When discord in a towne the toxan ringes,
Then all the rascalls turne unto us kinges.

Bishopes are like the turnores, most men say;
Though now cryed down, they'll up some other day.

Peace, passenger, heere sleepeth under ground
A judge in ending causes most profound;
Thocht not long since he was laid in this place,
It's lustres ten since he corrupted was.

Behold, O Scots! the reueryes of your king,
Britannes, admire the extravangancyes of our king;
Those hee makes lordes who should on gibbetes hing,
S. Andrew, why does thou giue up thy schooles,
And bedleme turne, and parliament house of fooles? Par.
Old dotard Pasquill, thou mistaketh it,
Montrose confined vs here to learn some wit.

The long, clear shadows across the lawn
Pointing toward evening, toward sleeping,
Are patterns for quiet resting.

Across the gold-green grasses the clear shadows
Are like plaintive memories
Across sunlit joys long ago mown
By the scythe that never needs whetting,
That is ever sharp.

In long, white-nights of remembering
The long shadows
Seem still to be near me
Like folded wings of dreaming.

If in heaven there shall be no shadows,
I shall wander through the unchanging light
Of wakefulness everlasting,

Erewhile beneath the lightning flare of passion
I saw huge visions flung across the gloom;
I built me altars after pagan fashion
And of my hours I made a hecatomb.

I wrought weird gods of night-stuff and of fancy;
I sought their hidden faces for my law:
My days and nights were filled with necromancy,
And an Olympian awe.

O many a night has seen my riot candles,
And heard the drunken revel of my feast,
Till Dawn walked up the blue with burning sandals
And made me curse the east!

For my faith was the faith of dusk and riot,

O God, do Thou not rend the curtain from my soul,
Display not Thou my faults before the eyes of all the world.
On the path that is that of virtue and good name,
On that path do Thou lead me straight.
Whatever actions are for the good of the world and of the Faith,
On such actions do Thou ever keep my mind intent.
In this world may my heart ever contented remain,
May all trouble abide far from it.
My passions and the Devil are ever at my side,
Show Thou to me clearly these two traitors.
However great the faults my hands commit,

O Center of the Scheme.
Star-Flinger, Beauty-Builder, Shaping Dream!
Now as the least in all thy space I stand
An alien in a strange and lonesome land.
I lift a little voice of pygmy pain;
I hurl it out — up — down — and shall I cry in vain?
Hear thou the prayer that struggles in this song —
Let me not linger long!

I crave the boon of dying into life!
Extend a pitying knife
And let these flesh-gyves part, let me be free!
Are we not kin? Am I not part of thee?
Am I not as a ripple in a cranny of thy sea?

Happie to be, trulye is in some schoole-
Maistere's booke, be either king or foole.
How happie then are they, if such men bee,
Whom both great fooles and kinges the world doth see.

Behold me — a shadow!
The shadow of an ancient laughing thing!

Fallen columns disintegrated with time;
Sacred mounds insulted with the growth of scornful weeds;
Shattered arches haunted by the lizard and the snake:
This is my Babylon — the Babylon I built and feasted in!

O, but the wantonness of my Babylon!
The princely prodigality of my Babylon!
This was the throne — I sat upon it.
I sat upon it and feasted mine ears with the haughty trumpets,
Mine eyes with the scarlet and purple.

And once in this long fallow garden a lily grew: