In the cold I will rise, I will bathe
In waters of ice; myself
Will shiver, and shrive myself,
Alone in the dawn, and anoint
Forehead and feet and hands;
I will shutter the windows from light,
I will place in their sockets the four
Tall candles and set them aflame
In the grey of the dawn; and myself
Will lay myself straight in my bed,
And draw the sheet under my chin.
There's a little worn-out pony this side of Hogan's shack
With a snip upon his nuzzle and a mark upon his back;
Just a common little pony is what most people say,
But then of course they've never heard what happened in his day:
I was droving on the Leichhardt with a mob of pikers wild,
When this tibby little pony belonged to Hogan's child.
One night it started raining – we were camping on a rise,
When the wind blew cold and bleakly and thunder shook the skies;
The lightning cut the figure eight around the startled cattle,
Oh, here the air is sweet and still,
And soft's the grass to lie on;
And far away's the little hill
They took for Christ to die on.
And there's a hill across the brook,
And down the brook's another;
But, oh, the little hill they took,—
I think I am its mother!
The moon that saw Gethsemane,
I watch it rise and set:
It has so many things to see,
They help it to forget.
But little hills that sit at home
So many hundred years,
Remember Greece, remember Rome,
Remember Mary's tears.
Lily! lady of the garden!
Let me press my lip to thine!
Love must tell its story, Lily!
Listen thou to mine.
Two I choose to know the secret --
Thee, and yonder wordless flute;
Dragons watch me, tender Lily,
And thou must be mute.
There's a maiden, and her name is . . .
Hist! was that a rose-leaf fell?
See, the rose is listening, Lily,
And the rose may tell.
Lily-browed and lily-hearted,
She is very dear to me;
Lovely? yes, if being lovely
Is -- resembling thee.
The light wraps you in its mortal flame.
Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way
against the old propellers of the twighlight
that revolves around you.
Speechless, my friend,
alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead
and filled with the lives of fire,
pure heir of the ruined day.
A bough of fruit falls from the sun on your dark garment.
The great roots of night
grow suddenly from your soul,
and the things that hide in you come out again
so that a blue and palled people
[How different people and different animals look upon the moon: showing that each creature finds in it his own mood and disposition]
The Old Horse in the City
The moon's a peck of corn. It lies
Heaped up for me to eat.
I wish that I might climb the path
And taste that supper sweet.
Men feed me straw and scanty grain
And beat me till I'm sore.
Some day I'll break the halter-rope
And smash the stable-door,
Run down the street and mount the hill
Just as the corn appears.
Still on the tower stood the vane,
A black yew gloomed the stagnant air,
I peered athwart the chancel pane
And saw the altar cold and bare.
A clog of lead was round my feet,
A band of pain across my brow;
"Cold altar, Heaven and earth shall meet
Before you hear my marriage vow."
I turned and hummed a bitter song
That mocked the wholesome human heart,
And then we met in wrath and wrong,
We met, but only met to part.
Full cold my greeting was and dry;
She faintly smiled, she hardly moved;
Cupido, unto whos commandement
The gentil kinrede of goddes on hy
And peple infernal been obedient,
And the mortel folk seruen bisyly,
Of goddesse Sitheree sone oonly,
To alle tho that to our deitee
Been sogettes greetinges senden we.
In general, we wole that yee knowe
That ladies of honour and reverence
And other gentil wommen han ysowe
Swich seed of complainte in our audience
Of men that doon hem outrage and offense
That it our eres greeveth for to heere,
Saint Laura, in her sleep of death,
Preserves beneath the tomb
---'Tis willed where what is willed must be---
In incorruptibility
Her beauty and her bloom.
So pure her maiden life had been,
So free from earthly stain,
'Twas fixed in fate by Heaven's own Queen,
That till the earth's last closing scene
She should unchanged remain.
Within a deep sarcophagus
Of alabaster sheen,
With sculptured lid of roses white,
She slumbered in unbroken night
By mortal eyes unseen.
St. Austin, going in thought
Along the sea-sands gray,
Into another world was caught,
And Carthage far away.
He saw the City of God
Hang in the saffron sky;
And this was holy ground he trod,
Where mortals come not nigh.
He saw pale spires aglow,
Houses of heavenly sheen;
All in a world of rose and snow,
A sea of gold and green.
There amid Paradise
The saint was rapt away
From unillumined sands and skies
And floor of muddy clay.
