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Best Famous Brothels Poems

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Written by Derek Walcott | Create an image from this poem

The Star-Apple Kingdom

 There were still shards of an ancient pastoral 
in those shires of the island where the cattle drank 
their pools of shadow from an older sky, 
surviving from when the landscape copied such objects as 
"Herefords at Sunset in the valley of the Wye." 
The mountain water that fell white from the mill wheel 
sprinkling like petals from the star-apple trees, 
and all of the windmills and sugar mills moved by mules 
on the treadmill of Monday to Monday, would repeat 
in tongues of water and wind and fire, in tongues 
of Mission School pickaninnies, like rivers remembering 
their source, Parish Trelawny, Parish St David, Parish 
St Andrew, the names afflicting the pastures, 
the lime groves and fences of marl stone and the cattle 
with a docile longing, an epochal content. 
And there were, like old wedding lace in an attic, 
among the boas and parasols and the tea-colored 
daguerreotypes, hints of an epochal happiness 
as ordered and infinite to the child 
as the great house road to the Great House 
down a perspective of casuarinas plunging green manes 
in time to the horses, an orderly life 
reduced by lorgnettes day and night, one disc the sun, 
the other the moon, reduced into a pier glass: 
nannies diminished to dolls, mahogany stairways 
no larger than those of an album in which 
the flash of cutlery yellows, as gamboge as 
the piled cakes of teatime on that latticed 
bougainvillea verandah that looked down toward 
a prospect of Cuyp-like Herefords under a sky 
lurid as a porcelain souvenir with these words: 
"Herefords at Sunset in the Valley of the Wye." 

Strange, that the rancor of hatred hid in that dream 
of slow rivers and lily-like parasols, in snaps 
of fine old colonial families, curled at the edge 
not from age of from fire or the chemicals, no, not at all, 
but because, off at its edges, innocently excluded 
stood the groom, the cattle boy, the housemaid, the gardeners, 
the tenants, the good ******* down in the village, 
their mouth in the locked jaw of a silent scream. 
A scream which would open the doors to swing wildly 
all night, that was bringing in heavier clouds, 
more black smoke than cloud, frightening the cattle 
in whose bulging eyes the Great House diminished; 
a scorching wind of a scream 
that began to extinguish the fireflies, 
that dried the water mill creaking to a stop 
as it was about to pronounce Parish Trelawny 
all over, in the ancient pastoral voice, 
a wind that blew all without bending anything, 
neither the leaves of the album nor the lime groves; 
blew Nanny floating back in white from a feather 
to a chimerical, chemical pin speck that shrank 
the drinking Herefords to brown porcelain cows 
on a mantelpiece, Trelawny trembling with dusk, 
the scorched pastures of the old benign Custos; blew 
far the decent servants and the lifelong cook, 
and shriveled to a shard that ancient pastoral 
of dusk in a gilt-edged frame now catching the evening sun 
in Jamaica, making both epochs one. 

He looked out from the Great House windows on 
clouds that still held the fragrance of fire, 
he saw the Botanical Gardens officially drown 
in a formal dusk, where governors had strolled 
and black gardeners had smiled over glinting shears 
at the lilies of parasols on the floating lawns, 
the flame trees obeyed his will and lowered their wicks, 
the flowers tightened their fists in the name of thrift, 
the porcelain lamps of ripe cocoa, the magnolia's jet 
dimmed on the one circuit with the ginger lilies 
and left a lonely bulb on the verandah, 
and, had his mandate extended to that ceiling 
of star-apple candelabra, he would have ordered 
the sky to sleep, saying, I'm tired, 
save the starlight for victories, we can't afford it, 
leave the moon on for one more hour,and that's it. 
But though his power, the given mandate, extended 
from tangerine daybreaks to star-apple dusks, 
his hand could not dam that ceaseless torrent of dust 
that carried the shacks of the poor, to their root-rock music, 
down the gullies of Yallahs and August Town, 
to lodge them on thorns of maca, with their rags 
crucified by cactus, tins, old tires, cartons; 
from the black Warieka Hills the sky glowed fierce as 
the dials of a million radios, 
a throbbing sunset that glowed like a grid 
where the dread beat rose from the jukebox of Kingston. 
He saw the fountains dried of quadrilles, the water-music 
of the country dancers, the fiddlers like fifes 
put aside. He had to heal 
this malarial island in its bath of bay leaves, 
its forests tossing with fever, the dry cattle 
groaning like winches, the grass that kept shaking 
its head to remember its name. No vowels left 
in the mill wheel, the river. Rock stone. Rock stone. 

