Short Poems

'Tis the Arabian bird alone
Lives chaste, because there is but one.
But had kind nature made them two,
They would like doves and sparrows do.

'T IS something from that tangle to have won;
'T is something to have matched the wild-bird's flight;
'T is something to have soared and touched the sun.
What though the lashing billows roar beneath?
Better than death in life is life in death: —

'Tis said the Gods lower down that Chain above,
That tyes both Prince and Subject up in Love;
And if this Fiction of the Gods be true,
Few , Mary-Land, in this can boast but you:
Live ever blest, and let those Clouds that do
Eclipse most States, be alwayes Lights to you;
And dwelling so, you may for ever be
The only Emblem of Tranquility.

'Tis sad to see the sons of learning
In everlasting Hellfire burning
While he that never read a line
Doth in eternal glory shine.

There was an Old Person of Shields,
Who frequented the valley and fields;
All the mice and the cats, and the snakes and the rats,
Followed after that person of Shields.

Thunder in the southern mountains, the third month of the year:
it shakes the darkness by the window at night.
When I rise in the morning, I hear an old farmer
say, " This is an omen of a good harvest this year! "

Three years ago I left these city walls;
my windblown hair now is touched with frost.
In poverty, much has turned out wrong;
unskilled I stand, my back turned to the times.
Bird prints left on sand — news from the battlefield
where oceans of dust smell of dragon blood.
But my solitary poet's heart lives on:
brush and inkstone are always by my side.

Tired and thirsty, weary of the way,
I seek the forest-inn that is my own;
Rifle and cap upon a bench I lay,
Beside the water pail my dog lies prone.
The inn's young mistress in the dying day
Stands still as one from whom all joy has flown;
Then she smiles shyly and half turns away —
The guests departure leaves us soon alone.

" The mills of the gods grind late, but they grind fine. "
GREEK POET .
Though THE MILLS of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all.

'Tis hard to find God, but to comprehend
Him, as He is, is labour without end.