Its quiet graves were made for peace till Gabriel blows his horn.
Those wise old elms could hear no cry
Of all that distant agony —
Only the red-winged blackbird, and the rustle of thick ripe corn.
The blue jay, perched upon that bronze, with bright unweeting eye
Could never read the names that signed
The noblest charter of mankind;
But all of them were names we knew beneath our English skies.
Les plantes et les planètes
Au même ciel obáissent ;
Du même soleil les bêtes
Et les hommes se nourrissent ;
Et le mátal dans la mine
Couve l'astre minuscule,
Soufre dont la fleur si fine
Vit en chaque corpuscule.
Naines ou gáantes sont
Poudre et bran jetás loin
Qui sans chute ou frein s'en vont
Aux quatre mondes sans coin
Ni angle, d'anges peuplás,
Mais d'autres disent que non,
Dont les mondes envolás
Seraient comme d'un canon,
The rake is like a wand or fan,
With bamboo springing in a span
To catch the leaves that I amass
In bushels on the evening grass.
I reckon how the wind behaves
And rake them lightly into waves
And rake the waves upon a pile,
Then stop my raking for a while.
Ravished lute, sing to her virgin ears,
Soft notes thy strings repeating;
Plucked harp, whose amorous song she hears,
Tell her the time is fleeting;
Night-tide and my distress of love
O speak, sweet numbers,
That pity her heart may move
Before she slumbers.
Cleanse me of my iniquity
and wash away my sins.
Laugh, Lord, at my obliquity.
In you laughter begins.
Regard this little steeple.
You gave to the High Plains
a flock of sheep, the people
who drink deep when it rains.
I shall number all the stones
Assyria has laid low.
I shall number all my bones
as David did long ago.
Oh, what a troubled route man took,
descending from the trees:
cave paintings and the printed book
made on his bended knees.
Tell me not in mormonful numbers
“Life is but an empty dream!”
To a student of the slumbers
Things are never what they seem.
Life is yearning and suppression;
Life is that to be enjoyed;
Puritanical discretion
Was not spoke by Dr. Freud.
These are the saddest of possible words:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double —
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
“Tinker to Evers to Chance.”
The leaves talked in the twilight, dear;
Hearken the tale they told:
How in some far-off place and year,
Before the world grew old,
I was a dreaming forest tree,
You were a wild, sweet bird
Who sheltered at the heart of me
Because the north wind stirred;
On a backwards-running clock in Lisbon,
By the marble statue of Pessoa;
On an antique astrolabe in London
Tracing out the sky above Samoa,
Thousands of miles away — in time, in place,
Each night conspires to create a myth
That stands for nothing real, yet leaves you with
The vague impression of a human face.
Even if you didn’ t have green eyes (in the bathtub, blue).
Even if you didn’ t have a lovely singing voice,
or care for Alexandrine champagne
some slow Saturday evenings to sing it through,
it pleases me, your lips close to my ear,
or when you’ re a big girl, and I’ m a big girl too.
