You say we bushmen cannot love—
Our lives are too prosaic: hence
We lose or lack that finer sense
That raises some few men above
Their fellows, setting them apart
As vessels of a finer make—
The acme of the potter’s art—
Are placed apart upon the shelf.
So he is more than common delf,
And, more than brute in human guise,
Who, seeking, finds his nobler self
Twin-mirrored in a woman’s eyes!
Yet these things bring their penalty:
For oft the merest touch will break
These vessels of a finer make;
And throats attuned to noblest key

You like the trifling triolet:
Well, here are three or four.
Unless your likings I forget,
You like the trifling triolet.
Against my conscience I abet
A taste which I deplore;
You like the trifling triolet:
Well, here are three or four.

Have you ever met with a pretty girl
Walking along the street,
With a nice new dress and her hair in curl?
Have you ever met with a pretty girl,
When her hat blew off and the wind with a whirl
Wafted it right to your feet?
Have you ever met with a pretty girl
Walking along the street?

Love that art enlargéd
As the sun!
Shine upon the bride-life
Here begun,
And upon his, too, that stirs
Now within the breath of hers —
No more two, but one.
Touch her beauty, quickening
With the spell
Of her girlhood passing:
Favor well
All his ways with her, that she
May deem this day's mystery
Was thy miracle.
Pass now, Love! upon them
In this light,
Till the magic of them,
Touch and sight,
Fades as either's lone life-story
Into all the grace and glory
Of their joy to-night!

1.
LORD, I do choose the higher than my will.
I would be handled by thy nursing arms
After thy will, not my infant alarms.
Hurt me thou wilt-but then more loving still,
If more can be and less, in love's perfect zone!
My fancy shrinks from least of all thy harms,
But do thy will with me-I am thine own.

2.

Some things wilt thou not one day turn to dreams?
Some dreams wilt thou not one day turn to fact?
The thing that painful, more than should be, seems,
Shall not thy sliding years with them retract-

How beautiful she looks, opening the pearly casement,
And how quiet she leans, and how troubled her brow is!
You may see the tears now, bright on her cheek,
But not the man she so bitterly loves.

Who know thee, love: thy life be such
That, ere the year be o'er,
Each one who loves thee now so much,
Even God, may love thee more!

My brightest hopes are mix'd with tears,
Like hues of light and gloom;
As when mid sun-shine rain appears,
Love rises with a thousand fears,

To pine and still to bloom.
When I have told my last fond tale
In lines of song to thee,
And for departure spread my sail,
Say, lovely princess, wilt thou fail
To drop a tear for me?

O, princess, should my votive strain
Salute thy ear no more,
Like one deserted on the main,
I still shall gaze, alas! but vain,
On wedlock's flow'ry shore.

Lay yourself down, when you wish to be born lay yourself down
in a grassy field meadow pasture lay yourself down and say Ma Baba Ma Baba
Soon your body will become this tiny in the morning
Office-goers will see on the grass drops of dew
Your one drop will vanish with the warmth of the sun, go,
Go if you wish to be born say to the clouds Ma Baba Ma Baba
The clouds will hurl you from their womb such rain such rain such rain
Down below a beautiful maiden enters her bath in a roofless rented bathroom
Today there isn’t enough tap water when the rain comes

LET others prate of Greece and Rome,
And towns where they may never be,
The muse should wander nearer home.
My country is enough for me;
Her wooded hills that watch the sea,
Her inland miles of springing corn,
At Macedon or Barrakee—
I love the land where I was born.
On Juliet smile the autumn stars
And windswept plains by Winchelsea,
In summer on their sandy bars
Her rivers loiter languidly.
Where singing waters fall and flee
The gullied ranges dip to Lorne
With musk and gum and myrtle tree—

God's mercy shines ;
And our full hearts must make record of this,
For grief that burst from out its dark confines
Into strange sunlit bliss.

I stood where glowed
The merry glare of golden whirring lights
Above the monstrous mass that seethed and flowed
Through one of London's nights.

1 watched the gleams
Of jagged warm lights on shrunk faces pale :
I heard mad laughter as one hears in dreams
Or Hell's harsh lurid tale.

The traffic rolled,
A gliding chaos populous of din,
A steaming wail at doom the Lord had scrawled