The image of the moon at night
All trembling in the ocean lies,
But she, with calm and steadfast light,
Moves proudly through the radiant skies,

How like the tranquil moon thou art--
Thou fairest flower of womankind!
And, look, within my fluttering heart
Thy image trembling is enshrined!

When these graven lines you see,
Traveller, do not pity me;
Though I be among the dead,
Let no mournful word be said.

Children that I leave behind,
And their children, all were kind;
Near to them and to my wife,
I was happy all my life.

My three sons I married right,
And their sons I rocked at night;
Death nor sorrow never brought
Cause for one unhappy thought.

Now, and with no need of tears,
Here they leave me, full of years,--
Leave me to my quiet rest
In the region of the blest.

I

In summer when the days are hot
The subway is delayed a lot;
In winter, quite the selfsame thing;
In autumn also, and in spring.

And does it not seem strange to you
That transportation is askew
In this--I pray, restrain your mirth!--
In this, the Greatest Town on Earth?

II

All night long and every night
The neighbors dance for my delight;
I hear the people dance and sing
Like practically anything.

Women and men and girls and boys,
All making curious kinds of noise

Go to sleep--though of course you will not--
to tideless waves thundering slantwise against
strong embankments, rattle and swish of spray
dashed thirty feet high, caught by the lake wind,
scattered and strewn broadcast in over the steady
car rails! Sleep, sleep! Gulls' cries in a wind-gust
broken by the wind; calculating wings set above
the field of waves breaking.
Go to sleep to the lunge between foam-crests,
refuse churned in the recoil. Food! Food!
Offal! Offal! that holds them in the air, wave-white

Whene'er the wast makes too much hast,
That hast againe makes too much wast.


I here stand keeper while 'tis light,
'Tis theft to enter when 'tis night.


This girdle doth the wast embrace
To keepe all others from that place.


This circle here is drawne about
To keepe all tempting spiritts out.


Whoe'er the girdle doth undoe
Hee quite undoes the owner too

Tell me what's happening to me?
Why is my heart beating so fervently?
why has this madness, like a wave,
Broken through the rock of habit?

Is it my strength or just my torment
I'm too disturbed to tell:
From the shimmering lines of life
I extract a forgotten phrase...

Is it a thief who turns his lantern
Upon the crowd of dreary letters?
I can't help reading the phrase,
But haven't the strength to go back...

It really had to flare up,
But it only harries the darkness;

When the north wind moans thro' the blind creek courses
And revels with harsh, hot sand,
I loose the horses, the wild red horses,
I loose the horses, the mad, red horses,
And terror is on the land.

With prophetic murmer the hills are humming,
The forest-kings bend and blow;
With hoofs of brass on the baked earth strumming,
O brave red horses, they hear us coming,
And the legions of death lean low.

O'er the wooded height, and the sandy hollow
Where the boles to the axe have rung,
Tho' they fly the foreman as flies the swallow,

Pale, at its ghastly noon,
Pauses above the death-still wood--the moon;
The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs;
The clouds descend in rain;
Mourning, the wan stars wane,
Flickering like dying lamps in sepulchres!
Haggard as spectres--vision-like and dumb,
Dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow,
Towards that sad lair the pale procession come
Where the grave closes on the night below.

With dim, deep-sunken eye,
Crutched on his staff, who trembles tottering by?

I admit the briar
Entangled in my hair
Did not injure me;
My blenching and trembling,
Nothing but dissembling,
Nothing but coquetry.

I long for truth, and yet
I cannot stay from that
My better self disowns,
For a man's attention
Brings such satisfaction
To the craving in my bones.

Brightness that I pull back
From the Zodiac,
Why those questioning eyes
That are fixed upon me?
What can they do but shun me
If empty night replies?

A little leaf just in the forest's edge,
All summer long, had listened to the wooing
Of amorous brids that flew across the hedge,
Singing their blithe sweet songs for her undoing.
So many were the flattering things they told her,
The parent tree seemed quite too small to hold her.

At last one lonesome day she saw them fly
Across the fields behind the coquette summer,
They passed her with a laughing light good-bye,
When from the north, there strode a strange new comer;
Bold was his mien, as he gazed on her, crying,