The way her breasts meet is hidden from me
By her lips asking my lips if I am here and
The flight of her thighs to her belly is
Too swift for my eye that lingers her love is too
Swift for a lover in love I should have been a
Jealous husband. I am an old fellow too old
For her who puts on her nightdress singing
And who laughs as she comes to bed I am too old
I should be a jealous husband instead of her love
I should be more than a page of print she knows by heart.

Old meeting-house bell
I love thy music well
It peals through the air
Sweetly full & fair
As in the early times
When I listened to its chimes.

Upon our eyelids, dear, the dew will lie,
And on the roughened meshes of our hair,
While little feet make bold to scurry by
And half-notes shrilly cut the quickened air.

Our clean, hard bodies, on the clean, hard ground
Will vaguely feel that they are full of power,
And they will stir, and stretch, and look around,
Loving the early, chill, half-lighted hour.

Loving the voices in the shadowed trees,
Loving the feet that stir the blossoming grass —
Oh, always we have known such things as these,
And knowing, can we love and let them pass?

My love must be as free
As is the eagle's wing,
Hovering o'er land and sea
And everything.

I must not dim my eye
In thy saloon,
I must not leave my sky
And nightly moon.

Be not the fowler's net
Which stays my flight,
And craftily is set
T' allure the sight.

But be the favoring gale
That bears me on,
And still doth fill my sail
When thou art gone.

I cannot leave my sky
For thy caprice,
True love would soar as high
As heaven is.

The eagle would not brook
Her mate thus won,

Unhappy East (not in that awe
you pay your Lords, whose will is law)
but in your owne unmanly raigne
on the soft sex, and proud disdaine!
what state would bring the value downe
of treasure which is all their owne?
Their thoughts to worthlesse objects move
who thus suppresse the growth of Love,
Love that extends the high desire,
Love that improves the manly fire,
and makes the price of Beauty rise
and all our wishes multiplyes;
Such high content dwells not in sense,
nor can the captiv'd fayre dispense

I'm guided in the darkest night
By flashes of auroral light,
Which over dart thy eastern home
And teach me not in vain to roam.
Thy steady light on t'other side
Pales the sunset, makes day abide,
And after sunrise stays the dawn,
Forerunner of a brighter morn.

There is no being here to me
But staying here to be
When others laugh I am not glad,
When others cry I am not sad,
But be they grieved or be they merry
I'm supernumerary.
I am a miser without blame
Am conscience stricken without shame.

Let your loving bondwoman
Salute your lips if you prefer;
This is your courtesy to her.
Yet still remember how she ran
From her grave, and running, leapt
To catch the arrows of your hurt,
To stretch her body in dust and dirt,
Flinging a causey where you stepped.

Remember how, asleep or waking,
The shallow pillow of her breast
Shook and shook to your heart's shaking,
In pity whereof her heart was split;
Love her now; forget the rest;
She has herself forgotten it.

'Twas of a lovely creature who dwelled by the seaside,
For her lovely form and features she was the village pride;
There was a young sea captain who Mary's heart would gain,
But she was true to Henry, was on the raging main.

'Twas in young Henry's absence this noble man he came
A-courting pretty Mary, but she refused the same.
She said, " I pray you begone, young man, your vows are all in vain,
Therefore begone, I love but one, he's on the raging main."

With mad desperation this noble man he said,

Twain that were foes, while Mary lived, are fled;
One laurel-crowned abides in heaven, and one
Beneath the earth has fared, a fallen sun,
A light of love among the loveless dead.
The first is chastity, that vanquished
The archer Love, that held joint empery
With the sweet beauty that made war on me,
When laughter of lips with laughing eyes was wed.

Their strife the Fates have closed, with stern control,
The earth holds her fair body, and her soul
An angel with glad angels triumpheth;
Love has no more than he can do; desire

I WANT to sing something — but this is all —
I try and I try, but the rhymes are dull
As though they were damp, and the echoes fall
Limp and unlovable.

Words will not say what I yearn to say —
They will not walk as I want them to,
But they stumble and fall in the path of the way
Of my telling my love for you.

Simply take what the scrawl is worth —
Knowing I love you as sun the sod
On the ripening side of the great round earth
That swings in the smile of God.