O Lord! my heart is sick,
Sick of this everlasting change;
And life runs tediously quick
Through its unresting race and varied range:
Change finds no likeness to itself in Thee,
And wakes no echo in Thy mute eternity.

Dear Lord! my heart is sick
Of this perpetual lapsing time,
So slow in grief, in joy so quick,
Yet ever casting shadows so sublime:
Time of all creatures is least like to Thee,
And yet it is our share of Thine eternity.

Oh change and time are storms,
For lives so thin and frail as ours;

Pink confused with white
flowers and flowers reversed
take and spill the shaded flame
darting it back
into the lamp's horn

petals aslant darkened with mauve

red where in whorls
petal lays its glow upon petal
round flamegreen throats

petals radiant with transpiercing light
contending
above

the leaves
reaching up their modest green
from the pot's rim

and there, wholly dark, the pot
gay with rough moss.

The pine resin is just an unguent on the year's first day of the rat
I have a cold, though when the plums are fragrant
spring still freezing, my runny nose with icicles again this morning!
paper sleeves as thin as the haze
he learns calligraphy in the light snow
the bamboo, bent now, will rise up sometime
don't know why — it's in front of the window at the end of the guest room
to see the moon, he says, but he must want to wash his hands
a willow with its lower leaves gone, a brush, now the autumn's here

Pine-crowned hills against the sky,
Kneeling low to pray;
Friendly, lamp-lit villages
Along the snowbound way;
Myriads of silver stars
Gleaming softly bright. . . .
Little King of Bethlehem,
I see Thy star tonight!

Fragrant wreaths and candle-glow
In a city street,
Songs of Christmas carolers
High and clear and sweet —
Echoes of the angel host,
With wings of shining white. . . .
Little King of Israel,
I hear Thy song tonight!

Words of ancient prophecy
Are mine to take or leave:
Visions of a golden age

Pilotless in youth was my life's ship
And she went sailing on the ocean main
Now I've a pilot who's without a ship
Both of us ache to set to sea again.

The ship's decayed, can just be dragged along
Even to a river she dares not draw near
By waves afrighted, and by winds made anxious
She dwells, being weak, within a world of fear.

She's broken spars, she's a thin, empty shell
Crumpled by Time's hand, by wind and weather
And so decrepit, only a thin thread
Of hope can hold her shattered frame together.

The piller pearisht is whearto I Lent
The strongest staye of myne unquyet mynde;
The lyke of it no man agayne can fynde
From East to west still seking though he went.
To myne unhappe, for happe away hath rent
Of all my joye the vearye bark and rynde;
And I (alas) by chaunce am thus assynde
Dearlye to moorne till death do it relent.
But syns that thus it is by destenye
What can I more but have a wofull hart,
My penne in playnt, my voyce in wofull crye,
My mynde in woe, my bodye full of smart,
And I my self my self alwayes to hate

I.

The pillar towers of Ireland, how wondrously they stand
By the lakes and rushing rivers through the valleys of our land;
In mystic file, through the isle, they lift their heads sublime,
These grey old pillar temples — these conquerors of time!

II.

Beside these grey old pillars, how perishing and weak
The Roman's arch of triumph, and the temple of the Greek,
And the gold domes of Byzantium, and the pointed Gothic spires,
All are gone, one by one, but the temples of our sires!

III.

A Pilgrim from the Eastern shore
Stood on Nevada's strand:
A tear was in his hither eye,
A pickaxe in his hand.
A tear was in his hither eye —
And in his left, to match,
There would have been another tear,
But for a healing patch.

And other patches, too, he wore,
Which on his garments hung,
And two were on that ill-starred spot
Where mothers smite their young.

A PILGRIM am I, on my way
To seek and find the Holy Land;
Scarce had I started, when there lay
And marched round me a fourfold band:
A smiling Joy, a weeping Woe,
A Hope, a Fear, did with me go;
And one may come, or one be gone;
But I am never more alone.

My little Hope, she pines and droops,
And finds it hard to live on earth;
But then some pitying angel stoops
To lift her out of frost and dearth,
And bears her on before, and up,
To taste, out of our Saviour's cup,
Such cheer as here she cannot find,

Piled deep below the screening apple branch
They lie with bitter apples in their hands:
And some are only ancient bones that blanch,
And some had ships that last year's wind did launch,
And some were yesterday the lords of lands.

In the soft dell, among the apple trees,
High up above the hidden pit she stands,
And there forever sings, who gave to these,
That lie below, her magic hour of ease,
And those her apples holden in their hands.

This in my dreams is shown me; and her hair
Crosses my lips and draws my burning breath;