To a Girl I Miss Much in that Summer
A Song of Summer
Maybe all the singers expire
In this season, when air in fire.
And the green leaves get dark,
Where hides a stray weary lark.
Shall I fade away to the lake,
A sole island, dawn or dusk awake.
With dewdrops sparkling and stars dim,
Solitude creeping is full to the brim.
O dashing an ode off can be in vain
To compare the summer to grief either pain.
But I’ll never see roses in bloom,
When breezes sobbing cross the valley in gloom.
I may die, as a bird’s gone,
And am washed to the sea along.
O listen, he begins to sing for Love,
Not ceasing until the viewless eve.
To May
A bud burst to gather the mellow light
In May, callin’ bees back before a rain.
An’ my thoughts flee away to thee tonight,
Where shone by a moonbeam,
To devote myself to darkness in no pain.
Weepin’ a lot when hearin’ the song in thicket,
Which the musk-roses play nature’s bell.
An’ how could I be a sweet cricket?
In fully tireless-throat’d melodies,
To sing o’ the summer’s an’ thy spell.
O stay for a while, my Lo’e, ‘til season’s gone.
Tho’ miles away, cherish’d memories’ taken aye!
The Long and Winding Way
Walking down the avenue, that I think
Elegies to Spring could be writ.
With the trees aside deeply green,
To groan either to praise lacks grit.
Sweet voices fled among numb memories,
Much as I try, sincerely as I bide.
Calling her soft name when Bird flies,
To carry a letter far to another side.
Flowers are not born for decorating,
To gain Summer’s smile and reward.
But one man in love wandering,
His eyes sad while his heart forward.
Walking down the long and winding way,
No sign, no companion, even no belief.
Only me, in which despairs happy to lay,
Dragging himself to invisible relief.
And reposing at the mossy silent path,
I’d love to count pieces broken.
Known the murder of me hath
Been done. O Lord, swallows a word spoken.
Green Outside
When I leant to the door, I saw
A tree shook its boughs to the wind,
And whispered, and got to bow,
And I would have my fancy pinn’d.
Follow its music, tho’ I may be sick,
And dance with the green shade,
When I feel the vitality not trick,
That enhances my Luve of glass-made.
Darkling it is gentler, to be at ease,
And covers some bird up for this sake
That the nightingale comes to sing with
His poor Luve, sure to never fake.
A Perfect World
Do I sink to the marsh of grief,
When I feel alone in thy absence?
Do I dive into the bottom of nothingness,
When I cannot with thee dance?
Then I groan, putting out sparks of fancy,
Where we’d plan a perfect world;
And behold the starry sky in darkness,
Tho’ the trees trembling to cold.
But still a fairy land that it can be,
Despite illusion and unknown future.
For thou pleas’st every minute of life,
Which makes me in love sweet or true.
And fight for thee, for the coming trip,
For our perfect world on my lip.
Who Killed John Keats
Then Keats died in Rome after his arrival,
In the warm climate of South, where grave green;
His name was like the old city’s eternal,
But finally itself writ in water and unseen.
Haply England’s hills and forests came to his dream,
Which fed blackbirds and poetry and illness;
Ancient days hid face in the mist o’er stream,
And gone with rough winds and short happiness.
‘Tis nature and love that give him gift
To picture the beauty in such a tender hue;
A pity that only nut of death can he lift,
And never to breathe air in the blue.
And who killed John Keats? grief in the core,
And damp? but I still wonder more, and more.
Irish Sea
O I’ll travel to that land one day,
With myself across European continent.
And the narrow channel can be a delay
Of my arrival, robbing me of content.
O I feel the breezes down gloomy hills,
And green waves against the sandy shore;
And corals in silence witness sea’s will,
And birds of paradise in the sky roar.
O I miss the graves cover’d in cypress tree,
Where buried soldiers devoted or lovelorn.
We call them boys, boys belonging to the sea,
And boys born to reap the fruitful corn.
O a smell of salt is oozing from the map,
And my heart aches in the imaginary trap.