Sonnets on Love, Rosebuds, and Death

I had no thoughts of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists' shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garnish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made, --
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now -- unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.

Joy shakes me like the wind that lifts a sail,
Like the roistering wind
That laughs through stalwart pines.
It floods me like the sun
On rain-drenched trees
That flash with silver and green,
I abandon myself to joy
I laugh -- I sing.
Too long have I walked a desolate way,
Too long stumbled down a maze
Bewildered.

Some things are very dear to me —
 [ ... ]

He came in silvern armour, trimmed with black
 [ ... ]

Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
They hung my black young lover
To a crossroads tree.

Way Down South in Dixie
(Bruised body high in air)
I asked the white Lord Jesus
What was the use of prayer.

Way Down South in Dixie
(Break the heart of me)
Love is a naked shadow
On a gnarled and naked tree.

You have been good to me, I give you this
 [ ... ]

Since men grow diffident at last,
And care no whit at all,
If spring be come, or the fall be past,
Or how the cool rains fall,

I come to no flower but I pluck,
I raise no cup but I sip,
For a mouth is the best of sweets to suck;
The oldest wine's on the lip.

If I grow old in a year or two,
And come to the querulous song
Of 'Alack and aday' and 'This was true,
And that, when I was young,'

I must have sweets to remember by,
Some blossom saved from the mire,
Some death-rebellious ember I
Can fan into a fire.

Let me be buried in the rain
 [ ... ]