And me happiest when I compose poems.

            Love, power, the huzza of battle
            Are something, are much;
yet a poem includes them like a pool
            water and reflection.
In me, nature’s divided things—
            tree, mould on tree—
            have their fruition;
I am their core. Let them swap,
bandy, like a flame swerve
I am their mouth; as a mouth I serve.

And I observe how the sensual moths
            big with odour and sunshine
dart into the perilous shrubbery;
or drop their visiting shadows
            upon the garden I one year made
of flowering stone to be a footstool
            for the perfect gods:
            who, friends to the ascending orders,
sustain all passionate meditations
and call down pardons
for the insurgent blood.

A quiet madman, never far from tears,
            I lie like a slain thing
            under the green air the trees
inhabit, or rest upon a chair
            towards which the inflammable air
tumbles on many robins’ wings;
            noting how seasonably
            leaf and blossom uncurl
and living things arrange their death,
while someone from afar off
blows birthday candles for the world.