Short Poems

Said Simple Sam: “Does Christmas come
—In April or December,
In winter, spring or harvest time?
—I really can't remember.”

Rose, oh pure contradiction, joy
of being No-one's sleep under so many lids.

Here lies a piece of Christ; a star in dust;
A vein of gold; a china dish that must
Be used in heaven, when God shall feast the just.

Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King,
Whose word no man relies on,
Who never said a foolish thing,
Nor ever did a wise one.

His heart, to me, was a place of palaces and pinnacles and shining towers;
I saw it then as we see things in dreams,—I do not remember how long I slept;
I remember the trees, and the high, white walls, and how the sun was always on the towers;
The walls are standing to-day, and the gates: I have been through the gates, I have groped, I have crept
Back, back. There is dust in the streets, and blood; they are empty; darkness is over them;
His heart is a place with the lights gone out, forsaken by great winds and the heavenly rain, unclean and unswept,

How calmly cows move to the milking sheds,
How slowly, hieratically along,
How humbly with their moon-surmounted heads,
Though fly-pursued and stained, they pass me by
As gravely as the clouds across the sky,
They being, like the stars ‘preserved from wrong’.

Great Nature clothes the soul, which is but thin,
With fleshly garments, which the Fates do spin,
And when these garments are grown old and bare,
With sickness torn, Death takes them off with care,
And folds them up in peace and quiet rest,
And lays them safe within an earthly chest:
Then scours them well and makes them sweet and clean,
Fit for the soul to wear those clothes again.

Finch-notes and swallow-notes tell the new year …
But so far are the Town of the Horse and the Dragon Mound
From this our house, from these walls and Han Gardens,
That the moon takes my heart to the Tartar sky.
I have woven in the frame endless words of my grieving …
Yet this petal-bough is smiling now on my lonely sleep.
… Oh, ask General Tou when his flags will come home
And his triumph be carved on the rock of Yen-jan Mountain!

Still must I tamely
Talk sense with these others?

How long
Before I shall be with you again,
Magnificently saying nothing!

Formed long ago, yet made to-day,
——Employed while others sleep;
What few would like to give away,
——Nor any wish to keep. (A bed.)