From bush to vine from man to dame

Marshals temptations

A million deep

And ever new beauties rise

And with what faults soever

The stock of illusion

Is inexhaustible

I meantime depreciate

Every hour in the market

But the wares I would buy

Are enhanced every hour

I see no other way

Than to run violently from the market

* * *

Poets are colorpots

Dovesnecks & opaline

Exquisite daintiness

Vapors of wine

Delicate gloom

Barrel of opium

Blowing simoom

Cloud-collecting, dissipating

Brain relaxing enervating

Put your body on your word

Man & sonnet at accord

Set your foot upon the scales

My foot weighs just a pound

Said the cruel Yankee captain

Trucking for his precious bales

Of ermine skin & silver fur

With the painted islander.

* * *

Thanks to those who go & come

Bringing Hellas, Thebes, & Rome,

As near to me as is my home:

Careful husbands of the mind

Who keep decaying history good,

And do not suffer Tyre or Troy

To know decrepitude.

* * *

I must not borrow light

From history trite

But from friends whom God gave

And the destiny I have

* * *

Comrade of the snow & wind

He left each civil scale behind

Him woodgods fed with honey wild

And of his memory beguiled

In caves & hollow trees he crept

And near the wolf & panther slept

He came to the green ocean’s rim

And saw the sea birds skim

Summer & winter o’er the wave

Like creatures made of skiey mould

Impassible to heat or cold.

He stood beside the main

Beautiful but insane

He felt himself as if the sky walked

Or the son of the wind

There was no man near

To mete himself withal

* * *

God only knew how Saadi dined

Roses he ate, & drank the wind

* * *

Friends to me are frozen wine

I wait the sun shall on them shine

* * *

That each should in his house abide,

Therefore was the world so wide

New England Capitalist

What are his machines

Of steel, brass, leather, oak, & ivory,

But manikins & miniatures,

Dwarfs of one faculty, measured from him,

As nimbly he applies his bending self

Unto the changing world, thus making that

Another weapon of his conquering will?

He built the mills, & by his polities, made

The arms of millions turn them.

Stalwart New Hampshire, mother of men,

Sea-dented Maine, reluctant Carolina,

Must drag his coach, & by arts of peace

He, in the plenitude of love & honor,

Eats up the poor, – poor citizen poor state.

Much has he done,

Has made his telegraph,

Propeller, car, post-office, phototype,

His coast survey, vote by majority,

His life assurance, & star registry,

Preludes & hints of what he meditates; –

Now let him make a harp!

* * *

On a raisin stone

The wheels of nature turn,

Out of it the fury comes

Wherewith the spondyls burn.

And, because the seed of the vine