Clean birds by sevens,
Unclean by twos,
The dove in the heavens
Is the one I choose.

(A Scholar is musing on his want of success.)

T O strive — and fail. Yes, I did strive and fail
I set mine eyes upon a certain night
To find a certain star — and could not hail
With them its deep-set light.

Fool that I was! I will rehearse my fault:
I, wingless, thought myself on high to lift
Among the winged — I set these feet that halt
To run against the swift.

And yet this man, that loved me so, can write —
That loves me, I would say, can let me see;
Or fain would have me think he counts but light

Clerk Colvill and his lusty dame
Were walking in the garden green;
The belt around her stately waist
Cost Clerk Colvill of pounds fifteen.

O promise me now, Clerk Colvill,
Or it will cost ye muckle strife:
Ride never by the wells of Slane
If ye wad live and brook your life.

Now speak nae mair, my lusty dame,
Now speak nae mair of that to me;
Did I ne'er see a fair woman
But I wad sin with her fair body?

He 's ta'en leave o' his gay lady
Nought minding what his lady said,
And he 's rode by the wells of Slane

Clad in the wealthy robes his genius wrought,
In happy dreams was gentle Shakespeare laid;
His pleased soul wandering through the realms of thought,
While all his elves and fairies round him played.

Voltaire approached: straight fled the quaint-eyed band,
For envious breath such sprites may not endure;
He pilfered many a gem with trembling hand,
Then stabbed and stabbed, to make the theft secure.

Ungrateful man! But vain thy black design,
Th' attempt, and not the deed, thy hand defiled;
Preserved by his own charms and spells divine,

The city streets coil around me:
thongs of mud bite into my heart,
a dull ember in it yields only clay,
cords of fire lash naked melancholy fields,
they burn Jaikur in the pit of my soul,
they plant in the pit ashes of rancor.

These are streets of which drowsy hearthside legends say:
From them no more than from the shores of death
has any traveler through night returned,
as if there
echo and silence were wings of the Sphinx,
two wings that jut from buried rock through the subsoil.
Who then shall let water gush to those streets,

With Bob and Joanne then, rounding
the cliffs from Wharf Road
to the beach one idle late summer
afternoon, as if time were endless,
sitting down then to rest
as if at home, at water's

edge, the seabirds swooping,
the beach empty, the talk lapping,
inconsequential, nothing brings
consequence, all happens, all this
sweet nothing. The moments flood back,
a blurring tide, and then withdraw

again into the ever
accumulating pool of ebbing
attentions, lost hopes, forgotten so
called dreams. No longer here to live,

THE FIRST BIRTH DAY .

The Sun, sweet girl, hath run his year-long race
Through the vast nothing of the eternal sky —
Since the glad hearing of the first faint cry
Announc'd a stranger from the unknown place
Of unborn souls. How blank was then the face,
How uninform'd the weak light-shunning eye,
That wept and saw not. Poor mortality
Begins to mourn before it knows its case,
Prophetic in its ignorance. But soon
The hospitalities of earth engage
The banish'd spirit in its new exile —
Pass some few changes of the fickle Moon,

Cincirinella had a mule in his stall,
All day long he kept it on the go,
Cart and saddle and bridle and all,
Trot trot Cincirinella. Ho!

He trotted on the mountain, he trotted on the plain,
He'd be trotting still, if he hadn't dropped.
With pennies in his pocket and pennies to gain
Cincirinella never never stopped.

The churchyard leans to the sea with its dead,--
It leans to the sea with its dead so long,
Do they hear, I wonder, the first bird's song,
When the winter's anger is all but fled;
The high, sweet voice of the west wind,
The fall of the warm, soft rain,
When the second month of the year
Puts heart in the earth again?

Do they hear, through the glad April weather,
The green grasses waving above them?
Do they think there are none left to love them,
They have lain for so long there, together?
Do they hear the note of the cuckoo,

CHURCH Street wears ever a smile, from having watched bright belles
Coming home with young men, after balls, " at all hours. "
Its villas don't mind; they say, " Go it, young swells,
We've been young, too! " But Ebenezer Street glowers.

Chapel deacons live here, with side whiskers and pompous wives,
Who play hymns on Sundays, and deeply deplore sinful acts.
They're convinced that their neighbors lead scandalous private lives;
" That you and I ought to be shot, " if one knew all the facts. "