The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins.
Poor soul, the centre of my sinful earth, [......] these rebel powers that thee array, Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? Why so large cost, having so short a lease, Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, Eat up thy charge? Is this thy body's end? Then soul, live thou upon thy servant's loss And let that pine to aggravate thy store; Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; Within be fed, without be rich no more. So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on men, And, Death once dead, there's no more dying then.
Andromeda, by Perseus sav'd and wed, Hanker'd each day to see the Gorgon's head: Till o'er a fount he held it, bade her lean, And mirror'd in the wave was safely seen That death she liv'd by.
Let not thine eyes know Any forbidden thing itself, although It once should save as well as kill: but be Its shadow upon life enough for thee.
Now that I, tying thy glass mask tightly, May gaze thro’ these faint smokes curling whitely, As thou pliest thy trade in this devil’s-smithy— Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?
He is with her, and they know that I know Where they are, what they do: they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray God in, for them!—I am here.
Grind away, moisten and mash up thy paste, Pound at thy powder,—I am not in haste! Better sit thus and observe thy strange things, Than go where men wait me and dance at the King’s.
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,
Ave Faustina Imperatrix, morituri te salutant. Lean back, and get some minutes' peace; Let your head lean Back to the shoulder with its fleece Of locks, Faustine.
Duncan Gray came here to woo, Ha, ha, the wooin o't! On blythe Yule night when we were fou, Ha, ha, the wooin o't! Maggie coost her head fu high, Look'd asklent and unco skeigh, Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh; Ha, ha, the wooin o't!
Duncan fleech'd, and Duncan pray'd, Ha, ha, the wooin o't! Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig, Ha, ha, the wooin o't! Duncan sigh'd baith out and in, Grat his een baith bleer't and blin',
My sister! my sweet sister! if a name Dearer and purer were, it should be thine. Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim No tears, but tenderness to answer mine: Go where I will, to me thou art the same A lov'd regret which I would not resign. There yet are two things in my destiny— A world to roam through, and a home with thee.
St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man; Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees, And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan, Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees: The sculptur'd dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
Ne Rubeam, Pingui donatus Munere (Horace, Epistles II.i.267) While you, great patron of mankind, sustain The balanc'd world, and open all the main; Your country, chief, in arms abroad defend, At home, with morals, arts, and laws amend;
On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year 'Tis time this heart should be unmoved, Since others it hath ceased to move: Yet though I cannot be beloved, Still let me love!
Titan! to whose immortal eyes The sufferings of mortality, Seen in their sad reality, Were not as things that gods despise; What was thy pity's recompense? A silent suffering, and intense; The rock, the vulture, and the chain, All that the proud can feel of pain, The agony they do not show, The suffocating sense of woe, Which speaks but in its loneliness, And then is jealous lest the sky Should have a listener, nor will sigh Until its voice is echoless.
What shall I do with this absurdity — O heart, O troubled heart — this caricature, Decrepit age that has been tied to me As to a dog's tail? Never had I more Excited, passionate, fantastical Imagination, nor an ear and eye
who goes there? who is this young man born lonely?
who walks there? who goes toward death
whistling through the water
without his chorus? without his posse? without his song?
it is autumn now
in me autumn grieves
in this carved gold of shifting faces
my eyes confess to the fatigue of living.
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