The first bunch can be found here. These were written in rapid succession.

 

I.

Those for whom dreams are a welcome refuge

And the silence of sleep their sole respite

Mourn at dawn for another lost deluge

And search the drab earth to regain that height.

There they call all they see the fabled truth,

For all seems to be beauty incarnate.

For there headless lies are woven to soothe

And assure them they belong to this state.

What sad mimics, what a sorry charade

The deceits of dreams have lately become.

Fastened to you by an unbroken braid,

From their foolhardy hold I always run.

Some sleepers to night may gladly resign,

But when I see you I know you are mine.

II.

Let’s gather it all in a solemn place,

And stare surely at what we held sacred:

Grey idols, memories we would chase,

Hollow enchanters boredom calls blessed.

On wandering evenings of no matter,

Plain treks to a destination well-worn,

There is nothing, almost nothing to spur

The pulling of the remembering thorn.

Pitiful to pass the precious hours

In time squandered or honourably spent,

But your love’s truth, grace, and powers

Forces my drab memories to relent.

Let us lead these lies to a worthy tomb,

And let our love feed, grow, and bloom

 

III.

My thoughts were once a shiftless wilderness,

Mad as I was—passing from place to place

Confessing to sin, sinning to confess—

Praying idleness could let me efface

The search for what is fleetingly fresh

In green forests rich, but truthfully bare:

Where fair spirits die with the feckless flesh

And clocks cackle as the vines ensnare

Youth and its red lustre with certainty,

For a free soul without an object pure

Is a windblown weed without real liberty,

Another lost to the world’s false allure.

I embrace your light and the shadows fall,

Next to you this earth is nothing at all.

 

IIII.

Wisdom is a tortured slope seldom scaled

By youth or age. For one is too tender,

The other has tried—and already failed.

What sage proverbs could the aged confer

Upon days and nights so unlike their own,

For everyone has a time and but one time

And save for that moment, we are alone.

Then to blank innocence do we align

To stave the decay, life’s cold retort

To the highest hopes of our beginnings?

Naturally some ships will remain in port

And ponder everything’s underpinnings.

From plain time our love let us retreat;

Let us let time be neither fate nor conceit .

 

V.

The master smith will whisper to her ore

And slowly sow the seeds of her design,

For it does not know the shapes it may take

Or through what honeyed charms she can refine

The basest of beasts, the weakest of minds

In the scarlet hearth of a forge most kind.

Perhaps a gutless block would not welcome

The breathless blaze of each blinding blow

For from such beauties the hapless run

Lest they be caught by eyes and lips that know

Their hearts better than they, or would request

They grow again and forsake the fallow.

Let my mould and course be once more recast,

Made mutable by a love unsurpassed.

 

VI.

Against my will, with nothing to my name,

I entered a vessel some have envied.

For their arrivals have been much the same,

But with the sun their looks have not agreed.

This splendid symmetry you admire

Conceals uneven terrain within me.

Of these jagged things you do not tire,

For you know they are beauty’s penalty.

Better still you can whisper with shadows,

The groping cliffs with uncertain edges,

The unexpected encroach of arrows

That enliven the sad sand-swept ledges.

Let the rivulets assume a single course,

For in you they find a purer source.

 

VII.

When the air is crisp and I can commune

With ancient texts or a fortifying tome

Dawn is destined to trouble me too soon

And banish me from my nocturnal home.

When raptured to my untainted abodes

I can see endless wonders within me;

Distant stars, the meanest moods and modes,

Weave themselves together unknowingly.

There is not a thought unturned by the tide

Nor a paltry sand speck it does not know:

A more perfect portrait can be espied

Than in the discordant realms below.

Without you these ventures would be for nought,

For you encompass all that can be sought.