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You are young, and I am older; You are hopeful, I am not— Enjoy life, ere it grow colder— Pluck the roses ere they rot. Teach your beau to heed the lay— That sunshine soon is lost in shade— That now’s as good as any day— To take thee, Rosa, ere she fade.

TO show the lab’ring bosom’s deep intent, And thought in living characters to paint, When first thy pencil did those beauties give, And breathing figures learnt from thee to live, How did those prospects give my soul delight, A new creation rushing on my sight? Still, wond’rous youth! each noble path pursue, On deathless glories fix thine ardent view: Still may the painter’s and the poet’s fire To aid thy pencil, and thy verse conspire! And may the charms of each seraphic theme Conduct thy footsteps to immortal fame! High to the blissful wonders of the skies Elate thy soul, and raise thy wishful eyes. Thrice happy, when exalted to survey That splendid city, crown’d with endless day, Whose twice six gates on radiant hinges ring: Celestial Salem blooms in endless spring. Calm and serene thy moments glide along, And may the muse inspire each future song! Still, with the sweets of contemplation bless’d, May peace with balmy wings your soul invest! But when these shades of time are chas’d away, And darkness ends in everlasting day, On what seraphic pinions shall we move, And view the landscapes in the realms above? There shall thy tongue in heav’nly murmurs flow, And there my muse with heav’nly transport glow: No more to tell of Damon’s tender sighs, Or rising radiance of Aurora’s eyes, For nobler themes demand a nobler strain, And purer language on th’ ethereal plain. Cease, gentle muse! the solemn gloom of night Now seals the fair creation from my sight.

Since I was the one who had been ill, it was me she came to see. Everyone wanted a glimpse of her. The people emerged from their houses toward mine and with such caution. They made a visor of their hands. It was as if they were to be accounted for, wading the long uphill, little moving triangles all I could distinguish at first. But the queen came to see only me and I saw her. And my life for a while was dismissed and so repaired.

Oft, when my lips I open to rehearse Thy wondrous spell of wisdom, and of power, And that my voice, and thy immortal verse, On listening ears, and hearts, I mingled pour, I shrink dismayed – and awful doth appear The vain presumption of my own weak deed; Thy glorious spirit seems to mine so near, That suddenly I tremble as I read – Thee an invisible auditor I fear: Oh, if it might be so, my master dear! With what beseeching would I pray to thee, To make me equal to my noble task, Succor from thee, how humbly would I ask, Thy worthiest works to utter worthily.

Sheila, we speak here on the fly Leaf of a book which was myself A good few graves ago. Now I am maintained by other Words for better or for worse To whisper my hello. The seasons turn. Threshold on thresh Hold forms continually and falls Under grief’s lonely hammer. What did you say? I thought between These fly leaf words I heard you speak Out of your Second Summer. The summer chimes and turns its blue Dragon-flying eyes to see We two are not afraid. Hello, Sheila, I can hear Your breath on the other side of the word And see you turn your head.

That neither fame nor love might wanting be To greatness, Cary, I sing that and thee; Whose house, if it no other honor had, In only thee might be both great and glad; Who, to upbraid the sloth of this our time, Durst valor make almost, but not, a crime; Which deed I know not, whether were more high, Or thou more happy, it to justify Against thy fortune: when no foe, that day, Could conquer thee but chance, who did betray. Love thy great loss, which a renown hath won, To live when Broick not stands, nor Ruhr doth run. Love honors, which of best example be When they cost dearest and are done most free; Though every fortitude deserves applause, It may be much or little in the cause. He’s valiant’st that dares fight, and not for pay; That virtuous is, when the reward’s away.

O soft embalmer of the still midnight, Shutting, with careful fingers and benign, Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light, Enshaded in forgetfulness divine: O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes, Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws Around my bed its lulling charities. Then save me, or the passed day will shine Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,— Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole; Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

Having desired little more than the arrival of the little more that arrives, outside our window a cypress of model proportions. Its patience seems to widen the nights we sleep in Rome. Warm flags draw a tortoise, it scrapes too near. Our friends hurry over when they hear, exclaiming over its mute resolute distinctness and helpless slow efforts to flee. Density pours into swallows and shadows: spilled with abandon each morning, begins then the slow work of receding. The joints announce their new allegiances. Metaphors swarm the surfaces of things. Night broken into, it's the sub rosa singling out I ought to have expected from Fra Angelico's small panel among others, the souped-up full-spectrum wings combined with a mood of reverent submission in both figures warning of experience yet to come. Starting now she'll reason with herself deliberately (imagine bulbs expecting stars for effort!), aware of being always overheard, subject to unprecedented measures of integrity, like an author. While a substance of landscape, mineral, leaches into blood vessels quietly steadily, meaning in this case nothing is damaged; extravagance of umbrella pines propping their fingers under the bonus horizons of the hills, redundancies boosting the city's resemblance to itself. A painter once squared himself against a difficult question and said no one could just create a landscape, but isn't it true that expectation builds a neighborhood and there is nowhere else that you can live. It was possession, turns out, by a force whose intention touched the first body alone, a body changed again precisely to its own form, a very special intention. Alloyed discretion, the grit of a damp trowel explores my mouth, at leisure determining the candor that cavity is good for.

(Variant printed in Samuel Daniel’s 1623 Works ) To thee, pure spirit, to thee alone addressed Is this joint work, by double interest thine, Thine by his own, and what is done of mine Inspired by thee, thy secret power impressed. My Muse with thine, itself dared to combine As mortal stuff with that which is divine: Let thy fair beams give luster to the rest That Israel’s King may deign his own, transformed In substance no, but superficial ’tire; And English guised in some sort may aspire To better grace thee what the vulgar formed: His sacred tones, age after age admire; Nations grow great in pride and pure desire So to excel in holy rites performed. Oh, had that soul which honor brought to rest Too soon not left and reft the world of all What man could show, which we perfection call, This precious piece had sorted with the best. But ah, wide festered wounds that never shall Nor must be closed, unto fresh bleeding fall: Ah, memory, what needs this new arrest? Yet blessed grief, that sweetness can impart Since thou art blest! Wrongly do I complain: Whatever weights my heavy thoughts sustain Dear feels my soul for thee. I know my part Nor be my weakness to thy rites a stain, Rites to aright, life-blood would not refrain: Assist me, then, that life what thine did part. Time may bring forth what time hath yet suppressed In whom thy loss hath laid to utter waste; The wrack of time, untimely all defaced, Remaining as the tomb of life deceased, Where, in my heart the highest room thou hast; There, truly there, thy earthly being is placed, Triumph of death: in life how more than blest. Behold, oh, that thou were now to behold This finished long perfection’s part begun, The rest but pieced, as left by thee undone. Pardon blest soul, presumption overbold, If love and zeal hath to this error run: ’Tis zealous love, love that hath never done, Nor can enough, though justly here controlled. But since it hath no other scope to go, Nor other purpose but to honor thee, That thine may shine, where all the Graces be; And that my thoughts (like smallest streams that flow, Pay to their sea, their tributary fee) Do strive, yet have no means to quit nor free That mighty debt of infinities I owe To thy great worth which time to times enroll, Wonder of men, sole born, sole of thy kind Complete in all, but heavenly was thy mind, For wisdom, goodness, sweetness, fairest soul: Too good to wish, too fair for earth, refined For heaven, where all true glory rests confined; And where but there no life without control? Oh, when from this account, this cast-up sum, This reck’ning made the audit of my woe, Sometime of rase my swelling passions know How work my thoughts, my sense is stricken dumb That would thee more than words could ever show, Which all fall short. Who knew thee best do know There lives no wit that may thy praise become. And rest fair monuments of thy fair fame, Though not complete. Nor can we reach, in thought, What on that goodly piece time would have wrought Had divers so spared that life (but life) to frame The rest. Alas, such loss! The world hath naught Can equal it, nor, oh, more grievance brought, Yet what remains must ever crown thy name. Receive these hymns, these obsequies receive, (If any mark of thy secret spirit thou bear) Made only thine, and no name else must wear. I can no more: Dear Soul, I take my leave; My sorrow strives to mount the highest sphere.

For Arthur Russell All that glitters isn’t music. Once, hidden in tall grass, I tossed fistfuls of dirt into the air: doe after doe of leaping. You said it was nothing but a trick of the light. Gold curves. Gold scarves. Am I not your animal? You’d wait in the orchard for hours to watch a deer break from the shadows. You said it was like lifting a cello out of its black case.