From this vile town, immers'd in smoke and care,
To you who brighten in a purer air,
Your faithful friend conveys her tenderest thought
(Though now perhaps neglected and forgot).
May blooming health your wonted mirth restore,
And every pleasure crown your every hour;
Caress'd, esteem'd, and lov'd, your merit known,
And foreign lands admire you, like your own:
Whilst I in silence various fortunes bear,
Distracted with the rage of bosom-war:
My restless fever tears my changeful brain,
With mix'd ideas of delight and pain;

When I laid aside the verses of Mimnermus,
I lived a life of canned heat and raw hands,
alone, not far from my body did I wander,
walked with a hope of a sudden dreamy forest of gold.
O rose, downfallen, bend your huge vegetic back;
eye down the imposter sun...in winter dream
sulk your rosefamed head into the bile of golden giant,
ah, rose, augment the rose further still!
whence upon that self-created dive in Eden
you blossomed where the Watchmaker of Nothingness
lulled,
your birth did cause bits of smashed night to pop,

Over the dead line we have called to you
To come across with a word to us,
Some beaten whisper of what happens
Where you are over the dead line
Deaf to our calls and voiceless.

The flickering shadows have not answered
Nor your lips sent a signal
Whether love talks and roses grow
And the sun breaks at morning
Splattering the sea with crimson.

WHERE contemplation finds her sacred spring,
Where heav'nly music makes the arches ring,
Where virtue reigns unsully'd and divine,
Where wisdom thron'd, and all the graces shine,
There sits thy spouse amidst the radiant throng,
While praise eternal warbles from her tongue;
There choirs angelic shout her welcome round,
With perfect bliss, and peerless glory crown'd.
While thy dear mate, to flesh no more confin'd,
Exults a blest, an heav n-ascended mind,
Say in thy breast shall floods of sorrow rise?

We held the book together timidly,
Whose antique music in an alien tongue
Once rose among the dew-drenched vines that hung
Beneath a high Castilian balcony.
I felt the lute strings' ancient ecstasy,
And while he read, my love-filled heart was stung,
And throbbed, as where an ardent bird has clung
The branches tremble on a blossomed tree.
Oh lady for whose sake the song was made,
Laid long ago in some still cypress shade,
Divided from the man who longed for thee,
Here in a land whose name he never heard,

Tossed like a falcon from the hunter's wrist,
A sweeping plunge, a sudden shattering noise,
And thou hast dared, with a long spiral twist,
The elastic stairway to the rising sun.
Peril below thee and above, peril
Within thy car; but peril cannot daunt
Thy peerless heart: gathering wing and poise,
Thy plane transfigured, and thy motor-chant
Subduéd to a whisper -- then a silence, --
And thou art but a disembodied venture
In the void.

But Death, who has learned to fly,
Still matchless when his work is to be done,

Thy clustering leaves are steeped in splendour;
   No evening red, no morning dun,
Can show a hue as rich and tender
   As thine -- bright lover of the sun!

What wondrous hints of hidden glory,
   Of strains no human lips can sing;
What symbols rare of life's strange story,
   Dost thou from earth's dark bosom bring!

What elements have made thy sweetness,
   Thy glowing hue, thy emerald stem?
What hand has fashioned to completeness

To a Beautiful Quaker

Sweet girl! though only once we met,
That meeting I shall ne'er forget;
And though we ne'er may meet again,
Remembrance will thy form retain.
I would not say, "I love," but still
My senses struggle with my will:
In vain, to drive thee from my breast,
My thoughts are more and more represt;
In vain I check the rising sighs,
Another to the last replies:
Perhaps this is not love, but yet
Our meeting I can ne'er forget.

What though we never silence broke,
Our eyes a sweeter language spoke.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune,
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,