10 Best Famous Threes Poems

Here is a collection of the top 10 all-time best famous Threes poems. This is a select list of the best famous Threes poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Threes poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of threes poems.

• All Famous Threes Poems

 1
BROTHER of all, with generous hand, 
Of thee, pondering on thee, as o’er thy tomb, I and my Soul, 
A thought to launch in memory of thee, 
A burial verse for thee. 

What may we chant, O thou within this tomb?
What tablets, pictures, hang for thee, O millionaire? 
—The life thou lived’st we know not, 
But that thou walk’dst thy years in barter, ’mid the haunts of brokers; 
Nor heroism thine, nor war, nor glory. 

Yet lingering, yearning, joining soul with thine,
If not thy past we chant, we chant the future, 
Select, adorn the future. 

2
Lo, Soul, the graves of heroes! 
The pride of lands—the gratitudes of men, 
The statues of the manifold famous dead, Old World and New,
The kings, inventors, generals, poets, (stretch wide thy vision, Soul,) 
The excellent rulers of the races, great discoverers, sailors, 
Marble and brass select from them, with pictures, scenes, 
(The histories of the lands, the races, bodied there, 
In what they’ve built for, graced and graved,
Monuments to their heroes.) 

3
Silent, my Soul, 
With drooping lids, as waiting, ponder’d, 
Turning from all the samples, all the monuments of heroes. 

While through the interior vistas,
Noiseless uprose, phantasmic (as, by night, Auroras of the North,) 
Lambent tableaux, prophetic, bodiless scenes, 
Spiritual projections. 

In one, among the city streets, a laborer’s home appear’d, 
After his day’s work done, cleanly, sweet-air’d, the gaslight burning,
The carpet swept, and a fire in the cheerful stove. 

In one, the sacred parturition scene, 
A happy, painless mother birth’d a perfect child. 

In one, at a bounteous morning meal, 
Sat peaceful parents, with contented sons.

In one, by twos and threes, young people, 
Hundreds concentering, walk’d the paths and streets and roads, 
Toward a tall-domed school. 

In one a trio, beautiful, 
Grandmother, loving daughter, loving daughter’s daughter, sat,
Chatting and sewing. 

In one, along a suite of noble rooms, 
’Mid plenteous books and journals, paintings on the walls, fine statuettes, 
Were groups of friendly journeymen, mechanics, young and old, 
Reading, conversing.

All, all the shows of laboring life, 
City and country, women’s, men’s and children’s, 
Their wants provided for, hued in the sun, and tinged for once with joy, 
Marriage, the street, the factory, farm, the house-room, lodging-room, 
Labor and toil, the bath, gymnasium, play-ground, library, college,
The student, boy or girl, led forward to be taught; 
The sick cared for, the shoeless shod—the orphan father’d and mother’d, 
The hungry fed, the houseless housed; 
(The intentions perfect and divine, 
The workings, details, haply human.)

4
O thou within this tomb, 
From thee, such scenes—thou stintless, lavish Giver, 
Tallying the gifts of Earth—large as the Earth, 
Thy name an Earth, with mountains, fields and rivers. 

Nor by your streams alone, you rivers,
By you, your banks, Connecticut, 
By you, and all your teeming life, Old Thames, 
By you, Potomac, laving the ground Washington trod—by you Patapsco, 
You, Hudson—you, endless Mississippi—not by you alone, 
But to the high seas launch, my thought, his memory.

5
Lo, Soul, by this tomb’s lambency, 
The darkness of the arrogant standards of the world, 
With all its flaunting aims, ambitions, pleasures. 

(Old, commonplace, and rusty saws, 
The rich, the gay, the supercilious, smiled at long,
Now, piercing to the marrow in my bones, 
Fused with each drop my heart’s blood jets, 
Swim in ineffable meaning.) 

Lo, Soul, the sphere requireth, portioneth, 
To each his share, his measure,
The moderate to the moderate, the ample to the ample. 

Lo, Soul, see’st thou not, plain as the sun, 
The only real wealth of wealth in generosity, 
The only life of life in goodness?

 Now Jones had left his new-wed bride to keep his house in order,
And hied away to the Hurrum Hills above the Afghan border,
To sit on a rock with a heliograph; but ere he left he taught
His wife the working of the Code that sets the miles at naught.

