At once, from hence, my lines and I depart,
I to my soft still walks, they to my heart;
I to the nurse, they to the child of art;

Yet as a firm house, though the carpenter
Perish, doth stand: as an ambassador
Lies safe, howe'er his king be in danger:

So, though I languish, pressed with melancholy,
My verse, the strict map of my misery,
Shall live to see that, for whose want I die.

Therefore I envy them, and do repent,
That from unhappy me, things happy are sent;
Yet as a picture, or bare sacrament,

At noon of night, and at the night's pale end,
Such things have chanced to me
As one, by day, would scarcely tell a friend
For fear of mockery.

Shadows, you say, mirages of the brain!
I know not, faith, not I.
Is it more strange the dead should walk again
Than that the quick should die?

At night they pound the vermilion newt
and stamens of buttercup;
her ten finger-tips, all transformed
into red gosling beaks.
A leisurely moment — just one tune
she plays on the jade lute:
several petals of flowering peach
float upon the waters.

These are names to haunt our dreams —
Babylon, Samarkand,
Valparaiso, Singapore,
Khartoum and Somaliland.

These are names to shatter dreams —
Chattanooga, Yonkers, Rye,
Walla Walla, Steubenville,
Noank, and Schenectady.

At most mischief
I suffer grief;
For of relief
Since I have none,
My lute and I
Continually
Shall us apply
To sigh and moan.

Nought may prevail
To weep or wail;
Pity doth fail
In you, alas!
Mourning or moan,
Complaint or none,
It is all one,
As in this case.

For cruelty
That most can be
Hath sovereignty
Within your heart;
Which maketh bare
All my welfare:
Nought do ye care
How sore I smart.

No tiger's heart
Is so pervert,
Without desert
To wreak his ire;

At midnight's hour I raised my head,
The owls were seeking for their bread;
The foxes barked impatient still,
At their wan fate they bear so ill.--
I thought me of eternities delayed:
And of commands but half obeyed.--
The night wind rustled through the glade
As if a force of men there staid;
The word was whispered through the ranks
And every hero seized his lance;
The word was whispered through the ranks,

At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountaintop,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take;
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!--and lo! where lies

A T midnight in the alley
A Tom-cat comes to wail,
And he chants the hate of a million years
As he swings his snaky tail.

Malevolent, bony, brindled,
Tiger and devil and bard,
His eyes are coals from the middle of Hell
And his heart is black and hard.

He twists and crouches and capers
And bares his curved sharp claws,
And he sings to the stars of the jungle nights,
Ere cities were, or laws.

Beast from a world primeval,
He and his leaping clan;
When the blotched red moon leers over the roofs

At liberty I sit and see
Them, that have erst laughed me to scorn,
Whipped with the whip that scourgid me:
And now they ban that they were born.

I see them sit full soberly
And think their earnest looks to hide;
Now, in themselves, they cannot spy
That they or this in me have spied.

I see them sitting all alone,
Marking the steps, each word and look;
And now they tread where I have gone,
The painful path that I forsook.

Now I see well I saw no whit
When they saw well, that now are blind;

At length 't is done, the glorious conflict's done,
And British valor hath the conquest won:
Success our arms, our heroes, honor crowns,
And Louisbourg an English monarch owns!
Swift, to the scene where late the valiant fought,
Waft me, ye muses, on the wings of thought —
That awful scene where the dread god of war
O'er field of death roll'd his triumphant car:
There yet, with fancy's eye, methinks I view
The pressing throng, the fierce assault renew:
With dauntless front advance, and boldly brave
The cannon's thunder and th' expecting grave.