Written by
Robert Burns |
WHILE Europe’s eye is fix’d on mighty things,
The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.
First, in the Sexes’ intermix’d connection,
One sacred Right of Woman is, protection.
—
The tender flower that lifts its head, elate,
Helpless, must fall before the blasts of Fate,
Sunk on the earth, defac’d its lovely form,
Unless your shelter ward th’ impending storm.
Our second Right—but needless here is caution,
To keep that right inviolate’s the fashion;
Each man of sense has it so full before him,
He’d die before he’d wrong it—’tis decorum.
—
There was, indeed, in far less polish’d days,
A time, when rough rude man had naughty ways,
Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot,
Nay even thus invade a Lady’s quiet.
Now, thank our stars! those Gothic times are fled;
Now, well-bred men—and you are all well-bred—
Most justly think (and we are much the gainers)
Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor manners.
For Right the third, our last, our best, our dearest,
That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest;
Which even the Rights of Kings, in low prostration,
Most humbly own—’tis dear, dear admiration!
In that blest sphere alone we live and move;
There taste that life of life—immortal love.
Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs;
’Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares,
When awful Beauty joins with all her charms—
Who is so rash as rise in rebel arms?
But truce with kings, and truce with constitutions,
With bloody armaments and revolutions;
Let Majesty your first attention summon,
Ah! ça ira! THE MAJESTY OF WOMAN!
|
Written by
Robert Frost |
Now that they've got it settled whose I be,
I'm going to tell them something they won't like:
They've got it settled wrong, and I can prove it.
Flattered I must be to have two towns fighting
To make a present of me to each other.
They don't dispose me, either one of them,
To spare them any trouble.
Double trouble's
Always the witch's motto anyway.
I'll double theirs for both of them-you watch me.
They'll find they've got the whole thing to do over,
That is, if facts is what they want to go by.
They set a lot (now don't they?) by a record
Of Arthur Amy's having once been up
For Hog Reeve in March Meeting here in Warren.
I could have told them any time this twelvemonth
The Arthur Amy I was married to
Couldn't have been the one they say was up
In Warren at March Meeting, for the reason
He wa'n't but fifteen at the time they say.
The Arthur Amy I was married to
Voted the only times he ever voted,
Which wasn't many, in the town of Wentworth.
One of the times was when 'twas in the warrant
To see if the town wanted to take over
The tote road to our clearing where we lived.
I'll tell you who'd remember-Heman Lapish.
Their Arthur Amy was the father of mine.
So now they've dragged it through the law courts once
I guess they'd better drag it through again.
Wentworth and Warren's both good towns to live in,
Only I happen to prefer to live
In Wentworth from now on; and when all's said,
Right's right, and the temptation to do right
When I can hurt someone by doing it
Has always been too much for me, it has.
I know of some folks that'd be set up
At having in their town a noted witch:
But most would have to think of the expense
That even I would be.
They ought to know
That as a witch I'd often milk a bat
And that'd be enough to last for days.
It'd make my position stronger, think,
If I was to consent to give some sign
To make it surer that I was a witch?
It wa'n't no sign, I s'pose, when Mallice Huse
Said that I took him out in his old age
And rode all over everything on him
Until I'd bad him worn to skin and bones
And if I'd left him bitched unblanketed
In front of one Town Hall, I'd left him hitched
front of every one in Grafton County.
Some cried shame on me not to blanket him,
The poor old man.
It would have been all right
If someone hadn't said to gnaw the posts
He stood beside and leave his trademark on them,
So they could recognize them.
Not a post
That they could hear tell of was scarified.
They made him keep on gnawing till he whined.
Then that same smarty someone said to look
He'd bet Huse was a cribber and bad gnawed
The crib he slept in-and as sure's you're born
They found he'd gnawed the four posts of his bed,
All four of them to splinters.
What did that prove?
Not that he hadn't gnawed the hitching posts
He said he had, besides.
Because a horse
Gnaws in the stable ain't no proof to me
He don't gnaw trees and posts and fences too.
But everybody took it for a proof.
I was a strapping girl of twenty then.
The smarty someone who spoiled everything
Was Arthur Amy.
You know who he was.
That was the way he started courting me.
He never said much after we were married,
But I mistrusted be was none too proud
Of having interfered in the Huse business.
I guess be found he got more out of me
By having me a witch.
Or something happened
To turn him round.
He got to saying things
To undo what he'd done and make it right,
Like, "No, she ain't come back from kiting yet.
Last night was one of her nights out.
She's kiting.
She thinks when the wind makes a night of it
She might as well herself.
" But he liked best
To let on he was plagued to death with me:
If anyone had seen me coming home
Over the ridgepole, ' stride of a broomstick,
As often as he had in the tail of the night,
He guessed they'd know what he had to put up with.
Well, I showed Arthur Amy signs enough
Off from the house as far as we could keep
And from barn smells you can't wash out of plowed ground
With all the rain and snow of seven years;
And I don't mean just skulls of Rogers' Rangers
On Moosilauke, but woman signs to man,
Only bewitched so I would last him longer.
Up where the trees grow short, the mosses tall,
I made him gather me wet snowberries
On slippery rocks beside a waterfall.
I made him do it for me in the dark.
And he liked everything I made him do.
I hope if he is where he sees me now
He's so far off be can't see what I've come to.
You can come down from everything to nothing.
All is, if I'd a-known when I was young
And full of it, that this would be the end,
It doesn't seem as if I'd had the courage
To make so free and kick up in folks' faces.
I might have, but it doesn't seem as if.
|
Written by
Henry Lawson |
His old clay pipe stuck in his mouth,
His hat pushed from his brow,
His dress best fitted for the South --
I think I see him now;
And when the city streets are still,
And sleep upon me comes,
I often dream that me an' Bill
Are humpin' of our drums.
I mind the time when first I came
A stranger to the land;
And I was stumped, an' sick, an' lame
When Bill took me in hand.
Old Bill was what a chap would call
A friend in poverty,
And he was very kind to all,
And very good to me.
We'd camp beneath the lonely trees
And sit beside the blaze,
A-nursin' of our wearied knees,
A-smokin' of our clays.
Or when we'd journeyed damp an' far,
An' clouds were in the skies,
We'd camp in some old shanty bar,
And sit a-tellin' lies.
Though time had writ upon his brow
And rubbed away his curls,
He always was -- an' may be now --
A favourite with the girls;
I've heard bush-wimmin scream an' squall --
I've see'd 'em laugh until
They could not do their work at all,
Because of Corny Bill.
He was the jolliest old pup
As ever you did see,
And often at some bush kick-up
They'd make old Bill M.
C.
He'd make them dance and sing all night,
He'd make the music hum,
But he'd be gone at mornin' light
A-humpin' of his drum.
Though joys of which the poet rhymes
Was not for Bill an' me,
I think we had some good old times
Out on the wallaby.
I took a wife and left off rum,
An' camped beneath a roof;
But Bill preferred to hump his drum
A-paddin' of the hoof.
The lazy, idle loafers what
In toney houses camp
Would call old Bill a drunken sot,
A loafer, or a tramp;
But if the dead should ever dance --
As poets say they will --
I think I'd rather take my chance
Along of Corny Bill.
His long life's-day is nearly o'er,
Its shades begin to fall;
He soon must mount his bluey for
The last long tramp of all;
I trust that when, in bush an' town,
He's lived and learnt his fill,
They'll let the golden slip-rails down
For poor old Corny Bill.
|
Written by
Charles Bukowski |
I have just spent one-hour-and-a-half
handicapping tomorrow's
card.
when am I going to get at the poems?
well, they'll just have to wait
they'll have to warm their feet in the
anteroom
where they'll sit gossiping about
me.
"this Chinaski, doesn't he realize that
without us he would have long ago
gone mad, been dead?"
"he knows, but he thinks he can keep
us at his beck and call!"
"he's an ingrate!"
"let's give him writer's block!"
"yeah!"
"yeah!"
"yeah!"
the little poems kick up their heels
and laugh.
then the biggest one gets up and
walks toward the door.
"hey, where are you going?" he is
asked.
"somewhere where I am
appreciated.
"
then, he
and the others
vanish.
I open a beer, sit down at the
machine and nothing
happens.
like now.
from the 1997 Black Sparrow New Year's greeting, "A New War"
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
The little pink house is high on the hill
And my heart is not what it used to be;
It will kick up a fuss I know, but still
I must toil up that twisty trail to see
What that empty old house can mean to me.
For a Poet lived there for donkey's years,
A Poet of parts and founded fame.
He took to the bottle, it appears,
And hid up there to enjoy his shame .
.
.
Oh, no, I'll never betray his name.
Then gaily he drank himself to death,
But, oh, on the rarest of mellow wine;
An exquisite way to end one's breath -
Lachrimae Christi, I'd choose for mine,
To sip and souse in the sweet sunshine.
They say that poets are half divine;
I question if that is always true;
At least, our Poet was partly swine,
Drunk each day, with a drab or two,
Till Presto! he vanished from our view.
Maybe he was weary of woe and sin,
Or sick, and crawled like a dog to die;
Where the olives end and the pines begin,
He sought the peace of the sun and sky .
.
.
He would see no one, and I wonder why?
And so I must climb up, up some day
And try to picture my Poet there;
He sprawled on his rose-bowered porch, they say,
To smoke and fuddle and dream and stare
At the sapphire sea through the amber air.
He gave up the ghost with none to see;
In his bed, no doubt, though I'd fain surmise
It was yonder under the ilex tree,
Watching the sun in splendour rise,
With the glory of God-light in his eyes.
Well, he was a Lord of Radiant Rhyme;
His gift was godlike, one can't deny,
But he quit in the glory of his prime
As if he despised us - I wonder why?
As if he found, where yon mountains soar,
Far from men-folk and heaven-high,
Peace and Beauty forever more .
.
.
Peace and Beauty - Ah! so would I.
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