Where the poppy-banners flow
   in and out amongst the corn,
   spotless morn
ever saw us come and go

hand in hand, as girl and boy
   warming fast to youth and maid,
   half afraid
at the hint of passionate joy

still in Summer's rose unshown:
   yet we heard nor knew a fear;
   strong and clear
summer's eager clarion blown

from the sunrise to the set:
   now our feet are far away,

Blind Peter Piper used to play
All up and down the city;
I'd often meet him on my way,
And throw a coin for pity.
But all amid his sparkling tones
His ear was quick as any
To catch upon the cobble-stones
The jingle of my penny.

And as upon a day that shone
He piped a merry measure:
"How well you play!" I chanced to say;
Poor Peter glowed with pleasure.
You'd think the words of praise I spoke
Were all the pay he needed;
The artist in the player woke,
The penny lay unheeded.

Now Winter's here; the wind is shrill,

Swift, o'er the wild and dreary waste
A NUT-BROWN GIRL was seen to haste;
Wide waving was her unbound hair,
And sun-scorch'd was her bosom bare;
For Summer's noon had shed its beams
While she lay wrapp'd in fev'rish dreams;
While, on the wither'd hedge-row's side,
By turns she slept, by turns she cried,
"Ah ! where lies hid the balsam sweet,
"To heal the wounds of MARGUERITE?"

Dark was her large and sunken eye
Which wildly gaz'd upon the sky;
And swiftly down her freckled face
The chilling dews began to pace:

By a black wharf I stood lately,
When the night was at its noon;
Keen, malicious stars were shining,
And a wicked, white-faced moon.

And I saw a stately vessel,
Built in fashion quaint and old;
From her masthead, in the moonlight,
Hung a flag of faded gold.

Black with age her masts and spars were,
Black with age her ropes and rails;
Like a ghost through cere-cloths gazing
Shone the white moon through her sails.

Not a movement stirred the stillness,
Not a sound the silence broke,

Mrs Dibbs - Polly Dibbs,
Standing at a tub,
Washing other people's clothes -
Rub-Rub-Rub.
Poor, old, skinny arms
White with soapy foam -
At night she takes her shabby hat
And goes off home.

Mrs Dibbs - Polly Dibbs -
Is not very rich.
She goes abroad all day to scrub,
And home at night to stitch.
She wears her shabby hat awry,
Perched on a silly comb;
And people laugh at Polly Dibbs
As she goes home.

Mrs Dibbs - Mother Dibbs -
Growing very old,
Says, "it's a hard world!"

Brown eyes,
Straight nose;
Dirt pies,
Rumpled clothes;

Torn books,
Spoilt toys;
Arch looks,
Unlike a boy's;

Little rages,
Obvious arts;
(Three her age is,)
Cakes, tarts;

Falling down
Off chairs;
Breaking crown
Down stairs;

Catching flies
On the pane;
Deep sighs,--
Cause not plain.

Bribing you
With kisses
For a few
Farthing blisses;

Wide awake,
As you hear,
"Mercy's sake,
Quiet, dear!"

New shoes,
New frock;

My garden hath a slender path
With ivy overgrown,
A secret place where once would pace
A pot all alone;
I see him now with fretted brow,
Plunged deep in thought;
And sometimes he would write maybe,
And sometimes he would not.

A verse a day he used to say
Keeps worry from the door;
Without the stink of printer's ink
How life would be a bore!
And so from chime of breakfast time
To supper he would beat
The pathway flat, a mossy mat
For his poetic feet.

He wrote, I'm told, of gods of old
And mythologic men;

Children of earth are we,
Lovers of land and sea,
Of hill, of brook, of tree,
Of all things fair;
Of all things dark or bright,
Born of the day and night,
Red rose and lily white
And dusky hair.

Yet not alone from earth
Do we derive our birth.
What were our singing worth
Were this the whole?
Somewhere from heaven afar
Hath dropped a fiery star,
Which makes us what we are,
Which is our soul.

Religions are poems. They concert
our daylight and dreaming mind, our
emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture

into the only whole thinking: poetry.
Nothing's said till it's dreamed out in words
and nothing's true that figures in words only.

A poem, compared with an arrayed religion,
may be like a soldier's one short marriage night
to die and live by. But that is a small religion.

Full religion is the large poem in loving repetition;
like any poem, it must be inexhaustible and complete

And it was at that age ... Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don't know, I don't know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don't know how or when,
no they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

I did not know what to say, my mouth
had no way
with names,
my eyes were blind,
and something started in my soul,