English

Pamphilia hath a number of good arts,
Which commendation to her worth imparts;
But, above all, in one she doth excel,
That she can paint incomparably well;
And yet so modest, that if prais'd for this,
She'll swear she does not know what painting is,
But straight will blush with such a portrait grace,
That one would think vermilion dyed her face.
One of her pictures I have ofttimes seen,
And would have sworn that it herself had been;
And when I bade her it on me bestow,
I swear I heard the picture's self say—No!

Tres soldados germanos, tres matadores de hombres,
cuyo sublime mérito, cuya virtud real
es descender de inicuos burgraves cuyos nombres
emblema de horror eran en la época feudal;

tres nietos de unos viejos bandidos sanguinarios,
gente que hoy ahorcaría tranquilo un tribunal.
que encontraron reyes en vez de presidiarios,
ciñendo una diadema a falta de un dogal;

seguidos por autómatas con cruces y cadenas
a quienes dan los pueblos en su hora de opresión,
si tienen sed, la sangre caliente de sus venas,

When the Kings come to royal hunting-seats
To find the royal joys of summer days,
The servants on the lofty watch tower raise
A banner, whose swift token warning greets
The country. Threatening stern, and armed man meets
Each stranger, who, by pleasant forest-ways,
All unawares, has rambled till he strays
Too close to paths where, in the noonday heats,
The King, uncrowned, lies down to sleep. Such law
As this the human soul sets heart and face
And hand, when once its King has come. In awe,
And gladness too, all men behold what grace

Elizabeth Bishop leaned on a table, it cracked,
both fell to the floor. A gesture
gone sadly awry. This was close to fact
and quickly became symbolic, bound to occur
in Florida, where she was surrounded
by rotting abundance and greedy insects.
One moment a laughing smile, a graceful hand
alighting on solid furniture,
a casual shift of weight,
the next, undignified splayed legs.
The shell of the table
proved to be stuffed with termite eggs.
True, it was a fall from no great height—
merely the height of herself,

Sweet, sweet!
I rise to greet
The sapphire sky
The air slips by
On either side
As up I ride
On mounting wing,
And sing and sing -
Then reach my bliss,
The sun's great kiss;
And poise a space
To see his face,
Sweet, sweet,
In radiant grace,
Ah, sweet! ah, sweet!

Sweet, sweet!
Beneath my feet
My nestlings call:
And down I fall
Unerring, true,
Through heaven's blue;
And haste to fill
Each noisy bill
My brooding breast
Stills their unrest.
Sweet, sweet,

Why sing of suns you cannot see, in vain?—
Here where dull day from night scarce diff'rent pales,
And fog as grisly as a dead man's nails
Freezes opaquely at the window pane;

Here where the laughter and the living eye
Of dormant water, blind and mute beneath
The black ice-shell, like spirits after death
Steal unadmired their passage. Down the sky

Like fruitless seed of seasons overblown,
The fluff-winged atomies tumble and amass,
Muffling the pale and sapless winter grass
Under a clammy still oblivion.

I am the fruit of Adams hands, through sin lockt in satans bands,
Destined to deth, the child of ire, a flaming brand of infernall fire:
Borne I was naked and bare, and spend my time in sorowe and care,
And shall returne unto the dust, and be deprived of carnall lust.
Yet thou father didst Jesus send, to pardon them that did offend:
We laud him in the work of might, that we be blessed in his sight.

So now, just suppose that someone wanted to know
if faggots are men—a fair question.
Would I then trot out all the masculinists I have known
who are homosexual
and show how they did and do and will oppress women and
are certainly male supremacist, no less than I,
or should that be no more?—which is not even to speak
of hideous straight men with their most of the most.
And then should I apologize
about how long we've existed and haven't had any
consciousness to speak of

I just had turned the classic page,
With ancient lore and wisdom fraught,
Which many a hoary-headed sage
Had stamped with never-dying thought;
And many a bard of lofty mind,
With measured lay and tuneful lyre,
And strains too grand for human kind,
All pregnant with celestial fire—
In notes majestic, loud and long,
Had poured the volumed tide of song.
Here Egypt's sages, skilled of yore
In Isis' dark mysterious rites,
Unvailed their find of mystic lore
To eager Grecian neophytes.
And as I sadly musing sat,

I love it, I love it, and who shall dare
To chide me for loving that old bike there?
I've treasured it long as a sainted prize,
And its battered old frame brings the tears to my eyes;
'Tis bound with a thousand bands to my heart,
Though the sprocket's bent and the links are apart.
Would you know the spell? My grandma sat there,
Upon that old saddle, and zipped through the air.
In childhood's hour I lingered near
That old machine, with listening ear,
For grandma's shrieks through the house would ring