laughter

Always, sweetheart,
Carry into your room the blossoming boughs of cherry,
Almond and apple and pear diffuse with light, that very
Soon strews itself on the floor; and keep the radiance of spring
Fresh quivering; keep the sunny-swift March-days waiting
In a little throng at your door, and admit the one who is plaiting
Her hair for womanhood, and play awhile with her, then bid her depart.

A come and go of March-day loves
Through the flower-vine, trailing screen;
A fluttering in of doves.

O, laugh, laughers!
O, laugh out, laughers!
You who laugh with laughs, you who laugh it up laughishly
O, laugh out laugheringly
O, belaughable laughterhood - the laughter of laughering laughers!
O, unlaugh it outlaughingly, belaughering laughists!
Laughily, laughily,
Uplaugh, enlaugh, laughlings, laughlings
Laughlets, laughlets.
O, laugh, laughers!
O, laugh out, laughers!

You’ll dine well, in a few days, with me,
if the gods are kind to you, my dear Fabullus,
and if you bring lots of good food with you,
and don’t come without a pretty girl
and wine and wit and all your laughter.
I say you’ll dine well, and charmingly,
if you bring all that: since your Catullus’s
purse alas is full of cobwebs.
But accept endearments in return for the wine
or whatever’s sweeter and finer:
since I’ll give you a perfume my girl
was given by the Loves and Cupids,

Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.

Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.

Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.

Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.

In my one love are many loves entwined;
Each hour makes me unfaithful to the last;
The beauty present dims the beauty past;
Of her worst rivals is her self combined.
When she is pale, in her dear cheek I find
The fairest shade on earth was ever cast;
And if she blush, that hue is not surpassed
In roses ruffled by the wanton wind.
Sometimes her sweet lips droop to a purpose sad;
Then all my soul in loving sympathy
Burns to dispel her sadness with a kiss;
And when they flash and curve in laughter glad,

Measures of oil for others,
Oil and red wine,
Lips laugh and drink, but never
Are the lips mine.

Worlds at the feet of others,
Power gods have known,
Hearts for the favoured round me
Mine beats, alone.

Fame offering to others
Chaplets of bays,
I with no crown of laurels,
Only grey days.

Sweet human love for others,
Deep as the sea,
God-sent unto my neighbour--
But not to me.

Sometime I'll wrest from others
More than all this,

Outside the afterlight's lucent rose
Is smiting the hills and brimming the valleys,
And shadows are stealing across the snows;
From the mystic gloom of the pineland alleys.
Glamour of mingled night and day
Over the wide, white world has sway,
And through their prisoning azure bars,
Gaze the calm, cold eyes of the early stars.

But here, in this long, low-raftered room,
Where the blood-red light is crouching and leaping,
The fire that colors the heart of the gloom
The lost sunshine of old summers is keeping­

The sea was sapphire coloured, and the sky
Burned like a heated opal through the air;
We hoisted sail; the wind was blowing fair
For the blue lands that to the eastward lie.
From the steep prow I marked with quickening eye
Zakynthos, every olive grove and creek,
Ithaca's cliff, Lycaon's snowy peak,
And all the flower-strewn hills of Arcady.
The flapping of the sail against the mast,
The ripple of the water on the side,
The ripple of girls' laughter at the stern,
The only sounds:- when 'gan the West to burn,

The darkened street was muffled with the snow,
The falling flakes had made your shoulders white,
And when we found a shelter from the night
Its glamor fell upon us like a blow.
The clash of dishes and the viol and bow
Mingled beneath the fever of the light.
The heat was full of savors, and the bright
Laughter of women lured the wine to flow.
A little child ate nothing while she sat
Watching a woman at a table there
Learn to kiss beneath a drooping hat.
The hour went by, we rose and turned to go,

Full well I trow that when I die
Down drops the curtain;
Another show is all my eye
And Betty Martin.
I know the score, and with a smile
Of rueful rating,
I reckon I am not worth while
Perpetuating.
II
I hope that God,--if God there be
Of love and glory,
Will let me off Eternity,
And end my story.
Will count me just a worn-out bit
Of human matter,
Who's done his job or bungled it,
--More like the latter.