Charity.

By the river
In the black wet night as the furtive rain slinks down,
Dropping and starting from sleep
Alone on a seat
A woman crouches.

I must go back to her.

I want to give her
Some money. Her hand slips out of the breast of her gown
Asleep. My fingers creep
Carefully over the sweet
Thumb-mound, into the palm's deep pouches.

So, the gift!

God, how she starts!
And looks at me, and looks in the palm of her hand!
And again at me!
I turn and run
Down the Embankment, run for my life.

But why? - why?

Because of my heart's
Beating like sobs, I come to myself, and stand
In the street spilled over splendidly
With wet, flat lights. What I've done
I know not, my soul is in strif...

They sleep within. . . .
I cower to the earth, I waking, I only.
High and cold thou dreamest, O queen, high-dreaming and lonely.

We have slept too long, who can hardly win
The white one flame, and the night-long crying;
The viewless passers; the world's low sighing
With desire, with yearning,
To the fire unburning,
To the heatless fire, to the flameless ecstasy! . . .

Helpless I lie.
And around me the feet of thy watchers tread.
There is a rumour and a radiance of wings above my head,
An intolerable radiance of wings. . . .

All the earth grows fire,
White lips of desire
Brushing cool on the forehead, croon slumbrous things.
Earth fades; and the air is thrilled with ways,
Dewy paths full of comfort. And radiant bands,
The gracious pr...

    Her emerald top
    phosphorescent candy glow
    stick candy,
    sno' cane -
    floss like
    the mane revealed beneath,
    spun hair matted/woven into
    icicle lengths & pubis mink.

    Her presence as a monk sliding
    under a cowl, jet-black velvet
    or midnight eye-liner shadow
    knotting strands of dark.

    She comes on waves -
    candelabra is a name
    deft movement of finger
    caressing storm, bare legs
    shining wet street lamps
    decantered ambered wine.

    Cigarette floating between lips,
    uncharted voyage of the smile
    where puffs of smoke
    are parrots' wings,
    incandescent show-girls
    in novelty across the flame.

Heaven is what I cannot reach!
The apple on the tree,
Provided it do hopeless hang,
That 'heaven' is, to me.

The color on the cruising cloud,
The interdicted ground
Behind the hill, the house behind, --
There Paradise is found!

Elemental drifts!
How I wish I could impress others as you have just been impressing me!

As I ebb'd with an ebb of the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk'd where the ripples continually wash you, Paumanok,
Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Alone, held by this eternal Self of me, out of the pride of which I utter my poems,
Was seiz'd by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
In the rim, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.

Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropt, to follow those slender winrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten,
Scum...

Fools are they who never know
How the times away do go;
But for us, who wisely see
Where the bounds of black death be,
Let's live merrily, and thus
Gratify the Genius.

        [Magotty-pie is given in MS. Lands. 1033, fol. 2, as a Wiltshire word for a magpie. See also 'Macbeth,' act iii, sc. 4. The same term occurs in the dictionaries of Hollyband, Cotgrave, and Minsheu.]

    Round about, round about,
        Magotty-pie,
    My father loves good ale,
        And so do I.

The bold encroachers on the deep
    Gain by degrees huge tracts of land,
Till Neptune, with one general sweep,
    Turns all again to barren strand.

The multitude's capricious pranks
    Are said to represent the seas,
Breaking the bankers and the banks,
    Resume their own whene'er they please.

Money, the life-blood of the nation,
    Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation
    Its motion and its heat maintains.

Because 'tis lordly not to pay,
    Quakers and aldermen in state,
Like peers, have levees every day
    Of duns attending at their gate.

We want our money on the nail;
    The banker's ruin'd if he pays:
They seem to act an ancient tale;
    The birds are met to strip the jays.

Stella, the onely planet of my light,
Light of my life, and life of my desire,
Chiefe good whereto my hope doth only aspire,
World of my wealth, and heau'n of my delight;
Why dost thou spend the treasures of thy sprite
With voice more fit to wed Amphions lyre,
Seeking to quench in me the noble fire
Fed by thy worth, and kindled by thy sight?
And all in vaine: for while thy breath most sweet
With choisest words, thy words with reasons rare,
Thy reasons firmly set on Vertues feet,
Labour to kill in me this killing care:
O thinke I then, what paradise of ioy
It is, so faire a vertue to enioy!

Darest thou now, O Soul,
Walk out with me toward the Unknown Region,
Where neither ground is for the feet, nor any path to follow?

No map, there, nor guide,
Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand,
Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are in that land.

I know it not, O Soul;
Nor dost thou--all is a blank before us;
All waits, undream'd of, in that region--that inaccessible land.

Till, when the ties loosen,
All but the ties eternal, Time and Space,
Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds, bound us.

Then we burst forth--we float,
In Time and Space, O Soul--prepared for them;
Equal, equipt at last--(O joy! O fruit of all!) them to fulfil, O Soul.

In vain you fervently extol,
    In vain you puff, your cutty clay.
A twelvemonth smoked and black as coal,
    'Tis redolent of rank decay
And bones of monks long passed away--
    A fragrance I do not admire;
And so I hold my nose and say,
    Give me a finely seasoned briar.

Macleod, whose judgment on the whole
    Is faultless, has been led astray
To nurse a high-born meerschaum bowl,
    For which he sweetly had to pay.
Ah, let him nurse it as he may,
    Before the colour mounts much higher,
The grate shall be its fate one day.
    Give me a finely seasoned briar.

The heathen Turk of Istamboul,
    In oriental turban gay,
Delights his unbelieving soul
    With hookahs, bubbling in a way
To fill a Christian with dismay

'Ave you 'eard o' the Widow at Windsor
With a hairy gold crown on 'er 'ead?
She 'as ships on the foam she 'as millions at 'ome,
An' she pays us poor beggars in red.
(Ow, poor beggars in red!)
There's 'er nick on the cavalry 'orses,
There's 'er mark on the medical stores
An' 'er troopers you'll find with a fair wind be'ind
That takes us to various wars.
(Poor beggars! barbarious wars!)
Then 'ere's to the Widow at Windsor,
An' 'ere's to the stores an' the guns,
The men an' the 'orses what makes up the forces
O' Missis Victorier's sons.
(Poor beggars! Victorier's sons!)

Walk wide o' the Widow at Windsor,
For 'alf o' Creation she owns:
We 'ave bought 'er the same with the sword an' the flame,
An' we've salted it down with our bones.
(Poor begg...