Oft have I brooded on defeat and pain,
The pathos of the stupid, stumbling throng.
These I ignore to-day and only long
To pour my soul forth in one trumpet strain,
One clear, grief-shattering, triumphant song,
For all the victories of man's high endeavor,
Palm-bearing, laurel deeds that live forever,
The splendor clothing him whose will is strong.
Hast thou beheld the deep, glad eyes of one
Who has persisted and achieved? Rejoice!
On naught diviner shines the all-seeing sun.
Salute him with free heart and choral voice,

When Youth's warm heart beats high, my friend,
And Youth's blue sky is bright,
And shines in Youth's clear eye, my friend,
Love's early dawning light,
Let the free soul spurn care's control,
And while the glad days shine,
We'll use their beams for Youth's gay dreams
Of Love and Song and Wine.

Let not the bigot's frown, my friend,
O'ercast thy brow with gloom,
For Autumn's sober brown, my friend,
Shall follow Summer's bloom.
Let smiles and sighs and loving eyes
In changeful beauty shine,

I.

Strive not, vain lover, to be fine;
Thy silk's the silk-worm's, and not thine:
You lessen to a fly your mistriss' thought,
To think it may be in a cobweb caught.
What, though her thin transparent lawn
Thy heart in a strong net hath drawn:
Not all the arms the god of fire ere made
Can the soft bulwarks of nak'd love invade.

II.

Be truly fine, then, and yourself dress
In her fair soul's immac'late glass.
Then by reflection you may have the bliss
Perhaps to see what a true fineness is;

Time, time, time, time, the clock
vaccinates us.
and then even that lacks
prophylaxis.

Ticktock-pockmarked, stricken
by such strokes, we
get sick of prescriptions
which work solely

on the body.
Systole diastole--
It is by its very

intermittency
that the heart knows
itself to be an I.

The pawn-shop man knows hunger,
And how far hunger has eaten the heart
Of one who comes with an old keepsake.
Here are wedding rings and baby bracelets,
Scarf pins and shoe buckles, jeweled garters,
Old-fashioned knives with inlaid handles,
Watches of old gold and silver,
Old coins worn with finger-marks.
They tell stories.

There is still the wind that I remember
firing the manes of horses, racing,
slanting, across the plains,
the wind that stains and scours the sandstone,

and the heart of gloomy columns, telamons,
overthrown in the grass. Spirit of the ancients, grey

with rancour, return on the wind,
breathe in that feather-light moss
that covers those giants, hurled down by heaven.
How alone in the space that’s still yours!
And greater, your pain, if you hear, once more,
the sound that moves, far off, towards the sea,

God in me is the fury on the bare heath
God in me shakes the interior kingdom of my heaven.
God in me is the fire wherein I burn.

God in me swirling cloud and driving rain
God in me cries a lonely nameless bird
God in me beats my head upon a stone.

God in me the four elements of storm
Raging in the shelterless landscape of the mind
Outside the barred doors of my Goneril heart.

My world is cold,
When you are cold.
And my eyes, they tear,
When you can’t stop the tears.
My world would stop,
If you ever did;
And my heart would bleed,
If you didn’t want it.
My breath turns cold,
When you exhale;
And the world around us stops,
Because nothing else matters.
So stop the world,
And stop the tears.
Stop my heart,
And stop my breath.
Because the world rotates around us,
And would stop, if we did so.

When I give up the helm
I know that the time has come for thee to take it.
What there is to do will be instantly done.
Vain is this struggle.

Then take away your hands
and silently put up with your defeat, my heart,
and think it your good fortune to sit perfectly still
where you are placed.

These my lamps are blown out at every little puff of wind,
and trying to light them I forget all else again and again.

But I shall be wise this time and wait in the dark,
spreading my mat on the floor;

Still falls the Rain---
Dark as the world of man, black as our loss---
Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails
Upon the Cross.

Still falls the Rain
With a sound like the pulse of the heart that is changed to the hammer-beat
In the Potter's Field, and the sound of the impious feet

On the Tomb:
Still falls the Rain

In the Field of Blood where the small hopes breed and the human brain
Nurtures its greed, that worm with the brow of Cain.

Still falls the Rain