My fault, my greatest fault,
O sea-eyed princess,
was to love you
as a child loves.
(The greatest lovers,
after all, are children)

My first mistake
(and not my last)
was to live
in the state of wonder
ready to be amazed
by the simple span
of night and day,

and ready for every woman
I loved to break me
into a thousand pieces to make
me an open city,
and to leave me behind her
as dust.
My weakness was to see
the world with the logic of a child.

And my mistake was dragging
love out of its cave into the open air,

One last kiss … then with tender eyes we went
Forth from the shadowy house of scattered light;
As children startled by a gruesome sight,
We wondered what the dim black waggon meant.

“A girl is dead,” we heard, and this was all;
But in my sleepless dreams she flutters past,
Like some unknown lost sister, found at last
Beyond the locked gate of a silent wall.

Had she been loved as I was loved, and died?
(Once in his arms I thought my heart would break!)
Could she not bear the kisses that I bore?

I have found a nobler love
Than the sordid world doth know
Above its envy or belief
My flames of passion glow

Had I known that you were going
I would have given you messages for her,
Now two years dead,
Whom I shall always love.

As it is, should she entreat you how it goes with me,
You must reply: as well as with most, you fancy;
That I love easily, and pass the time.

And she will not know how all day long between
My life and me her shadow intervenes,
A young thin girl,
Wearing a white skirt and a purple sweater
And a narrow pale blue ribbon about her hair.

I used to say to her, “I love you
Because your face is such a pretty colour,

P HAUORINUS vs'd to praise the quartaine-feauer;
Ould, beyond the moone would nutts commend;
Virgill, a gnatt, and Homer, honor'd euer
The fight of froggs, which do the most offend:
If these pure Wits most praise what most abhorre
What maruell ist though Marcus praise his whore.

If there were, oh! an Hellespont of cream
Between us, milk-white mistress, I would swim
To you, to show to both my love's extreme,
Leander-like,--yea! dive from brim to brim.
But met I with a buttered pippin-pie
Floating upon 't, that would I make my boat
To waft me to you without jeopardy,
Though sea-sick I might be while it did float.
Yet if a storm should rise, by night or day,
Of sugar-snows and hail of caraways,
Then, if I found a pancake in my way,
It like a plank should bring me to your kays;
Which having found, if they tobacco kept,

I smile sometimes amids my greatest grief,
Not for delight, for that long since is fled;
Despair did shut the gate against relief,
When love at first of death the sentence read.
But yet I smile sometimes in midst of pain,
To think what toys do toss my troubled head;
How most I wish, that most I should refrain,
And seek the thing that least I long to find;
And find the wound by which my heart is slain,
Yet want both skill and will to ease my mind.
Against my will I burn with free consent;
I live in pain, and in my pain delight;

The Romaine Publius and Laberins,
(Two poets whome great Cæsar fauorèd).
Their skill that Cæsar held most serious
Though by most Cæsars now disfauourèd:
Why should not poetry please these great Kesars?
It is because those Kesars are no Cæsars.

The Blessed One hath whispered: There are four
Places most sacred to believing hearts:
First, where the mother's love her Man-child bore,
And watched his little ways and childish arts.

And one, the second, where the Man-child rose
To know the Holy Spirit dwells within
This casement of the body, and he chose
To hold his breathing temple free from sin.

The third, perchance a narrow plot, whereon
The Man-child stood and served his fellow-men,
And loved the service better than a throne,
And where the suffering world loved him again.