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You Bid Me Try"
YOU bid me try, blue-eyes, to write A Rondeau. What! -- forthwith? -- tonight? Reflect. Some skill I have, 'tis true; But thirteen lines! -- and rimed on two! "Refrain" as well. Ah, Hapless plight!
Still, there are five lines -- ranged aright. These Gallic bonds, I feared, would fright My easy Muse. They did, till you -- You bid me try!
That makes them eight. The port's in sight -- 'Tis all because your eyes are bright! Now just a pair to end in "oo" -- When maids command, what can't we do? Behold! -- the rondeau, tasteful, light, You bid me try!
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Rose Leaves
I INTENDED an Ode, And it turned to a Sonnet. It began à la mode, I intended an Ode; But Rose cross'd the road In her latest new bonnet; I intended an Ode; And it turned to a Sonnet.
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Rondeau
IN after days when grasses high O'er-top the stone where I shall lie, Though ill or well the world adjust My slender claim to honour'd dust, I shall not question nor reply.
I shall not see the morning sky; I shall not hear the night-wind sigh; I shall be mute, as all men must In after days!
But yet, now living, fain would I That some one then should testify, Saying -- 'He held his pen in trust To Art, not serving shame or lust.' Will none? -- Then let my memory die In after days!
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A Garden Song
HERE in this sequestered close Bloom the hyacinth and rose, Here beside the modest stock Flaunts the flaring hollyhock; Here,without a pang, one sees Ranks, conditions, and degrees.
All the seasons run their race In this quiet resting place, Peach and apricot and fig Here will ripen and grow big; Here is store and overplus,-- More had not Alcinoüs!
Here, in alleys cool and green, Far ahead the thrush is seen; Here along the soutern wall Keeps the bee his festival; All is quiet else--afar Sounds of toil and turmoil are.
Here be shadows large and long; Here be spaces meet for song; Grant, O garden-god, that I, Now that none profane is nigh,-- Now that mood and moment please,-- Find the fair Pierides!
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Fame is a Food That Dead Men Eat
FAME is a food that dead men eat,-- I have no stomach for such meat. In little light and narrow room, They eat it in the silent tomb, With no kind voice of comrade near To bid the banquet be of cheer.
But Friendship is a nobler thing,-- Of Friendship it is good to sing. For truly, when a man shall end, He lives in memory of his friend, Who doth his better part recall, And of his faults make funeral.
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A Game of Chess
The Chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Glowed on the marble, where the glass Held up by standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out (Another hid his eyes behind his wing) Doubled the flames of sevenbranched candelabra Reflecting light upon the table as The glitter of her jewels rose to meet it, From satin cases poured in rich profusion. In vials of ivory and colored glass, Unstoppered, lurked her strange synthetic perfumes, Unguent, powdered, or liquid--troubled, confused And drowned the sense in odors; stirred by the air That freshened from the window, these ascended In fattening the prolonged candle-flames, Stirring the pattern on the coffered ceiling. Huge sea-wood fed with copper Burned green and orange, framed by the coloured stone, In which sad light a carved dolphin swam. Above the antique mantle was displayed As though a window gave upon the sylvan scene The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale Filled all the desert with inviolable voice And still she cried, and still the world pursues, "Jug Jug" to dirty ears. And other withered stumps of time Were told upon the walls; staring forms Leaned out, leaning, hushing the world enclosed. Footsteps shuffled on the stair. Under the firelight, under the brush, her hair Spread out in fiery points Glowed into words, then would be savagely still.
"My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me. "Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak. "What are you thinking of? What thinking? What? "I never know what you are thinking. Think."
I think we are in rats' alley Where the dead men lost their bones.
"What is that noise?" The wind under the door. "What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?" Nothing again nothing. "Do "You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember "Nothing?"
I remember Those are pearls that were his eyes.
"Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?" But O O O O that Shakespeherian Rag-- It's so elegant So intelligent "What shall I do now? What shall I do?" "I shall rush out as I am, and walk the street "With my hair down, so. What shall we do tomorrow? "What shall we ever do?" The hot water at ten. And, if it rains, a closed car at four. And we shall play a game of chess, Pressing lidless eyes and waiting for a knock upon the door.
