Read Collected Poems for Free Online Page B

ease.
                             O little, brown minores,
    Come — let’s skip the text! But after it
    In any well-conducted sermon comes, you know,
    The exhortation. Now I should proclaim
    The evil of your lives and urge repentance!
    When summer dawn is here? and only choristers?
                             How may it be?
        What evils may I warn your hearts against?
                   What words of guidance give?
        None come to me.… No ownership is yours,
    But winds and trees and evening waters and the sun
        Are yours in largesse, without counterclaim —
    The eighth commandment was not meant for you!
    I would not coax you from your ways of lechery;
                             For not your will, but God’s,
    Fills all the April air with mating and the chirp
        Of love. Obedient be to His good season.
                   I think ye do no murder, yet —
        Sometimes it grieves my very soul to see
    The lesser brethren fly your swift pursuit.
    If God directed so you take your livelihood,
    ’Tis well, but spare, I pray, their tiny span of bliss
        If food less petulent may serve instead;
        Nor their destruction ever make your sport.
                   Little children, no rebuke is meant;
                             I only pray your gentleness.…
                   Indeed, indeed, He set your flight
        Above the paths of sin! Advise? conjure?
                   I do you wrong. Rather, I think,
        He put it in your hearts to come to me
                             Not judging I could give
        Morsel of help or little twig of truth,
    But that the comfort of your presence might be mine.
        For sometimes, little brethren of the woods,
        We, in the common world beneath your trees,
        So clearly see the weakness and the sin about,
                   That only them we see, and we forget
    The holiness that still persists, the light, yea, God, Himself!
                   Belike He feared for me such hour,
        And in His care sent you, His seraphs of the trees.
        For you, tho’ of the world, share not its taint,
                             Nor breathe nor know its sin.
                   If we lived so, the sudden curve
                   And anxious fanning of soft plumes
                             Would stir our bending heads,
    And off we’d fly to — to that same mustard tree of yours!
                                            Was ever such a sermon?
                                            I, no text; no morals, you!
        Let’s call it then no sermon, but instead
    I’ll sit within the shadow of this tree
                             With you companionably close,
    And while the hoyden breeze on emerald wings
    Lets through the shimmering lances of the sun,
    And hums aloud for wantonness — we’ll gossip!
                             Oh, not of sin or other grave concern,
    But right familiarly of what we know — His life.
                                            Saints! what a fluttering
                                            And sparkle of expectancy!
                             Upon my lap at last, robin of mine?
                             ‘Twas thus about His knees that day
                             The children came and begged for tales,
                             Vexing poor Matthew, and bequeathing us
                             His