Golden in the heydays of his eyes,  
And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns  
And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves  
Trail with daisies and barley  
Down the river of the windfall light.  

And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns  
About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,  
In the sun that is young once only,  
Time let me play and be  
Golden in the mercy of his means,  

And green and golden I was hunstman and herdsman, the calves  
Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,  
And the sabbath rang slowly  
In the pebbles of the holy streams.  

All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay  
Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air  
And playing, lovely and watery  
And fire green as grass.  

And nightly under the simple stars  
As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,  
All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars  
Flying with the ricks, and the horses  
Flashing into the dark.  
  
And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white  
With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder:  it was all  
Shining, it was Adam and maiden,  
The sky gathered again  
And the sun grew round that very day.  
So it must have been after the birth of the simple light  
In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm  
Out of the whinnying green stable  
On to the fields of praise.  
  
And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house  
Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,  
In the sun born over and over,  
I ran my heedless ways,  
My wishes raced through the house-high hay  
And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows  
In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs  
Before the children green and golden  
Follow him out of grace,  

Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me  
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,  
In the moon that is always rising,  
Nor that riding to sleep  
I should hear him fly with the high fields  
And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.  

Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,  
Time held me green and dying  
Though I sang in my chains like the sea.  

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Ah, what a trifle is a heart  
If once into Love's hands it come!  
All other griefs allow a part  
To other griefs, and ask themselves but some;  
They come to us, but us Love draws;  
He swallows us and never chaws;  
By him, as by chain'd shot, whole ranks do die;  
He is tyrant pike, our hearts the fry.  

If 'twere not so, what did become  
Of my heart when I first saw thee?  
I brought a heart into the room,  
But from the room I carried none with me.  
If it had gone to thee, I know  
Mine would have taught thine heart to show  
More pity to me; but Love, alas,  
At one first blow did shiver it as glass.  

Yet nothing can to nothing fall,  
Nor any place be empty quite;  
Therefore I think my breast hath all  
Those pieces still, though they be not unite;  
And now as broken glasses show  
A hundred lesser faces, so  
My rags of heart can like, wish, and adore,  
But after one such love can love no more.  
  
http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/donne/donnebib.htm  

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The sea is calm tonight,  
The tide is full, the moon lies fair  
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light  
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,  
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.  
Come to the window, sweet is the night air!  
Only, from the long line of spray  
Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,  
Listen! you hear the grating roar  
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,  
At their return, up the high strand,  
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,  
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring  
The eternal note of sadness in.  

Sophocles long ago  
Heard it on the Agean, and it brought  
Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow  
Of human misery; we  
Find also in the sound a thought,  
Hearing it by this distant northern sea.  

The Sea of Faith  
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore  
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.  
But now I only hear  
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,  
Retreating, to the breath  
Of the night wind, down the vast edges drear  
And naked shingles of the world.  

Ah, love, let us be true  
To one another! for the world, which seems  
To lie before us like a land of dreams,  
So various, so beautiful, so new,  
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,  
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;  
And we are here as on a darkling plain  
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,  
Where ignorant armies clash by night.  

1867  

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Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 
And sorry I could not travel both 
And be one traveler, long I stood 
And looked down one as far as I could 
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 
Then took the other, as just as fair, 
And having perhaps the better claim, 
Because it was grassy and wanted wear; 
Though as for that passing there 
Had worn them really about the same, 
And both that morning equally lay 
In leaves no step had trodden black. 
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, 
I doubted if I should ever come back. 
I shall be telling this with a sigh 
Somewhere ages and ages hence: 
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I- 
I took the one less traveled by, 
And that has made all the difference. 

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When you are old and grey and full of sleep, 
And nodding by the fire, take down this book, 
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look 
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;  

How many loved your moments of glad grace, 
And loved your beauty with love false or true,  
But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you, 
And loved the sorrows of your changing face; 

And bending down beside the glowing bars, 
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled 
And paced upon the mountains overhead 
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars. 

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Tyger Tyger burning bright, 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye,  
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?  
  
In what distant deeps or skies,  
Burnt the fire of thine eyes? 
On what wings dare he aspire? 
What the hand dare sieze the fire?  

And what shoulder, & what art, 
Could twist the sinews of thy heart? 
And when thy heart began to beat, 
What dread hand? & what dread feet?  
  
What the hammer? and what the chain, 
In what furnace was thy brain? 
What the anvil ? what dread grasp, 
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!  
  
When the stars threw down their spears 
And water'd heaven with their tears: 
Did he smile his work to see? 
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?  

Tyger Tyger burning bright, 
In the forests of the night, 
What immortal hand or eye,  
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?  

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