10 Best Famous Lusts Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Lusts poems. This is a select list of the best famous Lusts poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Lusts poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of lusts poems.

• All Famous Lusts Poems

 CARRYING bouquet, and handkerchief, and gloves, 
Proud of her height as when she lived, she moves 
With all the careless and high-stepping grace, 
And the extravagant courtesan's thin face. 

Was slimmer waist e'er in a ball-room wooed? 
Her floating robe, in royal amplitude, 
Falls in deep folds around a dry foot, shod 
With a bright flower-like shoe that gems the sod. 

The swarms that hum about her collar-bones 
As the lascivious streams caress the stones, 
Conceal from every scornful jest that flies, 
Her gloomy beauty; and her fathomless eyes 

Are made of shade and void; with flowery sprays 
Her skull is wreathed artistically, and sways, 
Feeble and weak, on her frail vertebrae. 
O charm of nothing decked in folly! they 

Who laugh and name you a Caricature, 
They see not, they whom flesh and blood allure, 
The nameless grace of every bleached, bare bone, 
That is most dear to me, tall skeleton! 

Come you to trouble with your potent sneer 
The feast of Life! or are you driven here, 
To Pleasure's Sabbath, by dead lusts that stir 
And goad your moving corpse on with a spur? 

Or do you hope, when sing the violins, 
And the pale candle-flame lights up our sins, 
To drive some mocking nightmare far apart, 
And cool the flame hell lighted in your heart? 

Fathomless well of fault and foolishness! 
Eternal alembic of antique distress! 
Still o'er the curved, white trellis of your sides 
The sateless, wandering serpent curls and glides. 

And truth to tell, I fear lest you should find, 
Among us here, no lover to your mind; 
Which of these hearts beat for the smile you gave? 
The charms of horror please none but the brave. 

Your eyes' black gulf, where awful broodings stir, 
Brings giddiness; the prudent reveller 
Sees, while a horror grips him from beneath, 
The eternal smile of thirty-two white teeth. 

For he who has not folded in his arms 
A skeleton, nor fed on graveyard charms, 
Recks not of furbelow, or paint, or scent, 
When Horror comes the way that Beauty went. 

O irresistible, with fleshless face, 
Say to these dancers in their dazzled race: 
"Proud lovers with the paint above your bones, 
Ye shall taste death, musk scented skeletons! 

Withered Antino?s, dandies with plump faces, 
Ye varnished cadavers, and grey Lovelaces, 
Ye go to lands unknown and void of breath, 
Drawn by the rumour of the Dance of Death. 

From Seine's cold quays to Ganges' burning stream, 
The mortal troupes dance onward in a dream; 
They do not see, within the opened sky, 
The Angel's sinister trumpet raised on high. 

In every clime and under every sun, 
Death laughs at ye, mad mortals, as ye run; 
And oft perfumes herself with myrrh, like ye 
And mingles with your madness, irony!"

Persuasion

I 	At any moment love unheralded
Comes, and is king. Then as, with a fall
Of frost, the buds upon the hawthorn spread
Are withered in untimely burial,
So love, occasion gone, his crown puts by,
And as a beggar walks unfriended ways,
With but remembered beauty to defy
The frozen sorrows of unsceptred days.
Or in that later travelling he comes
Upon a bleak oblivion, and tells
Himself, again, again, forgotten tombs
Are all now that love was, and blindly spells
His royal state of old a glory cursed,
Saying 'I have forgot', and that's the worst.
II 	If we should part upon that one embrace,
And set our courses ever, each from each,
With all our treasure but a fading face
And little ghostly syllables of speech;
Should beauty's moment never be renewed,
And moons on moons look out for us in vain,
And each but whisper from a solitude
To hear but echoes of a lonely pain, —
Still in a world that fortune cannot change
Should walk those two that once were you and I,
Those two that once when moon and stars were strange
Poets above us in an April sky,
Heard a voice falling on the midnight sea,
Mute, and for ever, but for you and me.
III 	This nature, this great flood of life, this cheat
That uses us as baubles for her coat,
Takes love, that should be nothing but the beat
Of blood for its own beauty, by the throat,
Saying, you are my servant and shall do
My purposes, or utter bitterness
Shall be your wage, and nothing come to you
But stammering tongues that never can confess.
Undaunted then in answer here I cry,
'You wanton, that control the hand of him
Who masquerades as wisdom in a sky
Where holy, holy, sing the cherubim,
I will not pay one penny to your name
Though all my body crumble into shame.'
IV 	Woman, I once had whimpered at your hand,
Saying that all the wisdom that I sought
Lay in your brain, that you were as the sand
Should cleanse the muddy mirrors of my thought;
I should have read in you the character
Of oracles that quick a thousand lays,
Looked in your eyes, and seen accounted there
Solomons legioned for bewildered praise.
Now have I learnt love as love is. I take
Your hand, and with no inquisition learn
All that your eyes can tell, and that's to make
A little reckoning and brief, then turn
Away, and in my heart I hear a call,
'I love, I love, I love'; and that is all.
V 	When all the hungry pain of love I bear,
And in poor lightless thought but burn and burn,
And wit goes hunting wisdom everywhere,
Yet can no word of revelation learn;
When endlessly the scales of yea and nay
In dreadful motion fall and rise and fall,
When all my heart in sorrow I could pay
Until at last were left no tear at all;
Then if with tame or subtle argument
Companions come and draw me to a place
Where words are but the tappings of content,
And life spreads all her garments with a grace,
I curse that ease, and hunger in my heart
Back to my pain and lonely to depart.
VI 	Not anything you do can make you mine,
For enterprise with equal charity
In duty as in love elect will shine,
The constant slave of mutability.
Nor can your words for all their honey breath
Outsing the speech of many an older rhyme,
And though my ear deliver them from death
One day or two, it is so little time.
Nor does your beauty in its excellence
Excel a thousand in the daily sun,
Yet must I put a period to pretence,
And with my logic's catalogue have done,
For act and word and beauty are but keys
To unlock the heart, and you, dear love, are these.
VII 	Never the heart of spring had trembled so
As on that day when first in Paradise
We went afoot as novices to know
For the first time what blue was in the skies,
What fresher green than any in the grass,
And how the sap goes beating to the sun,
And tell how on the clocks of beauty pass
Minute by minute till the last is done.
But not the new birds singing in the brake,
And not the buds of our discovery,
The deeper blue, the wilder green, the ache
For beauty that we shadow as we see,
Made heaven, but we, as love's occasion brings,
Took these, and made them Paradisal things.
VIII 	The lilacs offer beauty to the sun,
Throbbing with wonder as eternally
For sad and happy lovers they have done
With the first bloom of summer in the sky;
Yet they are newly spread in honour now,
Because, for every beam of beauty given
Out of that clustering heart, back to the bough
My love goes beating, from a greater heaven.
So be my love for good or sorry luck
Bound, it has virtue on this April eve
That shall be there for ever when they pluck
Lilacs for love. And though I come to grieve
Long at a frosty tomb, there still shall be
My happy lyric in the lilac tree.
IX 	When they make silly question of my love,
And speak to me of danger and disdain,
And look by fond old argument to move
My wisdom to docility again;
When to my prouder heart they set the pride
Of custom and the gossip of the street,
And show me figures of myself beside
A self diminished at their judgment seat;
Then do I sit as in a drowsy pew
To hear a priest expounding th' heavenly will,
Defiling wonder that he never knew
With stolen words of measured good and ill;
For to the love that knows their counselling,
Out of my love contempt alone I bring.
X 	Not love of you is most that I can bring,
Since what I am to love you is the test,
And should I love you more than any thing
You would but be of idle love possessed,
A mere love wandering in appetite,
Counting your glories and yet bringing none,
Finding in you occasions of delight,
A thief of payment for no service done.
But when of labouring life I make a song
And bring it you, as that were my reward,
To let what most is me to you belong,
Then do I come of high possessions lord,
And loving life more than my love of you
I give you love more excellently true.
XI 	What better tale could any lover tell
When age or death his reckoning shall write
Than thus, 'Love taught me only to rebel
Against these things, — the thieving of delight
Without return; the gospellers of fear
Who, loving, yet deny the truth they bear,
Sad-suited lusts with lecherous hands to smear
The cloth of gold they would but dare not wear.
And love gave me great knowledge of the trees,
And singing birds, and earth with all her flowers;
Wisdom I knew and righteousness in these,
I lived in their atonement all my hours;
Love taught me how to beauty's eye alone
The secret of the lying heart is known.'
XII 	This then at last; we may be wiser far
Than love, and put his folly to our measure,
Yet shall we learn, poor wizards that we are,
That love chimes not nor motions at our pleasure.
We bid him come, and light an eager fire,
And he goes down the road without debating;
We cast him from the house of our desire,
And when at last we leave he will be waiting.
And in the end there is no folly but this,
To counsel love out of our little learning.
For still he knows where rotten timber is,
And where the boughs for the long winter burning;
And when life needs no more of us at all,
Love's word will be the last that we recall.

 A middle-northern March, now as always— 
gusts from the South broken against cold winds— 
but from under, as if a slow hand lifted a tide, 
it moves—not into April—into a second March, 

the old skin of wind-clear scales dropping 
upon the mold: this is the shadow projects the tree 
upward causing the sun to shine in his sphere. 

So we will put on our pink felt hat—new last year! 
—newer this by virtue of brown eyes turning back 
the seasons—and let us walk to the orchid-house, 
see the flowers will take the prize tomorrow 
at the Palace. 
 Stop here, these are our oleanders. 
When they are in bloom— 
 You would waste words 
It is clearer to me than if the pink 
were on the branch. It would be a searching in 
a colored cloud to reveal that which now, huskless, 
shows the very reason for their being. 

And these the orange-trees, in blossom—no need 
to tell with this weight of perfume in the air. 
If it were not so dark in this shed one could better 
see the white. 
 It is that very perfume 
has drawn the darkness down among the leaves. 
Do I speak clearly enough? 
It is this darkness reveals that which darkness alone 
loosens and sets spinning on waxen wings— 
not the touch of a finger-tip, not the motion 
of a sigh. A too heavy sweetness proves 
its own caretaker. 
And here are the orchids! 
 Never having seen 
such gaiety I will read these flowers for you: 
This is an odd January, died—in Villon's time. 
Snow, this is and this the stain of a violet 
grew in that place the spring that foresaw its own doom. 

And this, a certain July from Iceland: 
a young woman of that place 
breathed it toward the South. It took root there. 
The color ran true but the plant is small. 

This falling spray of snow-flakes is 
a handful of dead Februaries 
prayed into flower by Rafael Arevalo Martinez 
of Guatemala. 
 Here's that old friend who 
went by my side so many years: this full, fragile 
head of veined lavender. Oh that April 
that we first went with our stiff lusts 
leaving the city behind, out to the green hill— 
May, they said she was. A hand for all of us: 
this branch of blue butterflies tied to this stem. 

June is a yellow cup I'll not name; August 
the over-heavy one. And here are— 
russet and shiny, all but March. And March? 
Ah, March— 
 Flowers are a tiresome pastime. 
One has a wish to shake them from their pots 
root and stem, for the sun to gnaw. 

Walk out again into the cold and saunter home 
to the fire. This day has blossomed long enough. 
I have wiped out the red night and lit a blaze 
instead which will at least warm our hands 
and stir up the talk. 
 I think we have kept fair time. 
Time is a green orchard.

 WEBSTER was much possessed by death
And saw the skull beneath the skin;
And breastless creatures under ground
Leaned backward with a lipless grin.

Daffodil bulbs instead of balls
Stared from the sockets of the eyes!
He knew that thought clings round dead limbs
Tightening its lusts and luxuries.

Donne, I suppose, was such another
Who found no substitute for sense,
To seize and clutch and penetrate;
Expert beyond experience,

He knew the anguish of the marrow
The ague of the skeleton;
No contact possible to flesh
Allayed the fever of the bone.
. . . . .
Grishkin is nice: her Russian eye
Is underlined for emphasis;
Uncorseted, her friendly bust
Gives promise of pneumatic bliss.

The couched Brazilian jaguar
Compels the scampering marmoset
With subtle effluence of cat;
Grishkin has a maisonette;

The sleek Brazilian jaguar
Does not in its arboreal gloom
Distil so rank a feline smell
As Grishkin in a drawing-room.

And even the Abstract Entities
Circumambulate her charm;
But our lot crawls between dry ribs
To keep our metaphysics warm.

 SHE will not sleep, for fear of dreams, 
But, rising, quits her restless bed, 
And walks where some beclouded beams 
Of moonlight through the hall are shed.

Obedient to the goad of grief, 
Her steps, now fast, now lingering slow, 
In varying motion seek relief 
From the Eumenides of woe.

Wringing her hands, at intervals­ 
But long as mute as phantom dim­ 
She glides along the dusky walls, 
Under the black oak rafters, grim.

The close air of the grated tower 
Stifles a heart that scarce can beat, 
And, though so late and lone the hour, 
Forth pass her wandering, faltering feet;

And on the pavement, spread before 
The long front of the mansion grey, 
Her steps imprint the night-frost hoar, 
Which pale on grass and granite lay.

Not long she stayed where misty moon 
And shimmering stars could on her look, 
But through the garden arch-way, soon 
Her strange and gloomy path she took.

Some firs, coeval with the tower, 
Their straight black boughs stretched o'er her head, 
Unseen, beneath this sable bower, 
Rustled her dress and rapid tread. 

There was an alcove in that shade, 
Screening a rustic-seat and stand; 
Weary she sat her down and laid 
Her hot brow on her burning hand.

To solitude and to the night, 
Some words she now, in murmurs, said; 
And, trickling through her fingers white, 
Some tears of misery she shed.

