O, thou, who loved me once,
From thy Pagoda glance ;
Shoot down a poisoned lance :
        All’s well that comes from thee.

Look back, look down once more ;
Dear was to thee this shore ;
I see thee nevermore
        Beneath the olive tree.

Remains my station low,
Whilst thou dost greater grow ;
Ah, fate hath struck the blow
        That parted thee and me.

How can I bear my fate,
How can I loveless wait
In this most sorry state,
        When thou art far and free?

Far from the soul that swore
On love’s abysmal door
To cling forevermore
        To none on earth but thee ;

Free from the sacred plight
Which, to dispel the night,
Thou madest, when I quite
        Fell near thy bended knee.

Dost thou not still remember
Love’s May and Love’s December?
Both burned their sacred ember
        In our sweet company.

Dost hear the echoes fall
Within thy gilded hall?
Dost thou not ever recall
        The day thou wert like me?

When all thy gardens bloom,
Look out into the gloom ;
There does the flame consume
        Thy budless lilac tree.

There often thou didst play
A-mindless of the day
When soul to soul would say :
        “No more of thee and me.”

And when withers thy rose,
Throw to the wind that blows
This way a leaf ; who knows
        What therein I can see.

And till my course is run
I’ll count them one by one—
These leaves ; and may the sun
        Of joy ne’er set on thee.

^{translated from the Japanese by William George Aston}

The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die.

^{translated from the Japanese by William George Aston}

I come weary,
In search of an inn—
Ah! These wisteria flowers!

in which my greater self
rose up before me
accusing me of my life
with her extra finger
whirling in a gyre of rage
at what my days had come to.
what,
i pleaded with her, could i do,
oh what could i have done?
and she twisted her wild hair
and sparked her wild eyes
and screamed as long as
i could hear her
This.  This.  This.

The Khamsin* comes comes robed in the Lybian sands,
   Veiled in the haze of June,
Armed with Sahara’s serpent-wreathed brands,
   Shod with the sun and moon;
Swift winging in a cycloramic flame,—
Of Typhon born, unseeing and untame,—
She comes her reign of terror proclaim,
   While crowning day and night with all the blazonry of tropic noon.

She claps her iridescent wings, and lo!
   The rolling heat,
Tremulous, reverberant, a-glow,
   Sibilant, fleet,
Sweeps over the land with unabating ire,
Devouring Spring’s heritage entire,
Setting the very pyramids a-fire,
   Engulfing even the turtle’s shelter and the turtle-dove’s retreat.

Alas! where are the roses which the prime
    Of summer share
With the sesame, the myrtle and the thyme
    In meadows fair?
Where is the sacred lotus and the bloom
Of cumin and mimosa, whose perfume
Once filled the shrine of Isis and her tomb?
    Where is the pomegranate flower that shone in Cleopatra’s hair?

Where is the riant beauty of the land
    Of mystic runes
That decorates its shimmering robes of sand
    With emerald moons?
Where are the emerald shelters, desert-bound,
That with the prayer of caravans resound?
Where is the desert trail, the watering ground
    That murmurs low of lost oases amidst the fast dissolving dunes?

Where is the caravan that yesternight,
    To the merry sound
Of bells, set out of the city of delight
    To Nubia bound?
Where is the Nubian caravan that late
Passed heavy-laden through Denderah’s gate,
Speeding to reach the city for the fete,
    When gold and silver freely flow, when Allah’s bounties abound?

Where is the crested lark, the golden thrush
     Of the sacred grove,
Which made the sensitive acacia blush
     And bloom with love?
Where has the bearded bustard fallen? where
Is Ibis, once the pet of Hermes fair,
Nursing his purple wings and his despair?
     Where is the red flamingo hiding, where’s the house of the turtle-dove?

Across the welkin, like a shadow cast
     Upon a cloud, but one
Undaunted dips his black wings in the blast
     And rears anon
His form against the rushing winds; alone
The vulture hovers around the flame-draped throne
Of Death, and over the palms that rock and moan,
     Peering through the desolation, staring at the laughing sun.

And Khamsin, in her chariot of fire,
     Upon which clings
The moult of her unsatiable desire,
     Delirious sings,
And shakes the harvest from her tangled hair—
The sesame seeds, the grasses sere, the tare,
The golden tassels which the rushes wear,
     The purple feathers of the ibis and the swallow’s shrivelled wings.

She shakes her booty from her sapphire tresses
    In gleeful guile,
As she in passing savagely caresses
    The crouching Nile;
While everywhere, within her sight or call,
Along its banks or in its rushes tall,
All things are swooning in her leaden thrall,—
    Yea, prostrate is the salamander, prostrate is the crocodile.

And when at intervals her madness takes
    A sudden turn,
A lull ensues and over Egypt breaks
    The sacred urn
Of silence; while to quench her ancient thirst,
Which licked up every running stream and cursed
Every pool in cave or hollow nursed,
    She plunges deep into the Nile and wonders why his waters burn.

And wonders too when in the winnowed sands,
    Out of the gloom
Of labyrinthine avenues and lands
    Of mystic bloom,
Arise the scents of blossoms that have known
Ten thousand Khamsins, and were often blown
To dust ere Menes sat upon his throne—
    The blossoms of the teeming depths that float above the crest of doom.

Yea, and in the scattered dust of Ptah,
    The flawless gleam
That once shone in the fane of Amen-Ra
    Would fain redeem
From darkness of immemorial time,
Which swallowed Thebes and Memphis in their prime,
The symbol of a heritage sublime,
    And light again the sacred temple of the world’s eternal dream.

For though the earth itself should perish in
    A flaming pyre.
And the wasting sun should like a spider spin
    His cobwebs of fire,
Yet in the serdabs under Khamsin’s feet,
Around the blue of Osiris’s judgement seat,
Is this, which glyphs vermilion repeat:—
    The sun of thought, of faith, of God shall never expire, shall never expire.

Albeit, in a mocking gust she veers
            Into the gloom
That knows nor time nor sun, nor ever hears
    The voice of Doom:
And, rifling the bejewelled gods, she drops
    The veil of splendor from her howdah’s tops
And rocks in state from Karnak to Cheops
    To tramp the dust of Pharoah’s pride, to smite the phantom of his tomb.

But mocking Khamsin, when her mood is spent,
    Lulls the morn
In luscious breezes swooning with the scent
    Of love reborn;––
Carressing winds! the tree senescent grows
In you as young as fruitful, and the rose
Upon the bistre lips of Ramesis blows,
    Whispering of things immortal in the wandering seed and the reed forlorn.

She passes in phantasmagoric waves
    Over shifting dunes,
Through shattered orbs, beyond the barren caves
    Of mouldering moons,
While the antique youth the Sun, as young to-day
As when the cricket first essayed her lay,
Across the flood of Nilus makes his way,
    And with him weaves for Egypt wondrous summer garlands and galloons.

And lo, the Khamsin of the world, in flames
    Of crimson hue
And clouds of vitriolic dust, proclaims
    The era new;
But through the storm a spirit wings his flight
Across the phosphorescent gulfs of night,
And this, upon the rising sun, doth write:—
    God liveth, yea, God liveth still and man shall nothing rue.

*A dry wind from the Sahara that prevails in Egypt
about fifty days. Hence its name—Khamsin.

Outside the gates of night, above the moon,
Where breatheth none but gods, where light alone 
Forever rules from his star-studded throne, 
Where Melancholy never reaches noon, 
And where the Pleiades their harps attune,—
There in the centre of the lightning zone, 
Upon the zephyr which the storm hath sown, 
Thou first wert formed with pleasure to commune.
And now in Pleasure's world, upon the face
Of bright and gay Bohemia's fairest child 
The zephyr dallies with the lightning flash; 
The smile divine, as well the subtle grace
Are deeply there impressed, by naught defiled—
There joy's received as well as paid in cash. 

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

                    I
Queer are the ways of a man I know:
            He comes and stands
            In a careworn craze,
            And looks at the sands
            And the seaward haze
            With moveless hands
            And face and gaze,
            Then turns to go…
And what does he see when he gazes so?

                    II
They say he sees as an instant thing
            More clear than to-day,
            A sweet soft scene
            That once was in play
            By that briny green;
            Yes, notes alway
            Warm, real, and keen,
            What his back years bring—
A phantom of his own figuring.

                   III
Of this vision of his they might say more:
            Not only there
            Does he see this sight,
            But everywhere
            In his brain—day, night,
            As if on the air
            It were drawn rose-bright—
            Yea, far from that shore
Does he carry this vision of heretofore:

                    IV
A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried,
            He withers daily,
            Time touches her not,
            But she still rides gaily
            In his rapt thought
            On that shagged and shaly
            Atlantic spot,
            And as when first eyed
Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.

Body of a woman, white hills, white thighs,
when you surrender, you stretch out like the world.
My body, savage and peasant, undermines you
and makes a son leap in the bottom of the earth.

I was lonely as a tunnel. Birds flew from me.
And night invaded me with her powerful army.
To survive I forged you like a weapon,
like an arrow for my bow, or a stone for my sling.

But now the hour of revenge falls, and I love you.
Body of skin, of moss, of firm and thirsty milk!
And the cups of your breasts! And your eyes full of absence!
And the roses of your mound! And your voice slow and sad!

Body of my woman, I will live on through your marvelousness.
My thirst, my desire without end, my wavering road!
Dark river beds down which the eternal thirst is flowing,
and the fatigue is flowing, and the grief without shore.

Out of the night that covers me,   
  Black as the Pit from pole to pole,   
I thank whatever gods may be   
  For my unconquerable soul.   

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
  I have not winced nor cried aloud.   
Under the bludgeonings of chance   
  My head is bloody, but unbowed.   

Beyond this place of wrath and tears   
  Looms but the Horror of the shade, 
And yet the menace of the years   
  Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.   

It matters not how strait the gate,   
  How charged with punishments the scroll,   
I am the master of my fate:
  I am the captain of my soul.

O, gather me the rose, the rose,
   While yet in flower we find it,
For summer smiles, but summer goes,
   And winter waits behind it!

For with the dream foregone, foregone,
   The deed forborne for ever,
The worm, regret, will canker on,
   And time will turn him never.

So well it were to love, my love,
   And cheat of any laughter
The death beneath us and above,
   The dark before and after.

The myrtle and the rose, the rose,
   The sunshine and the swallow,
The dream that comes, the wish that goes,
   The memories that follow!

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon. 
November glooms are barren beside the dusk of June. 
The summer flowers are faded, the summer thoughts are sere. 
We'll go no more a-roving, lest worse befall, my dear. 

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon. 
The song we sang rings hollow, and heavy runs the tune. 
Glad ways and words remembered would shame the wretched year. 
We'll go no more a-roving, nor dream we did, my dear. 

We'll go no more a-roving by the light of the moon. 
If yet we walk together, we need not shun the moon. 
No sweet thing left to savour, no sad thing left to fear, 
We'll go no more a-roving, but weep at home, my dear.

'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.

O Thou bright jewel in my aim I strive
To comprehend thee. Thine own words declare
Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.
I cease to wonder, and no more attempt
Thine height t’explore, or fathom thy profound.
But, O my soul, sink not into despair,
Virtue is near thee, and with gentle hand
Would now embrace thee, hovers o’er thine head.
Fain would the heav’n-born soul with her converse,
Then seek, then court her for her promis’d bliss.

Auspicious queen, thine heav’nly pinions spread,
And lead celestial Chastity along;
Lo! now her sacred retinue descends,
Array’d in glory from the orbs above.
Attend me, Virtue, thro’ my youthful years!
O leave me not to the false joys of time!
But guide my steps to endless life and bliss.
Greatness, or Goodness, say what I shall call thee,
To give an higher appellation still,
Teach me a better strain, a nobler lay,
O thou, enthron’d with Cherubs in the realms of day!

Thy various works, imperial queen, we see,
    How bright their forms! how deck’d with pomp by thee!
Thy wond’rous acts in beauteous order stand,
And all attest how potent is thine hand.

    From Helicon’s refulgent heights attend,
Ye sacred choir, and my attempts befriend:
To tell her glories with a faithful tongue,
Ye blooming graces, triumph in my song.

    Now here, now there, the roving Fancy flies,
Till some lov’d object strikes her wand’ring eyes,
Whose silken fetters all the senses bind,
And soft captivity involves the mind.

    Imagination! who can sing thy force?
Or who describe the swiftness of thy course?
Soaring through air to find the bright abode,
Th’ empyreal palace of the thund’ring God,
We on thy pinions can surpass the wind,
And leave the rolling universe behind:
From star to star the mental optics rove,
Measure the skies, and range the realms above.
There in one view we grasp the mighty whole,
Or with new worlds amaze th’ unbounded soul.

    Though Winter frowns to Fancy’s raptur’d eyes
The fields may flourish, and gay scenes arise;
The frozen deeps may break their iron bands,
And bid their waters murmur o’er the sands.
Fair Flora may resume her fragrant reign,
And with her flow’ry riches deck the plain;
Sylvanus may diffuse his honours round,
And all the forest may with leaves be crown’d:
Show’rs may descend, and dews their gems disclose,
And nectar sparkle on the blooming rose.