And Love had made him very sage, as Nature made her fair;
So Cupid and Apollo linked , per heliograph, the pair.
At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise --
At e'en, the dying sunset bore her busband's homilies.

He warned her 'gainst seductive youths in scarlet clad and gold,
As much as 'gainst the blandishments paternal of the old;
But kept his gravest warnings for (hereby the ditty hangs)
That snowy-haired Lothario, Lieutenant-General Bangs.

'Twas General Bangs, with Aide and Staff, who tittupped on the way,
When they beheld a heliograph tempestuously at play.
They thought of Border risings, and of stations sacked and burnt --
So stopped to take the message down -- and this is whay they learnt --

"Dash dot dot, dot, dot dash, dot dash dot" twice. The General swore.
"Was ever General Officer addressed as 'dear' before?
"'My Love,' i' faith! 'My Duck,' Gadzooks! 'My darling popsy-wop!'
"Spirit of great Lord Wolseley, who is on that mountaintop?"

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute; the gilded Staff were still,
As, dumb with pent-up mirth, they booked that message from the hill;
For clear as summer lightning-flare, the husband's warning ran: --
"Don't dance or ride with General Bangs -- a most immoral man."

[At dawn, across the Hurrum Hills, he flashed her counsel wise --
But, howsoever Love be blind, the world at large hath eyes.]
With damnatory dot and dash he heliographed his wife
Some interesting details of the General's private life.

The artless Aide-de-camp was mute, the shining Staff were still,
And red and ever redder grew the General's shaven gill.
And this is what he said at last (his feelings matter not): --
"I think we've tapped a private line. Hi! Threes about there! Trot!"

All honour unto Bangs, for ne'er did Jones thereafter know
By word or act official who read off that helio.
But the tale is on the Frontier, and from Michni to Mooltan
They know the worthy General as "that most immoral man."

 "What should such fellows as I do,
Crawling between earth and heaven?"


Here is the phial; here I turn the key
Sharp in the lock. Click!--there's no doubt it turned.
This is the third time; there is luck in threes--
Queen Luck, that rules the world, befriend me now
And freely I'll forgive you many wrongs!
Just as the draught began to work, first time,
Tom Leigh, my friend (as friends go in the world),
Burst in, and drew the phial from my hand,
(Ah, Tom! ah, Tom! that was a sorry turn!)
And lectured me a lecture, all compact
Of neatest, newest phrases, freshly culled
From works of newest culture: "common good ;"
"The world's great harmonies;""must be content
With knowing God works all things for the best,
And Nature never stumbles." Then again,
"The common good," and still, "the common, good;"
And what a small thing was our joy or grief
When weigh'd with that of thousands. Gentle Tom,
But you might wag your philosophic tongue
From morn till eve, and still the thing's the same:
I am myself, as each man is himself--
Feels his own pain, joys his own joy, and loves
With his own love, no other's. Friend, the world
Is but one man; one man is but the world.
And I am I, and you are Tom, that bleeds
When needles prick your flesh (mark, yours, not mine).
I must confess it; I can feel the pulse
A-beating at my heart, yet never knew
The throb of cosmic pulses. I lament
The death of youth's ideal in my heart;
And, to be honest, never yet rejoiced
In the world's progress--scarce, indeed, discerned;
(For still it seems that God's a Sisyphus
With the world for stone).
You shake your head. I'm base,
Ignoble? Who is noble--you or I?
I was not once thus? Ah, my friend, we are
As the Fates make us.
This time is the third;
The second time the flask fell from my hand,
Its drowsy juices spilt upon the board;
And there my face fell flat, and all the life
Crept from my limbs, and hand and foot were bound
With mighty chains, subtle, intangible;
While still the mind held to its wonted use,
Or rather grew intense and keen with dread,
An awful dread--I thought I was in Hell.
In Hell, in Hell ! Was ever Hell conceived
By mortal brain, by brain Divine devised,
Darker, more fraught with torment, than the world
For such as I? A creature maimed and marr'd 
From very birth. A blot, a blur, a note
All out of tune in this world's instrument.
A base thing, yet not knowing to fulfil
Base functions. A high thing, yet all unmeet
For work that's high. A dweller on the earth,
Yet not content to dig with other men
Because of certain sudden sights and sounds
(Bars of broke music; furtive, fleeting glimpse
Of angel faces 'thwart the grating seen)
Perceived in Heaven. Yet when I approach
To catch the sound's completeness, to absorb
The faces' full perfection, Heaven's gate,
Which then had stood ajar, sudden falls to,
And I, a-shiver in the dark and cold,
Scarce hear afar the mocking tones of men:
"He would not dig, forsooth ; but he must strive
For higher fruits than what our tillage yields;
Behold what comes, my brothers, of vain pride!"
Why play with figures? trifle prettily
With this my grief which very simply's said,
"There is no place for me in all the world"?
The world's a rock, and I will beat no more
A breast of flesh and blood against a rock. . .
A stride across the planks for old time's sake.
Ah, bare, small room that I have sorrowed in; 
Ay, and on sunny days, haply, rejoiced;
We know some things together, you and I!
Hold there, you rangèd row of books ! In vain
You beckon from your shelf. You've stood my friends
Where all things else were foes; yet now I'll turn 
My back upon you, even as the world
Turns it on me. And yet--farewell, farewell!
You, lofty Shakespere, with the tattered leaves
And fathomless great heart, your binding's bruised
Yet did I love you less? Goethe, farewell;
Farewell, triumphant smile and tragic eyes,
And pitiless world-wisdom!

