Poems List

Tom Van Arden

Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
Our warm fellowship is one
Far too old to comprehend
Where its bond was first begun:
Mirage-like before my gaze
Gleams a land of other days,
Where two truant boys, astray,
Dream their lazy lives away.


There's a vision, in the guise
Of Midsummer, where the Past
Like a weary beggar lies
In the shadow Time has cast;
And as blends the bloom of trees
With the drowsy hum of bees,
Fragrant thoughts and murmurs blend,
Tom Van Arden, my old friend.


Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
All the pleasures we have known
Thrill me now as I extend
This old hand and grasp your own--
Feeling, in the rude caress,
All affection's tenderness;
Feeling, though the touch be rough,
Our old souls are soft enough.


So we'll make a mellow hour:
Fill your pipe, and taste the wine--
Warp your face, if it be sour,
I can spare a smile from mine;
If it sharpen up your wit,
Let me feel the edge of it--
I have eager ears to lend,
Tom Van Arden, my old friend.


Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
Are we 'lucky dogs,' indeed?
Are we all that we pretend
In the jolly life we lead?--
Bachelors, we must confess,
Boast of 'single blessedness'
To the world, but not alone-Man's
best sorrow is his own!


And the saddest truth is this,--
Life to us has never proved
What we tasted in the kiss
Of the women we have loved:
Vainly we congratulate
Our escape from such a fate
As their lying lips could send,



Tom Van Arden, my old friend!


Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
Hearts, like fruit upon the stem,
Ripen sweetest, I contend,
As the frost falls over them:
Your regard for me to-day
Makes November taste of May,
And through every vein of rhyme
Pours the blood of summer-time.


When our souls are cramped with youth
Happiness seems far away
In the future, while, in truth,


We look back on it to-day
Through our tears, nor dare to boast,-'
Better to have loved and lost!'
Broken hearts are hard to mend,
Tom Van Arden, my old friend.


Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
I grow prosy, and you tire;
Fill the glasses while I bend
To prod up the failing fire. . . .
You are restless:--I presume
There's a dampness in the room.--
Much of warmth our nature begs,
With rheumatics in our legs! . . .


Humph! the legs we used to fling
Limber-jointed in the dance,
When we heard the fiddle ring
Up the curtain of Romance,
And in crowded public halls
Played with hearts like jugglers' balls.--
FEATS OF MOUNTEBANKS, DEPEND!--
Tom Van Arden, my old friend.


Tom Van Arden, my old friend,
Pardon, then, this theme of mine:
While the firelight leaps to lend
Higher color to the wine,--
I propose a health to those
Who have HOMES, and home's repose,
Wife- and child-love without end!
. . . Tom Van Arden, my old friend.

Told By

Coming, clean from the Maryland-end
Of this great National Road of ours,
Through your vast West; with the time to spend,
Stopping for days in the main towns, where
Every citizen seemed a friend,
And friends grew thick as the wayside flowers,--
I found no thing that I might narrate
More singularly strange or queer
Than a thing I found in your sister-state
Ohio,--at a river-town--down here
In my notebook: _Zanesville--situate
On the stream Muskingum--broad and clear,
And navigable, through half the year,
North, to Coshocton; south, as far
As Marietta._--But these facts are
Not of the _story_, but the _scene_
Of the simple little tale I mean
To tell _directly_--from this, straight through
To the _end_ that is best worth listening to:

Eastward of Zanesville, two or three
Miles from the town, as our stage drove in,
I on the driver's seat, and he
Pointing out this and that to me,--
On beyond us--among the rest--
A grovey slope, and a fluttering throng
Of little children, which he 'guessed'
Was a picnic, as we caught their thin
High laughter, as we drove along,
Clearer and clearer. Then suddenly
He turned and asked, with a curious grin,
What were my views on _Slavery? 'Why?'_
I asked, in return, with a wary eye.
'Because,' he answered, pointing his whip
At a little, whitewashed house and shed
On the edge of the road by the grove ahead,-'
Because there are two slaves _there_,' he said-'
Two Black slaves that I've passed each trip
For eighteen years.--Though they've been set free,
They have been slaves ever since!' said he.
And, as our horses slowly drew
Nearer the little house in view,
All briefly I heard the history
Of this little old Negro woman and
Her husband, house and scrap of land;
How they were slaves and had been made free
By their dying master, years ago
In old Virginia; and then had come
North here into a _free_ state--so,
Safe forever, to found a home--
For themselves alone?--for they left South there
Five strong sons, who had, alas!


