- William Butler Yeats (1910)
`Put off that mask of burning gold
`I would but find what's there to find,
Love or deceit.'
`It was the mask engaged your mind,
And after set your heart to beat,
Not what's behind.'
`But lest you are my enemy,
I must enquire.'
`O no, my dear, let all that be;
What matter, so there is but fire
In you, in me?'
- Jonathan Swift
So geographers, in Afric maps,
- William Shakespeare
Who will believe my verse in time to come,
If it were fill'd with your most high deserts?
Though yet, heaven knows, it is but as a tomb
Which hides your life and shows not half your parts.
If I could write the beauty of your eyes
And in fresh numbers number all your graces,
The age to come would say 'This poet lies:
Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
So should my papers yellow'd with their age
Be scorn'd like old men of less truth than tongue,
And your true rights be term'd a poet's rage
And stretched metre of an antique song:
But were some child of yours alive that time,
You should live twice; in it and in my rhyme.
- William Wordsworth
I heard a thousand blended notes,
To her fair works did nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it griev'd me my heart to think
What man has made of man.
Through primrose-tufts, in that sweet bower,
The periwinkle trail'd its wreathes;
And 'tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.
The birds around me hopp'd and play'd:
Their thoughts I cannot measure,
But the least motion which they made,
It seem'd a thrill of pleasure.
The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.
If I these thoughts my not prevent,
If such be of my creed the plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?
Love pities us, covers us,
shining under the illicit streetlights
and humid sheen of desire,
in the splendid robes knit by fate.
So openly we wear them
and remove them to reveal our trembling selves.
Look after you leap and give it all,
knees buckling at unbearable sweetness,
poised at the moment of entering the brutal soul,
the animal flash of lightning,
the arrow that never returns to the bow.