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At the Portals of the Future, Full of madness, guilt and gloom, Stood the hateful form of Slavery, Crying, Give, Oh! give me room– Room to smite the earth with cursing, Room to scatter, rend and slay, From the trembling mother’s bosom Room to tear her child away; Room to trample on the manhood Of the country far and wide; Room to spread o’er every Eden Slavery’s scorching lava-tide. Pale and trembling stood the Future, Quailing ‘neath his frown of hate, As he grasped with bloody clutches The great keys of Doom and Fate. In his hand he held a banner All festooned with blood and tears: ‘Twas a fearful ensign, woven With the grief and wrong of years. On his brow he wore a helmet Decked with strange and cruel art; Every jewel was a life-drop Wrung from some poor broken heart. Though her cheek was pale and anxious, Yet, with look and brow sublime, By the pale and trembling Future Stood the Crisis of our time. And from many a throbbing bosom Came the words in fear and gloom, Tell us, Oh! thou coming Crisis, What shall be our country’s doom? Shall the wings of dark destruction Brood and hover o’er our land, Till we trace the steps of ruin By their blight, from strand to strand?

On Hearing Kelley’s Music to ‘Macbeth’ O melody, what children strange are these From thy most vast, illimitable realm? These sounds that seize upon and overwhelm The soul with shuddering ecstasy! Lo! here The night is, and the deeds that make night fear; Wild winds and waters, and the sough of trees Tossed in the tempest; wail of spirits banned, Wandering, unhoused of clay, in the dim land; The incantation of the Sisters Three, Nameless of deed and name – the mystic chords Weird repetitions of the mystic words; The mad, remorseful terrors of the Thane, And bloody hands – which bloody must remain. Last, the wild march; the battle hand to hand Of clashing arms, in awful harmony, Sublimely grand, and terrible as grand! The clan-cries; the barbaric trumpetry; And the one fateful note, that, throughout all, Leads, follows, calls, compels, and holds in thrall.

I have been cherish’d and forgiven By many tender-hearted, ’Twas for the sake of one in Heaven Of him that is departed. Because I bear my Father’s name I am not quite despised, My little legacy of fame I’ve not yet realized. And yet if you should praise myself I’ll tell you, I had rather You’d give your love to me, poor elf, Your praise to my great father.

The lightning struck him and left a scar. The wind stopped blowing and the wheat stood up. Self-tensed self, who is this I that says I ? I had a scar in the shape of  lightning That split in half when I opened my mouth. The sun  just a circle of  heat in the sky Throwing absence in the shape of clouds Down on the field. Another life placed In the middle of  the life I called my own. A lesser god commanded the front: return. A little god knocked about in the germ. The third person put me outside my own sphere. A small god chanting lightning in the synapse. Wind blows the wheat down. He calls it prayer.

I did not have exactly a way of life but the bee amazed me and the wind’s plenty was almost believable. Hearing a magpie laugh through a ghost town in Wyoming, saying Hello in Cambridge, eating cheese by the frothy Rhine, leaning from plexiglass over Tokyo, I was not able to make one life of all the presences I haunted. Still the bee amazed me, and I did not care to call accounts from the wind. Once only, at Pompeii, I fell into a sleep I understood, and woke to find I had not lost my way.