The mountains rolled like whales through phosphorous stars, 
as he swayed like a stone down fathoms into sleep, 
drawn by that magnet which pulls down half the world 
between a star and a star, by that black power 
that has the assassin dreaming of snow, 
that poleaxes the tyrant to a sleeping child. 
The house is rocking at anchor, but as he falls 
his mind is a mill wheel in moonlight, 
and he hears, in the sleep of his moonlight, the drowned 
bell of Port Royal's cathedral, sees the copper pennies 
of bubbles rising from the empty eye-pockets 
of green buccaneers, the parrot fish floating 
from the frayed shoulders of pirates, sea horses 
drawing gowned ladies in their liquid promenade 
across the moss-green meadows of the sea; 
he heard the drowned choirs under Palisadoes, 
a hymn ascending to earth from a heaven inverted 
by water, a crab climbing the steeple, 
and he climbed from that submarine kingdom 
as the evening lights came on in the institute, 
the scholars lamplit in their own aquarium, 
he saw them mouthing like parrot fish, as he passed 
upward from that baptism, their history lessons, 
the bubbles like ideas which he could not break: 
Jamaica was captured by Penn and Venables, 
Port Royal perished in a cataclysmic earthquake. 

Before the coruscating façades of cathedrals 
from Santiago to Caracas, where penitential archbishops 
washed the feet of paupers (a parenthetical moment 
that made the Caribbean a baptismal font, 
turned butterflies to stone, and whitened like doves 
the buzzards circling municipal garbage), 
the Caribbean was borne like an elliptical basin 
in the hands of acolytes, and a people were absolved 
of a history which they did not commit; 
the slave pardoned his whip, and the dispossessed 
said the rosary of islands for three hundred years, 
a hymn that resounded like the hum of the sea 
inside a sea cave, as their knees turned to stone, 
while the bodies of patriots were melting down walls 
still crusted with mute outcries of La Revolucion! 
"San Salvador, pray for us,St. Thomas, San Domingo, 
ora pro nobis, intercede for us, Sancta Lucia 
of no eyes," and when the circular chaplet 
reached the last black bead of Sancta Trinidad 
they began again, their knees drilled into stone, 
where Colon had begun, with San Salvador's bead, 
beads of black colonies round the necks of Indians. 
And while they prayed for an economic miracle, 
ulcers formed on the municipal portraits, 
the hotels went up, and the casinos and brothels, 
and the empires of tobacco, sugar, and bananas, 
until a black woman, shawled like a buzzard, 
climbed up the stairs and knocked at the door 
of his dream, whispering in the ear of the keyhole: 
"Let me in, I'm finished with praying, I'm the Revolution. 
I am the darker, the older America." 

She was as beautiful as a stone in the sunrise, 
her voice had the gutturals of machine guns 
across khaki deserts where the cactus flower 
detonates like grenades, her sex was the slit throat 
of an Indian, her hair had the blue-black sheen of the crow. 
She was a black umbrella blown inside out 
by the wind of revolution, La Madre Dolorosa, 
a black rose of sorrow, a black mine of silence, 
raped wife, empty mother, Aztec virgin 
transfixed by arrows from a thousand guitars, 
a stone full of silence, which, if it gave tongue 
to the tortures done in the name of the Father, 
would curdle the blood of the marauding wolf, 
the fountain of generals, poets, and cripples 
who danced without moving over their graves 
with each revolution; her Caesarean was stitched 
by the teeth of machine guns,and every sunset 
she carried the Caribbean's elliptical basin 
as she had once carried the penitential napkins 
to be the footbath of dictators, Trujillo, Machado, 
and those whose faces had yellowed like posters 
on municipal walls. Now she stroked his hair 
until it turned white, but she would not understand 
that he wanted no other power but peace, 
that he wanted a revolution without any bloodshed, 
he wanted a history without any memory, 
streets without statues, 
and a geography without myth. He wanted no armies 
but those regiments of bananas, thick lances of cane, 
and he sobbed,"I am powerless, except for love." 
She faded from him, because he could not kill; 
she shrunk to a bat that hung day and night 
in the back of his brain. He rose in his dream. 
(to be continued)


