Written by
Lewis Carroll |
The Banker's Fate
They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.
And the Banker, inspired with a courage so new
It was matter for general remark,
Rushed madly ahead and was lost to their view
In his zeal to discover the Snark.
But while he was seeking with thimbles and care,
A Bandersnatch swiftly drew nigh
And grabbed at the Banker, who shrieked in despair,
For he knew it was useless to fly.
He offered large discount--he offered a cheque
(Drawn "to bearer") for seven-pounds-ten:
But the Bandersnatch merely extended its neck
And grabbed at the Banker again.
Without rest or pause--while those frumious jaws
Went savagely snapping around--
He skipped and he hopped, and he floundered and flopped,
Till fainting he fell to the ground.
The Bandersnatch fled as the others appeared
Led on by that fear-stricken yell:
And the Bellman remarked "It is just as I feared!"
And solemnly tolled on his bell.
He was black in the face, and they scarcely could trace
The least likeness to what he had been:
While so great was the fright that his waistcoat turned white--
A wonderful thing to be seen!
To the horror of all who were present that day,
He uprose in full evening dress,
And with senseless grimaces endeavoured to say
What his tongue could no longer express.
Down he sank in a chair--ran his hands through his hair--
And chanted in mimsiest tones
Words whose utter inanity proved his insanity,
While he rattled a couple of bones.
"Leave him here to his fate--it is getting so late!"
The Bellman exclaimed in a fright.
"We have lost half a day.
Any further delay,
And we sha'n't catch a Snark before night!"
|
Written by
Ellis Parker Butler |
The cruelty of P.
L.
Brown—
(He had ten toes as good as mine)
Was known to every one in town,
And, if he never harmed a noun,
He loved to make verbs shriek and whine.
The “To be” family’s just complaints—
(Brown had ten toes as good as mine)
Made Brown cast off the last restraints:
He smashed the “Is nots” into “Ain’ts”
And kicked both mood and tense supine.
Infinitives were Brown’s dislike—
(Brown, as I said, had ten good toes)
And he would pinch and shake and strike
Infinitives, or, with a pike,
Prod them and then laugh at their woes.
At length this Brown more cruel grew—
(Ten toes, all good ones, then had Brown)
And to his woodshed door he drew
A young infinitive and threw
The poor, meek creature roughly down,
And while the poor thing weakly flopped,
Brown (ten good toes he had, the brute!)
Got out his chopping block and dropped
The martyr on it and then propped
His victim firmly with his boot.
He raised his axe! He brandished it!
(Ye gods of grammar, interpose!)
He brought it down full force all fit
The poor infinitive to split—
* * * * *
(Brown after that had but six toes!
Warning
Infinitives, by this we see.
Should not he split too recklessly.
|
Written by
James Dickey |
Memory: I can take my head and strike it on a wall on Cumberland Island
Where the night tide came crawling under the stairs came up the first
Two or three steps and the cottage stood on poles all night
With the sea sprawled under it as we dreamed of the great fin circling
Under the bedroom floor.
In daylight there was my first brassy taste of beer
And Payton Ford and I came back from the Glynn County slaughterhouse
With a bucket of entrails and blood.
We tied one end of a hawser
To a spindling porch-pillar and rowed straight out of the house
Three hundred yards into the vast front yard of windless blue water
The rope out slithering its coil the two-gallon jug stoppered and sealed
With wax and a ten-foot chain leader a drop-forged shark-hook nestling.
We cast our blood on the waters the land blood easily passing
For sea blood and we sat in it for a moment with the stain spreading
Out from the boat sat in a new radiance in the pond of blood in the sea
Waiting for fins waiting to spill our guts also in the glowing water.
We dumped the bucket, and baited the hook with a run-over collie pup.
The jug
Bobbed, trying to shake off the sun as a dog would shake off the sea.
We rowed to the house feeling the same water lift the boat a new way,
All the time seeing where we lived rise and dip with the oars.
We tied up and sat down in rocking chairs, one eye on the other responding
To the blue-eye wink of the jug.
Payton got us a beer and we sat
All morning sat there with blood on our minds the red mark out
In the harbor slowly failing us then the house groaned the rope
Sprang out of the water splinters flew we leapt from our chairs
And grabbed the rope hauled did nothing the house coming subtly
Apart all around us underfoot boards beginning to sparkle like sand
Pulling out the tarred poles we slept propped-up on leaning to sea
As in land-wind crabs scuttling from under the floor as we took runs about
Two more porch-pillars and looked out and saw something a fish-flash
An almighty fin in trouble a moiling of secret forces a false start
Of water a round wave growing in the whole of Cumberland Sound the one ripple.
Payton took off without a word I could not hold him either
But clung to the rope anyway it was the whole house bending
Its nails that held whatever it was coming in a little and like a fool
I took up the slack on my wrist.
The rope drew gently jerked I lifted
Clean off the porch and hit the water the same water it was in
I felt in blue blazing terror at the bottom of the stairs and scrambled
Back up looking desperately into the human house as deeply as I could
Stopping my gaze before it went out the wire screen of the back door
Stopped it on the thistled rattan the rugs I lay on and read
On my mother's sewing basket with next winter's socks spilling from it
The flimsy vacation furniture a bucktoothed picture of myself.
Payton came back with three men from a filling station and glanced at me
Dripping water inexplicable then we all grabbed hold like a tug-of-war.
We were gaining a little from us a cry went up from everywhere
People came running.
Behind us the house filled with men and boys.
On the third step from the sea I took my place looking down the rope
Going into the ocean, humming and shaking off drops.
A houseful
Of people put their backs into it going up the steps from me
Into the living room through the kitchen down the back stairs
Up and over a hill of sand across a dust road and onto a raised field
Of dunes we were gaining the rope in my hands began to be wet
With deeper water all other haulers retreated through the house
But Payton and I on the stairs drawing hand over hand on our blood
Drawing into existence by the nose a huge body becoming
A hammerhead rolling in beery shallows and I began to let up
But the rope strained behind me the town had gone
Pulling-mad in our house far away in a field of sand they struggled
They had turned their backs on the sea bent double some on their knees
The rope over their shoulders like a bag of gold they strove for the ideal
Esso station across the scorched meadow with the distant fish coming up
The front stairs the sagging boards still coming in up taking
Another step toward the empty house where the rope stood straining
By itself through the rooms in the middle of the air.
"Pass the word,"
Payton said, and I screamed it "Let up, good God, let up!" to no one there.
The shark flopped on the porch, grating with salt-sand driving back in
The nails he had pulled out coughing chunks of his formless blood.
The screen door banged and tore off he scrambled on his tail slid
Curved did a thing from another world and was out of his element and in
Our vacation paradise cutting all four legs from under the dinner table
With one deep-water move he unwove the rugs in a moment throwing pints
Of blood over everything we owned knocked the buckteeth out of my picture
His odd head full of crashed jelly-glass splinters and radio tubes thrashing
Among the pages of fan magazines all the movie stars drenched in sea-blood
Each time we thought he was dead he struggled back and smashed
One more thing in all coming back to die three or four more times after death.
At last we got him out logrolling him greasing his sandpaper skin
With lard to slide him pulling on his chained lips as the tide came,
Tumbled him down the steps as the first night wave went under the floor.
He drifted off head back belly white as the moon.
What could I do but buy
That house for the one black mark still there against death a forehead-
toucher in the room he circles beneath and has been invited to wreck?
Blood hard as iron on the wall black with time still bloodlike
Can be touched whenever the brow is drunk enough.
All changes.
Memory:
Something like three-dimensional dancing in the limbs with age
Feeling more in two worlds than one in all worlds the growing encounters.
Copyright © James Dickey 1965
Online Source - http://www.
oceanstar.
com/shark/dickey.
htm
|
Written by
Robert Lowell |
Wallowing in this bloody sty,
I cast for fish that pleased my eye
(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
No pots of gold to weight its ends);
Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
Rose to my bait.
They flopped about
My canvas creel until the moth
Corrupted its unstable cloth.
A calendar to tell the day;
A handkerchief to wave away
The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm
Pouching a bottle in one arm;
A whiskey bottle full of worms;
And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms
To mete the worm whose molten rage
Boils in the belly of old age?
Once fishing was a rabbit's foot--
O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot,
Let suns stay in or suns step out:
Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout--
The fisher's fluent and obscene
Catches kept his conscience clean.
Children, the raging memory drools
Over the glory of past pools.
Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls
Its bloody waters into holes;
A grain of sand inside my shoe
Mimics the moon that might undo
Man and Creation too; remorse,
Stinking, has puddled up its source;
Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage.
This is the pot-hole of old age.
Is there no way to cast my hook
Out of this dynamited brook?
The Fisher's sons must cast about
When shallow waters peter out.
I will catch Christ with a greased worm,
And when the Prince of Darkness stalks
My bloodstream to its Stygian term .
.
.
On water the Man-Fisher walks.
|
Written by
Anne Sexton |
In his tenth July some instinct
taught him to arm the waiting wave,
a giant where its mouth hung open.
He rode on the lip that buoyed him there
and buckled him under.
The beach was strung
with children paddling their ages in,
under the glare od noon chipping
its light out.
He stood up, anonymous
and straight among them, between
their sand pails and nursery crafts.
The breakers cartwheeled in and over
to puddle their toes and test their perfect
skin.
He was my brother, my small
Johnny brother, almost ten.
We flopped
down upon a towel to grind the sand
under us and watched the Atlantic sea
move fire, like night sparklers;
and lost our weight in the festival
season.
He dreamed, he said, to be
a man designed like a balanced wave.
.
.
how someday he would wait, giant
and straight.
Johnny, your dream moves summers
inside my mind.
He was tall and twenty that July,
but there was no balance to help;
only the shells came straight and even.
This was the first beach of assault;
the odor of death hung in the air
like rotting potatoes, the junkyard
of landing craft waited open and rusting.
The bodies were strung out as if they were
still reaching for each other, where they lay
to blacken, to burst through their perfect
skin.
And Johnny Pole was one of them.
He gave in like a small wave, a sudden
hole in his belly and the years all gone
where the Pacific noon chipped its light out.
Like a bean bag, outflung, head loose
and anonymous, he lay.
Did the sea move fire
for its battle season? Does he lie there
forever, where his rifle waits, giant
and straight?.
.
.
I think you die again
and live again,
Johnny, each summer that moves inside
my mind.
|
Written by
James Wright |
Near the dry river's water-mark we found
Your brother Minnegan,
Flopped like a fish against the muddy ground.
Beany, the kid whose yellow hair turns green,
Told me to find you, even if the rain,
And tell you he was drowned.
I hid behind the chassis on the bank,
The wreck of someone's Ford:
I was afraid to come and wake you drunk:
You told me once the waking up was hard,
The daylight beating at you like a board.
Blood in my stomach sank.
Beside, you told him never to go out
Along the river-side
Drinking and singing, clattering about.
You might have thrown a rock at me and cried
I was to blame, I let him fall in the road
And pitch down on his side.
Well, I'll get hell enough when I get home
For coming up this far,
Leaving the note, and running as I came.
I'll go and tell my father where you are.
You'd better go find Minnegan before
Policemen hear and come.
Beany went home, and I got sick and ran,
You old son of a *****.
You better hurry down to Minnegan;
He's drunk or dying now, I don't know which,
Rolled in the roots and garbage like a fish,
The poor old man.
|
Written by
Marriott Edgar |
It were after the Battle of Crecy-
The foe all lay dead on the ground-
And King Edward went out with his soldiers
To clean up the places around.
The first place they came to were Calais,
Where t' burghers all stood in a row,
And when Edward told them to surrender
They told Edward where he could go.
Said he, " I'll beleaguer this city,
I'll teach them to flout their new King -
Then he told all his lads to get camp-stools
And sit round the place in a ring.
Now the burghers knew nowt about Crecy-
They laughed when they saw Edward's plan-
And thinking their side were still winning,
They shrugged and said- " San fairy Ann.
"
But they found at the end of a fortnight
That things wasn't looking so nice,
With nowt going out but the pigeons,
And nowt coming in but the mice.
For the soldiers sat round on their camp-stools,
And never a foot did they stir,
But passed their time doing their knitting,
And crosswords, and things like that there.
The burghers began to get desperate
Wi' t' food supply sinking so low,
For they'd nowt left but dry bread and water,
Or what they called in French "pang" and "oh"
They stuck it all autumn and winter,
But when at last spring came around
They was bothered, bewitched and beleaguered,
And cods' heads was tenpence a pound.
So they hung a white flag on the ramparts
To show they was sick of this 'ere-
And the soldiers, who'd finished their knitting,
All stood up and gave them a cheer.
When King Edward heard they had surrendered
He said to them, in their own tongue,
"You've kept me here all football season,
And twelve of you's got to be hung.
"
Then up stood the Lord Mayor of Calais,
"I'll make one" he gallantly cried-
Then he called to his friends on the Council
To make up the rest of the side.
When the townspeople heard of the hanging
They rushed in a crowd through the gate-
They was all weeping tears of compassion,
And hoping they wasn't too late.
With ropes round their necks the twelve heroes
Stood proudly awaiting their doom,
Till the hangman at last crooked his finger
And coaxingly said to them-" Come.
At that moment good Queen Phillippa
Ran out of her bower and said-
Oh, do have some mercy, my husband;
Oh don't be so spiteful, dear Ted.
"
Then down on her knee-joints before them
She flopped, and in accents that rang,
Said, "Please, Edward, just to oblige me,
You can't let these poor burghers hang.
The King was so touched with her pleading,
He lifted his wife by the hand
And he gave her all twelve as a keepsake
And peace once again reigned in the land.
|
Written by
Marriott Edgar |
One evening at dusk as Noah stood on his Ark,
Putting green oil in starboard side lamp,
His wife came along and said, 'Noah, summat's wrong,
Our cabin is getting quite damp.
Noah said, 'Is that so?' Then he went down below,
And found it were right what she'd said,
For there on the floor quite a puddle he saw,
It was slopping around under t' bed.
Said he, 'There's an 'ole in the bottom somewhere,
We must find it before we retire.
'
Then he thowt for a bit, and he said 'Aye, that's it,
A bloodhound is what we require.
'
Se he went and fetched bloodhound from place where it lay,
'Tween the skunk and the polecat it were,
And as things there below, were a trifle so-so,
It were glad of a breath of fresh air.
They followed the sound as it went sniffing round,
'Til at last they located the leak,
'Twere a small hole in the side, about two inches wide,
Where a swordfish had poked in its beak.
And by gum! how the wet squirted in through that hole,
Well, young Shem who at sums was expert,
Worked it out on his slate that it came at the rate,
Of per gallon, per second, per squirt.
The bloodhound tried hard to keep water in check,
By lapping it up with his tongue,
But it came in so fast through that hole, that at last,
He shoved in his nose for a bung.
The poor faithful hound, he were very near drowned,
They dragged him away none too soon,
For the stream as it rose, pushed its way up his nose,
And blew him up like a balloon.
And then Mrs Noah shoved her elbow in t'hole,
And said,' Eh! it's stopped I believe,'
But they found very soon as she'd altered her tune,
For the water had got up her sleeve.
When she saw as her elbow weren't doing much good,
She said to Noah, 'I've an idea,
You sit on the leak and by t'end of the week,
There's no knowing, the weather may clear.
'
Noah didn't think much to this notion, at all,
But reckoned he'd give it a try,
On the 'ole down he flopped, and the leaking all stopped,
And all.
.
.
except him, was quite dry.
They took him his breakfast and dinner and tea,
As day after day there he sat,
'Til the rain was all passed and they landed at last,
On top side of Mount Ararat.
And that is how Noah got them all safe ashore,
But ever since then, strange to tell,
Them as helped save the Ark has all carried a mark,
Aye, and all their descendants as well.
That's why dog has a cold nose, and ladies cold elbows,
You'll also find if you enquire,
That's why a man takes his coat tails in hand,
And stands with his back to the fire.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
Jack would laugh an' joke all day;
Never saw a lad so gay;
Singin' like a medder lark,
Loaded to the Plimsoll mark
With God's sunshine was that boy;
Had a strangle-holt on Joy.
Held his head 'way up in air,
Left no callin' cards on Care;
Breezy, buoyant, brave and true;
Sent his sunshine out to you;
Cheerfulest when clouds was black --
Happy Jack! Oh, Happy Jack!
Sittin' in my shack alone
I could hear him in his own,
Singin' far into the night,
Till it didn't seem just right
One man should corral the fun,
Live his life so in the sun;
Didn't seem quite natural
Not to have a grouch at all;
Not a trouble, not a lack --
Happy Jack! Oh, Happy Jack!
He was plumbful of good cheer
Till he struck that low-down year;
Got so thin, so little to him,
You could most see day-light through him.
Never was his eye so bright,
Never was his cheek so white.
Seemed as if somethin' was wrong,
Sort o' quaver in his song.
Same old smile, same hearty voice:
"Bless you, boys! let's all rejoice!"
But old Doctor shook his head:
"Half a lung," was all he said.
Yet that half was surely right,
For I heard him every night,
Singin', singin' in his shack --
Happy Jack! Oh, Happy Jack!
Then one day a letter came
Endin' with a female name;
Seemed to get him in the neck,
Sort o' pile-driver effect;
Paled his lip and plucked his breath,
Left him starin' still as death.
Somethin' had gone awful wrong,
Yet that night he sang his song.
Oh, but it was good to hear!
For there clutched my heart a fear,
So that I quaked listenin'
Every night to hear him sing.
But each day he laughed with me,
An' his smile was full of glee.
Nothin' seemed to set him back --
Happy Jack! Oh, Happy Jack!
Then one night the singin' stopped .
.
.
Seemed as if my heart just flopped;
For I'd learned to love the boy
With his gilt-edged line of joy,
With his glorious gift of bluff,
With his splendid fightin' stuff.
Sing on, lad, and play the game!
O dear God! .
.
.
no singin' came,
But there surged to me instead --
Silence, silence, deep and dread;
Till I shuddered, tried to pray,
Said: "He's maybe gone away.
"
Oh, yes, he had gone away,
Gone forever and a day.
But he'd left behind him there,
In his cabin, pinched and bare,
His poor body, skin and bone,
His sharp face, cold as a stone.
An' his stiffened fingers pressed
Somethin' bright upon his breast:
Locket with a silken curl,
Poor, sweet portrait of a girl.
Yet I reckon at the last
How defiant-like he passed;
For there sat upon his lips
Smile that death could not eclipse;
An' within his eyes lived still
Joy that dyin' could not kill.
An' now when the nights are long,
How I miss his cheery song!
How I sigh an' wish him back!
Happy Jack! Oh, Happy Jack!
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
Each day when it's anighing three
Old Dick looks at the clock,
Then proudly brings my stick to me
To mind me of our walk.
And in his doggy rapture he
Does everything but talk.
But since I lack his zip and zest
My old bones often tire;
And so I ventured to suggest
Today we hug the fire.
But with what wailing he expressed
The death of his desire!
He gazed at me with eyes of woe
As if to say: 'Old boy,
You mustn't lose your grip, you know,
Let us with laughing joy,
On heath and hill six miles or so
Our legs and lungs employ.
'
And then his bark was stilled to a sigh
He flopped upon the floor;
But such a soft old mug am I
I threw awide the door;
So gaily, though the wind was high
We hiked across the moor.
|