My dearest Frank, I wish you joy
Of Mary's safety with a Boy,
Whose birth has given little pain
Compared with that of Mary Jane —
May he a growing Blessing prove,
And well deserve his Parents' Love! —
Endow'd with Art's and Nature's Good,
Thy Name possessing with thy Blood,
In him, in all his ways, may we
Another Francis WIlliam see! —
Thy infant days may he inherit,
They warmth, nay insolence of spirit; —
We would not with one foult dispense
To weaken the resemblance.
May he revive thy Nursery sin,
Peeping as daringly within,
His curley Locks but just descried,
With 'Bet, my be not come to bide.' —
Fearless of danger, braving pain,
And threaten'd very oft in vain,
Still may one Terror daunt his Soul,
One needful engine of Controul
Be found in this sublime array,
A neigbouring Donkey's aweful Bray.
So may his equal faults as Child,
Produce Maturity as mild!
His saucy words and fiery ways
In early Childhood's pettish days,
In Manhood, shew his Father's mind
Like him, considerate and Kind;
All Gentleness to those around,
And anger only not to wound.
Then like his Father too, he must,
To his own former struggles just,
Feel his Deserts with honest Glow,
And all his self-improvement know.
A native fault may thus give birth
To the best blessing, conscious Worth.
As for ourselves we're very well;
As unaffected prose will tell.
Cassandra's pen will paint our state,
The many comforts that await
Our Chawton home, how much we find
Already in it, to our mind;
And how convinced, that when complete
It will all other Houses beat
The ever have been made or mended,
With rooms concise, or rooms distended.
You'll find us very snug next year,
Perhaps with Charles and ***** near,
For now it often does delight us
To fancy them just over-right us.

I

What’s become of Waring
Since he gave us all the slip,
Chose land-travel or seafaring,
Boots and chest, or staff and scrip,
Rather than pace up and down
Any longer London-town?

Who’d have guessed it from his lip,
Or his brow’s accustomed bearing,
On the night he thus took ship,
Or started landward?—little caring
For us, it seems, who supped together,
(Friends of his too, I remember)
And walked home through the merry weather,
The snowiest in all December;
I left his arm that night myself
For what’s-his-name’s, the new prose-poet,
That wrote the book there, on the shelf—
How, forsooth, was I to know it
If Waring meant to glide away
Like a ghost at break of day?
Never looked he half so gay!

He was prouder than the devil:
How he must have cursed our revel!
Ay, and many other meetings,
Indoor visits, outdoor greetings,
As up and down he paced this London,
With no work done, but great works undone,
Where scarce twenty knew his name.
Why not, then, have earlier spoken,
Written, bustled? Who’s to blame
If your silence kept unbroken?
“True, but there were sundry jottings,
Stray-leaves, fragments, blurrs and blottings,
Certain first steps were achieved
Already which—(is that your meaning?)
Had well borne out whoe’er believed
In more to come!” But who goes gleaning
Hedge-side chance-blades, while full-sheaved
Stand cornfields by him? Pride, o’erweening
Pride alone, puts forth such claims
O’er the day’s distinguished names.

Meantime, how much I loved him,
I find out now I’ve lost him:
I, who cared not if I moved him,
Henceforth never shall get free
Of his ghostly company,
His eyes that just a little wink
As deep I go into the merit
Of this and that distinguished spirit—
His cheeks’ raised colour, soon to sink,
As long I dwell on some stupendous
And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
Monstr’-inform’-ingens-horrend-ous
Demoniaco-seraphic
Penman­’s latest piece of graphic.
Nay, my very wrist grows warm
With his dragging weight of arm!
E’en so, swimmingly appears,
Through one’s after-supper musings,
Some lost Lady of old years,
With her beauteous vain endeavour,
And goodness unrepaid as ever;
The face, accustomed to refusings,
We, puppies that we were… Oh never
Surely, nice of conscience, scrupled
Being aught like false, forsooth, to?
Telling aught but honest truth to?
What a sin, had we centupled
Its possessor’s grace and sweetness!
No! she heard in its completeness
Truth, for truth’s a weighty matter,
And, truth at issue, we can’t flatter!
Well, ’tis done with: she’s exempt
From damning us through such a sally;
And so she glides, as down a valley,
Taking up with her contempt,
Past our reach; and in, the flowers
Shut her unregarded hours.


Oh, could I have him back once more,
This Waring, but one half-day more!
Back, with the quiet face of yore,
So hungry for acknowledgment
Like mine! I’d fool him to his bent!
Feed, should not he, to heart’s content?
I’d say, “to only have conceived
Your great works, though they ne’er make progress,
Surpasses all we’ve yet achieved!”
I’d lie so, I should be believed.
I’d make such havoc of the claims
Of the day’s distinguished names
To feast him with, as feasts an ogress
Her sharp-toothed golden-crowned child!
Or, as one feasts a creature rarely
Captured here, unreconciled
To capture; and completely gives
Its pettish humours licence, barely
Requiring that it lives.

Ichabod, Ichabod,
The glory is departed!
Travels Waring East away?
Who, of knowledge, by hearsay,
Reports a man upstarted
Somewhere as a God,
Hordes grown European-hearted,
Millions of the wild made tame
On a sudden at his fame?
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?
Or who, in Moscow, toward the Czar,
With the demurest of footfalls
Over the Kremlin’s pavement, bright
With serpentine and syenite,
Steps, with five other generals,
That simultaneously take *****,
For each to have pretext enough
To kerchiefwise unfurl his sash
Which, softness’ self, is yet the stuff
To hold fast where a steel chain snaps,
And leave the grand white neck no ****?
Waring, in Moscow, to those rough
Cold northern natures borne, perhaps,
Like the lambwhite maiden dear
From the circle of mute kings,
Unable to repress the tear,
Each as his sceptre down he flings,
To Dian’s fane at Taurica,
Where now a captive priestess, she alway
Mingles her tender grave Hellenic speech
With theirs, tuned to the hailstone-beaten beach,
As pours some pigeon, from the myrrhy lands
Rapt by the whirlblast to fierce Scythian strands
Where bred the swallows, her melodious cry
Amid their barbarous twitter!
In Russia? Never! Spain were fitter!
Ay, most likely, ’tis in Spain
That we and Waring meet again—
Now, while he turns down that cool narrow lane
Into the blackness, out of grave Madrid
All fire and shine—abrupt as when there’s slid
Its stiff gold blazing pall
From some black coffin-lid.
Or, best of all,
I love to think
The leaving us was just a feint;
Back here to London did he slink;
And now works on without a wink
Of sleep, and we are on the brink
Of something great in fresco-paint:
Some garret’s ceiling, walls and floor,
Up and down and o’er and o’er
He splashes, as none splashed before
Since great Caldara Polidore:
Or Music means this land of ours
Some favour yet, to pity won
By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers,—
“Give me my so long promised son,
Let Waring end what I begun!”
Then down he creeps and out he steals
Only when the night conceals
His face—in Kent ’tis cherry-time,
Or, hops are picking; or, at prime
Of March, he wanders as, too happy,
Years ago when he was young,
Some mild eve when woods grew sappy,
And the early moths had sprung
To life from many a trembling sheath
Woven the warm boughs beneath;
While small birds said to themselves
What should soon be actual song,
And young gnats, by tens and twelves,
Made as if they were the throng
That crowd around and carry aloft
The sound they have nursed, so sweet and pure,
Out of a myriad noises soft,
Into a tone that can endure
Amid the noise of a July noon,
When all God’s creatures crave their boon,
All at once and all in tune,
And get it, happy as Waring then,
Having first within his ken
What a man might do with men,
And far too glad, in the even-glow,
To mix with your world he meant to take
Into his hand, he told you, so—
And out of it his world to make,
To contract and to expand
As he shut or oped his hand.
Oh, Waring, what’s to really be?
A clear stage and a crowd to see!
Some Garrick—say—out shall not he
The heart of Hamlet’s mystery pluck
Or, where most unclean beasts are rife,
Some Junius—am I right?—shall tuck
His sleeve, and out with flaying-knife!
Some Chatterton shall have the luck
Of calling Rowley into life!
Some one shall somehow run amuck
With this old world, for want of strife
Sound asleep: contrive, contrive
To rouse us, Waring! Who’s alive?
Our men scarce seem in earnest now:
Distinguished names!—but ’tis, somehow
As if they played at being names
Still more distinguished, like the games
Of children. Turn our sport to earnest
With a visage of the sternest!
Bring the real times back, confessed
Still better than our very best!

II

“When I last saw Waring…”
(How all turned to him who spoke—
You saw Waring? Truth or joke?
In land-travel, or seafaring?)

“…We were sailing by Triest,
Where a day or two we harboured:
A sunset was in the West,
When, looking over the vessel’s side,
One of our company espied
A sudden speck to larboard.
And, as a sea-duck flies and swins
At once, so came the light craft up,
With its sole lateen sail that trims
And turns (the water round its rims
Dancing, as round a sinking cup)
And by us like a fish it curled,
And drew itself up close beside,
Its great sail on the instant furled,
And o’er its planks, a shrill voice cried
(A neck as bronzed as a Lascar’s)
‘Buy wine of us, you English Brig?
Or fruit, tobacco and cigars?
A Pilot for you to Triest?
Without one, look you ne’er so big,
They’ll never let you up the bay!
We natives should know best.’
I turned, and ‘just those fellows’ way,’
Our captain said, ‘The long-shore thieves
Are laughing at us in their sleeves.’

“In truth, the boy leaned laughing back;
And one, half-hidden by his side
Under the furled sail, soon I spied,
With great grass hat, and kerchief black,
Who looked up, with his kingly throat,
Said somewhat, while the other shook
His hair back from his eyes to look
Their longest at us; then the boat,
I know not how, turned sharply round,
Laying her whole side on the sea
As a leaping fish does; from the lee
Into the weather, cut somehow
Her sparkling path beneath our bow;
And so went off, as with a bound,
Into the rose and golden half
Of the sky, to overtake the sun,
And reach the shore, like the sea-calf
Its singing cave; yet I caught one
Glance ere away the boat quite passed,
And neither time nor toil could mar
Those features: so I saw the last
Of Waring!”—You? Oh, never star
Was lost here, but it rose afar!
Look East, where whole new thousands are!
In Vishnu-land what Avatar?

O! nothing earthly save the ray
(Thrown back from flowers) of Beauty’s eye,
As in those gardens where the day
Springs from the gems of Circassy—
O! nothing earthly save the thrill
Of melody in woodland rill—
Or (music of the passion-hearted)
Joy’s voice so peacefully departed
That like the murmur in the shell,
Its echo dwelleth and will dwell—
O! nothing of the dross of ours—
Yet all the beauty—all the flowers
That list our Love, and deck our bowers—
Adorn yon world afar, afar—
The wandering star.

’Twas a sweet time for Nesace—for there
Her world lay lolling on the golden air,
Near four bright suns—a temporary rest—
An oasis in desert of the blest.
Away away—’mid seas of rays that roll
Empyrean splendor o’er th’ unchained soul—
The soul that scarce (the billows are so dense)
Can struggle to its destin’d eminence—
To distant spheres, from time to time, she rode,
And late to ours, the favour’d one of God—
But, now, the ruler of an anchor’d realm,
She throws aside the sceptre—leaves the helm,
And, amid incense and high spiritual hymns,
Laves in quadruple light her angel limbs.

Now happiest, loveliest in yon lovely Earth,
Whence sprang the “Idea of Beauty” into birth,
(Falling in wreaths thro’ many a startled star,
Like woman’s hair ’mid pearls, until, afar,
It lit on hills Achaian, and there dwelt),
She look’d into Infinity—and knelt.
Rich clouds, for canopies, about her curled—
Fit emblems of the model of her world—
Seen but in beauty—not impeding sight—
Of other beauty glittering thro’ the light—
A wreath that twined each starry form around,
And all the opal’d air in color bound.

