Works

When I was a much younger man,
my spiritual homeland was a scrub-mile of bush with thicket
leaves the size of your palms.

Saucer-size holes of white air enveloped the edge of trees...

The second time I lived on earth
Was several hundred years ago;
And, royal by my second birth,
I know as much as most men know.
I was a king who held the reins
As never modern monarch can;...

When I was still a youthful wight,

So full of enjoyment and merry,
The painters used to assert, in spite,

That my features were small yes, very;
Yet then full many a beauteous child...

It was June, and I was twenty.
All my wisdom, poor but plenty,
Never learned Festina lente.
Youth is gone, but whither went he?

Madeline came down the orchard
With a mischief in her eye,...

I will not know when I am dead
If sun or moon is overhead;
I'll stretch out flat without a sound
Inside a box beneath the ground,
And never rise again to see
Branches lifting on a tree,...

When I was young the silk
of my mind
hard as a peony head
unfurled
and wind bloomed the parachute:

The air-head tugged me
up,
tore my roots loose and drove
high, so high
...

When I would muse in boyhood
The wild green woods among,
And nurse resolves and fancies
Because the world was young,
It was not foes to conquer,
Nor sweethearts to be kind,...

When June is here - what art have we to sing
The whiteness of the lilies midst the green
Of noon-tranced lawns? Or flash of roses seen
Like redbirds' wings? Or earliest ripening...

We rode, we rode against the wind.
The countless lights along the town
Made the town blacker for their fire,
And you were always looking down.

To 'scape the blustering breath of March,...

When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd'and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
...

When, looking deeply in thy face,
I catch the undergleam of grace
That grows beneath the outward glance,
Long looking, lost as in a trance
Of long desires that fleet and meet...

When Love is kind,
Cheerful and free,
Love's sure to find
Welcome from me.

But when Love brings
Heartache or pang,
Tears, and such things--
Love may go hang!

If Love can sigh...

When love is lost, the day sets towards the night,
Albeit the morning sun may still be bright,
And not one cloud-ship sails across the sky.
Yet from the places where it used to lie...

Only in August my heart was aflame,
Catching the scent of your Wind-stirred hair,
Now, though you spread it to soften my sleep
Through the night, I should hardly care.
...

When midst the gay I meet
That gentle smile of thine,
Tho' still on me it turns most sweet,
I scarce can call it mine:
But when to me alone
Your secret tears you show,...

"O Lord, how canst Thou say Thou lovest me?
Me whom thou settest in a barren land,
Hungry and thirsty on the burning sand,
Hungry and thirsty where no waters be
Nor shadows of date-bearing tree: -...

When my time is come to die,
I would shun the decent gloom,
Whispered word and weeping eye,
Fitful hum of knowing fly
Questing through the darkened room.

I would lay my skin and bone...

When 'Omer smote 'is bloomin' lyre,
He'd 'eard men sing by land an' sea;
An' what he thought 'e might require,
'E went an' took, the same as me!

The market-girls an' fishermen,...

When Philoctetes in the Lemnian isle
Like a form sculptured on a monument
Lay couched; on him or his dread bow unbent
Some wild Bird oft might settle and beguile
The rigid features of a transient smile,...

When summer's end is nighing
And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
And all the feats I vowed
When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset...