truth

Heart it is, not a brick or stone
Why shouldn't it feel the pain?
Let none tyrannize this heart
Or I shall cry again and again
Neither the temple, nor the mosque
Nor on someone's door or porch
I await on the path where He will tread
Why others should compel me to go?
The illumined grace that lights up the heart
And glows like the midday sun
That Self that annihilates all sights
When then it hides in the mysterious net?
The amorous glance is the deadly dagger
And the arrows of emotions are fatal

[HE.] I know a youth who loves a little maid -
(Hey, but his face is a sight for to see!)
Silent is he, for he's modest and afraid -
(Hey, but he's timid as a youth can be!)
[SHE.] I know a maid who loves a gallant youth -
(Hey, but she sickens as the days go by!)
SHE cannot tell him all the sad, sad truth -
(Hey, but I think that little maid will die!)
[BOTH.] Now tell me pray, and tell me true,
What in the world should the poor soul do?

[HE.] He cannot eat and he cannot sleep -

Holy Lord God! I love Thy truth,
Nor dare Thy least commandment slight;
Yet pierced by sin the serpent's tooth,
I mourn the anguish of the bite.

But though the poison lurks within,
Hope bids me still with patience wait;
Till death shall set me free from sin,
Free from the only thing I hate.

Had I a throne above the rest,
Where angels and archangels dwell,
One sin, unslain, within my breast,
Would make that heaven as dark as hell.

The prisoner sent to breathe fresh air,

For Margot


Snow that fallest from heaven, bear me aloft on thy wings
To the domes of the star-girdled Seven, the abode of
ineffable things,
Quintessence of joy and of strength, that, abolishing
future and past,
Mak'st the Present an infinite length, my soul all-One
with the Vast,
The Lone, the Unnameable God, that is ice of His
measureless cold,
Without being or form or abode, without motion or
matter, the fold
Where the shepherded Universe sleeps, with nor sense
nor delusion nor dream,

Halls grew darker and somehow faded.
Grates of windows drowned in black.
Every knight, every beautiful lady
Knew the tiding: "The Queen's deadly sick."

And the king, very silent and frowned,
Passed the doors, lost of pages and slaves ...
Every word, that by chance cast around,
Proved the truth of the closing grave.

By the doors of the silent abode
I was crying, while pressing the brace ...
At the end of the passage remote
Someone echoed me, hiding his face.

The cooper should know about tubs.
But I learned about life as well,
And you who loiter around these graves
Think you know life.
You think your eye sweeps about a wide horizon, perhaps,
In truth you are only looking around the interior of your tub.
You cannot lift yourself to its rim
And see the outer world of things,
And at the same time see yourself.
You are submerged in the tub of yourself —
Taboos and rules and appearances,
Are the staves of your tub.
Break them and dispel the witchcraft

Beneath the burning eastern sky
The Cross was raised at morn:
The widowed Church to weep stood by,
The world, to hate and scorn.

Now, journeying westward, evermore
We know the lonely Spouse
By the dear mark her Saviour bore
Traced on her patient brows.

At Rome she wears it, as of old
Upon th' accursed hill:
By monarchs clad in gems and gold,
She goes a mourner still.

She mourns that tender hearts should bend
Before a meaner shrine,
And upon Saint or Angel spend

A leafy cot, where no dry rot
Had ever been by tenant seen,
Where ivy clung and wopses stung,
Where beeses hummed and drummed and strummed,
Where treeses grew and breezes blew -
A thatchy roof, quite waterproof,
Where countless herds of dicky-birds
Built twiggy beds to lay their heads
(My mother begs I'll make it "eggs,"
But though it's true that dickies do
Construct a nest with chirpy noise,
With view to rest their eggy joys,
'Neath eavy sheds, yet eggs and beds,
As I explain to her in vain

That man is truly great, and he alone
Who venerates, of present things or past
The absolute only,—is the liege of none
Save God and truth; who, awed not by this vast
And shadowy scheme of life, but anchored fast
In love, and sitting central like the sun,
So gives his mental beams to pierce and run
Through all its secrets while his days may last.
While thus progressive, little faith has he
For mysteries, till, sounding them, he hear
The gathered tones of their stirred depths agree

I wonder, by my truth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved; were we not weaned till then,
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers' den?
'Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be.
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee.

And now good morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love, all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room, an everywhere.
Let sead discoveries to new worlds have gone,