Written by William Matthews | Create an image from this poem

Dire Cure

 "First, do no harm," the Hippocratic
Oath begins, but before she might enjoy
such balm, the docs had to harm her tumor.
It was large, rare, and so anomalous
in its behavior that at first they mis-
diagnosed it. "Your wife will die of it
within a year." But in ten days or so
I sat beside her bed with hot-and-sour
soup and heard an intern congratulate
her on her new diagnosis: a children's
cancer (doesn't that possessive break
your heart?) had possessed her. I couldn't stop
personifying it. Devious, dour,
it had a clouded heart, like Iago's.
It loved disguise. It was a garrison
in a captured city, a bad horror film
(The Blob), a stowaway, an inside job.
If I could make it be like something else,
I wouldn't have to think of it as what,
in fact, it was: part of my lovely wife.
Next, then, chemotherapy. Her hair fell
out in tufts, her color dulled, she sat laced
to bags of poison she endured somewhat
better than her cancer cells could, though not
by much. And indeed, the cancer cells waned
more slowly than the chemical "cocktails"
(one the bright color of Campari), as the chemo
nurses called them, dripped into her. There were
three hundred days of this: a week inside
the hospital and two weeks out, the fierce
elixirs percolating all the while.
She did five weeks of radiation, too,
Monday to Friday like a stupid job.
She wouldn't eat the food the hospital
wheeled in. "Pureed fish" and "minced fish" were worth,
I thought, a sharp surge of food snobbery,
but she'd grown averse to it all -- the nurses'
crepe soles' muffled squeaks along the hall,
the filtered air, the smothered urge to read,
the fear, the perky visitors, flowers
she'd not been sent when she was well, the room-
mate (what do "semiprivate" and "extra
virgin" have in common?) who died, the nights
she wept and sweated faster than the tubes
could moisten her with lurid poison.
One chemotherapy veteran, six
years in remission, chanced on her former
chemo nurse at a bus stop and threw up.
My wife's tumor has not come back.
I like to think of it in Tumor Hell
strapped to a dray, flat as a deflated
football, bleak and nubbled like a poorly
ironed truffle. There's one tense in Tumor Hell:
forever, or what we call the present.
For that long the flaccid tumor marinates
in lurid toxins. Tumor Hell Clinic
is, it turns out, a teaching hospital.
Every century or so, the way
we'd measure it, a chief doc brings a pack
of students round. They run some simple tests:
surge current through the tumor, batter it
with mallets, push a wood-plane across its
pebbled hide and watch a scurf of tumor-
pelt kink loose from it, impale it, strafe it
with lye and napalm. There might be nothing
left in there but a still space surrounded
by a carapace. "This one is nearly
dead," the chief doc says. "What's the cure for that?"
The students know: "Kill it slower, of course."
They sprinkle it with rock salt and move on.
Here on the aging earth the tumor's gone:
My wife is hale, though wary, and why not?
Once you've had cancer, you don't get headaches
anymore, you get brain tumors, at least
until the aspirin kicks in. Her hair's back,
her weight, her appetite. "And what about you?"
friends ask me. First the fear felt like sudden
weightlessness: I couldn't steer and couldn't stay.
I couldn't concentrate: surely my spit would
dry before I could slather a stamp.
I made a list of things to do next day
before I went to bed, slept like a cork,
woke to no more memory of last night's
list than smoke has of fire, made a new list,
began to do the things on it, wept, paced,
berated myself, drove to the hospital,
and brought my wife food from the takeout joints
that ring a hospital as surely as
brothels surround a gold strike. I drove home
rancid with anger at her luck and mine --
anger that filled me the same way nature
hates a vacuum. "This must be hell for you,"
some said. Hell's not other people: Sartre
was wrong about that, too. L'enfer, c'est moi?
I've not got the ego for it. There'd be
no hell if Dante hadn't built a model
of his rage so well, and he contrived to
get exiled from it, for it was Florence.
Why would I live in hell? I love New York.
Some even said the tumor and fierce cure
were harder on the care giver -- yes, they
said "care giver" -- than on the "sick person."
They were wrong who said those things. Of course
I hated it, but some of "it" was me --
the self-pity I allowed myself,
the brave poses I struck. The rest was dire
threat my wife met with moral stubbornness,
terror, rude jokes, nausea, you name it.
No, let her think of its name and never
say it, as if it were the name of God.
Written by William Blake | Create an image from this poem

Proverbs of Hell (Excerpt from The Marriage of Heaven and H

 In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride's cloke.
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity, too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish, smiling fool, and the sullen, frowning fool shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits.
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.
One thought fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him, knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fool's reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow; nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!
As the caterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn braces. Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands and feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
Enough! or too much.
Written by William Blake | Create an image from this poem

