Short Poems

Lady fair, will you not listen
To my ardent vows of love?
Love that in my eyes doth glisten,
And is firm as Heaven above.

Only the Lion and the Cock,
As Galen says, withstand Love's shock.
So, Dearest, do not think me rude
If I yield now to lassitude,
But sympathise with me. I know
You would not have me roar, or crow.

Reader, pass on, nor idly waste your time,
In bad biography, or bitter rhyme;
What I am, this cumbrous clay ensures,
And what I was is no affair of yours.

The wood is talking in its sleep.
Have a care, trees!
You are heard by the brook and the breeze
And the listening lake;
And some of the birds are awake,
I know.
Green, garrulous wood, I trusted you so!

When I think of
this world
all is scattering blossoms,
so where else
might I choose to be?

The stars of last night and the wind of last night
Are west of the Painted Chamber and east of Cinnamon Hall.
… Though I have for my body no wings like those of the bright-coloured phœnix,
Yet I feel the harmonious heart-beat of the Sacred Unicorn.
Across the spring-wine, while it warms me, I prompt you how to bet
Where, group by group, we are throwing dice in the light of a crimson lamp;
Till the rolling of a drum, alas, calls me to my duties
And I mount my horse and ride away, like a water-plant cut adrift.

Make three fourths of a cross,
——And a circle complete;
And let two semicircles
——On a perpendicular meet;
Next add a triangle
——That stands on two feet;
Next two semicircles,
——And a circle complete. (TOBACCO.)

[So lovely] even in its cry,—
What were the cuckoo if it laughed?

By the sea the autumn sun sinks;
Startled by cold, the geese pitch a camp.
Anxious, I toss and turn—
Only a dawn moon on my bow and sword.

Lovely for youth, the look on life's lit face,
And limitless his longing
All beckonings and beguilements to embrace.
Unseen, those spectres thronging.
Marvel, the mind's emergence innocent-eyed,
Unblemished and believing,
World welcomed he, who goes without a guide
Toward wrongs beyond retrieving.