The Hound of Heaven

The Hound of Heaven


Francis Thompson


I FLED Him, down the nights and down the days;
I fled Him, down the arches of the years;
I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways
Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears
I hid from Him, and under running laughter.
Up vistaed hopes I sped;
And shot, precipitated,
Adown Titanic glooms of chasmèd fears,
From those strong Feet that followed, followed after.
But with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
They beat - and a Voice beat
More instant than the Feet -
'All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.'

I pleaded, outlaw-wise,
By many a hearted casement, curtained red,
Trellised with intertwining charities;
(For, though I knew His love Who followèd,
Yet was I sore adread
Lest, having Him, I must have naught beside).
But, if one little casement parted wide,
The gust of His approach would clash it to.
Fear wist not to evade, as Love wist to pursue.
Across the margent of the world I fled,
And troubled the gold gateways of the stars,
Smiting for shelter on their clangèd bars;
Fretted to dulcet jars
And silvern chatter the pale ports o' the moon.
I said to Dawn: Be sudden-to Eve: Be soon;
With thy young skiey blossoms heap me over
From this tremendous Lover-
Float thy vague veil about me, lest He see!
I tempted all His servitors, but to find
My own betrayal in their constancy,
In faith to Him their fickleness to me,
Their traitorous trueness, and their loyal deceit.
To all swift things for swiftness did I sue;
Clung to the whistling mane of every wind.
But whether they swept, smoothly fleet,
The long savannahs of the blue;
Or whether, Thunder-driven,
They clanged his chariot 'thwart a heaven,
Plashy with flying lightnings round the spurn o' their feet:-
Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue.
Still with unhurrying chase,
And unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,
Came on the following Feet,
And a Voice above their beat-
'Naught shelters thee, who wilt not shelter Me.'

I sought no more that after which I strayed
In face of man or maid;
But still within the little children's eyes
Seems something, something that replies,
They at least are for me, surely for me!
I turned me to them very wistfully;
But just as their young eyes grew sudden fair
With dawning answers there,
Their angel plucked them from me by the hair.
'Come then, ye other children, Nature's-share
With me' (said I) 'your delicate fellowship;
Let me greet you lip to lip,
Let me twine with you caresses,
Wantoning
With our Lady-Mother's vagrant tresses,
Banqueting
With her in her wind-walled palace,
Underneath her azured daïs,
Quaffing, as your taintless way is,
From a chalice
Lucent-weeping out of the dayspring.'
So it was done:
I in their delicate fellowship was one-
Drew the bolt of Nature's secrecies.
I knew all the swift importings
On the wilful face of skies;
I knew how the clouds arise
Spumèd of the wild sea-snortings;
All that's born or dies
Rose and drooped with; made them shapers
Of mine own moods, or wailful or divine;
With them joyed and was bereaven.
I was heavy with the even,
When she lit her glimmering tapers
Round the days dead sanctities.
I laughed in the morning's eyes.
I triumphed and I saddened with all weather,
Heaven and I wept together,
And its sweet tears were salt with mortal mine;
Against the red throb of its sunset-heart
I laid my own to beat,
And share commingling heat;
But not by that, by that, was eased my human smart.
In vain my tears were wet on Heaven's grey cheek.
For ah! we know not what each other says,
These things and I; in sound I speak-
Their sound is but their stir, they speak by silences.
Nature, poor stepdame, cannot slake my drouth;
Let her, if she would owe me,
Drop yon blue bosom-veil of sky, and show me
The breasts o' her tenderness:
Never did any milk of hers once bless
My thirsting mouth.
Nigh and nigh draws the chase,
With unperturbèd pace,
Deliberate speed, majestic instancy;
And past those noisèd Feet
A voice comes yet more fleet-
'Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me!'
Naked I wait Thy love's uplifted stroke!
My harness piece by piece Thou hast hewn from me,
And smitten me to my knee;
I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
In the rash lustihead of my young powers,
I shook the pillaring hours
And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears,
I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years-
My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap.
My days have crackled and gone up in smoke,
Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream.
Yea, faileth now even dream
The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist;
Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist
I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist,
Are yielding; cords of all too weak account
For earth with heavy griefs so overplussed.
Ah! is Thy love indeed
A weed, albeit an amaranthine weed,
Suffering no flowers except its own to mount?
Ah! must-
Designer infinite!-
Ah! must Thou char the wood ere Thou canst limn with it?
My freshness spent its wavering shower i' the dust;
And now my heart is as a broken fount,
Wherein tear-drippings stagnate, spilt down ever
From the dank thoughts that shiver
Upon the sighful branches of my mind.
Such is; what is to be?
The pulp so bitter, how shall taste the rind?
I dimly guess what Time in mists confounds;
Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds
From the hid battlements of Eternity;
Those shaken mists a space unsettle, then
Round the half-glimpsèd turrets slowly wash again.
But not ere him who summoneth
I first have seen, enwound
With glooming robes purpureal, cypress-crowned;
His name I know, and what his trumpet saith.
Whether man's heart or life it be which yields
Thee harvest, must Thy harvest-fields
Be dunged with rotten death?

