English

Love is the master of the ring
And life a circus tent.
What is this silly song you sing?
Love is the master of the ring.

I am afraid!
Afraid of Love
And of Love's bitter whip!
Afraid,
Afraid of Love
And Love's sharp, stinging whip.

What is this silly song you sing?
Love is the master of the ring.

Friends whose own griefs had borne the heaviest stroke
Best saw into his eyes, but never spoke …
Lover of children, pictures, books, and flowers,
Art was for him man's life, man's life an art,
Gracious of step and voice in hall or home …
He once brought Vergil to these lakes of ours,
But Vergil, kinsman of his gentle heart,
Took him forever from us back to Rome.

On a verdant summer islet
I beheld a wondrous scene,
In a trance of dreamy waking—
Burial of a Fairy Queen!

First I heard some small pipes playing,
Like faint night-winds on the breeze,
Or the sound of distant rain-drops,
As they fall among the trees.

Floating softly o'er the waters,
And from every bell of foam,
The fairy anthem echoed sweetly,
Sad as thoughts of distant home.

Next the sound, as if of footsteps,
O'er the grass plot mov'd along;
And distinctly came the accents

There was a Man in Galilee
Who talked as simple as could be,
Saying men should brothers be—
This lonely Man of Galilee.

There was a Man of Olivet
Whose strong voice reaches to us yet
Across the centuries' clamor—yet
There was a Man of Olivet.

There was a Man on Golgotha
Whose eyes grew dim at what they saw—
Yet clear to me is what they saw,
The dying Man on Golgotha.

Come, walk by Lake Gennesaret:
I saw a Fisher with his net,
Draw silver planets in his net—
How quiet is Gennesaret!

I KNOW I ought to make no dereliction
From the straight path to this side or to that;
I know the story I relate's no fiction,
And that the moment that I quit some flat,
Folks are all puff, and blame, and contradiction,
And swear I never know what I'd be at;
In short, such crowds, I find, can mend one's poem,
I live retired, on purpose not to know 'em.

Yes, gentlemen, my only ‘Academe’,
My sole ‘Gymnasium’, are my woods and bowers;
Of Afric and of Asia there I dream;
And the Nymphs bring me baskets full of flowers,

Do you remember how the twilight stood
And leaned above the river just to see
If still the crocus buds were in her hood,
And if her robes were gold or shadowy?
Do you remember how the twilight stood
When we were lovers and the world our wood?

And then, one night, when we could find no word,
But silence trembled like a heart—like mine!—
And suddenly that moon-enraptured bird
Awoke and all the darkness turned to wine?
How long ago that was! And how absurd
For us to own a wood that owned a bird!

a man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and leal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise

The storm had passed; the air was still;
So, by the leave of Gentle Will,
I shut the sovereign book of plays
To woo the queen of winter days;
But royalties are all akin,
As world without to world within.

A carnival of sleeted snows!
The elms were keen Mercutios,
Dazzling with such a diamond wit
No Capulet could suffer it.
In muffled bush I marked her fret,
The crook-backed nurse of Juliet.

Two opalescent briars pricked
Like Beatrice and Benedict.
Beyond their tinkling repartee

As a bell in a chime
Sets its twin-note a-ringing,
As one poet's rhyme
Wakes another to singing,
So, once she has smiled,
All your thoughts are beguiled,
And flowers and song from your childhood are bringing.

Though moving through sorrow
As the star through the night,
She needs not to borrow,
She lavishes, light.
The path of yon star
Seemeth dark but afar:
Like hers it is sure, and like hers it is bright.

Each grace is a jewel
Would ransom the town;