Selected Poems

My life closed twice before its close.
It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
A third event to me,

So huge, so hopeless to conceive
As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
And all we need of hell.

We like March, his shoes are purple,
He is new and high;
Makes he mud for dog and peddler,
Makes he forest dry;
Knows the adder's tongue his coming,
And begets her spot.
Stands the sun so close and mighty
That our minds are hot
News is he of all the others;
Bold it were to die
With the blue-birds buccaneering
On his British sky.

The soul unto itself
Is an imperial friend,
Or the most agonizing spy
An enemy could send.

Secure against its own,
No treason it can fear.
Itself its sovereign, of itself
The soul should stand in awe.