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Best Famous Condense Poems

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Written by John Trumbull | Create an image from this poem

To A Young Lady

 In vain, fair Maid, you ask in vain,
My pen should try th' advent'rous strain,
And following truth's unalter'd law,
Attempt your character to draw.
I own indeed, that generous mind That weeps the woes of human kind, That heart by friendship's charms inspired, That soul with sprightly fancy fired, The air of life, the vivid eye, The flowing wit, the keen reply-- To paint these beauties as they shine, Might ask a nobler pen than mine.
Yet what sure strokes can draw the Fair, Who vary, like the fleeting air, Like willows bending to the force, Where'er the gales direct their course, Opposed to no misfortune's power, And changing with the changing hour.
Now gaily sporting on the plain, They charm the grove with pleasing strain; Anon disturb'd, they know not why, The sad tear trembles in their eye: Led through vain life's uncertain dance, The dupes of whim, the slaves of chance.
From me, not famed for much goodnature, Expect not compliment, but satire; To draw your picture quite unable, Instead of fact accept a Fable.
One morn, in Æsop's noisy time, When all things talk'd, and talk'd in rhyme, A cloud exhaled by vernal beams Rose curling o'er the glassy streams.
The dawn her orient blushes spread, And tinged its lucid skirts with red, Wide waved its folds with glitt'ring dies, And gaily streak'd the eastern skies; Beneath, illumed with rising day, The sea's broad mirror floating lay.
Pleased, o'er the wave it hung in air, Survey'd its glittering glories there, And fancied, dress'd in gorgeous show, Itself the brightest thing below: For clouds could raise the vaunting strain, And not the fair alone were vain.
Yet well it knew, howe'er array'd, That beauty, e'en in clouds, might fade, That nothing sure its charms could boast Above the loveliest earthly toast; And so, like them, in early dawn Resolved its picture should be drawn, That when old age with length'ning day Should brush the vivid rose away, The world should from the portrait own Beyond all clouds how bright it shone.
Hard by, a painter raised his stage, Far famed, the Copley[1] of his age.
So just a form his colours drew, Each eye the perfect semblance knew; Yet still on every blooming face He pour'd the pencil's flowing grace; Each critic praised the artist rare, Who drew so like, and yet so fair.
To him, high floating in the sky Th' elated Cloud advanced t' apply.
The painter soon his colours brought, The Cloud then sat, the artist wrought; Survey'd her form, with flatt'ring strictures, Just as when ladies sit for pictures, Declared "whatever art can do, My utmost skill shall try for you: But sure those strong and golden dies Dipp'd in the radiance of the skies, Those folds of gay celestial dress, No mortal colours can express.
Not spread triumphal o'er the plain, The rainbow boasts so fair a train, Nor e'en the morning sun so bright, Who robes his face in heav'nly light.
To view that form of angel make, Again Ixion would mistake,[2] And justly deem so fair a prize, The sovereign Mistress of the skies," He said, and drew a mazy line, With crimson touch his pencils shine, The mingling colours sweetly fade, And justly temper light and shade.
He look'd; the swelling Cloud on high With wider circuit spread the sky, Stretch'd to the sun an ampler train, And pour'd new glories on the main.
As quick, effacing every ground, His pencil swept the canvas round, And o'er its field, with magic art, Call'd forth new forms in every part.
But now the sun, with rising ray, Advanced with speed his early way; Each colour takes a differing die, The orange glows, the purples fly.
The artist views the alter'd sight, And varies with the varying light; In vain! a sudden gust arose, New folds ascend, new shades disclose, And sailing on with swifter pace, The Cloud displays another face.
In vain the painter, vex'd at heart, Tried all the wonders of his art; In vain he begg'd, her form to grace, One moment she would keep her place: For, "changing thus with every gale, Now gay with light, with gloom now pale, Now high in air with gorgeous train, Now settling on the darken'd main, With looks more various than the moon; A French coquette were drawn as soon.
" He spoke; again the air was mild, The Cloud with opening radiance smiled; With canvas new his art he tries, Anew he joins the glitt'ring dies; Th' admiring Cloud with pride beheld Her image deck the pictured field, And colours half-complete adorn The splendor of the painted morn.
When lo, the stormy winds arise, Deep gloom invests the changing skies; The sounding tempest shakes the plain, And lifts in billowy surge the main.
The Cloud's gay dies in darkness fade, Its folds condense in thicker shade, And borne by rushing blasts, its form With lowering vapour joins the storm.


Written by Hart Crane | Create an image from this poem

To Brooklyn Bridge

 How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull's wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty--

Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
--Till elevators drop us from our day .
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I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene Never disclosed, but hastened to again, Foretold to other eyes on the same screen; And Thee, across the harbor, silver-paced As though the sun took step of thee, yet left Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,-- Implicitly thy freedom staying thee! Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets, Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning, A jest falls from the speechless caravan.
Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks, A rip-tooth of the sky's acetylene; All afternoon the cloud-flown derricks turn .
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Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.
And obscure as that heaven of the Jews, Thy guerdon .
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Accolade thou dost bestow Of anonymity time cannot raise: Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.
O harp and altar, of the fury fused, (How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!) Terrific threshold of the prophet's pledge, Prayer of pariah, and the lover's cry,-- Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars, Beading thy path--condense eternity: And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.
Under thy shadow by the piers I waited; Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone, Already snow submerges an iron year .
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O Sleepless as the river under thee, Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod, Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
Written by Philip Larkin | Create an image from this poem

Lines On A Young Ladys Photograph Album

 At last you yielded up the album, which
Once open, sent me distracted.
All your ages Matt and glossy on the thick black pages! Too much confectionery, too rich: I choke on such nutritious images.
My swivel eye hungers from pose to pose -- In pigtails, clutching a reluctant cat; Or furred yourself, a sweet girl-graduate; Or lifting a heavy-headed rose Beneath a trellis, or in a trilby-hat (Faintly disturbing, that, in several ways) -- From every side you strike at my control, Not least through those these disquieting chaps who loll At ease about your earlier days: Not quite your class, I'd say, dear, on the whole.
But o, photography! as no art is, Faithful and disappointing! that records Dull days as dull, and hold-it smiles as frauds, And will not censor blemishes Like washing-lines, and Hall's-Distemper boards, But shows a cat as disinclined, and shades A chin as doubled when it is, what grace Your candour thus confers upon her face! How overwhelmingly persuades That this is a real girl in a real place, In every sense empirically true! Or is it just the past? Those flowers, that gate, These misty parks and motors, lacerate Simply by being you; you Contract my heart by looking out of date.
Yes, true; but in the end, surely, we cry Not only at exclusion, but because It leaves us free to cry.
We know what was Won't call on us to justify Our grief, however hard we yowl across The gap from eye to page.
So I am left To mourn (without a chance of consequence) You, balanced on a bike against a fence; To wonder if you'd spot the theft Of this one of you bathing; to condense, In short, a past that no one now can share, No matter whose your future; calm and dry, It holds you like a heaven, and you lie Unvariably lovely there, Smaller and clearer as the years go by.
Written by Lewis Carroll | Create an image from this poem

Fit the Fifth ( Hunting of the Snark )

