Old age hath stronger sense of right than youth.

The base who prosper are intolerable.

The heavenly hills of Holland,—
How wondrously they rise
Above the smooth green pastures
Into the azure skies!
With blue and purple hollows,
With peaks of dazzling snow,
Along the far horizon
The clouds are marching slow.

No mortal foot has trodden
The summits of that range,
Nor walked those mystic valleys
Whose colours ever change;
Yet we possess their beauty,
And visit them in dreams,
While ruddy gold of sunset
From cliff and canyon gleams.

In days of cloudless weather
They melt into the light;

Up my lads, and lift the ledgers, sleep and ease are o'er.
Hear the Stars of Morning shouting: ‘Two and Two are Four’.
Though the creeds and realms are reeling, though the sophists roar,
Though we weep and pawn our watches, Two and Two are Four.

and . . . for times of financial crisis and courage—

“There's a run upon the Bank—
Stand away!
For the Manager's a crank and the Secretary drank,
and the Upper Tooting Bank
Turns to bay!

Stand close: there is a run
On the Bank.
Of our ship, our royal one, let the ringing
legend run,

The fish have left the coast a while ago,
Bad luck it is that's in it, faith! that's so,
For there's little you can win
When you'll scarcely see a fin,
An' when food is dear to buy and wages low.

Tis what his Reverence says to us this day:
“Need yous wonder that the fish are gone away?
'Twas the sights they saw on shore
That had scared them more and more,
And so, hadn't they a right to swim away?

“'Twas the couples that were gaming on the sands,
'Linking arms they were, maybe, or squeezin' hands,
Now, there's not a herring sprat

Making the circle larger, I can include
the green shed fading in the lot. Sometimes I think
we already have it. I think the world's that big.
Then your dog dies, and the planets are more perfectly
imperfectly-shaped than ever. I'm not afraid?
How else explain invention? In that story
where the man wakes up and can't find his wife, now,
suddenly, their bed's a moon, too big and too bright.











From Poetry Magazine, Vol. 186, no. 3, June 2005. Used with permission.

I'll take romance,
While my heart is young and eager to fly,
I'll give my heart a try,
I'll take romance.
I'll take romance,
While my arms are strong and eager for you,
I'll give my arms their cue,
I'll take romance.
So, my lover, when you want me, call me,
In the hush of the evening.
When you call me,
In the hush of the evening,
I'll rush to my first real romance,
While my heart is young and eager and gay,
I'll give my heart away,
I'll take romance.
I'll take my own romance.

When Aulus, the nocturnal thief, made prize
Of Hermes, swift-wing'd envoy of the skies,
Hermes, Arcadia's king, the thief divine,
Who, when an infant, stole Apollo's kine,
And whom, as arbiter and overseer
Of our gymnastic sports we planted here,
Hermes! he cried, you meet no new disaster;
Ofttimes the pupil goes beyond his master.

In solemn calm the Orient waits,
A deep, mysterious silence keeping;
No sign to tell if Day be sleeping
Or if he halt before her gates.

Now, now the mountain tops grow white,
The mists the vales below still cumber,
Still towns and peaceful hamlets slumber—
But heavenward turn your eager sight!

Behold it! Now a gleam awakes
And like young Passion's timid blushes
The red glow brighter, rosier flushes,
Then high above the zenith breaks!

A moment passes: swift the light
Throughout the Ether's vast dominions

Ye Jessmines that beneath the lunar ray,
Unfold your virgin robes, your modest grace,
Imparting odours you denied the day,
Though day's own light condensed adorns your race!
Ye Stars, that quivering midst yon azure sky,
From forth your circles softened Lustre stream,
And raise towards you calm Devotion's eye,
And send to lonely love a soothing beam,
Why cease you now to charm, as erst ye did?
Why free from rapture move I, now, along?
Ye scents, ye blooms, ye stars, in vain ye bid
Your soft enchantments round my senses throng—