10 Best Famous Vest Poems

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

• All Famous Vest Poems

 (After Pushkin) 
Look at the bare wood hand-waxed floor and long 
White dressing-gown, the good child's writing-desk 
And passionate cold feet
Summoning music of the night - tumbrils, gongs
And gamelans - with one neat pen, one candle
Puttering its life out hour by hour. 
Is "Tell Him I love him" never a good idea? You can't wish this
Unlived - this world on fire, on storm 
Alert, till the shepherd's song 
Outside, some hyper-active yellowhammer, bulbul,
Wren, amplified in hills and woods, tell her to bestow 
A spot of notice on the dawn.
*
"I'm writing to you. Well, that's it, that's everything.
You'll laugh, but you'll pity me too. I'm ashamed of this.
I meant to keep it quiet. You'd never have known, if -
I wish - I could have seen you once a week. To mull over, day 
And night, the things you say, or what we say together.
But word is, you're misogynist. Laddish. A philanderer
Who says what he doesn't mean. (That's not how you come across 
To me.) Who couldn't give a toss for domestic peace - 
Only for celebrity and showing off - 
And won't hang round in a provincial zone 
Like this. We don't glitter. Though we do,
Warmly, truly, welcome you.
*
"Why did you come? I'd never have set eyes 
On a star like you, or blundered up against
This crazed not-sleeping, hour after hour
In the dark. I might have got the better of
My clumsy fury with constraint, my fret
For things I lack all lexica and phrase-book art
To say. I might have been a faithful wife; a mother.
But that's all done with. This is Fate. God. 
Sorted. Here I am - yours, to the last breath. 
I couldn't give my heart to anyone else.
My life till now has been a theorem, to demonstrate
How right it is to love you. This love is love to death.
*
"I knew you anyway. I loved you, I'm afraid,
In my sleep. Your eyes, that denim-lapis, grey-sea- 
Grey-green blue, that Chinese fold of skin
At the inner corner, that shot look 
Bleeping "vulnerable" under the screensaver charm, 
Kept me alive. Every cell, every last gold atom
Of your body, was engraved in me 
Already. Don't tell me that was dream! When you came in, 
Staring round in your stripey coat and brocade 
Vest, I nearly died! I fainted, I was flame! I recognized
The you I'd always listened to alone, when I wrote
Or tried to wrestle my scatty soul into calm.
*
"Wasn't it you who slipped through the transparent
Darkness to my bed and whispered love? Aren't you
My guardian angel? Or is this arrant
Seeming, hallucination, thrown 
Up by that fly engineering a novel does
So beguilingly, or poems? Is this mad? 
Are there ways of dreaming I don't know?
Too bad. My soul has made its home
In you. I'm here and bare before you: shy,
In tears. But if I didn't heft my whole self up and hold it there - 
A crack-free mirror - loving you, or if I couldn't share
It, set it out in words, I'd die.
*
"I'll wait to hear from you. I must. Please let me hope.
Give me one look, from eyes I hardly dare
To look back at. Or scupper my dream 
By scolding me. I've given you rope
To hang me: tell me I'm mistaken. You're so much in
The world; while I just live here, bent on jam 
And harvest, songs and books. That's not complaint.
We live such different lives. So - this is the end. It's taken 
All night. I'm scared to read it back. I'm faint
With shame and fear. But this is what I am. My crumpled bed,
My words, my open self. All I can do is trust
The whole damn lot of it to you."
*
She sighs. The paper trembles as she presses down 
The pink wax seal. Outside, a milk mist clears
From the shimmering valley. If I were her guardian
Angel, I'd divide myself. One half would holler
Don't! Stay on an even keel! Don't dollop over
All you are, to a man who'll go to town 
On his next little fling. If he's entranced today 
By the way you finger your silk throat inside your collar,
Tomorrow there'll be Olga, Sally, Jane. But then I'd whisper
Go for it, petal. Nothing's as real as what you write.
His funeral, if he's not up to it. What we feel
Is mortal, and won't come again.
*
So cut, weeks later, to an outside shot: the same girl
Taking cover ("Dear God, he's here, he's come!")
Under fat red gooseberries, glimmering hairy stars:
The old, rude bushes she has hide-and-seeked in all 
Her life, where mother commands the serfs to sing
While picking, so they can't hurl
The odd gog into their mouths. No one could spy
Her here, not even the sun in its burn-time. Her cheeks 
Are simmering fire.
We're talking iridescence, a Red Admiral's last tremble
Before the avid schoolboy plunks his net.
Or imagine
* 
A leveret - like the hare you shot, remember? 
Which ran round screaming like a baby?
Only mine is shivering in papery winter corn,
While the hunter (as it might be, you) stomps his Hush 
Puppies through dead brush. Everything's quiet.
She's waited - how long? - ages: stoking pebbly embers
Under the evening samovar, filling 
The Chinese teapot, sending coils of Lapsang Suchong
Floating to the ceiling in the shadows, tracing O and E 
In the window's black reflection, one finger 
Tendrilling her own breath on the glass. 
Like putting a shell to your ear to hear the sea 
*
When it's really your own red little sparkle, the echo 
Of marching blood. She's asking a phantom 
World of pearled-up mist for proof
That her man exists: that gamelans and tumbrils
Won't evade her. But now, among 
The kitchen garden's rose-haws, mallow, Pernod- 
Coloured pears, she unhooks herself thorn by thorn 
For the exit aria. For fade-out. Suddenly there he is
In the avenue, the man she's written to - Charon
Gazing at her with blazing eyes! Darth Vader
From Star Wars. She's trapped, in a house she didn't realize
Was burning. Her letter was a gate to the inferno.
........
(This poem appeared in Pushkin: An Anthology, ed. E. Feinstein, Carcanet 1999)

 Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
His underwear is hanging on the lamp.
His raincoat is there in the overstuffed chair,
And the chair is becoming quite mucky and damp.
His workbook is wedged in the window,
His sweater's been thrown on the floor.
His scarf and one ski are beneath the TV,
And his pants have been carelessly hung on the door.
His books are all jammed in the closet,
His vest has been left in the hall.
A lizard named Ed is asleep in his bed,
And his smelly old sock has been stuck to the wall.
Whosever room this is should be ashamed!
Donald or Robert or Willie or--
Huh? You say it's mine? Oh, dear,
I knew it looked familiar!

 GIFT from the cold and silent Past! 
A relic to the present cast, 
Left on the ever-changing strand 
Of shifting and unstable sand, 
Which wastes beneath the steady chime 
And beating of the waves of Time! 
Who from its bed of primal rock 
First wrenched thy dark, unshapely block? 
Whose hand, of curious skill untaught, 
Thy rude and savage outline wrought? 
The waters of my native stream 
Are glancing in the sun's warm beam; 
From sail-urged keel and flashing oar 
The circles widen to its shore; 
And cultured field and peopled town 
Slope to its willowed margin down. 
Yet, while this morning breeze is bringing 
The home-life sound of school-bells ringing, 
And rolling wheel, and rapid jar 
Of the fire-winged and steedless car, 
And voices from the wayside near 
Come quick and blended on my ear,-- 
A spell is in this old gray stone, 
My thoughts are with the Past alone! 

A change! -- The steepled town no more 
Stretches along the sail-thronged shore; 
Like palace-domes in sunset's cloud, 
Fade sun-gilt spire and mansion proud: 
Spectrally rising where they stood, 
I see the old, primeval wood; 
Dark, shadow-like, on either hand 
I see its solemn waste expand; 
It climbs the green and cultured hill, 
It arches o'er the valley's rill, 
And leans from cliff and crag to throw 
Its wild arms o'er the stream below. 
Unchanged, alone, the same bright river 
Flows on, as it will flow forever! 
I listen, and I hear the low 
Soft ripple where its water go; 
I hear behind the panther's cry, 
The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by, 
And shyly on the river's brink 
The deer is stooping down to drink. 

But hard! -- from wood and rock flung back, 
What sound come up the Merrimac? 
What sea-worn barks are those which throw 
The light spray from each rushing prow? 
Have they not in the North Sea's blast 
Bowed to the waves the straining mast? 
Their frozen sails the low, pale sun 
Of Thulë's night has shone upon; 
Flapped by the sea-wind's gusty sweep 
Round icy drift, and headland steep. 
Wild Jutland's wives and Lochlin's daughters 
Have watched them fading o'er the waters, 
Lessening through driving mist and spray, 
Like white-winged sea-birds on their way! 

Onward they glide, -- and now I view 
Their iron-armed and stalwart crew; 
Joy glistens in each wild blue eye, 
Turned to green earth and summer sky. 
Each broad, seamed breast has cast aside 
Its cumbering vest of shaggy hide; 
Bared to the sun and soft warm air, 
Streams back the Northmen's yellow hair. 
I see the gleam of axe and spear, 
A sound of smitten shields I hear, 
Keeping a harsh and fitting time 
To Saga's chant, and Runic rhyme; 
Such lays as Zetland's Scald has sung, 
His gray and naked isles among; 
Or mutter low at midnight hour 
Round Odin's mossy stone of power. 
The wolf beneath the Arctic moon 
Has answered to that startling rune; 
The Gael has heard its stormy swell, 
The light Frank knows its summons well; 
Iona's sable-stoled Culdee 
Has heard it sounding o'er the sea, 
And swept, with hoary beard and hair, 
His altar's foot in trembling prayer! 

'T is past, -- the 'wildering vision dies 
In darkness on my dreaming eyes! 
The forest vanishes in air, 
Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare; 
I hear the common tread of men, 
And hum of work-day life again; 
The mystic relic seems alone 
A broken mass of common stone; 
And if it be the chiselled limb 
Of Berserker or idol grim, 
A fragment of Valhalla's Thor, 
The stormy Viking's god of War, 
Or Praga of the Runic lay, 
Or love-awakening Siona, 
I know not, -- for no graven line, 
Nor Druid mark, nor Runic sign, 
Is left me here, by which to trace 
Its name, or origin, or place. 
Yet, for this vision of the Past, 
This glance upon its darkness cast, 
My spirit bows in gratitude 
Before the Giver of all good, 
Who fashioned so the human mind, 
That, from the waste of Time behind, 
A simple stone, or mound of earth, 
Can summon the departed forth; 
Quicken the Past to life again, 
The Present lose in what hath been, 
And in their primal freshness show 
The buried forms of long ago. 
As if a portion of that Thought 
By which the Eternal will is wrought, 
Whose impulse fills anew with breath 
The frozen solitude of Death, 
To mortal mind were sometimes lent, 
To mortal musing sometimes sent, 
To whisper -- even when it seems 
But Memory's fantasy of dreams -- 
Through the mind's waste of woe and sin, 
Of an immortal origin!

 Mens Voices:

LORD of the lotus, lord of the harvest, 
Bright and munificent lord of the morn! 
Thine is the bounty that prospered our sowing, 
Thine is the bounty that nurtured our corn. 
We bring thee our songs and our garlands for tribute, 
The gold of our fields and the gold of our fruit; 
O giver of mellowing radiance, we hail thee, 
We praise thee, O Surya, with cymbal and flute.

Lord of the rainbow, lord of the harvest, 
Great and beneficent lord of the main! 
Thine is the mercy that cherished our furrows, 

Thine is the mercy that fostered our grain. 
We bring thee our thanks and our garlands for tribute, 
The wealth of our valleys, new-garnered and ripe; 
O sender of rain and the dewfall, we hail thee, 
We praise thee, Varuna, with cymbal and pipe. 


Womens Voices:

Queen of the gourd-flower, queen of the har- vest, 
Sweet and omnipotent mother, O Earth! 
Thine is the plentiful bosom that feeds us, 
Thine is the womb where our riches have birth. 
We bring thee our love and our garlands for tribute, 
With gifts of thy opulent giving we come; 
O source of our manifold gladness, we hail thee, 
We praise thee, O Prithvi, with cymbal and drum.


All Voices: 

Lord of the Universe, Lord of our being, 
Father eternal, ineffable Om! 
Thou art the Seed and the Scythe of our harvests, 
Thou art our Hands and our Heart and our Home. 
We bring thee our lives and our labours for tribute, 
Grant us thy succour, thy counsel, thy care. 
O Life of all life and all blessing, we hail thee, 
We praise thee, O Bramha, with cymbal and prayer

 SMOKE of the fields in spring is one,
Smoke of the leaves in autumn another.
Smoke of a steel-mill roof or a battleship funnel,
They all go up in a line with a smokestack,
Or they twist … in the slow twist … of the wind.

If the north wind comes they run to the south.
If the west wind comes they run to the east.
 By this sign
 all smokes
 know each other.
Smoke of the fields in spring and leaves in autumn,
Smoke of the finished steel, chilled and blue,
By the oath of work they swear: “I know you.”

Hunted and hissed from the center
Deep down long ago when God made us over,
Deep down are the cinders we came from—
You and I and our heads of smoke.

Some of the smokes God dropped on the job
Cross on the sky and count our years
And sing in the secrets of our numbers;
Sing their dawns and sing their evenings,
Sing an old log-fire song:

You may put the damper up,
You may put the damper down,
The smoke goes up the chimney just the same.

