Short Poems

Out of the earth
I sing for them,
A Horse nation
I sing for them.
Out of the earth
I sing for them,
The animals
I sing for them.

Lying with unstable pego 'twixt a brace of vigorous boys,
Phoebus what's the little game that all your leisure time employs?
I should guess, but contradicting rumours from your friends, odd rot 'em,
Check the surmise that you open to these vigorous youths your bottom;
Rumour with its hundred tongues, that tells us you're not up to fucking,
Tells us that you are not buggered; what's then left for you but sucking?

If all the world were apple pie,
—And all the sea were ink,
And all the trees were bread and cheese,
—What should we have to drink?

Sister Blossoms, ye have kept
So near the Master while ye slept
That, as upon the Martyr's face,
His light celestial we trace
In yours, revealing dreams that He,
Asleep upon the stormy sea,
Beheld, as though your light alone
His beacon in the darkness shone.

The earth has washed away its stain;
The sealed-up sky is breaking forth,
Mustering its glorious hosts again,
From the far south and north;
The climbing moon plays on the rippling sea.
—O, whither on its waters rideth Lee?

It lights the sea around their track,—
The curling comb, and steel-dark wave:
And there sits Lee the Spectre's back;—
Gone! gone! and none to save!
They 're seen no more; the night has shut them in.
May Heaven have pity on thee, man of sin!

He 's on the beach; but stops not there;
He 's on the sea,—that dreadful Horse!
Lee flings and writhes in wild despair.
In vain! The Spirit-Corse
Holds him by fearful spell;—he cannot leap:
Within that horrid light he rides the deep.

“I'm weak and faint. O, let me stay!”
“Nay, murderer, rest nor stay for thee!”
The Horse and man are on their way;
He bears him to the sea.
Hard breathes the Spectre through the silent night;
Fierce from his nostrils streams a deathly light.

Lee cannot turn. There is a force
In that fixed eye, which holds him fast.
How still they stand,—the man and Horse!
“Thine hour is almost past.”
“O, spare me,” cries the wretch, “thou fearful One!”
“The time is come,—I must not go alone.”

They 're met.—“I know thou com'st for me,”
Lee's spirit to the Spectre said;
“I know that I must go with thee:
Take me not to the dead.
It was not I alone that did the deed!”—
Dreadful the eye of that still, Spectral Steed!