The Magnet

Ask the Empress of the night
How the hand which guides her sphere,
Constant in unconstant light,
Taught the waves her yoke to bear,
And did thus by loving force
Curb or tame the rude sea's course.

Ask the female palm how she
First did woo her husband's love;
And the magnet, ask how he
Doth the obsequious iron move;
Waters, plants and stones know this,
That they love, not what love is.

Be not then less kind than these,
Or from love exempt alone;
Let us twine like amorous trees,

Old Age

As when into the garden paths by night
One bears a lamp, and with its sickly glare
Scatters the burnished flowers a-dreaming there,
Palely they show like spectres in his sight,
Lovely no more, disfurnished of delight,
Some folded up and drooping o'er the way,
Their odours spent, their colour changed to gray,
Some that stood queen-like in the morning light
Fallen discrowned: so the low-burning loves
That tremble in the hearts of aged men
Cast their own light upon the world that moves
Around them, and receive it back again.

Dirge of the Lone Woman

AS WE entered by that door
We saw the lights a-flame —
A-flame on your bier,
On the bier of you
Who had loved many a one,
Loved many a one!

Then I said to your love,
To her, your latest love,
" There's his last room,
His final roof-tree
Who has lived in many a one,
In many a one.

" A tree never more
Grows to shield him
From the bitter cold and rain,
From the blighting light of love
Which ends many a one —
Ends many a one.

" There's his last tree;

Rain

As the rain falls
so does
your love

bathe every
open
object of the world—
In houses
the priceless dry
rooms
of illicit love
where we live
hear the wash of the
rain—

There
paintings
and fine
metalware
woven stuffs—
all the whorishness
of our
delight
sees
from its window

the spring wash
of your love
the falling
rain—

Johnny's the Lad I Love

As I roved out on a May morning,
Being in the youthful spring,
I leaned my back close to the garden wall,
To hear the small birds sing.

And to hear two lovers talk, my dear,
To know what they would say,
That I might know a little of her mind
Before I would go away.

" Come sit you down, my heart, " he says,
" All on this pleasant green,
It's full three-quarters of a year and more
Since together you and I have been. "

" I will not sit on the grass, " she said,
" Now nor any other time,

Epigram

As honey in wine / wine, honey
Alexis in Cleobulus
Cleobulus in Alexis
sweet-haired & lovely each
as he with whom the other
mingles . . . product
of such two entwined
potent
as vineyards of deathless Cypris.

An Old maid early eer I knew

An old maid early eer I knew
Ought but the love that on me grew
And now Im coverd oer & oer
And wish that I had been a Whore

O I cannot cannot find
The undaunted courage of a Virgin Mind
For Early I in love was crost
Before my flower of love was lost

A Tragedy

A MONG his books he sits all day
— To think and read and write;
He does not smell the new-mown hay,
— The roses red and white.

I walk among them all alone,
— His silly, stupid wife;
The world seems tasteless, dead and done —
— An empty thing is life.

At night his window casts a square
— Of light upon the lawn;
I sometimes walk and watch it there
— Until the chill of dawn.

I have no brain to understand
— The books he loves to read;
I only have a heart and hand

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