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (excerpt)

 In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.
Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.
Prudence is a rich, ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.
The cut worm forgives the plow.
Dip him in the river who loves water.
A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.
Eternity is in love with the productions of time.
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock; but of wisdom, no clock can measure.
All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high, if he soars with his own wings.
A dead body revenges not injuries.
The most sublime act is to set another before you.
If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
Folly is the cloak of knavery.
Shame is Pride's cloke.
Prisons are built with stones of law, brothels with bricks of religion.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.
The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of
eternity, too great for the eye of man.
The fox condemns the trap, not himself.
Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth.
Let man wear the fell of the lion, woman the fleece of the sheep.
The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.
The selfish, smiling fool, and the sullen, frowning fool shall be both thought wise, that they may be a rod.
What is now proved was once only imagin'd.
The rat, the mouse, the fox, the rabbit watch the roots; the lion, the tyger, the horse, the elephant watch the fruits.
The cistern contains: the fountain overflows.
One thought fills immensity.
Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.
Every thing possible to be believ'd is an image of truth.
The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.
The fox provides for himself, but God provides for the lion.
Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.
He who has suffer'd you to impose on him, knows you.
As the plow follows words, so God rewards prayers.
The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.
Expect poison from the standing water.
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.
Listen to the fool's reproach! it is a kingly title!
The eyes of fire, the nostrils of air, the mouth of water, the beard of earth.
The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
The apple tree never asks the beech how he shall grow; nor the lion, the horse, how he shall take his prey.
The thankful receiver bears a plentiful harvest.
If others had not been foolish, we should be so.
The soul of sweet delight can never be defil'd.
When thou seest an eagle, thou seest a portion of genius; lift up thy head!
As the caterpiller chooses the fairest leaves to lay her eggs on, so the priest lays his curse on the fairest joys.
To create a little flower is the labour of ages.
Damn braces. Bless relaxes.
The best wine is the oldest, the best water the newest.
Prayers plow not! Praises reap not!
Joys laugh not! Sorrows weep not!
The head Sublime, the heart Pathos, the genitals Beauty, the hands and feet Proportion.
As the air to a bird or the sea to a fish, so is contempt to the contemptible.
The crow wish'd every thing was black, the owl that every thing was white.
Exuberance is Beauty.
If the lion was advised by the fox, he would be cunning.
Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius.
Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires.
Where man is not, nature is barren.
Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd.
Enough! or too much.
Written by Henry Lawson | Create an image from this poem

The Captain of the Push

 As the night was falling slowly down on city, town and bush, 
From a slum in Jones's Alley sloped the Captain of the Push; 
And he scowled towards the North, and he scowled towards the South, 
As he hooked his little finger in the corners of his mouth. 
Then his whistle, loud and shrill, woke the echoes of the `Rocks', 
And a dozen ghouls came sloping round the corners of the blocks. 

There was nought to rouse their anger; yet the oath that each one swore 
Seemed less fit for publication than the one that went before. 
For they spoke the gutter language with the easy flow that comes 
Only to the men whose childhood knew the brothels and the slums. 
Then they spat in turns, and halted; and the one that came behind, 
Spitting fiercely on the pavement, called on Heaven to strike him blind. 

Let us first describe the captain, bottle-shouldered, pale and thin, 
For he was the beau-ideal of a Sydney larrikin; 
E'en his hat was most suggestive of the city where we live, 
With a gallows-tilt that no one, save a larrikin, can give; 
And the coat, a little shorter than the writer would desire, 
Showed a more or less uncertain portion of his strange attire. 

That which tailors know as `trousers' -- known by him as `bloomin' bags' -- 
Hanging loosely from his person, swept, with tattered ends, the flags; 
And he had a pointed sternpost to the boots that peeped below 
(Which he laced up from the centre of the nail of his great toe), 
And he wore his shirt uncollar'd, and the tie correctly wrong; 
But I think his vest was shorter than should be in one so long. 

And the captain crooked his finger at a stranger on the kerb, 
Whom he qualified politely with an adjective and verb, 
And he begged the Gory Bleeders that they wouldn't interrupt 
Till he gave an introduction -- it was painfully abrupt -- 
`Here's the bleedin' push, me covey -- here's a (something) from the bush! 
Strike me dead, he wants to join us!' said the captain of the push. 

