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Tomorrow

Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow—
We die.
Let us eat and drink. Wherefore borrow
From griefs that will never come nigh?
Spread the feast, pour the wine,
Wreathe the brows with rose-twine,
Woo the harp into pulses of passion divine.
Remember how soon
The belfry's dull rune
Shall summon us hence from our comrades boon.
Then deaf to their cry,
Unheeding the tears of this sorrow,
How low we shall lie!
Then, eat and drink, for tomorrow—
We die.

Let us love and laugh, for tomorrow—
We die.
Let us love and laugh. Why should Sorrow

She is a sweet and bonny thing

She is a sweet and bonny thing
Not older than fifteen
Though old enough to wear a ring
But not the maidens gaudy thing
Could I but know the thoughts of her
In abscence all the day
As men tell money by the chink
I'd then know what to say.

I love to see her gown of green
Her breast of fairest clay
Her thoughts are purity within
Like th' pink inside o' may
And frae the ancle to the shin
She's like a bunch o' flowers
Lovely without & fair within
Like summers choices hours.

White as the white moss rose her skin

The Distant Sweetheart

High is the mountain-top—
But there's a lower peak.
Far away lives my love;
Nearer a girl's to seek.

Oxen and cows hath she—
My love of far away,
Loveliness only holds;
Yet is she rich to-day.

Linen all bleached and white
Lies in my neighbour's chest—
Ah, but an eyebrow black
Counts more than all the rest!

Fair maid so close to me,
What leagues are we apart—
Over the hills to thee
I come, I come, Sweetheart!

Ars Dura

How many evenings, walking soberly
Along our street all dappled with rich sun,
I please myself with words, and happily
Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run;
And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies
Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask,
Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes
And traitor hand that fails the well loved task!

Who ever learned the sonnet's bitter craft
But he had put away his sleep, his ease,
The wine he loved, the men with whom he laughed,
To brood upon such thankless tricks as these?

Night Stuff

Listen a while, the moon is a lovely woman, a lonely woman, lost in a silver dress, lost in a circus rider's silver dress.

Listen a while, the lake by night is a lonely woman, a lovely woman, circled with birches and pines mixing their green and white among stars shattered in spray clear nights.

I know the moon and the lake have twisted the roots under my heart the same as a lonely woman, a lovely woman, in a silver dress, in a circus rider's silver dress.

The Love of God

All things that are on earth shall wholly pass away,
Except the love of God, which shall live and last for aye.
The forms of men shall be as they had never been;
The blasted groves shall lose their fresh and tender green;
The birds of the thicket shall end their pleasant song,
And the nightingale shall cease to chant the evening long;
The kine of the pasture shall feel the dart that kills,
And all the fair white flocks shall perish from the hills.
The goat and antlered stag, the wolf and the fox,
The wild-boar of the wood, and the chamois of the rocks,

Canada's Fallen

We who are left must wait the years' slow healing,
Seeing the things they loved, the life they lost—
The clouds that out the east come, huge, concealing
The angry sunset, burnished, tempest-tossed.
How will we bear earth's beauty, visions, wonder,
Knowing they loved them in the self-same way—
Th' exulting lightning followed by deep thunder,
Th' exhilaration of each dawning day?
Banners of northern lights for them loom greener,
Waving as waves the sea-weed's streamered head;
Where bent the swaying wheat, the sunburned gleaner

Love Turned to Despair

'Tis past! the pangs of love are past,
I love, I love no more;
Yet who would think I am at last
More wretched than before?

How bless'd, when first my heart was freed
From love's tormenting care,
If cold indifference did succeed,
Instead of fierce despair?

But ah! how ill is he releas'd,
Though love a tyrant reigns,
When the successor in his breast
Redoubles all his pains:

In vain attempts the woeful wight,
That would despair remove,
Its little finger has more weight,
Than all the loins of love: