There are more poems to come.
She is neither pink nor pale,
And she never will be all mine;
She learned her hands in a fairy-tale,
And her mouth on a valentine.
She has more hair than she needs;
In the sun 'tis a woe to me!
And her voice is a string of coloured beads,
Or steps leading into the sea.
She loves me all that she can,
And her ways to my ways resign;
But she was not made for any man,
And she never will be all mine.
--from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
Who told me time would ease me of my pain!
I miss him in the weeping of the rain;
I want him at the shrinking of the tide;
The old snows melt from every mountain-side,
And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;
But last year's bitter loving must remain
Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide.
There are a hundred places where I fear
To go, -- so with his memory they brim.
And entering with relief some quiet place
Where never fell his foot or shone his face
I say, "There is no memory of him here!"
And so stand stricken, so remembering him.
--Sonnet ii from Collected Sonnets
That you were gone, not to return again --
Read from the back-page of a paper, say,
Held by a neighbor in a subway train,
How at the corner of this avenue
And such a street (so are the papers filled)
A hurrying man, who happened to be you,
At noon today had happened to be killed --
I should not cry aloud -- I could not cry
Aloud, or wring my hands in such a place --
I should but watch the station lights rush by
With a more careful interest on my face;
Or raise my eyes and read with greater care
Where to store furs and how to treat the hair.
--Sonnet v from Collected Sonnets
Oh, come, my lad, or go, my lad,
And love me if you like.
I shall not hear the door shut
Nor the knocker strike.
Oh, bring me gifts or beg me gifts,
And wed me if you will.
I'd make a man a good wife,
Sensible and still.
And why should I be cold, my lad,
And why should you repine,
Because I love a dark head
That never will be mine?
I might as well be easing you
As lie alone in bed
And waste the night in wanting
A cruel dark head.
You might as well be calling yours
What never will be his,
And one of us be happy.
There's few enough as is.
--from Renascence
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From filed and thicket as the year goes by;
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Nor that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Nor that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I known always: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales:
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
--Sonnet xxix from Collected Sonnets
Than bitter-sweet upon a broken wall
O r brush-wood smoke in autumn, I confess
I cannot swear I love you not at all,
For there is that about you in this light --
A yellow darkness, sinister of rain --
Which sturdily recalls my stubborn sight
To dwell on you, and dwell on you again.
And I am made aware of many a week
I shall consume, remembering in what way
Your brown hair grows about you brow and cheek,
And what divine absurdities you say:
Till all the world, and I, and surely you,
Will know I love you, whether or not I do,
--Sonnet xc from Collected Sonnets
Well, such you are, -- but well enough we know
How thick about us root, how rankly grow
Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend,
That flourish through neglect, and soon must send
Perfume too sweet upon us and overthrow
Our steady senses; how such matters go
We are aware, and how such matters end,
Yet shall be told no meagre passion here;
With lovers such as we forevermore
Isolde drinks the draught, and Guinevere
Receives the Table's ruin through her door,
Francesca, with the loud surf at her ear,
Lets fall the coloured book upon the floor.
--Sonnet xii from Collected Sonnets
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear,
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of Spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime
--Sonnet xxvii from Collected Sonnets
Butterflies are white and blue
In this field we wander through.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Death comes in a day or two.
All the things we ever knew
Will be ashes in that hour:
Mark the transient butterfly,
How he hangs upon the flower.
Suffer me to take your hand.
Suffer me to cherish you
Till the dawn is in the sky.
Whether I be false or true,
Death comes in a day or two.
--from The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain;
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
And rise and sink and rise and sink again;
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath,
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.
It well may be that in a difficult hour,
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release,
Or nagged by want past resolution's power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.
It well may be. I do not think I would.
--Sonnet xcix from Collected Sonnets
In my own way, and with my full consent.
Say what you will, kings in a tumbrel rarely
Went to their deaths more proud than this one went.
Some nights of apprehension and hot weeping
I will confess; but that's permitted me;
Day dried my eyes; I was not one for keeping
Rubbed in a cage a wing that would be free.
If I had loved you less or played you slyly
I might have held you for a summer more,
But at the cost of words I value highly,
And no such summer as the one before.
Should I outlive this anguish -- and men do --
I shall have only good to say of you.
--Sonnet xcix from Collected Sonnets
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends --
It gives a lovely light!
--from A Few Figs from Thistles
Oh, Prue she has a patient man,
And Joan a gentle lover,
And Agatha's Arth' is a hug-the-hearth, --
But my true love's a rover!
Mig, her man's as good as cheese
And honest as a briar,
Sue tells her love what he's thinking of, --
But my dear lad's a liar!
Oh, Sue and Prue and Agatha
Are thick with Mig and Joan!
They bite their threads and shake their heads
And gnaw my name like a bone;
And Prue says, "Mine's a patient man,
As never snaps me up,"
And Agath, "Arth' is a hug-the hearth,
Could live content in a cup;"
Sue's man's mind is like good jell --
All one colour, and clear --
And Mig's no call to think at all
What's to come next year,
--from A Few Figs from Thistles
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand:
Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!
