January

Janus am I; oldest of potentates;
Forward I look, and backward, and below
I count, as god of avenues and gates,
The years that through my portals come and go.
I block the roads, and drift the fields with snow;
I chase the wild-fowl from the frozen fen;
My frosts congeal the rivers in their flow,
My fires light up the hearths and hearts of men.

February

I am lustration, and the sea is mine!
I wash the sands and headlands with my tide;
My brow is crowned with branches of the pine;

'Does the blackened ruin, situated in the stony ground between Durraj and Mutathallam, which did not speak to me, when addressed, belong to the abode of Ummi Awfa?

'And is it her dwelling at the two stony meadows, seeming as though they were the renewed tattoo marks in the sinews of the wrist?

'The wild cows and the white deer are wandering about there, one herd behind the other, while their young are springing up from every lying-down place.

Too late, alas! the song
To remedy the wrong; --
The rooms are taken from us, swept and
garnished for their fate.
But these tear-besprinkled pages
Shall attest to future ages
That we cried against the crime of it --
too late, alas! too late!


"What have we ever done to bear this grudge?"
Was there no room save only in Benmore
For docket, duftar, and for office drudge,
That you usurp our smoothest dancing floor?
Must babus do their work on polished teak?
Are ball-rooms fittest for the ink you spill?

If hush'd the loud whirlwind that ruffled the deep,
The sky, if no longer dark tempests deform;
When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep?
No!--Here's to the Pilot who weather'd the storm!


At the foot-stool of Power let flattery fawn,
Let Faction her idols extol to the skies;
To virtue in humble resentment withdrawn,
Unblam'd may the merits of gratitude rise.


And shall not His memory to Britain be dear,
Whose example with envy all nations behold;
A Statesman unbiass'd by int'rest or fear,

What holy rites Mohammed's laws ordain,
What various duties bind his faithful train,--
What pious zeal his scatter'd tribes unites
In fix'd observance of these holy rites,--
At Mecca's shrine what votive crowds surround
With annual pomp the consecrated ground,--
The muse shall tell:--revolving years succeed,
And Time still venerates Mohammed's creed.


Nor faint the glory shed o'er Mecca's brow:
Land of the Prophet! known to fame art thou.
Here first in peace his infant hopes were known,

I.

Hamelin Town's in Brunswick,
By famous Hanover city;
The river Weser, deep and wide,
Washes its wall on the southern side;
A pleasanter spot you never spied;
But, when begins my ditty,
Almost five hundred years ago,
To see the townsfolk suffer so
From vermin, was a pity.

II.

Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks' own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,

The good Dame Mercy with Dame Charyte
My body buryed full ryght humbly
In a fayre temple of olde antyquyte,
Where was for me a dyryge devoutely
And with many a masse full ryght solempnely;
And over my grave, to be in memory,
Remembraunce made this lytell epytaphy:

"O erthe, on erthe it is a wonders cace
That thou arte blynde and wyll not the knowe.
Though upon erthe thou hast thy dwellynge-place,
Yet erthe at laste must nedes the overthrowe.
Thou thynkest the to be none erthe I trowe;

Divorced, but friends again at last,
we walk old ground together
in bright blue uncomplicated weather.
We laugh and pause
to hack to bits these tiny dinosaurs,
prehistoric, crenelated, cast
between the tractor ruts in mud.

On the green, a junior Douglas Fairbanks,
swinging on the chestnut's unlit chandelier,
defies the corporation spears--
a single rank around the bole,
rusty with blood.
Green, tacky phalluses curve up, romance
A gust--the old flag blazes on its pole.

In the village bakery
the pastry babies pass

I LIKE the hunting of the hare
Better than that of the fox;
I like the joyous morning air,
And the crowing of the cocks.

I like the calm of the early fields,
The ducks asleep by the lake,
The quiet hour which Nature yields
Before mankind is awake.

I like the pheasants and feeding things
Of the unsuspicious morn;
I like the flap of the wood-pigeon’s wings
As she rises from the corn.

I like the blackbird’s shriek, and his rush
From the turnips as I pass by,

Of all the people in the mornings at the mall,
It's the old liberators I like best,
Those veterans of the Bulge, Anzio, or Monte Cassino
I see lost in Automotive or back in Home Repair,
Bored among the paints and power tools.
Or the really old ones, the ones who are going fast,
Who keep dozing off in the little orchards
Of shade under the distant skylights.
All around, from one bright rack to another,
Their wives stride big as generals,
Their handbags bulging like ripe fruit.
They are almost all gone now,