IV-XI SAY WHAT YOU WILL
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ay what you will, and scratch my heart to findThe roots of last year’s roses in my breast;I am as surely riper in my mindAs if the fruit stood in the stalls confessed.Laugh at the unshed leaf, say what you will,Call me in all things what I was before,A flutterer in the wind, a woman still;I tell you I am what I was and more.My branches weigh me down, frost cleans the air,My sky is black with small birds bearing south;Say what you will, confuse me with fine care,Put by my word as but an April truth--Autumn is no less on me that a roseHugs the brown bough and sighs before it goes. IV-XII WHAT’S THIS OF DEATH What’s this of death, from you who never willdie?Think you the wrist that fashioned you in clay,The thumb that set the hollow just that wayIn your full throat and lidded the long eyeSo roundly from the forehead, will let lieBroken, forgotten, under foot some dayYour unimpeachable body, and so slayThe work he most had been remembered by?I tell you this: whatever of dust to dustGoes down, whatever of ashes may returnTo its essential self in its own season,Loveliness such as yours will not be lost,But, cast in bronze upon his very urn,Make known him Master, and for what goodreason.
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