--from A Few Figs from Thistles
That's troubled with that and this; --
But they would give the life they live
For a look from the man I kiss.
Cold he slants his eyes about,
And few enough's his choice, --
Though he'd slip me clean for a nun, or a queen,
Or a beggar with knots in her voice, --
And Agatha will turn awake
While her good man sleeps sound,
And Mig and Sue and Joan and Prue
Will hear the clock strike round,
For Prue she has a patient man,
As asks not when or why,
And Mig and Sue have naught to do
But peep who's passing by,
Joan is paired with a putterer
That bastes and tastes and salts,
And Agatha's Arth' is a hug-the-hearth, --
But my true love is false!
And if I loved you Wednesday,
Well, what is that to you?
I do not love you Thursday --
So much is true.
And why you come complaining
Is more than I can see.
I loved you Wednesday, -- yes -- but what
Is that to me?
--from A Few Figs from Thistles
How shall I know, unless I go
To Cairo and Cathay,
Whether or not this blessed spot
Is blest in every way?
Now it may be, the flower for me
Is this beneath my nose;
How shall I tell, unless I smell
The Carthaginian rose?
The fabric of my faithful love
No power shall dim or ravel
Whilst I stay her, -- but oh, my dear,
If I should ever travel!
--from A Few Figs from Thistles
I had a little Sorrow,
Born of a little Sin,
I found a room all damp with gloom
And shut us all within;
And "Little Sorrow, weep," said I,
"And, Little Sin, pray God to die,
And I upon the floor will lie
And think how bad I've been!"
Alas for pious planning --
It mattered not a whit!
As far as gloom went in that room,
The lamp might have been lit!
My little Sorrow would not weep,
My little Sin would go to sleep --
To save my soul I could not keep
My graceless mind on it!
So up I got in anger,
And took a book I had,
And put a ribbon on my hair
To please a passing lad,
And, "One thing there's no getting by --
I've been a wicked girl," said I;
"But if I can't be sorry, why,
I might as well be glad!"
--from A Few Figs from Thistles
Before she has her floor swept
Or her dishes done,
Any day you'll find her
A-sunning in the sun!
It's long after midnight
Her key's in the lock,
And you never see her chimney smoke
Till past ten o'clock!
She digs in her garden
With a shovel and a spoon,
She weeds her lazy lettuce
By the light of the moon,
--from A Few Figs from Thistles
Like a woman in a dream,
She forgets she borrowed butter
And pays you back in cream!
Her lawn looks like a meadow,
And if she mows the place
She leaves the clover standing
And the Queen Anne's lace!
Silver bark of beech, and sallow
Bark of yellow birch and yellow
Twig of willow.
Stripe of green in moosewood maple,
Colour seen in leaf of apple,
Bark of popple.
Wood of popple pale as moonbeam,
Wood of oak for yoke and barn-beam,
Wood of hornbeam.
Silver bark of beech, and hollow
Stem of elder, tall and yellow
Twig of willow.
--from The Buck in the Snow
I know a hundred ways to die.
I've often thought I'd try one:
Lie down beneath a motor truck
Some day when standing by one.
Or throw myself from off a bridge --
Except such things must be
So hard upon the scavengers
And men that clean the sea.
I know some poison I could drink.
I've often thought I'd taste it.
But mother bought it for the sink,
And drinking it would waste it.
--Stanza V of "A Very Little Sphinx" from Poems Selected for Young People
(on reflecting that the world is ready to go to war again)
Detestable race, continue to expunge yourself, die out.
Breed faster, crowd, encroach, sing hymns, build bombing airplanes;
Make speeches, unveil statues, issue bonds, parade;
Convert again into explosives the bewildered ammonia and the distracted cellulose;
Convert again into putrescent matter drawing flies
The hopeful bodies of the young; exhort,
Pray, pull long faces, be earnest, be all but overcome, be photographed;
Confer, perfect your formulae, commercialize
Bacteria harmful to human tissue,
Put death on the market;
Breed, crowd, encroach, expand, expunge yourself, die out,
Homo called sapiens.
--from Wine from These Grapes
I shall die, but that is all I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle while he cinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself: I will not give him a leg up.
Though he flick my shoulders with his whip, I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death; I am not on his pay-roll.
I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much, I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city are safe with me; never through me
Shall you be overcome.
--from Wine from These Grapes
What is this beauty men are babbling of;
I wonder only why they prize it so.
Sonnet xxvi in Collected Sonnets
Teeth in your palm and pennies on your eyes.
Sonnet cviii in Collected Sonnets
Sonnet iv in Collected Sonnets
To gather up my little gods and go.
Sonnet iv in Collected Sonnets
Sonnet cii in Collected Sonnets
So make the most of this, your little day,
Your little month, your little half a year...
Sonnet iv in Collected Sonnets
The colour and the features, every one,
The words not ever, and the smiles not yet...
Sonnet xv in Collected Sonnets
Faithless am I save to love's self alone...
I am most faithless when I most am true.
Sonnet x in Collected Sonnets