English

THE characters of great and small
—Come ready made, we can't bespeak one;
Their sides are many, too, and all
—(Except ourselves) have got a weak one.
Some sanguine people love for life,
—Some love their hobby till it flings them.
How many love a pretty wife
—For love of the éclat she brings them! . . .

A little to relieve my mind
—I've thrown off this disjointed chatter,
But more because I'm disinclined
—To enter on a painful matter:
Once I was bashful; I'll allow
—I've blushed for words untimely spoken;

Certainly there was something to their stories:
Something had been at the fields, the pond was shaped
Like an enormous footprint; there were the usual signs,
Small herds, snapped trees.
I sat astride my horse in the autumn twilight,
Conscious of looking well; they crowded about me,
Jabbering, gesticulating, spilling out of straw-thatched huts.
Later, outside the tavern, I was shown
A number of women — all, it was said, deflowered.

Well, I set out at once: the approach was sinister,
Full of the usual obstacles; suddenly,

Oh ! give me a cot in some wood-shaded glen,
Shut in from the clangour of conflict and pain,—
Far away from the turmoil of town-prisoned men,
Who strive for subsistence, and struggle for gain!
Aloof from all envy, secure from annoy,
My chiefest companions my wife and my child,—
I could think with some purpose, and labour with joy,
In that Home of Seclusion, far, far in the wild.

The lark should arouse me to action and thought,—
I would take my first draught at the health-giving rill;

Certain days wash ashore from the sea
and birds exist that dream of the south.

Possibly my heart flares up with cheer
because it thinks back to that afternoon in Mazatlan,
when we extinguished with booze
the final bonfires of summer.

Even now I recall it under the custard-apple tree
and the river making its sound at my feet.

(Many paths cut through the fields of sugar cane
and the grass was tall and ticklish.)

But days also bring love's weight on their shoulders:

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.

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.

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:

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,

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.