death

Full fifty merry maids I heard
One summer morn a-singing;
And each was like a joyous bird
With spring-clear not a-ringing.
It was an old-time soldier song
That held their happy voices:
Oh how it's good to swing along
When youth rejoices!

Then lo! I dreamed long years had gone,
They passed again ungladly.
Their backs were bent, their cheeks were wan,
Their eyes were staring sadly.
Their ranks were thinned by full a score

We brought him in from between the lines: we'd better have let him lie;
For what's the use of risking one's skin for a tyke that's going to die?
What's the use of tearing him loose under a gruelling fire,
When he's shot in the head, and worse than dead, and all messed up on the wire?
However, I say, we brought him in. Diable! The mud was bad;
The trench was crooked and greasy and high, and oh, what a time we had!
And often we slipped, and often we tripped, but never he made a moan;

769

One and One—are One—
Two—be finished using—
Well enough for Schools—
But for Minor Choosing—

Life—just—or Death—
Or the Everlasting—
More—would be too vast
For the Soul's Comprising—

When I was ten (no, younger
than that), my mother tried
to kill herself (without the facts
there can't be faith). One death
or another every day, Tanqueray bottles
halo the bed and she won't wake up
all weekend. In the myth book's color
illustration, the poet turns around
inside the mouth of hell to look at her
losing him (because it's not her fault
they had to meet there): so he can keep her
somewhere safe, save her place
till she comes back. Some say
she stepped on an asp, a handful of pills

ARGUMENT
The old Atlantes suffers fatal wreck,
Foiled by the ring, and young Rogero freed,
Who soars in air till he appears a speck,
Mounted upon the wizard's winged steed.
Obediant to the royal Charles's beck,
He who had followed Love's imperious lead,
Rinaldo, disembarks on British land,
And saves Genevra, doomed to stake and brand.


I
Though an ill mind appear in simulation,
And, for the most, such quality offends;
'Tis plain that this in many a situation

lights in the twilight,
lights of Solvay over the expanse of frozen snow-covered
lake,
orange lights of the refineries,
yellow and green and red lights of the neon along the
strip,
lights as if undersea, the argon just coming to exist,
all lights in the cold moisture of the grounded wind
staggering across the lake at twilight
are blurred, are meaningless, they call, together,
with a sound unintelligible and of no interest;
but in the slate sky above the imagined horizon

When I got to his marker, I sat on it,
like sitting on the edge of someone's bed
and I rubbed the smooth, speckled granite.
I took some tears from my jaw and neck
and started to wash a corner of his stone.
Then a black and amber ant
ran out onto the granite, and off it,
and another ant hauled a dead
ant onto the stone, leaving it, and not coming back.
Ants ran down into the grooves of his name
and dates, down into the oval track of the
first name's O, middle name's O,
the short O of his last name,

THERE 's little joy in life for me,
And little terror in the grave ;
I 've lived the parting hour to see
Of one I would have died to save.

Calmly to watch the failing breath,
Wishing each sigh might be the last ;
Longing to see the shade of death
O'er those belovèd features cast.

The cloud, the stillness that must part
The darling of my life from me ;
And then to thank God from my heart,
To thank Him well and fervently ;

Although I knew that we had lost

Dear youth, too early lost, who now art laid
Beneath the turf in green Labicum's glade,
O'er thee no storied urn, no labored bust
I rear to crumble with the crumbling dust;
But tapering box and shadowy vine shall wave,
And grass, with tears bedewed, shall clothe thy grave.
These gifts my sorrowing love to thee shall bring,
Gifts ever fresh and deathless as the Spring.
O when to me the fatal hour shall come,
Mine be as lowly and as green a tomb!

'Twas on a lofty vase's side,
Where China's gayest art had dyed
The azure flowers that blow,
Demurest of the tabby kind,
The pensive Selima, reclined,
Gazed on the lake below.

Her conscious tail her joy declared;
The fair round face, the snowy beard,
The velvet of her paws,
Her coat, that with the tortoise vies,
Her ears of jet, and emerald eyes,
She saw; and purred applause.

Still had she gazed; but 'midst the tide
Two angel forms were seen to glide,
The genii of the stream: