in Poems (Author's Poems)
News For The Delphic Oracle
Down the mountain walls
From where pan's cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.
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The Choice
The intellect of man is forced to choose
Perfection of the life, or of the work,
And if it take the second must refuse
a heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.
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The Cap And Bells
The jester walked in the garden:
The garden had fallen still;
He bade his soul rise upward
And stand on her window-sill.
It rose in a straight blue garment,
When owls began to call:
It had grown wise-tongued by thinking
Of a quiet and light footfall;
But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale night-gown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down.
He bade his heart go to her,
When the owls called out no more;
In a red and quivering garment
It sang to her through the door.
It had grown sweet-tongued by dreaming
Of a flutter of flower-like hair;
But she took up her fan from the table
And waved it off on the air.
'I have cap and bells, ' he pondered,
"I will send them to her and die";
And when the morning whitened
He left them where she went by.
She laid them upon her bosom,
Under a cloud of her hair,
And her red lips sang them a love-song
Till stars grew out of the air.
She opened her door and her window,
And the heart and the soul came through,
To her right hand came the red one,
To her left hand came the blue.
They set up a noise like crickets,
a chattering wise and sweet,
And her hair was a folded flower
And the quiet of love in her feet.
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The Apparitions
I have found nothing half so good
As my long-planned half solitude,
Where I can sit up half the night
With some friend that has the wit
Not to allow his looks to tell
When I am unintelligible.
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Peace
Ah, that Time could touch a form
That could show what Homer's age
Bred to be a hero's wage.
'Were not all her life but a storm,
Would not painters pain a form
Of such noble lines, ' I said,
'Such a delicate high head,
All that sternness amid charm,
All that sweetness amid strength?
Ah, but peace that comes at length,
Came when Time had touched her form.
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Fragments
Locke sank into a swoon;
The Garden died;
God took the spinning-jenny
Out of his side.
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A Prayer For My Daughter
It's certain that fine women eat
a crazy salad with their meat
Whereby the Horn of plenty is undone.
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Now all the truth is out,
Be secret and take defeat
From any brazen throat,
For how can you compete,
Being honour bred, with one
Who, were it proved he lies,
Were neither shamed in his own
Nor in his neighbours' eyes?
Bred to a harder thing
Than Triumph, turn away
And like a laughing string
Whereon mad fingers play
Amid a place of stone,
Be secret and exult,
Because of all things known
That is most difficult.
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A bloody and a sudden end,
Gunshot or a noose,
For Death who takes what man would keep,
Leaves what man would lose,
He might have had my sister,
My cousins by the score,
But nothing satisfied the fool
But my dear Mary Moore,
None other knows what pleasures man
At table or in bed.
What shall I do for pretty girls
Now my old bawd is dead?
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The Land of Heart's Desire
Land of Heart's Desire,
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, time an endless song.
The Land of Faery,
Where nobody gets old and godly and grave,
Where nobody gets old and crafty and wise,
Where nobody gets old and bitter of tongue.
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