My Old Football
YOU can keep your antique silver and your statuettes of bronze,
Your curios and tapestries so fine,
But of all your treasures rare there is nothing to compare
With this patched up, wornout football pal o’ mine.
Just a patchedup wornout football, yet how it clings!
I live again my happier days in thoughts that football brings.
It’s got a mouth, it’s got a tongue,
And oft when we’re alone I fancy that it speaks
To me of golden youth that’s flown.
It calls to mind our meeting,
The Cattle Thief
They were coming across the prairie, they were
galloping hard and fast;
For the eyes of those desperate riders had sighted
their man at last--
Sighted him off to Eastward, where the Cree
encampment lay,
Where the cotton woods fringed the river, miles and
miles away.
Mistake him? Never! Mistake him? the famous
Eagle Chief!
On An Infant Dying As Soon As Born
I SAW where in the shroud did lurk
A curious frame of Nature's work;
A floweret crush'd in the bud,
A nameless piece of Babyhood,
Was in her cradle-coffin lying;
Extinct, with scarce the sense of dying:
So soon to exchange the imprisoning womb
For darker closets of the tomb!
She did but ope an eye, and put
A clear beam forth, then straight up shut
The Shepherd’s Brow, Fronting Forked Lightning, Owns
The shepherd's brow, fronting forked lightning, owns
The horror and the havoc and the glory
Of it. Angels fall, they are towers, from heaven—a story
Of just, majestical, and giant groans.
But man—we, scaffold of score brittle bones;
Who breathe, from groundlong babyhood to hoary
Age gasp; whose breath is our memento mori—
What bass is our viol for tragic tones?
He! Hand to mouth he lives, and voids with shame;
And, blazoned in however bold the name,
The Double Image
1.
I am thirty this November.
You are still small, in your fourth year.
We stand watching the yellow leaves go queer,
flapping in the winter rain.
falling flat and washed. And I remember
mostly the three autumns you did not live here.
They said I'd never get you back again.
I tell you what you'll never really know:
A Fable For Critics
Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade,
Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made,
For the god being one day too warm in his wooing,
She took to the tree to escape his pursuing;
Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk,
And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk;
And, though 'twas a step into which he had driven her,
He somehow or other had never forgiven her;
Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic,
Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byronic,
Babyhood
A baby shines as bright
If winter or if May be
On eyes that keep in sight
A baby.
Though dark the skies or grey be,
It fills our eyes with light,
If midnight or midday be.
Love hails it, day and night,
At Last
O the years I lost before I knew you,
Love!
O, the hills I climbed and came not to you,
Love!
Ah! who shall render unto us to make
Us glad
The things which for and of each other's sake
We might have had?
If you and I had sat and played together,
Queen Mab: Part Iii.
'Fairy!' the Spirit said,
And on the Queen of Spells
Fixed her ethereal eyes,
'I thank thee. Thou hast given
A boon which I will not resign, and taught
A lesson not to be unlearned. I know
The past, and thence I will essay to glean
A warning for the future, so that man
May profit by his errors and derive
Experience from his folly;
From 'The Testament Of Beauty'
'Twas at that hour of beauty when the setting sun
squandereth his cloudy bed with rosy hues, to flood
his lov'd works as in turn he biddeth them Good-night;
and all the towers and temples and mansions of men
face him in bright farewell, ere they creep from their pomp
naked beneath the darkness;- while to mortal eyes
'tis given, ifso they close not of fatigue, nor strain
at lamplit tasks-'tis given, as for a royal boon
to beggarly outcasts in homeless vigil, to watch
where uncurtain's behind the great windows of space
Childhood
Babyhood is a spring playing,
Follow its source in the sand,
And its vibrations, flowing, growing,
Childhood can revitalize the barren land.
There will never any more joy as this season;
Nor any more paradise than in this cute;
Loving, electrical, spring with its flowing reason,
O wondrous singer! Enjoy this mystery fruit.
An Out-Worn Sappho
How tired I am! I sink down all alone
Here by the wayside of the Present. Lo,
Even as a child I hide my face and moan--
A little girl that may no farther go;
The path above me only seems to grow
More rugged, climbing still, and ever briered
With keener thorns of pain than these below;
And O the bleeding feet that falter so
And are so very tired!
Babyhood
Heigh-ho! Babyhood! Tell me where you linger:
Let's toddle home again, for we have gone astray;
Take this eager hand of mine and lead me by the finger
Back to the Lotus lands of the far-away.
Turn back the leaves of life; don't read the story,--
Let's find the _pictures_, and fancy all the rest:--
We can fill the written pages with a brighter glory
Than Old Time, the story-teller, at his very best!
Mister William
OH, listen to the tale of MISTER WILLIAM, if you please,
Whom naughty, naughty judges sent away beyond the seas.
He forged a party's will, which caused anxiety and strife,
Resulting in his getting penal servitude for life.
He was a kindly goodly man, and naturally prone,
Instead of taking others' gold, to give away his own.
But he had heard of Vice, and longed for only once to strike -
To plan ONE little wickedness - to see what it was like.
When Old Jack Died
I.
When old Jack died, we staid from school (they said,
At home, we needn't go that day), and none
Of us ate any breakfast--only one,
And that was Papa--and his eyes were red
When he came round where we were, by the shed
Where Jack was lying, half way in the sun
And half way in the shade. When we begun
To cry out loud, Pa turned and dropped his head
The Passing Of The Primroses
Primroses, why do you pass away?
Primroses
Nay, rather, why should we longer stay?
We are not needed, now stooping showers
Have sandalled the feet of May with flowers.
Surely, surely, 'tis time to go,
Now that the splendid bluebells blow,
Scattering a bridal peal, to hail
Silence For Gaza
With dynamite she raps her waist…
She explodes…
It is neither death… nor suicide…
Its Gaza's style to announce her worthiness of life…
For four years and Gaza's flesh burst around… bomb's shrapnel…
Neither magic nor miracle…
It is Gaza's weapons and arms for her continued existence…
And the enemy's detritions it is…
For four years the enemy with its dreams rejoicing it had been…
For flirting with time it was fascinated…
Philip, My King
Look at me with thy large brown eyes,
Philip, my king!
Round whom the enshadowing purple lies
Of babyhood's royal dignities.
Lay on my neck thy tiny hand
With love's invisible scepter laden;
I am thine Esther to command
Till thou shalt find a queen-handmaiden,
Philip, my king.
At The West India Docks
(A Memory of August, 1883)
I STOOD in the ghastly gleaming night by the swollen, sullen flow
Of the dreadful river that rolls her tides through the City of Wealth and
Woe;
And mine eyes were heavy with sleepless hours, and dry with desperate
grief,
And my brain was throbbing and aching, and mine anguish had no relief.
For never a moment — no; not one — through all the dreary day,
And thro' all the weary night forlorn, would the pitiless pulses stay
A Catalogue Of Insomnia
Just before I turned nineteen
I cut off my long, long hair
And Grandmother became ill.
It seemed like there had to be some connection
Though I could never pin it down
Did cutting my hair weaken her body?
My childhood was ended:
Was it time for her to leave?
I was very close to her all of my life