HE who has once been happy is for aye
   Out of destruction's reach. His fortune then
Holds nothing secret; and Eternity,
   Which is a mystery to other men,
Has like a woman given him its joy.
   Time is his conquest. Life, if it should fret.
Has paid him tribute. He can bear to die,
   He who has once been happy! When I set
The world before me and survey its range,
   Its mean ambitions, its scant fantasies,
The shreds of pleasure which for lack of change

Lay my rifle here beside me, set my Bible on my breast,
For a moment let the warning bugles cease;
As the century is closing I am going to my rest,
Lord, lettest Thou Thy servant go in peace.
But loud through all the bugles rings a cadence in mine ear,
And on the winds my hopes of peace are strowed.
Those winds that waft the voices that already I can hear
Of the rooi-baatjes singing on the road.

Yes, the red-coats are returning, I can hear the steady tramp,
After twenty years of waiting, lulled to sleep,

with
arms outstreched
and crowned with wisps
of seaweed hair she floats, eyes closed
in a world of perfect silence
that is loud enough
to hear
light
a kaleidoscope
a shimmering, elusive glimmer
dances across the bottom, the reflection
of a white hot sun that fails
to reach beyond
the blue
alone
she dives spins glides
in effortless infinite motion
bubbles trailing like round diamonds
in a perfect sapphire sea
surging forward
free
scales
pearly sheened
each a tiny peacock's feather

Do you wish the world were better?
Let me tell you what to do:
Set a watch for your actions,
Keep them always straight and true;
Rid tour mind of selfish motives;
Let your thoughts be clean and high.
You can make a little Eden
Of the sphere you occupy.

Do you wish the world were wiser?
Well, suppose you made a start,
By accumulating wisdom
In the scrapbook of your heart:
Do not waste one page on folly;
Live to learn, and learn to live.
If you want to give men knowledge
You must get it, ere you give.

My son, if you go to the races to battle with Ikey and Mo,
Remember, it's seldom the pigeon can pick out the eye of the crow;
Remember, they live by the business; remember, my son, and go slow.
If ever an owner should tell you, "Back mine" -- don't you be such a flat.
He knows his own cunning no doubt -- does he know what the others are at?
Find out what he's frightened of most, and invest a few dollars on that.

Walk not in the track of the trainer, nor hang round the rails at his stall.

When Wisdom tells me that the world’s a speck
Lost on the shoreless blue of God’s To-Day...
I smile, and think, ‘For every man his way:
The world’s my ship, and I’m alone on deck!’
And when he tells me that the world’s a spark
Lit in the whistling gloom of God’s To-Night...
I look within me to the edge of dark,
And dream, ‘The world’s my field, and I’m the lark,
Alone with upward song, alone with light!’

I saw the city's towers on a luminous pale-gray sky;
Beyond them a hill of the softest mistiest green,
With naught but frost and the coming of night between,
And a long thin cloud above the colour of August rye.
I sat in the midst of a plain on my snowshoes with bended knee
Where the thin wind stung my cheeks,
And the hard snow ran in little ripples and peaks,
Like the fretted floor of a white and petrified sea.
And a strange peace gathered about my soul and shone,
As I sat reflecting there,

Winter solitude--
in a world of one color
the sound of wind.


Translated by Robert Hass

When against earth a wooden heel
Clicks as loud as stone on steel,
When stone turns flour instead of flakes,
And frost bakes clay as fire bakes,
When the hard-bitten fields at last
Crack like iron flawed in the cast,
When the world is wicked and cross and old,
I long to be quit of the cruel cold.

Little birds like bubbles of glass
Fly to other Americas,
Birds as bright as sparkles of wine
Fly in the nite to the Argentine,
Birds of azure and flame-birds go
To the tropical Gulf of Mexico:

It snowed and snowed ,the whole world over,
Snow swept the world from end to end.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

As during summer midges swarm
To beat their wings against a flame
Out in the yard the snowflakes swarmed
To beat against the window pane

The blizzard sculptured on the glass
Designs of arrows and of whorls.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.

Distorted shadows fell
Upon the lighted ceiling:
Shadows of crossed arms,of crossed legs-
Of crossed destiny.