' God help me, in my grievous need, 
God help me, in my inward pain; 
Which cannot ask for pity's meed, 
Which has no license to complain;

Which must be borne, yet who can bear, 
Hours long, days long, a constant weight­ 
The yoke of absolute despair, 
A suffering wholly desolate ?

Who can for ever crush the heart, 
Restrain its throbbing, curb its life ? 
Dissemble truth with ceaseless art, 
With outward calm, mask inward strife ?'

She waited­as for some reply;
The still and cloudy night gave none; 
Erelong, with deep-drawn, trembling sigh, 
Her heavy plaint again begun. 

' Unloved­I love; unwept­I weep; 
Grief I restrain­hope I repress: 
Vain is this anguish­fixed and deep; 
Vainer, desires and dreams of bliss.

My love awakes no love again, 
My tears collect, and fall unfelt; 
My sorrow touches none with pain, 
My humble hopes to nothing melt.

For me the universe is dumb, 
Stone-deaf, and blank, and wholly blind; 
Life I must bound, existence sum 
In the strait limits of one mind;

That mind my own. Oh ! narrow cell; 
Dark­imageless­a living tomb ! 
There must I sleep, there wake and dwell 
Content, with palsy, pain, and gloom.'

Again she paused; a moan of pain, 
A stifled sob, alone was heard; 
Long silence followed­then again, 
Her voice the stagnant midnight stirred.

' Must it be so ? Is this my fate ?
Can I nor struggle, nor contend ?
And am I doomed for years to wait,
Watching death's lingering axe descend ? 

And when it falls, and when I die, 
What follows ? Vacant nothingness ? 
The blank of lost identity ? 
Erasure both of pain and bliss ?

I've heard of heaven­I would believe; 
For if this earth indeed be all, 
Who longest lives may deepest grieve, 
Most blest, whom sorrows soonest call.

Oh ! leaving disappointment here, 
Will man find hope on yonder coast ? 
Hope, which, on earth, shines never clear, 
And oft in clouds is wholly lost.

Will he hope's source of light behold, 
Fruition's spring, where doubts expire, 
And drink, in waves of living gold, 
Contentment, full, for long desire ?

Will he find bliss, which here he dreamed ? 
Rest, which was weariness on earth ? 
Knowledge, which, if o'er life it beamed, 
Served but to prove it void of worth ?

Will he find love without lust's leaven, 
Love fearless, tearless, perfect, pure, 
To all with equal bounty given, 
In all, unfeigned, unfailing, sure ? 

Will he, from penal sufferings free, 
Released from shroud and wormy clod, 
All calm and glorious, rise and see 
Creation's Sire­Existence' God ?

Then, glancing back on Time's brief woes, 
Will he behold them, fading, fly; 
Swept from Eternity's repose, 
Like sullying cloud, from pure blue sky ?

If so­endure, my weary frame; 
And when thy anguish strikes too deep, 
And when all troubled burns life's flame,
Think of the quiet, final sleep;

Think of the glorious waking-hour, 
Which will not dawn on grief and tears, 
But on a ransomed spirit's power, 
Certain, and free from mortal fears.

Seek now thy couch, and lie till morn, 
Then from thy chamber, calm, descend, 
With mind nor tossed, nor anguish-torn, 
But tranquil, fixed, to wait the end.

And when thy opening eyes shall see
Mementos, on the chamber wall,
Of one who has forgotten thee,
Shed not the tear of acrid gall. 

The tear which, welling from the heart, 
Burns where its drop corrosive falls, 
And makes each nerve, in torture, start, 
At feelings it too well recalls:

When the sweet hope of being loved, 
Threw Eden sunshine on life's way; 
When every sense and feeling proved 
Expectancy of brightest day.

When the hand trembled to receive 
A thrilling clasp, which seemed so near, 
And the heart ventured to believe,
Another heart esteemed it dear.

When words, half love, all tenderness, 
Were hourly heard, as hourly spoken, 
When the long, sunny days of bliss, 
Only by moonlight nights were broken.

Till drop by drop, the cup of joy 
Filled full, with purple light, was glowing, 
And Faith, which watched it, sparkling high, 
Still never dreamt the overflowing.

It fell not with a sudden crashing, 
It poured not out like open sluice; 
No, sparkling still, and redly flashing, 
Drained, drop by drop, the generous juice. 

I saw it sink, and strove to taste it, 
My eager lips approached the brim; 
The movement only seemed to waste it, 
It sank to dregs, all harsh and dim.

These I have drank, and they for ever 
Have poisoned life and love for me; 
A draught from Sodom's lake could never 
More fiery, salt, and bitter, be.

Oh ! Love was all a thin illusion; 
Joy, but the desert's flying stream; 
And, glancing back on long delusion,
My memory grasps a hollow dream.

