Works

Could I but strike - a sweeter note
Than all from virgin choirs that float,
Or harps with cords of gold;
A note more soft and more sublime
Than she, the sweetest of the Nine,
Euterpe's strains unfold!...

Could I but ride indefinite,
As doth the meadow-bee,
And visit only where I liked,
And no man visit me,

And flirt all day with buttercups,
And marry whom I may,
And dwell a little everywhere,...

(Verses 1, 3, Key Major; Verse 2, Key Minor)



Could I but will,
Will to my bent,
I'd have afar ones near me still,
And music of rare ravishment,
In strains that move the toes and heels!...

Could man be drunk for ever
With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
And lief lie down of nights.

But men at whiles are sober
And think by fits and starts,...

I want more lives in which to love
This world so full of beauty,
I want more days to use the ways
I know of doing duty;
I ask no greater joy than this
(So much I am life's lover),...

A steed with mutiny inspired
The stud which grazed the mead, and fired
A colt, whose eyes then blazing fire,
Stood forth and thus expressed his ire:

"How abject is the equine race,...

'Twas C'sar's saying: Kings no less conquerors are
By their wise counsel, than they be by war.

Now hearken, ye who take delight
In boasting of your worth!
To many a man, to many a knight,
Beloved in peace and brave in fight,
The Swabian land gives birth.

Of Charles and Edward, Louis, Guy,...

We'd gained our first objective hours before
While dawn broke like a face with blinking eyes,
Pallid, unshaved and thirsty, blind with smoke.
Things seemed all right at first. We held their line,...

The pig's head omelette -
something akin to a tatoo
buried squarely on the upper
torso of the man
wielding an axe,
chopping wood.
Shoulders drooped,
the bizarre rendition
had a female...

Imagining the smoke burnt
imprint of a tatoo
with tapers flickering,
the bejewelled gaze a dragon's snout
must bring
or the serpent coil, crimson flame
curl of dashing cobra,...

The Countess Jutta passed over the Rhine
In a light canoe by the moon's pale shine.
The handmaid rows and the Countess speaks:
"Seest thou not there where the water breaks
Seven corpses swim...

While the Poor gather round, till the end of time
May this bright flower of Charity display
Its bloom, unfolding at the appointed day;
Flower than the loveliest of the vernal prime...

AIX IN PROVENCE


I.

Christ God who savest man, save most
Of men Count Gismond who saved me!
Count Gauthier, when he chose his post,
Chose time and place and company...

Thanks, Sir, but, should it please the reverend Court,
I feel I can stand somehow, half sit down
Without help, make shift to even speak, you see,
Fortified by the sip of . . . why, 'tis wine,...

Half-awake I walked
A dimly-seen sweet hawthorn lane
Until sleep came;
I lingered at a gate and talked
A little with a lonely lamb.
He told me of the great still night,
Of calm starlight,...

And what of home, how goes it, boys,
While we die here in stench and noise?
"The hill stands up and hedges wind
Over the crest and drop behind;
Here swallows dip and wild things go...

And hath he not whereof he needs must sing?
And hath he not whereof he well may boast? -
He from whose kin so many a one did spring
To shape the mighty rocks that guard the coast...

One night the nymph called country dance--
(Whom folks, of late, have used so ill,
Preferring a coquette from France,
That mincing thing, Mamselle quadrille)--

Having been chased from London down...

Ah! County Guy, the hour is nigh,
The sun has left the lea,
The orange flower perfumes the bower,
The breeze is on the sea.
The lark his lay who thrill'd all day
Sits hush'd his partner nigh:...