hate

For all good friends who care to read,
here let me lyre my living creed . . .

One: you may deem me Pacifist,
For I've no sympathy with strife.
Like hell I hate the iron fist,
And shun the battle-ground of life.
The hope of peace is dear to me,
And I to Christian faith belong,
Holding that breath should sacred be,
And War is always wrong.

Two: Universalist am I
And dream a world that's frontier free,
With common tongue and common tie,
Uncurst by nationality;

The world is sadly sick, they say,
And plagued by woe and pain.
But look! How looms my garden gay,
With blooms in golden reign!
With lyric music in the air,
Of joy fulfilled in song,
I can't believe that anywhere
Is hate and harm and wrong.

A paradise my garden is,
And there my day is spent;
A steep myself in sunny bliss,
Incredibly content.
Feeling that I am truly part
Of peace so rapt and still,
There's not a care within my heart . . .
How can the world be ill?

I hate my neighbour Widow Green;
I'd like to claw her face;
But if I did she'd make a scene
And run me round the place:
For widows are in way of spleen
A most pugnacious race.

And yet I must do something quick
To keep the hag in line,
Since her red rooster chose to pick
Five lettuce heads of mine:
And so I fed it arsenic
Which it did not decline.

It disappeared, but on my mat
Before a week had sped
I found Mi-mi, my tabby cat

He was my best and oldest friend.
I'd known him all my life.
And yet I'm sure towards the end
He knew I loved his wife,
And wonder, wonder if it's why
He came so dreadfully to die.

He drove his car at racing speed
And crashed into a tree.
How could he have so little heed?
A skillful driver he.
I think he must have found that day
Some love-letters that went astray.

I looked into the woman's eyes
And there I saw she knew.
There was no shadow of surmise, -
For her himself he slew:

My days have been so wondrous free,
The little birds that fly
With careless ease from tree to tree,
Were but as bless'd as I.

Ask gliding waters, if a tear
Of mine increas'd their stream?
Or ask the flying gales, if e'er
I lent one sigh to them?

But now my former days retire,
And I'm by beauty caught;
The tender chains of sweet desire
Are fix'd upon my thought.

Ye nightingales, ye twisting pines!
Ye swains that haunt the grove!
Ye gentle echoes, breezy winds!

My black pearl…
My black diamond
My gold,

Which gives a black brightness…

It was you who taught me how to be love again
It was you who taught me how to be happy again
It was you who gave me the willingness to live again

But…

Why have you let me float in space
Without you as my parachute?

Why have you choose
To make me a wicked man?

Why have made me a man
Hate his kind of women?

Yes…

Now I give you the permission

Oh, wearisome condition of humanity,
Born under one law, to another bound;
Vainly begot, and yet forbidden vanity,
Created sick, commanded to be sound.
What meaneth nature by these diverse laws?
Passion and reason self-division cause.
It is the mark or majesty of power
To make offences that it may forgive;
Nature herself doth her own self deflower,
To hate those errors she herself doth give.
For how should man think that he may not do,
If nature did not fail and punish too?

'Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze;
He turned away the good old horse that served him many days;
He dressed himself in cycling clothes, resplendent to be seen;
He hurried off to town and bought a shining new machine;
And as he wheeled it through the door, with air of lordly pride,
The grinning shop assistant said, "Excuse me, can you ride?"
"See here, young man," said Mulga Bill, "from Walgett to the sea,
From Conroy's Gap to Castlereagh, there's none can ride like me.

The sun, which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends (because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent), is
Here our best hay-maker (forgive me this,
It is our country style); in this warm shine
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine.
Oh, we have water mixed with claret-lees,
Drink apt to bring in drier heresies
Than beer, good only for the sonnet strain,
With fustian metaphors to stuff the brain;
So mixed that given to the thirstiest one

All other joys of life he strove to warm,
And magnify, and catch them to his lip:
But they had suffered shipwreck with the ship,
And gazed upon him sallow from the storm.
Or if Delusion came, 'twas but to show
The coming minute mock the one that went.
Cold as a mountain in its star-pitched tent,
Stood high Philosophy, less friend than foe:
Whom self-caged Passion, from its prison-bars,
Is always watching with a wondering hate.
Not till the fire is dying in the grate,
Look we for any kinship with the stars.