Now of that long pursuit
Comes on at hand the bruit;
That Voice is round me like a bursting sea:
'And is thy earth so marred,
Shattered in shard on shard?
Lo, all things fly thee, for thou fliest Me!
Strange, piteous, futile thing!
Wherefore should any set thee love apart?
Seeing none but I makes much of naught' (He said),
'And human love needs human meriting:
How hast thou merited-
Of all man's clotted clay the dingiest clot?
Alack, thou knowest not
How little worthy of any love thou art!
Whom wilt thou find to love ignoble thee,
Save Me, save only Me?
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home:
Rise, clasp My hand, and come!'
Halts by me that footfall:
Is my gloom, after all,
Shade of His hand, outstretched caressingly?
'Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest,
I am He Whom thou seekest!
Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me.'

The Sorrow of God

Courtesy of BW3, a beautiful and simple Cockney poem called The Sorrow of God: A Sermon in a Billet. My favorite parts:

But what if 'E came to the earth to show,
By the paths o' pain that 'E trod,
The blistering flame of eternal shame
That burns in the heart o' God?

For the voice of the Lord, as I 'ears it now,
Is the voice of my pals what bled,
And the call of my country's God to me
Is the call of my country's dead.

The Last Day

From this collection of poems:

The Last Day


Kevin Hart


When the last day comes
A ploughman in Europe will look over his shoulder
And see the hard furrows of earth
Finally behind him, he will watch his shadow
Run back into his spine.

It will be morning
For the first time, and the long night
Will be seen for what it is,
A black flag trembling in the sunlight.
On the last day

Our stories will be rewritten
Each from the end,
And each will hear the fields and rivers clap
And under the trees

Old bones
Will cover themselves with flesh;
Spears, bullets, will pluck themselves
From wounds already healed,
Women will clasp their sons as men

And men will look
Into their palms and find them empty;
There will be time
For us to say the right things at last,
To look into our enemy’s face

And see ourselves,
Forgiven now, before the books flower in flames,
The mirrors return our faces,
And everything is stripped from us,
Even our names.

(Hat tip to RB.)

To Create an Enemy

To Create an Enemy


Sam Keen


To create an enemy
Start with an empty canvas.
Sketch in broad outline the forms of
men, women, and children.
Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.
Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,
fears that play through the kaleidoscope of
every finite heart.
Twist the smile until it forms the downward
arc of cruelty.
Exaggerate each feature until man is
metamorphasized into beast, vermin, insect.
Fill in the background with malignant
figures from ancient nightmares - devils,
demons, minions of evil.
When your icon of the enemy is complete
you will be able to kill without guilt,
slaughter without shame.

(Hat tip to RB.)

Andúril

Andúril

Would thy beauty be lost forevermore,
If thou wast reforged again?
Or would thy glory be restored
Every day until the end?

Would some metal disappear with every fix?
Is the cut too deep to mend?
Or could mettle be added to the mix
Until the perfect descends?

What if the sword n'er were wrought
With gold so great to heal?
What if its life is merely bought
With refinement as its seal?

What is grace that we can be
Reforged, refined each day?
The perfect never, but we can see
His glory bestowed our way.

A Woman's Question

A Woman's Question


Lena Lathrop


Do you know you have asked for the costliest thing
Ever made by the Hand above?
A woman's heart, and a woman's life-
And a woman's wonderful love.

Do you know you have asked for this priceless thing
As a child might ask for a toy?
Demanding what others have died to win,
With the reckless dash of a boy.

You have written my lesson of duty out,
Manlike, you have questioned me.
Now stand at the bars of my woman's soul
Until I shall question thee.
You require your mutton shall always be hot,
Your socks and your shirt be whole;
I require your heart be true as God's stars
And as pure as His heaven your soul.

Your require a cook for your mutton and beef,
I require a far greater thing;
A seamstress you're wanting for socks and shirts-
I look for a man and a king.