All been sold ere it came to pass
This first old master with his last breath
Had freed the _parents_.--(He went to death
Agonized and in dire despair
That the poor slave _children_ might not share
Their parents' freedom. And wildly then
He moaned for pardon and died. Amen!)


Thus, with their freedom, and little sum
Of money left them, these two had come
North, full twenty long years ago;
And, settling there, they had hopefully
Gone to work, in their simple way,
Hauling--gardening--raising sweet
Corn, and popcorn.--Bird and bee
In the garden-blooms and the apple-tree
Singing with them throughout the slow
Summer's day, with its dust and heat--
The crops that thirst and the rains that fail;
Or in Autumn chill, when the clouds hung low,
And hand-made hominy might find sale
In the near town-market; or baking pies
And cakes, to range in alluring show
At the little window, where the eyes
Of the Movers' children, driving past,
Grew fixed, till the big white wagons drew
Into a halt that would sometimes last
Even the space of an hour or two--
As the dusty, thirsty travelers made
Their noonings there in the beeches' shade
By the old black Aunty's spring-house, where,
Along with its cooling draughts, were found
Jugs of her famous sweet spruce-beer,
Served with her gingerbread-horses there,
While Aunty's snow-white cap bobbed 'round
Till the children's rapture knew no bound,
As she sang and danced for them, quavering clear
And high the chant of her old slave-days-


'Oh, Lo'd, Jinny! my toes is so',
Dancin' on yo' sandy flo'!'


Even so had they wrought all ways
To earn the pennies, and hoard them, too,--
And with what ultimate end in view?--
They were saving up money enough to be
Able, in time, to buy their own
Five children back.


Ah! the toil gone through!
And the long delays and the heartaches, too,
And self-denials that they had known!



But the pride and glory that was theirs
When they first hitched up their shackly cart
For the long, long journey South.--The start
In the first drear light of the chilly dawn,
With no friends gathered in grieving throng,--
With no farewells and favoring prayers;
But, as they creaked and jolted on,
Their chiming voices broke in song-


''Hail, all hail! don't you see the stars a-fallin'?
Hail, all hail! I'm on my way.
Gideon[1] am
A healin' ba'm--
I belong to the blood-washed army.
Gideon am
A healin' ba'm--
On my way!''


And their _return!_--with their oldest boy
Along with them! Why, their happiness
Spread abroad till it grew a joy
_Universal_--It even reached
And thrilled the town till the _Church_ was stirred
Into suspecting that wrong was wrong!--
And it stayed awake as the preacher preached
A _Real_ 'Love'-text that he had not long
To ransack for in the Holy Word.


And the son, restored, and welcomed so,
Found service readily in the town;
And, with the parents, sure and slow,
_He_ went 'saltin' de cole cash down.'


So with the _next_ boy--and each one
In turn, till _four_ of the five at last
Had been bought back; and, in each case,
With steady work and good homes not
Far from the parents, _they_ chipped in
To the family fund, with an equal grace.
Thus they managed and planned and wrought,
And the old folks throve--Till the night before
They were to start for the lone last son
In the rainy dawn--their money fast
Hid away in the house,--two mean,
Murderous robbers burst the door.
...Then, in the dark, was a scuffle--a fall--
An old man's gasping cry--and then
A woman's fife-like shriek.


...Three men
Splashing by on horseback heard
The summons: And in an instant all



Sprung to their duty, with scarce a word.
And they were _in time_--not only to save
The lives of the old folks, but to bag
Both the robbers, and buck-and-gag
And land them safe in the county-jail--
Or, as Aunty said, with a blended awe
And subtlety,--'Safe in de calaboose whah
De dawgs caint bite 'em!'


--So prevail
The faithful!--So had the Lord upheld
His servants of both deed and prayer,--
HIS the glory unparalleled-_
Theirs_ the reward,--their every son
Free, at last, as the parents were!
And, as the driver ended there
In front of the little house, I said,
All fervently, 'Well done! well done!'
At which he smiled, and turned his head
And pulled on the leaders' lines and--'See!'
He said,--''you can read old Aunty's sign?'
And, peering down through these specs of mine
On a little, square board-sign, I read:


'Stop, traveler, if you think it fit,
And quench your thirst for a-fip-and-a-bit.
The rocky spring is very clear,
And soon converted into beer.'


