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The Ghost of Miltiades

The Ghost of Miltiades came at night,
And he stood by the bed of the Benthamite,
And he said, in a voice, that thrill'd the frame,
"If ever the sound of Marathon's name
Hath fir'd they blood or flush'd thy brow,
Lover of Liberty, rise thee now!"


The Benthamite, yawning, left his bed --
Away to the Stock Exchange he sped,
And he found the Scrip of Greece so high,
That it fir'd his blood, it flush'd his eye,
And oh, 'twas a sight to see,
For never was Greek more Greek than he!
And still as the premium higher went,

The Genesis of the Butterfly

The dawn is smiling on the dew that covers
The tearful roses; lo, the little lovers
That kiss the buds, and all the flutterings
In jasmine bloom, and privet, of white wings,
That go and come, and fly, and peep and hide,
With muffled music, murmured far and wide.
Ah, the Spring time, when we think of all the lays
That dreamy lovers send to dreamy mays,
Of the fond hearts within a billet bound,
Of all the soft silk paper that pens wound,
The messages of love that mortals write
Filled with intoxication of delight,

The Gascon Punished

A GASCON (being heard one day to swear,
That he'd possess'd a certain lovely fair,)
Was played a wily trick, and nicely served;
'Twas clear, from truth he shamefully had swerved:
But those who scandal propagate below,
Are prophets thought, and ev'ry action know;
While good, if spoken, scarcely is believed,
And must be viewed, or not for truth received.

THE dame, indeed, the Gascon only jeered,
And e'er denied herself when he appeared;
But when she met the wight, who sought to shine;
And called her angel, beauteous and divine,

The Gardener LV It Was Mid-Day

It was mid-day when you went
away .
The sun was strong in the sky.
I had done my work and sat alone
on my balcony when you went away.
Fitful gusts came winnowing
through the smells of may distant
fields.
The doves cooed tireless in the shade,
and a bee strayed in my room hum-
ming the news of many distant fields.
The village slept in the noonday
heat. The road lay deserted.
In sudden fits the rustling of the
leaves rose and died.
I gazed at the sky and wove in the

The Garden Wall

Bricks of the wall,
so much older than the house -
taken I think from a farm pulled down
when the street was built -
narrow bricks of another century.

Modestly, though laid with panels and parapets,
a wall behind the flowers -
roses and hollyhocks, the silver
pods of lupine, sweet-tasting
phlox, gray
lavender -
unnoticed -
but I discovered
the colors in the wall that woke
when spray from the hose
played on its pocks and warts -

a hazy red, a
grain gold, a mauve
of small shadows, sprung

The Garden Shukkei-en

By way of a vanished bridge we cross this river
as a cloud of lifted snow would ascend a mountain.

She has always been afraid to come here.

It is the river she most
remembers, the living
and the dead both crying for help.

A world that allowed neither tears nor lamentation.

The matsu trees brush her hair as she passes
beneath them, as do the shining strands of barbed wire.

Where this lake is, there was a lake,
where these black pine grow, there grew black pine.

Where there is no teahouse I see a wooden teahouse

The Garden of Shadow

Love heeds no more the sighing of the wind
Against the perfect flowers: thy garden's close
Is grown a wilderness, where none shall find
One strayed, last petal of one last year's rose.

O bright, bright hair! O mouth like a ripe fruit!
Can famine be so nigh to harvesting?
Love, that was songful, with a broken lute
In grass of graveyards goeth murmuring.

Let the wind blow against the perfect flowers,
And all thy garden change and glow with spring:
Love is grown blind with no more count of hours

The Garden in Winter

Frosty-white and cold it lies
Underneath the fretful skies;
Snowflakes flutter where the red
Banners of the poppies spread,
And the drifts are wide and deep
Where the lilies fell asleep.

But the sunsets o'er it throw
Flame-like splendor, lucent glow,
And the moonshine makes it gleam
Like a wonderland of dream,
And the sharp winds all the day
Pipe and whistle shrilly gay.

Safe beneath the snowdrifts lie
Rainbow buds of by-and-by;
In the long, sweet days of spring
Music of bluebells shall ring,

The Garden by Moonlight

A black cat among roses,
Phlox, lilac-misted under a first-quarter moon,
The sweet smells of heliotrope and night-scented stock.
The garden is very still,
It is dazed with moonlight,
Contented with perfume,
Dreaming the opium dreams of its folded poppies.
Firefly lights open and vanish
High as the tip buds of the golden glow
Low as the sweet alyssum flowers at my feet.
Moon-shimmer on leaves and trellises,
Moon-spikes shafting through the snowball bush.
Only the little faces of the ladies' delight are alert and staring,