Repeat that, repeat,
Cuckoo, bird, and open ear wells, heart-springs, delightfully sweet,
With a ballad, with a ballad, a rebound
Off trundled timber and scoops of the hillside ground, hollow hollow hollow ground:
The whole landscape flushes on a sudden at a sound.

Rejoice you sots, your idol's come again,
To pick your pockets and kidnap your men.
Give him your moneys, and his Dutch your lands.
Ring not your bells ye fools, but wring your hands.

Had we been only lovers from a book
That holy men who had a hand in heaven
Illuminated: in a yellow wood,
Where crimson beast and bird are clawed with gold
And, wound in branches, hunt or hawk themselves,
Sun-woman, I would hide you as the ring
Of his own shining fetters that the snake,
Who is the wood itself, can never find.

The readers and the hearers like my books,
And yet some writers cannot them digest;
But what care I? for when I make a feast,
I would my guests should praise it, not the cooks.

Reader, I was born and cried,
Crackt so, smelt so, and so died,
Like to Caesar's was my death,
He in senate lost his breath;
And alike interr'd doth lie,
Thy famous Romulus and I.
And, at last, like Flora fair,
I left the commonwealth mine air.

Reach, with your whiter hands, to me
Some crystal of the spring,
And I about the cup shall see
Fresh lilies flourishing.
Or else, sweet nymphs, do you but this:
To th' glass your lips incline,
And I shall see by that one kiss
The water turned to wine.

Rare temples thou hast seen, I know,
And rich for in- and outward show:
Survey this chapel, built, alone,
Without or lime, or wood, or stone;
Then say if one thou'st seen more fine
Than this, the Fairies' once, now thine.

Rain dampens Sung-ling, spring fills with mist;
apricot blossoms and elm-seeds glitter
in freshly sown fields.
If you wonder where to go to hear the most beautiful singing:
at Eastgate and Level Lake, there are boats moored night and day!

Quitting kickball, the gods
went out to prepare for war.
Picking up the globelike ball that was left and holding it by his side,
a bridegroom, a god, walked quietly
to the house made of white wood, fresh with fragrance, and hid in it.
Suddenly, from there
a sound as limpid as a birth cry came out, running,
and in the clear cold dawn, in a bush, spilled a plum blossom.

Endow the fool with sun and moon,
Being his, he holds them mean and low,
But to the wise a little boon
Is great, because the giver's so.