I shall meet you once by day,
Where you race the rush of foam
From the passing of the ships,
Braid of samphire at your waist,
Bronze of wind for naked pride,
Pressing with impatient feet
Shadowy circles up the sand:
I shall take them from your hand
Fruits of ocean salt and sweet,
Mermaid love and seaman woe,
Danger quest and tempest home;
Bind a wreath of sun and spray;
Crush the froth against my lips;
Hold your secret fierce embraced:—
Till the movements of the tide
Surge about my heart, and flow
Singing chill from throat to knee:—

Could I but see thy face again
A moment's space,
Its young, delightful mock-disdain,
Its wooing grace;
Could I but kiss thy wilful hair,
That restless hand,
Would you divine how dear you were
And understand?

Why was it when our hearts were near
They would not speak?
What barrier of love's shy fear
Could we not break?
When all my living was thy love
My lips were dumb,
Only when chance and place remove
The accents come.

In those sweet days my daily bread
Was seeing thee;
Richly my heart with love was fed,
And poesy

O Little Wind of Arcady! The tired old city's waiting you,
Waiting mid the fog, the cold, the slush drifts and the rain,
Haunted by the memory of sunny days and happy days,
Waiting for the voice of you singing once again.

Through the days, the dreary days of winter we were missing you,
Far away in sunny lands we knew there was your song;
That was thought to cheer us then and keep us patient waiting you.
Hurry little perfumed wind, the hours are grey and long.
Ah, whisper you are coming soon O Little Wind of Arcady,

“In the long border on the right
I shall plant larkspur first,” she thinks.
“Peonies and chrysanthemums
And then sweet-scented maiden pinks.

“The border on the left shall hold
Nothing but masses of white phlox.
Forget-me-nots shall edge this one,
The one across be edged with box.

“The sun-dial in the centre stands.
The morning-glories bright shall twine.
And in the strip at either end
Shall grow great clumps of columbine.

“There is no garden in the world
So beautiful as mine,” she dreams.
Rising, she walks the little space

Hero care not though they prie,
I will loue thee till I die,
Ielousie is but a smart,
That tormentes a ielous hart:
Crowes are blacke that were white,
For betraying loues delight.

They that loue to finde a fault,
May repent what they haue sought,
What the fond eie hath not view'd,
Neuer wretched hart hath rew'd:
Vulcan then, prou'd a scorne,
When he saw he wore a horne.

Doth it then by might behoue,
To shut vp the gates of loue,
Women are not kept by force,
But by natures owne remorse.
If they list, they will stray,

A machine gun,
the low moon,
round and resounding

Once I heard a woman laughing—
Not like laughter of the women you have heard;
Syllables whose beauty blinds you, and reminds you
Of a brook in sunlight, or a sweet, leaf-hidden bird.
There is laughter that is human
Though shot through with notes of pain—
And then there is that laughter of an old, old, evil woman,
Raising red and burning mists within the brain.

In the mad, gin-reeking dance-hall,
Through the brainless oaths and shrieks, above the smoke
Of stale tobacco, burning to man's yearning

Stuck in a bottle on the window-sill,
In the cold gaslight burning gaily red
Against the luminous blue of London night,
These flowers are mine: while somewhere out of sight
In some black-throated alley's stench and heat,
Oblivious of the racket of the street,
A poor old weary woman lies in bed.

Broken with lust and drink, blear-eyed and ill,
Her battered bonnet nodding on her head,
From a dark arch she clutched my sleeve and said:
“I've sold no bunch to-day, nor touched a bite …
Son, buy six-penn'orth: and 'twill mean a bed.”

Reaching for the vinegar over the range hood
(still dashing grass wisps on the gas flames
from the exhaust vent where we booted
that brooding sparrow)

I remember the rabbit in the Tiergarten
that perched on its spatula feet where the grass
had just started to green. The German clouds
were unibrow.

It's not the stretching, slightly weaving, that recalls it,
it's the tang of vinegar, Easter egg dye solvent.
And my gallimaufry gets going, guests for dinner,
the requisite foofaraw.

In the soffits of the staircase a rag and a featherduster.

this trip
likely the one I'll die on
dandelions gone to fuzz.