Yet, whence that wondrous change of feeling, 
I never knew, and cannot learn, 
Nor why my lover's eye, congealing, 
Grew cold, and clouded, proud, and stern.

Nor wherefore, friendship's forms forgetting, 
He careless left, and cool withdrew; 
Nor spoke of grief, nor fond regretting, 
Nor even one glance of comfort threw.

And neither word nor token sending,
Of kindness, since the parting day,
His course, for distant regions bending,
Went, self-contained and calm, away. 

Oh, bitter, blighting, keen sensation, 
Which will not weaken, cannot die, 
Hasten thy work of desolation, 
And let my tortured spirit fly !

Vain as the passing gale, my crying; 
Though lightning-struck, I must live on; 
I know, at heart, there is no dying 
Of love, and ruined hope, alone.

Still strong, and young, and warm with vigour, 
Though scathed, I long shall greenly grow, 
And many a storm of wildest rigour 
Shall yet break o'er my shivered bough.

Rebellious now to blank inertion, 
My unused strength demands a task; 
Travel, and toil, and full exertion, 
Are the last, only boon I ask.

Whence, then, this vain and barren dreaming 
Of death, and dubious life to come ? 
I see a nearer beacon gleaming 
Over dejection's sea of gloom.

The very wildness of my sorrow 
Tells me I yet have innate force; 
My track of life has been too narrow, 
Effort shall trace a broader course. 

The world is not in yonder tower, 
Earth is not prisoned in that room, 
'Mid whose dark pannels, hour by hour, 
I've sat, the slave and prey of gloom.

One feeling­turned to utter anguish, 
Is not my being's only aim; 
When, lorn and loveless, life will languish, 
But courage can revive the flame.

He, when he left me, went a roving
To sunny climes, beyond the sea; 
And I, the weight of woe removing, 
Am free and fetterless as he.

New scenes, new language, skies less clouded,
May once more wake the wish to live; 
Strange, foreign towns, astir, and crowded, 
New pictures to the mind may give.

New forms and faces, passing ever, 
May hide the one I still retain, 
Defined, and fixed, and fading never, 
Stamped deep on vision, heart, and brain.

And we might meet­time may have changed him;
Chance may reveal the mystery,
The secret influence which estranged him;
Love may restore him yet to me. 

False thought­false hope­in scorn be banished ! 
I am not loved­nor loved have been; 
Recall not, then, the dreams scarce vanished, 
Traitors ! mislead me not again !

To words like yours I bid defiance, 
'Tis such my mental wreck have made; 
Of God alone, and self-reliance, 
I ask for solace­hope for aid.

Morn comes­and ere meridian glory
O'er these, my natal woods, shall smile, 
Both lonely wood and mansion hoary 
I'll leave behind, full many a mile.

 Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness. 
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says 
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing 
milk from his mother's forgotten breasts. 

Let us walk in the woods, says the cat. 
I'll teach you to read the tabloid of scents, 
to fade into shadow, wait like a trap, to hunt. 
Now I lay this plump warm mouse on your mat. 

You feed me, I try to feed you, we are friends, 
says the cat, although I am more equal than you. 
Can you leap twenty times the height of your body? 
Can you run up and down trees? Jump between roofs?

Let us rub our bodies together and talk of touch. 
My emotions are pure as salt crystals and as hard. 
My lusts glow like my eyes. I sing to you in the mornings
walking round and round your bed and into your face. 

Come I will teach you to dance as naturally 
as falling asleep and waking and stretching long, long. 
I speak greed with my paws and fear with my whiskers. 
Envy lashes my tail. Love speaks me entire, a word 

of fur. I will teach you to be still as an egg 
and to slip like the ghost of wind through the grass.

 [First published in Schiller's Horen, in connection 
with a
friendly contest in the art of ballad-writing between the two
great poets, to which many of their finest works are owing.]

ONCE a stranger youth to Corinth came,

Who in Athens lived, but hoped that he
From a certain townsman there might claim,

As his father's friend, kind courtesy.

Son and daughter, they

Had been wont to say

Should thereafter bride and bridegroom be.

But can he that boon so highly prized,

Save tis dearly bought, now hope to get?
They are Christians and have been baptized,

He and all of his are heathens yet.

For a newborn creed,

Like some loathsome weed,

Love and truth to root out oft will threat.

Father, daughter, all had gone to rest,

And the mother only watches late;
She receives with courtesy the guest,

And conducts him to the room of state.

Wine and food are brought,

Ere by him besought;

Bidding him good night. she leaves him straight.

But he feels no relish now, in truth,

For the dainties so profusely spread;
Meat and drink forgets the wearied youth,

And, still dress'd, he lays him on the bed.

Scarce are closed his eyes,

When a form in-hies

Through the open door with silent tread.

