Renowned Champion full of wrestling Art,
And made for victory in every part,
Whose active Limbes, oyl'd Tongue, and vertuous Mind,
Subdu'd both Foe and Friend, the Rough and Kind,
Yea, ev'n Thy-selfe, and thy Diseases too,
And all but Death (which won with much adoe
And shall at last be vanquish'd,) where are now
Those brawny Armes that crush'd the Dane? and how
Doe all thy Languages to Silence turne?
Babel's undifferenc'd by the speechlesse Urne.
What use of Wisedome now to mold the state
Where All are Equall? to appease debate

"God said I am tired of kings." -- EMERSON

God said, "I am tired of kings,"--
But that was a long while ago!
And meantime man said, "No,--
I like their looks in their robes and rings."
So he crowned a few more,
And they went on playing the game as before,
Fighting and spoiling things.

Man said, "I am tired of kings!
Sons of the robber-chiefs of yore,
They make me pay for their lust and their war;
I am the puppet, they pull the strings;
The blood of my heart is the wine they drink.

And an old priest said, "Speak to us of Religion."

And he said:

Have I spoken this day of aught else?

Is not religion all deeds and all reflection,

And that which is neither deed nor reflection, but a wonder and a surprise ever springing in the soul, even while the hands hew the stone or tend the loom?

Who can separate his faith from his actions, or his belief from his occupations?

Who can spread his hours before him, saying, "This for God and this for myself; This for my soul, and this other for my body?"

I looked down on a daisied lawn
To where a host of tiny eyes
Of snow and gold from velvet shone
And made me think of starry skies.

I looked up to the vasty night
Where stars were very small indeed,
And in their galaxy of light
They made me think of daised mead.

I took a daisy in my hold;
Its snowy rays were tipped with rose,
And with its tiny boss of gold
I thought--how like a star it glows!

I dreamt I plucked from Heaven's field
A star and held it in my hand.
Said I: "The might of God I wield,

Someone across the crowded room says
'Radio Luxemburg'
and it's like hearing your life
through the screech and moan
of wireless valves.
Were you really there,
in Mario Lanza days,
Sunday dinner in stiff church clothes.
Cigarette cards, comics, conkers
and pencil cases.
When you rode an invisible horse?

They hit the towers last year.
God knows. Maybe it's the alchemy
of new weapons and old superstitions.
You saw a woman sobbing
on her knees in Bleeker Street.
Briefly, because you were rushing
to meet a client.

Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah's
of my heart one by one
like the blood-red beads
of a ruby rosary strung
on strands of golden hair!

But my
poetry's muse
takes to the air
on wings made of steel
like the I-beams
of my suspension bridges!

I don't pretend
the nightingale's lament
to the rose isn't easy on the ears...
But the language
that really speaks to me
are Beethoven sonatas played
on copper, iron, wood, bone, and catgut...

You can "have"

As I lay at your feet that afternoon,
Little we spoke, you sat and mused,
Humming a sweet old-fashioned tune,

And I worshipped you, with a sense confused
Of the good time gone and the bad on the way,
While my hungry eyes your face perused

To catch and brand on my soul for aye
The subtle smile which had grown my doom.
Drinking sweet poison hushed I lay

Till the sunset shimmered athwart the room.
I rose to go. You stood so fair
And dim in the dead day's tender gloom:

All at once, or ever I was aware,

The Red Ribbon is all the go;
It's the temperance sign, you know;
It is seen wherever you go,
On men who dare do right.
II
CHORUS:

Dare to do right,
Dare to do right,
Let your motto ever be
Dare to do right.
III
It's no disgrace to wear that badge
Of red ribbon, dear youthful lad,
Your mother's heart it will make glad
To see you dare do right.
IV
Young friend, don't fail to sign the pledge,
And don the badge of ribbon red,
And leave some ways you have led,
Always dare do right.
V

Red lips are not so red
As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.
Kindness of wooed and wooer
Seems shame to their love pure.
O Love, your eyes lose lure
When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude
Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,
Rolling and rolling there
Where God seems not to care;
Till the fierce Love they bear
Cramps them in death's extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft, --
Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft, --

We shall have our little day.
Take my hand and travel still
Round and round the little way,
Up and down the little hill.

It is good to love again;
Scan the renovated skies,
Dip and drive the idling pen,
Sweetly tint the paling lies.

Trace the dripping, pierced heart,
Speak the fair, insistent verse,
Vow to God, and slip apart,
Little better, Little worse.

Would we need not know before
How shall end this prettiness;
One of us must love the more,
One of us shall love the less.

Thus it is, and so it goes;