A Madrigal
Crabbed Age and Youth
Cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare:
Youth is full of sports,
Age's breath is short,
Tree At My Window
Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
Laughter And Tears Ix
As the Sun withdrew his rays from the garden, and the moon threw cushioned beams upon the flowers, I sat under the trees pondering upon the phenomena of the atmosphere, looking through the branches at the strewn stars which glittered like chips of silver upon a blue carpet; and I could hear from a distance the agitated murmur of the rivulet singing its way briskly into the valley.
When the birds took shelter among the boughs, and the flowers folded their petals, and tremendous silence descended, I heard a rustle of feet though the grass. I took heed and saw a young couple approaching my arbor. The say under a tree where I could see them without being seen.
A Process In The Weather Of The Heart
A process in the weather of the heart
Turns damp to dry; the golden shot
Storms in the freezing tomb.
A weather in the quarter of the veins
Turns night to day; blood in their suns
Lights up the living worm.
A process in the eye forwarns
The bones of blindness; and the womb
Drives in a death as life leaks out.
The Breath Of Life
The Breath Of Life
To smell The Sun
to feel The Wind
to breathe the Fresh Air from within
to experience The Stormy Weather
to walk on Top Of The Ocean
to talk with The Highest Emotion
to live The Real Life
to know The Real Love
to say Good Morning to The Dove
Disillusionment Of Ten O'Clock
The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
Memory Of My Father
Every old man I see
Reminds me of my father
When he had fallen in love with death
One time when sheaves were gathered.
That man I saw in Gardner Street
Stumbled on the kerb was one,
He stared at me half-eyed,
I might have been his son.
I Didn't Go To Church Today
I didn't go to church today,
I trust the Lord to understand.
The surf was swirling blue and white,
The children swirling on the sand.
He knows, He knows how brief my stay,
How brief this spell of summer weather,
He knows when I am said and done
We'll have plenty of time together.
The Force That Through The Green Fuse Drives The Flower
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
Under The Greenwood Tree
Under the greenwood tree
Who loves to lie with me,
And turn his merry note
Unto the sweet bird's throat,
Come hither, come hither, come hither:
Here shall he see
No enemy
But winter and rough weather.
Who doth ambition shun,
Against Winter
The truth is dark under your eyelids.
What are you going to do about it?
The birds are silent; there's no one to ask.
All day long you'll squint at the gray sky.
When the wind blows you'll shiver like straw.
A meek little lamb you grew your wool
Till they came after you with huge shears.
Flies hovered over open mouth,
Then they, too, flew off like the leaves,
An Abandoned Factory, Detroit
The gates are chained, the barbed-wire fencing stands,
An iron authority against the snow,
And this grey monument to common sense
Resists the weather. Fears of idle hands,
Of protest, men in league, and of the slow
Corrosion of their minds, still charge this fence.
Beyond, through broken windows one can see
Where the great presses paused between their strokes
And thus remain, in air suspended, caught
A Bridal Song
I.
The golden gates of Sleep unbar
Where Strength and Beauty, met together,
Kindle their image like a star
In a sea of glassy weather!
Night, with all thy stars look down,--
Darkness, weep thy holiest dew,--
Never smiled the inconstant moon
On a pair so true.
Let eyes not see their own delight;--
A Beautiful Day
In the blue sky just a few specks of gray
In the evening of a beautiful day
Though last night it rained and more rain on the way
And that more rain is needed 'twould be fair to say
On a gum tree in the park the white backed magpie sing
He sings all year round from the Summer to Spring
But in late Winter and Spring he even sings at night
So nice to hear him piping in the moonlight
Spring it is with us and Summer is near
And beautiful weather for the time of year
Spectrogram Of A Pictorial Poem (Translation By Prof. Ghulam Jilani Asghar
The walls have come out of doors
Narrows are the passages, many are the footprints
On the steep rock where the sun lies half reclined
Jumping over one's shadow, falling headlong
Is the ultimate truth, nothing new about it
Dreaming some old dream
Eyes know not how much water has come out
Of their oceanic depths.
It is easy to cross a river
but how difficult it is to find a foothold on its banks.
(1) Before The Music Ends
Words paint a fragile picture of the dusk.
I think them to a poet far away.
The light shines dim upon my windowpane.
A few tears fall like blue rain in the mind.
Our time has been short listed by sunset,
No matter that the weather has its way,
The stresses live within their measurement,
And distance is a gift we give ourselves.
The Hard
Here on the Hard, you're welcome to pull up and stay;
there's a flat fee of a quid for parking all day.
And wandering over the dunes, who wouldn't die
for the view: an endless estate of beach, the sea
kept out of the bay by the dam-wall of the sky.
Notice the sign, with details of last year's high tides.
Walk on, drawn to the shipwreck, a mirage of masts
Fable
The mountain and the squirrel
Had a quarrel;
And the former called the latter "Little Prig."
Bun replied,
"You are doubtless very big;
But all sorts of things and weather
Must be taken in together
To make up a year
And a sphere.
And I think it's no disgrace
A Wife In London (December, 1899)
I--The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand
October's Bright Blue Weather
O suns and skies and clouds of June,
And flowers of June together,
Ye cannot rival for one hour
October's bright blue weather;
When loud the bumblebee makes haste,
Belated, thriftless vagrant,
And goldenrod is dying fast,
And lanes with grapes are fragrant;