Any moment of the chase
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et if over hill and hollow,Still it is your will to follow,I am off;--to heel, Apollo! _Portrait by a Neighbour_ Before she has her floor sweptOr her dishes done,Any day you’ll find herA-sunning in the sun! It’s long after midnightHer key’s in the lock,And you never see her chimney smokeTill past ten o’clock! She digs in her gardenWith a shovel and a spoon,She weeds her lazy lettuceBy the light of the moon. She walks up the walkLike a woman in a dream,She forgets she borrowed butterAnd pays you back cream! Her lawn looks like a meadow,And if she mows the placeShe leaves the clover standingAnd the Queen Anne’s lace! _The Merry Maid_ Oh, I am grown so free from careSince my heart broke!I set my throat against the air,I laugh at simple folk! There’s little kind and little fairIs worth its weight in smokeTo me, that’s grown so free from careSince my heart broke! Lass, if to sleep you would repairAs peaceful as you woke,Best not besiege your lover thereFor just the words he spokeTo me, that’s grown so free from careSince my heart broke! _To S. M._ _If he should lie a-dying_ I am not willing you should goInto the earth, where Helen went;She is awake by now, I know.Where Cleopatra’s anklets rustYou will not lie with my consent;And Sappho is a roving dust;Cressid could love again; Dido,Rotted in state, is restless still;You leave me much against my will. _The Philosopher_ And what are you that, wanting you,I should be kept awakeAs many nights as there are daysWith weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you,As many days as crawlI should be listening to the windAnd looking at the wall? I know a man that’s a braver manAnd twenty men as kind,And what are you, that you should beThe one man in my mind? Yet women’s ways are witless ways,As any sage will tell,--And what am I, that I should loveSo wisely and so well? _Four Sonnets_ I Love, though for this you riddle me with darts,And drag me at your chariot till I die,--Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!--Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lieWho shout you mighty: thick about my hair,Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr,Who still am free, unto no querulous careA fool, and in no temple worshipper!I, that have bared me to your quiver’s fire,Lifted my face into its puny rain,Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke DesireAs you are Powerless to Elicit Pain!(Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave,Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!)
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