For all men
These two. And 'tis farewell with you, my friends,
More dear because more near: Theokritus;
Heine that stings and smiles; Prometheus' bard;
(I've grown too coarse for Shelley latterly:)
And one wild singer of to-day, whose song
Is all aflame with passionate bard's blood
Lash'd into foam by pain and the world's wrong.
At least, he has a voice to cry his pain;
For him, no silent writhing in the dark,
No muttering of mute lips, no straining out
Of a weak throat a-choke with pent-up sound,
A-throb with pent-up passion. . .
Ah, my sun!
That's you, then, at the window, looking in
To beam farewell on one who's loved you long
And very truly. Up, you creaking thing,
You squinting, cobwebbed casement!
So, at last,
I can drink in the sunlight. How it falls.
Across that endless sea of London roofs,
Weaving such golden wonders on the grey,
That almost, for the moment, we forget
The world of woe beneath them.
Underneath,
For all the sunset glory, Pain is king.

Yet, the sun's there, and very sweet withal;
And I'll not grumble that it's only sun,
But open wide my lips--thus--drink it in;
Turn up my face to the sweet evening sky
(What royal wealth of scarlet on the blue
So tender toned, you'd almost think it green)
And stretch my hands out--so--to grasp it tight.
Ha, ha! 'tis sweet awhile to cheat the Fates,
And be as happy as another man.
The sun works in my veins like wine, like wine!
'Tis a fair world: if dark, indeed, with woe,
Yet having hope and hint of such a joy,
That a man, winning, well might turn aside,
Careless of Heaven . . .
O enough; I turn
From the sun's light, or haply I shall hope.
I have hoped enough; I would not hope again:
'Tis hope that is most cruel.
Tom, my friend,
You very sorry philosophic fool;
'Tis you, I think, that bid me be resign'd,
Trust, and be thankful.
Out on you! Resign'd?
I'm not resign'd, not patient, not school'd in
To take my starveling's portion and pretend
I'm grateful for it. I want all, all, all;
I've appetite for all. I want the best:
Love, beauty, sunlight, nameless joy of life.
There's too much patience in the world, I think.
We have grown base with crooking of the knee.
Mankind--say--God has bidden to a feast;
The board is spread, and groans with cates and drinks;
In troop the guests; each man with appetite
Keen-whetted with expectance.
In they troop,
Struggle for seats, jostle and push and seize.
What's this? what's this? There are not seats for all!
Some men must stand without the gates; and some
Must linger by the table, ill-supplied
With broken meats. One man gets meat for two,
The while another hungers. If I stand
Without the portals, seeing others eat
Where I had thought to satiate the pangs
Of mine own hunger; shall I then come forth
When all is done, and drink my Lord's good health
In my Lord's water? Shall I not rather turn
And curse him, curse him for a niggard host?
O, I have hungered, hungered, through the years,
Till appetite grows craving, then disease;
I am starved, wither'd, shrivelled.
Peace, O peace!
This rage is idle; what avails to curse
The nameless forces, the vast silences
That work in all things.
This time is the third,
I wrought before in heat, stung mad with pain,
Blind, scarcely understanding; now I know
What thing I do.
There was a woman once;
Deep eyes she had, white hands, a subtle smile,
Soft speaking tones: she did not break my heart,
Yet haply had her heart been otherwise
Mine had not now been broken. Yet, who knows?
My life was jarring discord from the first:
Tho' here and there brief hints of melody,
Of melody unutterable, clove the air.
From this bleak world, into the heart of night,
The dim, deep bosom of the universe,
I cast myself. I only crave for rest;
Too heavy is the load. I fling it down.