A king for the beautiful realm called Home,
And a man that his Maker, God,
Shall look upon as He did on the first
And say: "It is very good."

I am fair and young, but the rose may fade
From this soft young cheek one day;
Will you love me then 'mid the falling leaves,
As you did 'mong the blossoms of May?

Is your heart an ocean so strong and true,
I may launch my all on its tide?
A loving woman finds heaven or hell
On the day she is made a bride.

I require all things that are grand and true,
All things that a man should be;
If you give this all, I would stake my life
To be all you demand of me.

If you cannot be this, a laundress and cook
You can hire and little to pay;
But a woman's heart and a woman's life
Are not to be won that way.

Poem From a Slain Soldier

A poem written by an anonymous soldier killed in World War I:

If it be all for naught, for nothingness
At last, why does God make the world so fair?
Why spill this golden splendor out across
The western hills, and light the silver lamp
Of eve? Why give me eyes to see, and soul
To love so strong and deep? Then, with a pang
This brightness stabs me through, and wakes within
Rebellious voice to cry against all death?
Why set this hunger for eternity
To gnaw my heartstrings through, if death ends all?
If death ends all, then evil must be good,
Wrong must be right, and beauty ugliness.
God is a Judas who betrays His Son,
And with a kiss, damns all the world to hell,-
If Christ rose not again.

Sayers on God's Way

From Dorothy Sayers' The Devil to Pay:

Hard it is, very hard,
To travel up the slow and stony road
To Calvary, to redeem mankind; far better
To make but one resplendent miracle,
Lean through the cloud, lift the right hand of power
And with a sudden lightning smite the world perfect.
Yet this was not God's way, Who had the power,
But set it by, choosing the cross, the thorn,
The sorrowful wounds. Something there is, perhaps,
That power destroys in passing, something supreme,
To whose great value in the eyes of God
That cross, that thorn, and those five wounds bear witness.

The Appeal of the Gold Star Mother

The Appeal of the Gold Star Mother


Alexander M. Sullivan


To him the call in life's morning,
He whispered a fervent adieu,
He followed the flag of his country,
Far away as she knew he would do.
Somewhere by a hill or valley,
Stands a cross o'er the grave that he won,
In that place where the ivy is clinging,
Let the mother draw close to her son.

Let her gaze on the white cross above him,
Marking his flower-decked bed,
Let her kneel where he fell in his glory,
And pray where the laddie lies dead.
Let her weep where the sod rise o'er him,
Like a canopy fit for the true,
Let her pour out the love a mother,
And receive consolation anew.

Not long may she linger beside him,
But happy in heart she will be,
With green sod, the cross and the ivy
Entwined in sweet memory.
Back home in the land that he died for,
She will think of her pride and her joy,
And in fancy she'll see a red poppy,
Abloom on the grave of her boy.

I came across this while doing some research on soldiers. It's incredible how we often forget how much soldiers truly sacrifice for us. Their love is the kind of self-sacrificing, Christ-like love for which we should all strive, and their level of disciple is absolutely admirable.

Owen on War

From Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est":

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Two More Poems

Two very unrelated poems. The first is Down by the Salley Gardens, by Yeats. (The Wikipedia blurb about it is interesting.)

Down by the Salley Gardens

William Butler Yeats


Down by the sally gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the sally gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I being young and foolish with her did not agree.

In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she laid her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.

The second poem is more religious in nature. John Updike, not coincidentally, passed away a couple days ago.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

John Hoyer Updike


Make no mistake: if He rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
Reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
Each soft Spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
Eyes of the eleven apostles;
It was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
The same valved heart
That — pierced — died, withered, paused, and then
Regathered out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
Faded credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
Grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
Opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
Embarrassed by the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.

Thoughts

(Hat tip to Ms. Jacoby.) The author was a missionary to India.

Hast Thou No Scar?
Amy Carmichael


Hast thou no scar?
No hidden scar on foot, or side, or hand?
I hear thee sung as mighty in the land;
I hear them hail thy bright, ascendant star.
Hast thou no scar?

Hast thou no wound?
Yet I was wounded by the archers; spent,
Leaned Me against a tree to die; and rent
By ravening beasts that compassed Me, I swooned.
Hast thou no wound?

No wound? No scar?
Yet, as the Master shall the servant be,
And piercèd are the feet that follow Me.
But thine are whole; can he have followed far
Who hast no wound or scar?

And an adaptation of a passage from a book written by James Francis:

"He was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant woman. He grew up in another obscure village, where He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty. Then for three years He was an itinerant preacher.

