light

You have become a forge of snow-white fire,
A crucible of molten steel, O France!
Your sons are stars who cluster to a dawn
And fade in light for you, O glorious France!
They pass through meteor changes with a song
Which to all islands and all continents
Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame,
Nor quiet hearthstones, friendship, wife nor child,
Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power,
Nor many days spent in a chosen work,
Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme

O Spirit of the living God,
In all Thy plenitude of grace,
Where’er the foot of man hath trod,
Descend on our apostate race.

Give tongues of fire and hearts of love
To preach the reconciling Word,
Give power and unction from above,
Whene’er the joyful sound is heard.

Be darkness, at Thy coming, light;
Confusion, order in Thy path;
Souls without strength inspire with might;
Bid mercy triumph over wrath.

O Spirit of the Lord, prepare
All the round earth her God to meet;

O sleep, my babe, hear not the rippling wave,
Nor feel the breeze that round thee ling'ring strays
To drink thy balmy breath,
And sigh one long farewell.

Soon shall it mourn above thy wat'ry bed,
And whisper to me, on the wave-beat shore,
Deep murm'ring in reproach,
Thy sad untimely fate.

Ere those dear eyes had open'd on the light,
In vain to plead, thy coming life was sold,
O waken'd but to sleep,
Whence it can wake no more!

A thousand and a thousand silken leaves

O HEART of Spring!
Spirit of light and love and joyous day,
So soon to faint beneath the fiery Summer:
Still smiles the Earth, eager for thee alway:
Welcome art thou, soever short thy stay,
Thou bold, thou blithe newcomer!
Whither, O whither this thy journeying,
O heart of Spring?

O heart of Spring!
After the stormy days of Winter’s reign,
When the keen winds their last lament are sighing,
The Sun shall raise thee up to life again:

O CITY, look the Eastward way!
Beyond thy roofs of shadowy red and grey
Floats like a lily on the airy stream,
Radiant and vast, a cloud,
Around whose billowy head
Splendour from out the glooming West is shed
As if it were not ever to take flight,—
And on its edge of gleam
In the clear blue of waning afternoon,
Faint as a spirit slipping from the shroud,
Faint, and yet gathering light,
The Moon.

O city, dream and pray!

...
But let us leave Queen Mab a while,
Through many a gate, o'er many a stile,
That now had gotten by this wile,
Her dear Pigwiggen kissing;
And tell how Oberon doth fare,
Who grew as mad as any hare,
When he had sought each place with care,
And found his queen was missing.
By grisly Pluto he doth swear,
He rent his clothes, and tore his hair,
And as he runneth here and there,
An acorn-cup he greeteth;
Which soon he taketh by the stalk,

It was a face which darkness could kill
in an instant
a face as easily hurt
by laughter or light

'We think differently at night'
she told me once
lying back languidly

And she would quote Cocteau

'I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
'whom I am constantly shocking'

Then she would smile and look away
light a cigarette for me
sigh and rise

and stretch
her sweet anatomy

let fall a stocking

O well is thee! King Numa,
Within thy secret cave,
Where thy bones are ever moistened
By sad Egeria’s wave;
None now have power to pilfer
The treasure of thy tomb,
And reveal the institutions
And secret Rites of Rome.
O blessed be the Senate
That stowed those books away,
Curst be the attempt of Niebuhr
To drag them into day;
Light be the pressure, Numa,
Around thy watery bed,
May no perplexing problems
Infest thy kingly head!
As thus I blessed King Numa
And struggled hard with sleep,

The all upholding,
The all enfolding,
The all beholding,
Most secret Night;
From whose abysses,
With wordless blisses,
The Sun's first kisses,
Called gods to light.

One god undying,
But multiplying,
Restlessly trying,
Doing: undone.
Through myriad changes,
He sweeps and ranges;
But life estranges
Many in one.

In wild commotion,
Out of the ocean,
With moan and motion,
Wave upon waves,
Mingling in thunder,
Rise and go under:

WHEN I survey the bright
   Celestial sphere;
So rich with jewels hung, that Night
   Doth like an Ethiop bride appear:

   My soul her wings doth spread
   And heavenward flies,
Th' Almighty's mysteries to read
   In the large volumes of the skies.

   For the bright firmament
   Shoots forth no flame
So silent, but is eloquent
   In speaking the Creator's name.

   No unregarded star
   Contracts its light
Into so small a character,