English

Forget not yet the tried intent
Of such a truth as I have meant;
My great travail so gladly spent
Forget not yet!

Forget not yet when first began
The weary life ye know, since whan
The suit, the service, none tell can;
Forget not yet!

Forget not yet the great assays,
The cruel wrong, the scornful ways,
The painful patience in denays,
Forget not yet!

Forget not yet, forget not this,
How long ago hath been, and is,
The mind that never meant amiss
Forget not yet!

For why? the gaines doth seldome quitte the charge,
And so saye I, by proofe too dearely bought,
My haste mad wast, my brave and brainsicke barge,
Did float to fast, to catch a thing of nought:
With leasure, measure, meane, and many mo,
I mought have kept a chayre of quiet state,
But hastie heads can not bee setled so,
Till croked Fortune give a crabbed mate:
As busie braynes muste beate on tickle toyes,
As rashe invention breedes a rawe devise,
So sodayne falles doe hinder hastie joyes,

From east and south the holy clan
Of Bishops gathered, to a man;
To Synod, called Pan-Anglican,
In flocking crowds they came.

Among them was a Bishop, who
Had lately been appointed to
The balmy isle of Rum-ti-Foo,
And PETER was his name.

His people--twenty-three in sum--

They played the eloquent tum-tum,
And lived on scalps served up in rum--
The only sauce they knew.
When first good Bishop PETER came
(For PETER was that Bishop's name),
To humour them, he did the same

The swan existing
Is like a song with an accompaniment
Imaginary.

Across the glassy lake,
Across the lake to the shadow of the willows,
It is accompanied by an image —
As by Debussy's
" Reflets dans l'eau. "

The swan that is
Reflects
Upon the solitary water — breast to breast
With the duplicity:
" The other one! "

And breast to breast it is confused.
O visionary wedding! O stateliness of the procession!
It is accompanied by the image of itself
Alone.

At night

For those that never know the light,
The darkness is a sullen thing;
And they, the Children of the Night,
Seem lost in Fortune's winnowing.

But some are strong and some are weak, —
And there's the story. House and home
Are shut from countless hearts that seek
World-refuge that will never come.

And if there be no other life,
And if there be no other chance
To weigh their sorrow and their strife
Than in the scales of circumstance,

'T were better, ere the sun go down

Friends and loves we have none, nor wealth nor blessed abode,
But the hope of the City of God at the other end of the road.

Not for us are content, and quiet, and peace of mind,
For we go seeking a city that we shall never find.

There is no solace on earth for us — for such as we —
Who search for a hidden city that we shall never see.

Only the road and the dawn, the sun, the wind, and the rain,
And the watch fire under stars, and sleep, and the road again.

We seek the City of God, and the haunt where beauty dwells,

A fisher was casting his flies in a brook,
According to laws of such sciences,
With a patented reel and a patented hook
And a number of other appliances;
And the thirty-fifth cast, which he vowed was the last
(It was figured as close as a decimal),
Brought suddenly out of the water a trout
Of measurements infinitesimal.

This fish had a way that would win him a place
In the best and most polished society,
And he looked at the fisherman full in the face
With a visible air of anxiety:

For me, the naked and the nude
(By lexicographers construed
As synonyms that should express
The same deficiency of dress
Or shelter) stand as wide apart
As love from lies, or truth from art.

Lovers without reproach will gaze
On bodies naked and ablaze;
The Hippocratic eye will see
In nakedness, anatomy;
And naked shines the Goddess when
She mounts her lion among men.

The nude are bold, the nude are sly
To hold each treasonable eye.
While draping by a showman's trick

Four straight brick walls, severely plain,
A quiet city square surround;
A level space of nameless graves, —
The Quakers' burial-ground.

In gown of gray, or coat of drab,
They trod the common ways of life,
With passions held in sternest leash,
And hearts that knew not strife.

To yon grim meeting-house they fared,
With thoughts as sober as their speech,
To voiceless prayer, to songless praise,
To hear the elders preach.

Through quiet lengths of days they came,

There was an Old Man of Dumblane,
Who greatly resembled a crane;
But they said, " Is it wrong, since your legs are so long,
To request you won't stay in Dumblane? "