Short Poems

Love , like Ulysses,
Is a wanderer,
For new fields always
And new faces yearning. . . .
Put by, O waiting ones,
Put by your weaving,
Unlike Ulysses,
Love is unreturning.

Love, like a mountain-wind upon an oak,
Falling upon me, shakes me leaf and bough.

Someone in the garden murmurs all the day;
Someone in the garden moans the night away;
Deep in the pine-trees, hidden from our sight,
He murmurs all day, and moans all the night.

Fire in the window! flashes in the pane!
Fire on the roof-top! blazing weather-vane!
Turn about, weather-vane! put the fire out!
The sun's going down, sir, I haven't a doubt.

Love is a secret feeding fire that gives all creatures being,
Life to the dead, speech to the dumb, and to the blind man seeing.
And yet in me he contradicts all these his sacred graces:
Sears up my lips, my eyes, my life, and from me ever flying
Leads me in paths untracked, ungone, and many uncouth places,
Where in despair I beauty curse. Curse love and all fair faces!

Love brought me quietly in the dreaming night
A softly laughing boy of just eighteen.
I pressed him to me and I hugged despair.
Memory burns me
And my eyes still see what they saw.
Ill-starred lover,
You must forget the warmth of beauty
Even in your dreams.

Lord,
we have been watching over him
many nights, and many nights

The smell
is now unbearable
and Lazarus is still dead

Venus I hear the other day
Thy son stole from thy Lap away;
And that a kisse thou offer'st those,
Who will the Fugitive disclose.
Fair Goddesse grieve no more; He lies,
Close lurking in my Mistresse eyes;
Give now the kisse thou promis'd me;
Or let her do't, I'le pardon thee.

Lord Erskine, at women presuming to rail,
Calls a wife " a tin canister tied to one's tail; "
And fair Lady Anne, while the subject he carries on,
Seems hurt at his Lordship's degrading comparison.
But wherefore degrading? consider'd aright,
A canister's useful, and polish'd, and bright:
And should dirt its original purity hide,
That's the fault of the puppy to whom it is tied.

Look up, dear one, nor be cast down,
 For bright again will shine thy sun,
God's smiles are hid behind his frown—
  Trust Him , He will dispel thy gloom.

For T. M. D. W.