Works

With every rising of the sun
Think of your life as just begun.

The past has shrived and buried deep
All yesterdays - there let them sleep,

Nor seek to summon back one ghost...

You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease,
Within this region I subsist,
Whose spirits falter in the mist,
And languish for the purple seas.
It is the land that freemen till,
That sober-suited Freedom chose,...

There was a girl in our town
Who dearly loved to flirt,
But the home folks never noticed it at all.
The women in the neighborhood
All said she was too pert,
But she never even noticed them at all.
...

You'd entertain the universe in bed,
Foul woman; ennui makes you mean of soul.
To exercise your jaws at this strange sport
Each day you work a heart between your teeth.
Your eyes, illuminated like boutiques...

You don't believe -- I won't attempt to make ye:
You are asleep -- I won't attempt to wake ye.
Sleep on! sleep on! while in your pleasant dreams
Of Reason you may drink of Life's clear streams....

You felons on trial in courts;
You convicts in prison-cells, you sentenced assassins, chain'd and hand-cuff'd with iron;
Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison?...

You mustn't show weakness
and you've got to have a tan.
But sometimes I feel like the thin veils
of Jewish women who faint
at weddings and on Yom Kippur.

You mustn't show weakness...

You must n't swim till you're six weeks old,
Or your head will be sunk by your heels;
And summer gales and Killer Whales
Are bad for baby seals.


Are bad for baby seals, dear rat,...

You never can tell when you send a word,
Like an arrow shot from a bow
By an archer blind, be it cruel or kind,
Just where it may chance to go.
It may pierce the breast of your dearest friend....

Young England, what is then become of Old
Of dear Old England? Think they she is dead,
Dead to the very name? Presumption fed
On empty air! That name will keep its hold
In the true filial bosom's inmost fold...

Tune - "The carlin o' the glen."


I.

Young Jamie, pride of a' the plain,
Sae gallant and sae gay a swain;
Thro' a' our lasses he did rove,
And reign'd resistless king of love:...

But, Song, arise thee on a greater wing,
Nor twitter robin-like of love, nor sing
A pretty dalliance with grief - but try
Some metre like a sky,
Wherein to set
Stars that may linger yet...

I make this rhyme of my lady and me
To give me ease of my misery,
Of my lady and me I make this rhyme
For lovers in the after-time.
And I weave its warp from day to day
In a golden loom deep hid away...

N.B. - This sequence of poems has appeared in former editions under the title of 'Love Platonic.'


I

1
Surely at last, O Lady, the sweet moon
That bringeth in the happy singing weather...

Yea, let me be 'thy bachelere,'
'Tis sweeter than thy lord;
How should I envy him, my dear,
The lamp upon his board.
Still make his little circle bright
With boon of dear domestic light,...

'The daffodils are fine this year,' I said;
'O yes, but see my crocuses,' said she.
And so we entered in and sat at talk
Within a little parlour bowered about
With garden-noises, filled with garden scent,...

So many days that keep us still apart?
Ah, canst thou live upon remembered smiles,
And ask no warmer comfort for thy heart?

I call thy name right up into the sky,...

I

"You on the tower of my factory -

What do you see up there?
Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings
Advancing to reach me here?"
- "Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings...

Your heart has trembled to my tongue,
Your hands in mine have lain,
Your thought to me has leaned and clung,
Again and yet again,
My dear,
Again and yet again.
...

Your riches taught me poverty.
Myself a millionnaire
In little wealths, -- as girls could boast, --
Till broad as Buenos Ayre,

You drifted your dominions
A different Peru;...