English

SONG

Hark , how my Celia with the choice
Music of her hand and voice
Stills the loud wind, and makes the wild
Incensed boar and panther mild.
Mark how those statues like men move,
Whilst men with wonder statues prove.
This stiff rock bends to worship her;
That idol turns idolater.

Now, see how all the new-inspired
Images with love are fired;
Hark how the tender marble groans,
And all the late transformed stones
Court the fair nymph, with many a tear,

1. Hark! hark! with harps of gold, What anthem do they sing?
2. " Glory to God! " repeat The glad earth and the sea;
The radiant clouds are backward rolled, And angels smite the string.
And every wind and billow fleet, Bears on the jubilee.
Glory to God; bright wings, Spread glistening and afar,
Where Hebrew bard hath sung, Or Hebrew seer hath trod,
And on the hallowed rapture rings, From circling star to star.
Each holy spot hath found a tongue, " Let glory be to God. "

3. Soft swells the music now,
Along the shining choir,

Hardly a man is now alive
Who recalls that in 1795
Occurred the death of a Mr. James Boswell;
A joke on his doctor, who'd thought that he was well.

Hard helmets and high boots
tumescent in the sun,
got-up in rubber skin
and leather hide,
black, strapped, laced,
buckled with grommets,
chrome and brassy-eyed,
their dress itself is an act of sex,
as the body, used,
tumbles to its end
like jointed dolls we outgrew
and threw aside.
So the exalted race
to their base death
in self-abuse begins,
as the body's transient existence
sings its violent end,
to replace that dull, dull death
that waits upon the rest of us
behind a desk,

1. Hard heart of mine, O that the Lord Would
2. I hear the heavenly pilgrims tell Their
this hard heart subdue! O come thou blest life
sins are all forgiven; And while on earth their
giving word, And form my soul anew.
bodies dwell, Their souls enjoy a heaven.

3. The Christians sing redeeming love,
And talk of joys divine;
And soon they say in realms above,
In glory they shall shine.

4. But, ah! 'tis all an unknown tongue,
I never knew that love;
I cannot sing that heavenly song,
Nor tell of joys above.

TIDE ROUND A FINGER.

The bell that strikes the warning hour,
Reminds me that I should not linger,
And winds around my heart its power,
Tight as the string around my finger.

A sweet good-night I give, and then
Far from my thoughts I need must fling her,
Who bless'd that lovely evening, when
She tied the string around my finger.

Lovely and virtuous, kind and fair,

Of the two spoiled, barn-sour geldings
we owned that year, it was Red —
skittish and prone to explode
even at fourteen years — who'd let me
hold to my face his own: the massive labyrinthine
caverns of the nostrils, the broad plain
up the head to the eyes. He'd let me stroke
his coarse chin whiskers and take
his soft meaty underlip
in my hands, press my man's carnivorous
kiss to his grass-nipping upper half of one, just
so that I could smell
the long way his breath had come from the rain

SENT TO MISS BELL H——, WITH A PAIR OF BUCKLES .

Happy trifles, can ye bear
Sighs of fondness to the fair?
If your pointed tongues can tell,
How I love my charming Bell:
Fondly take a lover's part,
Plead the anguish of my heart.

 Go—ye trifles—gladly fly,
(Gracious in my fair one's eye)
Fly—your envy'd bliss to meet;
Fly, and kiss the charmer's feet.

 Happy there, with waggish play,
Though you revel day by day,
Like the donor, every night,
(Robb'd of his supreme delight)

Happy the man, who on the mountain-side
Bending o'er fern and flowers his basket fills:
Yet he will never know the outline-power,
The awful Whole of the Eternal Hills.

So some there are, who never feel the strength
In thy blind eyes, majestic and complete,
Which conquers those, who motionlessly sit,
O dear divine old Giant, at thy feet.

Happy the Man who his whole time doth bound
Within th'inclosure of his little ground.
Happy the Man whom the same humble place,
(Th'hereditary Cottage of his Race)
From his first rising infancy has known.
And by degrees sees gentle bending down,
With natural propension to that Earth
Which both preserv'd his Life, and gave him Birth.
Him no false distant lights by Fortune set,
Could ever into foolish wandrings get.
He never dangers either saw or fear'd:
The dreadful storms at Sea he never heard.