Five years have past; five summers, with the length Of five long winters! and again I hear These waters, rolling from their mountain-springs With a soft inland murmur.—Once again Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, That on a wild secluded scene impress Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and connect The landscape with the quiet of the sky. The day is come when I again repose Here, under this dark sycamore, and view These plots of cottage-ground, these orchard-tufts, Which at this season, with their unripe fruits, Are clad in one green hue, and lose themselves 'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms, Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! With some uncertain notice, as might seem Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, Or of some Hermit's cave, where by his fire The Hermit sits alone. These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din Of towns and cities, I have owed to them, In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind With tranquil restoration:—feelings too Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps, As have no slight or trivial influence On that best portion of a good man's life, His little, nameless, unremembered, acts Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, To them I may have owed another gift, Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. If this Be but a vain belief, yet, oh! how oft— In darkness and amid the many shapes Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir Unprofitable, and the fever of the world, Have hung upon the beatings of my heart— How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the woods, How often has my spirit turned to thee! And now, with gleams of half-extinguished thought, With many recognitions dim and faint, And somewhat of a sad perplexity, The picture of the mind revives again: While here I stand, not only with the sense Of present pleasure, but with pleasing thoughts That in this moment there is life and food For future years. And so I dare to hope, Though changed, no doubt, from what I was when first I came among these hills; when like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, Wherever nature led: more like a man Flying from something that he dreads, than one Who sought the thing he loved. For nature then (The coarser pleasures of my boyish days And their glad animal movements all gone by) To me was all in all.—I cannot paint What then I was. The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion: the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, Their colours and their forms, were then to me An appetite; a feeling and a love, That had no need of a remoter charm, By thought supplied, not any interest Unborrowed from the eye.—That time is past, And all its aching joys are now no more, And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts Have followed; for such loss, I would believe, Abundant recompense. For I have learned To look on nature, not as in the hour Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes The still sad music of humanity, Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man: A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things. Therefore am I still A lover of the meadows and the woods And mountains; and of all that we behold From this green earth; of all the mighty world Of eye, and ear,—both what they half create, And what perceive; well pleased to recognise In nature and the language of the sense The anchor of my purest thoughts, the nurse, The guide, the guardian of my heart, and soul Of all my moral being. Nor perchance, If I were not thus taught, should I the more Suffer my genial spirits to decay: For thou art with me here upon the banks Of this fair river; thou my dearest Friend, My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch The language of my former heart, and read My former pleasures in the shooting lights Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while May I behold in thee what I was once, My dear, dear Sister! and this prayer I make, Knowing that Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; And let the misty mountain-winds be free To blow against thee: and, in after years, When these wild ecstasies shall be matured Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! then, If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief, Should be thy portion, with what healing thoughts Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, And these my exhortations! Nor, perchance— If I should be where I no more can hear Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes these gleams Of past existence—wilt thou then forget That on the banks of this delightful stream We stood together; and that I, so long A worshipper of Nature, hither came Unwearied in that service: rather say With warmer love—oh! with far deeper zeal Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then forget, That after many wanderings, many years Of absence, these steep woods and lofty cliffs, And this green pastoral landscape, were to me More dear, both for themselves and for thy sake!

Elizabeth, The Lodge at Woodstock, 1554 Less than the charting of each dawn’s resolutions, less than each evening’s trickle of doubt, less than a crown’s weight in silver, a diamond’s scratch against glass, less than the touted ill luck of my rich beginnings—and yet more than Eve’s silence, my mute ingratitude. More than music’s safe passage, its rapturous net, more than this stockpile of words, their liquid solicitude; more desired than praise (the least-prized of my dreams), less real than dreaming (castle keep for my sins), more than no more, which seems much less than hoped-for, again— one mutiny, quelled; one wish lost, a forgotten treasure: to live without scrutiny, beyond constant measure.

The shine on her buckle took precedence in sun Her shine, I should say, could take me anywhere It feels right to be up this close in tight wind It feels right to notice all the shiny things about you About you there is nothing I wouldn’t want to know With you nothing is simple yet nothing is simpler About you many good things come into relation I think of proofs and grammar, vowel sounds, like A is for knee socks, E for panties I is for buttondown, O the blouse you wear U is for hair clip, and Y your tight skirt The music picks up again, I am the man I hope to be The bright air hangs freely near your newly cut hair It is so easy now to see gravity at work in your face Easy to understand time, that dark process To accept it as a beautiful process, your face

These alternate nights and days, these seasons Somehow fail to convince me. It seems I have the sense of infinity! (In your dreams, O crew of Columbus, O listeners over the sea For the surf that breaks upon Nothing—) Once I was waked by the nightingales in the garden. I thought, What time is it? I thought, Time—Is it Time still?—Now is it Time? (Tell me your dreams, O sailors: Tell me, in sleep did you climb The tall masts, and before you—) At night the stillness of old trees Is a leaning over and the inertness Of hills is a kind of waiting. (In sleep, in a dream, did you see The world’s end? Did the water Break—and no shore—Did you see?) Strange faces come through the streets to me Like messengers: and I have been warned By the moving slowly of hands at a window. Oh, I have the sense of infinity— But the world, sailors, is round. They say there is no end to it.

Pagano, the arc of night fallen Ice on the underhanded lilies cakewalk Underground, in the garage caverns of Galatian eocene gift of the man in the panther-skin trailed by detectives of the fanfare aboveworld hewer or warrior   of the blue muscles in the saga-like Cranial canopy of the newscast's morning December All are gone and connect him with the language of light and darkness refusal   out of the   flowers of the staff came a dove by that time the apple will be old and forgotten in telecast streams of your eyes wife in symphony of blue porcelain your symphony in blue Sometime, 1965 Newark, N.J.