EPILOGUE.

We knocked and knocked; at last, burst in the door,
And found him as you know--the outstretched arms
Propping the hidden face. The sun had set,
And all the place was dim with lurking shade.
There was no written word to say farewell,
Or make more clear the deed.
I search'd and search'd;
The room held little: just a row of books
Much scrawl'd and noted; sketches on the wall,
Done rough in charcoal; the old instrument
(A violin, no Stradivarius)
He played so ill on; in the table drawer
Large schemes of undone work. Poems half-writ;
Wild drafts of symphonies; big plans of fugues;
Some scraps of writing in a woman's hand:
No more--the scattered pages of a tale,
A sorry tale that no man cared to read.
Alas, my friend, I lov'd him well, tho' he
Held me a cold and stagnant-blooded fool,
Because I am content to watch, and wait
With a calm mind the issue of all things.
Certain it is my blood's no turbid stream;
Yet, for all that, haply I understood
More than he ever deem'd; nor held so light
The poet in him. Nay, I sometimes doubt
If they have not, indeed, the better part--
These poets, who get drunk with sun, and weep
Because the night or a woman's face is fair.
Meantime there is much talk about my friend.
The women say, of course, he died for love;
The men, for lack of gold, or cavilling
Of carping critics. I, Tom Leigh, his friend
I have no word at all to say of this.
Nay, I had deem'd him more philosopher;
For did he think by this one paltry deed
To cut the knot of circumstance, and snap
The chain which binds all being?

 In these days of peace and money, free to all the Commonweal, 
There are ancient dames in Buckland wearing wedding rings of steel; 
Wedding rings of steel and iron, worn on wrinkled hands and old, 
And the wearers would not give them, not for youth nor wealth untold. 

In the days of black oppression, when the best abandoned hope, 
And all Buckland crouched in terror of the prison and the rope, 
Many fair young wives in Buckland prayed beside their lonely beds 
For the absent ones who knew not where to lay their outlawed heads. 

But a whisper went through Buckland, to the rebels only known, 
That the man across the border had a chance to hold his own. 
There were men that came in darkness, quiet, grim and travel-worn, 
And, by twos, and threes, the young men stole away to join Kinghorn. 

Slipping powder-horns and muskets from beneath the floors and thatch, 
There were boys who kissed their mothers ere they softly dropped the latch; 
There were hunters' wives in backwoods who sat strangely still and white 
Till the dawn, because their men-folk went a-hunting in the night. 

But the rebels needed money, and so, through the Buckland hills, 
Came again, by night, the gloomy men of monosyllables; 
And the ladies gave their jewels to be smuggled out and sold, 
And the homely wives of Buckland gave their wedding rings of gold. 

And a Buckland smith in secret, and in danger, in his shed 
Made them rings of baser metals (from the best he had, to lead), 
To be gilt and worn to market, or to meetings where they.prayed, 
Lest the spies should get an inkling, and the husbands be betrayed. 

Then a silence fell on Buckland; there was peace throughout the land, 
And a loyalty that puzzled all the captains in command; 
There was too much Law and Order for the men who weren't blind, 
And the greatest of the king's men wasn't easy in his mind. 

They were hunting rebels, certes, and the troops were understood 
To be searching for a stronghold like a needle in a wood; 
But whene'er the king was prayed for in the meeting-houses, then 
It was strange with how much unction ancient sinners cried "Ah-men!" 

Till at last, when all was quiet, through the gloomy Buckland hills 
Once again there came those furtive men of monosyllables; 
And their message was – "Take warning what the morrow may reveal, 
Death and Freedom may be married with a wedding ring of steel." 

In the morning, from the marshes, rose the night-mist, cold and damp, 
From the shipping in the harbour and the sleeping royal camp; 
From the lanes and from the by-streets and the high streets of the town, 
And above the hills of Buckland, where the rebel guns looked down. 

And the first one sent a message to the camp to fight or yield, 
And the wintry sun looked redly on a bloody battlefield; 
Till the man from 'cross the border marched through Buckland once again, 
With a charter for the people and ten thousand fighting men. 

