I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.°
What hours, O what black hours we have spent°
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent°
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree°
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;°
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

You say I love not, 'cause I doe not play
Still with your curles, and kisse the time away.
You blame me too, because I cann't devise
Some sport, to please those Babies in your eyes:
By Loves Religion, I must here confesse it,
The most I love, when I the least expresse it.
Small griefs find tongues: Full Casques are ever found
To give (if any, yet) but little sound,
Deep waters noyse-lesse are; And this we know,
That chiding streams betray small depth below.
So when Love speechlesse is, she doth expresse
A depth in love, and that depth, bottomlesse.

You earthly Souls that court a wanton flame,
Whose pale weak influence
Can rise no higher then the humble name
And narrow laws of Sence,
Learn by our friendship to create
An immaterial fire,
Whose brightnesse Angels may admire,
But cannot emulate.

Sicknesse may fright the roses from her cheek,
Or make the Lilies fade,
But all the subtile wayes that death doth seek
Cannot my love invade:
Flames that are kindled by the eye,
Through time and age expire;
But ours that boast a reach far higher
Can nor decay, nor die.

Since Amaro died I cannot sleep at night;
if I do, I meet him in dreams and tears come coursing down.
Last summer he was over three feet tall;
this year he would have been seven years old.
He was diligent and wanted to know how to be a good son,
read his books and recited by heart the “Poem on the Capital.”
Medicine stayed the bitter pain, but only for ten days;
then the wind took his wandering soul off to the Nine Springs.
Since then, I hate the gods and buddhas;
better if they had never made heaven and earth!
I stare at my knees, often laugh in bitterness,

A yellow leaf, from the darkness
Hops like a frog before me;
Why should I start and stand still?
I was watching the woman that bore me
Stretched in the brindled darkness
Of the sick-room, rigid with will
To die: and the quick leaf tore me
Back to this rainy swill
Of leaves and lamps and the city street mingled before me.

The year stood at its equinox
And bluff the North was blowing,
A bleat of lambs came from the flocks,
Green hardy things were growing;
I met a maid with shining locks
Where milky kine were lowing.

She wore a kerchief on her neck,
Her bare arm showed its dimple,
Her apron spread without a speck,
Her air was frank and simple.

She milked into a wooden pail
And sang a country ditty,
An innocent fond lovers' tale,
That was not wise nor witty,
Pathetically rustical,
Too pointless for the city.

She kept in time without a beat

The world is heated seven times,
The sky is close above the lawn,
An oven when the coals are drawn.

There is no stir of air at all,
Only at times an inward breeze
Turns back a pale leaf in the trees.

Here the syringa's rich perfume
Covers the tulip's red retreat,
A burning pool of scent and heat.

The pallid lightning wavers dim
Between the trees, then deep and dense
The darkness settles more intense.

A hawk lies panting in the grass,
Or plunges upward through the air,
The lightning shows him whirling there.

The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapours weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan.
Me only cruel immortality
Consumes: I wither slowly in thine arms,
Here at the quiet limit of the world,
A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream
The ever-silent spaces of the East,
Far-folded mists, and gleaming halls of morn.

Alas! for this gray shadow, once a man--
So glorious in his beauty and thy choice,
Who madest him thy chosen, that he seemed

Forgotten by the one
I was so sure
would come asking about me—
since then all I do
is wonder if I even exist

With half the Western world at stake,
See Perry on the midland lake,
The unequal combat dare;
Unawed by vastly stronger pow'rs,
He met the foe and made him ours,
And closed the savage war.

Macdonough, too, on Lake Champlain,
In ships outnumbered, guns, and men,
Saw dangers thick increase;
His trust in God and virtue's cause
He conquer'd in the lion's jaws,
And led the way to peace.

To sing each valiant hero's name
Whose deeds have swelled the files of fame,
Requires immortal powers;
Columbia's warriors never yield