First Traveller: What's that lying in the dust?
Second Traveller: A crooked stick.
First Traveller: What's it worth, if you can trust
— — To arithmetic?
Second Traveller: Isn't this a riddle?
First Traveller: No, a trick.
Second Traveller: It's worthless. Leave it where it lies.
First Traveller: Wait; count ten;
— — Rub a little dust upon your eyes;
— — Now, look again.
Second Traveller: Well, and what the devil is it, then?
First Traveller: It's the sort of crooked stick that shepherds know.
Second Traveller: Someone's loss!

Because the cithole hath a thousand tones
Inwrought with many subtile harmonies
Of lute and flute wherein sweet music dies,
Yea, all the bitter-sweet that love disowns,
Mournful are they and full of heavy moans
And tears and interpenetrative sighs,
Soul-stirred with ultimate immensities,
And incommunicable antiphones!

So is the soul fulfilled of saddest things,
Of multitudinous sighs more sad than they
Whereof Earth hears no sound, yet nothing may
Drown the deep murmur of its echoings:
Even so of soul and soul the poet sings

Because mine eyes can never have their fill
Of looking at my lady's lovely face,
I will so fix my gaze
That I may become blessed beholding her.
Even as an angel, up at his great height
Standing amid the light,
Becometh blessed by only seeing God:--
So, though I be a simple earthly wight,
Yet none the less I might,
Beholding her who is my heart's dear load,
Be blessed, and in the spirit soar abroad.
Such power abideth in that gracious one;
Albeit felt of none
Save of him who, desiring, honors her.

Because mine eyes are fashioned so,
Shalt thou forsake thy house and hearth,
And like a beggar thou shalt go,
Despised of men and nothing worth.
Fair fame and fortune — all shall be
As trodden dust beneath your feet,
Because of me!

And we shall know the town at eve
Where, in the gas-illumined street,
Unhappy people make-believe,
And proven friends are few to meet —
Where lust and hunger, toil and hate,
In noisy riot pay their due
To cynic Fate.

Such bitter things and sweet shall fill

Because insect blood flows and seeps in
and everything exhausts its semen
this earth is bright,
from a woman's white fingers
a gold coin slips down on my hand.
The time is the beginning of May.
Infant trees swim out onto the streets,
chirping, buds grow out to flare.
Look, the landscape has come, valiantly flowing;
floating up distinctly in the blue sky
it really clearly reflects people's shadows.

I

Because I work not, as logicians work,
Who but to ranked and marshalled reason yield:
But my feet hasten through a faery field,
Thither, where underneath the rainbow lurk
Spirits of youth, and life, and gold, concealed:

Because by leaps I scale the secret sky,
Upon the motion of a cunning star:
Because I hold the winds oracular,
And think on airy warnings, when men die:
Because I tread the ground, where shadows are:

Therefore my name is grown a popular scorn,
And I a children's terror! Only now,

Because I used to shun
Death and the mouth of hell
And count my battles won
If I should see the sun
The blood and smoke dispel.

Because I used to pray
That living I might see
The dawning light of day
Se me upon my way
And from my fetters free,
Because I used to seek
Your anser to my prayer
And that your soul should speak
For strengthening of the weak
To struggle with despair,

Now I have seen my shame
That I should thus deny
My soul's divinest flame,
Now shall I should your name,
Now shall I seek to die

Thinking only of their vow that they would crush the Tartars —
On the desert, clad in sable and silk, five thousand of them fell. . . .
But arisen from their crumbling bones on the banks of the river at the border,
Dreams of them enter, like men alive, into rooms where their loves lie sleeping.

Because I am idolatrous and have besought,
With grievous supplication and consuming prayer,
The admirable image that my dreams have wrought
Out of her swan's neck and her dark, abundant hair:
The jealous gods, who brook no worship save their own,
Turned my live idol marble and her heart to stone.

" I, Belladonna, am the wife of a man named Wahoo,
Who early became a mandrake in Liang.
Before our matrimonyvine could be consommeted, he had to go back,
Leaving me, his wife, to dwell here ruefully alone.
The mustard has not been cut, the flaxseed bed remains unvisited —
Hemlocked in here without any neighbors, I raised my head and sighed for my Traveler's Joy:
" Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme —
I pray that he'll forget me not!"
Gingerly, I hoped, but I recently heard that the King of Ch'u,