English

'Mongst all the Creatures in this spacious Round,
Of the Birds kind, the Phœnix is alone,
Which best by you, of living Things, is knowne;
None like to that, none like to you is found:
Your Beautie is the hot and splend'rous Sunne,
The precious Spices be your chaste Desire,
Which being kindled by that heav'nly fire,
Your Life so like the Phœnix's begun;
Your selfe thus burned in that sacred flame,
With so rare sweetnesse all the Heav'ns perfuming,
Againe increasing, as you are consuming,
Onely by dying, borne the very same:

Since to obtaine thee, nothing me will sted,
I have a Med'cine that shall cure my Love,
The powder of her Heart dry'd, when she is dead,
That Gold nor Honour ne'r had pow'r to move;
Mix'd with her Teares, that ne'r her true-Love crost,
Nor at Fifteene ne'r long'd to be a Bride,
Boyl'd with her Sighes, in giving up the Ghost,
That for her late deceased Husband dy'd;
Into the same then let a Woman breathe,
That being chid, did never word replie,
With one thrice-marry'd's Pray'rs, that did bequeath
A Legacie to stale Virginitie.

Letters and Lines we see are soone defaced,
Metals doe waste, and fret with Cankers Rust,
The Diamond shall once consume to Dust,
And freshest Colours with foule staynes disgraced:
Paper and Inke can paint but naked Words,
To write with Bloud, of force offends the Sight;
And if with Teares I find them all too light,
And Sighes and Signes a silly Hope affords,
O sweetest Shadow, how thou serv'st my turne!
Which still shalt be, as long as there is Sunne;
Nor whilst the World is, never shall be done,

That learned Father, which so firmely proves
The Soule of Man immortall and divine,
And doth the sev'rall Offices define:
Gives her that Name, as she the Body moves,
Then is she Love, imbracing Charitie,
Moving a Will in us, it is the Mind,
Retayning Knowledge, still the same in kind;
As intellectuall, it is Memorie,
In judging, Reason onely is her Name,
In speedie apprehension, it is Sense,
In Right or Wrong, they call her Conscience,
The Spirit, when it to God-ward doth inflame:
These of the Soule the sev'rall Functions bee,

Nothing but No and I, and I and No,
How fals it out so strangely you reply?
I tell yee (Faire) ile not be answered so,
With this affirming No, denying I.
I say, I Love, you sleightly answere I:
I say, You Love, you peule me out a No:
I say, I Die, you Eccho me with I:
Save mee I Crie, you sigh me out a No;
Must Woe and I, have naught but No and I?
No I, am I, if I no more can have;
Answere no more, with Silence make reply,
And let me take my selfe what I doe crave,
Let No and I, with I and you be so:

The earth has fallen from its old estate
Of understanding between fay and faun,
Dryad and mortal are not intimate;
A classic gate is locked, a key is gone.
And yet, to some, on any west wind blown
Comes reminiscent fragrance of white phlox
There is a race whose foreign eyes have known
The quiet that a garden gate unlocks.
Now dreamers go on melancholy ways
Who those sequestered paths no more may tread;
Grave exiles from an avatistic maze
From leisure of the enviable dead,
While sea-fog hides away fantastic coasts

Who says
That it's by my desire,
This separation, this living so far from you?
My dress still smells of the lavender you gave:
My hand still holds the letter that you sent.
Round my waist I wear a double sash:
I dream that it binds us both with a same-heart knot.
Did not you know that people hide their love,
Like a flower that seems too precious to be picked?

Toward what island-home am I moving,
not wanting to marry, not wanting
too much of that emptiness at evening,
as when I walked though a field at dusk
and felt wide in the night.
And it was again the evening that drew me
back to the field where I was most alone,
compassed by stems and ruts,
no light of the fixed stars, no flashing in the eyes,
only heather pared by dry air, shedding
a small feathered radiance when I looked away,
an expanse whose deep sleep seemed an unending
warren I had been given, to carry out such tasks—

Remember the promise, Dakotah,
Remember Messiah has said:
“I come on the morrow, my children,
And with me the numberless dead.
Again will the sunlight on lances
Shiver and break at the morn—

On the lances of warriors, Dakotah,
The bright eagle feathers adorn.
Again will the buffalo fatten,
Again will the swift hunters roam;
Dance the ghost-dance, O Dakotah!
For to-morrow thy people come home.”

Once in the flight of ages past,
There lived a man:—and WHO was HE?
—Mortal! howe'er thy lot be cast,
That Man resembled Thee.

Unknown the region of his birth,
The land in which he died unknown:
His name has perish'd from the earth;
This truth survives alone:—

That joy and grief, and hope and fear,
Alternate triumph'd in his breast;
His bliss and woe,—a smile, a tear!
—Oblivion hides the rest.

The bounding pulse, the languid limb,
The changing spirits' rise and fall;