There are ancient dames in Buckland with old secrets to reveal, 
Wearing wedding rings of iron, wearing wedding rings of steel; 
And their tears drop on the metal when their thoughts are far away 
In the past where their young husbands died on Buckland field that day.

 The Cross, the Cross
Goes deeper in than we know,
Deeper into life;
Right into the marrow
And through the bone.
Along the back of the baby tortoise
The scales are locked in an arch like a bridge,
Scale-lapping, like a lobster's sections
Or a bee's.

Then crossways down his sides
Tiger-stripes and wasp-bands.

Five, and five again, and five again,
And round the edges twenty-five little ones,
The sections of the baby tortoise shell.

Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Four, and a keystone;
Then twenty-four, and a tiny little keystone.

It needed Pythagoras to see life playing with counters on the living back
Of the baby tortoise;
Life establishing the first eternal mathematical tablet,
Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise shell.

The first little mathematical gentleman
Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers
Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law.

Fives, and tens,
Threes and fours and twelves,
All the volte face of decimals,
The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven.

Turn him on his back,
The kicking little beetle,
And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching belly,
The long cleavage of division, upright of the eternal cross
And on either side count five,
On each side, two above, on each side, two below
The dark bar horizontal.

The Cross!
It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,
Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,
Through his five-fold complex-nature.

So turn him over on his toes again;
Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-piece,
Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing head,
Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all mathematics.

The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate
Of the baby tortoise.
Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvednes,s of an individual creature
Plotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one.

 ASHES of soldiers! 
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought, 
Lo! the war resumes—again to my sense your shapes, 
And again the advance of armies. 

Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending, 
From the cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee, 
From every point of the compass, out of the countless unnamed graves, 
In wafted clouds, in myraids large, or squads of twos or threes, or single ones, they
 come, 
And silently gather round me.

Now sound no note, O trumpeters! 
Not at the head of my cavalry, parading on spirited horses, 
With sabres drawn and glist’ning, and carbines by their thighs—(ah, my brave
 horsemen! 
My handsome, tan-faced horsemen! what life, what joy and pride, 
With all the perils, were yours!)

Nor you drummers—neither at reveille, at dawn, 
Nor the long roll alarming the camp—nor even the muffled beat for a burial; 
Nothing from you, this time, O drummers, bearing my warlike drums. 

But aside from these, and the marts of wealth, and the crowded promenade, 
Admitting around me comrades close, unseen by the rest, and voiceless,
The slain elate and alive again—the dust and debris alive, 
I chant this chant of my silent soul, in the name of all dead soldiers. 

Faces so pale, with wondrous eyes, very dear, gather closer yet; 
Draw close, but speak not. 

Phantoms of countless lost!
Invisible to the rest, henceforth become my companions! 
Follow me ever! desert me not, while I live. 

Sweet are the blooming cheeks of the living! sweet are the musical voices sounding! 
But sweet, ah sweet, are the dead, with their silent eyes. 

Dearest comrades! all is over and long gone;
But love is not over—and what love, O comrades! 
Perfume from battle-fields rising—up from foetor arising. 

Perfume therefore my chant, O love! immortal Love! 
Give me to bathe the memories of all dead soldiers, 
Shroud them, embalm them, cover them all over with tender pride!

Perfume all! make all wholesome! 
Make these ashes to nourish and blossom, 
O love! O chant! solve all, fructify all with the last chemistry. 

Give me exhaustless—make me a fountain, 
That I exhale love from me wherever I go, like a moist perennial dew,
For the ashes of all dead soldiers.

 ORTHODOX! orthodox, who believe in John Knox,
 Let me sound an alarm to your conscience:
A heretic blast has been blown in the West,
 That what is no sense must be nonsense,
Orthodox! That what is no sense must be nonsense.


Doctor Mac! Doctor Mac, you should streek on a rack,
 To strike evil-doers wi’ terror:
To join Faith and Sense, upon any pretence,
 Was heretic, damnable error,
Doctor Mac! 1 ’Twas heretic, damnable error.


Town of Ayr! town of Ayr, it was mad, I declare,
 To meddle wi’ mischief a-brewing, 2
Provost John 3 is still deaf to the Church’s relief,
 And Orator Bob 4 is its ruin,
Town of Ayr! Yes, Orator Bob is its ruin.


