All poems, page 2

Black reapers with the sound of steel on stones Are sharpening scythes. I see them place the hones

Now hath my life across a stormy sea Like a frail bark reached that wide port where all

No Persian cumber, boy, for me; I hate your garlands linden-plaited;

O'er all the hilltops Is quiet now,

I will be the gladdest thing Under the sun!

I shot an arrow into the air, It fell to earth, I knew not where;

The boy stood on the burning deck Whence all but him had fled;

Glory be to God for dappled things— For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

The moon hath left the sky; Lost is the Pleiads' light;

Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early nor too late, which is in due time for thee.

If we must die, let it not be like hogs Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,

The garden flowers still blossom in the vale, Before our house the poplars still are green;

These be Three silent things:

Since I have set my lips to your full cup, my sweet, Since I my pallid face between your hands have laid,

O my Companion, Night is passing fair, Fairer than aught the dawn and sundown wear;

The fog comes on little cat feet.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree:

O may I join the choir invisible Of those immortal dead who live again

Into the woods my Master went, Clean forspent, forspent.

When I go away from you The world beats dead

January brings the snow, Makes our feet and fingers glow.

The sea is calm to-night. The tide is full, the moon lies fair

At the dawn I seek Thee, Rock and refuge tried,

I know not what spell is o'er me, That I am so sad to-day;

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows, My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

If ever two were one then surely we, If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;

Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon;

wade through black jade.

An omnibus across the bridge Crawls like a yellow butterfly,

My heart was heavy, for its trust had been Abused, its kindness answered with foul wrong;

You little sparrows left without A mother, come and play with me.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

One walketh in Renunciation's way; Another fain would pay

I was returning from hunting, and walking along an avenue of the garden, my dog running in front of me. Suddenly he took shorter steps, and began to steal along as though tracking game.

This lonely hill to me was ever dear, This hedge, which shuts from view so large a part

In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial,

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp;

It is portentous, and a thing of state That here at midnight, in our little town,

Across sea-meadows measureless I go, My wagon sinking under grass so tall

O, my luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June:

I have learnt that all men live not by care for themselves but by love. It was not given to the mother to know what her children needed for their life.

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole,

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high,

I ask but right, let her that caught me late, Either love, or cause that I may never hate;

Had we but World enough, and Time, This coyness Lady were no crime.

Now that I know How passion warms little

In countless pictures I behold thee, O Mary, lovelily expressed,

One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs

Alas! there cometh the time when man will no longer launch the arrow of his longing beyond man—and the string of his bow will have unlearned to whizz! I tell you: one must still have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: ye have still chaos in you.

Oh! distant past, made up of slow But ever accumulating days!