And, though I read aloud, I could
Scarce hear myself for laugh and shout
Of children--a glad multitude
Of little people, swarming out
Of the picnic-grounds I spoke about.--
And in their rapturous midst, I see
Again--through mists of memory--
A black old Negress laughing up
At the driver, with her broad lips rolled
Back from her teeth, chalk-white, and gums
Redder than reddest red-ripe plums.
He took from her hand the lifted cup
Of clear spring-water, pure and cold,
And passed it to me: And I raised my hat
And drank to her with a reverence that
My conscience knew was justly due
The old black face, and the old eyes, too--
The old black head, with its mossy mat
Of hair, set under its cap and frills
White as the snows on Alpine hills;
Drank to the old _black_ smile, but yet
Bright as the sun on the violet,--
Drank to the gnarled and knuckled old



Black hands whose palms had ached and bled
And pitilessly been worn pale
And white almost as the palms that hold
Slavery's lash while the victim's wail
Fails as a crippled prayer might fail.--
Aye, with a reverence infinite,
I drank to the old black face and head--
The old black breast with its life of light--
The old black hide with its heart of gold.

To Robert Burns

Sweet Singer that I loe the maist
O' ony, sin' wi' eager haste
I smacket bairn-lips ower the taste
O' hinnied sang,
I hail thee, though a blessed ghaist
In Heaven lang!


For weel I ken, nae cantie phrase,
Nor courtly airs, nor lairdly ways,
Could gar me freer blame, or praise,
Or proffer hand,
Where 'Rantin' Robbie' and his lays
Thegither stand.


And sae these hamely lines I send,
Wi' jinglin' words at ilka end,
In echo o' the sangs that wend
Frae thee to me
Like simmer-brooks, wi mony a bend
O' wimplin' glee.


In fancy, as wi' dewy een,
I part the clouds aboon the scene
Where thou wast born, and peer atween,
I see nae spot
In a' the Hielands half sae green
And unforgot?


I see nae storied castle-hall,
Wi' banners flauntin' ower the wall
And serf and page in ready call,
Sae grand to me
As ane puir cotter's hut, wi' all
Its poverty.


There where the simple daisy grew
Sae bonnie sweet, and modest too,
Thy liltin' filled its wee head fu'
O' sic a grace,
It aye is weepin' tears o' dew
Wi' droopit face.


Frae where the heather bluebells fling
Their sangs o' fragrance to the Spring,
To where the lavrock soars to sing,
Still lives thy strain,
For' a' the birds are twittering
Sangs like thine ain.


And aye, by light o' sun or moon,
By banks o' Ayr, or Bonnie Doon,
The waters lilt nae tender tune



But sweeter seems
Because they poured their limpid rune
Through a' thy dreams.


Wi' brimmin' lip, and laughin' ee,
Thou shookest even Grief wi' glee,
Yet had nae niggart sympathy
Where Sorrow bowed,
But gavest a' thy tears as free
As a' thy gowd.


And sae it is we be thy name
To see bleeze up wi' sic a flame,
That a' pretentious stars o' fame
Maun blink asklent,
To see how simple worth may shame
Their brightest glent.

To The Judge

_A Voice From the Interior of Old Hoop-Pole Township_

Friend of my earliest youth,
Can't you arrange to come down
And visit a fellow out here in the woods--
Out of the dust of the town?
Can't you forget you're a Judge
And put by your dolorous frown
And tan your wan face in the smile of a friend-Can't
you arrange to come down?


Can't you forget for a while
The arguments prosy and drear,--
To lean at full-length in indefinite rest
In the lap of the greenery here?
Can't you kick over 'the Bench,'
And 'husk' yourself out of your gown
To dangle your legs where the fishing is good-Can't
you arrange to come down?


Bah! for your office of State!
And bah! for its technical lore!
What does our President, high in his chair,
But wish himself low as before!
Pick between peasant and king,--
Poke your bald head through a crown
Or shadow it here with the laurels of Spring!-Can't
you arrange to come down?


'Judge it' out _here_, if you will,--
The birds are in session by dawn;
You can draw, not _complaints_, but a sketch of the hill
And a breath that your betters have drawn;
You can open your heart, like a case,
To a jury of kine, white and brown,
And their verdict of 'Moo' will just satisfy you!-Can't
you arrange to come down?


Can't you arrange it, old Pard?--
Pigeonhole Blackstone and Kent!--
Here we have 'Breitmann,' and Ward,
Twain, Burdette, Nye, and content!
Can't you forget you're a Judge
And put by your dolorous frown
And tan your wan face in the smile of a friend-Can't
you arrange to come down?

