• There's blood between us, love, my love,

    There's father's blood, there's brother's blood;

    And blood's a bar I cannot pass:

    I choose the stairs that mount above,

    Stair after golden skyward stair,

    To city and to sea of glass.

    My lily feet are soiled with mud,

    With scarlet mud which tells a tale...

  • Deprived of other Banquet,

    I entertained Myself —

    At first — a scant nutrition —

    An insufficient Loaf —


    But grown by slender addings

    To so esteemed a size

    'Tis sumptuous enough for me —

    And almost to suffice


    A Robin's famine able —

    Red Pilgrim, He and I —...

  • When I was dead, my spirit turned

       To seek the much-frequented house:

    I passed the door, and saw my friends

       Feasting beneath the green orange boughs;

    From hand to hand they pushed the wine,

       They sucked the pulp of plum and peach;

    They sang, they jested, and they laughed,

       For each...

  • Her smile was shaped like other smiles —

    The Dimples ran along —

    And still it hurt you, as some Bird

    Did hoist herself, to sing,

    Then recollect a Ball, she got —

    And hold upon the Twig,

    Convulsive, while the Music broke —

    Like Beads — among the Bog —

  • I asked no other thing.

    No other was denied.

    I offered Being for it ;

    The mighty merchant smiled.


    Brazil ?  He twirled a button,

    Without a glance my way :

    "But, madam, is there nothing else

    That we can show...

  • I lost a World — the other day!

    Has Anybody found?

    You'll know it by the Row of Stars

    Around its forehead bound.


    A Rich man — might not notice it —

    Yet — to my frugal Eye,

    Of more Esteem than Ducats —

    Oh find it — Sir — for me!

  • No Other can reduce

    Our mortal Consequence

    Like the remembering it be nought

    A Period from hence

    But Contemplation for

    Contemporaneous Nought

    Our Single Competition

    Jehovah's Estimate.

  •    THE Queen of Beauty, t'other day

    (As the Elysian journals say).

    To ease herself of all her cares,

    And better carry on affairs;

    By privy-council mov'd above,

    And Cupid minister of love,

    To keep the earth in due obedience,

    Resolv'd to substitute vice-regents;

    To...

  • The Veins of other Flowers

    The Scarlet Flowers are

    Till Nature leisure has for Terms

    As "Branch," and "Jugular."


    We pass, and she abides.

    We conjugate Her Skill

    While She creates and federates

    Without a syllable.