The stars are soft as flowers, and as near;
The hills are webs of shadow, slowly spun;
No separate leaf or single blade is here-
All blend to one.
No moonbeam cuts the air; a sapphire light
Rolls lazily. and slips again to rest.
There is no edged thing in all this night,
Save in my breast.
Would I might wake in you the whirl-wind soul
Of Michelangelo, who hewed the stone
And Night and Day revealed, whose arm alone
Could draw the face of God, the titan high
Whose genius smote like lightning from the sky —
And shall he mold like dead leaves in the grave?
Nay he is in us! Let us dare and dare.
God help us to be brave.
For his sake drifting away from the true
windlessness, torn sails the aftermath
of him: white canvas suffering too vaguely
from the beautiful agreeing with these arguments,
but far away: sought him, found him
not, distant from image, archetype, the typical
sublime’s encroachments, archaeology
of his innocence which is to be destroyed. Shaped,
shaping, shapes, and shape, the neverwhere
intact, the unearth disinterred. Hermes mi amor,
mi partida, mi pobreza: him my dark
of the moon, my mare nubium, oceanus
Spanish
Vagos preludios. En la noche espléndida
Su voz de perlas una fuente calla,
Cuelgan las brisas sus celestes pifanos
En el follaje. Las cabezas pardas
De los búhos acechan.
Las flores se abren más, como asombradas.
Los cisnes de marfil tienden los cuellos
En las lagunas pálidas.
Selene mira del azul. Las frondas
Tiemblan... y todo! hasta el silencio, calla...
Es que ella pasa con su boca triste
Y el gran misterio de sus ojos de ámbar,
A través de la noche, hacia el olvido,
Methought I saw my late espoused Saint
Brought to me like Alcestus from the grave,
Who Jove's great Son to her glad Husband gave,
Rescu'd from death by force though pale and faint.
Mine as whom washt from spot of child-bed taint
Purification in the old Law did save,
And such as yet once more I trust to have
Full sight of her in Heav'n without restraint,
Came vested all in white, pure as her mind:
Her face was veil'd, yet to my fancied sight
Love, sweetness, goodness in her person shin'd
The brass medallion profile of your face I keep always.
It is not jingling with loose change in my pockets.
It is not stuck up in a show place on the office wall.
I carry it in a special secret pocket in the day
And it is under my pillow at night.
The brass came from a long ways off: it was up against hell and high water, fire and flood, before the
face was put on it.
It is the side of a head; a woman wishes; a woman waits; a woman swears behind silent lips that the
sea will bring home what is gone.
At the time when the stars are grey,
And the gold of the molten moon
Fades, and the twilight is thinned,
And the sun leaps up, and the wind,
A light rose, not of the day,
A stronger light than of noon.
As the light of a face much loved
Was the face of the light that clomb;
As a mother's whitened with woes
Her adorable head that arose;
As the sound of a God that is moved,
Her voice went forth upon Rome.
At her lips it fluttered and failed
Twice, and sobbed into song,
Song of the Soldiers
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
To hazards whence no tears can win us;
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away!
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye
Who watch us stepping by,
With doubt and dolorous sigh?
Can much pondering so hoodwink you?
Is it a purblind prank, O think you,
Friend with the musing eye?
Monday, March 13, 1826
The Budget - quite charming and witty - no hearing,
For plaudits and laughs, the good things that were in it; --
Great comfort to find, though the Speech isn't cheering,
That all its gay auditors were, every minute.
What, still more prosperity! - mercy upon us,
"This boy'll be the death of me" - oft as, already,
Such smooth Budgeteers have genteelly undone us,
For Ruin made easy there's no one like Freddy.
Tuesday
Much grave apprehension express'd by the Peers,
Oh, there were fifteen men in green,
Each with a tommy-gun,
Who leapt into my plane at dawn;
We rose to meet the sun.
We set our course towards the east
And climbed into the day
Till the ribbed jungle underneath
Like a giant fossil lay.
We climbed towards the distant range,
Where two white paws of cloud
Clutched at the shoulders of the pass;
The green men laughed aloud.
They did not fear the ape-like cloud
That climbed the mountain crest
And hung from ropes invisible
