Short Poems

ON HER ART OF GROWING OLD GRACEFULLY

You ask a verse, to sing (ah, laughing face!)
Your happy art of growing old with grace?
O Muse, begin, and let the truth — but hold!
First let me see that you are growing old.

You ask for the date
of my birth?
Write this down.
It was the day you loved me
and gave me our first kiss.

You are no more, but sunken in a sea
Sheer into dream ten thousand leagues you fell;
And now you lie green-golden, while a bell
Swings with the tide, my heart. And all is well
Till I look down, and, wavering, the spell —
Your loveliness — returns. There in the sea,
Where you lie amber-pale and coral-cool,
You are most loved, most lost, most beautiful.

You agree
With me,
Don't you?
That in the zoo
The seals
Have the best deals?

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.

[To Thomas Moore, June 22, 1821. " You say nothing of politics — but, alas! what can be said?"]

The world is a bundle of hay,
Mankind are the asses who pull,
Each tugs it a different way, —
And the greatest of all is John Bull!

Within the covert of a shady grove
We saw the little red-cheek'd god of Love:
He had nor bow nor quiver: these among
The neighboring trees upon a bow were hung.
Upon a bank of tender rosebuds laid,
He smiling slept; bees with their noise invade
His rest, and on his lips their honey made.

Wisely and well was it said of him, " Hang it all, he's a
Mixture of Jesus, Apollo, Goliath and Julius Caesar!"
Always he plans as an ever Do-Right-man, never an Err-man,
And never a drop of the blood in his beautiful body was German.
" God save him," we said when he lived, but the words now sound odd,
For we know that in Heaven above at this moment he 's saving God .

A window box of pansies
Is such a happy thing.
A window box of wallflowers
Is a garden for a king.
A window box of roses
Makes everyone stand still
Who sees a garden growing
On a window sill.

THE BUBBLE

Why should I stay? Nor seed nor fruit have I.
But, sprung at once to beauty's perfect round,
Nor loss, nor gain, nor change in me is found, —
A life — complete in death — complete to die.