All hurriedly she knelt upon a bed
Of flowers: of lilies such as rear’d the head
On the fair Capo Deucato, and sprang
So eagerly around about to hang
Upon the flying footsteps of—deep pride—
Of her who lov’d a mortal—and so died.
The Sephalica, budding with young bees,
Uprear’d its purple stem around her knees:
And gemmy flower, of Trebizond misnam’d—
Inmate of highest stars, where erst it sham’d
All other loveliness: its honied dew
(The fabled nectar that the heathen knew)
Deliriously sweet, was dropp’d from Heaven,
And fell on gardens of the unforgiven
In Trebizond—and on a sunny flower
So like its own above that, to this hour,
It still remaineth, torturing the bee
With madness, and unwonted reverie:
In Heaven, and all its environs, the leaf
And blossom of the fairy plant, in grief
Disconsolate linger—grief that hangs her head,
Repenting follies that full long have fled,
Heaving her white breast to the balmy air,
Like guilty beauty, chasten’d, and more fair:
Nyctanthes too, as sacred as the light
She fears to perfume, perfuming the night:
And Clytia pondering between many a sun,
While pettish tears adown her petals run:
And that aspiring flower that sprang on Earth—
And died, ere scarce exalted into birth,
Bursting its odorous heart in spirit to wing
Its way to Heaven, from garden of a king:
And Valisnerian lotus thither flown
From struggling with the waters of the Rhone:
And thy most lovely purple perfume, Zante!
Isola d’oro!—Fior di Levante!
And the Nelumbo bud that floats for ever
With Indian Cupid down the holy river—
Fair flowers, and fairy! to whose care is given
To bear the Goddess’ song, in odors, up to Heaven:

  “Spirit! that dwellest where,
    In the deep sky,
  The terrible and fair,
    In beauty vie!
  Beyond the line of blue—
    The boundary of the star
  Which turneth at the view
    Of thy barrier and thy bar—
  Of the barrier overgone
    By the comets who were cast
  From their pride, and from their throne
    To be drudges till the last—
  To be carriers of fire
    (The red fire of their heart)
  With speed that may not tire
    And with pain that shall not part—
  Who livest—that we know—
    In Eternity—we feel—
  But the shadow of whose brow
    What spirit shall reveal?
  Tho’ the beings whom thy Nesace,
    Thy messenger hath known
  Have dream’d for thy Infinity
    A model of their own—
  Thy will is done, O God!
    The star hath ridden high
  Thro’ many a tempest, but she rode
    Beneath thy burning eye;
  And here, in thought, to thee—
    In thought that can alone
  Ascend thy empire and so be
    A partner of thy throne—
  By winged Fantasy,
     My embassy is given,
  Till secrecy shall knowledge be
    In the environs of Heaven.”

She ceas’d—and buried then her burning cheek
Abash’d, amid the lilies there, to seek
A shelter from the fervor of His eye;
For the stars trembled at the Deity.
She stirr’d not—breath’d not—for a voice was there
How solemnly pervading the calm air!
A sound of silence on the startled ear
Which dreamy poets name “the music of the sphere.”
Ours is a world of words: Quiet we call
“Silence”—which is the merest word of all.

All Nature speaks, and ev’n ideal things
Flap shadowy sounds from the visionary wings—
But ah! not so when, thus, in realms on high
The eternal voice of God is passing by,
And the red winds are withering in the sky!
“What tho’ in worlds which sightless cycles run,
Link’d to a little system, and one sun—
Where all my love is folly, and the crowd
Still think my terrors but the thunder cloud,
The storm, the earthquake, and the ocean-wrath
(Ah! will they cross me in my angrier path?)
What tho’ in worlds which own a single sun
The sands of time grow dimmer as they run,
Yet thine is my resplendency, so given
To bear my secrets thro’ the upper Heaven.
Leave tenantless thy crystal home, and fly,
With all thy train, athwart the moony sky—
Apart—like fire-flies in Sicilian night,
And wing to other worlds another light!
Divulge the secrets of thy embassy
To the proud orbs that twinkle—and so be
To ev’ry heart a barrier and a ban
Lest the stars totter in the guilt of man!”

