There is a book, which we may call
(Its excellence is such)
Alone a library, tho' small;
The ladies thumb it much.

Words none, things num'rous it contains:
And, things with words compar'd,
Who needs be told, that has his brains,
Which merits most regard?

Ofttimes its leaves of scarlet hue
A golden edging boast;
And open'd, it displays to view
Twelve pages at the most.

Nor name, nor title, stamp'd behind,
Adorns its outer part;
But all within 'tis richly lin'd,
A magazine of art.

The whitest hands that secret hoard

My Fancy loves to play with Clouds
That hour by hour can change Heaven's face;
For I am sure of my delight,
In green or stony place.

Sometimes they on tall mountains pile
Mountains of silver, twice as high;
And then they break and lie like rocks
All over the wide sky.

And then I see flocks very fair;
And sometimes, near their fleeces white,
Are small black lambs that soon will grow
And hide their mothers quite.

Sometimes, like little fishes, they
Are all one size, and one great shoal;
Sometimes they like big sailing ships

There are strange shadows fostered of the moon,
More numerous than the clear-cut shade of day . . .
Go forth, when all the leaves whisper of June,
Into the dusk of swooping bats at play;
Or go into that late November dusk
When hills take on the noble lines of death,
And on the air the faint, astringent musk
Of rotting leaves pours vaguely troubling breath.
Then shall you see shadows whereof the sun,
Knows nothing—aye, a thousand shadows there
Shall leap and flicker and stir and stay and run,
Like petrels of the changing foul or fair;

Ah, you night, you little night!
Ah, you night, you stormy night!
Why from early evening tide
Even to the midnight late
Twinkle not your little stars,
Shineth not your full-orbed moon?
You are veiled with darkling clouds!
'T is with you, I think, O night,
Even as with me, young man,—
Villain grief has called on us!
When the dire one takes abode
Somewhere deep within the heart,—
You forget the lasses fair,
Dances and obeisances;
You forget from evening tide
Even to the midnight late,
Singing songs, to take delight

“A T last you come, my fellow of the seas,
For whom I've waited long! Your hand.
Now, please
To sit while we like kinsfolk here recite
High-colored happenings by day and night,
Whether in Polynesian waters, or
Beyond Malayan lands, with sail and oar
Gladly adventured under sun and stars …
How oft we steered beneath uneasy spars!

“Little we dreamed to greet and talk it all
In this snug haven. … So the fates should fall,
Since we were cronies in the crescent will
To know the soul of man through good and ill,

Today I want the sky,
The tops of the high hills,
Above the last man's house,
His hedges, and his cows,
Where, if I will, I look
Down even on sheep and rook,
And of all things that move
See buzzards only above:—
Past all trees, past furze
And thorn, where naught deters
The desire of the eye
For sky, nothing but sky.
I sicken of the woods
And all the multitudes
Of hedge-trees. They are no more
Than weeds upon this floor
Of the river of air
Leagues deep, leagues wide, where
I am like a fish that lives
In weeds and mud and gives

I scratch the Enemy's back, do overtime,
And he with no less vigour scratches mine.
I call him Friend and he calls back at me
‘Friend’. He is a gentle Enemy!
(These lonely compliments no animus
Can cause, this gentle fooling between us.)
If so the man we all were like this one
No man would need to carry a shot-gun!
A motley, of thrasonical intent,
He affects, to stage his modest argument.—
If names could bark then I think Woffington
Would bark at us. But it is dead and gone,
And only fleshless eardrums now can smash.

And yet this ‘Enemy’ counters all my song.
His is a battle all the way along.
With him the machete never seems to rust.
No room with him for thoughts of the ultimate dust.
Confucian philosophy and arms
Seem equal partners in his iron charms.
Ideal samurai, virtuous, loyal, modest,
He brings a tolerant something to the West,
That was never there before, I think, with this
Odd code of a devotion we have lost:
Samurai, yes, but with an artist crossed.
His not the tender moon above the stream!
And yet what pathos in this bitter gleam

You now solicit a few enemy thrusts
At the stock poets' thickly bay-leaved busts.
Ranged in that portrait-place, of marble and clay,
August with the as-yet unwithered bay
I seem to note a roman profile bland,
I hear the drone from out the cactus-land:
That must be the poet of the Hollow Men:
The lips seem bursting with a deep Amen.
I espy Ezra, bearded like the Kaiser,
And wistful Earp, like a mediaeval sizar,
The learned beneficiary of provisions,
Gone to the buttery to lubricate his visions.
And there's Roy Campbell, stiff-chested and slim,

Well well well!!!—a dirty piece of work—
Come out of the murk, gone back into the murk!
As sure as my name's Faust, that's one of the worst
That ever on my deadened senses burst.
He brought an odour with him that went well
With the congested passions of his dead hell,
Built in the early days of human spleen,
Concocted of a frausty discipline
He had a waggle of his hinder parts
As if shaken by the combustion of dud farts.
He had an apoplectic barber's block,
From always keeping under key and lock
And walling-up his septic rages. Scarred