Short Poems

Come, my Chrysilla, come
And make my arms your home.
Why, sweet, with downcast eyelids stand?
Why pluck your gown with trembling hand?
Love leaves no room for shame,
And if your lips refuse me ‘Yes,’
One gentle nod will still confess
The power of Venus' name.

The soft voluptuous opiate shades,
The sun just gone, the eager light dispell'd—(I too will soon be gone, dispell'd,)
A haze—nirwana—rest and night—oblivion.

Aired in the sun,
even the nun's pillow
has an earthy smell

Yelled at
for praying in his underwear
at the family shrine

Ten thousand threads of thought, two sheets written:
before sealing them, I read them over, wonder if they'll do.
The palace water clock has just sounded the fifth watch,
the lamp in the window, my one light, about to go out.

A toadstool comes up in a night,—
Learn the lesson, little folk:—
An oak grows on a hundred years,
But then it is an oak.

In Walden wood the chickadee
Runs round the pine & maple tree,
Intent on insect slaughter:
O tufted entomologist!
Devour as many as you list,
Then drink in Walden Water.

Die ere long I'm sure, I shall;
After leaves, the tree must fall.

Letcher was Carted first about the streets,
For false Position in his neighbours sheets:
Next, hang'd for Theeving: Now the people say,
His Carting was the Prologue to this Play.

Instead of Orient Pearls, of Jet,
I sent my Love a Karkanet:
About her spotlesse neck she knit
The lace, to honour me, or it:
Then think how wrapt was I to see
My Jet t'enthrall such Ivorie.