She digs in her garden With a shovel and a spoon, She weeds her lazy lettuce By the light of the moon, She walks up the walk Like a woman in a dream, She forgets she borrowed butter And pays you back cream! Her lawn looks like a meadow, And if she mows the place She leaves the clover standing And the Queen Anne's lace! Midnight Oil Cut if you will, with Sleep's dull knife, Each day to half its length, my friend,-- The years that Time takes off _my_ life, He'll take from off the other end! The Merry Maid Oh, I am grown so free from care Since my heart broke! I set my throat against the air, I laugh at simple folk! There's little kind and little fair Is worth its weight in smoke To me, that's grown so free from care Since my heart broke! Lass, if to sleep you would repair As peaceful as you woke, Best not besiege your lover there For just the words he spoke To me, that's grown so free from care Since my heart broke! To Kathleen Still must the poet as of old, In barren attic bleak and cold, Starve, freeze, and fashion verses to Such things as flowers and song and you; Still as of old his being give In Beauty's name, while she may live, Beauty that may not die as long As there are flowers and you and song. To S. M. If he should lie a-dying I am not willing you should go Into the earth, where Helen went; She is awake by now, I know. Where Cleopatra's anklets rust You will not lie with my consent; And Sappho is a roving dust; Cressid could love again; Dido, Rotted in state, is restless still: You leave me much against my will. The Philosopher And what are you that, wanting you I should be kept awake As many nights as there are days With weeping for your sake? And what are you that, missing you, As many days as crawl I should be listening to the wind And looking at the wall? I know a man that's a braver man And twenty men as kind, And what are you, that you should be The one man in my mind? Yet women's ways are witless ways, As any sage will tell,-- And what am I, that I should love So wisely and so well? Four Sonnets I Love, though for this you riddle me with darts, And drag me at your chariot till I die,-- Oh, heavy prince! Oh, panderer of hearts!-- Yet hear me tell how in their throats they lie Who shout you mighty: thick about my hair Day in, day out, your ominous arrows purr Who still am free, unto no querulous care A fool, and in no temple worshiper! I, that have bared me to your quiver's fire, Lifted my face into its puny rain, Do wreathe you Impotent to Evoke Desire As you are Powerless to Elicit Pain! (Now will the god, for blasphemy so brave, Punish me, surely, with the shaft I crave!) II