    Such is thy pow’r, nor are thine orders vain,
O thou the leader of the mental train:
In full perfection all thy works are wrought,
And thine the sceptre o’er the realms of thought.
Before thy throne the subject-passions bow,
Of subject-passions sov’reign ruler thou;
At thy command joy rushes on the heart,
And through the glowing veins the spirits dart.

    Fancy might now her silken pinions try
To rise from earth, and sweep th’ expanse on high:
From Tithon’s bed now might Aurora rise,
Her cheeks all glowing with celestial dies,
While a pure stream of light o’erflows the skies.
The monarch of the day I might behold,
And all the mountains tipt with radiant gold,
But I reluctant leave the pleasing views,
Which Fancy dresses to delight the Muse;
Winter austere forbids me to aspire,
And northern tempests damp the rising fire;
They chill the tides of Fancy’s flowing sea,
Cease then, my song, cease the unequal lay.

Let the crows go by hawking their caw and caw.
They have been swimming in midnights of coal mines somewhere.
Let ’em hawk their caw and caw.

Let the woodpecker drum and drum on a hickory stump. 
He has been swimming in red and blue pools somewhere hundreds of years 
And the blue has gone to his wings and the red has gone to his head. 
Let his red head drum and drum.

Let the dark pools hold the birds in a looking-glass. 
And if the pool wishes, let it shiver to the blur of many wings, old swimmers from old places.

Let the redwing streak a line of vermillion on the green wood lines. 
And the mist along the river fix its purple in lines of a woman’s shawl on lazy shoulders.

^{translated from the Japanese by William George Aston}

The cry of the cicada
Gives us no sign
That presently it will die.

^{translated by William Roger Paton}

“Farewell” is on my tongue, but I hold in the word with a wrench and still abide near thee. For I shudder at this horrid parting as at the bitter night of hell. Indeed thy light is like the daylight; but that is mute, while thou bringest me that talk, sweeter than the Sirens, on which all my soul’s hopes hang.

The feverish heaven with a stitch in the side,
     Of lightning.

My Desire is round,
It is a great globe.
If my desire were no bigger than this world
It were no bigger than a pin’s head.
But this world is to the world I want
As a cinder to Sirius.