By his glimmering lamp discerns he now

How, in veil and garment white array'd,
With a black and gold band round her brow,

Glides into the room a bashful maid.

But she, at his sight,

Lifts her hand so white,

And appears as though full sore afraid.

"Am I," cries she, "such a stranger here,

That the guest's approach they could not name?
Ah, they keep me in my cloister drear,

Well nigh feel I vanquish'd by my shame.

On thy soft couch now

Slumber calmly thou!

I'll return as swiftly as I came."

"Stay, thou fairest maiden!" cries the boy,

Starting from his couch with eager haste:
"Here are Ceres', Bacchus' gifts of joy;

Amor bringest thou, with beauty grac'd!

Thou art pale with fear!

Loved one let us here

Prove the raptures the Immortals taste."

"Draw not nigh, O Youth! afar remain!

Rapture now can never smile on me;
For the fatal step, alas! is ta'en,

Through my mother's sick-bed phantasy.

Cured, she made this oath:

'Youth and nature both

Shall henceforth to Heav'n devoted be.'


"From the house, so silent now, are driven

All the gods who reign'd supreme of yore;
One Invisible now rules in heaven,

On the cross a Saviour they adore.

Victims slay they here,

Neither lamb nor steer,
But the altars reek with human gore."

And he lists, and ev'ry word he weighs,

While his eager soul drinks in each sound:
"Can it be that now before my gaze

Stands my loved one on this silent ground?

Pledge to me thy troth!

Through our father's oath:

With Heav'ns blessing will our love be crown'd."

"Kindly youth, I never can be thine!

'Tis my sister they intend for thee.
When I in the silent cloister pine,

Ah, within her arms remember me!

Thee alone I love,

While love's pangs I prove;

Soon the earth will veil my misery."

"No! for by this glowing flame I swear,

Hymen hath himself propitious shown:
Let us to my fathers house repair,

And thoult find that joy is not yet flown,

Sweetest, here then stay,

And without delay

Hold we now our wedding feast alone!"

Then exchange they tokens of their truth;

She gives him a golden chain to wear,
And a silver chalice would the youth

Give her in return of beauty rare.

"That is not for me;

Yet I beg of thee,
One lock only give me of thy hair."

Now the ghostly hour of midnight knell'd,

And she seem'd right joyous at the sign;
To her pallid lips the cup she held,

But she drank of nought but blood-red wine.

For to taste the bread

There before them spread,

Nought he spoke could make the maid incline.

To the youth the goblet then she brought,--

He too quaff'd with eager joy the bowl.
Love to crown the silent feast he sought,

Ah! full love-sick was the stripling's soul.

From his prayer she shrinks,

Till at length he sinks

On the bed and weeps without control.

And she comes, and lays her near the boy:

"How I grieve to see thee sorrowing so!
If thou think'st to clasp my form with joy,

Thou must learn this secret sad to know;

Yes! the maid, whom thou

Call'st thy loved one now,

Is as cold as ice, though white as snow."

Then he clasps her madly in his arm,

While love's youthful might pervades his frame:
"Thou might'st hope, when with me, to grow warm,

E'en if from the grave thy spirit came!

Breath for breath, and kiss!

Overflow of bliss!

Dost not thou, like me, feel passion's flame?"

Love still closer rivets now their lips,

Tears they mingle with their rapture blest,
From his mouth the flame she wildly sips,

Each is with the other's thought possess'd.

His hot ardour's flood

Warms her chilly blood,

But no heart is beating in her breast.

In her care to see that nought went wrong,

Now the mother happen'd to draw near;
At the door long hearkens she, full long,

Wond'ring at the sounds that greet her ear.

Tones of joy and sadness,

And love's blissful madness,

As of bride and bridegroom they appear,

From the door she will not now remove

'Till she gains full certainty of this;
And with anger hears she vows of love,

Soft caressing words of mutual bliss.

"Hush! the cock's loud strain!

But thoult come again,

When the night returns!"--then kiss on kiss.

Then her wrath the mother cannot hold,

But unfastens straight the lock with ease
"In this house are girls become so bold,

As to seek e'en strangers' lusts to please?"

By her lamp's clear glow

Looks she in,--and oh!

Sight of horror!--'tis her child she sees.

Fain the youth would, in his first alarm,

With the veil that o'er her had been spread,
With the carpet, shield his love from harm;

But she casts them from her, void of dread,

And with spirit's strength,

In its spectre length,

Lifts her figure slowly from the bed.

"Mother! mother!"--Thus her wan lips say:

"May not I one night of rapture share?
From the warm couch am I chased away?

Do I waken only to despair?

It contents not thee

To have driven me

An untimely shroud of death to wear?

