Absence absenting causeth me to complain,
My sorrowful complaints abiding in distress,
And departing most privy increaseth my pain,
Thus live I uncomforted wrapped all in heaviness.

In heaviness I am wrapped, devoid of all solace,
Neither pastime nor pleasure can revive my dull wit,
My spirits be all taken, and death doth me menace,
With his fatal knife the thread for to kit.

For to cut the thread of this wretched life,
And shortly bring me out of this case:
I see it availeth not, yet must I be pensive,

Abroad on a winter's night there ran
Under the starlight, leaping the rills
Swollen with snow-drip from the hills,
 Goat-legged, goat-bearded Pan.

He loved to run on the crisp white floor,
Where black hill-torrents chiselled grooves,
And he loved to print his clean-cut hooves,
 Where none had trod before.

And now he slacked and came to a stand
Beside a river too broad to leap;
And as he panted he heard a sheep
 That bleated near at hand.

"Bell-wether, bell-wether, what do you say,
Peace, and huddle your ewes from cold!"

Abroad in the meadows to see the young lambs
Run sporting about by the side of their dams,
With fleeces so clean and so white;
Or a nest of young doves in a large open cage,
When they play all in love without anger or rage,
How much we may learn from the sight!

If we had been ducks, we might dabble in mud,
Or dogs, we might play till it ended in blood,
So foul or so fierce are their natures.
But Thomas and William, and such pretty names,
Should be cleanly and harmless as doves or as lambs,
Those lovely sweet innocent creatures.

Abroad as I was walking,
Down by some green woodside,
I heard some young girl singing
I wish I was a bride.

"I thank you, pretty fair maid,
For singing of your song.
It's I myself shall marry you.'
"Kind sir, I am too young.'

"The younger the better,
More fitter for my bride,
That all the world may plainly see
I married my wife a maid.'

Nine times I kissed her ruby lips,
I viewed her sparkling eye,
I catched her by the lilywhite hand,
One night with her to lie.

All the fore part of that night

On top of two tall buildings,
Where Seventh Street joints
The Avenue,
The city's signs:


STAR

JESUS

The Light of the World
...

WRIGLEYS

eat it
after
every meal
It Does You Good
Intermittently, their lights flash
Down upon the streets of Washington,
The sleek pat streets some asphalt spider
Spun and tired of.
Upon a fountain in the square
Where sparrows get their water,

And there she 's leand her back to a thorn,
Oh and alelladay, oh and alelladay

And there she has her baby born.
Ten thousand times good night and be wi thee

She has houked a grave ayont the sun,
And there she has buried the sweet babe in.

And she 's gane back to her father's ha,
She 's counted the leelest maid o them a'.


‘O look not sae sweet, my bonie babe,
Gin ye smyle sae, ye 'll smyle me dead.’

Above the wary waiting world,
Asleep in chill despair,
There breaks a sound of joyous bells
Upon the frosted air.
And o'er the humblest rooftree, lo,
A star is dancing on the snow.

What makes the yellow star to dance
Upon the brink of night?
What makes the breaking dawn to glow
So magically bright, —
And all the earth to be renewed
With infinite beatitude?

The singing bells, the throbbing star,
The sunbeams on the snow,
And the awakening heart that leaps
New ecstasy to know, —
They all are dancing in the morn

XXIII

Above the voiceful windings of a river
An old green slab of simply graven stone
Shuns notice, overshadowed by a yew.
Here Vaughan lies dead, whose name flows on for ever
Through pastures of the spirit washed with dew
And starlit with eternities unknown.
Here sleeps the Silurist; the loved physician;
The face that left no portraiture behind;
The skull that housed white angels and had vision
Of daybreak through the gateways of the mind.
 Here faith and mercy, wisdom and humility
 (Whose influence shall prevail for evermore)

Above the quiet valley and unrippled lake
While woodchucks burrowed new holes, and birds sang,
And radicles began downward and shoots
Committed themselves to the spring
And entered with tiny industrious earthquakes,
A dry-rooted, winter-twisted oak
Revealed itself slowly. And one morning
When the valley underneath was still sleeping
It shook itself and was all green.

Above the pools, above the valley of fears,
Above the woods, the clouds, the hills, the trees,
Beyond the sun's and the moon's mad mysteries,
Beyond the confines of the starry spheres,

My spirit, you move with a pure ardency,
And, as one who swoons in the senses of sound,
You furrow furiously the immensity profound
With an indicable and male sensuality.

Fly from those morbid miasmas and their mire;
Purify your own self in the mid air malign,
And there drink, as a delicious and rare wine,
The enormity and the intensity of fire.