PoemsHousehold Edition
eat; From air and ocean bring me foods, From all zones and altitudes;—       From all natures, sharp and slimy, Salt and basalt, wild and tame:      Tree and lichen, ape, sea-lion, Bird, and reptile, be my game. Ivy for my fillet band; Blinding dog-wood in my hand; Hemlock for my sherbet cull me, And the prussic juice to lull me; Swing me in the upas boughs, Vampyre-fanned, when I carouse. Too long shut in strait and few, Thinly dieted on dew, I will use the world, and sift it, To a thousand humors shift it, As you spin a cherry. O doleful ghosts, and goblins merry! O all you virtues, methods, mights,      Means, appliances, delights, Reputed wrongs and braggart rights, Smug routine, and things allowed, Minorities, things under cloud! Hither! take me, use me, fill me, Vein and artery, though ye kill me! 

  

  

       TO J.W.     

      Set not thy foot on graves; Hear what wine and roses say; The mountain chase, the summer waves, The crowded town, thy feet may well delay. Set not thy foot on graves; Nor seek to unwind the shroud Which charitable Time And Nature have allowed To wrap the errors of a sage sublime. Set not thy foot on graves; Care not to strip the dead Of his sad ornament, His myrrh, and wine, and rings, His sheet of lead, And trophies buried:      Go, get them where he earned them when alive; As resolutely dig or dive. Life is too short to waste In critic peep or cynic bark, Quarrel or reprimand:      'T will soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark! 

  

  

       DESTINY     

      That you are fair or wise is vain, Or strong, or rich, or generous; You must add the untaught strain That sheds beauty on the rose. There's a melody born of melody, Which melts the world into a sea. Toil could never compass it; Art its height could never hit; It came never out of wit; But a music music-born Well may Jove and Juno scorn. Thy beauty, if it lack the fire Which drives me mad with sweet desire, What boots it? What the soldier's mail, Unless he conquer and prevail? What all the goods thy pride which lift, If thou pine for another's gift? Alas! that one is born in blight, Victim of 
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