Smoke of a city sunset skyline,
Smoke of a country dusk horizon—
 They cross on the sky and count our years.

Smoke of a brick-red dust
 Winds on a spiral
 Out of the stacks
For a hidden and glimpsing moon.
This, said the bar-iron shed to the blooming mill,
This is the slang of coal and steel.
The day-gang hands it to the night-gang,
The night-gang hands it back.

Stammer at the slang of this—
Let us understand half of it.
 In the rolling mills and sheet mills,
 In the harr and boom of the blast fires,
 The smoke changes its shadow
 And men change their shadow;
 A ******, a wop, a bohunk changes.

 A bar of steel—it is only
Smoke at the heart of it, smoke and the blood of a man.
A runner of fire ran in it, ran out, ran somewhere else,
And left—smoke and the blood of a man
And the finished steel, chilled and blue.

So fire runs in, runs out, runs somewhere else again,
And the bar of steel is a gun, a wheel, a nail, a shovel,
A rudder under the sea, a steering-gear in the sky;
And always dark in the heart and through it,
 Smoke and the blood of a man.
Pittsburg, Youngstown, Gary—they make their steel with men.

In the blood of men and the ink of chimneys
The smoke nights write their oaths:
Smoke into steel and blood into steel;
Homestead, Braddock, Birmingham, they make their steel with men.
Smoke and blood is the mix of steel.

 The birdmen drone
 in the blue; it is steel
 a motor sings and zooms.

Steel barb-wire around The Works.
Steel guns in the holsters of the guards at the gates of The Works.
Steel ore-boats bring the loads clawed from the earth by steel, lifted and lugged by arms of steel, sung on its way by the clanking clam-shells.
The runners now, the handlers now, are steel; they dig and clutch and haul; they hoist their automatic knuckles from job to job; they are steel making steel.
Fire and dust and air fight in the furnaces; the pour is timed, the billets wriggle; the clinkers are dumped:
Liners on the sea, skyscrapers on the land; diving steel in the sea, climbing steel in the sky.

Finders in the dark, you Steve with a dinner bucket, you Steve clumping in the dusk on the sidewalks with an evening paper for the woman and kids, you Steve with your head wondering where we all end up—
Finders in the dark, Steve: I hook my arm in cinder sleeves; we go down the street together; it is all the same to us; you Steve and the rest of us end on the same stars; we all wear a hat in hell together, in hell or heaven.

Smoke nights now, Steve.
Smoke, smoke, lost in the sieves of yesterday;
Dumped again to the scoops and hooks today.
Smoke like the clocks and whistles, always.
 Smoke nights now.
 To-morrow something else.

Luck moons come and go:
Five men swim in a pot of red steel.
Their bones are kneaded into the bread of steel:
Their bones are knocked into coils and anvils
And the sucking plungers of sea-fighting turbines.
Look for them in the woven frame of a wireless station.
So ghosts hide in steel like heavy-armed men in mirrors.
Peepers, skulkers—they shadow-dance in laughing tombs.
They are always there and they never answer.

One of them said: “I like my job, the company is good to me, America is a wonderful country.”
One: “Jesus, my bones ache; the company is a liar; this is a free country, like hell.”
One: “I got a girl, a peach; we save up and go on a farm and raise pigs and be the boss ourselves.”
And the others were roughneck singers a long ways from home.
Look for them back of a steel vault door.

They laugh at the cost.
They lift the birdmen into the blue.
It is steel a motor sings and zooms.

In the subway plugs and drums,
In the slow hydraulic drills, in gumbo or gravel,
Under dynamo shafts in the webs of armature spiders,
They shadow-dance and laugh at the cost.

The ovens light a red dome.
Spools of fire wind and wind.
Quadrangles of crimson sputter.
The lashes of dying maroon let down.
Fire and wind wash out the slag.
Forever the slag gets washed in fire and wind.
The anthem learned by the steel is:
 Do this or go hungry.
Look for our rust on a plow.
Listen to us in a threshing-engine razz.
Look at our job in the running wagon wheat.

Fire and wind wash at the slag.
Box-cars, clocks, steam-shovels, churns, pistons, boilers, scissors—
Oh, the sleeping slag from the mountains, the slag-heavy pig-iron will go down many roads.
Men will stab and shoot with it, and make butter and tunnel rivers, and mow hay in swaths, and slit hogs and skin beeves, and steer airplanes across North America, Europe, Asia, round the world.

