Lured as the Earth lures Summer,
Wooing as Sunlight the Seed—
I am the mystical Comer,
I am the Will and the Deed!

Over and over forever
The glad sad story is told;
Fleeing, escaping me never,
I am your Shower of Gold.

Subtle as April creeping
Flower-shod out of the South,
I am the dream of your sleeping,
Fever am I at your mouth.

I am the sap-lift singing
The hope of a last glad birth:
I am the May-Fog clinging—
You are the Earth!

And mine are the pangful kisses
That waken the Dream in the Dust;

He is a bad sleeper and it is a joy to me
To feel him well when he is the proud prey
And the strong neighbour of the best of sleep
Without false covers—no need—and without awakenings.
So near, so near to me that I believe he enflames me
In some way, with his overwhelming desire, that I feel
In my ravished and trembling body.
If we find ourselves face to face, and if he turns
Close to my side, as lovers are wont to do,
His haunches, deliriously dreamy or not,
Sudden, mutinous, malicious, stubborn, whorish,

It may be that, hidden in the shade of the trees,
Tea-pickers too are listening to the cuckoo.

I Stript of Earthly Comforts am;
Stript, Lett me duely mourn:
Naked from Earth at first I came,
And Naked I Return.
What, but Gifts from above were They?
GOD gave them unto me.
And now they Take their Flight away,
Taken by GOD they be.
The Name of my Great GOD, I will
Forever then Adore;
Hee's Wise, and Just, and Sovereign Still,
And Good forevermore.

Love is not love that cannot stand and say,
“What I have suffered I would bear again
And ten times more, if so the slightest pain
From finger-tip of thine to soothe away
I might be able, pleasure to convey
In tiniest crimson tingle of a vein:
Yea, sweetheart, stony-hearted would remain
Unloved, unkissed, for ever and a day,
If so the Beauty might be nearer brought
That I have seen between the palms of dreams.”
Till we are one with our ideal gleams,
And bear upon our brows the rainbow sought
By snatching baffled hands of eager thought,

I am on leave of absence, I am allowed the sweet furlough,
Given by consent of life from one life to another,
Crossing all abysses of time and space to arrive on this recent globe

My ancestors sent me out of the world of their peace to plead their case with the present
I can go and stay: but I cannot go where they are not or stay where they are not.
They send me as their singer to tell their story of sacrifice,
They send me as their envoy from immortal nowheres visiting the secular earth.
I do not waste myself in the gayday of the spendthrift body:

The roots of grasses
And of trees from foreign lands
With us shall flourish,
When with fost'ring care we tend
Daily the gardens of Japan.

I'm only a Gargoyle attached to a church,
As ugly a Gargoyle as ever was known;
I lean from my Gothic, aerial perch
To gaze on that glorious vision in stone,—

The fair Caryatid just over the street
Enthroned on a pillar of porphyry red,
So mild of demeanor, so patient and sweet,
Though seventeen stories are heaped on her head!

I envy the wind that may speak to my love,
The raindrop that plashes her cheek like a tear,
The cobweb that covers her hand like a glove,
The sparrow that builds in the curve of her ear.

Not , “Is it Old or is it New?”
But, “Is it False or is it True?”

Hail not the New as True While Proof is meager.
Be Willing to Believe, but not Too Eager.

S EEK All the Truth lest Error seize you;
Fear not the Truth that does not please you.

B ELIEVE what you have Proved. They most deceive
Themselves who try to Prove what they Believe.

A DMITTING you don't know, is going
The First Step on the Road to Knowing.

Wondrous the gods, more wondrous are the men,
More wondrous, wonderous still, the cock and hen,
More wondrous still, the table, stool and chair;
But ah! more wondrous still the charming fair.