Written by
Elinor Wylie |
My love came up from Barnegat,
The sea was in his eyes;
He trod as softly as a cat
And told me terrible lies.
His hair was yellow as new-cut pine
In shavings curled and feathered;
I thought how silver it would shine
By cruel winters weathered.
But he was in his twentieth year,
Ths time I'm speaking of;
We were head over heels in love with fear
And half a-feared of love.
My hair was piled in a copper crown --
A devilish living thing --
And the tortise-shell pins fell down, fell down,
When that snake uncoiled to spring.
His feet were used to treading a gale
And balancing thereon;
His face was as brown as a foreign sail
Threadbare against the sun.
His arms were thick as hickory logs
Whittled to little wrists;
Strong as the teeth of a terrier dog
Were the fingers of his fists.
Within his arms I feared to sink
Where lions shook their manes,
And dragons drawn in azure ink
Lept quickened by his veins.
Dreadful his strength and length of limb
As the sea to foundering ships;
I dipped my hands in love for him
No deeper than the tips.
But our palms were welded by a flame
The moment we came to part,
And on his knuckles I read my name
Enscrolled with a heart.
And something made our wills to bend,
As wild as trees blown over;
We were no longer friend and friend,
But only lover and lover.
"In seven weeks or seventy years --
God grant it may be sooner! --
I'll make a hankerchief for you
From the sails of my captain's schooner.
We'll wear our loves like wedding rings
Long polished to our touch;
We shall be busy with other things
And they cannot bother us much.
When you are skimming the wrinkled cream
And your ring clinks on the pan,
You'll say to yourself in a pensive dream,
'How wonderful a man!'
When I am slitting a fish's head
And my ring clanks on the knife,
I'll say with thanks as a prayer is said,
'How beautiful a wife!'
And I shall fold my decorous paws
In velvet smooth and deep,
Like a kitten that covers up its claws
To sleep and sleep and sleep.
Like a little blue pigeon you shall bow
Your bright alarming crest;
In the crook of my arm you'll lay your brow
To rest and rest and rest.
Will he never come back from Barnegat
With thunder in his eyes,
Treading as soft as a tiger cat,
To tell me terrible lies?
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Written by
Thomas Hardy |
Southampton Docks: October 1899
Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,
And Cendric with the Saxons entered in,
And Henry's army lept afloat to win
Convincing triumphs over neighboring lands,
Vaster battalions press for further strands,
To argue in the selfsame bloody mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
Still fails to mend.--Now deckward tramp the bands,
Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
And as each host draws out upon the sea
Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,
As if they knew not that they weep the while.
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Written by
William Topaz McGonagall |
Near by the silent waters of the Mediterranean,
And at the door of an old hut stood a coloured man,
Whose dress was oriental in style and poor with wear,
While adown his furrowed cheeks ran many a tear.
And the poor coloured man seemed very discontent,
And his grief overcame him at this moment;
And he wrung his hands in agony wild,
And he cried, "Oh! help me, great God, to find my child."
"And Ada, my dear wife, but now she is dead,
Which fills my poor heart with sorrow and dread;
She was a very loving wife, but of her I'm bereft,
And I and my lost child are only left.
And, alas! I know not where to find my boy,
Who is dear to me and my only joy;
But with the help of God I will find him,
And this day in search of him I will begin."
So Medoo leaves Turkey and goes to France,
Expecting to find his boy there perhaps by chance;
And while there in Paris he was told
His boy by an Arab had been sold
To a company of French players that performed in the street,
Which was sad news to hear about his boy Popeet;
And while searching for him and making great moan,
He was told he was ill and in Madame Mercy's Home.
Then away went Medoo with his heart full of joy,
To gaze upon the face of his long-lost boy;
Who had been treated by the players mercilessly,
But was taken to the home of Madame Celeste.
She was a member of the players and the leader's wife,
And she loved the boy Popeet as dear as her life,
Because she had no children of her own;
And for the poor ill-treated boy often she did moan.
And when Popeet's father visited the Home,
He was shown into a room where Popeet lay alone,
Pale and emaciated, in his little bed;
And when his father saw him he thought he was dead.
And when Popeet saw his father he lept out of bed,
And only that his father caught him he'd been killed dead;
And his father cried, " Popeet, my own darling boy,
Thank God I've found you, and my heart's full of joy."
Then Madame Mercy's tears fell thick and fast,
When she saw that Popeet had found his father at last;
Then poor Popeet was taken home without delay,
And lived happy with his father for many a day.
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Written by
Robert William Service |
Ah me! How hard is destiny!
If we could only know. . . .
I bought my son from Sicily
A score of years ago;
I haled him from our sunny vale
To streets of din and squalor,
And left it to professors pale
To make of him a scholar.
Had he remained a peasant lad,
A shepherd on the hill,
like golden faun in goatskin clad
He might be singing still;
He would have made the flock his care
And lept with gay reliance
On thymy heights, unwitting there
Was such a thing as science.
He would have crooned to his guitar,
Draughts of chianti drinking;
A better destiny by far
Than reading, writing, thinking.
So bent above his books was he,
His thirst for knowledge slaking,
He did not realize that we
Are worm-food in the making.
Ambition got him in its grip
And inched him to his doom;
Fate granted him a fellowship,
Then graved for him a tomb.
"Beneath my feet I can't allow
The grass to grow," he said;
And toiled so tirelessly that now
It grows above his head.
His honour scrolls shall feed the flame,
They mean no more to me;
His ashes I with bitter blame
Will take to Sicily.
And there I'll weep with heart bereft,
By groves and sunny rills,
And wish my laughing boy I'd left
A shepherd on the hills.
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