Goodness, a New Post!

Where has the horse gone? Where the young warrior? Where is the giver of treasure?
What has become of the feasting seats? Where are the joys of the hall?
Alas, the bright cup! Alas, the mailed warrior! Alas, the prince's glory!
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Here wealth is fleeting, her friend is fleeting, here man is fleeting, here woman is fleeting--
All this earthly habitation shall be emptied.

Come live with me and be my love
And we shall all the pleasures prove.

Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burned the topless towers of Illium?

That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang

Never, never, never, never, never!

Divorce me, untie or break that knot again;
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Which freely drink to your lord's health,
Then to the plow (the common-wealth),
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To the rough sickle and crook'd scythe,
Drink frolic boys, till all be blithe.
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And you must know, your lord's word true
Feed him ye must whose food fills you,
And that this pleasure is like rain,
Not sent ye for to drown your pain
But for to make it spring again.

Me miserable! which way shall I fly
Infinite wrath, and infinite despair?
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell;

True ease in writing comes from art not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.

Nor public flame, nor private, dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire, Chaos is restored;
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall;
And universal darkness buries all.

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Awaits alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
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Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust,
Or Flattery soothe the dull cold ear of Death?
[stanza]
Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
Or waked to ecstacy the living lyre.

For tenthly he goes in quest of food.
For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbor.
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For he can tread to all the measures upon the music.
For he can swim for life.
For he can creep.

We perished, each alone;
But I beneath a rougher sea,
And whelmed in deeper gulfs than he.

O Rose, thou art sick!
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
[stanza]
Has found out thy bed
Of crimson joy,
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy.

And if the Babe is born a Boy
He's given to a Woman Old,
Who nails him down upon a rock,
Catches his Shrieks in Cups of gold.

In truth the prison, into which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is:

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

And no birds sing.

So that her highborn kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,

But in her web she still delights
To weave the mirror's magic sights,
For often through the silent nights
A funeral, with plumes and lights
And music, went to Camelot:
Or when the moon was overhead,
Came two lovers lately wed;
"I am half sick of shadows," said
The lady of Shalott.

Look'd up in perfect silence at the stars.

Wild nights - Wild nights!
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Rowing in Eden -
Ah - the Sea!
Might I but moor - tonight -
In thee!

There is a certain slant of light,
Winter afternoons -
That oppresses like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes -

I like a look of Agony,
Because I know it's true -
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The Beads upon the Forehead
By homely Anguish strung.

For I have but the power to kill,
Without - the power to die -

But never met this Fellow
Attended or alone
Without a tighter Breathing
And Zero at the Bone.

"And has thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."

About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.

And only by one's going slightly taut
In the capriciousness of summer air
Is of the slightest bondage made aware.

No more to build on there. And they, since they
Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.

O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

Petals on a wet, black bough

We are the guardians of the gate in the rock,
The Two
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Something is going to fall like rain
And it won't be flowers.
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This might happen any day;
So be careful what you say
And do;
Be clean, be tidy, oil the lock,
Weed the garden, wind the clock;
Remember the Two.

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
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In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I'd have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
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And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm.

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
Time held me green and dying
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
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Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way

And now is quiet in the tomb as now
Explodes inside the sun, and it is now
In the saddle of space, where argosies of dust
Sail outward blazing, and the mind of God
The flash across the gap of being thinks
In the instant absence of forever: now.

"Oh Charlie, won't we ever rest?"
"What's your hurry?" Charlie said.

That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.

I almost love you
but would have cast, I know,
the stones of silence.
I am the artful voyeur
[stanza]
of your brain's exposed
and darkened combs,
your muscles webbing
and all your numbered bones:

Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever
next to each other on the same line inside a poem,
A small chapel where weddings like these,
between perfect strangers, can take place.

Shall we dress in skin,
our living linen?
bone weft
pull of masculine
into feminine,
the heft
the warp, weave and spin
of carded days in....