No lack of counsel from the shrewd and wise
How love may be acquired and how conserved
Warrants this laying bare before your eyes
My needle to your north abruptly swerved;
If I would hold you, I must hide my fears
Lest you be wanton, lead you to believe
My compass to another quarter veers,
Little surrender, lavishly receive.
But being like my mother the brown earth
Fervent and full of gifts and free from guile,
Liefer would I you loved me for my worth,
Though you should love me but a little while,
Than for a philtre any doll can brew,—

If when the wind blows
Rattling the trees,
Clicking like skeletons'
Elbows and knees,

You hear along the road
Three horses pass,
Do not go near the dark
Cold window-glass.

If when the first snow lies
Whiter than bones,
You see the mark of hoofs
Cut to the stones,

Hoofs of three horses
Going abreast—
Turn about, turn about,
A closed door is best!

Upright in the earth
Under the sod
They buried three horses,
Bridled and shod,

Daniel Webster's horses—
He said as he grew old,

O ailing Love, compose your struggling wing!
Confess you mortal; be content to die.
How better dead, than be this awkward thing
Dragging in dust its feathers of the sky;
Hitching and rearing, plunging beak to loam,
Upturned, disheveled, uttering a weak sound
Less proud than of the gull that rakes the foam,
Less kind than of the hawk that scours the ground.
While yet your awful beauty, even at bay,
Beats off the impious eye, the outstretched hand,
And what your hue or fashion none can say,
Vanish, be fled, leave me a wingless land …

You loved me not at all, but let it go;
I loved you more than life, but let it be.
As the more injured party, this being so,
The hour's amenities are all to me—
The choice of weapons; and I gravely choose
To let the weapons tarnish where they lie;
And spend the night in eloquent abuse
Of senators and popes and such small fry
And meet the morning standing, and at odds
With heaven and earth and hell and any fool
Who calls his soul his own, and all the gods,
And all the children getting dressed for school …

Love me no more, now let the god depart,
If love be grown so bitter to your tongue!
Here is my hand; I bid you from my heart
Fare well, fare very well, be always young.
As for myself, mine was a deeper drouth:
I drank and thirsted still; but I surmise
My kisses now are sand against your mouth,
Teeth in your palm and pennies on your eyes.
Speak but one cruel word, to shame my tears;
Go, but in going, stiffen up my back
To meet the yelping of the mustering years—
Dim, trotting shapes that seldom will attack

If I have pained thee by a word,
If, May, when last we met,
A doubt shot through me, wild, absurd,
Forgive, forget.

Love is so scarce, truth is so rare,
So swift-winged is regret,
So keen the spear-points of despair—
Forgive, forget.

Believe me, if the quick tears sprang,
If thy soft eyes were wet
Almost, I also felt a pang:
Forgive, forget.

Be gracious, love, and for love's sake
Bear with me even yet.
The best of me discern and take;
The rest forget!

On the last words of what you write to me
I give you my opinion at the first,
To see the dead must prove corruption nursed
Within you, by your heart's own vanity.
The soul should bend the flesh to its decree:
Then rule it, friend, as fish by line emerced.
As to the smock, your lady's gift, the worst
Of words were not too bad for speech so free.
It is a thing unseemly to declare
The love of gracious dame or damozel,
And therewith for excuse to say, I dream'd.
Tell us no more of this, but think who seem'd

You have passed in all the collaterals of love but where is love?
You have brought me love's dresses and love's habits and love's alphabets but have not brought me love,
You have brought me soul's love that forgot the body,
You have brought me body's love that forgot the soul,
But love still waits expecting a complete return
For I, said love, when I take possession of life,
I, too, sing, and sing a song beyond the songs of song,
For I go singing not in words but in shapes and phantoms that give words leave to be.

At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows,
So take your creel, O Madlen mine,
We'll gather it full ere the moon's a-shine
And bear it home from the dripping brine.
By Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows:
We'll cook it over the red culm-fire,
And you shall tell me your heart's desire
And I will tell you mine.

At Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows:
Your creel, my lass; to the cliff we'll hie
And seek in clefts where the gulls go by
Like dreams of love in a blue, blue eye.
By Traeth-y-daran the laver-weed grows;

Love, Reason, Hate, did once bespeak
Three mates to play at Barley-break;
Love, Folly took; and Reason, Fancy;
And Hate consorts with Pride; so dance they:
Love coupled last; and so it fell
That Love and Folly were in hell.

They break, and Love would Reason meet,
But Hate was nimbler on her feet;
Fancy looks for Pride, and thither
Hies, and they two hug together:
Yet this new coupling still doth tell
That Love and Folly were in hell.

The rest do break again, and Pride
Hath now got Reason on her side;