Short Poems

How much do you love me, a million bushels?
Oh, a lot more than that, Oh, a lot more.

And tomorrow maybe only half a bushel?
Tomorrow maybe not even a half a bushel.

And is this your heart arithmetic?
This is the way the wind measures the weather.

The grandest writer of late ages
Who wrapt Rome up in golden pages,
Whom scarcely Livius equal'd, Gibbon,
Died without star or cross or ribbon.

What General has a good army in himself, has a good army;
He happy in himself, or she happy in herself, is happy.

Stalks of rice,
reaped and drying
in the mountain paddy—
hard to see them as the little seedlings
we wet our sleeves planting

Faint trickle of
mossy water from
a crevice in the mountain rock:
the clear still way
I pass through the world.

Old Widow Shopter, when so ere she cryes,
Lets drip a certain Gravie from her eyes.

If thou hast found an honie-combe,
Eate thou not all, but taste on some:
For if thou eat'st it to excess;
That sweetness turnes to Loathsomness.
Taste it to Temper; then 'twill be
Marrow, and Manna unto thee.

This Stone can tell the storie of my life,
What was my Birth, to whom I was a Wife:
In teeming years, how soon my Sun was set,
Where now I rest, these may be known by Jet.
For other things, my many Children be
The best and truest Chronicles of me.

Magot frequents those houses of good-cheere,
Talkes most, eates most, of all the Feeders there.
He raves through leane, he rages through the fat;
(What gets the master of the Meal by that?)
He who with talking can devoure so much,
How wo'd he eate, were not his hindrance such?

Mine eyes, like clouds, were drizling raine,
And as they thus did entertaine
The gentle Beams from Julia's sight
To mine eyes level'd opposite:
O Thing admir'd! there did appeare
A curious Rainbow smiling there;
Which was the Covenant, that she
No more wo'd drown mine eyes, or me.