Love dislikes nothing
WHATSOEVER thing I see,
Rich or poor although it be;
Tis a mistress unto me.
Be my maiden fair or brown,
Does she smile or does she frown,_______Repetition
Still I write a sweetheart down.
Be she rough or smooth of skin;
When I touch, I then begin
For to let affection in.
Be she bald, or does she wear
Locks incurl’d of other hair,_____________Jumbling up of words
I shall find enchantment there.
Be she whole, or be she rent,
So my fancy be content,
She’s to me most excellent.
Be she fat, or be she lean,
Be she sluttish, be she clean,
I’m a man for ev’ry scene.
Romantic
Human Life
If dead, we cease to be ; if total gloom
Swallow up life's brief flash for aye, we fare
As summer-gusts, of sudden birth and doom,
Whose sound and motion not alone declare,
But are their whole of being ! If the breath
Be Life itself, and not its task and tent,
If even a soul like Milton's can know death ;
O Man ! thou vessel purposeless, unmeant,
Yet drone-hive strange of phantom purposes !
Surplus of Nature's dread activity,
Which, as she gazed on some nigh-finished vase,
Retreating slow, with meditative pause,
She formed with restless hands unconsciously.
Blank accident ! nothing's anomaly !
If rootless thus, thus substanceless thy state,
Go, weigh thy dreams, and be thy hopes, thy fears,
The counter-weights !--Thy laughter and thy tears
Mean but themselves, each fittest to create
And to repay the other ! Why rejoices
Thy heart with hollow joy for hollow good ?
Why cowl thy face beneath the mourner's hood ?________Rhetorical qeuestions
Why waste thy sighs, and thy lamenting voices,
Image of Image, Ghost of Ghostly Elf,____________Alliteration
That such a thing as thou feel'st warm or cold ?
Yet what and whence thy gain, if thou withhold
These costless shadows of thy shadowy self ?
Be sad ! be glad ! be neither ! seek, or shun !
Thou hast no reason why ! Thou canst have none ;
Thy being's being is contradiction.
Victorian
No coward soul is mine
No coward soul is mine
No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere
I see Heaven's glories shine
And Faith shines equal arming me from Fear
O God within my breast
Almighty ever-present Deity
Life, that in me hast rest,
As I Undying Life, have power in Thee
Vain are the thousand creeds
That move men's hearts, unutterably vain,
Worthless as withered weeds______Alliteration
Or idlest froth amid the boundless main
Holding so fast by thy infinity,
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of Immortality______Allusion
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears
Though earth and moon were gone
And suns and universes ceased to be
And Thou wert left alone
Every Existence would exist in thee
There is not room for Death
Nor atom that his might could render void
Since thou art Being and Breath _________ Alliteration
And what thou art may never be destroyed.
Post Modern
Two Horses And a Dog
Without external reference,The world presents itselfIn perfect clarity._____________________AllusionWherewithal, arrested moments,The throes of demystification,Morality as nothing moreThan humility and honesty, a salty measure.Then it was a cold snap,Weather turned lethal so it was easierTo feel affinityWith lodgepole stands, rifted aspens,And grim, tenacious sage.History accelerates till it misses the turns.Wars are shorter nowJust to fit into it.One day you know you are no longer youngBecause you’ve stopped loving your own desperation.You change life to loneliness in your mindAnd, you know, you need to change it back.Statistics show thatOne in every fiveWomenIs essential to my survival.My daughter asks how wide is lightning.That depends, but I don’t know on what.Probably the dimension of inner hugeness,As in a speck of dirt.It was an honor to suffer humiliation and refusal._________AntithesisShame was an honor.It was an honor to freeze your ass horsebackIn the year’s first blizzard,Looking for strays that never materialized.It was an honor to break apart against this,An honor to fail at well-beingAs the high peaks accepted the first snow -A sigh of relief.Time stands still_____________AllutionAnd we things go whizzing past it,Queasy and lonely,Wearing dogtags with scripture on them.
Modern
Ectasy
I saw a frieze on whitest marble drawn
Of boys who sought for shells along the shore,
Their white feet shedding pallor in the sea,
The shallow sea, the spring-time sea of green______________alliteration
That faintly creamed against the cold, smooth pebbles . . .
One held a shell unto his shell-like ear
And there was music carven in his face,
His eyes half-closed, his lips just breaking open
Of numberless caverns filled with singing seas._____________anecdote
And all of them were hearkening as to singing
Of far-off voices thin and delicate,
Voices too fine for any mortal wind
And yet those sounds flowed from their grave, sweet faces.
And as I looked I heard that delicate music,
And I became as grave, as calm, as still
As those carved boys. I stood upon that shore,
I felt the cool sea dream around my feet,
My eyes were staring at the far horizon . . .
