10 Best Famous Boomed Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Boomed poems. This is a select list of the best famous Boomed poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Boomed poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of boomed poems.

• All Famous Boomed Poems

 A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten years old. 

The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages. It shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies of the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace is unconquerable and eternal.


I

Peace-of-the-Heart, my own for long,
Whose shining hair the May-winds fan,
Making it tangled as they can,
A mystery still, star-shining yet,
Through ancient ages known to me
And now once more reborn with me: —

This is the tale of the Tiger Tree
A hundred times the height of a man,
Lord of the race since the world began.

This is my city Springfield,
My home on the breast of the plain.
The state house towers to heaven,
By an arsenal gray as the rain...
And suddenly all is mist,
And I walk in a world apart,
In the forest-age when I first knelt down
At your feet, O Peace-of-the-Heart.

This is the wonder of twilight:
Three times as high as the dome
Tiger-striped trees encircle the town,
Golden geysers of foam.
While giant white parrots sail past in their pride.
The roofs now are clouds and storms that they ride.
And there with the huntsmen of mound-builder days
Through jungle and meadow I stride.
And the Tiger Tree leaf is falling around
As it fell when the world began:
Like a monstrous tiger-skin, stretched on the ground,
Or the cloak of a medicine man.
A deep-crumpled gossamer web,
Fringed with the fangs of a snake.
The wind swirls it down from the leperous boughs.
It shimmers on clay-hill and lake,
With the gleam of great bubbles of blood,
Or coiled like a rainbow shell....
I feast on the stem of the Leaf as I march.
I am burning with Heaven and Hell.


II

The gray king died in his hour.
Then we crowned you, the prophetess wise:
Peace-of-the-Heart we deeply adored
For the witchcraft hid in your eyes.
Gift from the sky, overmastering all,
You sent forth your magical parrots to call
The plot-hatching prince of the tigers,
To your throne by the red-clay wall.

Thus came that genius insane:
Spitting and slinking,
Sneering and vain,
He sprawled to your grassy throne, drunk on The Leaf,
The drug that was cunning and splendor and grief.
He had fled from the mammoth by day,
He had blasted the mammoth by night,
War was his drunkenness,
War was his dreaming,
War was his love and his play.
And he hissed at your heavenly glory
While his councillors snarled in delight,
Asking in irony: "What shall we learn
From this whisperer, fragile and white?"

And had you not been an enchantress
They would not have loitered to mock
Nor spared your white parrots who walked by their paws
With bantering venturesome talk.

You made a white fire of The Leaf.
You sang while the tiger-chiefs hissed.
You chanted of "Peace to the wonderful world."
And they saw you in dazzling mist.
And their steps were no longer insane,
Kindness came down like the rain,
They dreamed that like fleet young ponies they feasted
On succulent grasses and grain.

Then came the black-mammoth chief:
Long-haired and shaggy and great,
Proud and sagacious he marshalled his court:
(You had sent him your parrots of state.)
His trunk in rebellion upcurled,
A curse at the tiger he hurled.
Huge elephants trumpeted there by his side,
And mastodon-chiefs of the world.
But higher magic began.
For the turbulent vassals of man.
You harnessed their fever, you conquered their ire,
Their hearts turned to flowers through holy desire,
For their darling and star you were crowned,
And their raging demons were bound.
You rode on the back of the yellow-streaked king,
His loose neck was wreathed with a mistletoe ring.
Primordial elephants loomed by your side,
And our clay-painted children danced by your path,
Chanting the death of the kingdoms of wrath.
You wrought until night with us all.
The fierce brutes fawned at your call,
Then slipped to their lairs, song-chained.
And thus you sang sweetly, and reigned:
"Immortal is the inner peace, free to beasts and men.
Beginning in the darkness, the mystery will conquer,
And now it comforts every heart that seeks for love again.
And now the mammoth bows the knee,
We hew down every Tiger Tree,
We send each tiger bound in love and glory to his den,
Bound in love...and wisdom...and glory,...to his den."


III

"Beware of the trumpeting swine,"
Came the howl from the northward that night.
Twice-rebel tigers warning was still
If we held not beside them it boded us ill.
From the parrots translating the cry,
And the apes in the trees came the whine:
"Beware of the trumpeting swine.
Beware of the faith of a mammoth."

"Beware of the faith of a tiger,"
Came the roar from the southward that night.
Trumpeting mammoths warning us still
If we held not beside them it boded us ill.
The frail apes wailed to us all,
The parrots reëchoed the call:
"Beware of the faith of a tiger."
From the heights of the forest the watchers could see
The tiger-cats crunching the Leaf of the Tree
Lashing themselves, and scattering foam,
Killing our huntsmen, hurrying home.
The chiefs of the mammoths our mastery spurned,
And eastward restlessly fumed and burned.
The peacocks squalled out the news of their drilling
And told how they trampled, maneuvered, and turned.
Ten thousand man-hating tigers
Whirling down from the north, like a flood!
Ten thousand mammoths oncoming
From the south as avengers of blood!
Our child-queen was mourning, her magic was dead,
The roots of the Tiger Tree reeking with red.


IV

This is the tale of the Tiger Tree
A hundred times the height of a man,
Lord of the race since the world began.

We marched to the mammoths,
We pledged them our steel,
And scorning you, sang: —
"We are men,
We are men."
We mounted their necks,
And they stamped a wide reel.
We sang:
"We are fighting the hell-cats again,
We are mound-builder men,
We are elephant men."
We left you there, lonely,
Beauty your power,
Wisdom your watchman,
To hold the clay tower.
While the black-mammoths boomed —
"You are elephant men,
Men,
Men,
Elephant men."
The dawn-winds prophesied battles untold.
While the Tiger Trees roared of the glories of old,
Of the masterful spirits and hard.

The drunken cats came in their joy
In the sunrise, a glittering wave.
"We are tigers, are tigers," they yowled.
"Down,
Down,
Go the swine to the grave."
But we tramp
Tramp
Trampled them there,
Then charged with our sabres and spears.
The swish of the sabre,
The swish of the sabre,
Was a marvellous tune in our ears.

We yelled "We are men,
We are men."
As we bled to death in the sun....
Then staunched our horrible wounds
With the cry that the battle was won....
And at last,
When the black-mammoth legion
Split the night with their song: —
"Right is braver than wrong,
Right is stronger than wrong,"
The buzzards came taunting:
"Down from the north
Tiger-nations are sweeping along."

Then we ate of the ravening Leaf
As our savage fathers of old.
No longer our wounds made us weak,
No longer our pulses were cold.
Though half of my troops were afoot,
(For the great who had borne them were slain)
We dreamed we were tigers, and leaped
And foamed with that vision insane.
We cried "We are soldiers of doom,
Doom,
Sabres of glory and doom."
We wreathed the king of the mammoths
In the tiger-leaves' terrible bloom.
We flattered the king of the mammoths,
Loud-rattling sabres and spears.
The swish of the sabre,
The swish of the sabre,
Was a marvellous tune in his ears.


V

This was the end of the battle.
The tigers poured by in a tide
Over us all with their caterwaul call,
"We are the tigers,"
They cried.
"We are the sabres,"
They cried.
But we laughed while our blades swept wide,
While the dawn-rays stabbed through the gloom.
"We are suns on fire" was our yell —
"Suns on fire."...
But man-child and mastodon fell,
Mammoth and elephant fell.
The fangs of the devil-cats closed on the world,
Plunged it to blackness and doom.

The desolate red-clay wall
Echoed the parrots' call: —
"Immortal is the inner peace, free to beasts and men.
Beginning in the darkness, the mystery will conquer,
And now it comforts every heart that seeks for love again.
And now the mammoth bows the knee,
We hew down every Tiger Tree,
We send each tiger bound in love and glory to his den,
Bound in love... and wisdom... and glory,... to his den."

A peacock screamed of his beauty
On that broken wall by the trees,
Chiding his little mate,
Spreading his fans in the breeze...
And you, with eyes of a bride,
Knelt on the wall at my side,
The deathless song in your mouth...
A million new tigers swept south...
As we laughed at the peacock, and died.

This is my vision in Springfield:
Three times as high as the dome,
Tiger-striped trees encircle the town,
Golden geysers of foam; —
Though giant white parrots sail past, giving voice,
Though I walk with Peace-of-the-Heart and rejoice.

 You bring me good news from the clinic,
Whipping off your silk scarf, exhibiting the tight white
Mummy-cloths, smiling: I'm all right.
When I was nine, a lime-green anesthetist
Fed me banana-gas through a frog mask. The nauseous vault
Boomed with bad dreams and the Jovian voices of surgeons.
Then mother swam up, holding a tin basin.
O I was sick.

They've changed all that. Traveling
Nude as Cleopatra in my well-boiled hospital shift,
Fizzy with sedatives and unusually humorous,
I roll to an anteroom where a kind man
Fists my fingers for me. He makes me feel something precious
Is leaking from the finger-vents. At the count of two,
Darkness wipes me out like chalk on a blackboard. . .
I don't know a thing.

For five days I lie in secret,
Tapped like a cask, the years draining into my pillow.
Even my best friend thinks I'm in the country.
Skin doesn't have roots, it peels away easy as paper.
When I grin, the stitches tauten. I grow backward. I'm twenty,
Broody and in long skirts on my first husband's sofa, my fingers
Buried in the lambswool of the dead poodle;
I hadn't a cat yet.

Now she's done for, the dewlapped lady
I watched settle, line by line, in my mirror—
Old sock-face, sagged on a darning egg.
They've trapped her in some laboratory jar.
Let her die there, or wither incessantly for the next fifty years,
Nodding and rocking and fingering her thin hair.
Mother to myself, I wake swaddled in gauze,
Pink and smooth as a baby.

 To Dawson Town came Percy Brown from London on the Thames.
A pane of glass was in his eye, and stockings on his stems.
Upon the shoulder of his coat a leather pad he wore,
To rest his deadly rifle when it wasn't seeking gore;
The which it must have often been, for Major Percy Brown,
According to his story was a hunter of renown,
Who in the Murrumbidgee wilds had stalked the kangaroo
And killed the cassowary on the plains of Timbuctoo.
And now the Arctic fox he meant to follow to its lair,
And it was also his intent to beard the Artic hare...
Which facts concerning Major Brown I merely tell because
I fain would have you know him for the Nimrod that he was.

Now Skipper Grey and Deacon White were sitting in the shack,
And sampling of the whisky that pertained to Sheriff Black.
Said Skipper Grey: "I want to say a word about this Brown:
The piker's sticking out his chest as if he owned the town."
Said Sheriff Black: "he has no lack of frigorated cheek;
He called himself a Sourdough when he'd just been here a week."
Said Deacon White: "Methinks you're right, and so I have a plan
By which I hope to prove to-night the mettle of the man.
Just meet me where the hooch-bird sings, and though our ways be rude
We'll make a proper Sourdough of this Piccadilly dude."

Within the Malamute Saloon were gathered all the gang;
The fun was fast and furious, and the loud hooch-bird sang.
In fact the night's hilarity had almost reached its crown,
When into its storm-centre breezed the gallant Major Brown.
And at the apparation, whith its glass eye and plus-fours,
From fifty alcoholic throats responded fifty roars.
With shouts of stark amazement and with whoops of sheer delight,
They surged around the stranger, but the first was Deacon White.
"We welcome you," he cried aloud, "to this the Great White Land.
The Artic Brotherhood is proud to grip you by the hand.
Yea, sportsman of the bull-dog breed, from trails of far away,
To Yukoners this is indeed a memorable day.
Our jubilation to express, vocabularies fail...
Boys, hail the Great Cheechako!" And the boys responded: "Hail!"

"And now," continued Deacon White to blushing Major Brown,
"Behold assembled the eelight and cream of Dawson Town,
And one ambition fills their hearts and makes their bosoms glow -
They want to make you, honoured sir, a bony feed Sourdough.
The same, some say, is one who's seen the Yukon ice go out,
But most profound authorities the definition doubt,
And to the genial notion of this meeting, Major Brown,
A Sourdough is a guy who drinks ... an ice-worm cocktail down."

"By Gad!" responded Major Brown, "that's ripping, don't you know.
I've always felt I'd like to be a certified Sourdough.
And though I haven't any doubt your Winter's awf'ly nice,
Mayfair, I fear, may miss me ere the break-up of your ice.
Yet (pray excuse my ignorance of matters such as these)
A cocktail I can understand - but what's an ice-worm, please?"
Said Deacon White: "It is not strange that you should fail to know,
Since ice-worms are peculiar to the Mountain of Blue Snow.
Within the Polar rim it rears, a solitary peak,
And in the smoke of early Spring (a spectacle unique)
Like flame it leaps upon the sight and thrills you through and through,
For though its cone is piercing white, its base is blazing blue.
Yet all is clear as you draw near - for coyley peering out
Are hosts and hosts of tiny worms, each indigo of snout.
And as no nourishment they find, to keep themselves alive
They masticate each other's tails, till just the Tough survive.
Yet on this stern and Spartan fare so-rapidly they grow,
That some attain six inches by the melting of the snow.
Then when the tundra glows to green and ****** heads appear,
They burrow down and are not seen until another year."

"A toughish yarn," laughed Major Brown, "as well you may admit.
I'd like to see this little beast before I swallow it."
"'Tis easy done," said Deacon White, "Ho! Barman, haste and bring
Us forth some pickled ice-worms of the vintage of last Spring."
But sadly still was Barman Bill, then sighed as one bereft:
"There's been a run on cocktails, Boss; there ain't an ice-worm left.
Yet wait . . . By gosh! it seems to me that some of extra size
Were picked and put away to show the scientific guys."
Then deeply in a drawer he sought, and there he found a jar,
The which with due and proper pride he put upon the bar;
And in it, wreathed in queasy rings, or rolled into a ball,
A score of grey and greasy things, were drowned in alcohol.
Their bellies were a bilious blue, their eyes a bulbous red;
Their back were grey, and gross were they, and hideous of head.
And when with gusto and a fork the barman speared one out,
It must have gone four inches from its tail-tip to its snout.
Cried Deacon White with deep delight: "Say, isn't that a beaut?"
"I think it is," sniffed Major Brown, "a most disgustin' brute.
Its very sight gives me the pip. I'll bet my bally hat,
You're only spoofin' me, old chap. You'll never swallow that."
"The hell I won't!" said Deacon White. "Hey! Bill, that fellows fine.
Fix up four ice-worm cocktails, and just put that wop in mine."

So Barman Bill got busy, and with sacerdotal air
His art's supreme achievement he proceeded to prepare.
His silver cups, like sickle moon, went waving to and fro,
And four celestial cocktails soon were shining in a row.
And in the starry depths of each, artistically piled,
A fat and juicy ice-worm raised its mottled mug and smiled.
Then closer pressed the peering crown, suspended was the fun,
As Skipper Grey in courteous way said: "Stranger, please take one."
But with a gesture of disgust the Major shook his head.
"You can't bluff me. You'll never drink that gastly thing," he said.
"You'll see all right," said Deacon White, and held his cocktail high,
Till its ice-worm seemed to wiggle, and to wink a wicked eye.
Then Skipper Grey and Sheriff Black each lifted up a glass,
While through the tense and quiet crown a tremor seemed to pass.
"Drink, Stranger, drink," boomed Deacon White. "proclaim you're of the best,
A doughty Sourdough who has passed the Ice-worm Cocktail Test."
And at these words, with all eyes fixed on gaping Major Brown,
Like a libation to the gods, each dashed his cocktail down.
The Major gasped with horror as the trio smacked their lips.
He twiddled at his eye-glass with unsteady finger-tips.
Into his starry cocktail with a look of woe he peered,
And its ice-worm, to his thinking, mosy incontinently leered.
Yet on him were a hundred eyes, though no one spoke aloud,
For hushed with expectation was the waiting, watching crowd.
The Major's fumbling hand went forth - the gang prepared to cheer;
The Major's falt'ring hand went back, the mob prepared to jeer,
The Major gripped his gleaming glass and laid it to his lips,
And as despairfully he took some nauseated sips,
From out its coil of crapulence the ice-worm raised its head,
Its muzzle was a murky blue, its eyes a ruby red.
And then a roughneck bellowed fourth: "This stiff comes here and struts,
As if he bought the blasted North - jest let him show his guts."
And with a roar the mob proclaimed: "Cheechako, Major Brown,
Reveal that you're of Sourdough stuff, and drink your cocktail down."

The Major took another look, then quickly closed his eyes,
For even as he raised his glass he felt his gorge arise.
Aye, even though his sight was sealed, in fancy he could see
That grey and greasy thing that reared and sneered in mockery.
Yet round him ringed the callous crowd - and how they seemed to gloat!
It must be done . . . He swallowed hard . . . The brute was at his throat.
He choked. . . he gulped . . . Thank God! at last he'd got the horror down.
Then from the crowd went up a roar: "Hooray for Sourdough Brown!"
With shouts they raised him shoulder high, and gave a rousing cheer,
But though they praised him to the sky the Major did not hear.
Amid their demonstrative glee delight he seemed to lack;
Indeed it almost seemed that he - was "keeping something back."
A clammy sweat was on his brow, and pallid as a sheet:
"I feel I must be going now," he'd plaintively repeat.
Aye, though with drinks and smokes galore, they tempted him to stay,
With sudden bolt he gained the door, and made his get-away.

And ere next night his story was the talk of Dawson Town,
But gone and reft of glory was the wrathful Major Brown;
For that ice-worm (so they told him) of such formidable size
Was - a stick of stained spaghetti with two red ink spots for eyes.

 Good Father!… ’Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew 
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn 
Men’s bones all Europe through. 

Three nights ere this, with columned corps he’d crossed
The Sambre at Charleroi, 
To move on Brussels, where the English host 
Dallied in Parc and Bois. 

The yestertide we’d heard the gloomy gun 
Growl through the long-sunned day
From Quatre-Bras and Ligny; till the dun 
Twilight suppressed the fray; 

Albeit therein—as lated tongues bespoke— 
Brunswick’s high heart was drained, 
And Prussia’s Line and Landwehr, though unbroke,
Stood cornered and constrained. 

And at next noon-time Grouchy slowly passed 
With thirty thousand men: 
We hoped thenceforth no army, small or vast, 
Would trouble us again.

My hut lay deeply in a vale recessed, 
And never a soul seemed nigh 
When, reassured at length, we went to rest— 
My children, wife, and I. 

But what was this that broke our humble ease?
What noise, above the rain, 
Above the dripping of the poplar trees 
That smote along the pane? 

—A call of mastery, bidding me arise, 
Compelled me to the door,
At which a horseman stood in martial guise— 
Splashed—sweating from every pore. 

Had I seen Grouchy? Yes? Which track took he? 
Could I lead thither on?— 
Fulfilment would ensure gold pieces three,
Perchance more gifts anon. 

“I bear the Emperor’s mandate,” then he said, 
“Charging the Marshal straight 
To strike between the double host ahead 
Ere they co-operate,

“Engaging Bl?cher till the Emperor put 
Lord Wellington to flight, 
And next the Prussians. This to set afoot 
Is my emprise to-night.” 

I joined him in the mist; but, pausing, sought
To estimate his say, 
Grouchy had made for Wavre; and yet, on thought, 
I did not lead that way. 

I mused: “If Grouchy thus instructed be, 
The clash comes sheer hereon;
My farm is stript. While, as for pieces three, 
Money the French have none. 

“Grouchy unwarned, moreo’er, the English win, 
And mine is left to me— 
They buy, not borrow.”—Hence did I begin
To lead him treacherously. 

By Joidoigne, near to east, as we ondrew, 
Dawn pierced the humid air; 
And eastward faced I with him, though I knew 
Never marched Grouchy there.

Near Ottignies we passed, across the Dyle 
(Lim’lette left far aside), 
And thence direct toward Pervez and Noville 
Through green grain, till he cried: 

“I doubt thy conduct, man! no track is here
I doubt they gag?d word!” 
Thereat he scowled on me, and pranced me near, 
And pricked me with his sword. 

“Nay, Captain, hold! We skirt, not trace the course 
Of Grouchy,” said I then:
“As we go, yonder went he, with his force 
Of thirty thousand men.” 

—At length noon nighed, when west, from Saint-John’s-Mound, 
A hoarse artillery boomed, 
And from Saint-Lambert’s upland, chapel-crowned,
The Prussian squadrons loomed. 

Then to the wayless wet gray ground he leapt; 
“My mission fails!” he cried; 
“Too late for Grouchy now to intercept, 
For, peasant, you have lied!”

He turned to pistol me. I sprang, and drew 
The sabre from his flank, 
And ’twixt his nape and shoulder, ere he knew, 
I struck, and dead he sank. 

I hid him deep in nodding rye and oat—
His shroud green stalks and loam; 
His requiem the corn-blade’s husky note— 
And then I hastened home…. 

—Two armies writhe in coils of red and blue, 
And brass and iron clang
From Goumont, past the front of Waterloo, 
To Pap’lotte and Smohain. 

The Guard Imperial wavered on the height; 
The Emperor’s face grew glum; 
“I sent,” he said, “to Grouchy yesternight,
And yet he does not come!” 

’Twas then, Good Father, that the French espied, 
Streaking the summer land, 
The men of Bl?cher. But the Emperor cried, 
“Grouchy is now at hand!” 

And meanwhile Vand’leur, Vivian, Maitland, Kempt, 
Met d’Erlon, Friant, Ney; 
But Grouchy—mis-sent, blamed, yet blame-exempt— 
Grouchy was far away. 

Be even, slain or struck, Michel the strong,
Bold Travers, Dnop, Delord, 
Smart Guyot, Reil-le, l’Heriter, Friant. 
Scattered that champaign o’er. 

Fallen likewise wronged Duhesme, and skilled Lobau 
Did that red sunset see;
Colbert, Legros, Blancard!… And of the foe 
Picton and Ponsonby; 

With Gordon, Canning, Blackman, Ompteda, 
L’Estrange, Delancey, Packe, 
Grose, D’Oyly, Stables, Morice, Howard, Hay,
Von Schwerin, Watzdorf, Boek, 

Smith, Phelips, Fuller, Lind, and Battersby, 
And hosts of ranksmen round… 
Memorials linger yet to speak to thee 
Of those that bit the ground!

The Guards’ last column yielded; dykes of dead 
Lay between vale and ridge, 
As, thinned yet closing, faint yet fierce, they sped 
In packs to Genappe Bridge. 

Safe was my stock; my capple cow unslain;
Intact each cock and hen; 
But Grouchy far at Wavre all day had lain, 
And thirty thousand men. 

O Saints, had I but lost my earing corn 
And saved the cause once prized!
O Saints, why such false witness had I borne 
When late I’d sympathized!… 

So, now, being old, my children eye askance 
My slowly dwindling store, 
And crave my mite; till, worn with tarriance,
I care for life no more. 

To Almighty God henceforth I stand confessed, 
And Virgin-Saint Marie; 
O Michael, John, and Holy Ones in rest, 
Entreat the Lord for me!

 Kanzo Makame, the diver, sturdy and small Japanee, 
Seeker of pearls and of pearl-shell down in the depths of the sea, 
Trudged o'er the bed of the ocean, searching industriously. 

Over the pearl-grounds the lugger drifted -- a little white speck: 
Joe Nagasaki, the "tender", holding the life-line on deck, 
Talked through the rope to the diver, knew when to drift or to check. 

Kanzo was king of his lugger, master and diver in one, 
Diving wherever it pleased him, taking instructions from none; 
Hither and thither he wandered, steering by stars and by sun. 

Fearless he was beyond credence, looking at death eye to eye: 
This was his formula always, "All man go dead by and by -- 
S'posing time come no can help it -- s'pose time no come, then no die." 

Dived in the depths of the Darnleys, down twenty fathom and five; 
Down where by law, and by reason, men are forbidden to dive; 
Down in a pressure so awful that only the strongest survive: 

Sweated four men at the air pumps, fast as the handles could go, 
Forcing the air down that reached him heated and tainted, and slow -- 
Kanzo Makame the diver stayed seven minutes below; 

Came up on deck like a dead man, paralysed body and brain; 
Suffered, while blood was returning, infinite tortures of pain: 
Sailed once again to the Darnleys -- laughed and descended again! 



Scarce grew the shell in the shallows, rarely a patch could they touch; 
Always the take was so little, always the labour so much; 
Always they thought of the Islands held by the lumbering Dutch -- 

Islands where shell was in plenty lying in passage and bay, 
Islands where divers could gather hundreds of shell in a day. 
But the lumbering Dutch in their gunboats they hunted the divers away. 

Joe Nagasaki, the "tender", finding the profits grow small, 
Said, "Let us go to the Islands, try for a number one haul! 
If we get caught, go to prison -- let them take lugger and all!" 

Kanzo Makame, the diver -- knowing full well what it meant -- 
Fatalist, gambler, and stoic, smiled a broad smile of content, 
Flattened in mainsail and foresail, and off to the Islands they went. 

Close to the headlands they drifted, picking up shell by the ton, 
Piled up on deck were the oysters, opening wide in the sun, 
When, from the lee of the headland, boomed the report of a gun. 

Then if the diver was sighted, pearl-shell and lugger must go -- 
Joe Nagasaki decided (quick was the word and the blow), 
Cut both the pipe and the life-line, leaving the diver below! 

Kanzo Makame, the diver, failing to quite understand, 
Pulled the "haul up" on the life-line, found it was slack in his hand; 
Then, like a little brown stoic, lay down and died on the sand. 

Joe Nagasaki, the "tender", smiling a sanctified smile, 
Headed her straight for the gunboat--throwing out shells all the while -- 
Then went aboard and reported, "No makee dive in three mile! 

"Dress no have got and no helmet -- diver go shore on the spree; 
Plenty wind come and break rudder -- lugger get blown out to sea: 
Take me to Japanee Consul, he help a poor Japanee!" 

So the Dutch let him go; but they watched him, as off from the Islands he ran, 
Doubting him much -- but what would you? You have to be sure of your man 
Ere you wake up that nest-ful of hornets -- the little brown men of Japan. 

Down in the ooze and the coral, down where earth's wonders are spread, 
Helmeted, ghastly, and swollen, Kanzo Makame lies dead. 
Joe Nagasaki, his "tender", is owner and diver instead. 

Wearer of pearls in your necklace, comfort yourself if you can. 
These are the risks of the pearling -- these are the ways of Japan; 
"Plenty more Japanee diver plenty more little brown man!"

 "But, sir," I said, "they tell me the man is like to die!" The Canon shook his head indulgently. "Young blood, Cousin," he boomed. "Young blood! Youth will be served!" 
-- D'Hermonville's Fabliaux. 


He woke up with a sick taste in his mouth 
And lay there heavily, while dancing motes 
Whirled through his brain in endless, rippling streams, 
And a grey mist weighed down upon his eyes 
So that they could not open fully. Yet 
After some time his blurred mind stumbled back 
To its last ragged memory -- a room; 
Air foul with wine; a shouting, reeling crowd 
Of friends who dragged him, dazed and blind with drink 
Out to the street; a crazy rout of cabs; 
The steady mutter of his neighbor's voice, 
Mumbling out dull obscenity by rote; 
And then . . . well, they had brought him home it seemed, 
Since he awoke in bed -- oh, damn the business! 
He had not wanted it -- the silly jokes, 
"One last, great night of freedom ere you're married!" 
"You'll get no fun then!" "H-ssh, don't tell that story! 
He'll have a wife soon!" -- God! the sitting down 
To drink till you were sodden! . . . 
Like great light 
She came into his thoughts. That was the worst. 
To wallow in the mud like this because 
His friends were fools. . . . He was not fit to touch, 
To see, oh far, far off, that silver place 
Where God stood manifest to man in her. . . . 
Fouling himself. . . . One thing he brought to her, 
At least. He had been clean; had taken it 
A kind of point of honor from the first . . . 
Others might do it . . . but he didn't care 
For those things. . . . 
Suddenly his vision cleared. 
And something seemed to grow within his mind. . . . 
Something was wrong -- the color of the wall -- 
The ***** shape of the bedposts -- everything 
Was changed, somehow . . . his room. Was this his room? 

. . . He turned his head -- and saw beside him there 
The sagging body's slope, the paint-smeared face, 
And the loose, open mouth, lax and awry, 
The breasts, the bleached and brittle hair . . . these things. 
. . . As if all Hell were crushed to one bright line 
Of lightning for a moment. Then he sank, 
Prone beneath an intolerable weight. 
And bitter loathing crept up all his limbs.

 A flickering glimmer through a window-pane,
A dim red glare through mud bespattered glass,
Cleaving a path between blown walls of sleet
Across uneven pavements sunk in slime
To scatter and then quench itself in mist.
And struggling, slipping, often rudely hurled
Against the jutting angle of a wall,
And cursed, and reeled against, and flung aside
By drunken brawlers as they shuffled past,
A man was groping to what seemed a light.
His eyelids burnt and quivered with the strain
Of looking, and against his temples beat
The all enshrouding, suffocating dark.
He stumbled, lurched, and struck against a door
That opened, and a howl of obscene mirth
Grated his senses, wallowing on the floor
Lay men, and dogs and women in the dirt.
He sickened, loathing it, and as he gazed
The candle guttered, flared, and then went out.
Through travail of ignoble midnight streets
He came at last to shelter in a porch
Where gothic saints and warriors made a shield
To cover him, and tortured gargoyles spat
One long continuous stream of silver rain
That clattered down from myriad roofs and spires
Into a darkness, loud with rushing sound
Of water falling, gurgling as it fell,
But always thickly dark. Then as he leaned
Unconscious where, the great oak door blew back
And cast him, bruised and dripping, in the church.
His eyes from long sojourning in the night
Were blinded now as by some glorious sun;
He slowly crawled toward the altar steps.
He could not think, for heavy in his ears
An organ boomed majestic harmonies;
He only knew that what he saw was light!
He bowed himself before a cross of flame
And shut his eyes in fear lest it should fade.