Barcelona Metropolis

Witch-Wife
She is neither pink nor pale, / And she never will be all mine; / She learned her hands in a fairy-tale, / And her mouth on a valentine. // She has more hair than she needs; / In the sun 'tis a woe to me! / And her voice is a string of colored beads, / Or steps leading into the sea. // She loves me all that she can, / And her ways to my ways resign; / But she was not made for any man, / And she never will be all mine.

Renascence
Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I / And hailed the earth with such a cry / As is not heard save from a man / Who has been dead, and lives again. / About the trees my arms I wound; / Like one gone mad I hugged the ground; / I raised my quivering arms on high; / I laughed and laughed into the sky, / Till at my throat a strangling sob / Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb / Sent instant tears into my eyes;

Afternoon on a Hill
I will be the gladdest thing / Under the sun! / I will touch a hundred flowers / And not pick one. // I will look at cliffs and clouds / With quiet eyes, / Watch the wind bow down the grass, / And the grass rise. // And when lights begin to show / Up from the town, / I will mark which must be mine, / And then start down!

Sonnet XCIX
Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink / Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; / Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink / And rise and sink and rise and sink again; // Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, / Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; / Yet many a man is making friends with death / Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. // It well may be that in a difficult hour, / Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, / Or nagged by want past resolution's power, // I might be driven to sell your love for peace, / Or trade the memory of this night for food. / It well may be. I do not think I would.

Wild Swans
I looked in my heart while the wild swans went over. / And what did I see I had not seen before? / Only a question less or a question more; / Nothing to match the flight of wild birds flying. / Tiresome heart, forever living and dying, / House without air, I leave you and lock your door. / Wild swans, come over the town, come over / The town again, trailing your legs and crying!

First Fig
My candle burns at both ends; / It will not last the night; / But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends— / It gives a lovely light!

Second Fig
Safe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: / Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

Burial
Mine is a body that should die at sea! / And have for a grave, instead of a grave / Six feet deep and the length of me, / All the water that is under the wave! // And terrible fishes to seize my flesh, / Such as a living man might fear, / And eat me while I am firm and fresh,- / Not wait till I’ve been dead for a year!

Sonnet XI
I shall forget you presently, my dear, / So make the most of this, your little day, / Your little month, your little half a year, / Ere I forget, or die, or move away, // And we are done forever; by and by / I shall forget you, as I said, but now, / If you entreat me with your loveliest lie / I will protest you with my favorite vow. // I would indeed that love were longer-lived, / And vows were not so brittle as they are, / But so it is, and nature has contrived // To struggle on without a break thus far,— / Whether or not we find what we are seeking / Is idle, biologically speaking.

Sonnet XV
Only until this cigarette is ended, / A little moment at the end of all, / While on the floor the quiet ashes fall, / And in the firelight to a lance extended, // Bizarrely with the jazzing music blended, / The broken shadow dances on the wall, / I will permit my memory to recall / The vision of you, by all my dreams attended. // And then adieu, -farewell!-the dream is done. / Yours is a face of which I can forget / The color and the features, every one, // The words not ever, and the smiles not yet; / But in your day this moment is the sun / Upon a hill, after the sun has set.