Short Poems

On the wind of January
Down flits the snow,
Travelling from the frozen north
As cold as it can blow.

Declension 1

All nouns in a make Feminine,
If you like " Musa " them decline,
Except they're from a Graecian line,
Or by their sense are Masculine.

Old houses were scaffolding once
and workmen whistling.

Bless , thou dread Creator,
Bless this humble fane;
Man may build them greater , —
More they'll not contain.

Though the bards whom the Orient sun hath bless'd
Are greater than we who dwell in the west,
Yet in hatred of those whom our equals we find,
In this we're not in the least behind.

K N ow I hate to affect too much obscuritie, & harshnes, because they profit no sence. To note vices, so that no man can vnderstand them, is as fonde, as the French execution in picture. Yet there are some, (too many) that think nothing good, that is so curteous, as to come within their reach. Tearming all Satyres (bastard) which are not palpable darke, and so rough writ, that the hearing of them read, would set a mans teeth on edge. For whose vnseasond pallate I wrote the first Satyre in some places too obscure, in all places misliking me.

A Philosopher

What though they conquer us?
The tea has come.
In at most nine hundred years,
Someone will conquer them.

Though thou'rt like Judas — an apostate black,
In the resemblance one thing thou dost lack:
When he had gotten his ill-purchased pelf,
He went away and wisely hanged himself.
This thou may do at last — yet much I doubt,
If thou hast any bowels to gush out!

Now the sky is inky black,
And the clouds a driven rack,
Now the wind of death is blowing.
— " Sceptre and crown
— Shall tumble down. "
How the kings of the earth are going!

All greenery hath faded from the trees,
— The soft red earth turns brown,
No leaflet even stirring in the breeze,
— Slowly the night sinks down.
The sun is gone, but in the lighted west
— The gracious tokens of his going are,
And quick to shine out-gleaming all the rest,
— Brighter for darkness grows a single star.