"But from out my coffin's prison-bounds

By a wond'rous fate I'm forced to rove,
While the blessings and the chaunting sounds

That your priests delight in, useless prove.

Water, salt, are vain

Fervent youth to chain,

Ah, e'en Earth can never cool down love!

"When that infant vow of love was spoken,

Venus' radiant temple smiled on both.
Mother! thou that promise since hast broken,

Fetter'd by a strange, deceitful oath.

Gods, though, hearken ne'er,

Should a mother swear

To deny her daughter's plighted troth.

From my grave to wander I am forc'd,

Still to seek The Good's long-sever'd link,
Still to love the bridegroom I have lost,

And the life-blood of his heart to drink;

When his race is run,

I must hasten on,

And the young must 'neath my vengeance sink,

"Beauteous youth! no longer mayst thou live;

Here must shrivel up thy form so fair;
Did not I to thee a token give,

Taking in return this lock of hair?

View it to thy sorrow!

Grey thoult be to-morrow,

Only to grow brown again when there.

"Mother, to this final prayer give ear!

Let a funeral pile be straightway dress'd;
Open then my cell so sad and drear,

That the flames may give the lovers rest!

When ascends the fire

From the glowing pyre,

To the gods of old we'll hasten, blest."

1797.

 MY mother's maids, when they did sew and spin, 
They sang sometime a song of the field mouse, 
That for because her livelood was but thin [livelihood] 
Would needs go seek her townish sister's house. 
She thought herself endured to much pain: 
The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse 
That when the furrows swimmed with the rain 
She must lie cold and wet in sorry plight, 
And, worse than that, bare meat there did remain 
To comfort her when she her house had dight: 
Sometime a barleycorn, sometime a bean, 
For which she labored hard both day and night 
In harvest time, whilst she might go and glean. 
And when her store was 'stroyed with the flood, 
Then well away, for she undone was clean. 
Then was she fain to take, instead of food, 
Sleep if she might, her hunger to beguile. 
"My sister," qoth she, "hath a living good, 
And hence from me she dwelleth not a mile. 
In cold and storm she lieth warm and dry 
In bed of down, and dirt doth not defile 
Her tender foot, she laboreth not as I. 
Richly she feedeth and at the rich man's cost, 
And for her meat she needs not crave nor cry. 
By sea, by land, of the delicates the most 
Her cater seeks and spareth for no peril. 
She feedeth on boiled, baken meat, and roast, 
And hath thereof neither charge nor travail. 
And, when she list, the liquor of the grape 
Doth goad her heart till that her belly swell." 
And at this journey she maketh but a jape: [joke] 
So forth she goeth, trusting of all this wealth 
With her sister her part so for to shape 
That, if she might keep herself in health, 
To live a lady while her life doth last. 
And to the door now is she come by stealth, 
And with her foot anon she scrapeth full fast. 
The other for fear durst not well scarce appear, 
Of every noise so was the wretch aghast. 
"Peace," quoth the town mouse, "why speakest thou so loud?" 
And by the hand she took her fair and well. 
"Welcome," quoth she, "my sister, by the rood." 
She feasted her that joy is was to tell 
The fare they had; they drank the wine so clear; 
And as to purpose now and then it fell 
She cheered her with: "How, sister, what cheer?" 
Amids this joy there fell a sorry chance, 
That, wellaway, the stranger bought full dear 
The fare she had. For as she looks, askance, 
Under a stool she spied two steaming eyes 
In a round head with sharp ears. In France 
was never mouse so feared, for though the unwise [afraid] 
Had not yseen such a beast before, 
Yet had nature taught her after her guise 
To know her foe and dread him evermore. 
The town mouse fled; she knew whither to go. 
The other had no shift, but wondrous sore 
Feared of her life, at home she wished her, though. 
And to the door, alas, as she did skip 
(Th' heaven it would, lo, and eke her chance was so) 
At the threshold her silly foot did trip, 
And ere she might recover it again 
The traitor cat had caught her by the hip 
And made her there against her will remain 
That had forgotten her poor surety, and rest, 
For seeming wealth wherein she thought to reign. 
Alas, my Poynz, how men do seek the best [a friend of Wyatt] 
And find the worst, by error as they stray. 
And no marvel, when sight is so opprest 
And blind the guide. Anon out of the way 
Goeth guide and all in seeking quiet life. 
O wretched minds, there is no gold that may 
Grant that ye seek, no war, no peace, no strife, 
No, no, although thy head was hoopt with gold, [crowned] 
Sergeant with mace, haubert, sword, nor knife 
Cannot repulse the care that follow should. 
Each kind of life hath with him his disease: 
Live in delight even as thy lust would, [as you would desire] 
And thou shalt find when lust doth most thee please 
It irketh strait and by itself doth fade. 
A small thing it is that may thy mind appease. 
None of ye all there is that is so mad 
To seek grapes upon brambles or breers, [briars] 
Not none I trow that hath his wit so bad 
To set his hay for conies over rivers, [snares for rabbits] 
Ne ye set not a drag net for an hare. [nor] 
And yet the thing that most is your desire 
Ye do misseek with more travail and care. 
Make plain thine heart, that it be not notted 
With hope or dread, and see thy will be bare 
>From all effects whom vice hath ever spotted. 
Thyself content with that is thee assigned, 
And use it well that is to thee allotted, 
Then seek no more out of thyself to find 
The thing that thou hast sought so long before, 
For thou shalt find it sitting in thy mind. 
Mad, if ye list to continue your sore, 
Let present pass, and gape on time to come, 
And deep yourself in travail more and more. 
Henceforth, my Poynz, this shall be all and some: 
These wretched fools shall have nought else of me. 
But to the great God and to His high doom* [judgment] 
None other pain pray I for them to be 
But, when the rage doth lead them from the right, 
That, looking backward, Virtue they may see 
Even as She is, so goodly fair and bright. 
And whilst they clasp their lusts in arms across 
Grant them, good Lord, as Thou mayst of Thy might, 
To fret inward for losing such a loss.

