Cure me with quietness,
Bless me with peace;
Comfort my heaviness,
Stay me with ease.
Stillness in solitude
Send down like dew;
Mine armour of fortitude
Piece and make new:
That when I rise again
I may shine bright
As the sky after rain,
Day after night.
Help, Good Shepherd
How bright the constellations are,
Hanging in heaven, or on the tree;
The skyborn or terrestrial star
Brood not upon; the waters fleet,
Willows, or thy crown-destined thorn,
Full of her rubies, as is meet,
Or whitening in the eye of morn,
Pause not beside: shepherds’ delight,
The pipe and tabor in the vale,
And mirthful watchfires of a night,
And herdsman’s rest in wattled pale,
Forsake, though dearly earned: and still
Sound with thy crook the darkling flood,
Still range the sides of shelvy hill
And call about in underwood:
For on the hill are many strayed,
Some held in thickets plunge and cry,
And the deep waters make us afraid.
Come then and help us, or we die.
Old Woman Speaks of the Moon, An
And wondering praise to be shared by the girl in the shop,
Lauding the goddess who blessed her each sleepless night
Greater and brighter till full: but the girl could not stop.
She turned and looked up in my face, and hastened to cry
How beautiful was the orb, how the constant glow
Comforted in the cold night the old waking eye:
How fortunate she, whose lodging was placed that so
She in her lonely night, in her lonely age,
She from her poor lean bed might behold the undying
Letter of loveliness written on heaven’s page,
The sharp silver arrows leap down to where she was lying.
The dying spoke love to the immortal, the foul to the fair,
The withered to the still-flowering, the bound to the free:
The nipped worm to the silver swan that sails through the air:
And I took it as good, and a happy omen to me.
Barefoot I went and made no sound;
The earth was hot beneath:
The air was quivering around,
The circling kestrel eyed the ground
And hung above the heath.
There in the pathway stretched along
The lovely serpent lay:
She reared not up the heath among,
She bowed her head, she sheathed her tongue,
And shining stole away.
Fair was the brave embroidered dress,
Fairer the gold eyes shone:
Loving her not, yet did I bless
The fallen angel’s comeliness;
And gazed when she had gone.
To J.C. Collis
Live unlamenting though obscure remaining:
be as the bird that in the desolate places
feeds her two young, and man-unheard is heard still
to her God crying.
Die unaccursed though the universal
curse be abroad: for of her God remembered
though the world burn, the spirit as a bird shall
flee to her mountain.
The Bat
Whose murky and erratic wing
Swoops so sickeningly, and whose
Aspect to the female Muse
Is a demon’s, made of stuff
Like tattered, sooty waterproof,
Looking dirty, clammy, cold.
Wicked, poisonous, and old;
I have maligned thee! . . . for the Cat
Lately caught a little bat,
Seized it softly, bore it in.
On the carpet, dark as sin
In the lamplight, painfully
It limped about, and could not fly.
Even fear must yield to love,
And pity make the depths to move.
Though sick with horror, I must stoop,
Grasp it gently, take it up,
And carry it, and place it where
It could resume the twilight air.
Strange revelation! warm as milk,
Clean as a flower, smooth as silk!
O what a piteous face appears,
What great fine thin translucent ears
What chestnut down and crapy wings,
Finer than any lady’s things —
And O a little one that clings!
Warm, clean, and lovely, though not fair,
And burdened with a mother’s care;
Go hunt the hurtful fly, and bear
My Blessing to your kind in air.
On each other`s necks could weep:
In each other`s arms could sleep
In the calm the cradle lends:
Lends awhile, and takes away.
But for hunger, but for fear,
Calm could be our day and year
From the yellow to the grey:
From the gold to the grey hair,
But for passion we could rest,
But for passion we could feast
On compassion everywhere.
Even in this night I know
By the awful living dead,
By this craving tear I shed,
Somewhere, somewhere it is so.
Stormcock in Elder
In my dark hermitage, aloof
From the world’s sight and the world’s sound,
By the small door where the old roof
Hangs but five feet above the ground,
I groped along the shelf for bread
But found celestial food instead:
For suddenly close at my ear,
Loud, loud and wild, with wintry glee,
The old unfailing chorister
Burst out in pride of poetry;
And through the broken roof I spied
Him by his singing glorified.
Scarcely an arm’s-length from the eye,
Myself unseen, I saw him there;
The throbbing throat that made the cry,
The breast dewed from the misty air,
The polished bill that opened wide
And showed the pointed tongue inside;
The large eye, ringed with many a ray
Of minion feathers, finely laid,
The feet that grasped the elder-spray;
How strongly used, how subtly made
The scale, the sinew, and the claw,
Plain through the broken roof I saw;
The flight-feathers in tail and wing,
The shorter coverts, and the white
Merged into russet, marrying
The bright breast to the pinions bright,
Gold sequins, spots of chestnut, shower
Of silver, like a brindled flower.
Soldier of fortune, northwest Jack,
Old hard-times’ braggart, there you blow
But tell me ere your bagpipes crack
How you can make so brave a show,
Full-fed in February, and dressed
Like a rich merchant at a feast.
One-half the world, or so they say,
Knows not how half the world may live;
So sing your song and go your way,
And still in February contrive
As bright as Gabriel to smile
On elder-spray by broken tile.
The Plain Facts
Which no one can resist;
For I have found a wondrous thing –
The Fact that I exist.And I have found another, which
I now proceed to tell.
The world is so sublimely rich
That you exist as well.Fact One is lovely, so is Two,
But O the best is Three:
The Fact that I can smile at you,
And you can smile at me.
The Swifts
Down in a flask to the water, up and way with a cry,
And a wild swoop and a swift turn
And a fever of life under a thundery sky,
So they go, so they go by.And high and high and high in the diamond light,
They soar and they shriek in the sunlight when
heaven is bare,
With the pride of life in their strong flight
And a rapture of love to lift them, to hurtle them
there,
High and high in the diamond air.And away with the summer, away like the spirit of glee
Flashing and calling, and strong on the wing,
and wild in their play,
With a high cry to the high sea,
And a heart for the south, a heart for the diamond
Day,
So they go over, so go away.
