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WHO MADE LOVE TO ME, IMAGIN’D MORE THAN WOMAN Fair lovely Maid, or if that Title be Too weak, too Feminine for Nobler thee, Permit a Name that more Approaches Truth: And let me call thee, Lovely Charming Youth. This last will justifie my soft complainte, While that may serve to lessen my constraint; And without Blushes I the Youth persue, When so much beauteous Woman is in view Against thy Charms we struggle but in vain With thy deluding Form thou giv’st us pain, While the bright Nymph betrays us to the Swain. In pity to our Sex sure thou wer’t sent, That we might Love, and yet be Innocent: For sure no Crime with thee we can commit; Or if we shou’d – thy Form excuses it. For who, that gathers fairest Flowers believes A Snake lies hid beneath the Fragrant Leaves. Thou beauteous Wonder of a different kind, Soft Cloris with the dear Alexis join’d; When e’er the Manly part of thee, wou’d plead Thou tempts us with the Image of the Maid, While we the noblest Passions do extend The Love to Hermes, Aphrodite the Friend.

Thou blossom bright with autumn dew, And colored with the heaven’s own blue, That openest when the quiet light Succeeds the keen and frosty night. Thou comest not when violets lean O’er wandering brooks and springs unseen, Or columbines, in purple dressed, Nod o’er the ground-bird’s hidden nest. Thou waitest late and com’st alone, When woods are bare and birds are flown, And frosts and shortening days portend The aged year is near his end. Then doth thy sweet and quiet eye Look through its fringes to the sky, Blue-blue-as if that sky let fall A flower from its cerulean wall. I would that thus, when I shall see The hour of death draw near to me, Hope, blossoming within my heart, May look to heaven as I depart.

(the way bed is in winter, like an aproned lap, like furry mittens, like childhood crouching under tables) The Ninth Day of Xmas, in the morning black outside our window: clattering cans, the whir of a hopper, shouts, a whistle,move on... I see them in my warm imagination the way I’ll see them later in the cold, heaving the huge cans and running (running!) to the next house on the street. My vestiges of muscle stir uneasily in their percale cocoon: what moves those men out there, what drives them running to the next house and the next? Halfway back to dream, I speculate: The Social Weal? “Let’s make good old Bloomington a cleaner place to live in—right, men?Hup, tha!” Healthy Competition? “Come on, boys, let’s burn up that route today and beat those dudes on truck thirteen!” Enlightened Self-Interest? “Another can, another dollar—don’t slow down, Mac, I’m puttin’ three kids through Princeton?” Or something else? Terror? A half hour later, dawn comes edging over Clark Street: layers of color, laid out like a flattened rainbow—red, then yellow, green, and over that the black-and-blue of night still hanging on. Clark Street maples wave their silhouettes against the red, and through the twiggy trees, I see a solid chunk of garbage truck, and stick-figures of men, like windup toys, tossing little cans— and running. All day they’ll go like that, till dark again, and all day, people fussing at their desks, at hot stoves, at machines, will jettison tin cans, bare evergreens, damp Kleenex, all things that are Caesar’s. O garbage men, the New Year greets you like the Old; after this first run you too may rest in beds like great warm aproned laps and know that people everywhere have faith: putting from them all things of this world, they confidently bide your second coming.

I wanted to be sure to reach you; though my ship was on the way it got caught in some moorings. I am always tying up and then deciding to depart. In storms and at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide around my fathomless arms, I am unable to understand the forms of my vanity or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder in my hand and the sun sinking. To you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage of my will. The terrible channels where the wind drives me against the brown lips of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet I trust the sanity of my vessel; and if it sinks, it may well be in answer to the reasoning of the eternal voices, the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

Richer than mother's milk is half-and-half. Friends of two minds, redouble your craft. Our shelves our hives, our selves a royal jelly, may we at Benares and Boston, Philly and Delhi collect our birthright nectar. No swarm our own, we must be industrious, both queen and drone. Being two beings requires a rage for rigor, rewritable memory, hybrid vigor. English herself is a crossbred mother mutt, primly promiscuous and hot to rut. Oneness? Pure chimera. Splendor is spliced. Make your halves into something twice your size, your tongue a hyphen joining nation to nation. Recombine, become a thing of your own creation, a many-minded mongrel, the line's renewal, self-made and twofold, soul and dual.