Hacked from a hard rock country, broken and baked in mills and smelters, the rusty dust waits
Till the clean hard weave of its atoms cripples and blunts the drills chewing a hole in it.
The steel of its plinths and flanges is reckoned, O God, in one-millionth of an inch.

Once when I saw the curves of fire, the rough scarf women dancing,
Dancing out of the flues and smoke-stacks—flying hair of fire, flying feet upside down;
Buckets and baskets of fire exploding and chortling, fire running wild out of the steady and fastened ovens;
Sparks cracking a harr-harr-huff from a solar-plexus of rock-ribs of the earth taking a laugh for themselves;
Ears and noses of fire, gibbering gorilla arms of fire, gold mud-pies, gold bird-wings, red jackets riding purple mules, scarlet autocrats tumbling from the humps of camels, assassinated czars straddling vermillion balloons;
I saw then the fires flash one by one: good-by: then smoke, smoke;
And in the screens the great sisters of night and cool stars, sitting women arranging their hair,
Waiting in the sky, waiting with slow easy eyes, waiting and half-murmuring:
 “Since you know all
 and I know nothing,
 tell me what I dreamed last night.”

Pearl cobwebs in the windy rain,
in only a flicker of wind,
are caught and lost and never known again.

A pool of moonshine comes and waits,
but never waits long: the wind picks up
loose gold like this and is gone.

A bar of steel sleeps and looks slant-eyed
on the pearl cobwebs, the pools of moonshine;
sleeps slant-eyed a million years,
sleeps with a coat of rust, a vest of moths,
a shirt of gathering sod and loam.

The wind never bothers … a bar of steel.
The wind picks only .. pearl cobwebs .. pools of moonshine.

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches, 
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined 
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered 
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down 
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals . . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me 
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: 
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.

I LIKE a church; I like a cowl; 
I love a prophet of the soul; 
And on my heart monastic aisles 
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; 
Yet not for all his faith can see 5 
Would I that cowl¨¨d churchman be. 
Why should the vest on him allure  
Which I could not on me endure? 

Not from a vain or shallow thought 
His awful Jove young Phidias brought; 10 
Never from lips of cunning fell 
The thrilling Delphic oracle: 
Out from the heart of nature rolled 
The burdens of the Bible old; 
The litanies of nations came 15 
Like the volcano's tongue of flame  
Up from the burning core below ¡ª 
The canticles of love and woe; 
The hand that rounded Peter's dome  
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome 20 
Wrought in a sad sincerity; 
Himself from God he could not free; 
He builded better than he knew;¡ª 
The conscious stone to beauty grew. 

Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest 25 
Of leaves and feathers from her breast? 
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell  
Painting with morn each annual cell? 
Or how the sacred pine tree adds 
To her old leaves new myriads? 30 
Such and so grew these holy piles  
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon  
As the best gem upon her zone; 
And Morning opes with haste her lids 35 
To gaze upon the Pyramids; 
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky  
As on its friends with kindred eye; 
For out of Thought's interior sphere  
These wonders rose to upper air; 40 
And Nature gladly gave them place  
Adopted them into her race  
And granted them an equal date 
With Andes and with Ararat. 

These temples grew as grows the grass; 45 
Art might obey but not surpass. 
The passive Master lent his hand 
To the vast soul that o'er him planned; 
And the same power that reared the shrine  
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. 50 
Ever the fiery Pentecost 
Girds with one flame the countless host  
Trances the heart through chanting choirs  
And through the priest the mind inspires. 

The word unto the prophet spoken 55 
Was writ on tables yet unbroken; 
The word by seers or sibyls told  
In groves of oak or fanes of gold  
Still floats upon the morning wind  
Still whispers to the willing mind. 60 
One accent of the Holy Ghost 
The heedless world hath never lost. 
I know what say the fathers wise ¡ª 
The Book itself before me lies ¡ª 
Old Chrysostom best Augustine 65 
And he who blent both in his line  
The younger Golden Lips or mines  
Taylor the Shakespeare of divines. 
His words are music in my ear  
I see his cowl¨¨d portrait dear; 70 
And yet for all his faith could see  
I would not this good bishop be. 

 I.

Oh, what a dawn of day!
How the March sun feels like May!
All is blue again
After last night's rain,
And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.
Only, my Love's away!
I'd as lief that the blue were grey,

II.

Runnels, which rillets swell,
Must be dancing down the dell,
With a foaming head
On the beryl bed
Paven smooth as a hermit's cell;
Each with a tale to tell,
Could my Love but attend as well.

III.

