song

Love, when the present is become the past,
And dust has covered all that now is new,
When many a fame has faded out of view,
And many a later fame is fading fast -

If then these songs of mine might hope to last,
Which sing most sweetly when they sing of you,
Though queen and empress wore oblivion's hue,
Your loveliness would not be overcast.

Now, while the present stays with you and me,
In love's copartnery our hearts combine,
Life's loss and gain in equal shares to take.

Listened but couldn't hear
the subject hissing: looked up to
pages of stuttering rain (it tastes

green), warmer while the song decays
such weather full of precedent
A body made of water

dropped from a stratus
window mists over as it falls,
all hesitating sluice and flume

*

A water-worded book, muttering
foam of nouns, matte adjectives
and artifacts: torn pieces of

the visible, divisible by threes
A lot absorbed in rubble and the day's
debris litters the nocturne

I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing
Recovered Paradise to all mankind,
By one man's firm obedience fully tried
Through all temptation, and the Tempter foiled
In all his wiles, defeated and repulsed,
And Eden raised in the waste Wilderness.
Thou Spirit, who led'st this glorious Eremite
Into the desert, his victorious field
Against the spiritual foe, and brought'st him thence
By proof the undoubted Son of God, inspire,
As thou art wont, my prompted song, else mute,

Lolling on a bank of thyme
Drunk with Spring I made this rhyme. . . .

Though peoples perish in defeat,
And races suffer to survive,
The sunshine never was so sweet,
So vast he joy to be alive;
The laughing leaves, the glowing grass
Proclaim how good it is to be;
The pines are lyric as I pass,
The hills hosannas sing to me.

Pink roses ring yon placid palm,
Soft shines the blossom of the peach;
The sapphire sea is satin calm,
With bell-like tinkle on the beach;
A lizard lazes in the sun,

Elephants of the Gun-Teams

We lent to Alexander the strength of Hercules,
The wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees.
We bowed our necks to service--they ne'er were loosed again,--
Make way there, way for the ten-foot teams
Of the Forty-Pounder train!


Gun-Bullocks

Those heroes in their harnesses avoid a cannon-ball,
And what they know of powder upsets them one and all;
Then we come into action and tug the guns again,--
Make way there, way for the twenty yoke

Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that name
If rightly thou art called, whose voice divine
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar,
Above the flight of Pegasean wing!
The meaning, not the name, I call: for thou
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top
Of old Olympus dwellest; but, heavenly-born,
Before the hills appeared, or fountain flowed,
Thou with eternal Wisdom didst converse,
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play
In presence of the Almighty Father, pleased
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee

Now Morn, her rosy steps in the eastern clime
Advancing, sowed the earth with orient pearl,
When Adam waked, so customed; for his sleep
Was aery-light, from pure digestion bred,
And temperate vapours bland, which the only sound
Of leaves and fuming rills, Aurora's fan,
Lightly dispersed, and the shrill matin song
Of birds on every bough; so much the more
His wonder was to find unwakened Eve
With tresses discomposed, and glowing cheek,
As through unquiet rest: He, on his side

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven firstborn,
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam
May I express thee unblam'd? since God is light,
And never but in unapproached light
Dwelt from eternity, dwelt then in thee
Bright effluence of bright essence increate.
Or hear"st thou rather pure ethereal stream,
Whose fountain who shall tell? before the sun,
Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest ***
The rising world of waters dark and deep,

A dove lived in a village.
When it opened its mouth
sweetness came out, sound
like a silver light around
the cherry bough. But
the dove wasn't satisfied.

It saw the villagers
gathered to listen under
the blossoming tree.
It didn't think: I
am higher that they are.
It wanted to wealk among them,
to experience the violence of human feeling,
in part for its song's sake.

So it became human.
It found passion, it found violence,
first conflated, then
as separate emotions

They told me once that Pan was dead,
And so, in sooth, I thought him;
For vainly where the streamlets led
Through flowery meads I sought him--
Nor in his dewy pasture bed
Nor in the grove I caught him.
"Tell me," 'twas so my clamor ran--
"Tell me, oh, where is Pan?"

But, once, as on my pipe I played
A requiem sad and tender,
Lo, thither came a shepherd-maid--
Full comely she and slender!
I were indeed a churlish blade
With wailings to offend 'er--
For, surely, wooing's sweeter than