Glooms of the live-oaks, beautiful-braided and woven 
With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven 
  Clamber the forks of the multiform boughs,-- 
                        Emerald twilights,-- 
                        Virginal shy lights, 
Wrought of the leaves to allure to the whisper of vows, 
When lovers pace timidly down through the green colonnades 
Of the dim sweet woods, of the dear dark woods, 
  Of the heavenly woods and glades, 
That run to the radiant marginal sand-beach within 
        The wide sea-marshes of Glynn;-- 
Beautiful glooms, soft dusks in the noon-day fire,-- 
Wildwood privacies, closets of lone desire, 
Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,-- 
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves, 
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood, 
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;-- 
O braided dusks of the oak and woven shades of the vine, 
While the riotous noon-day sun of the June-day long did shine 
Ye held me fast in your heart and I held you fast in mine; 
But now when the noon is no more, and riot is rest, 
And the sun is a-wait at the ponderous gate of the West, 
And the slant yellow beam down the wood-aisle doth seem 
Like a lane into heaven that leads from a dream,-- 
Ay, now, when my soul all day hath drunken the soul of the oak, 
And my heart is at ease from men, and the wearisome sound of the stroke 
  Of the scythe of time and the trowel of trade is low, 
  And belief overmasters doubt, and I know that I know, 
  And my spirit is grown to a lordly great compass within, 
That the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn 
Will work me no fear like the fear they have wrought me of yore 
When length was fatigue, and when breadth was but bitterness sore, 
And when terror and shrinking and dreary unnamable pain 
Drew over me out of the merciless miles of the plain,-- 
Oh, now, unafraid, I am fain to face 
  The vast sweet visage of space. 
To the edge of the wood I am drawn, I am drawn, 
Where the gray beach glimmering runs, as a belt of the dawn, 
  For a mete and a mark 
    To the forest-dark:-- 
                        So: 
Affable live-oak, leaning low,-- 
Thus--with your favor--soft, with a reverent hand, 
(Not lightly touching your person, Lord of the land!) 
Bending your beauty aside, with a step I stand 
On the firm-packed sand, 
                        Free 
By a world of marsh that borders a world of sea. 
  Sinuous southward and sinuous northward the shimmering band 
  Of the sand-beach fastens the fringe of the marsh to the folds of the land. 
Inward and outward to northward and southward the beach-lines linger and curl 
As a silver-wrought garment that clings to and follows 
    the firm sweet limbs of a girl. 
Vanishing, swerving, evermore curving again into sight, 
Softly the sand-beach wavers away to a dim gray looping of light. 
And what if behind me to westward the wall of the woods stands high? 
The world lies east: how ample, the marsh and the sea and the sky! 
A league and a league of marsh-grass, waist-high, broad in the blade, 
Green, and all of a height, and unflecked with a light or a shade, 
Stretch leisurely off, in a pleasant plain, 
To the terminal blue of the main. 
Oh, what is abroad in the marsh and the terminal sea? 
  Somehow my soul seems suddenly free 
From the weighing of fate and the sad discussion of sin, 
By the length and the breadth and the sweep of the marshes of Glynn. 
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free 
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea! 
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun, 
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who hath mightily won 
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain 
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain. 
As the marsh-hen secretly builds on the watery sod, 
Behold I will build me a nest on the greatness of God: 
I will fly in the greatness of God as the marsh-hen flies 
In the freedom that fills all the space 'twixt the marsh and the skies: 
By so many roots as the marsh-grass sends in the sod 
I will heartily lay me a-hold on the greatness of God: 
Oh, like to the greatness of God is the greatness within 
The range of the marshes, the liberal marshes of Glynn. 
And the sea lends large, as the marsh: lo, out of his plenty the sea 
Pours fast: full soon the time of the flood-tide must be: 
Look how the grace of the sea doth go 
About and about through the intricate channels that flow 
        Here and there, 
                        Everywhere, 
Till his waters have flooded the uttermost creeks and the low-lying lanes, 
And the marsh is meshed with a million veins, 
That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow 
  In the rose-and-silver evening glow. 
                        Farewell, my lord Sun! 
The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 
'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; 
Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; 
Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; 
And the sea and the marsh are one. 
How still the plains of the waters be! 
The tide is in his ecstasy. 
The tide is at his highest height: 
                        And it is night. 
And now from the Vast of the Lord will the waters of sleep 
Roll in on the souls of men, 
But who will reveal to our waking ken 
The forms that swim and the shapes that creep 
                        Under the waters of sleep? 
And I would I could know what swimmeth below when the tide comes in 
On the length and the breadth of the marvellous marshes of Glynn.

     I am but a small-winged bird:
But I will conquer the big world
     As the bee-martin beats the crow,
By attacking it always from Above.

            O’ de wurl’ ain’t flat,
            An’ de wurl’ ain’t roun’,
            Hit’s one long strip
            Hangin’ up an’ down—
            Jes’ Souf an’ Norf;
            Jes’ Norf an’ Souf.

Talkin’ ’bout sailin’ ’roun’ de wurl’—
Huh! I’d be so dizzy my head ’ud twurl.
If dis heah earf wuz jes’ a ball
You know the people all ’ud fall.

            O’ de wurl’ ain’t flat,
            An’ de wurl’ ain’t roun’.
            Hit’s one long strip
            Hangin’ up an’ down—
            Jes’ Souf an’ Norf;
            Jes’ Norf an’ Souf.

Talkin’ ’bout the City whut Saint John saw—
Chile, you oughta go to Saginaw;
A nigger’s chance is “finest kind,”
An’ pretty gals ain’t hard to find.

            Huh! de wurl’ ain’t flat,
            An’ de wurl’ ain’t roun’,
            Jes’ one long strip
            Hangin’ up an’ down.
            Since Norf is up,
            An’ Souf is down,
            An’ Hebben is up,
            I’m upward boun’.

Because I could not stop for Death—
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves— 
And Immortality.

We slowly drove—He knew no haste
And I had put away
My labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility—

We passed the School, where Children strove
At Recess—in the Ring—
We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain—
We passed the Setting Sun—

Or rather—He passed us—
The Dews drew quivering and chill—
For only Gossamer, my Gown—
My Tippet—only Tulle—

We paused before a House that seemed
A Swelling of the Ground—
The Roof was scarcely visible—
The Cornice—in the Ground—

Since then—’tis Centuries—and yet
Feels shorter than the Day
I first surmised the Horses’ Heads
Were toward Eternity—