Her house is empty and her heart is old, And filled with shades and echoes that deceive No one save her, for still she tries to weave With blind bent fingers, nets that cannot hold. Once all men’s arms rose up to her, ‘tis told, And hovered like white birds for her caress: A crown she could have had to bind each tress Of hair, and her sweet arms the Witches’ Gold.
Her mirrors know her witnesses, for there She rose in dreams from other dreams that lent Her softness as she stood, crowned with soft hair. And with his bound heart and his young eyes bent And blind, he feels her presence like shed scent, Holding him body and life within its snare.
An old man in Concord forgets to go to morning service. He falls asleep, while reading Vergil, and dreams that he is Aeneas at the funeral of Pallas, an Italian prince. The sun is blue and scarlet on my page, And yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, yuck-a, rage
Some prowl sea-beds, some hurtle to a star and, mother, some obsessed turn over every stone or open graves to let that starlight in. There are men who would open anything.
Harvey, the circulation of the blood, and Freud, the circulation of our dreams, pried honourably and honoured are like all explorers. Men who’d open men.
All night I stumble through the fields of light, And chase in dreams the starry rays divine That shine through soft folds of the robe of night, Hung like a curtain round a sacred shrine.
When daylight dawns I leave the meadows sweet And come back to the dark house built of clay, Over the threshold pass with lagging feet, Open the shutters and let in the day.
Here, where the world is quiet; Here, where all trouble seems Dead winds' and spent waves' riot In doubtful dreams of dreams; I watch the green field growing For reaping folk and sowing, For harvest-time and mowing, A sleepy world of streams.
I am tired of tears and laughter, And men that laugh and weep; Of what may come hereafter For men that sow to reap: I am weary of days and hours, Blown buds of barren flowers,
On the telephone, friends mistake us now when we first say hello—not after. And that oddly optimistic lilt we share nourishes my hopes: we do sound happy. . . .
Last night, in my dream’s crib, a one-day infant girl. I wasn’t totally unprepared—
Before our lives divide for ever, While time is with us and hands are free, (Time, swift to fasten and swift to sever Hand from hand, as we stand by the sea) I will say no word that a man might say Whose whole life's love goes down in a day; For this could never have been; and never, Though the gods and the years relent, shall be.
Is it worth a tear, is it worth an hour, To think of things that are well outworn? Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower, The dream foregone and the deed forborne? Though joy be done with and grief be vain, Time shall not sever us wholly in twain;
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