No wonder they made him blind—
Cupid—and gave him arrows.
In two strokes, so, they defined
the odds of love and the sorrows.

The energy of desire
confronts the Probable—
so random, though, in its fire
a queen may well love a bull,

or an old man a child.
A barb is no less a curse
that the archer shot it wild.
You can't yank in reverse

without doubling the cut,
nor push through as it's sent—
for less than your life—what
arrived by accident.

Passionate light that lingers in the west,
Lovelier growing as the moments pass,
Must thou depart at rigorous night's behest?
Alas!

The hosts of darkness fill heaven's eastern plain,
Great swelling clouds in triumph, lo! they ride,
Yet thou thine amorous beauty dost disdain
To hide.

While far above, faint wayward cloudlets glow
Like radiant moments seen by memory:
Love's envoys, they are fain to fade and go
With thee.

Tender as every sense at parting is,
The tremulous sky grows pale as death above,

O she's a girl of winsome face,
A maid of fairest mould, O,
And all her garments fall with grace
In ev'ry bending fold, O.
My heart it leaps to see her walk,
So stately step her feet, O,
My tongue is dumb to hear her talk,
Her voice it sounds so sweet, O,
For oh! she seems to my poor mind
The very pride of womankind.

Whene'er she sits, she sitting seems
The fairest to the sight, O;
She rises up and then one deems
She's fairest at her height, O.
Whene'er I see her in a room
I think her fairest there, O,

Not endless life, but endless love, I crave,
The gladness and the calm of holier springs,
The hope that makes men resolute and brave,
The joyful life in the great Life of Things.

And then one morning
surprised
I found myself
at the brink of wisdom
having forgotten love.

You are a poet, sycamore,
A minor poet.
You are not much good in a practical world;
You shed your ragged leaves early, and clutter up the landscape.
But you are lovely on winter evenings
Against the afterglow—
Bare and pale and a little disdainful,

O peace is a white bird,
And Beauty is a castled cloud,
And Love is a fierce fire that loves to be made kind;

And I have climbed the castled cloud,
And I have caged the fierce fire,
But the white bird, the white bird—her I cannot bind!

My love she was a Gipsey O
The brown and bonny Gipsey O
She fortunes told from town to town
And sometimes she got tipsey O
Her face was brown as is the ground
Her eyes are two eclipses
The sun is fixed the rest go round
She's the sun O' the gipseys O.

A gipsey lass my love was born
Among the heaths furze bushes O
More fair than Lady's on the lawn
Whose song is like the thrushes O
Like links O' snakes her inky hair
The dandy beau she kisses O
Her face round as an apple fair
She blisters where she kisses O.

All glory to my God and King And to his place above
He shields me with his mighty wing And keeps me for his love.

Jesus, I covet to love Thee,
And that is wholly my yearning:
Therefore to love Thee Thou teach me,
And I Thy love shall ever sing.

Jesus, Thy love into me send
And with Thy love Thou me feed.
Jesus, Thy love aye in me lend!
Thy Love ever be my soul's meed.

Jesus, my heart with love Thou light!
Thy love me make e'er to forsake
All worldly joy both day and night
Thee alone my joy to make.

Jesus, Thy love me chaufe within
So that no thing but Thee I seek;
In Thy love make my soul to brynne