Read Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) for Free Online Page B

extinguish sight and speech
Each on each.
    VII
    In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
    And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky,
    Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force –
Gold, of course.
    Oh heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
[80] Earth’s returns
    For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
    With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.

A Lovers’ Quarrel
    I
    Oh, what a dawn of day!
    How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night’s rain,
    And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love’s away!
    I’d as lief that the blue were grey.
    II
    Runnels, which rillets swell,
    Must be dancing down the dell,
[10] With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
    Paven smooth as a hermit’s cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
    Could my Love but attend as well.
    III
    Dearest, three months ago!
    When we lived blocked-up with snow, –
When the wind would edge
In and in his wedge,
    In, as far as the point could go –
[20] Not to our ingle, though,
    Where we loved each the other so!
    IV
    Laughs with so little cause!
    We devised games out of straws.
We would try and trace
One another’s face
    In the ash, as an artist draws;
Free on each other’s flaws,
    How we chattered like two church daws!
    V
    What’s in the ‘Times’? – a scold
    [30] At the Emperor deep and cold;
He has taken a bride
To his gruesome side,
    That’s as fair as himself is bold:
There they sit ermine-stoled,
    And she powders her hair with gold.
    VI
    Fancy the Pampas’ sheen!
    Miles and miles of gold and green
Where the sunflowers blow
In a solid glow,
    [40] And – to break now and then the screen –
Black neck and eyeballs keen,
    Up a wild horse leaps between!
    VII
    Try, will our table turn?
    Lay your hands there light, and yearn
Till the yearning slips
Through the finger-tips
    In a fire which a few discern,
And a very few feel burn,
    And the rest, they may live and learn!
    VIII
    [50] Then we would up and pace,
    For a change, about the place,
Each with arm o’er neck:
’Tis our quarter-deck,
    We are seamen in woeful case.
Help in the ocean-space!
    Or, if no help, we’ll embrace.
    IX
    See, how she looks now, dressed
    In a sledging-cap and vest!
’Tis a huge fur cloak –
[60] Like a reindeer’s yoke
    Falls the lappet along the breast:
Sleeves for her arms to rest,
    Or to hang, as my Love likes best.
    X
    Teach me to flirt a fan
    As the Spanish ladies can,
Or I tint your lip
With a burnt stick’s tip
    And you turn into such a man!
Just the two spots that span
    [70] Half the bill of the young male swan.
    XI
    Dearest, three months ago
    When the mesmerizer Snow
With his hand’s first sweep
Put the earth to sleep:
    ’Twas a time when the heart could show
All – how was earth to know,
    ’Neath the mute hand’s to-and-fro?
    XII
    Dearest, three months ago
    When we loved each other so,
[80] Lived and loved the same
    Till an evening came
    When a shaft from the devil’s bow
Pierced to our ingle-glow,
    And the friends were friend and foe!
    XIII
    Not from the heart beneath –
    ’Twas a bubble born of breath,
Neither sneer nor vaunt,
Nor reproach nor taunt.
    See a word, how it severeth!
[90] Oh, power of life and death
    In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!
    XIV
    Woman, and will you cast
    For a word, quite off at last
Me, your own, your You, –
Since, as truth is true,
    I was You all the happy past –
Me do you leave aghast
    With the memories We amassed?
    XV
    Love, if you knew the light
    [100] That your soul casts in my sight,
How I look to you
For the pure and true
    And the beauteous and the right, –
Bear with a moment’s spite
    When a mere mote threats the white!
    XVI
    What of a hasty word?
    Is the fleshly heart not stirred
By a worm’s pin-prick
Where its roots are quick?
    [110] See the eye, by a fly’s foot blurred –
    Ear, when a straw is heard
    Scratch the brain’s coat of curd!
    XVII
    Foul be the world or fair
    More or less, how