D’rymple mild! D’rymple mild, tho’ your heart’s like a child,
 And your life like the new-driven snaw,
Yet that winna save you, auld Satan must have you,
 For preaching that three’s ane an’ twa,
D’rymple mild! 5 For preaching that three’s ane an’ twa.


Rumble John! rumble John, mount the steps with a groan,
 Cry the book is with heresy cramm’d;
Then out wi’ your ladle, deal brimstone like aidle,
 And roar ev’ry note of the D—’d.
Rumble John! 6 And roar ev’ry note of the D—’d.


Simper James! simper James, leave your fair Killie dames,
 There’s a holier chase in your view:
I’ll lay on your head, that the pack you’ll soon lead,
 For puppies like you there’s but few,
Simper James! 7 For puppies like you there’s but few.


Singet Sawnie! singet Sawnie, are ye huirdin the penny,
 Unconscious what evils await?
With a jump, yell, and howl, alarm ev’ry soul,
 For the foul thief is just at your gate.
Singet Sawnie! 8 For the foul thief is just at your gate.


Poet Willie! poet Willie, gie the Doctor a volley,
 Wi’ your “Liberty’s Chain” and your wit;
O’er Pegasus’ side ye ne’er laid a stride,
 Ye but smelt, man, the place where he sh-t.
Poet Willie! 9 Ye but smelt man, the place where he sh-t.


Barr Steenie! Barr Steenie, what mean ye, what mean ye?
 If ye meddle nae mair wi’ the matter,
Ye may hae some pretence to havins and sense,
 Wi’ people that ken ye nae better,
Barr Steenie! 10 Wi’people that ken ye nae better.


Jamie Goose! Jamie Goose, ye made but toom roose,
 In hunting the wicked Lieutenant;
But the Doctor’s your mark, for the Lord’s holy ark,
 He has cooper’d an’ ca’d a wrang pin in’t,
Jamie Goose! 11 He has cooper’d an’ ca’d a wrang pin in’t.


Davie Bluster! Davie Bluster, for a saint ye do muster,
 The core is no nice o’ recruits;
Yet to worth let’s be just, royal blood ye might boast,
 If the Ass were the king o’ the brutes,
Davie Bluster! 12 If the Ass were the king o’ the brutes.


Cessnock-side! Cessnock-side, wi’ your turkey-cock pride
 Of manhood but sma’ is your share:
Ye’ve the figure, ’tis true, ev’n your foes will allow,
 And your friends they dare grant you nae mair,
Cessnock-side! 13 And your friends they dare grant you nae mair.


Muirland Jock! muirland Jock, when the L—d makes a rock,
 To crush common-sense for her sins;
If ill-manners were wit, there’s no mortal so fit
 To confound the poor Doctor at ance,
Muirland Jock! 14 To confound the poor Doctor at ance.


Andro Gowk! Andro Gowk, ye may slander the Book,
 An’ the Book nought the waur, let me tell ye;
Tho’ ye’re rich, an’ look big, yet, lay by hat an’ wig,
 An’ ye’ll hae a calf’s-had o’ sma’ value,
Andro Gowk! 15 Ye’ll hae a calf’s head o’ sma value.


Daddy Auld! daddy Auld, there’a a tod in the fauld,
 A tod meikle waur than the clerk;
Tho’ ye do little skaith, ye’ll be in at the death,
 For gif ye canna bite, ye may bark,
Daddy Auld! 16 Gif ye canna bite, ye may bark.


Holy Will! holy Will, there was wit in your skull,
 When ye pilfer’d the alms o’ the poor;
The timmer is scant when ye’re taen for a saunt,
 Wha should swing in a rape for an hour,
Holy Will! 17 Ye should swing in a rape for an hour.


Calvin’s sons! Calvin’s sons, seize your spiritual guns,
 Ammunition you never can need;
Your hearts are the stuff will be powder enough,
 And your skulls are a storehouse o’ lead,
Calvin’s sons! Your skulls are a storehouse o’ lead.


Poet Burns! poet Burns, wi” your priest-skelpin turns,
 Why desert ye your auld native shire?
Your muse is a gipsy, yet were she e’en tipsy,
 She could ca’us nae waur than we are,
Poet Burns! She could ca’us nae waur than we are.