To My Good Master

In fancy, always, at thy desk, thrown wide,
Thy most betreasured books ranged neighborly--
The rarest rhymes of every land and sea
And curious tongue--thine old face glorified,--
Thou haltest thy glib quill, and, laughing-eyed,
Givest hale welcome even unto me,
Profaning thus thine attic's sanctity,
To briefly visit, yet to still abide
Enthralled there of thy sorcery of wit,
And thy songs' most exceeding dear conceits.
O lips, cleft to the ripe core of all sweets,
With poems, like nectar, issuing therefrom,
Thy gentle utterances do overcome
My listening heart and all the love of it!

To Annie

When the lids of dusk are falling
O'er the dreamy eyes of day,
And the whippoorwills are calling,
And the lesson laid away,--
May Mem'ry soft and tender
As the prelude of the night,
Bend over you and render
As tranquil a delight.

Time


1
The ticking-- ticking-- ticking of the clock--!
That vexed me so last night--! 'For though Time keeps
Such drowsy watch,' I moaned, 'he never sleeps,
But only nods above the world to mock
Its restless occupant, then rudely rock
It as the cradle of a babe that weeps!'
I seemed to see the seconds piled in heaps
Like sand about me; and at every shock
O' the bell, the piled sands were swirled away
As by a desert-storm that swept the earth
Stark as a granary floor, whereon the gray
And mist-bedrizzled moon amidst the dearth
Came crawling, like a sickly child, to lay
Its pale face next mine own and weep for day.

2
Wait for the morning! Ah! We wait indeed
For daylight, we who toss about through stress
Of vacant-armed desires and emptiness
Of all the warm, warm touches that we need,
And the warm kisses upon which we feed
Our famished lips in fancy! May God bless
The starved lips of us with but one caress
Warm as the yearning blood our poor hearts bleed...!
A wild prayer--! Bite thy pillow, praying so--
Toss this side, and whirl that, and moan for dawn;
Let the clock's seconds dribble out their woe,
And Time be drained of sorrow! Long ago
We heard the crowing cock, with answer drawn
As hoarsely sad at throat as sobs... Pray on!

To a Boy Whistling

The smiling face of a happy boy
With its enchanted key
Is now unlocking in memory
My store of heartiest joy.


And my lost life again to-day,
In pleasant colors all aglow,
From rainbow tints, to pure white snow,
Is a panorama sliding away.


The whistled air of a simple tune
Eddies and whirls my thoughts around,
As fairy balloons of thistle-down
Sail through the air of June.


O happy boy with untaught grace!
What is there in the world to give
That can buy one hour of the life you live
Or the trivial cause of your smiling face!

Thomas The Pretender

Tommy's alluz playin' jokes,
An' actin' up, an' foolin' folks;
An' wunst one time he creep
In Pa's big chair, he did, one night,
An' squint an' shut his eyes bofe tight,
An' say, 'Now I 'm asleep.'
An' nen we knowed, an' Ma know' too,
He _ain't_ asleep no more 'n you!


An' wunst he clumbed on our back'fence
An' flop his arms an' nen commence
To crow, like he's a hen;
But when he failed off, like he done,
He didn't fool us childern none,
Ner didn't _crow_ again.
An' our Hired Man, as he come by,
Says, 'Tom can't _crow_, but he kin _cry_.'

Three Dead Friends

Always suddenly they are gone--
The friends we trusted and held secure--
Suddenly we are gazing on,
Not a _smiling_ face, but the marble-pure
Dead mask of a face that nevermore
To a smile of ours will make reply--
The lips close-locked as the eyelids are-Gone--
swift as the flash of the molten ore
A meteor pours through a midnight sky,
Leaving it blind of a single star.


Tell us, O Death, Remorseless Might!
What is this old, unescapable ire
You wreak on us?--from the birth of light
Till the world be charred to a core of fire!
We do no evil thing to you--
We seek to evade you--that is all--
That is your will--you will not be known
Of men. What, then, would you have us do?--
Cringe, and wait till your vengeance fall,
And your graves be fed, and the trumpet blown?


You desire no friends; but _we_--O we
Need them so, as we falter here,
Fumbling through each new vacancy,
As each is stricken that we hold dear.
One you struck but a year ago;
And one not a month ago; and one-(
God's vast pity!)--and one lies now
Where the widow wails, in her nameless woe,
And the soldiers pace, with the sword and gun,
Where the comrade sleeps, with the laureled brow.


