A Paradise of Poems

Of and in all these things, I have dream'd that we are not to be changed so much, nor the law    of us changed,    I have dream'd that heroes and good-doers shall be under the present    and past law,    And that murderers, drunkards, liars, shall be under the present    and past law,    For I have dream'd that the law they...

Never seek to tell thy love Love that never told can be For the gentle wind does move Silently invisibly I told my love I told my love I told her all my heart Trembling cold in ghastly fears Ah she doth depart Soon as she was gone from me A traveller came by Silently invisibly O was no deny

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity. My apologies to necessity if I'm mistaken, after all. Please, don't be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due. May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade. My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second. My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first. Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers h...

There are names for what binds us: strong forces, weak forces. Look around, you can see them: the skin that forms in a half-empty cup, nails rusting into the places they join, joints dovetailed on their own weight. The way things stay so solidly wherever they’ve been set down — and gravity, scientists say, is weak. And see how the flesh grows back across a wound, with a great vehemence, more stron...

They both thought that a sudden feeling had united them This certainty is beautiful, Even more beautiful than uncertainty. They thought they didn't know each other, nothing had ever happened between them, These streets, these stairs, this corridors, Where they could have met so long ago? I would like to ask them, if they can remember - perhaps in a revolving door face to face one day? A "sorry" in...

True love. Is it normal is it serious, is it practical? What does the world get from two people who exist in a world of their own? Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason, drawn randomly from millions but convinced it had to happen this way - in reward for what? For nothing. The light descends from nowhere. Why on these two and not on others? Doesn't this outrage justice? Yes it does. Doesn...

Whoever you are holding me now in hand, Without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you supposed, but far different. Who is he that would become my follower? Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections? The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive, You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect t...

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty...

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees,...

Moon marked and touched by sun my magic is unwritten but when the sea turns back it will leave my shape behind. I seek no favor untouched by blood unrelenting as the curse of love permanent as my errors or my pride I do not mix love with pity nor hate with scorn and if you would know me look into the entrails of Uranus where the restless oceans pound. I do not dwell within my birth nor my diviniti...

1.Give me the splendid silent sun with all his beams full-dazzling, Give me autumnal fruit ripe and red from the orchard, Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows, Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape, Give me fresh corn and wheat, give me serene-moving animals teaching content, Give me nights perfectly quiet as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars,...

The eyes where love in chastest fire would glow, Joying to be consumed amidst their light, The face whereon with wondrous lustre bright The purple rose was blushing o'er the snow; The hair whereof the sun would envious grow, It made his own less golden to the sight; The well-formed body and the hand so white, All to cold earth reduced lies here below! In tender age, a beauty all entire, E'en like...

Follow your destiny, Water your plants, Love your roses. The rest is shadow Of unknown trees. Reality is always More or less Than what we want. Only we are always Equal to ourselves. It’s good to live alone, And noble and great Always to live simply. Leave pain on the altar As an offering to the gods. See life from a distance. Never question it. There’s nothing it can Tell you. The answer Lies bey...

When I behold you, Lady! when my eyes Dwell on the deep enjoyment of your sight, I give my spirit to that one delight, And earth appears to me a Paradise. And when I hear you speak, and see you smile, Full satisfied, absorb'd, my centr'd mind Deems all the world's vain hopes and joys the while As empty as the unsubstantial wind. Lady! I feel your charms, yet dare not raise To that high theme the u...

Farewell, sweetest country; out of my heart, you roses, Wayside roses, nodding, the slow traveller to keep. Too long have I drowsed alone in the meadows deep, Too long alone endured the silence Nature espouses. Oh, the rush, the rapture of life! throngs, lights, houses, This is London. I wake as a sentinel from sleep. Stunned with the fresh thunder, the harsh delightful noises, I move entranced on...

Often rebuked, yet always back returning    To those first feelings that were born with me, And leaving busy chase of wealth and learning    For idle dreams of things that cannot be: To-day, I will seek not the shadowy region;    Its unsustaining vastness waxes drear; And visions rising, legion after legion,    Bring the unreal world too...

Cold in the earth—and the deep snow piled above thee, Far, far removed, cold in the dreary grave! Have I forgot, my only Love, to love thee, Severed at last by Time's all-severing wave? Now, when alone, do my thoughts no longer hover Over the mountains, on that northern shore, Resting their wings where heath and fern leaves cover Thy noble heart forever, ever more? Cold in the earth—and fifteen wi...

There is a faith in loving fiercely the one who is rightfully yours, especially if you have waited years and especially if part of you never believed you could deserve this loved and beckoning hand held out to you this way. I am thinking of faith now and the testaments of loneliness and what we feel we are worthy of in this world. Years ago in the Hebrides, I remember an old man who walked every m...

Airpods in my ears, Playing podcasts and music, Hiding from the crowd. Maybe I’ll go deaf, But Beethoven composed music when he was deaf. There is no excuse, Sprint, rest, sprint, rest, and repeat. Glasses on my eyes, Ten hours a week on average, Reading books. Maybe I’ll go blind, But Borges wrote books when he was blind. There is no excuse, Sprint, rest, sprint, rest, and repeat Weights on my sh...

A moment of happiness, you and I sitting on the verandah, apparently two, but one in soul, you and I. We feel the flowing water of life here, you and I, with the garden's beauty and the birds singing. The stars will be watching us, and we will show them what it is to be a thin crescent moon. You and I unselfed, will be together, indifferent to idle speculation, you and I. The parrots of heaven wil...

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey work of the stars, And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren, And the tree-toad is a chef-d’oeuvre for the highest, And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven, And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery, And the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue, A...

Seasons on seasons. The spring is signaled by birdsong coyotes screech and yammer in the moonlight and the first flowers open. I saw two owls today in the daylight, on silent wings. They landed as one and watched me sleepily. Oh who? they called. Or how, or how who? Then they leaned into the trunk into the sun that shone through the tight-curled buds, and vanished into dappled shadows never waitin...

When I die I want your hands on my eyes: I want the light and the wheat of your beloved hands to pass their freshness over me one more time to feel the smoothness that changed my destiny. I want you to live while I wait for you, asleep, I want for your ears to go on hearing the wind, for you to smell the sea that we loved together and for you to go on walking the sand where we walked. I want for w...

Why, if it could begin as laurel, and be spent so, this space of Being, a little darker than all the surrounding green, with little waves at the edge of every leaf (like a breeze’s smile)—: why then have to be human — and shunning destiny long for destiny?… Oh, not because happiness exists, that over-hasty profit from imminent loss, not out of curiosity, or to practice the heart, which could exist...

I remember, I remember, The house where I was born, The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn; He never came a wink too soon, Nor brought too long a day, But now, I often wish the night Had borne my breath away! I remember, I remember, The roses, red and white, The vi'lets, and the lily-cups, Those flowers made of light! The lilacs where the robin built, And where my brother set The...