As told to a child
When we locked up the house at night,
We always locked the flowers outside
And cut them off from window light.
The time I dreamed the door was tried
And brushed with buttons upon sleeves,
The flowers were out there with the thieves.
Yet nobody molested them!
We did find one nasturtium
Upon the steps with bitten stem.
I may have been to blame for that:
I always thought it must have been
Some Hower I played with as I sat
At dusk to watch the moon down early.
In loving thee thou know’st I am forsworn,But thou art twice forsworn to me love swearing:In act thy bed-vow broke and new faith tornIn vowing new hate after new love bearing.But why of two oaths’ breach do I accuse thee,When I break twenty? I am perjured most,For all my vows are oaths but to misuse…
A voice said, Look me in the starsAnd tell me truly, men of earth,If all the soul-and-body scarsWere not too much to pay for birth.
That slip from heaven at night and softly fallHas been picked up with stones to build a wall.Some laborer found one faded and stone-cold,And saving that its weight suggested goldAnd tugged it from his first too certain hold,He noticed nothing in it to remark.He was not used to handling stars thrown darkAnd lifeless from an…
Alas, ’tis true, I have gone here and there,And made myself a motley to the view,Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear,Made old offences of affections new.Most true it is that I have looked on truthAskance and strangely. But, by all above,These blenches gave my heart another youth,And worse essays proved thee…
Oh, if a tree could wanderand move with foot and wings!It would not suffer the axe blowsand not the pain of saws! For would the sun not wanderaway in every night ?How could at ev’ry morningthe world be lighted up? And if the ocean’s waterwould not rise to the sky,How would the plants be quickenedby…
And thought of doing something to the shoreThat water never did to land before.The clouds were low and hairy in the skies,Like locks blown forward in the gleam of eyes.You could not tell, and yet it looked as ifThe shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,The cliff in being backed by continent;It looked as…
