Art thou pale for weariness
Of climbing Heaven, and gazing on the earth,
Wandering companionless
Among the stars that have a different birth,--
And ever changing, like a joyless eye
That finds no object worth its constancy?
Where man's profane and tainting hand
Nature’s primaeval loveliness has marred,
And some few souls of the high bliss debarred
Which else obey her powerful command;
...mountain piles
That load in grandeur Cambria's emerald vales.
Ever as now with Love and Virtue's glow
May thy unwithering soul not cease to burn,
Still may thine heart with those pure thoughts o'erflow
Which force from mine such quick and warm return.
Adapted From The Vita Nuova Of Dante.
What Mary is when she a little smiles
I cannot even tell or call to mind,
It is a miracle so new, so rare.
YET oft, to hear the echoes ring and stir
That vacant valley like a dulcimer,
I flung her name against the naked hills,
And crimsoned all the air with thoughts of her.
Let me this gondola boat compare to the slumberous cradle,
And to a spacious bier liken the cover demure;
Thus on the Great Canal through life we are swaying and swimming
Onward with never a care, coffin and cradle between.
O Son of mine, when dusk shall find thee bending
Between a gravestone and a cradle's head---
Between the love whose name is loss unending
And the young love whose thoughts are liker dread,---
Thou too shalt groan at heart that all thy spending
Cannot repay the dead, the hungry dead.
Dear is that valley to the murmuring bees;
And all, who know it, come and come again.
The small birds build there; and, at summer-noon,
Oft have I heard a child, gay among the flowers,
As in the shining grass she sate concealed,
Sing to herself…….
The sun may set and rise,
But we, contrariwise,
Sleep, after our short light,
One everlasting night.
I lie in the bath and I contemplate the toilet-paper:
Scottissue, 1000 sheets –
What a lot of pissin and shittin,
What a lot of pissin and shittin,
Enough for the poems of Shelley and Keats –
All the poems of Shelley and Keats.
