ASTROPHEL AND STELLA: I
Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That she, dear she, might take some pleasure of my pain,--
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,--
I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inventions fine her wits to entertain,
Oft turning others' leaves, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn'd brain.
But words came halting forth, wanting invention's stay;

Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
like a buttercup
upon its branching stem-
save that it's green and wooden-
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you.
We lived long together
a life filled,
if you will,
with flowers. So that
I was cheered
when I came first to know
that there were flowers also
in hell.
Today
I'm filled with the fading memory of those flowers

Still his little grave she seeketh
In her mother-sorrow wild,
Hush! While in her heart she speaketh
To the spirit of her child:
“Were we not to one another
Once the sum of all sweet gain?
Say then—say unto thy mother,
Shall we ever meet again?
Darling, shall we meet again,
Knowing, loving one another?
“Ah! What weary, weary sorrows
Have I known through loss of thee,
And what comfortless to-morrows
Wait me in this misery!
Were we not to one another
Once the sum of all sweet gain?

AS ye came from the holy land
   Of Walsinghame,
Met you not with my true love
   By the way as you came?

How should I know your true love,
   That have met many a one
As I came from the holy land,
   That have come, that have gone?

She is neither white nor brown,
   But as the heavens fair;
There is none hath her form divine
   In the earth or the air.

Such a one did I meet, good sir,

To give life you must take life,
and as our grief falls flat and hollow
upon the billion-blooded sea
I pass upon serious inward-breaking shoals rimmed
with white-legged, white-bellied rotting creatures
lengthily dead and rioting against surrounding scenes.
Dear child, I only did to you what the sparrow
did to you; I am old when it is fashionable to be
young; I cry when it is fashionable to laugh.
I hated you when it would have taken less courage
to love.

Portate bien,
behave yourself you always said to me.
I behaved myself
when others were warm in winter
and I stood out in the cold.
I behaved myself when others had full plates
and I stared at them hungrily,
never speaking out of turn,
existing in a shell of good white behavior
with my heart a wet-feathered
bird growing but never able to crack out of the shell.
Behaving like a good boy,
my behavior shattered
by outsiders who came
to my village one day
insulting my grandpa because he couldn't speak
English
English-

AS I sat alone, by blue Ontario's shore,
As I mused of these mighty days, and of peace return'd, and the dead
that return no more,
A Phantom, gigantic, superb, with stern visage, accosted me;
Chant me the poem, it said, that comes from the soul of America--
chant me the carol of victory;
And strike up the marches of Libertad--marches more powerful yet;
And sing me before you go, the song of the throes of Democracy.

(Democracy--the destin'd conqueror--yet treacherous lip-smiles
everywhere,

496

As far from pity, as complaint—
As cool to speech—as stone—
As numb to Revelation
As if my Trade were Bone—

As far from time—as History—
As near yourself—Today—
As Children, to the Rainbow's scarf—
Or Sunset's Yellow play

To eyelids in the Sepulchre—
How dumb the Dancer lies—
While Color's Revelations break—
And blaze—the Butterflies!

133

As Children bid the Guest "Good Night"
And then reluctant turn—
My flowers raise their pretty lips—
Then put their nightgowns on.

As children caper when they wake
Merry that it is Morn—
My flowers from a hundred cribs
Will peep, and prance again.

Long since I came into the school of Art,
A child in works, but not a child in heart.
Slowly I learn, by her instruction mild,
To be in works a man, in heart a child.