Quoth a god:
See them move
slowly, serenely onward,
through mountains and all,

stretching and dragging
their long steel bodies,
rib by rib,
across continents,
and leaving their spawn,

cities,
behind them.
Egregious worms!

The night is a circus tent.
The stars are peep holes
the bad ones have made
to spy through on us.
Why aren't the gods like us?
Why don't they pay
and come in the way we did?
Are they poor?
Are they cheats?
Maybe they fear we'd make clowns of them?
Suppose we did—
aren't clowns the gods of our circus?
What's the matter with those fellows?
Tell them to climb down
and come in free.
We don't want them staring in on us.
It annoys the performers.

Oh, where's the maid that I can love,
With love which I have never told?
Where is the one that I would like
To comfort me when I am old?

Do I not see before my face,
A mate prepared for every one?
Then sure there's one prepared for me,
Nor need I trudge the road alone.

Now who is he that speaks to me
Of Mormons and of Mormonhood?
While this you know, the Lord has said,
They twain shall be one flesh, one blood!

Come listen, then, to what I say
Before this evening's work is done,
That you can do as you may please,

Evin dead behold I breath!
My breath procures my pane
Els dolour eftir death
Suld slaik when I war slane:
Bot Destinies disdane
So span my fatall threid
But mercy to remane
A martyr quik and deid.
O fatall deidly feid,
O Rigour but remorse!
Since thair is no remeid
Come Patience perforce.

The faits—the thraward faitis
The wicked weirds hes wroght
My state of all estates
Unhappiest to be thoght.
Had I offendit oght
Or wroght aganst thair will
Bot mercy than they moght
Conclude my corps to kill;

What mightie motione so my mynd mischeivis?
What uncouth cairs throu all my corps do creep?
What restles rage my Resone so bereivis?
What maks me loth of meit, of drink, of sleep?
I knou not nou what Countenance to keep
For to expell a poysone that I prove
Alace, alace that evir I leirnd to love.

A frentick fevir thrugh my flesh I feill,
I feill a passione can not be exprest.
I feill a byll within my bosum beill
No Cataplasme can weill impesh that pest.
I feill my self with seiknes so possest
A madnes maks my mirth from me remove.

Here let me sit, as ev'ning falls,
In sad and solemn mood,
Among the now deserted halls
Of ancient Holyrood;
To think how human pow'r and pride
Must sink into decay,
Or, like the bubbles on the tide,
Pass, pass away.

No more the joyous crowd resorts
To see the archers good
Draw bow within the ringing courts
Of merry Holyrood.
Ah, where's that high and haughty race
That here so long held sway?
And where the phantoms they would chase?
Pass'd, pass'd away!

And where the monks and friars grey,
That oft in jovial mood

If the Philosopher sayes true, the first
Draught is refreshment unto them that thirst;
The second mirth and wit doth still afford;
But perfect drunkeness issues from the third
If to these rigid rules you'l me confine,
Hence glasses; I'l in flagons drink my wine.

In beauty as He moulded her,
Four years ago God gathered her—
A tender lamb, and folded her—
An orphan child, and fathered her.

I stand beside the grave of her,
And know that lying shattered there
Is nothing that I crave of her,
For dust alone is scattered there.

But springing like the flowers on it,
My thoughts spring in the heart of me;
I face the silent powers on it,
Nor fear that death is part of me.

While earth was sleeping in the opal dawn
She dreamed of beauty, for a presence bright
Laid on her breast a rose, but in the light
She wakened and her angel guest had gone.

Then softly o'er her senses like a prayer,
A perfume drifted, known in Paradise,
An incense of Love's holiest sacrifice—
An evanescent fragrance, rich and rare.

O Loveliness, too soon to disappear,
The wildering grace that wraps the rose's heart
Is still the ultimate despair of art—
A pearl that, vanishing, leaves but a tear.

These petals shame mortality and blight;

For many and many a year
A sordid grudge we bore.
But now when he comes down the street
He lingers at my door.

For Time is closing in,
And age forgives its debts,
When family falls away, like mist,
And memory forgets.

Now as we sit and talk
Under the mulberry tree
The only friend I have in life
Is my old enemy.