Works

Many years have I still to burn, detained
Like a candle flame on this body; but I enshrine
A darkness within me, a presence which sleeps contained
In my flame of living, her soul enfolded in mine.
...

Cynthius, pluck ye by the ear,
That ye may good doctrine hear;
Play not with the maiden-hair,
For each ringlet there's a snare.
Cheek, and eye, and lip, and chin -
These are traps to take fools in....

To the distance! Ah, the distance!
Blue and broad and dim!
Peace is not in burgh or meadow,
But beyond the rim.

Aye, beyond it, far beyond it;
Follow still my soul,...

A hundred miles between us
Could never part us more
Than that one step you took from me
What time my need was sore.

A hundred years between us
Might hold us less apart...

I.

I dreamed last night once more I stood
Knee-deep in purple clover leas;
Your old home glimmered thro' its wood
Of dark and melancholy trees,
Where ev'ry sudden summer breeze...

Kings must not oft be seen by public eyes:
State at a distance adds to dignities.

What is there in those distant hills
My fancy longs to see,
That many a mood of joy instils?
Say what can fancy be?

Do old oaks thicken all the woods,
With weeds and brakes as here?...

Yes! from mine eyes the tears unbidden start,
As thee, my country, and the long-lost sight
Of thy own cliffs, that lift their summits white
Above the wave, once more my beating heart...

I left my home for travelling;
Because I heard the strange birds sing
In foreign skies, and felt their wing

Brush past my soul impatiently;
I saw the bloom on flower and tree...

Looking into the glassy crucifix of water.
slits of rock form stigmata across creviced limestone -
green pools with an occasional fish passing
air bubbles to the top...

Your face upon a drop of purple wine
Shows like my soul poised on a bead of blood.

From the Turkic of Hussein Baikrani.

I.

Wisely a woman prefers to a lover a man who neglects her.
This one may love her some day, some day the lover will not.

II.
...

Chords are touch'd by Apollo, the death-laden bow, too, he bendeth;

While he the shepherdess charms, Python he lays in the dust.
-
What is merciful censure? To make thy faults appear smaller?
...

They that eat the uncrushed grape
Walk with steady heels:
Lo, now, how they stare and gape
Where the poet reels!
He has drunk the sheer divine
Concentration of the vine.

"I am but clay," the sinner plead,
Who fed each vain desire.
"Not only clay," another said,
"But worse, for thou art mire."

To safeguard man from wrongs, there nothing must
Be truer to him than a wise distrust.
And to thyself be best this sentence known:
Hear all men speak, but credit few or none.

Ditherum dump lived i'th' haase behund th' pump,
An he grummel'd throo mornin to neet,
On his rig he'd a varry respectable hump,
An his nooas end wor ruddy an breet....

Believe me, together
The bright gods come ever,
Still as of old;
Scarce see I Bacchus, the giver of joy,
Than comes up fair Eros, the laugh-loving boy,
And Phoebus, the stately, behold!
...

I

TEMPEST


Wrapped round of the night, as a monster is wrapped of the ocean,
Down, down through vast storeys of darkness, behold, in the tower...

(E. L G.)



Beneath a knap where flown
Nestlings play,
Within walls of weathered stone,
Far away
From the files of formal houses,
By the bough the firstling browses,...