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After Li Po
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones,
The labor of an age in pilèd stones,
Or that his hallowed relics should be hid
I think I should have loved you presently,
And given in earnest words I flung in jest;
And lifted honest eyes for you to see,
Mr. Kessler, you know, was in the army,
And he drew six dollars a month as a pension,
And stood on the corner talking politics,
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight darkens, the curlew calls;
Along the sea-sands damp and brown
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
Jenny kissed me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
Gather ye rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
I
The winter evening settles down
With smell of steaks in passageways.
O quam te memorem virgo...
Stand on the highest pavement of the stair —
Lean on a garden urn —
There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
So, we’ll go no more a roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving,
