I do not care for kisses. 'Tis a debt
We paid for the first privilege of love.
These are the rains of April which have wet
Our fallow hearts and forced their germs to move.
Now the green corn has sprouted. Each new day
Brings better pleasures, a more dear surprise,
The blade, the ear, the harvest--and our way
Leads through a region wealthy grown and wise.
We now compare our fortunes. Each his store
Displays to kindred eyes of garnered grain,
Two happy farmers, learned in love's lore,
Who weigh and touch and argue and complain--

Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou, shrieking harbinger,
Foul pre-currer of the fiend,
Augur of the fever's end,
To this troop come thou not near.

From this session interdict
Every fowl of tyrant wing,
Save the eagle, feather'd king:
Keep the obsequy so strict.

Let the priest in surplice white,
That defunctive music can,
Be the death-defying swan,
Lest the requiem lack his right.

And thou, treble-dated crow,

DEAREST, a look is but a ray
Reflected in a certain way;
A word, whatever tone it wear,
Is but a trembling wave of air;
A touch, obedience to a clause
In nature's pure material laws.

The very flowers that bend and meet,
In sweetening others, grow more sweet;
The clouds by day, the stars by night,
Inweave their floating locks of light;
The rainbow, Heaven's own forehead's braid,
Is but the embrace of sun and shade.

Oh! in the hour when I shall feel
Those shadows round my senses steal,
When gentle eyes are weeping o'er

He loved the brook's soft sound,
The swallow swimming by.
He loved the daisy-covered ground,
The cloud-bedappled sky.
To him the dismal storm appeared
The very voice of God;
And when the evening rack was reared
Stood Moses with his rod.
And everything his eyes surveyed,
The insects in the brake,
Were creatures God Almighty made,
He loved them for His sake--
A silent man in life's affairs,
A thinker from a boy,
A peasant in his daily cares,
A poet in his joy.

The Kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man,
seeking goodly pearls; who, when he had found one,
sold all that he had and bought it.—Matthew 13.45


I know the ways of Learning; both the head
And pipes that feed the press, and make it run;
What reason hath from nature borrowed,
Or of itself, like a good huswife, spun
In laws and policy; what the stars conspire,
What willing nature speaks, what forced by fire;
Both th' old discoveries, and the new-found seas,
The stock and surplus, cause and history:

Come live with me and be my Dear;
And till that happy bond shall lapse,
I'll set your Poutings in Brevier,
Your praises in the largest CAPS.

There's Diamond-'tis for your Eyes;
There's Ruby-that will match your Lips;
Pearl, for your Teeth; and Minion-size
To suit your dainty Finger-tips.

In Nonpareil I'll put your Face;
In Rubric shall your Blushes rise;
There is no Bourgeois in your Case;
Your Form can never need 'Revise.'

Your Cheek seems 'Ready for the Press';
Your laugh as Clarendon is clear;

Touch me, from out your breast of love,
With such white hands that be
As beautiful as a dream of
Your lips' virginity;
Or else look pity on my hope,
And that sweet sorrow shall
With the pang of departure cope,
And make amends for all.

O God, forgive me that I ranged
My live into a dream of love!
Will tears of anguish never wash
The passion from my blood?

Love kept my heart in a song of joy,
My pulses quivered to the tune;
The coldest blasts of winter blew
Upon me like sweet airs in June.

Love floated on the mists of morn
And rested on the sunset’s rays;
He calmed the thunder of the storm
And lighted all my ways.

Love held me joyful through the day
And dreaming ever through the night;
No evil thing could come to me,
My spirit was so light.

Was it love breathed on us as on the skies
Dawn breathes for a short space and then is fled;
Or loved we never at all who but misread
With too dim vision the guarded mysteries?

Were we unfaithful or were we unwise,
Knew we not love, or if our love is dead,
If such were true, for grace of what is sped,
Could we not part with unaverted eyes?

But whence there looks askance as at strange fears?
Anmd when the far and muffled cryings that beat
Across the moment of our dire farewell?

Is here of sentience the dread burial?

Stuck on the fridge, our favorite pin-up girl
is anorexic. On the radio we have a riff

of Muzak sax, and on the mind
a self-help book. We sprawl all evening, all

alone, in the unraised ranch;
all day the company we kept

kept on incorporating. As for the world
of poverty, we did our best, thanks

to a fund of Christian feeling
and mementos from

Amelia, the foster child, who has
the rags and seven photogenic sisters we prefer

in someone to be saved. She's proof
Americans have got a heart