Certain Verses very weary
On their laggard footsteps coming
In the Tuscan manner dreary,
Chanced upon a lover humming
Of his woes and bitter sorrows
In the heavy-footed measures
And the leaden-weighted treasures
That were used in ancient morrows—
Heaven forgive our Castillejo
For having praised these oldtime lays so!
“And whence,” said Love in passion,
“This measure so o'erweighted
Our ears have so much hated?”
They answered in this fashion:
“This is a foreign gabble,
The subject without reason,
To common-sense such treason

Who shall have my fayre lady?
Who shall have my faire lady?
Who but I, who but I, who but I?
Under the levys grene,
Under the levys grene.

The fayrest man
That best love can,
Dandirly, dandirly, dandirly dan,
Under the levys grene,
Under the levys grene.

I love you, because in my thousand and one nights of dreams,
I never once dreamed of you.
I looked down paths that traveled from afar,
but it was never you I expected.
Suddenly I've felt you flying through my soul
in quick, lofty flight,
and how beautiful you seem way up there, far
from my always idiot heart!
Love me that way, flying over everything.
And, like the bird on its branch, land in my arms
only to rest,
then fly off again.
Be not like the romantic ones who, in love, set me on fire.
When you climb up my mansion,

Why, in the brightness of this cheerful morning,
When universal nature whispers rest,
Should darkling thoughts, tumultuous,—no warning,—
Disturb the calm of my unguarded breast?

Vague memories, unhappy dreams, come thronging,
Unquiet ghosts arisen from the tomb
Of my past years; and all the love and longing
My lone heart feels, moan round me in the gloom.

How may it be that solitude can borrow
From earth so beautiful and heaven so clear
These resurrected shapes of causeless sorrow!
Needs my sad soul such discipline severe?

With dawn it comes or does not come,
My love that took to stony silence,
Round the walls it goes, begging,
Torn by talons of death whenever
Out of the depths and gnawed by despair
It shouts: O you creature you!
The Ship of Fate moved on,
Sinbad of the Wind never came,
How was it you came when our wells
Are poisoned, where can you have come from?
Did we meet before I came to be?
But love is blind and now I write
On water what you said, our Spring
Completes its journey through disgust
And sorrow from the wilderness,

Beyond the hills the daylight dimly sheds
Some drowsy glances on the restful night;
Thus dreamily the day the darkness weds
And day is darkened, dark receiving sight.
The cuckoo calling in a far-off field
Echoes itself to please another spring,
The cry recalling how the past could yield
Sweet notes and vanish on a swift-flown wing
I love this calmness of the midnight May,
I love the music of the cuckoo's throat,
I love the beauty of that stilly way—
The heavens above—where stars effulgent float:
But in this lovely hour I am alone

Love, he is nearer (though the moralist
Of rule and line cry shame on me), more near
To thee and to the heart of thee, be't wist,
Who sins against thee even for the dear
Lack that he hath of thee; than who, chill-wrapt
In thy light-thought-on customed livery,
Keeps all thy laws with formal service apt,
Save that great law to tremble and to be
Shook to his heart-strings if there do but pass
The rumour of thy pinions. Such one is
Thy varlet, guerdoned with the daily mass
That feed on thy remainder-meats of bliss.

my love is building a building
around you, a frail slippery
house, a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginning

of your smile) a skilful uncouth
prison, a precise clumsy
prison (building that and this into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)

my love is building a magic, a discrete
tower of magic and (as i guess)

when Farmer Death (whom fairies hate) shall

crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He'll not my tower,
laborious, casual

where the surrounded smile
hangs

Bright things, blest things, to look on you,
Eyes that are in their wane
Grow bright, and hearts at ebb of age
Fill with life's tide again.

And you, not age nor death should touch,
If human love might save;
But stronger is the love that blights,
And gathers to the grave.

We know that you the angels love,—
They love all gentle things—
And often o'er you fondly stoop,
And spread their viewless wings.

And tenderly their starry eyes
Watch you by night and day,
And sweetly as they smile on you,
So you on us alway.

My noble, lovely, little Peggy,
Let this my First Epistle beg ye,

At dawn of morn, and close of even,
To lift your heart and hands to Heaven.
In double beauty say your prayer:
Our Father first, then Notre Père.
And, dearest child, along the day,
In every thing you do and say,
Obey and please my lord and lady,
So God shall love and angels aid ye.

If to these precepts you attend,
No second letter need I send,
And so I rest your constant friend.