 Immortal Heat, O let thy greater flame
Attract the lesser to it: let those fires
Which shall consume the world, first make it tame,
And kindle in our hearts such true desires,

As may consume our lusts, and make thee way.
Then shall our hearts pant thee; then shall our brain
All her invention on thine Altar lay,
And there in hymnes send back thy fire again:

Our eies shall see thee, which before saw dust;
Dust blown by wit, till that they both were blinde:
Thou shalt recover all thy goods in kinde,
Who wert disseized by usurping lust:

All knees shall bow to thee; all wits shall rise,
And praise him who did make and mend our eies.

 You ask me to be gay and glad 
While lurid clouds of danger loom, 
And vain and bad and gambling mad, 
Australia races to her doom. 
You bid me sing the light and fair, 
The dance, the glance on pleasure's wings – 
While you have wives who will not bear, 
And beer to drown the fear of things. 

A war with reason you would wage 
To be amused for your short span, 
Until your children's heritage 
Is claimed for China by Japan. 
The football match, the cricket score, 
The "scraps", the tote, the mad'ning Cup – 
You drunken fools that evermore 
"To-morrow morning" sober up! 

I see again with haggard eyes, 
The thirsty land, the wasted flood; 
Unpeopled plains beyond the skies, 
And precious streams that run to mud; 
The ruined health, the wasted wealth, 
In our mad cities by the seas, 
The black race suicide by stealth, 
The starved and murdered industries! 

You bid me make a farce of day, 
And make a mockery of death; 
While not five thousand miles away 
The yellow millions pant for breath! 
But heed me now, nor ask me this – 
Lest you too late should wake to find 
That hopeless patriotism is 
The strongest passion in mankind! 

You'd think the seer sees, perhaps, 
While staring on from days like these, 
Politeness in the conquering Japs, 
Or mercy in the banned Chinese! 
I mind the days when parents stood, 
And spake no word, while children ran 
From Christian lanes and deemed it good 
To stone a helpless Chinaman. 

I see the stricken city fall, 
The fathers murdered at their doors, 
The sack, the massacre of all 
Save healthy slaves and paramours – 
The wounded hero at the stake, 
The pure girl to the leper's kiss – 
God, give us faith, for Christ's own sake 
To kill our womankind ere this. 

I see the Bushman from Out Back, 
From mountain range and rolling downs, 
And carts race on each rough bush track 
With food and rifles from the towns; 
I see my Bushmen fight and die 
Amongst the torn blood-spattered trees, 
And hear all night the wounded cry 
For men! More men and batteries! 

I see the brown and yellow rule 
The southern lands and southern waves, 
White children in the heathen school, 
And black and white together slaves; 
I see the colour-line so drawn 
(I see it plain and speak I must), 
That our brown masters of the dawn 
Might, aye, have fair girls for their lusts! 

With land and life and race at stake – 
No matter which race wronged, or how – 
Let all and one Australia make 
A superhuman effort now. 
Clear out the blasting parasites, 
The paid-for-one-thing manifold, 
And curb the goggled "social-lights" 
That "scorch" to nowhere with our gold. 

Store guns and ammunition first, 
Build forts and warlike factories, 
Sink bores and tanks where drought is worst, 
Give over time to industries. 
The outpost of the white man's race, 
Where next his flag shall be unfurled, 
Make clean the place! Make strong the place! 
Call white men in from all the world!