Short Poems

They came
Next to meadows abundant, pierced with flowers,
With sulphur-colour'd lilies, brittle in stalk,
And seals of red carnation which had each
Two tongues like butterflies.

His gilded rowels
Now stars of blood.

The sky minted into golden sequins.
Stars like gold tufts.
Stars like golden bees.
Stars like golden rowels.
Sky peak'd with tiny flames.
Stars like tiny-spoked wheels of fire.

Night's lantern
Pointed with pierced lights, and breaks of rays
Discover'd everywhere.

Stars waving their indivisible rays.
Sky fleeced with the milky way.

(a ) Stars

How looks the night? There does not miss a star.
The million sorts of unaccounted motes
Now quicken, sheathed in the yellow galaxy.
There is no parting or bare interstice
Where the stint compass of a skylark's wings
Would not put out some tiny golden centre.

— now the rain,
A brittle sheen, runs upward like a cliff,

. . . in her cheeks that dwell
Centred like meteors, bright like pimpernel.

The time was late and the wet yellow woods
Told off their leaves along the piercing gale,

There is an island, wester'd in the main,┬░
Around it balances the level sea.