And what did the first?--that wayward soul,
Clothed of sorrow, yet nude of sin,
And with all hearts bowed in the strange control
Of the heavenly voice of his violin.
Why, it was music the way he _stood_,
So grand was the poise of the head and so
Full was the figure of majesty!--
One heard with the eyes, as a deaf man would,
And with all sense brimmed to the overflow
With tears of anguish and ecstasy.


And what did the girl, with the great warm light
Of genius sunning her eyes of blue,
With her heart so pure, and her soul so white--
What, O Death, did she do to you?
Through field and wood as a child she strayed,
As Nature, the dear sweet mother led;
While from her canvas, mirrored back,
Glimmered the stream through the everglade



Where the grapevine trailed from the trees to wed
Its likeness of emerald, blue and black.


And what did he, who, the last of these,
Faced you, with never a fear, O Death?
Did you hate _him_ that he loved the breeze,
And the morning dews, and the rose's breath?
Did you hate him that he answered not
Your hate again--but turned, instead,
His only hate on his country's wrongs?
Well--you possess him, dead!--but what
Of the good he wrought? With laureled head
He bides with us in his deeds and songs.


Laureled, first, that he bravely fought,
And forged a way to our flag's release;
Laureled, next--for the harp he taught
To wake glad songs in the days of peace--
Songs of the woodland haunts he held
As close in his love as they held their bloom
In their inmost bosoms of leaf and vine--
Songs that echoed, and pulsed and welled
Through the town's pent streets, and the sick child's room,
Pure as a shower in soft sunshine.


Claim them, Death; yet their fame endures,
What friend next will you rend from us
In that cold, pitiless way of yours,
And leave us a grief more dolorous?
Speak to us!--tell us, O Dreadful Power!--
Are we to have not a lone friend left?--
Since, frozen, sodden, or green the sod,--
In every second of every hour,
_Some one_, Death, you have left thus bereft,
Half inaudibly shrieks to God.

There Was a Cherry-Tree

There was a cherry-tree. Its bloomy snows
Cool even now the fevered sight that knows
No more its airy visions of pure joy --
As when you were a boy.

There was a cherry-tree. The Bluejay sat
His blue against its white -- O blue as jet
He seemed there then!-- But now -- Whoever knew
He was so pale a blue!

There was a cherry-tree -- our child-eyes saw
The miracle:-- Its pure white snows did thaw
Into a crimson fruitage, far too sweet
But for a boy to eat.

There was a cherry-tree, give thanks and joy!--
There was a bloom of snow -- There was a boy --
There was a bluejay of the realest blue --
And fruit for both of you.

Their Sweet Sorrow

They meet to say farewell: Their way
Of saying this is hard to say--.
He holds her hand an Instant, wholly
Distressed-- and she unclasps it slowly,


He lends his gaze evasively
Over the printed page that she
Recurs to, with a new-moon shoulder
Glimpsed from the lace-mists that infold her.


The clock, beneath its crystal cup,
Discreetly clicks-- 'Quick! Act! Speak up!'
A tension circles both her slender
Wrists-- and her raised eyes flash in splendor,


Even as he feels his dazzled own--.
Then blindingly, round either thrown,
They feel a stress of arms that ever
Strain tremblingly-- and 'Never! Never!'


Is whispered brokenly, with half
A sob, like a belated laugh--,
While cloyingly their blurred kiss closes--,
Sweet as the dew's lip to the rose's.

The Watches Of The Night

O the waiting in the watches of the night!
In the darkness, desolation, and contrition and affright;
The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight:
The ever weary memory that ever weary goes
Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows--
The ever weary eyelids gasping ever for repose--
In the dreary, weary watches of the night!


Dark--stifling dark--the watches of the night!
With tingling nerves at tension, how the blackness flashes white
With spectral visitations smitten past the inner sight!--
What shuddering sense of wrongs we've wrought
that may not be redressed--
Of tears we did not brush away--of lips we left unpressed,
And hands that we let fall, with all their loyalty unguessed!
Ah! the empty, empty watches of the night!


What solace in the watches of the night?--
What frailest staff of hope to stay--what faintest shaft of light?
Do we _dream_ and dare _believe_ it, that by never weight of right
Of our own poor weak deservings, we shall win the dawn at last--
Our famished souls find freedom from this penance for the past,
In a faith that leaps and lightens from the gloom
that flees aghast--
Shall we survive the watches of the night?


