DO NOT LOVE ME YET

Do not love me yet, for I

Am still a slender moon,

A scimitar about the heart

Too sharp to touch too soon.

Before I’m touched I need to grow

More full in golden light;

I need to smile upon my earth

And rule some patch of night.

I need to know what roads and fields

Lie in my domain

And dull my brand new ecstasies

With sophomoric pain.

I need the love of some blank boy

As cold and dark as me,

That we might grope in ignorance

And fear of what might be.

And then, when I’m a silver bowl

And know what I can hold,

Then, then, perhaps, we could try love

If you are not too old

America the Beautiful Revisited

America the Beautiful Revisited

America, while breathing gaseous skies,

Converts her amber waves of grain to gold.

She logs her mountains’ purple majesty

And risks her fruited plains in futures sold.

How could the selfless pilgrims have foreseen

The fiscal dust their sturdy feet would raise?

When did their quest for freedom of belief

Become obsessed with how much interest pays?

The early heroes’ hearts were filled with fire,

Replaced of late by nuclear doomsday fear.

When greed fails in these days to get its way,

Then hired generals flatten all that’s dear.

Those patriot dreamers failed to forecast years

Of lotteries and bets on football games,

Nor could they know what poverty and fears

Would lurk in cities bearing brave men’s names.

America! My poor America!

Thy crown of brotherhood is hard to see.

Thy god is Gold; thy goodness yields to law,

And lawyers fight from fee to shining fee.

NIGHT COMES TO ME

NIGHT COMES TO ME

THROUGHOUT THE DAY

Night comes to me throughout the day

And closes my external door.

I know that I am in for more

Unhappiness, and yet I stay.

The pain of missing you is less

Than that of missing thoughts of you.

And so I’d rather suffer through

This torture than face emptiness.

I want you with me, even though

You’re not with me. You are the light

That gets me through this awful night

Yet brings the darkness where I go.

Children dear, was it yesterday

Children dear, was it yesterday

(Call yet once) that she went away?

Once she sate with you and me,

On a red gold throne in the heart of the sea,

And the youngest sate on her knee.

She comb'd its bright hair, and she tended it well,

When down swung the sound of the far-off bell.

She sigh'd, she look'd up through the clear green sea.

She said; "I must go, for my kinsfolk pray

In the little grey church on the shore to-day.

'Twill be Easter-time in the world--ah me!

And I lose my poor soul, Merman, here with thee."

I said; "Go up, dear heart, through the waves.

Say thy prayer, and come back to the kind sea-caves."

She smil'd, she went up through the surf in the bay.

Children dear, was it yesterday?

Darkling i listen

Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain--
To thy high requiem become a sod.

But when the meloncholy fit shall fall

But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

Come away.......

Come, dear children, let us away;
Down and away below.
Now my brothers call from the bay;
Now the great winds shore wards blow;
Now the salt tides seawards flow;
Now the wild white horses play,
Champ and chafe and toss in the spray.
Children dear, let us away.
This way, this way.
Call her once before you go.
Call once yet.
In a voice that she will know:
"Margaret! Margaret!"
Children's voices should be dear
(Call once more) to a mother's ear:
Children's voices, wild with pain.
Surely she will come again.
Call her once and come away.
This way, this way.
"Mother dear, we cannot stay."
The wild white horses foam and fret.
Margaret! Margaret!
Come, dear children, come away down.
Call no more.
One last look at the white-walled town,
And the little grey church on the windy shore.
Then come down.
She will not come though you call all day.
Come away, come away.