Short Poems

Verbum caro factum est
Et habitavit in nobis.
Fetis bel chere,
Drink to thy fere,
Verse le bavere,
And singe Nouwel!

The breeze across the plain
Has waved the wild bush clover, but
The dewdrops still remain.

All through the never-ending night
I lie awake and think;
In vain I look to try and see
The daybreak's feeble blink
Peep through the shutter's chink.

In a Roses' bower
Sweet Philomel sat, singing
All her night-long passion to those lovely hearts:

Only the Moon looked on them,
Heard what she sang; and the Roses
Answered, breathing their perfumes back from echoing depths.

The trees they lean'd in their love unto trees,
That lock'd in their loves, and were so made strong,
Stronger than armies; ay, stronger than seas
That rush from their caves in a storm of song.

It is all right for a man
To be absent-minded,
But his mind shouldn't overstay
Its leave of absence.

O'er sandy'tracts the shea-oak trees
Droop their long wavy grey-green trails:
And inland wandering moans and wails
The long blast of the ocean-breeze:
Like loose strings of a viol or harp
These answering sound—now low, now sharp
And keen, a melancholy strain:
A death song o'er the mournful plain.

Ah, the place is wild and sweet
Where my darling went:—
If I chase her flying feet
When the day is spent,
Shall I find her, as I go
Where the Night's pale roses blow?

O cricket, from your cheery cry
No one could ever guess
How quickly you must die.

The wingèd leaves are too transparent bright
For shadow on the ground. The sun pours through
Swamp maple's ghostly grayness to delight
Of the moist earth, where hushed anemones
And wakeful starflowers hoard their early dew,
And woolly ferns uncurl at roots of trees.
A brook finds out its journey cold and new
Through leaf mould and deep mossy crevices.