O VERE mine lofe a sugar-powl,
De fery shmallest loomp
Vouldt shveet de seas, from pole to pole,
Und make de shildren shoomp.
Und if she vere a clofer-field,
I'd bet my only pence,
It vouldn't pe no dime at all
Pefore I'd shoomp de fence.

Her heafenly foice, it drill me so,
It oft-dimes seems to hoort,
She ish de holiest anamile
Dat roons oopon de dirt.
De renpow rises vhen she sings,
De sonnshine vhen she dalk;
De angels crow und flop deir vings
Vhen she goes out to valk.

Once in the world’s first prime,
When nothing lived or stirred,
Nothing but new-born Time,
Nor was there even a bird –
The Silence spoke to a Star,
But do not dare repeat
What it said to its love afar:
It was too sweet, too sweet.

But there, in the fair world’s youth,
Ere sorrow had drawn breath,
When nothing was known but Truth,
Nor was there even death,
The Star to Silence wed,
And the Sun was priest that day,
And they made their bridal-bed
High in the Milky Way.

My love, we will go, we will go, I and you,
And away in the woods we will scatter the dew;
And the salmon behold, and the ousel too,
My love, we will hear, I and you, we will hear,
The calling afar of the doe and the deer.
And the bird in the branches will cry for us clear,
And the cuckoo unseen in his festival mood;
And death, oh my fair one, will never come near
In the bosom afar of the fragrant wood.

My own dear love, he is strong and bold
And he cares not what comes after.
His words ring sweet as a chime of gold,
And his eyes are lit with laughter.
He is jubilant as a flag unfurled --
Oh, a girl, she'd not forget him.
My own dear love, he is all my world, --
And I wish I'd never met him.

My love, he's mad, and my love, he's fleet,
And a wild young wood-thing bore him!
The ways are fair to his roaming feet,
And the skies are sunlit for him.
As sharply sweet to my heart he seems
As the fragrance of acacia.

Who knows
what visceral vistas of pain
will lead me to you
in your mist-shrouded
mount of passion
I will, one day,
pause for that moment
wrench reality from
trembling dreams
Sweat-drunk nights I've crushed
visions into the darkness
pounding past the fertile womb
of your threshold
My limbs ache for your hold
the cold touch on my writhing
your silver gaze will draw me
uncombatant to your hypnotic void
Lover, wife, cruel mistress
the night's far with you
your smile soaks in pangs
of endless lovers' vows

Have you love for me,
Yours my love shall be,
While the days of life are flowing.
Short was summer's stay,
Grass now pales away,
With our play will come regrowing.

What you said last year
Sounds yet in my ear,--
Birdlike at the window sitting,
Tapping, trilling there,
Singing, in would bear
Joy the warmth of sun befitting.

Litli-litli-lu,
Do you hear me too,
Youth behind the birch-trees biding?
Now the words I send,
Darkness will attend,
May be you can give them guiding.

Take it not amiss!

One with eyes the fairest
Cometh from his dwelling,
Some one loves thee, rarest,
Bright beyond my telling.
In thy grace thou shinest
Like some nymph divinest,
In her caverns dewy:
All delights pursue thee,
Soon pied flowers, sweet-breathing,
Shall thy head be wreathing.

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws *one* voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

I lie here thinking of you:---

the stain of love
is upon the world!
Yellow, yellow, yellow
it eats into the leaves,
smears with saffron
the horned branched the lean
heavily
against a smooth purple sky!
There is no light
only a honey-thick stain
that drips from leaf to leaf
and limb to limb
spoiling the colors
of the whole world-

you far off there under
the wine-red selvage of the west!

Distance nor death shall part us, dear,
Nor yet the traitor word;
And love shall live within our home
As blithe as any bird.

The sight of you is in my eyes,
Your touch is in my hand;
They cannot part us now, my love,
With miles of weary land.

Man with his sword and Death his scythe,
Are but the tricks of time,
To tease me with the empty years
Before we shared one name.