English

He that hath such acuteness, and such wit,
As would aske ten good heads to husband it;
He that can write so well that no man dare
Refuse it for the best, let him beware:
BEAUMONT is dead, by whose sole death appeares,
Wit 's a Disease consumes men in few yeares.

He that hath no mistress, must not wear a favour,
He that woos a mistress, must serve before he have her,
He that hath no bedfellow, must lie alone,
And he that hath no lady, must be content with Joan,
And so must I, for why alas my love and I am parted,
False Cupid, I will have thee whipt, and have thy mother carted.

He snuggles his fingers
In the blacker loam
The lean months are done with,
The fat to come.

— — His eyes are set
— — On a brushwood-fire
— — But his heart is soaring
— — Higher and higher.

Though he stands ragged
An old scarecrow,
This is the way
His swift thoughts go,

" Butter beans fo' Clara
Sugar corn fo' Grace
An' fo' de little feller
Runnin' space.

" Radishes and lettuce
Eggplants and beets
Turnips fo' de winter
An' candied sweets.

He sleeps at last—a hero of his race.
Dead!—and the night lies softly on his face,
While the faint summer stars, like sentinels,
Hover above his lonely resting-place.

A soldier, yet less soldier than a man,
Who gave to justice what a soldier can,—
The courage of his arm, a patient heart,
And the fire-soul that flamed when wrong began.

Not Caesar, Alexander, Antonine,
No despot born of the old warrior line,
Napoleons of the sword, whose cruel hands
Caught at the throat of love upon its shrine,—

He seemed to know the harbour,
So leisurely he swam;
His fin,
Like a piece of sheet-iron,
Three-cornered,
And with knife-edge,
Stirred not a bubble
As it moved
With its base-line on the water.

His body was tubular
And tapered
And smoke-blue,
And as he passed the wharf
He turned,
And snapped at a flat-fish
That was dead and floating.
And I saw the flash of a white throat,
And a double row of white teeth,
And eyes of metallic grey,
Hard and narrow and slit.

He sat upon the rolling deck
Half a world away from home,
And smoked a Capstan cigarette
And watched the blue waves tipped with foam.

He had a mermaid on his arm,
An anchor on his breast,
And tattooed on his back he had
A blue bird in a nest.

He sang one song and died — no more but that:
A single song and carelessly complete.
He would not bind and thresh his chance-grown wheat,
Nor bring his wild fruit to the common vat,
To store the acid rinsings, thin and flat,
Squeezed from the press or trodden under feet.
A few slow beads, blood-red and honey-sweet,
Oozed from the grape, which burst and spilled its fat.
But Time, who soonest drops the heaviest things
That weight his pack, will carry diamonds long.
So through the poets' orchestra, which weaves

He said he had been a soldier,
That his wife and children
Had died in Jamaica.
He had a beggar's wallet over his shoulders,
And a coat of shreds and patches.
And though his body was bent,
He was tall
And had the look of one
Used to have been upright.

I talked a while, and then
I gave him a piece of cold bacon

He rose up on his dying bed
and asked for fish.
His wife looked it up in her dream book
and played it.

He roamed half round the world of woe,
Where toil and labour never cease;
Then dropped one little span below
In search of peace.

And now to him mild beams and showers,
All that he needs to grace his tomb,
From loneliest regions at all hours,
Unsought for come.