Chloe or her modern sister, Lil,
Stepping one day over the fatal sill,
Will say quietly: " Behold the waiting equipage!"
Or whistle Hello and end an age.

For both these girls have that cold ease
Of women overwooed, half-won, hard to please.
Death is one more honour they accept
Quizzically, ladies adept

In hiding what they feel, if they feel at all.
It can scarcely have the importance of a ball,
Is less impressive than the least man
Chloe, smiling, turns pale, or Lil tweaks with her fan.

Yet, they have been used so tenderly.

Cease your labours, lovers of boys,
Wish no more your hopeless hopes.
Can any man dry the flowing sea
Or count the desert sand?
For that's what it's like to love a boy
Who's proud of a beauty sweet to gods and men.

Look at me you lovers:
My toils after a boy
Were as water on desert sand.

The [visions] Caverns of the Grave Ive seen
And these I shewd to Englands Queen
[And] But now the Caves of Hell I view
Who shall I dare to shew them to
What mighty Soul in Beautys form
Shall [dare to] dauntless View the Infernal Storm
Egremonts Countess [dare] can controll
The [waves] flames of Hell that round me roll
If she refuse I still go on
Till the Heavens & Earth are gone
Still admird by [worthy] Noble minds
Followd by Envy on the winds
Reengravd Time after Time
Ever in their youthful prime

As well as any other, Erato,
I can dwell separately on what we know
In common secrecy,
And celebrate the old, adored rose,
Retell — oh why — how similarly grows
The last leaf of the tree.

But for familiar sense what need can be
Of my most singular device or me,
If homage may be done
(Unless it is agreed we shall not break
The patent silence for mere singing's sake)
As well by anyone?

Mistrust me not, then, if I have begun
Unwontedly and if I seem to shun
Unstrange and much-told ground:
For in peculiar earth alone can I

Cause of this stab in my side,
Girl I love, and have long loved,
Your colour God created,
Like the daisy is your brow.
Your red-gold is God's giving,
Your hair like a tongue of gold,
Your neck grows straight and slender,
Your breasts are full balls of yarn.
Your cheeks a charming scarlet,
Your brows, maid, are London black;
Your eyes like two bright brooches,
Your nose, it's on a dear girl.
Your smile, five joys of Mary;
Your flesh filches me from faith.
You are white as Saint Anne's child,
Fair colour and fine figure.

Catching the water that drips
from a hose dangling from a water tower,
a baby sparrow is bathing.
It trots up to it, flaps its wings,
and trots back again.
It's repeating the same movement many times over.
Yes: No matter what happens to the world,
sparrow, stay there, repeating your movement eternally, without resting.
There's rumbling in the C61 boiler.

The cat that comes to my window sill
When the moon looks cold and the night is still--
He comes in a frenzied state alone
With a tail that stands like a pine tree cone,
And says, "I have finished my evening lark,
And I think I can hear a hound dog bark.
My whiskers are frozen stuck to my chin.
I do wish you'd git up and let me in."
That cat gits in.

But if in solitude of the night
He doesn't appear to be feeling right,
And rises and stretches and seeks the floor,
And some remote corner he would explore,

A cat came fiddling out of a barn,
With a pair of bagpipes under her arm,
She could sing nothing but “Fiddle-de-de.
The mouse has married the bumble bee.”
Pipe, cat—dance, mouse—
We'll have a wedding at our good house.

Tramping at night in the cold and wet, I passed the lighted inn,
And an old tune, a sweet tune, was being played within.
It was full of the laugh of the leaves and the song the wind sings;
It brought the tears and the choked throat, and a catch to the heart-strings.

And it brought a bitter thought of the days that now were dead to me,
The merry days in the old home before I went to sea —
Days that were dead to me indeed. I bowed my head to the rain,
And I passed by the lighted inn to the lonely roads again.

" Cast down your bucket where you are, "
From burning sands or Polar star
From where the iceberg rears its head
Or where the kingly palms outspread;
'Mid blackened fields or golden sheaves,
Or foliage green, or autumn leaves,
Come sounds of warning from afar,
" Cast down your bucket where you are. "

What doth it matter if thy years
Have slowly dragged 'mid sighs and tears?
What doth it matter, since thy day
Is brightened now by hope's bright ray.
The morning star will surely rise,
And Ethiop's sons with longing eyes