Up rose the maiden in the yellow night,
The single-mooned eve!-on earth we plight
Our faith to one love—and one moon adore—
The birth-place of young Beauty had no more.
As sprang that yellow star from downy hours,
Up rose the maiden from her shrine of flowers,
And bent o’er sheeny mountain and dim plain
Her way—but left not yet her Therasaean reign.

My dear,

I've lost everything I hold near;
you've turned my heart into a constant pit of fear
where I flinch at the sight of possible pain
and lose sight of the flame
I ever saw in us.

It's such a shame
that I have to put up such a fuss
because I never really did much
to stop what was bothering me the most,
just let it drift away like a coast;
might as well take a toast
to all the few good times we had
and be glad
that you could've been the biggest part of my life.

I really don’t want to do this,
but you've turned my infatuated bliss
into something that could be dismissed;
I was ready to put all my cards on the table,
expose my all like a fable,
but everything got blown away
when you decided to stop giving me the time of day
and shut down everything I had to say.
You're a ****.
You make me go berserk
even when you give me just the smallest smirk.
I cant take this.

You never have anything nice to say;
think that makes me want to stay?
I'm over this whole act.
Have you ever learned manners?
No? Do you expect me to adapt
to this pettish play
where 'men' are mean to the ones they like?
That doesn’t even make sense.
Why would you act in anger
or give any thought of danger
to someone you want to give your heart to?
Does that somehow make sense to you?

But, when I look into your eyes
I can see past all these tries,
that I truly despise,
and I see the real you.
The one that wants to hold my hand;
someone who wants to understand
everything I demand
and commit to who I really am.

Playing this tug-of-war
will be the end of me.
But, the game continues because of this stupid life I wished for.
I should just shut the door
since this has just become a chore
I have to bear
because it only seems fair
since your eyes tell me more than the rest of you.

I think we're through
unless you change your ways that have somehow became apart of you.


Sincerely,

Your almost Love

I had to let go of your memories
As I did with San Fransisco
With its innocent corners and places
The quaint stores and my shadow

"Does it snow in San Fransisco?"
My little nephew asked
"Not always, but it did long ago"
And my eyes filled with remnants of the past

It hasn't gotten easier, years have gone by
I still remember the golden gate
The sunsets and the pleasant sky
I need you still and in vain I wait
For you to stop by
And steady my pettish state

"Fall Down"he cried, and the walls were blasted in all directions,
The roof was flung over the top of the world
as he stood among ruins lighted by a single taper.
He listened to the ***** music, not recognizing it at first but having gained an appetite, he proceeded across the blackness  to satisfy his hunger in the only available light still living.

The goblet that she held aloft had a fiery glow about it.
The green ball of radiating light that shone was not an emerald but something from his genetic memory of forefathers that had somehow embedded itself obsessionaly in his brain.
He began speaking, asking awkward questions that held little or no meaning to her.
She answered cautiously, then stepped over the dead pine needles to comfort him.
It seemed to her he had been wounded in the war of Love, and his amour welded securely in place had left its mark.

He took a step towards her"may I kiss you"? he asked.
His amour clinked slightly as he took her in his arms with all the warmth of a log fire in late December .
All the leaves yellowed at once and a double file of moons passed through the heavens.
There was a strange sound in the Christmas sky
She felt strangely at home in this alien world without time, where flowers capitulate and the stars do battle in the endless heavens, rising in turmoil, falling at last to the ground, splintered and bleeding.

