Try Before You Trust

To counsel my estate, abandoned to the spoil
Of forged friends, whose grossest fraud is set with finest foil;
To verify true dealing wights, whose trust no treason dreads,
And all too dear th'acquaintance be, of such most harmful heads;
I am advised thus: who so doth friend, friend so,
As though tomorrow next he feared for to become a foe.

To have a feigned friend, no peril like I find;
Oft fleering face may mantle best a mischief in the mind.
A pair of angel's ears oft times doth hide a serpent's heart,


Try Before You Trust

To counsel my estate, abandoned to the spoil
Of forged friends, whose grossest fraud is set with finest foil;
To verify true dealing wights, whose trust no treason dreads,
And all too dear th'acquaintance be, of such most harmful heads;
I am advised thus: who so doth friend, friend so,
As though tomorrow next he feared for to become a foe.

To have a feigned friend, no peril like I find;
Oft fleering face may mantle best a mischief in the mind.
A pair of angel's ears oft times doth hide a serpent's heart,


You Make the Sunshine of my Heart

You make the sunshine of my heart
And its tempestuous shower;
Sometimes the thought of you is like
A lilac bush in flower,
Yea, honey-sweet as hives in May.
And then the pang of it will strike
My bosom with a fiery smart,
As though love's deeply planted dart
Drained all its life away.

My thoughts hum round you, Dear, like bees
About a bank of thyme,
Or round the yellow blossoms of
The heavy-scented lime.
Ah, sweeter you than honeydew,
Yet dark the ways of love,


Written In Australia

THE WIDE sun stares without a cloud:
Whipped by his glances truculent
The earth lies quivering and cowed.
My heart is hot with discontent:
I hate this haggard continent.

But over the loping leagues of sea
A lone land calls to her children free:
My own land holding her arms to me—
But oh, the long loping leagues of sea.

The grey old city is dumb with heat;
No breeze comes leaping, naked, rude,
Adown the narrow, high-walled street;


Wolfram's Dirge

IF thou wilt ease thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
   Then sleep, dear, sleep;
And not a sorrow
   Hang any tear on your eyelashes;
   Lie still and deep,
   Sad soul, until the sea-wave washes
The rim o' the sun to-morrow,
   In eastern sky.

But wilt thou cure thine heart
Of love and all its smart,
   Then die, dear, die;
'Tis deeper, sweeter,
   Than on a rose-bank to lie dreaming
   With folded eye;
   And there alone, amid the beaming


With Serving Still

With serving still
This I have won,
For my goodwill
To be undone.

And for redress
Of all my pain,
Disdainfulness
I have again.

And for reward
Of all my smart,
Lo, thus unheard,
I must depart.

Wherefore all ye
That after shall
By fortune be,
As I am, thrall,

Example take
What I have won,
Thus for her sake
To be undone.


Wishes To His Supposed Mistress

Whoe'er she be,
That not impossible she
That shall command my heart and me;

Where'er she lie,
Locked up from mortal eye
In shady leaves of destiny:

Till that ripe birth
Of studied fate stand forth,
And teach her fair steps to our earth;

Till that divine
Idea take a shrine
Of crystal flesh, through which to shine:

Meet you her, my wishes,
Bespeak her to my blisses,
And be ye called my absent kisses.

I wish her beauty,
That owes not all its duty


Winter Remembered

Two evils, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks,
And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my cause, my proper heat and center.

Better to walk forth in the frozen air
And wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing;
Because my heart would throb less painful there,


Why Was Cupid a Boy

Why was Cupid a boy,
And why a boy was he?
He should have been a girl,
For aught that I can see.

For he shoots with his bow,
And the girl shoots with her eye,
And they both are merry and glad,
And laugh when we do cry.

And to make Cupid a boy
Was the Cupid girl's mocking plan;
For a boy can't interpret the thing
Till he is become a man.

And then he's so pierc'd with cares,
And wounded with arrowy smarts,
That the whole business of his life
Is to pick out the heads of the darts.


Wild Deer

Where are you O Wild Deer?
I have known you for a while, here.

Both loners, both lost, both forsaken
The wild beast, for ambush, have all waken

Let us inquire of each other's state
If we can, each other's wishes consummate

I can see this chaotic field
Joy and peace sometimes won't yield

O friends, tell me who braves the danger
To befriend the forsaken, behold the stranger

Unless blessed Elias may come one day
And with his good office open the way

It is time to cultivate love


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