He never had a family or owned a home. He never set foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place He was born. He never wrote a book, or held an office. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness.

While He was still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him. His friends deserted Him. He was turned over to His enemies, and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While He was dying, His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had - His coat.

When He was dead, He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today He is the central figure for much of the human race. All the armies that ever marched, and all the navies that ever sailed, and all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as this one solitary life."

Let My Love a Martyr Be

It kind of switches between trochaic and iambic meter...

Let My Love a Martyr Be


Let my Love a martyr be.
Tho' She must die, yet let Her suffer
Swiftly Her ignominy.
If Love must then be snatched from me,

Thrash Her 'pon the stagger'd rocks,
Her doom, to shatter instantly,
Not to drown in placid waters
Chok'd by the deceptive sleep.

Oh! I may smile and be content
If ends be quick and quickly rent,
Or ardent, bright, and brilliant-wrought –
That Love be lost, but not forgot.

But Love, I fear Thy last demise
Shall softly swoop in grim attire,
In noiseless dark and secrecy.
Thou'll never boast of starréd skies

To hail Thee at Thy final hour!
Nay, Love, when come the dying days,
Thy bearers shall unlearn Thy art
And dooméd men forsake Thy ways.

Whence this awful, ghastly price?
Was Death too bleak to bravely win
Or Life too sweet to sacrifice
For Love, snow-white and free from sin?

Yet ours is not to die for Thee,
Dear Love, but is to watch instead
As Thou are slowly crucified –
To gaze upon Thy sacred head.

So I pray to God and Fate:
Grant not Love a silent Death!
Leave Her desp'rate, bold and proud!
Meet Her at the final breath!

For Death and Time are twain and sure
And silence is their last domain.
But Love, thy Death-cry, sweet and pure,
May pierce and vanquish e'en their reign...

Some Sonnets

A couple more sonnets. The first is the one I did for the Literary Fair. I had to write it in forty minutes, so it's overly grandiloquent on purpose. The second one here is kind of random; I wrote it, as a joke, for the door of my host at Boston College. My other sonnets are here.

10. This World Alone


This world alone doth not suffice.
My silent, everlasting grief
Cannot be quelled by mortal vice,
By joys too rare, too mild, too brief!
Oh! Were I ancient as the Earth,
My life is still a passing mist,
For it shall end. And what's Life worth
That's past, forgotten, gone, Death-kiss'd?
Would I could conquer Time's offense
And glance upon the evermore!
All else is but a vain pretense.
I seek a new celestial shore!
But Life is naught; my Death is sure.
And I must ask, "Doth aught endure?"

11. Poema Nicolai


Dear Stranger, Heed my caveat
Before the threshold Thou wouldst cross!
Lo! those who do departeth not.
They know 'twould be but to their loss.
For chancing 'pon our fam'd estate,
Escapest Thou Thine Earthly plane
And soarest past the pearly gate.
We live within the heav'nly fane!
Here, worlds are rent at our command,
The Sun is swallowed by the shade
And muses, form'd of shifting sand,
Perform th'eternal serenade
While gods assembled roll and rock.
But prithee, Ere Thou ent'rest, knock!

Ode on a Grecian Urn

This is a great poem...if you understand the premise. Unlike many poems, the title actually means something; the poet is observing a Grecian urn and reflecting on the figures painted upon it. Once I figured that out, I realized that this was a beautiful poem.

(There are specific indentations for this poem, but Blogspot won't let me recreate them. Go here to see what I mean.)

Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats


Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loath?
What mad pursuit? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit deities of no tone.
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unweariéd,
Forever piping songs forever new;
Moreo happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands dressed?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity. Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Holy Sonnet 10

John Gunther's Death Be Not Proud was named after this poem.

Holy Sonnet 10

John Donne


Death, be not proud, though some have calléd thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, not yet cant thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

She Walks in Beauty

She Walks in Beauty

George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron


She walks in beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.

One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!

Sonnets

1. This Maiden I Hath Never Met


Her shadows flicker, flit across
My gaze, and I, by Love's chains bound,
Am summon'd and my soul is toss'd
Into the Hunt. And as the hound
May whimper at the distant sighs
Of Death, who's hid yet 'neath His veil,
I augur ill her looming eyes
Which linger, reason to assail.
Embark I thence to vain pursue
This dread-wench, daughter of my mind.
Fair Cupid ne'er his arrow drew
So sure as this, which struck me blind
That I, love-curséd, shan't forget
This maiden I hath never met.

