All fly – yet who is misanthrope? –     The actual men and things that pass    Jostling, to wither as the grass    So soon: and (be it heaven’s hope,    Or…

    Instants in the quiet, small sharp stars,    Pierce my spirit with a thrust whose speed    Baffles even the grasp of time.    Oh that I might reflect them    As swiftly,…

    Books and a coloured skein of thoughts were mine;    And magic words lay ripening in my soul    Till their much-whispered music turned a wine    Whose subtlest power was…

    The eyes of the portraits on the wall    Look at me, follow me,    Stare incessantly:    I take it their glance means nothing at all?     – Clearly, oh clearly!…

    In the middle of countries, far from hills and sea,    Are the little places one passes by in trains    And never stops at; where the skies extend    Uninterrupted,…

    Sitting on the top of the ‘bus,    I bite my pipe and look at the sky.    Over my shoulder the smoke streams out    And my life with it.    “Conservation…

    Her eyes of bright unwinking glaze    All imperturbable do not    Even make pretences to regard    The justing absence of her stays,    Where many a Tyrian gallipot    Excites desire with spilth…

    Dear absurd child – too dear to my cost I’ve found –     God made your soul for pleasure, not for use:    It cleaves no way, but angled…

(From the French of St�phane Mallarm�.)     I would immortalize these nymphs: so bright    Their sunlit colouring, so airy light,    It floats like drowsing down. Loved I a…

    There is a country in my mind,    Lovelier than a poet blind    Could dream of, who had never known    This world of drought and dust and stone    In all…