How hot the scent is of the summer rose,

How dreadful the black wastes of evening sky,

How dreadful the tall soldiers drumming by.

But we have speech, to chill the angry day,

And speech, to dull the rose’s cruel scent.

We spell away the overhanging night,

We spell away the soldiers and the fright.

There’s a cool web of language winds us in,

Retreat from too much joy or too much fear:

We grow sea-green at last and coldly die

In brininess and volubility.

But if we let our tongues lose self-possession,

Throwing off language and its watery clasp

Before our death, instead of when death comes,

Facing the wide glare of the children’s day.

Facing the rose, the dark sky and the drums,

We shall go mad no doubt and die that way.

He can watch a grass or leaf

Every instant grow; he can

Clearly through a flint wall see,

Or watch the startled spirit flee

From the throat of a dead man.

Across two counties he can hear

And catch your words before you speak.

The woodlouse or the maggot’s weak

Clamor rings in his sad ear,

And noise so slight it would surpass

Credence—drinking sound of grass,

Worm talk, clashing jaws of moth

Chumbling holes in cloth;

The groan of ants who undertake

Gigantic loads for honor’s sake

(Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin);

Whir of spiders when they spin,

And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs

Of idle grubs and flies.

This man is quickened so with grief,

He wanders god-like or like thief

Inside and out, below, above,

Without relief seeking lost love.

Of the greatness, rareness, muchness,

Fewness of this precious only

Endless world in which you say

You live, you think of things like this:

Blocks of slate enclosing dappled

Red and green, enclosing tawny

Yellow nets, enclosing white

And black acres of dominoes,

Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.

In the parcel a small island,

On the island a large tree,

On the tree a husky fruit.

Strip the husk and pare the rind off:

In the kernel you will see

Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled

Red and green, enclosed by tawny

Yellow nets, enclosed by white

And black acres of dominoes,

Where the same brown paper parcel—

Children, leave the string alone!

For who dares undo the parcel

Finds himself at once inside it,

On the island, in the fruit,

Blocks of slate about his head,

Finds himself enclosed by dappled

Green and red, enclosed by yellow

Tawny nets, enclosed by black to

And white acres of dominoes,

With the same brown paper parcel

Still unopened on his knee.

And, if he then should dare to think

Of the fewness, muchness, rareness,

Is Greatness of this endless only

Precious world in which he says

He lives—he then unties the string.

Oh, time too swift, oh, swiftness never ceasing!
His youth ‘gainst time and age hath ever spurned,

But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing.

Beauty, strength, youth, are flowers but fading seen;

Duty, faith, love, are roots, and ever green.

His helmet now shall make a hive for bees,

And lover’s sonnets turned to holy psalms,

A man-at-arms must now serve on his knees,

And feed on prayers, which are age his’ alms;

But though from court to cottage he depart,

His saint is sure of his unspotted heart.

And when he saddest sits in homely cell,

He’ll teach his swains this carol for a song:
Blest be the hearts that wish my sovereign well,

Cursed be the souls that think her any wrong!

Goddess, allow this aged man his right,

To be your beadsman now, that was your knight.

When As the Rye Reach to the Chin

When as the rye reach to the chin,

And chopcherry, chopcherry ripe within,

Strawberries swimming in the cream,

And schoolboys playing in the stream;

Then O, then O, then O my truelove said,

Till that time come again

She could not live a maid.

Hot Sun, Cool Fire

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,

Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair.

Shine, sun; burn, fire; breathe, air, and ease me;

Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me.

Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning;

Make not my glad cause cause of mourning.

Let not my beauty’s fire

Inflame unstaid desire,

Nor pierce any bright eye

That wandereth lightly.

That the dear she might take some pleasure of my pain,

Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,

Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe:

Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain,

Oft turning others’ leaves, to see if thence would flow

Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburned brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay;

Invention, Nature’s child, fled stepdame Study’s blows;

And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way.

Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes,

Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite:

“Fool,” said my Muse to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”

Alas, have I not pain enough, my friend,

Upon whose breast a fiercer gripe doth tire

Than did on him who first stale down the fire,”

While Love on me cloth all his quiver spend,

But with your rhubarb words you must contend

To grieve me worse, in saying that Desire

Doth plunge my well-formed soul even in the mire

Of sinful thoughts, which do in ruin end?

If that be sin which doth the manners frame,’

Well stayed with truth in word and faith of deed,

Ready of wit, and fearing naught but shame;

If that be sin which in fixed hearts doth breed

A loathing of all loose unchastity,

Then love is sin, and let me sinful be.

The wisest scholar of the wight most wise

By Phoebus’ doom, with sugared sentence says

That Virtue, if it once met with our eyes,

Strange flames of love it in our souls would raise;

I on my horse, and Love on me, doth try

Our horsemanships, while by strange work I prove

A horseman to my horse, a horse to Love,

And now man’s wrongs in me, poor beast, descry.

The reins where with my rider doth me tie

Are humbled thoughts, which bit of reverence move,

Curbed in with fear, but with gilt boss above

Of hope, which makes it seem fair to the eye.

The wand is will; thou, fancy, saddle art,

Girt fast by memory; and while I spur

My horse, he spurs with sharp desire my heart;

He sits me fast, however I do stir;

And now bath made me to his hand so right

That in the manage9 myself takes delight.

Who will in fairest book of Nature know

How virtue may best lodged in beauty be,

Let him but learn of love to read in thee,

Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show.

There shall he find all vices’ overthrow,

Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty

Of reason, from whose light those night birds fly,

That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so.

And, not content to be perfection’s heir

Thyself, dost strive all minds that way to move,

Who mark in thee what is in thee most fair.

So while thy beauty draws the heart to love,

As fast thy virtue bends that love to good.

“But ah,” Desire still cries, “give me some food.”

Unto her rested sense a perfect waking,

While late bare earth, proud of new clothing, springeth,

Sings out her woes, a thorn her song-book making,

And mournfully bewailing,

Her throat in tunes expresseth

What grief her breast oppresseth

For Tereus’ force on her chaste will prevailing.

Oh Philomela fair, Oh take some gladness,

That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness:

Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;

Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart irvadeth.

Alas, she bath no other cause of anguish

But Tereus’ love, on her by strong hand wroken,

Wherein she suffering, all her spirits languish;

Full womanlike complains her will was broken.

But I, who daily craving,

Cannot have to content me,

Have more cause to lament me,

Since wanting is more woe than too much having.

O Philomela fair, O take some gladness,

That here is juster cause of plaintful sadness:

Thine earth now springs, mine fadeth;

Thy thorn without, my thorn my heart invadeth.

For Love is dead.

All Love is dead, infected

With plague of deep disdain;

Worth as naught worth rejected,

And Faith fair scorns doth gain.

From so ungrateful fancy,

From such a female franzy,

From them that use men thus,

Good Lord, deliver us!

Weep, neighbors, weep; do you not hear it said

That Love is dead?

His deathbed peacock’s folly,

His winding sheet is shame,

His will false-seeming holy,

His sole exec’tor blame.

From so ungrateful . . .

Let dirge be sung and trentals rightly read,

For Love is dead.

Sir Wrong his tomb ordaineth

My mistress, marble heart,

Which epitaph containeth,

“Her eyes were once his dart.”

From so ungrateful . . .

Alas, I lie, rage hath this error bred;

Love is not dead.

Love is not dead, but sleepeth

In her unmatched mind,

Where she his counsel keepeth,

Till due desert she find.

Therefore from so vile fancy,

To call such wit a franzy,

Who Love can temper thus,

Good Lord, deliver us!

Now darkgreen the leaves are full of metaphors

Now lit up is each tiny lamp of blueberry.

The white nails of rain have dropped and the sun is free.

And whether she bends or straightens to each bush

To find the children’s laughter among the leaves

Her quiet hands seem to make the quiet summer hush—

Berries or children, patient she is with these.

I only vex and perplex her; madness, rage

Are endearing perhaps put down upon the page;

Even silence daylong and sullen can then

Enamor as restraint or classic discipline.

So I envy the berries she puts in her mouth,

The red and succulent juice that stains her lips;

I shall never taste that good to her, nor will they
Displease her with a thousand barbarous jests.

How they lie easily for her hand to take,

Part of the unoffending world that is hers;

Here beyond complexity she stands and stares

And leans her marvelous head as if for answers.

No more the easy soul my childish craft deceives

Nor the simpler one for whom yes is always yes;

No, now her voice comes to me from a far way off

Though her lips are redder than the raspberries.

And mad^ you captive, my rugged troublesome compatriots;

Your splendid beards, here, are epicene, plaster white

And your angers

Unclothed with Palestinian hills quite lost in this immense and ugly edifice.

You are bored—I see it—sultry prophets with priests and nuns

(What coarse jokes must pass between you!)
and with those morbidly religious

I.e. my prize brother-in-law

Ex-Lawrencian

Pawing his rosary, and his wife

Sick with many guilts.

Believe me I would gladly take you

From this spidery church

Its bad melodrama, its musty smell of candle and set you both free again

In no make-believe world of sin and penitence

But the sunlit square opposite

Alive at noon with arrogant men.

Yet cheer up Ezekiel and you Jeremiah who were once cast into a pit;

I shall not leave you here incensed, uneasy among alien Catholic saints

But shall bring you from time to time
my hot Hebrew heart

As passionate as your own, and stand

With you here awhile in aching confraternity.

And its satellite wait for me;

Their meaning I will not know

Until I go there,

But the black-hatted undertaker

Who, passing, saw my heart beating in the grass,

Is also going there. Hi, I tell him,

A great squall in the Pacific blew a dead poet out of the water,

Who now hangs from the city’s gates.

Crowds depart daily to see it, and return

With grimaces and incomprehension;

If its limbs twitched in the air

They would sit at its feet peeling their oranges.

And turning over I embrace like a lover the trunk of a tree,

One of those for whom the lightning was too much and grew a brilliant

I hunchback with a crown of leaves.

The ailments escaped from the labels

Of medicine bottles are all fled to the wind;

I’ve seen myself lately in the eyes

Of old women,

Spent streams mourning my manhood,

In whose old pupils the sun became a bloodsmear on broad catalpa leaves and

Hanging from ancient twigs,

My murdered selves

Sparked the air like the muted collisions

Of fruit. A black dog howls down my blood,

A black dog with yellow eyes;

He too by someone’s inadvertence

Saw the bloodsmear

On the broad catalpa leaves.

But the furies clear a path for me to the worm

Who sang for an hour in the throat of a robin,

And misled by the cries of young boys

I am again

A breathless swimmer in that cold green element.