in Poems (Author's Poems)
The Cup
Is like the sea wave, which the more you drink
The more you thirst—yea—drink too much, as men
Have done on rafts of wreck—it drives you mad.
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in Poems (Author's Poems)
Crazy Jane Talks With The Bishop
'Fair and foul are near of kin,
And fair needs foul, ' I cried.
'My friends are gone, but that's a truth
Nor grave nor bed denied. '
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Lapis Lazuli
Their eyes mid many wrinkles, their eyes,
Their ancient, glittering eyes, are gay.
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The Vision Of Sin
All the windy ways of men
Are but dust that rises up,
And is lightly laid again.
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Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with o'Leary in the grave.
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Wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world
my blood approves.
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A Woman's Shortcomings
She has laughed as softly as if she sighed,
She has counted six, and over,
Of a purse well filled, and a heart well tried
Oh, each a worthy lover!
They "give her time"; for her soul must slip
Where the world has set the grooving;
She will lie to none with her fair red lip:
But love seeks truer loving.
She trembles her fan in a sweetness dumb,
As her thoughts were beyond recalling;
With a glance for one, and a glance for some,
From her eyelids rising and falling;
Speaks common words with a blushful air,
Hears bold words, unreproving;
But her silence says - what she never will swear
And love seeks better loving.
Go, lady! Lean to the night-guitar,
And drop a smile to the bringer;
Then smile as sweetly, when he is far,
At the voice of an in-door singer.
Bask tenderly beneath tender eyes;
Glance lightly, on their removing;
And join new vows to old perjuries -
But dare not call it loving!
Unless you can think, when the song is done,
No other is soft in the rhythm;
Unless you can feel, when left by One,
That all men else go with him;
Unless you can know, when unpraised by his breath,
That your beauty itself wants proving;
Unless you can swear "For life, for death!"
Oh, fear to call it loving!
Unless you can muse in a crowd all day
On the absent face that fixed you;
Unless you can love, as the angels may,
With the breadth of heaven betwixt you;
Unless you can dream that his faith is fast,
Through behoving and unbehoving;
Unless you can die when the dream is past
Oh, never call it loving!
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Crossways
Come away, o human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her would not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.
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News For The Delphic Oracle
Down the mountain walls
From where pan's cavern is
Intolerable music falls.
Foul goat-head, brutal arm appear,
Belly, shoulder, bum,
Flash fishlike; nymphs and satyrs
Copulate in the foam.
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Geography Iii
Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food
and love, but they were pleasant rather
than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things
like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it
for a baby goat. I'd have
nightmares of other islands
stretching away from mine, infinities
of islands, islands spawning islands,
like frogs'eggs turning into polliwogs
of islands, knowing that I had to live
on each and every one, eventually,
for ages, registering their flora,
their fauna, their geography.
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