At the head of Wear Water, about twelve at noon,
I heard a maid a-talking and this was her tune,
There are all sorts of callings, in every degree,
But of all sorts of callings a collier for me.

You may know a jolly collier as he walks on the street,
His clothing is so handsome, and so neat are his feet,
With teeth as white as ivory, and his eyes as black as sloes,
You may know a jolly collier wherever he goes.

You may know a jolly collier: he's a swaggering, young blade,
When he goes a-courting of his buxom fair maid,

AT THE FEAST of Belshazzar and Athousand of his lords,
While they drank from golden vessels, as the Book of Truth records,
In the night as they reveled in the royal palace hall,
They were seized with consternation — 'twas the Hand upon the wall!

See the brave captive, Daniel, as he stood before the throng,
And rebuked the haughty monarch for his mighty deeds of wrong;
As he read out the writing — 'twas the doom of one and all,
For the kingdom now was finished — said the Hand upon the wall!

At the equinox when the earth was veiled in a late rain, wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring,
The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary, the ground-swell shook the beds of granite.

I gazing at the boundaries of granite and spray, the established sea-marks, felt behind me
Mountain and plain, the immense breadth of the continent, before me the mass and doubled stretch of water.

I said: You yoke the Aleutian seal-rocks with the lava and coral sowings that flower the south,

At the end of the row
I stepped on the toe
Of an unemployed hoe.
It rose in offense
And struck me a blow
In the seat of my sense.
It wasn't to blame
But I called it a name.
And I must say it dealt
Me a blow that I felt
Like malice prepense.
You may call me a fool,
But was there a rule
The weapon should be
Turned into a tool?
And what do we see?
The first tool I step on
Turned into a weapon.

At the end of the garden,
Across the litter of weeds and grass cuttings,
The pumpkin spreads its coarse,
Bristled, hollow-stemmed lines,
Erupting in great leaves
Above flowers
The nobbly and prominent
Stigmas of which
Are like fuses
Waiting to be set by bees.

When, like a string
Of yellow mines
Across the garden,
The pumpkins will smolder
And swell,
Drawing their combustion from the sun
To make their own.
At night I lie
Waiting for detonations,
Half expecting
To find the garden
Cratered like a moon.

(After Sappho)

A T the end of the bough, at the top of the tree
(As fragrant, as high, and as lovely as thou!),
One sweet apple reddens which all men may see
At the end of the bough.

Swinging full to the view, though the gatherers now
Pass, and evade, overlook busily:
Overlook! nay, but pluck it!
They cannot tell how.

For it swings out of reach as a cloud, and as free

At the door of his hut sat Massasoit,
And his face was lined with care,
For the Yellow Pest had stalked from the West
And swept his wigwams bare;
Mother and child had it stricken down,
And the warrior in his pride,
Till for one that lived when the plague was past,
A full half-score had died.

Now from the Eastern Shore there came
Word of a white-skinned race
Who had risen from out the mighty deep
In search of a dwelling-place.
Houses they fashioned of tree and stone,
Turkey and deer they slew

At the dark street corner
where Guilt and Desire
are attempting to stare
each other down
(presently, one of them
will light a cigarette
and glance in the direction
of the abandoned warehouse)
Love came slouching along,
an exploded silence
standing a little apart
but visible anyway
in the yellow, silent, steaming light,
while Guilt and Desire wrangled,
trying not to be overheard
by this trespasser.

Each time Desire looked towards Love,
hoping to find a witness,
Guilt shouted louder
and shook them hips

At the corner of Wood Street, when daylight appears,
Hangs a Thrush that sings loud, it has sung for three years:
Poor Susan has passed by the spot, and has heard
In the silence of morning the song of the Bird.

'Tis a note of enchantment; what ails her? She sees
A mountain ascending, a vision of trees;
Bright volumes of vapour through Lothbury glide,
And a river flows on through the vale of Cheapside.

Green pastures she views in the midst of the dale,
Down which she so often has tripped with her pail;

At ten a Clock, when I the Fire rake,
I then a Verse of twice ten words do make;
And in the Morning, when for Coals I look,
One of twice nine I in the Ashes hook.
Turn but five Leaves, and there you'll surely find
Some of the first, and some of th'other kind.

He certainly is in the Right
Who mingles Profit with Delight .

Men of Learning, Sense, and Reason
Have to ev'ry thing a Season;
As the Summer serves the Mason,
And the Winter time the Thrasher,
Market-days the Haberdasher,
Sun-shine Hay-harvest and the Washer.