On the green/
with lignum vitae balls and ivory markers,
the pins planted in wild duck formation,
and quickly dispersed—
by this survival of ancient punctilio
in the manner of Chinese lacquer-carving,
layer after layer exposed by certainty of touch and unhurried incision
so that only so much color shall be revealed as is necessary to the picture,
I learn that we are precisionists,
not citizens of Pompeii arrested in action
as a cross-section of one's correspondence would seem to imply.
Renouncing a policy of boorish indifference

“Witch!
Witch!
Cursed black heart,
Cursed gold heart striped with black;
Thighs and breasts I have loved;
Lips virgin to my thought,
Sweeter to me than red figs;
Lying tongue that I have cherished.
Is my heart wicked?
Are my eyes turned against too bright a sun?
Do I dazzle, and fear what I cannot see?
It is grievous to lose the heart from the body,
Death which tears flesh from flesh is a grievous thing;
But death is cool and kind compared to this,
This horror which bleeds and kindles,
These kisses shot with poison,

There are rivers lapsing down
Lily-laden to the sea;
Every lily is a boat
For bees, one, two, or three:
I wish there were a fairy boat
For you, my friend, and me.

We would rock upon the river,
Scarcely floating by;
Rocking rocking like the lilies,
You, my friend, and I;
Rocking like the stately lilies
Beneath the statelier sky.

But ah, where is that river
Whose hyacinth banks descend
Down to the sweeter lilies,
Till soft their shadows blend
Into a watery twilight?—
And ah, where is my friend?—

Yaw, dot ish so! Yaw, dot ish so!
“Dis vorldt vas all a fleeting show.”
I shmokes mine pipe,
I trinks mine bier,
Und efry day to vork I go;
“Dis vorldt vas all a fleeting show;”
Yaw, dot ish so!

Yaw, dot ish so! Yaw, dot ish so!
I don'd got mooch down here below,
I eadt und trink,
I vork und shleep,
Und find oudt, as I oldter grow,
I haf a hardter row to hoe;
Yaw, dot ish so!

Yaw, dot ish so! Yaw, dot ish so!
Dis vorldt don'd gife me haf a show;
Somedings to vear,
Some food to eadt;
Vot else? Shust vait a minude, dough;

O DAVID , if I had
Your power, I should be glad—
In harping, with the sling,
In patient reasoning!

Blake, Homer, Job, and you,
Have made old wine-skins new.
Your energies have wrought
Stout continents of thought.

But, David, if the heart
Be brass, what boots the art
Of exorcising wrong,
Of harping to a song?

The sceptre and the ring
And every royal thing
Will fail. Grief's lustiness
Must cure the harp's distress.

S CHPEND someding less as vot you earns;
Pay all der notes vhen dhey comes due;
Don'd you forget von half you learns,
Nor bite off dwice vot you can chew.

Now Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain,
And clothes him in the embroidery
Of glittering sun and clear blue sky.
With beast and bird the forest rings,
Each in his jargon cries or sings;
And Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain.
River, and fount, and tinkling brook
Wear in their dainty livery
Drops of silver jewelry;
In new-made suit they merry look;
And Time throws off his cloak again
Of ermined frost, and wind, and rain

On these sandy dikes I shake the world's dust from my clothes,
And leisurely stroll into my tumbleweed house
Through the rock-strewn gorge a near by stream goes trickling,
While distant mountains glint through the sparse trees
So hard to find words for their airy kingfisher blue,
So easy for a fisherman to live.
On these green shores I listen, grasping the creepers,
Spring and my heart have now become as one
The call of yellow birds among the oaks,
The cry of deer browsing on the duckweed
Sadly I recall those men of a hundred sorrows,

The meteor's arc of quiet; a voiceless rain;
The mist's mute communing with a stagnant moat;
The sigh of a flower that has neglected lain;
That bell's unuttered note:

A hidden self rebels, its slumber broken;
Love secret as crystal forms within the womb;
The heart may as faithfully beat, the vow unspoken;
All sounds to silence come.

His icicle upon the frozen bough
Stern winter hangs, where hung the leaf ere now:
In soft diffusion doth the morning creep
Along the clouded heaven from mound to mound,
So faint and wan, the woods are still asleep,
And pallid shadows scarcely mark the ground.

Then comes the thought, Alas that summer dies;
Alas that youth should melancholy grow
In waning hours, and lose the alchemies
That make its thickest clouds with gold to glow!

But what hast thou to do,
Whose soul is strong, with time? What cause hast thou