PRESENTATION STANZAS TO CORRESPONDENTSFactor John! Factor John, whom the Lord made alone,
 And ne’er made anither, thy peer,
Thy poor servant, the Bard, in respectful regard,
 He presents thee this token sincere,
Factor John! He presents thee this token sincere.


Afton’s Laird! Afton’s Laird, when your pen can be spared,
 A copy of this I bequeath,
On the same sicker score as I mention’d before,
 To that trusty auld worthy, Clackleith,
Afton’s Laird! To that trusty auld worthy, Clackleith.


 Note 1. Dr. M’Gill, Ayr.—R. B. [back]
Note 2. See the advertisement.—R. B. [back]
Note 3. John Ballantine,—R. B. [back]
Note 4. Robert Aiken.—R. B. [back]
Note 5. Dr. Dalrymple, Ayr.—R. B. [back]
Note 6. John Russell, Kilmarnock.—R. B. [back]
Note 7. James Mackinlay, Kilmarnock.—R. B. [back]
Note 8. Alexander Moodie of Riccarton.—R. B. [back]
Note 9. William Peebles, in Newton-upon-Ayr, a poetaster, who, among many other things, published an ode on the “Centenary of the Revolution,” in which was the line: “And bound in Liberty’s endering chain.”—R. B.
 [back]
Note 10. Stephen Young of Barr.—R. B. [back]
Note 11. James Young, in New Cumnock, who had lately been foiled in an ecclesiastical prosecution against a Lieutenant Mitchel—R. B. [back]
Note 12. David Grant, Ochiltree.—R. B. [back]
Note 13. George Smith, Galston.—R. B. [back]
Note 14. John Shepherd Muirkirk.—R. B. [back]
Note 15. Dr. Andrew Mitchel, Monkton.—R. B. [back]
Note 16. William Auld, Mauchline; for the clerk, see “Holy Willie”s Prayer.”—R. B. [back]
Note 17. Vide the “Prayer” of this saint.—R. B. [back]

 There was a row in Silver Street that's near to Dublin Quay,
Between an Irish regiment an' English cavalree;
It started at Revelly an' it lasted on till dark:
The first man dropped at Harrison's, the last forninst the Park.
 For it was: -- "Belts, belts, belts, an' that's one for you!"
 An' it was "Belts, belts, belts, an' that's done for you!"
 O buckle an' tongue
 Was the song that we sung
 From Harrison's down to the Park!

There was a row in Silver Street -- the regiments was out,
They called us "Delhi Rebels", an' we answered "Threes about!"
That drew them like a hornet's nest -- we met them good an' large,
The English at the double an' the Irish at the charge.
 Then it was: -- "Belts . . .

There was a row in Silver Street -- an' I was in it too;
We passed the time o' day, an' then the belts went whirraru!
I misremember what occurred, but subsequint the storm
A Freeman's Journal Supplemint was all my uniform.
 O it was: -- "Belts . . .

There was a row in Silver Street -- they sent the Polis there,
The English were too drunk to know, the Irish didn't care;
But when they grew impertinint we simultaneous rose,
Till half o' them was Liffey mud an' half was tatthered clo'es.
 For it was: -- "Belts . . .

There was a row in Silver Street -- it might ha' raged till now,
But some one drew his side-arm clear, an' nobody knew how;
'Twas Hogan took the point an' dropped; we saw the red blood run:
An' so we all was murderers that started out in fun.
 While it was: -- "Belts . . .

There was a row in Silver Street -- but that put down the shine,
Wid each man whisperin' to his next: "'Twas never work o' mine!"
We went away like beaten dogs, an' down the street we bore him,
The poor dumb corpse that couldn't tell the bhoys were sorry for him.
 When it was: -- "Belts . . .

There was a row in Silver Street -- it isn't over yet,
For half of us are under guard wid punishments to get;
'Tis all a merricle to me as in the Clink I lie:
There was a row in Silver Street -- begod, I wonder why!
 But it was: -- "Belts, belts, belts, an' that's one for you!"
 An' it was "Belts, belts, belts, an' that's done for you!"
 O buckle an' tongue
 Was the song that we sung
 From Harrison's down to the Park!

 1898

Being a translation of the song that was made by a Mohammedanschoolmaster of Bengal Infantry (some time on service at Suakim)when he heard that Kitchener was taking money from the English tobuild a Madrissa for Hubshees -- or a college for the Sudanese.
Oh Hubshee, carry your shoes in your hand and bow your head on your breast!
This is the message of Kitchener who did not break you in jest.
It was permitted to him to fulfil the long-appointed years;
Reaching the end ordained of old over your dead Emirs.

