I see my plaint, with open ears
Is heard, alas, and laughing eyes;
I see that scorn beholds my tears,
And all the harm hap can devise;
I see my life away so wears
That I myself myself despise;
And most of all wherewith I strive
Is that I see myself alive.

I saw his round mouth's crimson deepen as it fell,
Like a Sun, in his last deep hour;
Watched the magnificent recession of farewell,
Clouding, half gleam, half glower,
And a last splendour burn the heavens of his cheek.
And in his eyes
The cold stars lighting, very old and bleak,
In different skies.

I remember when I was young
reading alone in the empty hall,
again and again refilling the lamp with oil,
never minding then how long the winter night was.

I RECOLLECT a nurse call'd Ann,
Who carried me about the grass,
And one fine day a fine young man
Came up, and kiss'd the pretty lass.
She did not make the least objection!
Thinks I, " Aha!
When I can talk I'll tell Mamma"
— And that's my earliest recollection.

I pour out wine in a libation to the river god
and prognosticate my future path from the wind.
Here, beyond the grasses of the spring,
I have made the acquaintance of a countryman of mine!
We talk intimately — it is difficult to part.
Our friendship is new — but that just makes closeness easier.
And because you have asked where my ancestors are buried,
fresh tears fall, and dampen my clothes.

I pick up your scroll of poems, read in front of the lamp;
poems ended, the lamp gutters, sky not yet light.
My eyes hurt, I put out the lamp, go on sitting in the dark:
the sound of waves blown by head winds, sloshing against the boat.

I often sit and wish that I
Could be a kite up in the sky,
And ride upon the breeze and go
Whichever way I chanced to blow.

I never cared for Life: Life cared for me,
And hence I owed it some fidelity.
It now says, " Cease; at length thou hast learnt to grind
Sufficient toll for an unwilling mind,
And I dismiss thee — not without regard
That thou didst ask no ill-advised reward,
Nor sought in me much more than thou couldst find."

I met this lovely scene once before, on horseback,
but then I was constrained by official duties.
Now I have retired, and nothing holds me back:
I've earned the chance to look carefully
at the eastern mountains.

I mean to penetrate the particular
the way an owl waits
for a kangaroo rat

and the photomicrograph
beholds
the hairy pappus
of a dandelion.