 The Beaver's Lesson 

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care; 
They pursued it with forks and hope; 
They threatened its life with a railway-share; 
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan For making a separate sally; And fixed on a spot unfrequented by man, A dismal and desolate valley.
But the very same plan to the Beaver occurred: It had chosen the very same place: Yet neither betrayed, by a sign or a word, The disgust that appeared in his face.
Each thought he was thinking of nothing but "Snark" And the glorious work of the day; And each tried to pretend that he did not remark That the other was going that way.
But the valley grew narrow and narrower still, And the evening got darker and colder, Till (merely from nervousness, not from goodwill) They marched along shoulder to shoulder.
Then a scream, shrill and high, rent the shuddering sky, And they knew that some danger was near: The Beaver turned pale to the tip of its tail, And even the Butcher felt *****.
He thought of his childhood, left far far behind-- That blissful and innocent state-- The sound so exactly recalled to his mind A pencil that squeaks on a slate! "'Tis the voice of the Jubjub!" he suddenly cried.
(This man, that they used to call "Dunce.
") "As the Bellman would tell you," he added with pride, "I have uttered that sentiment once.
"'Tis the note of the Jubjub! Keep count, I entreat; You will find I have told it you twice.
'Tis the song of the Jubjub! The proof is complete, If only I've stated it thrice.
" The Beaver had counted with scrupulous care, Attending to every word: But it fairly lost heart, and outgrabe in despair, When the third repetition occurred.
It felt that, in spite of all possible pains, It had somehow contrived to lose count, And the only thing now was to rack its poor brains By reckoning up the amount.
"Two added to one--if that could but be done," It said, "with one's fingers and thumbs!" Recollecting with tears how, in earlier years, It had taken no pains with its sums.
"The thing can be done," said the Butcher, "I think.
The thing must be done, I am sure.
The thing shall be done! Bring me paper and ink, The best there is time to procure.
" The Beaver brought paper,portfolio, pens, And ink in unfailing supplies: While strange creepy creatures came out of their dens, And watched them with wondering eyes.
So engrossed was the Butcher, he heeded them not, As he wrote with a pen in each hand, And explained all the while in a popular style Which the Beaver could well understand.
"Taking Three as the subject to reason about-- A convenient number to state-- We add Seven, and Ten, and then multiply out By One Thousand diminished by Eight.
"The result we proceed to divide, as you see, By Nine Hundred and Ninety Two: Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be Exactly and perfectly true.
"The method employed I would gladly explain, While I have it so clear in my head, If I had but the time and you had but the brain-- But much yet remains to be said.
"In one moment I've seen what has hitherto been Enveloped in absolute mystery, And without extra charge I will give you at large A Lesson in Natural History.
" In his genial way he proceeded to say (Forgetting all laws of propriety, And that giving instruction, without introduction, Would have caused quite a thrill in Society), "As to temper the Jubjub's a desperate bird, Since it lives in perpetual passion: Its taste in costume is entirely absurd-- It is ages ahead of the fashion: "But it knows any friend it has met once before: It never will look at a bride: And in charity-meetings it stands at the door, And collects--though it does not subscribe.
" Its flavor when cooked is more exquisite far Than mutton, or oysters, or eggs: (Some think it keeps best in an ivory jar, And some, in mahogany kegs) "You boil it in sawdust: you salt it in glue: You condense it with locusts and tape: Still keeping one principal object in view-- To preserve its symmetrical shape.
" The Butcher would gladly have talked till next day, But he felt that the lesson must end, And he wept with delight in attempting to say He considered the Beaver his friend.
While the Beaver confessed, with affectionate looks More eloquent even than tears, It had learned in ten minutes far more than all books Would have taught it in seventy years.
They returned hand-in-hand, and the Bellman, unmanned (For a moment) with noble emotion, Said "This amply repays all the wearisome days We have spent on the billowy ocean!" Such friends, as the Beaver and Butcher became, Have seldom if ever been known; In winter or summer, 'twas always the same-- You could never meet either alone.
And when quarrels arose--as one frequently finds Quarrels will, spite of every endeavor-- The song of the Jubjub recurred to their minds, And cemented their friendship for ever!
Written by Dylan Thomas | Create an image from this poem

From Loves First Fever To Her Plague

 From love's first fever to her plague, from the soft second
And to the hollow minute of the womb,
From the unfolding to the scissored caul,
The time for breast and the green apron age
When no mouth stirred about the hanging famine,
All world was one, one windy nothing,
My world was christened in a stream of milk.
And earth and sky were as one airy hill.
The sun and mood shed one white light.
From the first print of the unshodden foot, the lifting Hand, the breaking of the hair, From the first scent of the heart, the warning ghost, And to the first dumb wonder at the flesh, The sun was red, the moon was grey, The earth and sky were as two mountains meeting.
The body prospered, teeth in the marrowed gums, The growing bones, the rumour of the manseed Within the hallowed gland, blood blessed the heart, And the four winds, that had long blown as one, Shone in my ears the light of sound, Called in my eyes the sound of light.
And yellow was the multiplying sand, Each golden grain spat life into its fellow, Green was the singing house.
The plum my mother picked matured slowly, The boy she dropped from darkness at her side Into the sided lap of light grew strong, Was muscled, matted, wise to the crying thigh, And to the voice that, like a voice of hunger, Itched in the noise of wind and sun.
And from the first declension of the flesh I learnt man's tongue, to twist the shapes of thoughts Into the stony idiom of the brain, To shade and knit anew the patch of words Left by the dead who, in their moonless acre, Need no word's warmth.
The root of tongues ends in a spentout cancer, That but a name, where maggots have their X.
I learnt the verbs of will, and had my secret; The code of night tapped on my tongue; What had been one was many sounding minded.
One wound, one mind, spewed out the matter, One breast gave suck the fever's issue; From the divorcing sky I learnt the double, The two-framed globe that spun into a score; A million minds gave suck to such a bud As forks my eye; Youth did condense; the tears of spring Dissolved in summer and the hundred seasons; One sun, one manna, warmed and fed.


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

Alphonso Of Castile

 I Alphonso live and learn,
Seeing nature go astern.
Things deteriorate in kind, Lemons run to leaves and rind, Meagre crop of figs and limes, Shorter days and harder times.
Flowering April cools and dies In the insufficient skies; Imps at high Midsummer blot Half the sun's disk with a spot; 'Twill not now avail to tan Orange cheek, or skin of man: Roses bleach, the goats are dry, Lisbon quakes, the people cry.
Yon pale scrawny fisher fools, Gaunt as bitterns in the pools, Are no brothers of my blood,— They discredit Adamhood.
Eyes of gods! ye must have seen, O'er your ramparts as ye lean, The general debility, Of genius the sterility, Mighty projects countermanded, Rash ambition broken-handed, Puny man and scentless rose Tormenting Pan to double the dose.
Rebuild or ruin: either fill Of vital force the wasted rill, Or, tumble all again in heap To weltering chaos, and to sleep.
Say, Seigneurs, are the old Niles dry, Which fed the veins of earth and sky, That mortals miss the loyal heats Which drove them erst to social feats, Now to a savage selfness grown, Think nature barely serves for one; With.
science poorly mask their hurt, And vex the gods with question pert, Immensely curious whether you Still are rulers, or Mildew.
Masters, I'm in pain with you; Masters, I'll be plain with you.
In my palace of Castile, I, a king, for kings can feel; There my thoughts the matter roll, And solve and oft resolve the whole, And, for I'm styled Alphonse the Wise, Ye shall not fail for sound advice, Before ye want a drop of rain, Hear the sentiment of Spain.
You have tried famine: no more try it; Ply us now with a full diet; Teach your pupils now with plenty, For one sun supply us twenty: I have thought it thoroughly over, State of hermit, state of lover; We must have society, We cannot spare variety.
Hear you, then, celestial fellows! Fits not to be over zealous; Steads not to work on the clean jump, Nor wine nor brains perpetual pump; Men and gods are too extense,— Could you slacken and condense? Your rank overgrowths reduce, Till your kinds abound with juice; Earth crowded cries, "Too many men,"— My counsel is, Kill nine in ten, And bestow the shares of all On the remnant decimal.
Add their nine lives to this cat; Stuff their nine brains in his hat; Make his frame and forces square With the labors he must dare; Thatch his flesh, and even his years With the marble which he rears; There growing slowly old at ease, No faster than his planted trees, He may, by warrant of his age, In schemes of broader scope engage: So shall ye have a man of the sphere, Fit to grace the solar year.
Written by Robert Browning | Create an image from this poem

