Skip to main content

The Terrors of Truth

A MIGHTY wizard gave to an eastern King
The power to see, for but a single day,
Through all disguise, beholding everything
Stript bare of false array.

Then, to the monarch's gaze made manifest
In their true lineaments and native forms,
Foul demons, at the Enchanter's dread behest,
Came and passed by in swarms.

Yonder was that which he had deemed to be
Fair-smiling Friendship—one gorgonian frown;
And yonder was self-named Fidelity,
Hungering to seize his crown.

And hour by hour, serene and grave and mute,

The Moth and the Evening Primrose

The Moth is waiting for the night
To poise his feathered wings, untried,
Fresh from their prison, scarcely dried,
And trembling for the trial flight.
“The Rose is dreaming of the Bee:
Perchance my Primrose wakes for me.”

The evening wears a golden zone:
One waits and listens, like the flower,
She feels her fate and knows her hour.
The night is come, but not alone:
Love's wings are trembling on the air:
All the heart's treasure lying bare.

Quatrain

Hark at the lips of this pink whorl of shell
And you shall hear the ocean's surge and roar:
So in the quatrain's measure, written well,
A thousand lines shall all be sung in four!

O Thou most mighty, make me one wtih Thee, take me for Thy servant, Lord

O Thou most mighty, make me one with Thee, take me for Thy servant, Lord,
Pain, pleasure, wealth cling about the soul: the seven clutch it fast.
The mind is unstable, a thief and lawless: Bhakti has no place therein.
The Lord was gracious, He looked upon me: all else was weariness and set aside.
My Lover is Immortal: he is not born, he does not die: joyfully my union is accomplished.
Gulal says, Now am I wedded wife: there is no more coming, no more going.

Hare-hunting

Hark! from yon covert, where those tow'ring oaks
Above the humble copse aspiring rise,
What glorious triumphs burst in ev'ry gale
Upon our ravished ears! The hunters shout,
The clanging horns swell their sweet-winding notes,
The pack wide-op'ning load the trembling air
With various melody; from tree to tree
The propagated cry redoubling bounds,
And wingèd zephyrs waft the floating joy
Through all the regions near. Afflictive birch
No more the schoolboy dreads, his prison broke,
Scamp'ring he flies, nor heeds his master's call.

Newport Beach

THE crested line of waves upheaving slow,
Like white-plumed squadrons in compact array,
Moving to launch their thunder on the foe,
Each gathering in, with hushed yet ardent will,
Its strength of purpose ere the war-cloud burst.—
And with accumulate energy press on
Their foamy ridges, to dissolve at last,
Like passion's billows, into gushing tears,
Or, with an inarticulate moan, expire.

Wave after wave successively rolls on
And dies along the shore, until more loud
One billow with concentrate force is heard
To swell prophetic, and exultant rears

Under the Boughs

Prefer the cherry when the fruit hangs thick
and hot for plunder of a blackbird's beak,
the bird flashing and crying in the leaves.

Shadow and sun and blackbird in the leaves
make summer's ripeness, the blood's sweet, slow heat,
when there is this hot, red-fleshed fruit to eat.

I will not ask you to believe sweetness
of fruit beyond all possible sweetness
when the sugary juice stains lips and teeth.

I will not ask you to believe surfeit
is possible. The sun burns at your shut
eyelids; the sun warms at your shadowed cheek.

Gloomily the clouds are sailing

When the fog slunk in with that salivary,
close, coyote panting, its hue a very
huelessness, like breath huffed on a glass,
like the void stretched and still stretching past
where we'd thought it could, we felt less wary.
We felt our shoulders loosen, surrendering
to phantom hands and softly vanished feet.
The sensation was a first and last: sweet
to feel the vigilance at last suspending,
the chronic stress of constantly pretending
to know—have known!—what all the others knew.
Loopy, sly, we leered at one another
(what we just assumed was one another)

When Freedom Mourns

When hordes with lance and sabre
Spread desolation wide,
And bloody murder revels
Along the crimson tide.

When hungry famine follows
The devastating flame,
And tender children vainly call
A slaughtered father's name

When homes are burned and plundered,
And widowed women weep,
Distorted lie the mangled dead
In their eternal sleep.

Then desolated Freedom mourns
Her immolated sons;
And lamentations mingle with
The echoes of the guns.

Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet

Follow your saint, follow with accents sweet;
Haste you, sad notes, fall at her flying feet.
There, wrapped in cloud of sorrow, pity move,
And tell the ravisher of my soul I perish for her love.
But if she scorns my never-ceasing pain,
Then burst with sighing in her sight, and ne'er return again.

All that I sung still to her praise did tend.
Still she was first, still she my songs did end.
Yet she my love and music both doth fly,
The music that her echo is, and beauty's sympathy.
Then let my notes pursue her scornful flight;
Subscribe to English