One leads us through the watches of the night--
By the ceaseless intercession of our loved ones lost to sight
He is with us through all trials, in His mercy and His might;--
With our mothers there about Him, all our sorrow disappears,
Till the silence of our sobbing is the prayer the Master hears,
And His hand is laid upon us with the tenderness of tears
In the waning of the watches of the night.

The Wife-Blessed

I.
In youth he wrought, with eyes ablur,
Lorn-faced and long of hair--
In youth--in youth he painted her
A sister of the air--
Could clasp her not, but felt the stir
Of pinions everywhere.

II.
She lured his gaze, in braver days,
And tranced him sirenwise;
And he did paint her, through a haze
Of sullen paradise,
With scars of kisses on her face
And embers in her eyes.


III.
And now--nor dream nor wild conceit--
Though faltering, as before--
Through tears he paints her, as is meet,
Tracing the dear face o'er
With lilied patience meek and sweet
As Mother Mary wore.

The Treasure Of The Wise Man

O the night was dark and the night was late,
And the robbers came to rob him;
And they picked the locks of his palace-gate,
The robbers that came to rob him--
They picked the locks of his palace-gate,
Seized his jewels and gems of state,
His coffers of gold and his priceless plate,--
The robbers that came to rob him.


But loud laughed he in the morning red!--
For of what had the robbers robbed him?--
Ho! hidden safe, as he slept in bed,
When the robbers came to rob him,--
They robbed him not of a golden shred
Of the childish dreams in his wise old head-'
And they're welcome to all things else,' he said,
When the robbers came to rob him.

The Twins

One 's the pictur' of his Pa,
And the _other_ of her Ma--
Jes the bossest pair o' babies 'at a mortal ever saw!
And we love 'em as the bees
Loves the blossoms of the trees,
A-ridin' and a-rompin' in the breeze!


One's got her Mammy's eyes--
Soft and blue as Apurl-skies--
With the same sort of a smile, like--Yes,
and mouth about her size,--
Dimples, too, in cheek and chin,
'At my lips jes _wallers_ in,
A-goin' to work, er gittin' home agin.


And the _other_--Well, they say
That he's got his Daddy's way
O' bein' ruther soberfied, er ruther extry gay,--
That he either cries his best,
Er he laughs his howlin'est--
Like all he lacked was buttons and a vest!


Look at _her_!--and look at _him_!--
Talk about yer 'Cheru-_bim_!'
Roll 'em up in dreams together, rosy arm and chubby limb!
O we love 'em as the bees
Loves the blossoms of the trees,
A-ridin' and a-rompin' in the breeze!

The Stepmother

First she come to our house,
Tommy run and hid;
And Emily and Bob and me
We cried jus' like we did
When Mother died,--and we all said
'At we all wisht 'at we was dead!


And Nurse she couldn't stop us,
And Pa he tried and tried,--
We sobbed and shook and wouldn't look,
But only cried and cried;
And nen someone--we couldn't jus'
Tell who--was cryin' same as us!


Our Stepmother! Yes, it was her,
Her arms around us all-'
Cause Tom slid down the bannister
And peeked in from the hall.--
And we all love her, too, because
She's purt nigh good as Mother was!

The Town Karnteel

The Town Karnteel--! It's who'll reveal
Its praises jushtifiable?
For who can sing av anything
So lovely and reliable?
Whin Summer, Spring, or Winter lies
From Malin's Head to Tipperary,
There's no such town for interprise
Bechuxt Youghal and Londonderry!


There's not its likes in Ireland--
For twic't the week, be gorries!
They're playing jigs upon the band,
And joomping there in sacks-- and-- and--
And racing, wid wheelborries!


Kanteel-- it's there, like any fair,
The purty gurrls is plinty, sure--!
And man-alive! At forty-five
The leg's av me air twinty, sure!
I lave me cares, and hoein' too,
Behint me, as is sinsible,
And it's Karnteel I'm goin' to,
To cilebrate in principle!


For there's the town av all the land!
And twic't the week, be-gorries!
They're playing jigs upon the band,
And joomping there in sacks-- and-- and--
And racing, wid wheelborries!


And whilst I feel for owld Karnteel
That I've no phrases glorious,
It stands above the need av love
That boasts in voice uproarious--!
Lave that for Cork, and Dublin too,
And Armagh and Killarney thin--,
And Karnteel won't be troublin' you
Wid any jilous blarney, thin!


For there's the town av all the land
Where twic't the week, be-gorries!
They're playing jigs upon the band,
And joomping there in sacks-- and-- and--
And racing, wid wheelborries!

The Sphinx

I know all about the Sphinx--
I know even what she thinks,
Staring with her stony eyes
Up forever at the skies.


For last night I dreamed that she
Told me all the mystery--
Why for aeons mute she sat--:
She was just cut out for that!

The South Wind And The Sun

O The South Wind and the Sun!
How each loved the other one
Full of fancy--- full folly--
Full of jollity and fun!
How they romped and ran about,
Like two boys when school is out,
With glowing face, and lisping lip,
Low laugh, and lifted shout!


And the South Wind-- he was dressed
With a ribbon round his breast
That floated, flapped and fluttered
In a riotous unrest,
And a drapery of mist
From the shoulder and the wrist
Flowing backward with the motion
Of the waving hand he kissed.


And the Sun had on a crown
Wrought of gilded thistle-down,
And a scarf of velvet vapor,
And a ravelled-rainbow gown;
And his tinsel-tangled hair,
Tossed and lost upon the air,
Was glossier and flossier
Than any anywhere.


And the South Wind's eyes were two
Little dancing drops of dew,
As he puffed his cheeks, and pursed his lips,
And blew and blew and blew!
And the Sun's-- like diamond-stone,
Brighter yet than ever known,
As he knit his brows and held his breath,
And shone and shone and shone!


And this pair of merry fays
Wandered through the summer days;
Arm-in-arm they went together
Over heights of morning haze--
Over slanting slopes of lawn
They went on and on and on,
Where the daisies looked like star-tracks
Trailing up and down the dawn.


And where'er they found the top
Of a wheat-stalk droop and lop
They chucked it underneath the chin
And praised the lavish crop,
Till it lifted with the pride
Of the heads it grew beside,
And then the South Wind and the Sun



Went onward satisfied.


Over meadow-lands they tripped,
Where the dandelions dipped
In crimson foam of clover-bloom,
And dripped and dripped and dripped;
And they clinched the bumble-stings,
Gauming honey on their wings,
And bundling them in lily-bells,
With maudlin murmurings.


And the humming-bird that hung
Like a jewel up among
The tilted honeysuckle-horns,
They mesmerized, and swung
In the palpitating air,
Drowsed with odors strange and rare,
And with whispered laughter, slipped away,
And left him hanging there.


And they braided blades of grass
Where the truant had to pass;
And they wriggled through the rushes
And the reeds of the morass,
Where they danced, in rapture sweet,
O'er the leaves that laid a street
Of undulant mosaic for
The touches of their feet.


By the brook with mossy brink
Where the cattle came to drink.
They trilled and piped and whistled
With the thrush and bobolink,
Till the kine in listless pause,
Switched their tails in mute applause,
With lifted heads and dreamy eyes,
And bubble-dripping jaws.


And where the melons grew,
Streaked with yellow, green and blue
These jolly sprites went wandering
Through spangled paths of dew;
And the melons, here and there,
They made love to, everywhere
Turning their pink souls to crimson
With caresses fond and fair.


Over orchard walls they went,
Where the fruited boughs were bent
Till they brushed the sward beneath them
Where the shine and shadow blent;
And the great green pear they shook



Till the sallow hue forsook
Its features, and the gleam of gold
Laughed out in every look.


And they stroked the downy cheek
Of the peach, and smoothed it sleek,
And flushed it into splendor;
And with many an elfish freak,
Gave the russet's rust a wipe--
Prankt the rambo with a stripe,
And the wine-sap blushed its reddest
As they spanked the pippins ripe.


Through the woven ambuscade
That the twining vines had made,
They found the grapes, in clusters,
Drinking up the shine and shade--
Plumpt like tiny skins of wine,
With a vintage so divine
That the tongue of fancy tingled
With the tang of muscadine.


And the golden-banded bees,
Droning o'er the flowery leas,
They bridled, reigned, and rode away
Across the fragrant breeze,
Till in hollow oak and elm
They had groomed and stabled them
In waxen stalls oozed with dews
Of rose and lily-stem.


Where the dusty highway leads,
High above the wayside weeds
They sowed the air with butterflies
Like blooming flower-seeds,
Till the dull grasshopper sprung
Half a man's height up, and hung
Tranced in the heat, with whirring wings,
And sung and sung and sung!


And they loitered, hand in hand,
Where the snipe along the sand
Of the river ran to meet them
As the ripple meets the land,
Till the dragon-fly, in light
Gauzy armor, burnished bright,
Came tilting down the waters
In a wild, bewildered flight.