When Lil's husband got demobbed, I said-- I didn't mince my words, I said to her myself, HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME* [British call-out at pub closing time] Now Albert's coming back, make yourself a bit smart. He'll want to know what you done with that money he gave you To get yourself some teeth. He did, I was there. You have them all out, Lil, and get a nice set, He said, I swear, I can't bear to look at you. And no more can't I, I said, and think of poor Albert. He's been in the army four years, he wants a good time. And if you don't give it him, there's others will, I said. Oh is there, she said. Something o' that, I said. Then I'll know who to thank, she said, and give me a straight look. HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME If you don't like it you can get on with it, I said. Others can pick and choose if you can't. But if Albert makes off, it won't be for lack of telling. You ought to be ashamed, I said, to look so antique. (And her only thirty-one.) I can't help it, she said, pulling a long face, It's them pills I took, to bring it off, she said. (She's had five already, and nearly died of young George.) The chemist said it would be all right, but I've never been the same. You are a proper fool, I said. Well, if Albert won't leave you alone, there it is, I said. What you get married for if you don't want children? HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME Well, that Sunday Albert was home, they had a hot gammon, And they asked me in to dinner, to get the beauty of it hot-- HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME Goonight Bill. Goonight Lou. Goonight May. Goonight. Ta ta. Goonight. Goonight. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night.
Age: 124
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September
THE dark green Summer, with its massive hues, Fades into Autumn's tincture manifold. A gorgeous garniture of fire and gold The high slope of the ferny hill indues. The mists of morn in slumbering layers diffuse O'er glimmering rock, smooth lake, and spiked array Of hedge-row thorns, a unity of grey. All things appear their tangible form to lose In ghostly vastness. But anon the gloom Melts, as the Sun puts off his muddy veil; And now the birds their twittering songs resume, All Summer silent in the leafy dale. In Spring they piped of love on every tree, But now they sing the song of memory.
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Christmas Day
WAS it a fancy, bred of vagrant guess, Or well-remember'd fact, that He was born When half the world was wintry and forlorn, In Nature's utmost season of distress? And did the simple earth indeed confess Its destitution and its craving need, Wearing the white and penitential weed, Meet symbol of judicial barrenness? So be it; for in truth 'tis ever so, That when the winter of the soul is bare, The seed of heaven at first begins to grow, Peeping abroad in desert of despair. Full many a floweret, good, and sweet, and fair, Is kindly wrapp'd in coverlet of snow.
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"Full Well I Know . . . "
FULL well I know -- my friends -- ye look on me A living specter of my Father dead -- Had I not bourne his name, had I not fed On him, as one leaf trembling on a tree, A woeful waste had been my minstrelsy -- Yet have I sung of maidens newly wed And I have wished that hearts too sharply bled Should throb with less of pain, and heave more free By my endeavor. Still alone I sit Counting each thought as miser counts a penny, Wishing to spend my pennyworth of wit On antic wheel of fortune like a zany: You love me for my sire, to you unknown, Revere me for his sake, and love me for my own.
Age: 124
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Long time a child . . . "
LONG time a child, and still a child, when years Had painted manhood on my cheek, was I, -- For yet I lived like one not born to die; A thriftless prodigal of smiles and tears, No hope I needed, and I knew no fears. But sleep, though sweet, is only sleep, and waking, I waked to sleep no more, at once o'ertaking The vanguard of my age, with all arrears Of duty on my back. Nor child, nor man, Nor youth, nor sage, I find my head is gray, For I have lost the race I never ran: A rathe December blights my lagging May; And still I am a child, though I be old, Time is by debtor for by years untold.
Age: 124
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No Life Vain
LET me not deem that I was made in vain, Or that my being was an accident, Which fate, in working its sublime intent, Not wished to be, to hinder would not deign. Each drop uncounted in a storm of rain Hath its own mission, and is duly sent To its own leaf or blade, not idly spent 'Mid myriad dimples on the shipless main. The very shadow of an insect's wing, For which the violet cared not while it stayed, Yet felt the lighter for its vanishing, Proved that the sun was shining by its shade: Then can a drop of the eternal spring, Shadow of living lights, in vain be made?