2. The Rose's Sheen


A wizened stranger, gray and mad
Pursued me on the narrow way.
Bare-scalp'd, his hoary frame unclad,
He sought my tragic heart to sway.
"Hast Beauty thou espied?" quoth he,
"It's naught but phantom tricks and spells
That crazéd men in cages see.
'Tis heaven dream'd in mortal hells."
Yet clement stream the Sun’s swift rays
Tho’ I by bleakest night subsist.
I cherish, through Time’s ebon haze,
All crimson lips I never kiss’d.
There’s beauty in the rose’s sheen
Though undertrod, by eyes unseen.

3. For Thee Alone


Ere dawn'd the Sun or wax'd the Moon,
When Death no man had ever touch'd,
Before the firmaments were strewn
With stars and spheres in orbits clutch'd,
I loved thee then. And tho' my mind
Rememb'reth not past mother's womb
Nor scrieth futures undivin'd
Nor seeth aught but present doom,
Yet swear I still, by all who dar'd
To know where knowledge can't be prov'd,
Ere e'en I breath'd, my heart was bar'd
For thee alone; by thee it's sooth'd.
This love I hazard to believe
Years ne'er can quell nor Time conceive.

4. A Thousand Gentle Words


A thousand gentle words I spake
To her. And to her I profess'd
A steadfast ardor naught could break.
My passion's truth I oft confess'd.
Yet crooked corners of my soul
In surety could not confide.
And tho' I sought her to extol,
Doubt's shadow with me e'er would glide.
This dubious nether-shade is kin
To hanging fruit and ebbing drink
Which Tantalus could never win.
Thus is my curse. That it would shrink
Away from me! My life I'd give
An* I'd avert Doubt's somber sieve.*

Used as an archaic form of "If."

5. The Master Self-Proclaim'd


This man, whose name I hath forgot,
The master self-proclaim'd o'er Fate.
And She to him denieth not
His fantasies, but now will wait
For lies to snare him. Blinded by
Her patient schemes, he's soon away
To vanquish all beneath the sky.
A king of kings! All mortals stray
To him, and awestruck gods avow
His might. Yet Fate shall judgment mete.
He'll fall, and doth it matter how
Her doom upon him be complete?
Whe'er plague or sword or noose his bane,
'Tis by his slave the master's slain.

6. What's Love?


What's Love? A thousand quills could scribe
A thousand scrolls and ne'er impart
Her truer meaning, nor describe
Her mien. Eludeth She their art
And countless lies of Her are said.
In Life's immortal drama, She
By Passion's often play'd instead.
Love's shy, and mortals seldom see
Her unconceal'd. Yet I'll aspire
To meet Her whilst She may be found
Before I to the grave retire.
Against all hope, my hopes abound.
For paths to Her whom I await
Are clear, unwinding, ever-straight...

7. The Sharpest Thorn


And thou'rt the scarlet rose I've grasp'd,
Thy thorns and petals intertwin'd.
Thou, maiden whom my heart hath clasp'd,
Mayst carelessly, with half a mind,
Disarm me with thine angel-eyes
Or slay me with a languid stare.
Thy laughter, 'tis my paradise!
Yet scowl, and thou art my despair.
My fragile spirit can't contend
With thee. Thy beauty's far too fair,
Thy charms too sweet. Can man defend
Against thee? Let him now beware!
The sharpest, vilest, meanest thorn
Thee, brightest rose, will e'er adorn.

8. A Hand Well Play'd


There is a lass in ev'ry dale
Whose beauty all the lads would swear
Is peerless. They shall never fail
To praise her form, her grace, her hair
And all her fairest features. Each
Will call her when she passeth by.
Before she's met they'll beg and preach
Their love to her, who's young and spry
And nameless, for they know her not.
As seasons bloom and briskly fade,
So is she swiftly, soon forgot.
For them, she's but a hand well play'd.
Their Love to other maids they'll lend
But never give nor comprehend.

9. The Heart's Deceit


The heart's deceit's above all things.
What else on earth could imitate
Its Siren-calls, which draw all kings
And men? I'd suffer Hell's black gate
To cross ere suffer Love to lose.
Or so I say, for She's a sly
And tricky beast. A wily muse
Is Love, Whose truth is oft a lie.
Oh! Rarer than a summer frost
And sweeter than a fragrant kiss
Is Love that's true. It hath no cost
Too great to meet. What woe to miss
This Love so lovely to behold!
Unfading, timeless, clear and bold...