Short Poems

The plum-blossom
Which I thought I would show
To my Brother
Does not seem to be one at all;
It was only that snow had fallen!

Kind Reader! take your choice to cry or laugh;
Here H AROLD lies—but where's his Epitaph?
If such you seek, try Westminster, and view
Ten thousand just as fit for him as you.
A THENS . [First published, 1832.]

Twilight stifled the valley wearily
And from the hillside, spattered with fragments
Chipped from a broken sun, a cracked breath
Of dead and brittle song tossed its bones—
Ringing like dream-armor in a sleepy world:
As must have rung the harvest-song of Linos
Luring the benighted wayfarer to a death
Of bloody water in a heap of stones.

But Islands of the Blessèd, bless you, son,
I never came upon a blessed one.

My luv
is like
a
greenglass
insulator
on

None but one beheld him dying,
Parting with the parting day;
Winds of evening, sadly sighing,
Bore his soul from earth away.

Not kind! to freeze me with forecast,
Dear grace and girder of mine and me.
You to be gone and I lag last—
Nor I nor heaven would have it be.

Cosway Frazer & Baldwin of Egypts Lake
Fear to associate with Blake
This Life is a Warfare against Evils
They heal the sick he casts out devils
Hayley Flaxman & Stothard are also in doubt
Lest their Virtue should be put to the rout
One grins [one] tother spits & in corners hides
And all the [Righteous] Virtuous have shewn their backsides

There souls of men are bought and sold,
And milk-fed infancy for gold;
And youth to slaughter houses led,
And beauty for a bit of bread . . .

The sword sang on the barren heath,
The sickle in the fruitful field;
The sword he sung a song of death,
But could not make the sickle yield.