Age: 124
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How long I sailed . . ."
HOW long I sailed, and never took a thought To what port I was bound! Secure as sleep, I dwelt upon the bosom of the deep And perilous sea. And though my ship was fraught With rare and precious fancies, jewels brought From fairyland, no course I cared to keep, Nor changeful wind nor tide I heeded ought, But joyed to feel the merry billows leap, And watch the sunbeams dallying with the waves; Or haply dream what realms beneath may lie Where the clear ocean is an emerald sky, And mermaids warble in their coral caves, Yet vainly woo to me their secret home; -- And sweet it were for ever so to roam
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The Flight of Youth
YOUTH, thou art fled, -- but where are all the charms Which, though with thee they came, and passed with thee, Should leave a perfume and sweet memory Of what they have been? All thy boons and harms Have perished quite. Thy oft-revered alarms Forsake the fluttering echo. Smiles and tears Die on my cheek, or, petrified with years, Show the dull woe which no compassion warms, The mirth none shares. Yet could a wish, a thought, Unravel all the complex web of age, -- Could all the characters that Time hath wrought Be clean effaced from my memorial page By one short word, the word I would not say; -- I thank my God because my hairs are gray.
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To Wordsworth
THERE have been poets that in verse display The elemental forms of human passions; Poets have been, to whom the fickle fashions And all the willful humors of the day Have furnished matter for a polished lay: And many are the smooth elaborate tribe Who, emulous of thee, the shape describe, And fain would every shifting hue portray Of restless Nature. But, thou mighty Seer! 'Tis thine to celebrate the thoughts that make The life of souls, the truths for whose sweet sake We to ourselves and to our God are dear. Of Nature's inner shirine thou art the priest, Where most she works when we perceive her least
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She is not fair to outward view
SHE is not fair to outward view, As many maidens be, Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled on me: O, then I saw her eye was bright, -- A well of love, a spring of light.
But now her looks are coy and cold; To mine they ne'er reply; And yet I cease not to behold, The love-light in her eye: Her very frowns are better far Than smiles of other maidens are!
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November
THE mellow year is hasting to its close: The little birds have almost sung their last, Their small notes twitter in the dreary blast -- That shrill-piped harbinger of early snows; -- The patient beauty of the scentless rose, Oft with the morn's hoar crystal quaintly glassed, Hangs a pale mourner for the summer past, And makes a little summer where it grows; -- In the chill sunbeam of the faint brief day The dusky waters shudder as they shine; The russet leaves obstruct the straggling way Of oozy brooks, which no deep banks define, And the gaunt woods, in ragged, scant array, Wrap their old limbs with sombre ivy-twine.
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Address to Certain Golfishes
RESTLESS forms of living light Quivering on your lucid wings, Cheating still the curious sight With a thousand shadowings; Various as the tints of even, Gorgeous as the hues of heaven, Reflected on you native streams In flitting, flashing, billowy gleams! Harmless warriors, clad in mail Of silver breastplate, golden scale; -- Mail of Nature's own bestowing, With peaceful radiance, mildly glowing -- Fleet are ye as fleetest galley Or pirate rover sent from Sallee; Keener than the Tartar's arrow, Sport ye in your sea so narrow.
Was the sun himself your sire? Were ye born of vital fire? Or of the shade of golden flowers, Such as we fetch from Eastern bowers, To mock this murky clime of ours? Upwards, downwards, now ye glance, Weaving many a mazy dance; Seeming still to grow in size When ye would elude our eyes -- Pretty creatures! we might deem Ye were happy as ye seem -- As gay, as gamesome, and as blithe, As light, as loving, and as lithe, As gladly earnest in your play, As when ye gleamed in far Cathay.
And yet, since on this hapless earth There's small sincerity in mirth, And laughter oft is but an art To drown the outcry of the heart; It may be that your ceaseless gambols, Your wheelings, dartings, divings, rambles, Your restless roving round and round, The circuit of your crystal bound -- Is but the task of weary pain, An endless labor, dull and vain; And while your forms are gaily shining, Your little lives are inly pining! Nay -- but still I fain would dream That ye are happy as ye seem.