Long have I long’ d to see my love againe,
Still have I wisht, but never could obtaine it;
Rather than all the world (if I might gaine it)
Would I desire my love’ s sweet precious gaine.
Yet in my soule I see him everie day,
See him, and see his still sterne countenaunce,
But (ah) what is of long continuance,
Where majestie and beautie beares the sway?
Sometimes, when I imagine that I see him,
’ Tis now since I began to die
Four months, yet still I gasping live;
Wrapp’ d up in sorrow do I lie,
Hoping, yet doubting a reprieve.
Adam from Paradise expell’ d
Just such a wretched being held.
’ Tis not thy love I fear to lose,
That will in spite of absence hold;
But ’ tis the benefit and use
Is lost, as in imprison’ d gold:
Which though the sum be ne’ er so great,
Enriches nothing but conceit.
Why so pale and wan fond lover?
Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can’ t move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee why so pale?
Why so dull and mute young sinner?
Prithee why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can’ t win her,
Saying nothing do’ t?
Prithee why so mute?
Again this morning my eyes woke up too close
to your eyes,
their almost green orbs
too heavy-lidded to really look back.
To wake up next to you
is ordinary. I do not even need to look at you
to see you.
But I do look. So when you come to me
in your opulent sadness, I see
you do not want me
to unbutton you
so I cannot do the one thing
I can do.
Now it is almost one a. m. I am still at my desk
and you are upstairs at your desk a staircase
away from me. Already it is years
Reader unmov’ d and Reader unshaken, Reader unseduc’ d
and unterrified, through the long-loud and the sweet-still
I creep toward you. Toward you, I thistle and I climb.
I crawl, Reader, servile and cervine, through this blank
season, counting — I sleep and I sleep. I sleep,
Reader, toward you, loud as a cloud and deaf, Reader, deaf
One must be brave to live through
a day. What remains
is nothing but the pleasure of longing — very precious.
Longing
purifies as does flying, strengthens as does an effort,
it fashions the soul
as work
fashions the belly.
It is like an athlete, like a runner
who will never
stop running. And this
gives him endurance.
You couples lying
where moon-scythes and day-scythes reaped you,
browning fruit falls and sleeps
in tangled nests, the wild grass,
falls from your apple tree that still grows here:
cry for your dead hero, his weak sword, his flight,
that you were slaughtered and your bed poured whiteness,
the issue of murdered marriage dawns.
The streets crack, a house falls open to the air,
sun and rain lie on the bed.
And the river still runs in a child’ s hands
under the factory’ s black hulk,
If no one ever marries me, —
And I don't see why they should,
For nurse says I'm not pretty,
And I'm seldom very good —
If no one ever marries me
I shan't mind very much;
I shall buy a squirrel in a cage,
And a little rabbit-hutch:
I shall have a cottage near a wood,
And a pony all my own,
And a little lamb quite clean and tame,
That I can take to town:
And when I'm getting really old, —
At twenty-eight or nine —
I shall buy a little orphan-girl
And bring her up as mine.
Kind are her answers,
But her performance keeps no day;
Breaks time, as dancers
From their own music when they stray:
All her free favors
And smooth words wing my hopes in vain.
O did ever voice so sweet but only feign?
Can true love yield such delay,
Converting joy to pain?
Go wailing verse, the infants of my love,
Minerva-like, brought forth without a Mother:
Present the image of the cares I prove,
Witness your Father’s grief exceeds all other.
Sigh out a story of her cruel deeds,
With interrupted accents of despair:
A monument that whosoever reads,
May justly praise, and blame my loveless Fair.
Say her disdain hath dried up my blood,
And starved you, in succours still denying:
Press to her eyes, importune me some good;
Waken her sleeping pity with your crying.
