Works

Bury, for practice bold and skill
Deserves to be of note;
He cures by means that well might kill,
He cuts his patient's throat!

* * * * *
...

Well with the purpose does the place agree;
For e'en the very house is crack'd, you see.

Yes, every poet is a fool;
By demonstration, Ned can show it:
Happy could Ned's inverted rule
Prove every fool to be a poet.

Those bless'd structures, plot and rhyme
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter's vision is not a lens,...

If Luther's day expand to Darwin's year,
Shall that exclude the hope--foreclose the fear?

Unmoved by all the claims our times avow,
The ancient Sphinx still keeps the porch of shade;...

Than farthest stars more distant,
A mile more,
A mile more,
A voice cries on insistent:
"You may smile more if you will;

"You may sing too and spring too;
But numb at last...

Go, words of mine! and if you live
Only for one brief, little day;
If peace, or joy, or calm you give
To any soul; or if you bring
A something higher to some heart,
I may come back again and sing...

(WRITTEN IN MDCCXXXVIII.)


DIALOGUE I.

Fr. Not twice a twelvemonth you appear in print,
And when it comes, the court see nothing in 't.
You grow correct, that once with rapture writ,...

There is a world Life dreams of, long since lost:
Invisible save only to the heart:
That spreads its cloudy islands, without chart,
Above the Earth,'mid oceans none has crossed:...

With quiet heart, I climbed the hill,
from which one can see, the city, complete,
hospitals, brothels, purgatory, hell,

prison, where every sin flowers, at our feet....

Perplexing case! your pardon, Friends, I pray,
My head so turns, I know not what to say;
However, since I've dared to come before ye,
I'll stop the whirligig,
("Clapping his hand to his forehead_,)...

The day is done; and, lo! the shades
Melt 'neath Diana's mellow grace.
Hark, how those deep, designing maids
Feign terror in this sylvan place!
Come, friends, it's time that we should go;...

These, to you now, O, more than ever now -
Now that the Ancient Enemy
Has passed, and we, we two that are one, have seen
A piece of perfect Life
Turn to so ravishing a shape of Death...

Patience, little Heart.
One day a heavy, June-hot woman
Will enter and shut the door to stay.

And when your stifling heart would summon...

Here check we our career:
Long books I greatly fear.
I would not quite exhaust my stuff;
The flower of subjects is enough.
To me, the time is come, it seems,
To draw my breath for other themes....

Beyond the moon, within a land of mist,
Lies the dim Garden of all Dead Desires,
Walled round with morning's clouded amethyst,
And haunted of the sunset's shadowy fires;...

HOLD! hold, my good friends; for one moment, pray stop ye,
I return ye my thanks, in the name of poor Hoppy.
He's not the first person who never did write,
And yet has been fed by a benefit-night....

FIRST SPEAKER, as David

I.
On the first of the Feast of Feasts,
The Dedication Day,
When the Levites joined the Priests
At the Altar in robed array,
Gave signal to sound and say,
...

Hold! Prompter, hold! a word before your nonsense;
I'd speak a word or two, to ease my conscience.
My pride forbids it ever should be said,
My heels eclips'd the honours of my head;...

We act by fits and starts, like drowning men,
But just peep up, and then pop down again.
Let those who call us wicked change their sense;
For never men lived more on Providence....