The Turn Brave infant of Saguntum, clear Thy coming forth in that great year, When the prodigious Hannibal did crown His rage with razing your immortal town. Thou, looking then about, Ere thou wert half got out, Wise child, didst hastily return, And mad’st thy mother’s womb thine urn. How summed a circle didst thou leave mankind Of deepest lore, could we the center find! The Counterturn Did wiser Nature draw thee back From out the horror of that sack, Where shame, faith, honor, and regard of right Lay trampled on; the deeds of death and night Urged, hurried forth, and hurled Upon th’ affrighted world; Sword, fire, and famine, with fell fury met, And all on utmost ruin set, As, could they but life’s miseries foresee, No doubt all infants would return like thee? The Stand For what is life, if measured by the space, Not by the act? Or maskèd man, if valued by his face Above his fact? Here’s one outlived his peers And told forth fourscore years; He vexèd time and busied the whole state, Troubled both foes and friends; But ever to no ends: What did this stirrer but die late? How well at twenty had he fall’n or stood! For three of his fourscore he did no good. The Turn He entered well, by virtuous parts, Got up and thrived with honest arts; He purchased friends, and fame, and honors then, And had his noble name advanced with men; But weary of that flight He stooped in all men’s sight To sordid flatteries, acts of strife, And sunk in that dead sea of life So deep, as he did then death’s waters sup, But that the cork of title buoyed him up. The Counterturn Alas, but Morison fell young; He never fell, thou fall’st, my tongue. He stood, a soldier to the last right end, A perfect patriot, and a noble friend, But most a virtuous son. All offices were done By him so ample, full, and round, In weight, in measure, number, sound, As, though his age imperfect might appear, His life was of humanity the sphere. The Stand Go now, and tell out days summed up with fears, And make them years; Produce thy mass of miseries on the stage To swell thin age; Repeat of things a throng, To show thou hast been long, Not lived; for life doth her great actions spell By what was done and wrought In season, and so brought To light: her measures are, how well Each syllabe answered, and was formed how fair; These make the lines of life, and that’s her air. The Turn It is not growing like a tree In bulk doth make man better be; Or standing long an oak, three hundred year, To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere: A lily of a day Is fairer far in May; Although it fall and die that night, It was the plant and flower of light. In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be. The Counterturn Call, noble Lucius, then for wine, And let thy looks with gladness shine; Accept this garland, plant it on thy head, And think, nay know, thy Morison’s not dead. He leaped the present age, Possessed with holy rage To see that bright eternal day; Of which we priests and poets say Such truths as we expect for happy men, And there he lives with memory, and Ben The Stand Jonson! who sung thus of him, ere he went Himself to rest, Or taste a part of that full joy he meant To have expressed In this bright asterism; Where it were friendship’s schism (Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry) To separate these twi- Lights, the Dioscuri, And keep the one half from his Harry. But fate doth so alternate the design, Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth must shine. The Turn And shine as you exalted are, Two names of friendship, but one star: Of hearts the union. And those not by chance Made, or indenture, or leased out t’advance The profits for a time. No pleasures vain did chime Of rimes, or riots, at your feasts, Orgies of drink, or feigned protests, But simple love of greatness and of good; That knits brave minds and manners more than blood. The Counterturn This made you first to know the why You liked, then after to apply That liking, and approach so one the tother, Till either grew a portion of the other: Each styled by his end The copy of his friend. You lived to be the great surnames And titles by which all made claims Unto the virtue. Nothing perfect done, But as a Cary, or a Morison. The Stand And such a force the fair example had, As they that saw The good, and durst not practice it, were glad That such a law Was left yet to mankind; Where they might read and find Friendship, indeed, was written, not in words; And with the heart, not pen, Of two so early men, Whose lines her rolls were, and recòrds, Who, ere the first down bloomèd on the chin, Had sowed these fruits, and got the harvest in.

