English

Love is blind, and a wanton;
In the whole world, there is scant one
Such another:
No, not his mother.
He hath plucked her doves, and sparrows,
To feather his sharp arrows,
And alone prevaileth,
While sick Venus waileth.
But if Cypris once recover
The wag; it shall behove her
To look better to him;
Or she will undo him.
(from Poetaster)

Swell me a bowl with lusty wine,
Till I may see the plump Lyaeus swim
Above the brim:
I drink as I would write,
In flowing measure filled with flame and sprite.
(from Poetaster)

If Ifreely may discover,
What would please me in my lover:
I would have her fair, and witty,
Savouring more of court than city;
A little proud, but full of pity;
Light and humourous in her toying,
Oft building hopes, and soon destroying,
Long, but sweet in the enjoying;
Neither too easy nor too hard:
All extremes I would have barred.

She should be allowed her passions,
So they were but used as fashions;
Sometimes froward, and then frowning,
Sometimes sickish, and then swowning,

Hail! Childish slaves of social rules
You had yourselves a hand in making!
How I could shake your faith, ye fools,
If but I thought it worth the shaking.
I see, and pity you; and then
Go, casting off the idle pity,
In search of better, braver men,
My own way freely through the city.

My own way freely, and not yours;
And, careless of a town's abusing.
Seek real friendship that endures
Among the friends of my own choosing.
I'll choose my friends myself, do you hear?
And won't let Mrs. Grundy do it,

Fasten black eyes on me.
I ask nothing of you under the peach trees,
Fasten your black eyes in my gray
with the spear of a storm.
The air under the peach blossoms is a haze of pink.

Here you watch the Bard's Career,
Month by month and year by year,
Writing, writing, writing verse,
Worse and worse and worse and worse.

I know you. You will hail the huge release,
Saying the sheathing of a thousand swords,
In silence and injustice, well accords
With Christmas bells. And you will gild with grease
The papers, the employers, the police,
And vomit up the void your windy words
To your New Christ; who bears no whip of cords
For them that traffic in the doves of peace.

The feast of friends, the candle-fruited tree,
I have not failed to honour. And I say
It would be better for such men as we,
And we be nearer Bethlehem, if we lay

We all are little infants
As far as I can see.
Romping and sprawling all about
One painted Nursery.

We all of us have small ideas
Of what is wrong and right
And sometimes we dispute our views
—and sometimes even fight.

Some tie gold paper round our heads
And play at being kings
And others sit against the wall
And think of serious things.

We are not always very good
We strut and shriek a lot.
We have our games they all must have
And toys that they must not.

White founts falling in the courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard,
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips,
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,

Her mind's a shallow bowl
Round which in naked light
The homeless goldfish glance
Like flame in all men's sight.

Dazzled I watch, then turn
Home-coming to the cool
Star-haunted secrecies
Of the dream-shadowed pool.