Short Poems

Dearest, where thy shadow falls,
Beauty sits, and Music calls;
Where thy form and favor come,
All good creatures have their home.

They say, through patience, chalk
Becomes a ruby stone;
Ah, yes! but by the true heart's blood
The chalk is crimson grown.

The mosquito knows full well, small as he is
he's a beast of prey.
But after all
he only takes his bellyful,
he doesn't put my blood in the bank.

HIS Son's
A Jew.
I thought

How gorgeous that shock of red lilies, and larkspur cleaving
All with a flash of blue! — when will she be leaving
Her room, where the night still hangs like a half-folded bat,
And passion unbearable seethes in the darkness, like must in a vat.

If thou chance for to find
A new House to thy mind,
And built without thy Cost:
Be good to the Poor,
As God gives thee store,
And then my Labour's not lost.

With beauty, with pleasure surrounded, to languish —
To weep without knowing the cause of my anguish:
To start from short slumbers, and wish for the morning —
To close my dull eyes when I see it returning;
Sighs sudden and frequent, looks ever dejected —
Words that steal from my tongue, by no meaning connected!
Ah! say, Fellow-swains, how these symptoms befell me?
They smile, but reply not — Sure Delia will tell me!

116. Ad Cambricum .

E multis aliquos si non despexit amantes,
Si tua non fuerit rustica nata fremis?
Aut tam formosam tibi, Cambrice, non genuisses,
Aut sineres nato munere posse frui.
Castae sint facies sua quas sinit esse pudicas,
Pulchrior huic forma est quam decet esse probis.

A¤àt¤ën ╬Àx max╬▒rwn ╬▒nt╬▒cioj e╬╣h ╬▒moib╬À.
[Dionysius, Periegesis , 1186]

Celestial pow'rs! that piety regard,
From you my labours wait their last reward.

Still as she looked the iron clouds
Would part, and sunlight shone between,
But drearily strange and pale and cold.