English

From deep within
the peony pistils, withdrawing
regretfully, the bee.

The last rays of the setting sun,
Which once shone upon me warmly, have now gone
The wind keeps returning to strike the walls
While cold birds seek warmth in one another's breast.
Clinging to their feathers,
They fear hunger in silence.
O, men of influence
Remember to withdraw in time!
You look sad and frail
Is it because of power and fame?
I prefer to fly with jays and tits,
Not with hoary herons.
For they travel high and far,
Making the return too hard.

Early dawn —
whitefish, an inch

Take me, O my Father! take me —
Take me, save me, through thy Son;
That which thou wouldst have me, make me,
Let thy will in me be done.

Long from thee my footsteps straying,
Thorny proved the way I trod;
Weary come I now, and praying —
Take me to thy love, my God!

Fruitless years with grief recalling,
Humbly I confess my sin!
At thy feet, O Father, falling,
To thy household take me in.

Freely now to thee I proffer,
This relenting heart of mine;
Freely, life and soul I offer,

The peacock sits perched on the roof all night,
And wakes up the farmhouse before 't is light;
But his matins they suit not the delicate ear
Of the drowsy damsels, that half in fear
And half in disgust his discord hear.

If the soul's migration from frame to frame
Be truth, tell me now whence the peacock's came?
Say if it had birth at the musical close
Of a dying hyena, — or if it arose
From a Puritan scold that sang psalms through her nose?

Well: a jackass there was — but you need not look

This day was sacred, once, to Pan,
And kept with song and wine;
But when our better creed began
'T was held no more divine,
Until there came a holy man,
One Bishop Valentine.

He, finding, as all good men will,
Much in the ancient way
That was not altogether ill,
Restored the genial day,
And we the pagan fashion still
With pious hearts obey.

Without this custom, all would go
Amiss in Love's affairs;
All passion would be poor dumb show,
Pent sighs, and secret prayers;

Come, O thou mighty Savior,
We look for thine appearing;
Descend we pray,
Thy love display,
Our waiting spirits cheering.

Come, clothed with glorious power;
Let all thy saints adore thee,
And let thy word,
The Spirit's sword,
Subdue thy foes before thee.

May every heart with gladness,
Thine offered grace receiving,
Now cease from sin,
And pure within,
Have peace, in thee believing.

Then, when thou com'st to judgment,
On flying clouds descending,

Night may forget the day,
The roses and the dew,
And yet my heart alway,
Lady, remembers you.

Day may forget the night,
Forget both moon and star,
Yet deathless, dark or light,
Your memories are!

Hardly who bends o'er Wayland bridge
Can tell which side the current flows;
In vain you mark the swaying sedge —
This way and that each eddy goes.

I drop a leaflet on the wave —
A crimson page from autumn's book —
Did ever thing so misbehave?
For less it moves as more I look!

They say the Sudbury seeks the sea,
But ocean to the eastward lies;
This dallying streamlet seems to be
Bound for the spring whence it had rise,

And lingers as it loved the meads
And mossy rocks where cattle stray

Thy beauty, Roslin, woke a loftier thought —
Those friars are gone, but not the truths they taught;
The mind that planned thee, and the monks that reared,
Censers, bells, candles — all have disappeared:
But the same spirit hovers round thy walls
That hallows Westminster, pervades St. Paul's,
Or makes the pile that sanctifies the Ouse
A place of pilgrimage for my small muse.

When Scotland's poet led his poet-guest
To thee from Hawthornden's romantic nest,
Thou wast a wreck, and Johnson's learned eye