lost

COME away, come away from the straightness of the road;
I will lead you into delicate recesses
Where peals of ripples ring through the maidenhair’s abode
In the heart of little water wildernesses.

I will show you pleasant places; tawny hills the sun has kissed,
Where the giant trees the wind is always swinging
Rise from clouds of pearly saplings tipped with rose and amethyst,—
Fairy boughs where fairy butterflies are clinging.

Come away from the road; I will lead through shade and sheen,

O fly, my soul! what hangs upon
Thy drooping wings,
And weighs them down
With love of gaudy mortal things?

The Sun is now i' the east; each shade,
As he doth rise,
Is shorter made,
That earth may lessen to our eyes.

Oh, be not careless then and play
Until the star of peace
Hide all his beams in dark recess.
Poor pilgrims needs must lose their way
When all the shadows do increase.

Sweetest love, I do not go,
For weariness of thee,
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;
But since that I
Must die at last, 'tis best
To use myself in jest
Thus by feign'd deaths to die.

Yesternight the sun went hence,
And yet is here today;
He hath no desire nor sense,
Nor half so short a way:
Then fear not me,
But believe that I shall make
Speedier journeys, since I take
More wings and spurs than he.

O FLY not, Pleasure, pleasant-hearted Pleasure;
   Fold me thy wings, I prithee, yet and stay:
   For my heart no measure
   Knows, nor other treasure
To buy a garland for my love to-day.

And thou, too, Sorrow, tender-hearted Sorrow,
   Thou gray-eyed mourner, fly not yet away:
   For I fain would borrow
   Thy sad weeds to-morrow,
   To make a mourning for love's yesterday.

The voice of Pity, Time's divine dear Pity,
   Moved me to tears: I dared not say them nay,

I scanned her picture dreaming,
   Till each dear line and hue
Was imaged, to my seeming,
   As if it lived anew.

Her lips began to borrow
   Their former wondrous smile;
Her fair eyes, faint with sorrow,
   Grew sparkling as erstwhile.

Such tears as often ran not
   Ran then, my love, for thee;
And O, believe I cannot
   That thou are lost to me!

"Gesang ist Dasein"

A small thing done well, the steel bit paring
the cut end of the collar, lifting delicate
blue spirals of iron slowly out of lamplight

into darkness until they broke and fell
into a pool of oil and water below.
A small thing done well, my father said

so often that I tired of hearing it and lost
myself in the shop's north end, an underworld
of welders who wore black masks and stared

through smoked glass where all was midnight
except the purest spark, the blue-white arc

(From the diaries of Malte Laurids Brigge)


You, whom I do not tell that all night long
I lie weeping,
whose very being makes me feel wanting
like a cradle.

You, who do not tell me, that you lie awake
thinking of me:--
what, if we carried all these longings within us
without ever being overwhelmed by them,
letting them pass?

Look at these lovers, tormented by love,
when first they begin confessing,
how soon they lie!

You make me feel alone. I try imagining:

And when our streets are green again
When metalled roads are green
And girls walk barefoot through the weeds
Of Regent Street, Saint Martin's Lane

And children hide in factories
Where burdock blooms and vetch and rust,
And elms and oaks and chestnut trees
Are tall again and hope is lost

When up the Strand the foxes glide
And hedgehogs sniff and wildcats yell
And golden orioles come back
To flash through Barnes and Clerkenwell

When governments and industries

I.

Slow spreads the gloom my soul desires--
The sun from India's shore retires--
To EVAN'S banks with temp'rate ray,
Home of my youth! he leads the day.
O banks to me for ever dear!
O stream, whose murmurs still I hear!
All, all my hopes of bliss reside
Where EVAN mingles with the CLYDE .


II.

And she in simple beauty drest,
Whose image lives within my breast,
Who trembling heard my parting sigh,
And long pursued me with her eye!
Does she, with heart unchang'd as mine,

Sweet in her green dell the flower of beauty slumbers,
Lull'd by the faint breezes sighing through her hair;
Sleeps she and hears not the melancholy numbers
Breathed to my sad lute 'mid the lonely air.

Down from the high cliffs the rivulet is teeming
To wind round the willow banks that lure him from above:
O that in tears, from my rocky prison streaming,
I too could glide to the bower of my love!

Ah! where the woodbines with sleepy arms have wound her,
Opes she her eyelids at the dream of my lay,