And they heard the killdee's call,
And afar, the waterfall,
But the rustle of a falling leaf



They heard above it all;
And the trailing willow crept
Deeper in the tide that swept
The leafy shallop to the shore,
And wept and wept and wept!


And the fairy vessel veered
From its moorings-- tacked and steered
For the centre of the current
Sailed away and disappeared:
And the burthen that it bore
From the long-enchanted shore-'
Alas! The South Wind and the Sun!'
I murmur evermore.


For the South Wind and the Sun,
Each so loves the other one,
For all his jolly folly
And frivolity and fun,
That our love for them they weigh
As their fickle fancies may,
And when at last we love them most,
They laugh and sail away.

The Singer

While with Ambition's hectic flame
He wastes the midnight oil,
And dreams, high-throned on heights of fame,
To rest him from his toil,-


Death's Angel, like a vast eclipse,
Above him spreads her wings,
And fans the embers of his lips
To ashes as he sings.

The Shower

The landscape, like the awed face of a child,
Grew curiously blurred; a hush of death
Fell on the fields, and in the darkened wild
The zephyr held its breath.


No wavering glamour-work of light and shade
Dappled the shivering surface of the brook;
The frightened ripples in their ambuscade
Of willows thrilled and shook.


The sullen day grew darker, and anon
Dim flashes of pent anger lit the sky;
With rumbling wheels of wrath came rolling on
The storm's artillery.


The cloud above put on its blackest frown,
And then, as with a vengeful cry of pain,
The lightning snatched it, ripped and flung it down
In ravelled shreds of rain:


While I, transfigured by some wondrous art,
Bowed with the thirsty lilies to the sod,
My empty soul brimmed over, and my heart
Drenched with the love of God.

The Sermon Of The Rose

Wilful we are in our infirmity
Of childish questioning and discontent.
Whate'er befalls us is divinely meant--
Thou Truth the clearer for thy mystery!
Make us to meet what is or is to be
With fervid welcome, knowing it is sent
To serve us in some way full excellent,
Though we discern it all belatedly.
The rose buds, and the rose blooms and the rose
Bows in the dews, and in its fulness, lo,
Is in the lover's hand,--then on the breast
Of her he loves,--and there dies.--And who knows
Which fate of all a rose may undergo
Is fairest, dearest, sweetest, loveliest?

Nay, we are children: we will not mature.
A blessed gift must seem a theft; and tears
Must storm our eyes when but a joy appears
In drear disguise of sorrow; and how poor
We seem when we are richest,--most secure
Against all poverty the lifelong years
We yet must waste in childish doubts and fears
That, in despite of reason, still endure!
Alas! the sermon of the rose we will
Not wisely ponder; nor the sobs of grief
Lulled into sighs of rapture; nor the cry
Of fierce defiance that again is still.
Be patient--patient with our frail belief,
And stay it yet a little ere we die.

O opulent life of ours, though dispossessed
Of treasure after treasure! Youth most fair
Went first, but left its priceless coil of hair--
Moaned over sleepless nights, kissed and caressed
Through drip and blur of tears the tenderest.
And next went Love--the ripe rose glowing there
Her very sister!... It is here; but where
Is she, of all the world the first and best?
And yet how sweet the sweet earth after rain--
How sweet the sunlight on the garden wall
Across the roses--and how sweetly flows
The limpid yodel of the brook again!
And yet--and yet how sweeter after all,
The smouldering sweetness of a dead red rose!

The Same Old Story

The same old story told again--
The maiden droops her head,
The ripening glow of her crimson cheek
Is answering in her stead.
The pleading tone of a trembling voice
Is telling her the way
He loved her when his heart was young
In Youth's sunshiny day:
The trembling tongue, the longing tone,
Imploringly ask why
They can not be as happy now
As in the days gone by.
And two more hearts, tumultuous
With overflowing joy,
Are dancing to the music
Which that dear, provoking boy
Is twanging on his bowstring,
As, fluttering his wings,
He sends his love-charged arrows
While merrily be sings:
'Ho! ho! my dainty maiden,
It surely can not be
You are thinking you are master
Of your heart, when it is me.'
And another gleaming arrow
Does the little god's behest,
And the dainty little maiden
Falls upon her lover's breast.
'The same old story told again,'
And listened o'er and o'er,
Will still be new, and pleasing, too,
Till 'Time shall be no more.'