Poems (Tree)/Many Things I'd Find to Charm You
MANY things I'd find to charm you,Books and scarves and silken socks,All the seven rainbow coloursBlack and white with 'broidered clocks.Then a stick of polished whaleboneAnd a coat of tawny fur,And a row of gleaming bottlesFilled with rose-water and myrrh.Rarest brandy of the 'fifties,Old liqueurs in leather kegs,Golden Sauterne, copper sherryAnd a nest of plover's eggs.Toys of tortoise-shell and jasper,Little boxes cut in jade;Handkerchiefs of finest cambric,Damask cloths and dim brocade.Six musicians of the Magyar,Madness making harmony;And a bed austere and narrowWith a quilt from Barbary.You shall have a bath of amber,A Venetian looking-glass,And a crimson-chested parrotOn a lawn of terraced grass.Then a small Tanagra statueFound anew in ruins old,Or an azure plate from Persia,Or my hair in plaits of gold;Or my scalp that like an IndianYou shall carry for a purse,Or my spilt blood in a goblet . . .Or a volume of my verse.
1916