Dearest, three months ago!
When we lived blocked-up with snow,---
When the wind would edge
In and in his wedge,
In, as far as the point could go---
Not to our ingle, though,
Where we loved each the other so!

IV.

Laughs with so little cause!
We devised games out of straws.
We would try and trace
One another's face
In the ash, as an artist draws;
Free on each other's flaws,
How we chattered like two church daws!

V.

What's in the `Times''?---a scold
At the Emperor deep and cold;
He has taken a bride
To his gruesome side,
That's as fair as himself is bold:
There they sit ermine-stoled,
And she powders her hair with gold.

VI.

Fancy the Pampas' sheen!
Miles and miles of gold and green
Where the sunflowers blow
In a solid glow,
And---to break now and then the screen---
Black neck and eyeballs keen,
Up a wild horse leaps between!

VII.

Try, will our table turn?
Lay your hands there light, and yearn
Till the yearning slips
Thro' the finger-tips
In a fire which a few discern,
And a very few feel burn,
And the rest, they may live and learn!

VIII.

Then we would up and pace,
For a change, about the place,
Each with arm o'er neck:
'Tis our quarter-deck,
We are seamen in woeful case.
Help in the ocean-space!
Or, if no help, we'll embrace.

IX.

See, how she looks now, dressed
In a sledging-cap and vest!
'Tis a huge fur cloak---
Like a reindeer's yoke
Falls the lappet along the breast:
Sleeves for her arms to rest,
Or to hang, as my Love likes best.

X.

Teach me to flirt a fan
As the Spanish ladies can,
Or I tint your lip
With a burnt stick's tip
And you turn into such a man!
Just the two spots that span
Half the bill of the young male swan.

XI.

Dearest, three months ago
When the mesmerizer Snow
With his hand's first sweep
Put the earth to sleep:
'Twas a time when the heart could show
All---how was earth to know,
'Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro?

XII.

Dearest, three months ago
When we loved each other so,
Lived and loved the same
Till an evening came
When a shaft from the devil's bow
Pierced to our ingle-glow,
And the friends were friend and foe!

XIII.

Not from the heart beneath---
'Twas a bubble born of breath,
Neither sneer nor vaunt,
Nor reproach nor taunt. 
See a word, how it severeth!
Oh, power of life and death
In the tongue, as the Preacher saith!

XIV.

Woman, and will you cast
For a word, quite off at last
Me, your own, your You,---
Since, as truth is true,
I was You all the happy past---
Me do you leave aghast
With the memories We amassed?

XV.

Love, if you knew the light
That your soul casts in my sight,
How I look to you
For the pure and true
And the beauteous and the right,---
Bear with a moment's spite
When a mere mote threats the white!

XVI.

What of a hasty word?
Is the fleshly heart not stirred
By a worm's pin-prick
Where its roots are quick?
See the eye, by a fly's foot blurred---
Ear, when a straw is heard
Scratch the brain's coat of curd!

XVII.

Foul be the world or fair
More or less, how can I care?
'Tis the world the same
For my praise or blame,
And endurance is easy there.
Wrong in the one thing rare---
Oh, it is hard to bear!

XVIII.

Here's the spring back or close,
When the almond-blossom blows:
We shall have the word
In a minor third
There is none but the cuckoo knows:
Heaps of the guelder-rose!
I must bear with it, I suppose.

XIX.

Could but November come,
Were the noisy birds struck dumb
At the warning slash
Of his driver's-lash---
I would laugh like the valiant Thumb
Facing the castle glum
And the giant's fee-faw-fum!

XX.

Then, were the world well stripped
Of the gear wherein equipped
We can stand apart,
Heart dispense with heart
In the sun, with the flowers unnipped,---
Oh, the world's hangings ripped,
We were both in a bare-walled crypt!

XXI.

Each in the crypt would cry
``But one freezes here! and why? 
``When a heart, as chill,
``At my own would thrill
``Back to life, and its fires out-fly?
``Heart, shall we live or die?
``The rest. . . . settle by-and-by!''

XXII.

So, she'd efface the score,
And forgive me as before.
It is twelve o'clock:
I shall hear her knock
In the worst of a storm's uproar,
I shall pull her through the door,
I shall have her for evermore!

 It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vest the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all to little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.

This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the scepter and the isle—
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfill
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centered in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toiled, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age had yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

a man who had fallen among thieves

lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and Meal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise

one hand did nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the mute trouserfly confessed
a button solemnly inert.

Brushing from whom the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars