She has hope's remedy in being young:
When age is on, and life has such a fall,
The efficacy has left that medicine
Which in youth is so vital.
For give me, fair One, nor resent
The Lines to you I lately sent.
They seem, as if your Form you priz'd,
And ev'ry other Gift despis'd:
When a discerning Eye may find,
Your greatest Beauty's in your Mind.
The world is drowsy, the winds asleep,
On the sward of the sky the star-blossoms peep,
And the grey Moon moves with his silver scythe
The pallid flowers of light to reap.
Ah, Yes! I Wrote the 'Purple Cow' --
I'm Sorry, now, I Wrote it!
But I can Tell you Anyhow,
I'll Kill you if you Quote it!
I NEVER SAW A PURPLE COW,
I NEVER HOPE TO SEE ONE;
BUT I CAN TELL YOU, ANYHOW,
I'D RATHER SEE THAN BE ONE!
Great Kings were dust and all their deeds forgot
Did my harp's taut and burnished strings stand mute;
The fragrance of dead ladies' lovely names
Blew never down but for my lute.
On the map it is precise and rectilinear as a chessboard, though driving past you would hardly notice it, this boundary line or ragged margin, a shallow swale that cups a simple trickle of water, less rill than rivulet, more gully than dell, a tangled ditch grown up throughout with a fearsome assortment of wildflowers and bracken. There is no fence, though here and there a weathered post asserts a former claim, strands of fallen wire taken by the dust.
Ah, my darling, when over the purple horizon shall loom
The shrouded mother of a new idea, men hide their faces,
Cry out and fend her off, as she seeks her procreant groom,
Wounding themselves against her, denying her fecund embraces.
Peace without Justice is a low estate,--
A coward cringing to an iron Fate!
But Peace through Justice is the great ideal,--
We'll pay the price of war to make it real.
Was it always as now? This race I truly can't fathom.
Nothing is young but old age; youth, alas! only is old.