A Sestina You who are happy in a thousand homes, Or overworked therein, to a dumb peace; Whose souls are wholly centered in the life Of that small group you personally love; Who told you that you need not know or care About the sin and sorrow of the world? Do you believe the sorrow of the world Does not concern you in your little homes? — That you are licensed to avoid the care And toil for human progress, human peace, And the enlargement of our power of love Until it covers every field of life? The one first duty of all human life Is to promote the progress of the world In righteousness, in wisdom, truth and love; And you ignore it, hidden in your homes, Content to keep them in uncertain peace, Content to leave all else without your care. Yet you are mothers! And a mother's care Is the first step toward friendly human life. Life where all nations in untroubled peace Unite to raise the standard of the world And make the happiness we seek in homes Spread everywhere in strong and fruitful love. You are content to keep that mighty love In its first steps forever; the crude care Of animals for mate and young and homes, Instead of pouring it abroad in life, Its mighty current feeding all the world Till every human child can grow in peace. You cannot keep your small domestic peace Your little pool of undeveloped love, While the neglected, starved, unmothered world Struggles and fights for lack of mother's care, And its tempestuous, bitter, broken life Beats in upon you in your selfish homes. We all may have our homes in joy and peace When woman's life, in its rich power of love Is joined with man's to care for all the world.

Go, smiling souls, your new-built cages break, In heaven you’ll learn to sing, ere here to speak, Nor let the milky fonts that bathe your thirst Be your delay; The place that calls you hence is, at the worst, Milk all the way.

Where’er thy navy spreads her canvas wings, Homage to thee, and peace to all, she brings: The French and Spaniard, when thy flags appear, Forget their hatred, and consent to fear. So Jove from Ida did both hosts survey, And when he pleas’d to thunder, part the fray. Ships heretofore in seas like fishes sped, The mightiest still upon the smallest fed: Thou on the deep imposest nobler laws, And by that justice hast remov’d the cause Of those rude tempests, which, for rapine sent, Too oft, alas, involv’d the innocent. Now shall the ocean, as thy Thames, be free From both those fates, of storms and piracy. But we most happy, who can fear no force But winged troops, or Pegasean horse: ’Tis not so hard for greedy foes to spoil Another nation, as to touch our soil. Should Nature’s self invade the world again, And o’er the centre spread the liquid main, Thy power were safe; and her destructive hand Would but enlarge the bounds of thy command: Thy dreadful fleet would style thee lord of all, And ride in triumph o’er the drowned ball: Those towers of oak o’er fertile plains might go, And visit mountains, where they once did grow. The world’s restorer once could not endure, That finish’d Babel should those men secure, Whose pride design’d that fabric to have stood Above the reach of any second flood: To thee His chosen, more indulgent, He Dares trust such power with so much piety.

Wife and servant are the same, But only differ in the name: For when that fatal knot is tied, Which nothing, nothing can divide: When she the word obey has said, And man by law supreme has made, Then all that’s kind is laid aside, And nothing left but state and pride: Fierce as an Eastern prince he grows, And all his innate rigour shows: Then but to look, to laugh, or speak, Will the nuptial contract break. Like mutes she signs alone must make, And never any freedom take: But still be governed by a nod, And fear her husband as a God: Him still must serve, him still obey, And nothing act, and nothing say, But what her haughty lord thinks fit, Who with the power, has all the wit. Then shun, oh! shun that wretched state, And all the fawning flatt’rers hate: Value your selves, and men despise, You must be proud, if you’ll be wise.