CAN we not consecrate
To man and God above
This volume of our great
Supernal tide of love?

’Twere wrong its wealth to waste
On merely me and you,
In selfish touch and taste,
As other lovers do.

This love is not as theirs:
It came from the Divine,
Whose glory still it wears,
And print of Whose design.

The world is full of woe,
The time is blurred with dust,
Illusions breed and grow,
And eyes’ and flesh’s lust.

My soul; is raying like a star,
My heart is happier than a bird,
And all because, through fortune’s jar,
I hear one little word.
I feel as if all life and might
Had started on a loftier course,
As if all passion and delight
Were deepened at the source.

I feel as if the very air
Was breathed from out the heart of love,
And in my heart, still rapture rare,
Sat brooding like a dove.

O beauty! Even through a word
What powers are thine to raise and bless!
O love! A seraph’s voice is heard

THE fierce exulting worlds, the motes in rays,
   The churlish thistles, scented briers,
The wind-swept bluebells on the sunny braes,
   Down to the central fires,

Exist alike in Love. Love is a sea
   Filling all the abysses dim
Of lornest space, in whose deeps regally
   Suns and their bright broods swim.

This mighty sea of Love, with wondrous tides,
   Is sternly just to sun and grain;
'Tis laving at this moment Saturn's sides,

The longer I live and the more I see
Of the struggle of souls towards the heights above,
The stronger this truth comes home to me---
That the Universe rests on the shoulders of love,
A love so limitless, deep, and broad,
That men have re-named it, and called it God.

And nothing that was ever born or evolved,
Nothing created by light or force
But deep in its system there lies dissolved
A shining drop from the great Love source;
A shining drop that shall live for aye;
Though kingdoms may perish and stars decay.

Cor zu' bravo sbordone a manimanca,
Du' pellegrini a or de vemmaria
Cercaveno indov'era l'osteria,
Perc'uno aveva male in d'una cianca.

Ce s'incontra er zor Lotte, e je spalanca
Er portone dicenno: "A casa mia"
E loro je risposeno: "Per dia
Dimani sarai fio de l'oca bianca".

Quelli ereno du' angeli, fratello,
Che ar vedelli passà li Ghimorrini
Se sentinno addrizzà tutti l'ucello.

E arrivonno a strillà, fiji de mulo:
"Lotte, mannece giù li pellegrini,
Che ce serveno a noi pe daje in culo".

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."
A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

His eyes are quickened so with grief,
He can watch a grass or leaf
Every instant grow; he can
Clearly through a flint wall see,
Or watch the startled spirit flee
From the throat of a dead man.
Across two counties he can hear
And catch your words before you speak.
The woodlouse or the maggot's weak
Clamour rings in his sad ear,
And noise so slight it would surpass
Credence--drinking sound of grass,
Worm talk, clashing jaws of moth
Chumbling holes in cloth;
The groan of ants who undertake

In one of fhe States of America, some years ago,
There suddenly came on a violent storm of snow,
Which was nearly the death of a party of workmen,
Who had finished their day's work - nine or ten of them.

The distance was nearly twenty miles to their camp,
And with the thick falling snow their clothes felt damp,
As they set out for their camp, which was in a large grove,
And to reach it, manfully against the storm they strove.

The wind blew very hard, and the snow was falling fast,
Still, they plodded on, but felt a little downcast,

I have love
And a child,
A banjo
And shadows.
(Losses of God,
All will go
And one day
We will hold
Only the shadows.)

it lay in my palm soft and trembled
as a new bird and i thought about
authority and how it always insisted
on itself, how it was master
of the man, how it measured him, never
was ignored or denied, and how it promised
there would be sweetness if it was obeyed
just like the saints do, like the angels
and i opened the window and held out my
uncupped hand; i swear to god
i thought it could fly