Pan and Luna

 Si credere dignum est.
--Virgil, Georgics, III, 390 Oh, worthy of belief I hold it was, Virgil, your legend in those strange three lines! No question, that adventure came to pass One black night in Arcadia: yes, the pines, Mountains and valleys mingling made one mass Of black with void black heaven: the earth's confines, The sky's embrace,--below, above, around, All hardened into black without a bound.
Fill up a swart stone chalice to the brim With fresh-squeezed yet fast-thickening poppy-juice: See how the sluggish jelly, late a-swim, Turns marble to the touch of who would loose The solid smooth, grown jet from rim to rim, By turning round the bowl! So night can fuse Earth with her all-comprising sky.
No less, Light, the least spark, shows air and emptiness.
And thus it proved when--diving into space, Stript of all vapor, from each web of mist, Utterly film-free--entered on her race The naked Moon, full-orbed antagonist Of night and dark, night's dowry: peak to base, Upstarted mountains, and each valley, kissed To sudden life, lay silver-bright: in air Flew she revealed, Maid-Moon with limbs all bare.
Still as she fled, each depth,--where refuge seemed-- Opening a lone pale chamber, left distinct Those limbs: mid still-retreating blue, she teemed Herself with whiteness,--virginal, uncinct By any halo save what finely gleamed To outline not disguise her: heavenwas linked In one accord with earth to quaff the joy, Drain beauty to the dregs without alloy.
Whereof she grew aware.
What help? When, lo, A succorable cloud with sleep lay dense: Some pinetree-top had caught it sailing slow, And tethered for a prize: in evidence Captive lay fleece on fleece of piled-up snow Drowsily patient: flake-heaped how or whence, The structure of that succorable cloud, What matter? Shamed she plunged into its shroud.
Orbed--so the woman-figure poets call Because of rounds on rounds--that apple-shaped Head which its hair binds close into a ball Each side the curving ears--that pure undraped Pout of the sister paps--that .
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once for all, Say--her consummate circle thus escaped With its innumerous circlets, sank absorbed, Safe in the cloud--O naked Moon full-orbed! But what means this? The downy swathes combine, Conglobe, the smothery coy-caressing stuff Curdles about her! Vain each twist and twine Those lithe limbs try, encroached on by a fluff Fitting as close as fits the dented spine Its flexible ivory outside-flesh: enough! The plumy drifts contract, condense, constringe, Till she is swallowed by the feathery springe.
As when a pearl slips lost in the thin foam Churned on a sea-shore, and, o'er-frothed, conceits Herself safe-housed in Amphitrite's dome,-- If, through the bladdery wave-worked yeast, she meets What most she loathes and leaps from,--elf from gnome No gladlier,--finds that safest of retreats Bubble about a treacherous hand wide ope To grasp her--(divers who pick pearls so grope)-- So lay this Maid-Moon clasped around and caught By rough red Pan, the god of all that tract: He it was schemed the snare thus subtly wrought With simulated earth-breath,--wool-tufts packed Into a billowy wrappage.
Sheep far-sought For spotless shearings yield such: take the fact As learned Virgil gives it,--how the breed Whitens itself forever: yes, indeed! If one forefather ram, though pure as chalk From tinge on fleece, should still display a tongue Black 'neath the beast's moist palate, prompt men balk The propagating plague: he gets no young: They rather slay him,--sell his hide to calk Ships with, first steeped with pitch,--nor hands are wrung In sorrow for his fate: protected thus, The purity we loved is gained for us.
So did girl-Moon, by just her attribute Of unmatched modesty betrayed, lie trapped, Bruised to the breast of Pan, half god half brute, Raked by his bristly boar-sward while he lapped --Never say, kissed her! that were to pollute Love's language--which moreover proves unapt To tell how she recoiled--as who finds thorns Where she sought flowers--when, feeling, she touched--horns! Then--does the legend say?--first moon-eclipse Happened, first swooning-fit which puzzled sore The early sages? Is that why she dips Into the dark, a minute and no more, Only so long as serves her while she rips The cloud's womb through and, faultless as before, Pursues her way? No lesson for a maid Left she, a maid herself thus trapped, betrayed? Ha, Virgil? Tell the rest, you! "To the deep Of his domain the wildwood, Pan forthwith Called her, and so she followed"--in her sleep, Surely?--"by no means spurning him.
" The myth Explain who may! Let all else go, I keep --As of a ruin just a monolith-- Thus much, one verse of five words, each a boon: Arcadia, night, a cloud, Pan, and the moon.
Written by Florbela Espanca | Create an image from this poem

to be a poet

To be a poet is to be louder , bigger
Than men! Biting as who kisses!
It is like being a beggar and to give whoever be
King of the Kingdom of Behind and Beyond  Pain!

