Written by
Sylvia Plath |
Old goatherds swear how all night long they hear
The warning whirr and burring of the bird
Who wakes with darkness and till dawn works hard
Vampiring dry of milk each great goat udder.
Moon full, moon dark, the chary dairy farmer
Dreams that his fattest cattle dwindle, fevered
By claw-cuts of the Goatsucker, alias Devil-bird,
Its eye, flashlit, a chip of ruby fire.
So fables say the Goatsucker moves, masked from men's sight
In an ebony air, on wings of witch cloth,
Well-named, ill-famed a knavish fly-by-night,
Yet it never milked any goat, nor dealt cow death
And shadows only--cave-mouth bristle beset--
Cockchafers and the wan, green luna moth.
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Written by
Carl Sandburg |
THIS Mohammedan colonel from the Caucasus yells with his voice and wigwags with his arms.
The interpreter translates, “I was a friend of Kornilov, he asks me what to do and I tell him.”
A stub of a man, this Mohammedan colonel … a projectile shape … a bald head hammered …
“Does he fight or do they put him in a cannon and shoot him at the enemy?”
This fly-by-night, this bull-roarer who knows everybody.
“I write forty books, history of Islam, history of Europe, true religion, scientific farming, I am the Roosevelt of the Caucasus, I go to America and ride horses in the moving pictures for $500,000, you get $50,000 …”
“I have 30,000 acres in the Caucasus, I have a stove factory in Petrograd the bolsheviks take from me, I am an old friend of the Czar, I am an old family friend of Clemenceau …”
These hands strangled three fellow workers for the czarist restoration, took their money, sent them in sacks to a river bottom … and scandalized Stockholm with his gang of strangler women.
Mid-sea strangler hands rise before me illustrating a wish, “I ride horses for the moving pictures in America, $500,000, and you get ten per cent …”
This rider of fugitive dawns.…
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Written by
Carl Sandburg |
WAGON WHEEL GAP is a place I never saw
And Red Horse Gulch and the chutes of Cripple Creek.
Red-shirted miners picking in the sluices,
Gamblers with red neckties in the night streets,
The fly-by-night towns of Bull Frog and Skiddoo,
The night-cool limestone white of Death Valley,
The straight drop of eight hundred feet
From a shelf road in the Hasiampa Valley:
Men and places they are I never saw.
I have seen three White Horse taverns,
One in Illinois, one in Pennsylvania,
One in a timber-hid road of Wisconsin.
I bought cheese and crackers
Between sun showers in a place called White Pigeon
Nestling with a blacksmith shop, a post-office,
And a berry-crate factory, where four roads cross.
On the Pecatonica River near Freeport
I have seen boys run barefoot in the leaves
Throwing clubs at the walnut trees
In the yellow-and-gold of autumn,
And there was a brown mash dry on the inside of their hands.
On the Cedar Fork Creek of Knox County
I know how the fingers of late October
Loosen the hazel nuts.
I know the brown eyes of half-open hulls.
I know boys named Lindquist, Swanson, Hildebrand.
I remember their cries when the nuts were ripe.
And some are in machine shops; some are in the navy;
And some are not on payrolls anywhere.
Their mothers are through waiting for them to come home.
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Written by
Thomas Hardy |
THE sun had wheeled from Grey's to Dammer's Crest,
And still I mused on that Thing imminent:
At length I sought the High-street to the West.
The level flare raked pane and pediment
And my wrecked face, and shaped my nearing friend
Like one of those the Furnace held unshent.
"I've news concerning her," he said. "Attend.
They fly to-night at the late moon's first gleam:
Watch with thy steel: two righteous thrusts will end
"Her shameless visions and his passioned dream.
I'll watch with thee, to testify thy wrong--
To aid, maybe--Law consecrates the scheme."
I started, and we paced the flags along
Till I replied: "Since it has come to this
I'll do it! But alone. I can be strong."
Three hours past Curfew, when the Froom's mild hiss
Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandise,
From Pummery-Tout to where the Gibbet is,
I crossed my pleasaunce hard by Glyd'path Rise,
And stood beneath the wall. Eleven strokes went,
And to the door they came, contrariwise,
And met in clasp so close I had but bent
My lifted blade upon them to have let
Their two souls loose upon the firmament.
But something held my arm. "A moment yet
As pray-time ere you wantons die!" I said;
And then they saw me. Swift her gaze was set
With eye and cry of love illimited
Upon her Heart-king. Never upon me
Had she thrown look of love so thorough-sped!...
At once she flung her faint form shieldingly
On his, against the vengeance of my vows;
The which o'erruling, her shape shielded he.
Blanked by such love, I stood as in a drowse,
And the slow moon edged from the upland nigh,
My sad thoughts moving thuswise: "I may house
"And I may husband her, yet what am I
But licensed tyrant to this bonded pair?
Says Charity, Do as ye would be done by."...
Hurling my iron to the bushes there,
I bade them stay. And, as if brain and breast
Were passive, they walked with me to the stair.
Inside the house none watched; and on we prest
Before a mirror, in whose gleam I read
Her beauty, his,--and mine own mien unblest;
Till at her room I turned. "Madam," I said,
"Have you the wherewithal for this? Pray speak.
Love fills no cupboard. You'll need daily bread."
"We've nothing, sire," said she, "and nothing seek.
'Twere base in me to rob my lord unware;
Our hands will earn a pittance week by week."
And next I saw she'd piled her raiment rare
Within the garde-robes, and her household purse,
Her jewels, and least lace of personal wear;
And stood in homespun. Now grown wholly hers,
I handed her the gold, her jewells all,
And him the choicest of her robes diverse.
"I'll take you to the doorway in the wall,
And then adieu," I to them. "Friends, withdraw."
They did so; and she went--beyond recall.
And as I paused beneath the arch I saw
Their moonlit figures--slow, as in surprise--
Descend the slope, and vanish on the haw.
"'Fool,' some will say," I thought. "But who is wise,
Save God alone, to weigh my reasons why?"
--"Hast thou struck home?" came with the boughs' night-sighs.
It was my friend. "I have struck well. They fly,
But carry wounds that none can cicatrize."
--"Not mortal?" said he. "Lingering--worse," said I.
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