I would be ever your desired,
Never the possessed—
Nor in this will of mine is wantonness expressed.
The desired woman is most dear,
The possessed wanton is too near.

I would be far on unattainable height—
Always for knowledge, always for sight:
While from your touch and kisses I am free,
Our love is the high, perfect thing to be.

When I get a child,
I get him with fixed intent;
I don't get him by accident.
I get him because I am content with life,
Satisfied with myself,
And because I love my wife.

When the child is born,
I am full of scorn
At thought of other children.
By instinct I divine
There never was so fine a boy as mine.
I think this, because I am satisfied with life,
Conceited with myself,
And because I love my wife.

And I want to keep my son,
I want to finish what I have begun.
It is one of the keenest pleasures that I know

Fools drove him with goads and whips
Down to the sea where there were ships
And he was forced at the risk of his neck
To find a refuge on a stranger's deck.

Then that ship sailed away
Far from the land that day,
He watched the sky, and mourned to be
In such a dread captivity.

But from a rift of flying cloud
Burst a tempest quick and loud;
A burning bolt struck the strange deck
Bringing the ship to sudden wreck.

So the poor slave swam free
Over a quick calmed sea:
On a new coast-line he was thrown,

I Came, with friendship's face, to glad my heart,
But sad, and sorrowful my steps depart!
In my friend's stead—a spot of earth was shown,
And on his grave my woe-struck eyes were thrown!
No more to their distracted sight remain'd,
But the cold clay that all they lov'd contain'd:
And there his last and narrow bed was made,
And the drear tomb-stone for its covering laid!

Alas!—for this my aged heart is wrung!
Grief choaks my voice, and trembles on my tongue.
Lonely and desolate, I mourn the dead,
The friend with whom my every comfort fled!

“What injury can I cause unto thee
O, thou guardian of man? Why hast thou
Set me as an object to strike at so
That I am become a burden to mysself?”—Job.

Infinite might, thou tyrant of worlds!
The earth and the suns, the stars and the planets,
They are all nothing but toys for thee—
A means to kill time and only to shorten
The long and tedious procession of years,
Of which even thou cannot be freed.
And though recklessly strewn o'er vast spaces,
Whose distances none but thou couldst measure,
Yet are they helplessly bound like slaves

How can he turn religious and adore
That God, he so devoutly moc'd before?
I will the depths of Providence reveal;
Th' Almighty's methods will I not conceal.
Yet why should I suggest what your own heart,
Where it not vain, might, better farr, impart?
On th' wicked's head this heavy fate shall come,
And this shall be from God th' Oppressor's doom:
His sons tho' more and lovelyer they are
Than their decrepit father's silver hayr,
Strong as the sons of Anak, bright and brave,
Shall shrowd theyr pride in an untimely Grave,

Ask me not, my little Lucy,
What the gods may give to me,
Nor ought you be glad could you see
What your future's going to be.

Better far to bear the blowy
Breezes, come they slow or fast.
Jove may give us many snowy
Winters; this may be the last.

Wisdom, Lucy. Take the present!
Take the treasure of to-day!
Even as I write these pleasant
Rhymes, this evening slips away.

She from the steed of wanton mane
Shall spurn all servile toil and pain;
Nor shake the sieve, nor ply the mill
Nor sweep the floor, tho dusty still,
Nor near the oven take her seat,
But loathe the ashes, smoke, and heat,
And to her husband profit naught,
Unless by sheer compulsion taught.
Twice, thrice she bathes her thro the day,
Washing the slightest soil away;
Perfumes with oils her every limb,
Her tresses combs in order trim;
Tress upon tress, in thickening braid,
While twisted flowers her temples shade.
A goodly sight to strangers' view,

I see amid the fields of Ayr
A ploughman, who, in foul and fair,
Sings at his task
So clear, we know not if it is
The laverock's song we hear, or his,
Nor care to ask.

For him the ploughing of those fields
A more ethereal harvest yields
Than sheaves of grain;
Songs flush with purple bloom the rye,
The plover's call, the curlew's cry,
Sing in his brain.

Touched by his hand, the wayside weed
Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed
Beside the stream
Is clothed with beauty; gorse and grass
And heather, where his footsteps pass,

When Morning, with a hundred wings,
Broke through the curtain-chink; and wept
The earth, at what the day-break brings:
The body slept.

A little yet the early sky,
With gold and blue, shall be astir
For you; while you are passing by:
But not for her:

Go! let the voices of your feet
Speak thoughts beyond the tongue's control;
For now, in ways where all things meet,
Now sleeps the soul.

Go! nor forget the steadfast gaze,
That, loosed in Death, hath pierced the night
Of the great mystery of our days,
With eyes of light.