night

My sweet little girl should be cheerful and mild
She must not be fretful and cry!
Oh! why is this passion? remember, my child,
GOD sees you, who lives in the sky.

That dear little face, that I like so to kiss,
How alter'd and sad it appears!
Do you think I can love you so naughty as this,
Or kiss you, all wetted with tears?

Remember, though GOD is in Heaven, my love,
He sees you within and without,
And always looks down, from His glory above,
To notice what you are about.

Unto seventy years and seven,
Hide your double birthright well-
You, that are the brat of Heaven
And the pampered heir to Hell.

Let your rhymes be tinsel treasures,
Strung and seen and thrown aside.
Drill your apt and docile measures
Sternly as you drill your pride.

Show your quick, alarming skill in
Tidy mockeries of art;
Never, never dip your quill in
Ink that rushes from your heart.

When your pain must come to paper,
See it dust, before the day;

No more with overflowing light
Shall fill the eyes that now are faded,
Nor shall another's fringe with night
Their woman-hidden world as they did.

No more shall quiver down the days
The flowing wonder of her ways,
Whereof no language may requite
The shifting and the many-shaded.

The grace, divine, definitive,
Clings only as a faint forestalling;
The laugh that love could not forgive
Is hushed, and answers to no calling;
The forehead and the little ears

I think that, next to your sweet eyes,
And pleasant books, and starry skies,
I love the world of flowers;
Less for their beauty of a day,
Than for the tender things they say,
And for a creed I've held alway,
That they are sentient powers.

It may be matter for a smile --
And I laugh secretly the while
I speak the fancy out --
But that they love, and that they woo,
And that they often marry too,
And do as noisier creatures do,
I've not the faintest doubt.

That slim creek out of the sky
the dried-blood western gum tree
is all stir in its high reaches:

its strung haze-blue foliage is dancing
points down in breezy mobs, swapping
pace and place in an all-over sway

retarded en masse by crimson blossom.
Bees still at work up there tack
around their exploded furry likeness

and the lawn underneath's a napped rug
of eyelash drift, of blooms flared
like a sneeze in a redhaired nostril,

minute urns, pinch-sized rockets

The perfume of your body dulls my sense.
I want nor wine nor weed; your breath alone
Suffices. In this moment rare and tense
I worship at your breast. The flower is blown,
The saffron petals tempt my amorous mouth,
The yellow heart is radiant now with dew
Soft-scented, redolent of my loved South;
O flower of love! I give myself to you.
Uncovered on your couch of figured green,
Here let us linger indivisible.
The portals of your sanctuary unseen
Receive my offering, yielding unto me.

I never kill a fly because
I think that what we have of laws
To regulate and civilize
Our daily life - we owe to flies.
II
Apropos, I'll tell you of Choo, the spouse
Of the head of the hunters, Wung;
Such a beautiful cave they had for a house,
And a brood of a dozen young.
And Wung would start by the dawn's red light
On the trailing of bird or beast,
And crawl back tired on the brink of night
With food for another feast.
III
Then the young would dance in their naked glee,

They thought I'd be a champion;
They boasted loud of me.
A dozen victories I'd won,
The Press was proud of me.
I saw myself with glory crowned,
And would, beyond a doubt,
Till last night in the second round
A Dago knocked me out.
II
It must have been an accident;
I cannot understand.
For I was so damn confident
I'd lick him with one hand.
I bounded in the ring to cheers;
I panted for the fray:
Ten minutes more with hoots and jeers

My thoughts soar not as they ought to soar,
Higher and higher on soul-lent wings;
But ever and often and more and more
They are dragged down earthward by little things,
By little troubles and little needs,
As a lark might be tangled among the weeds.

My purpose is not what it ought to be,
Steady and fixed, like a star on high,
But more like a fisherman's light at sea;
Hither and thither it seems to fly--
Sometimes feeble, and sometimes bright,
Then suddenly lost in the gloom of night.

Fill the bumper fair!
Every drop we sprinkle
O'er the brow of Care
Smooths away a wrinkle.
Wit's electric flame
Ne'er so swiftly passes,
As when through the frame
It shoots from brimming glasses.
Fill the bumper fair!
Every drop we sprinkle
O'er the brow of Care
Smooths away a wrinkle.

Sages can, they say,
Grasp the lightning's pinions,
And bring down its ray
From the starr'd dominions:
So we, Sages, sit,
And, 'mid bumpers brightening,