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I sat beneath a willow tree,
  Where water falls and calls;
While fancies upon fancies solaced me,
  Some true, and some were false.

Who set their heart upon a hope
  That never comes to pass,
Droop in the end like fading heliotrope,
  The sun's wan looking-glass.

Who set their will upon a whim
  Clung to through good and ill,
Are wrecked alike whether they sink or swim,
  Or hit or miss their will.

All things are vain that wax and wane,
  For which we waste our breath;
Love only doth not wane and is not vain,
  Love only outlives death.

A singing lark rose toward the sky,
  Circling he sang amain;
He sang, a speck scarce visible sky-high,
  And then he sank again.

A second like a sunlit spark
  Flashed singing up his track;
But never overtook that foremost lark,
  And songless fluttered back.

A hovering melody of birds
  Haunted the air above;
They clearly sang contentment without words,
  And youth and joy and love.

O silvery weeping willow tree
  With all leaves shivering,
Have you no purpose but to shadow me
  Beside this rippled spring?

On this first fleeting day of Spring,
  For Winter is gone by,
And every bird on every quivering wing
  Floats in a sunny sky;

On this first Summer-like soft day,
  While sunshine steeps the air,
And every cloud has gat itself away,
  And birds sing everywhere.

Have you no purpose in the world
  But thus to shadow me
With all your tender drooping twigs unfurled,
  O weeping willow tree?

With all your tremulous leaves outspread
  Betwixt me and the sun,
While here I loiter on a mossy bed
  With half my work undone;

My work undone, that should be done
  At once with all my might;
For after the long day and lingering sun
  Comes the unworking night.

This day is lapsing on its way,
  Is lapsing out of sight;
And after all the chances of the day
  Comes the resourceless night.

The weeping-willow shook its head
  And stretched its shadow long;
The west grew crimson, the sun smouldered red,
  The birds forbore a song.

Slow wind sighed through the willow leaves,
  The ripple made a moan,
The world drooped murmuring like a thing that grieves;
  And then I felt alone.

I rose to go, and felt the chill,
  And shivered as I went;
Yet shivering wondered, and I wonder still,
  What more that willow meant;

That silvery weeping-willow tree
  With all leaves shivering,
Which spent one long day overshadowing me
  Beside a spring in Spring.
a Feb 2015
my mind has fallen down, nearer to where my heart is, and it is shrinking, but pulsing huger, whilst my heart is no longer pumping blood and throat is now stuck with this dry lump and my tear ducts are too empty to occupy and it's all suddenly just decided to go, to leave, to place this heaviness upon the cage that no longer protects my unworking heart
prose
ravendave Dec 2016
She waits. Her hands,
weaving, unweaving.

Lovers' entreaties
curling her ears.

The suitors yearn for skin on skin.
Not a single one gets in.

Still her fingers,
working, unworking.

Waiting for her husband,
the twenty year journeyman.

The lovers renew their pleas.
"Just you wait," she

tells her hands,
fingers weaving, unweaving.

"****** and Wisdom
will settle the score."

Soon, all weaving ended.
Her husband's arrows
darkened the air.

The suitors died for skin on skin.
Not a single one got in.
Kagey Sage Jan 13
I tip my hat to the contempt of corrupt government
but please don't mistake that as being against a collective good
I am an anarcho-socialist cause the proliferation of the individual is only possible in a welfare society
All you capitalist bootlickers will hustle yourself back to serfs
or worse
Where the noble few are the only ones to live free

Now they propagandize you with a promise
you can join their game and be a Capitalist too
Yet the unworking economic royalists
will not abdicate their thrones
So they want you to be grateful for all they provide
a chance to labor under them and be dazzled with distractions
which serfs of the past could never know
Slow economic mobility to a halt
They want a return to Victorian deference above all

— The End —