See the star that leads the day
Rising shoots a golden ray,
To make the shades of darkness go
From heaven above and earth below;
And warn us early with the sight
To leave the beds of silent night,
From a heart sincere and sound
From its very deepest ground,
Send devotion up on high
Wing'd with heat to reach the sky.
See the time for sleep has run,
Rise before, or with the sun,
Lift thine hands and humbly pray
The fountain of eternal day,
That as the light serenely fair
Illustrates all the tracts of air,

The beam-repelling mists arise,
And evening spreads obscurer skies;
The twilight will the night forerun,
And night itself be soon begun.
Upon thy knees devoutly bow,
And pray the Lord of glory now
To fill thy breast, or deadly sin
May cause a blinder night within.
And whether pleasing vapours rise
Which gently dim the closing eyes,
Which make the weary members bless'd
With sweet refreshment in their rest,
Or whether spirits in the brain
Dispel their soft embrace again,
And on my watchful bed I stay,

Almighty Framer of the Skies!
O let our pure devotion rise,
Like Incense in thy Sight!
Wrapt in impenetrable Shade
The Texture of our Souls were made
Till thy Command gave light.
The Sun of Glory gleam'd the Ray,
Refin'd the Darkness into Day,
And bid the Vapours fly;
Impell'd by his eternal Love
He left his Palaces above
To cheer our gloomy Sky.

How shall we celebrate the day,
When God appeared in mortal clay,
The mark of worldly scorn;
When the Archangel's heavenly Lays,

O fly, my Soul! What hangs upon
   Thy drooping wings,
   And weighs them down
With love of gaudy mortal things?

The Sun is now i' the east: each shade
   As he doth rise
   Is shorter made,
That earth may lessen to our eyes.

O be not careless then and play
   Until the Star of Peace
Hide all his beams in dark recess!
Poor pilgrims needs must lose their way,
When all the shadows do increase.

Dark is her cheek, but her blood’s rich blush
Comes through its dusk with a sunset flush,
While joy, like a prairie-bee, slaketh its drouth
At the red honey-cup of her smiling mouth,
And her wild eyes glow, like meteors, there
’Neath the streaming storm of her night-black hair.
And ever I pride in my forest choice,
The more while I list to her bird-like voice,
Warbling old songs in her own wild speech,
But with this new burden still added to each;
“Who’ll pity, who’ll comfort the dark wood-dove
When the white hawk leaves her to die of love?

for Rene Magritte

The carpenter's made a hole
In the parlor floor, and I'm standing
Staring down into it now
At four o'clock in the evening,
As Schliemann stood when his shovel
Knocked on the crowns of Troy.

A clean-cut sawdust sparkles
On the grey, shaggy laths,
And here is a cluster of shavings
>From the time when the floor was laid.
They are silvery-gold, the color
Of Hesperian apple-parings.

Kneeling, I look in under
Where the joists go into hiding.
A pure street, faintly littered

In Italy, where this sort of thing can occur,
I had a vision once - though you understand
It was nothing at all like Dante's, or the visions of saints,
And perhaps not a vision at all. I was with some friends,
Picking my way through a warm sunlit piazza
In the early morning. A clear fretwork of shadows
From huge umbrellas littered the pavement and made
A sort of lucent shallows in which was moored
A small navy of carts. Books, coins, old maps,
Cheap landscapes and ugly religious prints
Were all on sale. The colors and noise

HAD cigarettes no ashes,
And roses ne'er a thorn,
No man would be a funker
Of whin, or burn, or bunker.
There were no need for mashies,
The turf would ne'er be torn,
Had cigarettes no ashes,
And roses ne'er a thorn.


Had cigarettes no ashes,
And roses ne'er a thorn,
The big trout would not ever
Escape into the river.
No gut the salmon smashes

The West Village by then was changing; before long
the rundown brownstones at its farthest edge
would have slipped into trendier hands. She lived,
impervious to trends, behind a potted hedge of
rubber trees, with three cats, a canary—refuse
from whose cage kept sifting down and then
germinating, a yearning seedling choir, around
the saucers on the windowsill—and an inexorable
cohort of roaches she was too nearsighted to deal
with, though she knew they were there, and would
speak of them, ruefully, as of an affliction that

Wak'd by the gentle gleamings of the morn,
Soon clad, the reaper, provident of want
Hies cheerful hearted to the ripen'd field;
Nor hastes alone; attendant by his side
His faithful wife, sole partner of his cares,
Bears on her breast the sleeping babe; behind
With steps unequal trips her infant train:
Thrice happy pair, in love and labour join'd! --
All day they ply their task; with mutual chat
Beguiling each the sultry, tedious hours:
Around them falls in rows the sever'd corn,
Or the shocks rise in regular array.