No, you have been always docile.
See now, a forehead vaulted thus, or thus -
a nose bow'd one way rather than another -
Eye-brows with straiter, or with sharper curve -
a line, a mole, a wrinkle, a mere nothing
I th' countenance of an European savage -
And thou—art saved, in Asia, from the fire.
Ask ye for signs and wonders after that?
What need of calling angels into play?
Out of a fired ship, which by no way
But drowning could be rescued from the flame,
Some men leap'd forth, and ever as they came
Near the foes'ships, did by their shot decay;
So all were lost, which in the ship were found,
They in the sea being burnt, they in the burnt ship drown'd.
Only do not forget, if I wake up crying
it's only because in my dream I'm a lost child
hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands.
All wishes are not idle, nor in vain
fulfillment we devise — for pain is pain,
not for itself to be desired, but ill;
or else to strive or to subdue the will
alike were graceless; and of Evil this
alone is deadly certain: Evil is.
I've often wish'd that I had clear,
For life, six hundred pounds a year;
a handsome house to lodge a friend;
a river at my garden's end;
a terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land set out to plant a wood.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker's art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down.
Good evening, daddy
I know you've heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred.
Unendowed with wealth or pity,
Little birds with scarlet legs
Sitting on their speckled eggs,
Eye each flu-infected city.
Altogether elsewhere, vast
Herds of reindeer move across
Miles and miles of golden moss,
Silently and very fast.
What troops
Of generous boys in happiness thus bred —
Saturnians through life's Tempe led,
Went from the North and came from the South,
With golden mottoes in the mouth,
To lie down midway on a bloody bed.
Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
a year or two, but wallow'd in, a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.
I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.