A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 14

Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book

The wellspring of thy feeling: hold thou, still,

The best and worst of all thy soul could brook,

And know thy heart as thou dost know thy will.

Soft! lest thy tongue's denial plague thy brain,

And bring to lowly dust its highest worth:

Be yet the greatest honour thou may'st gain

The honour of thy glory in thy birth.

Soft! yet admit the symbol of thy woe;

Relinquish not the hours of thy glee;

Mayhap thou'lt know, as surely thou must know,

The voice of all thy lords of poesy.

If still thy words be bounded by thy care,

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear.

Happy birthday, Will!

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 13

These offices, so oft as thou wilt look,

Are more than truth in beauty lost in truth:

For all the world such madness could not brook

As that which is the summer of thy youth.

Yet as thy days to winter's pole incline,

Uplift thine eyes to autumn's golden blaze;

Let all the glory of the world be thine,

Unnumber'd in the span of all thy days.

Into one moment breathe all thou hast known,

And if in all eternity there be

Another such, thou shalt not find it gone,

But biding for the splendour that was thee.

The sum of joy that all thy nature took

Shall profit thee and much enrich thy book.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 12

To take a new acquaintance of thy mind

I had not thought: art thou that wayward she

To whom with heart and spirit I inclin'd?

Art thou the soul of all my poesy?

I knew thee not when first I spoke thy name:

I scant could know the path I chose to tread

Were all the incense to thy hallow'd fame

Burnt to thy god of errantry instead.

I knew thee not; I know thee, now, too well:

I cannot plumb the fathoms of my grief

In words: there are no words this tale to tell.

There is no physic here to bring relief.

And yet, for thee, and thee alone, I brook

These offices, so oft as thou wilt look.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 11

Those children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain,

Deliver us, as gloriously as thou,

To whom we raise our votive song in vain:

Thou, all the past and future, aid us now!

Thy song, thine art, thy laurel's verdant green,

Are all we seek: let all our will be thine;

Thou god of light and fire, archer keen,

Our all is number'd to thy voice divine.

Let but thy Muse a single moment stay,

And give us tongue to offer in thy praise:

Do thou, bright rider of the gleaming day,

Light on us all thy music in thy rays.

As one to thee entreaties now inclin'd:

To take a new acquaintance of thy mind.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 10

Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find

More hours in the substance of each day,

More graces in each hour to grace inclin'd,

Than all the best and worst of earth-wrought clay.

Speak not for Muses' art: that gift is thine,

And doubly honour'd now, since doubly won;

Surrender not to visions, though divine:

What hearken they whose mortal race is run?

But if for thee, and for thyself alone,

His golden lyric note thou fain would'st hear,

Then hold thy will to all his godlike tone:

Yet own not aught to thee was held more dear.

Seek, then; and if he will it, not in vain,

Those children nursed, deliver'd from thy brain.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 9

And this one brings it up to speed...

Look what thy memory cannot contain:

And if thy silence yet thy choice uphold,

Then be the sum of argument in vain;

Then let thy rhyming be thy fool-wrought gold.

What claimeth part in mortal weal and woe

Who mocketh those who kneel his grace to seek?

If knowing is foreknowing, doth he know

The darkness of the vengeance he must wreak?

The favour of his cruelty is bright,

And dark the sunlit valley of his glee:

Though still his lyre all thy soul delight,

It speaketh of the sorrow that is thee.

The awful glory of his art enshrin'd

Commit to these waste blanks, and thou shalt find.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 8

Time's thievish progress to eternity,

As more than number'd in the sum of days,

More certain is: as immortality

Abound upon those prophet-trodden ways;

In silent chorus let thy virgins sing:

Be all the wealth of all their virtue thine:

Yet all for naught. How should that honour bring

To thee his lyre's music, though divine?

Then make thy choice: not seer's sacred part

Is offer'd thee, nor glory to thy name;

But in the splendour of the Muse's Art,

Thy soul be all, and all that thou mayst claim.

If yet thou speak'st of honour and disdain,

Look what thy memory cannot contain.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 7

Still catching up...

Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know

What days awaken with their fleeting time:

Yet if thou wilst but will it, will it so,

That all thy truth were honour'd in one clime.

What is that truth whose worth thou countest such

That all the past and all the future pale

To this the word thou lovest over-much?

Wouldst thou deny thine all that thou art frail?

If for thy gift thou mournest, wilst thou hold

A mocking future higher than thine all,

And all upon thy word, in wisdom told,

Be this too great a burden? Cities fall.

Yet thou mayst measure in thy prophecy

Time's thievish progress to eternity.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 6

Two days behind... But that's no reason not to catch up now.

Of mouthed graves will give thee memory

A fraction of a fraction of thy days:

Yet if thou wilst endure eternity,

Mayhap thou'lt find Apollo in his blaze.

Speak, Mortal, thou who knowest the divine:

Wert thou above the vengeance of the god,

A brighter fate might evermore be thine;

Speak of the shaded shores that thou hast trod.

Speak, from those shores, of monarchs yet to rise,

Of ships that have not sailed the stormy sea:

A thousand generations ope their eyes

And find a past and future all in thee.

The hours that pass uncounted as they go

Thou by thy dial's shady stealth mayst know.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 5

The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show

I will not see: swift let my senses fail

Ere I the paleness of thy cheek must know

And own it truth that thou art mortal-frail.

Or, if my traitor eyes must look to thine,

And seek thy ravag'd splendour in thy gaze,

Then ere I see the proof of thy decline

Dark come the night upon my earthbound days.

I would not bide where thou art not; and thou,

The sum of glories more than I can name,

Canst never be but as thou bidest now:

Then let my spirit's weakness be my shame.

Mayhap the dawns that I will never see

Of mouthed graves will give thee memory.

Yes, I know, italicizing 'thee' is cheating...

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 4

And of this book this learning mayst thou taste:

That, compassed in one moment's heaving life,

Nor love nor honour so the living grac'd

As when the poet sang immortal strife.

To deathless glory swift the legions ride;

Could action spell the measure of their time,

Then endless would their memories abide,

And votive flame displace an idle rhyme.

Yet, what from hour to hour we cannot tell,

Nor own the past can of its past reveal,

That knowledge from those words we must impel:

The smallest part of what our days conceal.

Go, number this, and count, that none mayst know

The wrinkles which thy glass will truly show.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 3

And I'm a bit late with this one.

The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear,

But cannot hold the measure of thy soul;

When word to word eternity declare,

Let this one moment all thy worth extol.

The glory of a thousand burning suns

Though still the Muse can summon, and impart,

The storied path of mortal actions runs

Beyond the splendour of a mortal's Art.

Be thou the first: what can the poet say,

Save that he praise the honour of thy name?

There is no verse compos'd of earthly clay

T' outdo the self-styled worth of all thy fame.

Thine actions speak what minstrels have not trac'd:

And of this book, this learning mayst thou taste.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 2

Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste

Discovers, ere the questing eye can see

Thine unforgiving years upon thee trac'd,

Or mourn the sacred ruin that was thee.

Yet, though the world regret thy fleeting day,

And ponder on its hours, unnumber'd, brief,

I find no sorrows come my heart to weigh,

Nor bow my head beneath their load of grief.

What's fallen, that my sonnet cannot raise?

What lost, that cannot find the world anew?

Eternal odes if writ to speak thy praise,

What pow'r shall keep thee hid from mortal view?

But let me raise to thee this simple air:

The vacant leaves thy mind's imprint will bear.

A New(er) Acquaintance of Thy Mind: Day 1

And just to make it harder this time, a corona on LXXVII.

Thy glass will show thee how thy beauties wear:
Wilst thou regret the waning of thy grace?
It is not for thy cheek, though wondrous fair,
Thou art remember’d of the mortal race.
Defended from the workings of the moon,
Relentless in her chase from night to night,
Nor thou nor I can hold thy virgin bloom,
Nor still the sun in his eternal flight.
If in the fading splendour of thy gaze
A spark of all thy knowing linger still,
Then let thy uncontained thoughts upraise
A higher monument to mark thy will.
Thy page will tell the learning thou hast traced,
Thy dial how thy precious minutes waste.