Works

'So say the foolish!' Say the foolish so, Love?
'Flower she is, my rose' or else, 'My very swan is she'
Or perhaps, 'Yon maid-moon, blessing earth below, Love,...

I look for the way
things will turn
out spiralling from a center,
the shape
things will take to come forth in

so that the birch tree white
touched black at branches
will stand out...

Who hath beheld the goddess face to face,
Blind with her beauty, all his days shall go
Climbing lone mountains towards her temple place,
Weighed with song's sweet, inexorable woe.

God to his untaught children sent

Law, order, knowledge, art, from high,
And ev'ry heav'nly favour lent,

The world's hard lot to qualify.
They knew not how they should behave,
...

I had rather write one word upon the rock
Of ages than ten thousand in the sand.
The rock of ages! lo I cannot reach
Its lofty shoulders with my puny hand:
I can but touch the sands about its feet....

Poetry to us is given,
As stars beautify the Heaven,
Or, as the sunbeams when they gleam,
Sparkling so bright upon the stream,
And the poetry of motion
Is ship sailing o'er the ocean;...

To me the world's an open book
Of sweet and pleasant poetry;
I read it in the running brook
That sings its way toward the sea.
It whispers in the leaves of trees,
The swelling grain, the waving grass,...

Out of the past the dim leaves spoke to me
The thoughts of Pindar with a voice so sweet
Hybl'an bees seemed swarming my retreat
Around the reedy well of Poesy.
I closed the book. Then, knee to neighbor knee,...

Do you remember the wood, love,
That skirted the meadow so green;
Where the cooing was heard of the stock-dove,
And the sunlight just glinted between.
The trees, that with branches entwining...

O! should I ever dare profane
With venal touch the hallow'd lyre,
Let me be banish'd from the Muses' train;
Ne'er let me feel their heart-ennobling fire!
Unworthy of a Poet's glorious name,...

...wry humour.
The poet revels in image and can use it well.
Paul Cameron Brown is capable of interesting,
even arresting work.

What time the poet hath hymned
The writhing maid, lithe-limbed,
Quivering on amaranthine asphodel,
How can he paint her woes,
Knowing, as well he knows,
That all can be set right with calomel?
...

Here I myself might likewise die,
And utterly forgotten lie,
But that eternal poetry
Repullulation gives me here
Unto the thirtieth thousand year,
When all now dead shall reappear.

Vain is the chiming of forgotten bells
That the wind sways above a ruined shrine.
Vainer his voice in whom no longer dwells
Hunger that craves immortal Bread and Wine.
...

Children of earth are we,
Lovers of land and sea,
Of hill, of brook, of tree,
Of all things fair;
Of all things dark or bright,
Born of the day and night,
Red rose and lily white...

Poets are strange -- not always understood
By many is their gift,
Which is for evil or for mighty good --
To lower or to lift.

Upon their spirits there hath come a breath;
Who reads their verse...

Wantons we are, and though our words be such,
Our lives do differ from our lines by much.

This thing, that thing is the rage,
Helter-skelter runs the age;
Minds on this round earth of ours
Vary like the leaves and flowers,
Fashion'd after certain laws;
Sing thou low or loud or sweet,...

Bacon, Hogg, Lamb and Shakespeare.

Bacon, philosopher profound,
With mighty thoughts his works abound,
Reflections did his mind engage
Were in advance of his own age.
...

Old poets foster'd under friendlier skies,
Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say,
At dawn, and lavish all the golden day
To make them wealthier in his readers' eyes;...