It is to have  of a thousand wishes the splendor
And do not even to know what to want !
It is to have  here deep inside a flaming star,
It is to have  claws and wings of condor!

It is hunger, thirst of Infinite!
By elmo, the golden satin mornings .
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It is to condense the world into a single cry! And is to love you, like that, madly .
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You being soul and blood, and life in me And saying this singing it to everyone!
Written by Robert Browning | Create an image from this poem

Protus

 Among these latter busts we count by scores,
Half-emperors and quarter-emperors,
Each with his bay-leaf fillet, loose-thonged vest,
Loricand low-browed Gorgon on the breast,---
One loves a baby face, with violets there,
Violets instead of laurel in the hair,
As those were all the little locks could bear.
Now read here.
``Protus ends a period ``Of empery beginning with a god; ``Born in the porphyry chamber at Byzant, ``Queens by his cradle, proud and ministrant: ``And if he quickened breath there, 'twould like fire ``Pantingly through the dim vast realm transpire.
``A fame that he was missing spread afar: ``The world from its four corners, rose in war, ``Till he was borne out on a balcony ``To pacify the world when it should see.
``The captains ranged before him, one, his hand ``Made baby points at, gained the chief command.
``And day by day more beautiful he grew ``In shape, all said, in feature and in hue, ``While young Greek sculptors, gazing on the child, ``Because with old Greek sculptore reconciled.
``Already sages laboured to condense ``In easy tomes a life's experience: ``And artists took grave counsel to impart ``In one breath and one hand-sweep, all their art--- ``To make his graces prompt as blossoming ``Of plentifully-watered palms in spring: ``Since well beseems it, whoso mounts the throne, ``For beauty, knowledge, strength, should stand alone, ``And mortals love the letters of his name.
'' ---Stop! Have you turned two pages? Still the same.
New reign, same date.
The scribe goes on to say How that same year, on such a month and day, ``John the Pannonian, groundedly believed ``A Blacksmith's bastard, whose hard hand reprieved ``The Empire from its fate the year before,--- ``Came, had a mind to take the crown, and wore ``The same for six years (during which the Huns ``Kept off their fingers from us), till his sons ``Put something in his liquor''---and so forth.
Then a new reign.
Stay---``Take at its just worth'' (Subjoins an annotator) ``what I give ``As hearsay.
Some think, John let Protus live ``And slip away.
'Tis said, he reached man's age ``At some blind northern court; made, first a page, ``Then tutor to the children; last, of use ``About the hunting-stables.
I deduce ``He wrote the little tract `On worming dogs,' ``Whereof the name in sundry catalogues ``Is extant yet.
A Protus of the race ``Is rumoured to have died a monk in Thrace,--- ``And if the same, he reached senility.
'' Here's John the Smith's rough-hammered head.
Great eye, Gross jaw and griped lips do what granite can To give you the crown-grasper.
What a man!
Written by Robert Browning | Create an image from this poem

Now!

 Out of your whole life give but a moment!
All of your life that has gone before,
All to come after it, -- so you ignore,
So you make perfect the present, condense,
In a rapture of rage, for perfection's endowment,
Thought and feeling and soul and sense,
Merged in a moment which gives me at last
You around me for once, you beneath me, above me --
Me, sure that, despite of time future, time past,
This tick of life-time's one moment you love me!
How long such suspension may linger? Ah, Sweet,
The moment eternal -- just that and no more --
When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core,
While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut, and lips meet!

Book: Reflection on the Important Things