I had ambition once. Like Solomon
I asked for wisdom, deeming wisdom fair,
And with much pains a little knowledge won
Of Nature's cruelty and Man's despair,
And mostly learned how vain such learnings were.
Then in my grief I turned to happiness,
And woman's love awhile was all my care,
And I achieved some sorrow and some bliss,
Till love rebelled. Then the mad lust of power
Became my dream, to rule my fellow--men;
And I too lorded it my little hour,
And wrought for weal or woe with sword and pen,
And wounded many, some, alas, my friends.

Amarillis I did woo,
And I courted Phillis too;
Daphne, for her love, I chose;
Cloris, for that damask rose
In her cheek, I held as dear;
Yea, a thousand liked well near.
And, in love with all together,
Fearèd the enjoying either;
'Cause to be of one possest,
Barred the hope of all the rest.

All is a lie: love and mind not;
Dream while desires are sobbing;
Offer to wounds thou canst bind not
Thy heart that stays not its throbbing.

Swift burns love to the ember:
Give all thy heart to thy dreaming,
Desiring, and loving; remember,
Life is vain and a seeming.

Be proud with a pride beyond taming;
If sadness thou have, do not show it;
Love, like a king, purples flaming;
And, being not God, be a poet.

Love life's weariness leavens;
Naught beside it is real;
Life is the flash in black heavens;

My heart is what it was before,
A house where people come and go;
But it is winter with your love,
The sashes are beset with snow.

I light the lamp and lay the cloth,
I blow the coals to blaze again;
But it is winter with your love,
The frost is thick upon the pane..

I know a winter when it comes:
The leaves are listless on the boughs;
I watched your love a little while,
And brought my plants into the house.

I water them and turn them south,
I snap the dead brown from the stem;
But it is winter with your love,

Not mortal men alone does Love assail,
No, nor yet women, but it leaves its stamp
Upon the souls of Gods, and passes on
To mighty ocean. Zeus omnipotent
Is powerless to avert it, and submits
And yields full willingly.

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

All the winged creatures I have loved!
And when, a child, I 'neath the thicket roved,
I from their nests the little birds conveyed—
At first, of reeds I cages for them made,
Where, mid green mosses, I to tame them tried.
Later, I used to leave the windows wide:
They flew not off, or if the woods their choice,
Still they returned whene'er they heard my voice.
A dove and I long lived in friendliness!
Now I the art of taming souls possess.

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammels and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

All through eternity
Beauty unveils His exquisite form
in the solitude of nothingness;
He holds a mirror to His Face
and beholds His own beauty.
he is the knower and the known,
the seer and the seen;
No eye but His own
has ever looked upon this Universe.

His every quality finds an expression:
Eternity becomes the verdant field of Time and Space;
Love, the life-giving garden of this world.
Every branch and leaf and fruit
Reveals an aspect of His perfection-
They cypress give hint of His majesty,

All that's not love is the dearth of my days,
The leaves of the volume with rubric unwrit,
The temple in times without prayer, without praise,
The altar unset and the candle unlit.


Let me survive not the lovable sway
Of early desire, nor see when it goes
The courts of Life's abbey in ivied decay,
Whence sometime sweet anthems and incense arose.


The delicate hues of its sevenfold rings
The rainbow outlives not; their yellow and blue
The butterfly sees not dissolve from his wings,