Deeming that I was due to die
I framed myself a coffin;
So full of graveyard zeal was I,
I set the folks a-laughing.
I made it snugly to my fit,
My joinering was honest;
And sometimes in it I would sit,
And fancy I was non est.

I stored it on my cabin shelf
Forever to remind me,
When I was tickled with myself,
That Death was close behind me.
Let's be prepared, I used to say,
E're in the Dark we launch us:
And so with boding day by day
I kept me coffin-conscious.

Then came that winter dark as doom,

There was never a castle seen
So fair as mine in Spain:
It stands embowered in green,
Crowning the gentle slope
Of a hill by the Xenil's shore,
And at eve its shade flaunts o'er
The storied Vega plain,
And its towers are hid in the mists of Hope;
And I toil through years of pain
Its glimmering gates to gain.

In visions wild and sweet
Sometimes its courts I greet:
Sometimes in joy its shining halls
I tread with favored feet;
But never my eyes in the light of day
Were blest with its ivied walls,

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My best Acquaintances are those
With Whom I spoke no Word—
The Stars that stated come to Town
Esteemed Me never rude
Although to their Celestial Call
I failed to make reply—
My constant—reverential Face
Sufficient Courtesy.

I never killed a bear because
I always thought them critters was
So kindo' cute;
Though round my shack they often came,
I'd raise my rifle and take aim,
But couldn't shoot.
Yet there was one full six-feet tall
Who came each night and gobbled all
The grub in sight;
On my pet garden truck he'd feast,
Until I thought I must at least
Give him a fight.

I put some corn mush in a pan;
He lapped it swiftly down and ran

Because I was content with these poor fields,
Low open meads, slender and sluggish streams,
And found a home in haunts which others scorned,
The partial wood-gods overpaid my love,
And granted me the freedom of their state,
And in their secret senate have prevailed
With the dear dangerous lords that rule our life,
Made moon and planets parties to their bond,
And pitying through my solitary wont
Shot million rays of thought and tenderness.

For me in showers, in sweeping showers, the spring
Visits the valley:—break away the clouds,

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Musicians wrestle everywhere—
All day—among the crowded air
I hear the silver strife—
And—walking—long before the morn—
Such transport breaks upon the town
I think it that "New Life"!

If is not Bird—it has no nest—
Nor "Band"—in brass and scarlet—drest—
Nor Tamborin—nor Man—
It is not Hymn from pulpit read—
The "Morning Stars" the Treble led
On Time's first Afternoon!

Some—say—it is "the Spheres"—at play!
Some say that bright Majority
Of vanished Dames—and Men!
Some—think it service in the place

If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into Bergdorf's
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
Close to the fear of war and the stars which have disappeared.
I have in my hands only 35c, it's so meaningless to eat!
and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves
like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you
to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,
I must tighten my belt.

I hug you, -
Both the rainbow to the river
And the clouds flame
In God's hand.
You laugh, - rain in the sun,
The mignonette bedewed,
And cunning is
A lilac star with eyelash.
Like a cloven comet
Figaro clowns.
Mozart's Tarot
Is cryptic and clear.
Lethean bliss
Sleeps sweet in trombones,
A tarry monastery rings
in a copse of violins.
What shadows does
a gaze cast into space?
You don't know? And you mustn't
look back, my friend.
Whose heart begins to glisten
at the blue, blue Si?

Mud is Beauty in the making,
Mud is melody awaking;
Laughter, leafy whisperings,
Butterflies with rainbow wings;
Baby babble, lover's sighs,
Bobolink in lucent skies;
Ardours of heroic blood
All stem back to Matrix Mud.

Mud is mankind in the moulding,
Heaven's mystery unfolding;
Miracles of mighty men,
Raphael's brush and Shakespear's pen;
Sculpture, music, all we owe
Mozart, Michael Angelo;
Wonder, worship, dreaming spire,
Issue out of primal mire.

In the raw, red womb of Time
Man evolved from cosmic slime;

The secret of the stars, -- gravitation.
The secret of the earth, -- layers of rock.
The secret of the soil, -- to receive seed.
The secret of the seed, -- the germ.
The secret of man, -- the sower.
The secret of woman, -- the soil.
My secret: Under a mound that you shall never find.