Sonnets And Poems eBook

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Man cannot be a sophist to his heart,
He must look nakedly on his intent,
Expose it of all shreds of argument,
id strip it like a slave^girl in the mart.
What though with speckled truths and masked confessions
He still deceives awhile the outer sense?
At barely half his honesty's expense
Still earns the world's excuse for the world's transgressions?

His conscience cannot play the marshland elf,
Confusing that poor midnight wanderer,
His soul, with floundering Tights and errant gleams.
O what damnation man would deal himself
If meeting her beyond his uttermost dreams
He still could face his soul and lie to her.

0 spare me from the hand of niggard love
That grasps at interest on what it lends,
And sets cold counsel as a guard above
The hoard it calculates before it spends.
Such misers of the riches of the heart
Bear their untested treasure to the grave,
And miss the whole, striving to save the part,
By the bare measure they have striven to save.

Is it for pride in saying at the end:
See, Life! I spent not all that thou hast given -
Lo, this and this and this I did not spend!
I stinted earth of bliss to add to heaven.
Alas, poor fools! life only gave ye this
Because earth has such need of heavenly bliss.