innocence

Neither clown nor child nor black
nor white but verticle
and a questioning innocence
dressed in night and snow:
The mother smiles at the sailor,
the fisherman at the astronaunt,
but the child child does not smile
when he looks at the bird child,
and from the disorderly ocean
the immaculate passenger
emerges in snowy mourning.

I was without doubt the child bird
there in the cold archipelagoes
when it looked at me with its eyes,
with its ancient ocean eyes:
it had neither arms nor wings

Beaten like an old hound
Whimpering by the stove,
I complicate the pain
That smarts with promised love.
The oilstove falls, the rain,
Forecast, licks at my wound;
Ice forms, clips the green shoot,
And strikes the wren house mute.

May commoner and king,
The barren bride and nun
Begrudge the season's dues.
May children curse the sun,
Sweet briar and grass refuse
To compromise the spring,
And both sower and seed
Choke on the summer's weed.

Those promises we heard

Have you ever heard of lynching in the great United States?
'Tis an awful, awful story that the Negro man relates,
How the mobs the laws have trampled, both the human and divine,
In their killing helpless people as their cruel hearts incline.

Not the heathen! 'Tis the Christian with the Bible in his hand,
Stands for pain and death to tyrannize the weaklings of the land;
Not the red man nor the Spaniard kills the blacks of Uncle Sam,
'Tis the white man of the nation who will lunch the sons of Ham.

Take back your coins, King's Councillor. I am of those women you
sent to the forest shrine to decoy the young ascetic who had never
seen a women. I failed in your bidding.
Dimly day was breaking when the hermit boy came to bathe in
the stream, his tawny locks crowded on his shoulders, like a
cluster of morning clouds, and his limbs shining like a streak of
sunbeam. We laughed and sang as we rowed in our boat; we jumped
into the river in a mad frolic, and danced around him, when the sun

Love and harmony combine,
And round our souls entwine
While thy branches mix with mine,
And our roots together join.

Joys upon our branches sit,
Chirping loud and singing sweet;
Like gentle streams beneath our feet
Innocence and virtue meet.

Thou the golden fruit dost bear,
I am clad in flowers fair;
Thy sweet boughs perfume the air,
And the turtle buildeth there.

There she sits and feeds her young,
Sweet I hear her mournful song;
And thy lovely leaves among,

Lovers eminent in love
Ever diversities combine;
The vocal chords of the cushat-dove,
The snake's articulated spine.

Such elective elements
Educate the eye and lip
With one's refreshing innocence,
The other's claim to scholarship.

The serpent's knowledge of the world
Learn, and the dove's more naïve charm;
Whether your ringlets should be curled,
And why he likes his claret warm.

I.
Introth, I do my self perswade,
That the wilde boy is grown a man,
And all his childishnesse off laid,
E're since LUCASTA did his fires fan;
H' has left his apish jigs,
And whipping hearts like gigs:
For t' other day I heard him swear,
That beauty should be crown'd in honours chair.

II.
With what a true and heavenly state
He doth his glorious darts dispence,
Now cleans'd from falsehood, blood and hate,
And newly tipt with innocence!
Love Justice is become,

I.

Introth, I do my self perswade,
That the wilde boy is grown a man,
And all his childishnesse off laid,
E're since Lucasta did his fires fan;
H' has left his apish jigs,
And whipping hearts like gigs:
For t' other day I heard him swear,
That beauty should be crown'd in honours chair.

II.

With what a true and heavenly state
He doth his glorious darts dispence,
Now cleans'd from falsehood, blood and hate,
And newly tipt with innocence!
Love Justice is become,

If the good King only knew,
Lindy Lou,
What a cherub child are you,
It is true,
He would step down from his throne,
And would claim you for his own,
Then whatever would I do,
Lindy Lou?
II
As I kiss your tiny feet,
Lindy Lou,
I just feel I want to eat
All of you.
What's so heaven-sweet and mild
As a happy baby-child?
If you died I would die too,
Lindy Lou?
III

White founts falling in the Courts of the sun,
And the Soldan of Byzantium is smiling as they run;
There is laughter like the fountains in that face of all men feared,
It stirs the forest darkness, the darkness of his beard;
It curls the blood-red crescent, the crescent of his lips;
For the inmost sea of all the earth is shaken with his ships.
They have dared the white republics up the capes of Italy,
They have dashed the Adriatic round the Lion of the Sea,