Fragments
Troy Town is covered up with weeds,
The rabbits and the pismires
On broken gold, and shards, and
Where Priam's ancient palace stood
Troy Town is covered up with weeds,
The rabbits and the pismires
On broken gold, and shards, and
Where Priam's ancient palace stood
On old Cold Crendon's windy tops Grows wintrily Blown Hilcote Copse,
Wind-bitten beech with badger barrows,
Where brocks eat wasp-grubs with their marrows,
And foxes lie on short-grassed turf,
In the dark womb where I
My mother’s life made me a man
Through all the months of human
Her beauty fed my common earth
One road leads to London, One road leads to Wales,
My road leads me seawards To the white dipping sails
One road leads to the river, As it goes singing slow;
My road leads to shipping, Where the bronzed sailors go
Laugh and be merry, remember, better the world with a song,
Better the world with a blow in the teeth of a wrong
Laugh, for the time is brief, a thread the length of a span
Laugh and be proud to belong to the old proud pageant of man
I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and ...
When I am buried, all my thoughts and acts Will be reduced to lists of dates and facts, And long before this wandering flesh is rotten The dates which made me will be all forgotten; And none will know the gleam there used to be About the feast day...
Mother Carey
She's the mother o' the witches'N' all them sort o' rips;
She's a fine gell to look at, but the hitch is,
She's a sight too fond of ships;
I hold that when a person dies His soul returns again to earth;
Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise Another mother gives him birth
With sturdier limbs and brighter brain The old soul takes the road again
Such is my own belief and tru...
This is a sacred city built of marvellous earth
Life was lived nobly here to give such beauty birth
Beauty was in this brain and in this eager hand: Death is so blind and dumb Death does not understand
Death drifts the brain with du...
I Four bells were struck, the watch was called on deck,
All work aboard was over for the hour,
And some men sang and others played at check,
Or mended clothes or watched the sunset glower
Be with me,
Beauty, for the fire is dying;
My dog and I are old, too old for roving
Man, whose young passion sets the spindrift flying,