You think I am happy:
in my heart, I suffer!
A fake smile on my face, I play the p'i-p'a:
but the tune is wild, music never written down.

Truly, my Satan, thou art but a dunce,
And dost not know the garment from the man;
Every harlot was a virgin once,
Nor canst thou ever change Kate into Nan.

Tho' thou art worshiped by the names divine
Of Jesus and Jehovah, thou art still
The Son of Morn in weary Night's decline,
The lost traveller's dream under the hill.

Prologue
Mutual forgiveness of each vice,
Such are the gates of paradise,
Against the accuser's chief desire,
Who walk'd among the stones of fire.
Jehovah's finger wrote the law;
Then wept; then rose in zeal and awe,
And the dead corpse, from Sinai's heat,
Buried beneath his mercy seat.
O Christians! Christians! tell me why
You rear it on your altars high?
The Keys

The caterpillar on the leaf
Reminds thee of thy mother's grief.
Of the Gates

My eternal man set in repose,
The female from his darkness rose;

'Tis not by guilt the onward sweep
Of truth and right, O Lord, we stay;
'Tis by our follies that so long
We hold the earth from heaven away.

These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Among the heart-strings of a friend.

The ill-timed truth we might have kept--
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?
The word we had not sense to say--
Who knows how grandly it had rung?

Our faults no tenderness should ask,
The chastening stripes must cleanse them all;

The royal feast was done; the King
Sought some new sport to banish care,
And to his jester cried: "Sir Fool,
Kneel now, and make for us a prayer!"

The jester doffed his cap and bells,
And stood the mocking court before;
They could not see the bitter smile
Behind the painted grin he wore.

He bowed his head, and bent his knee
Upon the monarch's silken stool;
His pleading voice arose: "O Lord,
Be merciful to me, a fool!

"No pity, Lord, could change the heart
From red with wrong to white as wool;

South of the house, north of the house
young men plant the fields,
singing field songs as they work,
tunes that ring out loud.
How different from the young " knights-errant "
of the neighboring town:
daubing rouge upon their faces,
falcons perched on arms!

. . . And forth they yede togider, twain and twain,
That to behold it was a worthy sight,
Toward the ladies on the green plain,
That song and daunced, as I said now right.
The ladies, as soone as they goodly might,
They brake of both the song and dance,
And yede to meet hem with full glad semblance.

And every lady tooke ful womanly
By the hond a knight, and forth they yede
Unto a faire laurer that stood fast by,
With leves lade, the boughes of great brede.
And to my dome there never was indede
Man that had seen half so faire a tre;

Upon the Book and Picture of the Seraphical Saint Teresa

Conclusion

O Heart! the equal poise of love's both parts,
Big alike with wound and darts,
Live in these conquering leaves; live all the same;
And walk through all tongues one triumphant flame.
Live here, great Heart, and love and die and kill,
And bleed and wound, and yield and conquer still,
Let this immortal life, where e'er it comes,
Walk in a crowd of loves and martyrdoms.
Let mystic deaths wait on't, and wise souls be
The love-slain witnesses of this life of thee.

One morning I call for a sedan-chair man;
his face shows amazement as he looks at me.
" Can it not be possible
that you and I have met once in this life? "
The bearer rubs his eyes,
looks again, and sighs again.
He says that when I was first married
it was he who pushed the marriage car!
Now that scholar, so young and handsome,
has changed appearance like the morning mist.
How is it that the second time we meet
I should have become so very ancient?
Before the bearer has finished talking
a secret pain is born in my heart:

Of my flesh and blood, only one remains,
my sister, ten years older than me.
I go to see her, knocking at her door;
white hair hangs about her face.
When she hears the sound and knows her brother's here
she comes out to greet me, in fine spirits.
She speaks many words with much self-awareness,
sitting upright, instructs me forcefully.
And we agree that the next day
together we will visit mother's tomb.
In years past, to wait upon
her compassionate visage
there were only my sister and myself.
In the morning, we pour the wine libation,