English

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,

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,

Beauty, thou wild fantastick Ape,
Who dost in ev'ry Country change thy shape!
Here black, there brown, here tawny, and there white;
Thou Flatt'rer which compli'st with every sight!
Thou Babel which confound'st the Ey
With unintelligible variety!
Who hast no certain What, nor Where,
But vary'st still, and dost thy self declare
Inconstant, as thy she-Professors are.

Beauty, Loves Scene and Maskerade,
So gay by well-plac'd Lights, and Distance made;
False Coyn, with which th' Impostor cheats us still;

Beauty, since you so much desire
To know the place of Cupid's fire,
About you somewhere doth it rest,
Yet never harbour'd in your breast,
Nor gout-like in your heel or toe,--
What fool would seek Love's flame so low?
But a little higher, but a little higher,
There, there, O there lies Cupid's fire.

Think not, when Cupid most you scorn,
Men judge that you of ice were born;
For though you cast love at your heel,
His fury yet sometimes you feel:
And whereabouts if you would know,
I tell you still not in your toe:

Beauty goes out to meet a greater beauty,
— Something we cannot grasp, who cry our loss —
Something God meant when he made the first morning,
— Something he meant, who stumbled with a cross!

Beauty goes out to meet a greater beauty,
Something we cannot grasp, who cry our loss —
Something God meant when he made the first morning,
Something he meant, who stumbled with a cross!

A beauty all stainless, a pearl of a maiden,
Has plunged me in trouble, and wounded my heart.
With sorrow and gloom are my soul overladen;
An anguish is there that will never depart.
I could voyage to Egypt across the deep water,
Nor care about bidding dear Eire farewell,
So I only might gaze on the Geraldine's daughter,
And sit by her side in some green, pleasant dell!

Her curling locks wave round her figure of lightness,
All dazzling and long, like the purest of gold;

The Beautiful, which mocked his fond pursuing,
The poet followed long;
With passionate purpose the shy shadow wooing,
And soul-betraying song.

And still the fervor of his fond endeavor
To him seemed poured in vain,
And all in vain, forever and forever,
The sorrow of his strain.

But when at lasThe perished broken-hearted,
The world, grown dark and dull,
Bewailed the radiance with him departed
Who was the Beautiful.

The beautiful! what is not perfect here below,
Created by the great Almighty power?
Each grain of sand Omnipotence doth show,
And beauty beameth in the humblest flower.

There's beauty in the budding leaves of spring,
In the maturity of summer born —
And in the many hues that autumn's bring,
And in bright winter's glittering sheen at dawn.

Mark you the smallest insect's many hues;
What beauty in their ever changing shade!
The diamond glistening of the morning dews, —