A MAN YOUNG AND OLD
  I
 First Love
 
 THOUGH nurtured like the sailing moon
 In beauty's murderous brood,
 She walked awhile and blushed awhile
 And on my pathway stood
 Until I thought her body bore
 A heart of flesh and blood.
 But since I laid a hand thereon
 And found a heart of stone
 I have attempted many things
 And not a thing is done,
 For every hand is lunatic
 That travels on the moon.
 She smiled and that transfigured me
 And left me but a lout,
 Maundering here, and maundering there,
 Emptier of thought
 Than the heavenly circuit of its stars
 When the moon sails out.
 
 II
 Human Dignity
 Like the moon her kindness is,
 If kindness I may call
 What has no comprehension in't,
 But is the same for all
 As though my sorrow were a scene
 Upon a painted wall.
 So like a bit of stone I lie
 Under a broken tree.
 I could recover if I shrieked
 My heart's agony
 To passing bird, but I am dumb
 From human dignity.
 
 III
 The Mermaid 
 A mermaid found a swimming lad,
 Picked him for her own,
 Pressed her body to his body,
 Laughed; and plunging down
 Forgot in cruel happiness
 That even lovers drown.
 
 IV
 The Death of the Hare
 I have pointed out the yelling pack,
 The hare leap to the wood,
 And when I pass a compliment
 Rejoice as lover should
 At the drooping of an eye,
 At the mantling of the blood.
 Then' suddenly my heart is wrung
 By her distracted air
 And I remember wildness lost
 And after, swept from there,
 Am set down standing in the wood
 At the death of the hare.
 
 V
 The Empty Cup
 A crazy man that found a cup,
 When all but dead of thirst,
 Hardly dared to wet his mouth
 Imagining, moon-accursed,
 That another mouthful
 And his beating heart would burst.
 October last I found it too
 But found it dry as bone,
 And for that reason am I crazed
 And my sleep is gone.
 
 VI
 His Memories
 We should be hidden from their eyes,
 Being but holy shows
 And bodies broken like a thorn
 Whereon the bleak north blows,
 To think of buried Hector
 And that none living knows.
 The women take so little stock
 In what I do or say
 They'd sooner leave their cosseting
 To hear a jackass bray;
 My arms are like the twisted thorn
 And yet there beauty lay;
 The first of all the tribe lay there
 And did such pleasure take –
 She who had brought great Hector down
 And put all Troy to wreck –
 That she cried into this ear,
 "Strike me if I shriek.'
 
 VII
 The Friends of his Youth
 Laughter not time destroyed my voice
 And put that crack in it,
 And when the moon's pot-bellied
 I get a laughing fit,
 For that old Madge comes down the lane,
 A stone upon her breast,
 And a cloak wrapped about the stone,
 And she can get no rest
 With singing hush and hush-a-bye;
 She that has been wild
 And barren as a breaking wave
 Thinks that the stone's a child.
 And Peter that had great affairs
 And was a pushing man
 Shrieks, "I am King of the Peacocks,'
 And perches on a stone;
 And then I laugh till tears run down
 And the heart thumps at my side,
 Remembering that her shriek was love
 And that he shrieks from pride.
 
 VIII
 Summer and Spring
 We sat under an old thorn-tree
 And talked away the night,
 Told all that had been said or done
 Since first we saw the light,
 And when we talked of growing up
 Knew that we'd halved a soul
 And fell the one in t'other's arms
 That we might make it whole;
 Then peter had a murdering look,
 For it seemed that he and she
 Had spoken of their childish days
 Under that very tree.
 O what a bursting out there was,
 And what a blossoming,
 When we had all the summer-time
 And she had all the spring!
 
 IX
 The Secrets of the Old
 I have old women's sectets now
 That had those of the young;
 Madge tells me what I dared not think
 When my blood was strong,
 And what had drowned a lover once
 Sounds like an old song.
 Though Margery is stricken dumb
 If thrown in Madge's way,
 We three make up a solitude;
 For none alive to-day
 Can know the stories that we know
 Or say the things we say:
 How such a man pleased women most
 Of all that are gone,
 How such a pair loved many years
 And such a pair but one,
 Stories of the bed of straw
 Or the bed of down.
 
 X
 His Wildness
 O bid me mount and sail up there
 Amid the cloudy wrack,
 For peg and Meg and Paris' love
 That had so straight a back,
 Are gone away, and some that stay
 Have changed their silk for sack.
 Were I but there and none to hear
 I'd have a peacock cry,
 For that is natural to a man
 That lives in memory,
 Being all alone I'd nurse a stone
 And sing it lullaby.
 
 XI
 From 'Oedipus at Colonus'
 Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
 Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
 Delight becomes death-longing if all longing else be vain.
 Even from that delight memory treasures so,
 Death, despair, division of families, all entanglements of mankind grow,
 As that old wandering beggar and these God-hated children know.
 In the long echoing street the laughing dancers throng,
 The bride is catried to the bridegroom's chamber
 through torchlight and tumultuous song;
 I celebrate the silent kiss that ends short life or long.
 Never to have lived is best, ancient writers say;
 Never to have drawn the breath of life, never to have
 looked into the eye of day;
 The second best's a gay goodnight and quickly turn away.