Said the stranger: `I am nothing but a bushy and a dunce; 
`But I read about the Bleeders in the WEEKLY GASBAG once; 
`Sitting lonely in the humpy when the wind began to "whoosh," 
`How I longed to share the dangers and the pleasures of the push! 
`Gosh! I hate the swells and good 'uns -- I could burn 'em in their beds; 
`I am with you, if you'll have me, and I'll break their blazing heads.' 

`Now, look here,' exclaimed the captain to the stranger from the bush, 
`Now, look here -- suppose a feller was to split upon the push, 
`Would you lay for him and fetch him, even if the traps were round? 
`Would you lay him out and kick him to a jelly on the ground? 
`Would you jump upon the nameless -- kill, or cripple him, or both? 
`Speak? or else I'll SPEAK!' The stranger answered, `My kerlonial oath!' 

`Now, look here,' exclaimed the captain to the stranger from the bush, 
`Now, look here -- suppose the Bleeders let you come and join the push, 
`Would you smash a bleedin' bobby if you got the blank alone? 
`Would you break a swell or Chinkie -- split his garret with a stone? 
`Would you have a "moll" to keep yer -- like to swear off work for good?' 
`Yes, my oath!' replied the stranger. `My kerlonial oath! I would!' 

`Now, look here,' exclaimed the captain to the stranger from the bush, 
`Now, look here -- before the Bleeders let yer come and join the push, 
`You must prove that you're a blazer -- you must prove that you have grit 
`Worthy of a Gory Bleeder -- you must show your form a bit -- 
`Take a rock and smash that winder!' and the stranger, nothing loth, 
Took the rock -- and smash! They only muttered, `My kerlonial oath!' 

So they swore him in, and found him sure of aim and light of heel, 
And his only fault, if any, lay in his excessive zeal; 
He was good at throwing metal, but we chronicle with pain 
That he jumped upon a victim, damaging the watch and chain, 
Ere the Bleeders had secured them; yet the captain of the push 
Swore a dozen oaths in favour of the stranger from the bush. 

Late next morn the captain, rising, hoarse and thirsty from his lair, 
Called the newly-feather'd Bleeder, but the stranger wasn't there! 
Quickly going through the pockets of his `bloomin' bags,' he learned 
That the stranger had been through him for the stuff his `moll' had earned; 
And the language that he muttered I should scarcely like to tell. 
(Stars! and notes of exclamation!! blank and dash will do as well). 

In the night the captain's signal woke the echoes of the `Rocks,' 
Brought the Gory Bleeders sloping thro' the shadows of the blocks; 
And they swore the stranger's action was a blood-escaping shame, 
While they waited for the nameless, but the nameless never came. 
And the Bleeders soon forgot him; but the captain of the push 
Still is `laying' round, in ballast, for the nameless `from the bush.'


Written by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Create an image from this poem

The Forerunners

 The harbingers are come. See, see their mark; 
White is their colour, and behold my head. 
But must they have my brain? must they dispark 
Those sparkling notions, which therein were bred? 
Must dulnesse turn me to a clod? 
Yet have they left me, Thou art still my God. 

Good men ye be, to leave me my best room, 
Ev'n all my heart, and what is lodged there: 
I passe not, I, what of the rest become, 
So Thou art still my God, be out of fear. 
He will be pleased with that dittie; 
And if I please him, I write fine and wittie. 

Farewell sweet phrases, lovely metaphors. 
But will ye leave me thus? when ye before 
Of stews and brothels onely knew the doores, 
Then did I wash you with my tears, and more, 
Brought you to Church well drest and clad; 
My God must have my best, ev'n all I had. 

Louely enchanting language, sugar-cane, 
Hony of roses, whither wilt thou flie? 
Hath some fond lover tic'd thee to thy bane? 
And wilt thou leave the Church, and love a stie? 
Fie, thou wilt soil thy broider'd coat, 
And hurt thy self, and him that sings the note. 

Let foolish lovers, if they will love dung, 
With canvas, not with arras clothe their shame: 
Let follie speak in her own native tongue. 
True beautie dwells on high: ours is a flame 
But borrow'd thence to light us thither. 
Beautie and beauteous words should go together. 

Yet if you go, I passe not; take your way: 
For, Thou art still my God, is all that ye 
Perhaps with more embellishment can say, 
Go birds of spring: let winter have his fee, 
Let a bleak palenesse chalk the doore, 
So all within be livelier then before.

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry