lest passion won,
And to the wise man the fit occasion
Has not yet refused a full measure:
Be up--away, my treasure!

If that my love thy bosom inflameth
With honest purpose and just intention,
To free me from my soul's contention
Give over joys the day shameth;
Who thee lameth he also me lameth,
And my good grace builds all in thy good grace;
Be up--away! Fear leaveth place,
That thou art here, no more unto pleasure,
Be up--away, my treasure!

Although thou with a sleep art wresting,
'Tis rightful thou bringst it close,
That of the favour one meeting shows
An hundred may hence be attesting.
'Tis fitting too thou shouldst be mindful
That the ease which we lose now, in kind, full
Many a promise holds for our leisure;
Ere they take thee sleeping;
Be up--away, my treasure!

Hic Jacet

The coroner's merry little children
Have such twinkling brown eyes.
Their father is not of gay men
And their mother jocular in no wise,
Yet the coroner's merry little children
Laugh so easily.

They laugh because they prosper.
Fruit for them is upon all branches.
Lo! how they jibe at loss, for
Kind heaven fills their little paunches!
It's the coroner's merry, merry children
Who laugh so easily.

Contemporania

The corner of a great rain
Steamy with the country
Has fallen upon my garden.

I go back and forth now
And the little leaves follow me
Talking of the great rain,
Of branches broken,
And the farmer's curses!

But I go back and forth
In this corner of a garden
And the green shoots follow me
Praising the great rain.

We are not curst together,
The leaves and I,
Framing devices, flower devices
And other ways of peopling
The barren country.

Truly it was a very great rain
That makes the little leaves follow me.

To wish Myself Courage

On the day when youth is no more upon me
I will write of the leaves and the moon in a tree top!
I will sing then the song, long in the making--
When the stress of youth is put away from me.

How can I ever be written out as men say?
Surely it is merely an interference with the long song--
This that I am now doing.

But when the spring of it is worn like the old moon
And the eaten leaves are lace upon the cold earth--
Then I will rise up in my great desire--
Long at the birth--and sing me the youth-song!

* * * * *

LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED.