...Short partings do best, though: time wears out affections,
The absent love fades, a new one takes its place.
With Menelaus away, Helen's disinclination for sleeping
Alone led her into her guest's
Warm bed at night. Were you crazy, Menelaus?
Why go off leaving your wife
With a stranger in the house? Do you trust doves to falcons,
Full sheepfolds to mountain wolves?
Here Helen's not at fault, the adulterer's blameless -
He did no more than you, or any man else,
Would do yourself. By providing place and occasion

Friend, the arrow of his glance struck

my eyes;

Its point pierced my heart (and) his

sweet image entered my soul.

For a long time I have been staying

(here) watching the road, standing

at my house.

My life clings to (my) dark beloved,

(he is) a life-giving herb.

Mira says I am sold into the hands of

Giridhar, but people say I am loose.

Oh the airman's game is a showman's game, for we all of us watch him go
With his roaring soaring aeroplane and his bombs for the blokes below,
Over the railways and over the dumps, over the Hun and the Turk,
You'll hear him mutter, "What ho, she bumps," when the Archies get to work.
But not of him is the song I sing, though he follow the eagle's flight,
And with shrapnel holes in his splintered wing comes home to his roost at night.
He may silver his wings on the shining stars, he may look from the throne on high,

For Robert Lowell

This is the time of year
when almost every night
the frail, illegal fire balloons appear.
Climbing the mountain height,

rising toward a saint
still honored in these parts,
the paper chambers flush and fill with light
that comes and goes, like hearts.

Once up against the sky it's hard
to tell them from the stars--
planets, that is--the tinted ones:
Venus going down, or Mars,

or the pale green one. With a wind,
they flare and falter, wobble and toss;

The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay
At his little place at What'sitsname (it isn't far away).
They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new,
And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do;
He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly on the estate,
Or fish for Father Neptune with the mermaids for a bait;
He scaled amid the staggering stars that precipice, the sky,
And blew his trumpet above heaven, and got by mastery
The starry crown of God Himself, and shoved it on the shelf;

The ape, the monkey and baboon did meet,
And breaking of their fast in Friday street,
Two of them swore together solemnly
In their three natures was a sympathy.

Nay, quoth baboon,
I do deny that strain:
I have more knavery in me
than you twain.

Why, quoth the ape, I have a horse at will
In Paris Garden for to ride on still,
And there show tricks. Tush, quoth the monkey,
For better tricks in great men's houses lie.

Tush, quoth baboon,
when men do know I come,
For sport from city, country
they will run.

Bill has left his house of clay,
Slammed the door and gone away:
How he laughed but yesterday!

I had two new jokes to tell,
Salty, but he loved them well:
Now I see his empty shell.

Poker-faced he looks at me;
Peeved to miss them jokes - how h
Would have belly-laughed with glee!

He gives me the pip, I swear;
Seems just like he isn't there:
Flown the coop - I wonder where?

Bill had no belief in "soul";
Thought the body was the whole,
And the grave the final goal.

Didn't reckon when we pass,

Ancient town of Leith, most wonderful to be seen,
With your many handsome buildings, and lovely links so green,
And the first buildings I may mention are the Courthouse and Town Hall,
Also Trinity House, and the Sailors' Home of Call.

Then as for Leith Fort, it was erected in 1779, which is really grand,
And which is now the artillery headquarters in Bonnie Scotland;
And as for the Docks, they are magnificent to see,
They comprise five docks, two piers, 1,141 yards long respectively.

Dear to my heart are the ancestral dwellings of America,
Dearer than if they were haunted by ghosts of royal splendour;
These are the homes that were built by the brave beginners of a nation,
They are simple enough to be great, and full of a friendly dignity.

I love the old white farmhouses nestled in New England valleys,
Ample and long and low, with elm-trees feathering over them:
Borders of box in the yard, and lilacs, and old-fashioned Howers,
A fan-light above the door, and little square panes in the windows,

The clock of my days winds down.
The cat eats sparrows outside my window.
Once, she brought me a small rabbit
which we devoured together, under
the Empire Table
while the men shrieked
repossessing the gold umbrella.

Now the beard on my clock turns white.
My cat stares into dark corners
missing her gold umbrella.
She is in love
with the Alligator Bride.

Ah, the tiny fine white
teeth! The Bride, propped on her tail
in white lace
stares from the holes
of her eyes. Her stuck-open mouth