He had become deathly quiet.
She searched the glowing embers for for an answer, but the answer came from deep within herself.
Now she understood, for a few brief moments , he had confused X with Y.
His armor had been breached.
Slowly he turned his head and forced himself to look away- ashamed.
The blood flowed from the open wounds in his biceps,
and ran down his body and dripped from his fingertips profusely
His world had jumped backwards, as had hers.


"Drink"? she asked.
He gulped down the hot liquor.
It burnt his insides.
He felt a change and his strength returning.
"Some things never change"she said softly
His inquiring eyes searched her face for meaning
There are, she said things that have long ceased to be objects,  and emotions that stand solely as never -to -be calender occasions, outside that sequence of element called time.

He had armed himself well, to guard against his vulnerability and fear.
He slashed expertly at any deeper meaning that could have been hidden in their encounter.
Gleefully he dismembered her word by word, rejecting her love as a pettish ideal.
Inwardly she wept and her heart bled and it bled, fouling the floor with her infernal animal juices, dripping and running until life itself was reddened, and their ****** had become a Winters night Nightmare.

He turned and fled into the night.
It was like running through a waist- high snowdrift.
He knew it was wrong.
He was compounding his error by running
The night was silent now, it was endless, It slanted towards the end of the world.
It gave off its own light.
There was no sky- nothing overhead.
He was alone.
His own voice echoed back to him from the wilderness.
"I HATE YOU" ..........."ANIMAL"..........."I HATE YOU"


Gathering his thoughts and shedding his armor,
he returned to make amends, surprised at his own since of honor and chivalry.
His boring apologies seemed to her a functional disorder,
that occurred for pretty flimsy reasons.
First times are always special she explained
The pins and needles are gone through and Ive caught my breath again.
They agreed to be parted as friends.
She watched as he walked away,
Honor, armor and fear still intact.
They had smashed the clock of time ,
and feasted on the ten or so ages of man.


A tiny pool of water lay on the palm of her hand.
The residue of another world, another generation.
A little momentum left behind, like a tear shed unsuspectingly.
She closed her eyes in disbelief, but couldn't stop the seeing.
The impulses of nature had become a reality.
The evening sky looked as it never had before.
The morning sun shed tears that turned in turmoil.
A flash of metallic light covered the night sky.
Her world receded for an instant, then grew stable again .
Seconds later her palm was clear and unblemished.

She had embedded herself in the armor so dearly held by him.
She stood for the last time in this alien world.
In the midst of an explosion of thought,
she stared frightened into the deep blue mirrors of his mind.
How could he know of her nightmare?
This abstract tragedy,   that he so unknowingly had become a part of.
Her saddened eyes watched him leave her life as abruptly as he entered
pledging her heart and silent love to him for ever.

My soul…
Listen to the pettish sound of the sky
He will cry soon by rumbling, prepare your goblet
The sky falls in love with the sea and cry without stop in order to touch her
The sea fills herself in his love
My soul…
you missed that his ocean-like eyes?
Which you can't touch…
if i caress pearls will pour  from his hair
Which you never have could felt…
Cry o soul with the sky  behalf of holy love
without stop flows poems from my lips
clock inside my heart stopped
my knees tremble by craving
I am burning in flames
i get cold that have been trapped in ice-heart
listen that voice which you never could heard
a night will come open unlike bright
That night is mine…
my left side is silent as much as death this night
at the same time the most severe war
a soul passed by here with one hand goblet
at the same time by digging passed
By hurting…
Oh my little child soul!!
Listen the silent of night
Nobody hears its screaming
Night loves morning by trying to endure this pain
this soul wanders in verses from word to word
that soul sews scars that have been ripped from his heart line by line
the pocket of a coat hid his combative spirit
i'm drinking behalf of that soul
on behalf of every wounded soul…

Great is thy Sin, since Sin is never Small:
     And Monstrous Moles of Sin call home thy Soule.
About their Mountainous Molehills they do Crawle.
     Play thou (and win) a Game of Whacke-a-Mole.
     Unto the Moles be deadly as an Asp.  
     Beware, take care, and Swat the pettish Wasp.