To One Who Eats Larks
Ah, my brave Vitellius!
Ah, your tastes are marvellous!
When you eat your singing birds
Do you leave the bones — and words,
The proud music in the throat?...
Not a note, not a note?
Doubtless they were not so pleasant
As the brains of a young pheasant,
Or flamingoes' tongues, whose duty
Never was to utter beauty.
But they sang, but they fluted
And your rasping lies confuted,
And your ugliness laid bare
With a lyric in the air.
So you bought them on a string,
Dangling balls that used to sing,
And you gave them to the cook
With a fat and happy look.
But you ask me why this fuss!
Ah, my brave Vitellius,
I am never sure your stringers
May not string you other singers,
May not tire of lark and wren
And attempt to sell you men.
Please forgive me, but I've made
Certain songs ... and I'm afraid!
If Beauty Came to You
If Beauty came to you,
Ah, would you know her grace,
And could you in your shadowed prison view
Unscathed her face?
Stepping as noiselessly
As moving moth-wings, so
Might she come suddenly to you or me
And we not know.
Amid these clangs and cries,
Alas, how should we hear
The shy, dim-woven music of her sighs
As she draws near.
Threading through monstrous, black,
Uncharitable hours,
Where the soul shapes its own abhorrèd rack
Of wasted powers?