women

I wayed by star and planet shine
   Towards the dear one's home
At Kingsbere, there to make her mine
   When the next sun upclomb.

I edged the ancient hill and wood
   Beside the Ikling Way,
Nigh where the Pagan temple stood
   In the world's earlier day.

And as I quick and quicker walked
   On gravel and on green,
I sang to sky, and tree, or talked
   Of her I called my queen.

- "O faultless is her dainty form,
   And luminous her mind;
She is the God-created norm

In his lodge beside a river,
Close beside a frozen river,
Sat an old man, sad and lonely.
White his hair was as a snow-drift;
Dull and low his fire was burning,
And the old man shook and trembled,
Folded in his Waubewyon,
In his tattered white-skin-wrapper,
Hearing nothing but the tempest
As it roared along the forest,
Seeing nothing but the snow-storm,
As it whirled and hissed and drifted.
All the coals were white with ashes,
And the fire was slowly dying,
As a young man, walking lightly,

Come away! come away! there’s a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;
There’s a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us.
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn
Put off the summer’s languor with a touch that made us glad
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot follow,
To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.

I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses,
All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses,
All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing.

Let cowards and laggards fall back! But alert to the saddle
Weatherworn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion,
With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.

The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses;
There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us:

The quick sparks on the gorse bushes are leaping,
Little jets of sunlight-texture imitating flame;
Above them, exultant, the peewits are sweeping:
They are lords of the desolate wastes of sadness their screamings proclaim.

Rabbits, handfuls of brown earth, lie
Low-rounded on the mournful grass they have bitten down to the quick.
Are they asleep? -- Are they alive? -- Now see, when I
Move my arms the hill bursts and heaves under their spurting kick.

HE’S acruisin’ in a pearler with a dirty nigger crew,
Abuyin’ pearls and copra for a stingy Spanish Jew,
And his face is tann’d like leather ’neath a blazin’ tropic Sun,
And he’s workin’ out a penance for the things he hasn’t done.
Round the Solomons he runs, tradin’ beads and castoff guns,
Buyin’ pearls from grinnin’ niggers, loadin copra by the ton;
And he’ll bargain and he’ll smile, but he’s thinkin’ all the while
Of the penance that he’s workin’ out for sins he hasn’t done.

As a man and woman make
a garden between them like
a bed of stars, here
they linger in the summer evening
and the evening turns
cold with their terror: it
could all end, it is capable
of devastation. All, all
can be lost, through scented air
the narrow columns
uselessly rising, and beyond,
a churning sea of poppies--

Hush, beloved. It doesn't matter to me
how many summers I live to return:
this one summer we have entered eternity.
I felt your two hands

'Tis morn, O Krishna, awake, all the pretty young milkmaids are calling for you; arise O Braj's prince, The sun is up in the sky, the moon pales, the tender tamala trees are in full bloom .

The women of Braj have stringed a garland of flowers of many kinds and wait to greet you. Arise dear child, wash your face and have your breakfast, O my heart's delight!

Says Sura, my Lord of large lotus-like eyes is the abode of bliss that never abates.

I AM a weakling. God, who made
The still, strong man, made also me.
The God who could the tiger plan,
In his lithe splendour unafraid—
A thing of flame and poetry—
That Puissance made of me—a Man!

The One who reared His vast design—
Star, atom, system, germ, and soul—
Could fashion forth this tremulous
And paltry little heart of mine!
The God who could conceive the Whole,
Himself blasphemed in building thus.

Though tempers are bad and peevish folks swear,
Remember to ruffle thy brows, friend, ne'er;
And let not the fancies of women so fair
E'er serve thy pleasure in life to impair.