Two roads lie in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for
She lay, skin down in the moist dirt,
the canebrake rustling
with the whispers of leaves, and
loud longing of hounds and
the ransack of hunters crackling the near
branches.
She muttered, lifting her head a nod toward
freedom,
I shall not, I shall not be moved.
He comes! He comes!
Striding along on camel-rug in triumph.
Yes, stranger, we are making ourselves ready!
Agyei the warrior is drunk–
The green mamba with the fearful eyes.
Yes, Agyei the warrior,
He strides along the camel-rug in triumph,
Make way!
He comes! He comes!
An old Hare lived in a house on a hill,
One hundred years old and never was ill;
His ears so long and his eyes so big,
And is leg so spry that he knew everything
About the beasts that walk and the bird’s that sing–
This old Doc Hare,
Who lived up there
In a mighty fine house on
Poor harlot, Mary Magdalene,
Into the feast with trembling crept,
Past frowns that stabbed her with their hate
And falling at His feet she wept.
Self-righteous Simon spurned her there
And marveled that her sinful touch
Displeased Him not, but he forgave:
“Though sinning sore she love’d much.”
Brave, grateful Mary Magdalene,
When Peter all his faith had lost,
Pressed on
Where’s the Poet? show him! show him,
Muses nine! that I may know him.
‘Tis the man who with a man
Is an equal, be he King,
Or poorest of the beggar-clan
Or any other wonderous thing
A man may be ‘twixt ape and Plato;
‘Tis the man who with a bird,
Wren or Eagle, finds his way to
All
1.
Spirit here that reignest!
Spirit here that painest!
Spirit here that burneth!
Spirit here that mourneth!
Spirit! I bow
My forehead low,
Enshaded with thy pinions!
Spirit! I look
All passion struck,
Into thy pale dominions!
In the beginning
God made the earth,
After that he took two stones and made them into
Sun and Moon.
He further created Rain,
Whose desire was to fall down and cover the earth
with water,
And Darkness, over whom Moon scattered a
basketful of seeds,
Which were the Stars.
There were no people on the earth at first,
So God
Gentle I go
When her glimpse
Attracted my coming back.
Gentle I laid
Hand round her shoulder
And felt the surrounding with lust.
Beautiful cities of Eastern Europe in Ukraine shatter by atomic bombs:
Cherkasy
Chernihiv
Chernivtsi
Dnipropetrovsk
Donetsk
Ivano-Frankivsk
Kharkiv
Kherson
Khmelnytskyi
Kiev
Kiroyobrad
Luhansk
Lviv
Mykolaiv
Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
Which first she placed where morning’s earliest ray
Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam;
Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it
A case of silk, and braided thereupon<br
In after-time, a sage of mickle lore
Yclep’d Typographus, the Giant took,
And did refit his limbs as heretofore,
And made him read in many a learned book,
And into many a lively legend look;
Thereby in goodly themes so training him,
That all his brutishness he quite forsook,
When, meeting Artegall and Talus grim,
My apparition rose from the fall of lead,
Declared, ‘I am a civilian.’ It only served
To aggravate your fright. For how could I
Have risen, a being of this world, in that hour
Of impartial death! And I thought also: nor is
Your quarrel of this world.
You stood still
For both eternities, and oh I heard the lesson
Of
COME away, come away, death,
And in sad cypres let me be laid;
Fly away, fly away, breath;
I am slain by a fair cruel maid.
My shroud of white, stuck all with yew,
O prepare it!
My part of death, no one so true
Did share it.
Not a flower, not a flower sweet,
On my black coffin let there
There’s no wind along these seas,
Out oars for Stavenger!
Forward all for Stavenger!
So we must wake the white-ash breeze,
Let fall for Stavenger!
A long pull for Stavenger!
Oh, hear the benches creak and strain!
(A long pull for Stavenger!)
She thinks she smells the Northland rain!
(A long pull for Stavenger!)
The plump good-natured children play in the blue pool:
roll and plop, plop and roll;
slide and tumble, oiled, in the slippery sun
silent as otters, turning over and in,
churning the water; or-seamstresses-cut and sew
with jackknives its satins invisibly.
Not beautiful, but suddenly limned with light
their elliptical wet flesh in a flash reflects it
for Moremi, 1963
Earth will not share the rafter’s envy; dung floors
Break, not the gecko’s slight skin, but its fall
Taste this soil for death and plumb her deep for life
As this yam, wholly earthed, yet a living tuber
To the warmth of waters, earthed as springs
As roots of baobab, as the hearth.
The air will not deny you. Like
Lapobo,
Tall but not too tall,
Short but not too short,
She is of medium size.
Lapobo,
Her teeth are not as ash
Nor the colour of maize flour,
Her teeth are white as fresh milk.
The whiteness of her teeth
When I think of her
Makes food drop from my hand.
And why should I be sad?
And why should you be glad?
To-morrow will come
With the sunrise gun,
When I may be glad
While you may be sad —
Ah, should I not wait till then?
What if the skies are gray
And hide the sun away;
To-morrow will come
With the sunrise gun,
The sun will break through,
I miss you when I start my day
I miss you and your every way
I miss you wherever I go
I miss you in my work I do
I miss you when Am gonna sleep
I miss you in my thoughts so deep
I miss you in my sweetest dream
I miss you on opening my eyes
I miss
