Written by
Robert William Service |
Said darling daughter unto me:
"oh Dad, how funny it would be
If you had gone to Mexico
A score or so of years ago.
Had not some whimsey changed your plan
I might have been a Mexican.
With lissome form and raven hair,
Instead of being fat and fair.
"Or if you'd sailed the Southern Seas
And mated with a Japanese
I might have been a squatty girl
With never golden locks to curl,
Who flirted with a painted fan,
And tinkled on a samisan,
And maybe slept upon a mat -
I'm very glad I don't do that.
"When I consider the romance
Of all your youth of change and chance
I might, I fancy, just as well
Have bloomed a bold Tahitian belle,
Or have been born . . . but there - ah no!
I draw the line - and Esquimeaux.
It scares me stiff to think of what
I might have been - thank God! I'm not."
Said I: "my dear, don't be absurd,
Since everything that has occurred,
Through seeming fickle in your eyes,
Could not a jot be otherwise.
For in this casual cosmic biz
The world can be but what it is;
And nobody can dare deny
Part of this world is you and I.
Or call it fate or destiny
No other issue could there be.
Though half the world I've wandered through
Cause and effect have linked us two.
Aye, all the aeons of the past
Conspired to bring us here at last,
And all I ever chanced to do
Inevitably led to you.
To you, to make you what you are,
A maiden in a Morris car,
IN Harris tweeds, an airedale too,
But Anglo-Saxon through and through.
And all the good and ill I've done
In every land beneath the sun
Magnificently led to this -
A country cottage and - your kiss."
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Written by
Marianne Moore |
Although the aepyornis
or roc that lived in Madagascar, and
the moa are extinct,
the camel-sparrow, linked
with them in size--the large sparrow
Xenophon saw walking by a stream--was and is
a symbol of justice.
This bird watches his chicks with
a maternal concentration-and he's
been mothering the eggs
at night six weeks--his legs
their only weapon of defense.
He is swifter than a horse; he has a foot hard
as a hoof; the leopard
is not more suspicious.How
could he, prized for plumes and eggs and young
used even as a riding-beast, respect men
hiding actor-like in ostrich skins, with the right hand
making the neck move as if alive
and from a bag the left hand strewing grain, that ostriches
might be decoyed and killed!Yes, this is he
whose plume was anciently
the plume of justice; he
whose comic duckling head on its
great neck revolves with compass-needle nervousness
when he stands guard,
in S-like foragings as he is
preening the down on his leaden-skinned back.
The egg piously shown
as Leda's very own
from which Castor and Pollux hatched,
was an ostrich-egg.And what could have been more fit
for the Chinese lawn it
grazed on as a gift to an
emperor who admired strange birds, than this
one, who builds his mud-made
nest in dust yet will wade
in lake or sea till only the head shows.
. . . . . . .
Six hundred ostrich-brains served
at one banquet, the ostrich-plume-tipped tent
and desert spear, jewel-
gorgeous ugly egg-shell
goblets, eight pairs of ostriches
in harness, dramatize a meaning
always missed by the externalist.
The power of the visible
is the invisible; as even where
no tree of freedom grows,
so-called brute courage knows.
Heroism is exhausting, yet
it contradicts a greed that did not wisely spare
the harmless solitaire
or great auk in its grandeur;
unsolicitude having swallowed up
all giant birds but an alert gargantuan
little-winged, magnificently speedy running-bird.
This one remaining rebel
is the sparrow-camel.
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Written by
Vachel Lindsay |
The cornfields rise above mankind,
Lifting white torches to the blue,
Each season not ashamed to be
Magnificently decked for you.
What right have you to call them yours,
And in brute lust of riches burn
Without some radiant penance wrought,
Some beautiful, devout return?
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Written by
Robert Louis Stevenson |
FOR some abiding central source of power,
Strong-smitten steady chords, ye seem to flow
And, flowing, carry virtue. Far below,
The vain tumultuous passions of the hour
Fleet fast and disappear; and as the sun
Shines on the wake of tempests, there is cast
O'er all the shattered ruins of my past
A strong contentment as of battles won.
And yet I cry in anguish, as I hear
The long drawn pageant of your passage roll
Magnificently forth into the night.
To yon fair land ye come from, to yon sphere
Of strength and love where now ye shape your flight,
O even wings of music, bear my soul!
Ye have the power, if but ye had the will,
Strong-smitten steady chords in sequence grand,
To bear me forth into that tranquil land
Where good is no more ravelled up with ill;
Where she and I, remote upon some hill
Or by some quiet river's windless strand,
May live, and love, and wander hand in hand,
And follow nature simply, and be still.
From this grim world, where, sadly, prisoned, we
Sit bound with others' heart-strings as with chains,
And, if one moves, all suffer, - to that Goal,
If such a land, if such a sphere, there be,
Thither, from life and all life's joys and pains,
O even wings of music, bear my soul!
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Written by
Claude McKay |
Alfonso is a handsome bronze-hued lad
Of subtly-changing and surprising parts;
His moods are storms that frighten and make glad,
His eyes were made to capture women's hearts.
Down in the glory-hole Alfonso sings
An olden song of wine and clinking glasses
And riotous rakes; magnificently flings
Gay kisses to imaginary lasses.
Alfonso's voice of mellow music thrills
Our swaying forms and steals our hearts with joy;
And when he soars, his fine falsetto trills
Are rarest notes of gold without alloy.
But, O Alfonso! wherefore do you sing
Dream-songs of carefree men and ancient places?
Soon we shall be beset by clamouring
Of hungry and importunate palefaces.
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Written by
Robert Graves |
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon
The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
As for the Greek theatrical tradition
Which represents that summer's expedition
Not as a mere reconnaisance in force
By three brigades of foot and one of horse
(Their left flank covered by some obsolete
Light craft detached from the main Persian fleet)
But as a grandiose, ill-starred attempt
To conquer Greece - they treat it with contempt;
And only incidentally refute
Major Greek claims, by stressing what repute
The Persian monarch and the Persian nation
Won by this salutary demonstration:
Despite a strong defence and adverse weather
All arms combined magnificently together.
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