The love which enraptures me in song,
Keeps my homely heart as his redoubt,
And when holy bells ring loud and strong,
Stands bravely dressing for the bout.
Yet she who kindles love and tries it well,
Wills not unbridled hope and earnest dreams,
But temp'rance by the distance of the bell,
For this she shades her lovely beams.
Terror is born from Fortune's corpse,
Love flees to the heart to weep and bide.
What can I say to such remorse
But to swear to never leave his side.
Vowing never again himself to give,
By my faith unto death, he shall yet live.
My heart tortures itself for you,
Weeping in the Scetian desert
Where saints dwelt in gloom,
And prays what at their appetite
Might swill my longing too,
To grant blue lips a saintly smile,
And eyes a blacksome hue.
But as the words escape my lips
You rush to my minds eye.
Your beauty and that wan smile
Is Justice, and all my being cries
Instantaneous repentance!
I love every needle, I cherish every prick
That reminds me of you, and if our love is doomed
That pain is everything; all I know,
Is I'm a fool for you.
I hear a piano, wild-eyed in the terror of the Moon.
It's soft and I can barely hear it, perhaps an angel is up past her bedtime,
Playing a secret little song, a cheating song beautiful enough to escape justice.
Maybe every now and then she feigns an accident,
Pushing hard on the key,
Pushing the envelope.
And something changes about the way a tree sways in the wind,
Or the way the sunbeams bounce and scatter,
Or how an animal simply looks at me,
Like they see me,
All of me.
Of late I have had visions,
Of late I have had dreams,
Of water breaking o'er the dam,
Of things as yet unseen.
I saw it all: the yelps and shouts,
The artifice thrown down,
A people poor in spirit
Embracing all around.
I saw the wicked kings be blest
By prisoners in their jails,
And trade their crowns for simple cloth
To walk repentance trail.
It lives in you, it lives in me,
A dream of song and dace,
And all our sheepish silence
Forgotten—Free at last!
Sing, O Muse, of brave fool Greg,
Who after slipping by the pickup-driving teens
Was cruelly drenched—A prank of his own sire.
So suffered Greg and Rowley by his jest
That once the prank had lost its shameful sting,
They sought Whirley Street ops: wrath's fitting vessels
But in vain! Again they chafed under father's yoke,
Helplessly peppered by Whirley snowballs, a treacherous end.
Greg would not shun his father's sin,
Framing Rowley, the cocoa but to warm his icy soul,
The warrior bond laid low.
Yet hum, ye teens, dread punishing sprites,
For one a touch, the other's meal!