He stamped only before your walls, and the Tomb ye knew was dust:
He gathered up under his armpits all the swords of your trust:
He set a guard on your granaries, securing the weak from the strong:
He said: -- " Go work the waterwheels that were abolished so long."

He said: -- "Go safely, being abased. I have accomplished my vow."
That was the mercy of Kitchener. Cometh his madness now!
He does not desire as ye desire, nor devise as ye devise:
He is preparing a second host -- an army to make you wise.

Not at the mouth of his clean-lipped guns shall ye learn his name again,
But letter by letter, from Kaf to Kaf, at the mouths of his chosen men.
He has gone back to his own city, not seeking presents or bribes,
But openly asking the English for money to buy you Hakims and scribes.

Knowing that ye are forfeit by battle and have no right to live,
He begs for money to bring you learning -- and all the English give.
It is their treasure -- it is their pleasure -- thus are their hearts inclined:
For Allah created the English mad -- the maddest of all mankind!

They do not consider the Meaning ofThings; they consult not creed nor clan.
Behold, they clap the slave on the back, and behold, he ariseth a man!
They terribly carpet the earth with dead, and before their cannon cool,
They walk unarmed by twos and threes to call the living to school.

How is this reason (which is their reason) to judge a scholar's worth,
By casting a ball at three straight sticks and defending the same with a fourth?
But this they do (which is doubtless a spell) and other matters more strange,
Until, by the operation of years, the hearts of their scholars change:

Till these make come and go great boats or engines upon the rail
(But always the English watch near by to prop them when they fail);
Till these make laws of their own choice and Judges of their
And all the mad English obey the Judges and say that that Law is good.

Certainly they were mad from of old; but I think one new thing,
That the magic whereby they work their magic -- wherefrom their fortunes spring --
May be that they show all peoples their magic and ask no price in return.
Wherefore, since ye are bond to that magic, O Hubshee, make haste and learn!

Certainly also is Kitchener mad. But one sure thing I know --
If he who broke you be minded to teach you, to his Madrissa go!
Go, and carry your shoes in your hand and bow your head on your breast,
For he who did not slay you in sport, he will not teach you in jest.

 Dürer would have seen a reason for living
 in a town like this, with eight stranded whales
to look at; with the sweet sea air coming into your house
on a fine day, from water etched
 with waves as formal as the scales
on a fish.

One by one in two's and three's, the seagulls keep
 flying back and forth over the town clock,
or sailing around the lighthouse without moving their wings --
rising steadily with a slight
 quiver of the body -- or flock
mewing where

a sea the purple of the peacock's neck is
 paled to greenish azure as Dürer changed
the pine green of the Tyrol to peacock blue and guinea
gray. You can see a twenty-five-
 pound lobster; and fish nets arranged
to dry. The

whirlwind fife-and-drum of the storm bends the salt
 marsh grass, disturbs stars in the sky and the
star on the steeple; it is a privilege to see so
much confusion. Disguised by what
 might seem the opposite, the sea-
side flowers and

trees are favored by the fog so that you have
 the tropics first hand: the trumpet-vine,
fox-glove, giant snap-dragon, a salpiglossis that has
spots and stripes; morning-glories, gourds,
 or moon-vines trained on fishing-twine
at the back door;

cat-tails, flags, blueberries and spiderwort,
 striped grass, lichens, sunflowers, asters, daisies --
yellow and crab-claw ragged sailors with green bracts -- toad-plant, 
petunias, ferns; pink lilies, blue
 ones, tigers; poppies; black sweet-peas.
The climate

is not right for the banyan, frangipani, or
 jack-fruit trees; or for exotic serpent
life. Ring lizard and snake-skin for the foot, if you see fit;
but here they've cats, not cobras, to
 keep down the rats. The diffident
little newt

with white pin-dots on black horizontal spaced-
 out bands lives here; yet there is nothing that
ambition can buy or take away. The college student
named Ambrose sits on the hillside
 with his not-native books and hat
and sees boats

at sea progress white and rigid as if in
 a groove. Liking an elegance of which
the sourch is not bravado, he knows by heart the antique
sugar-bowl shaped summer-house of
 interlacing slats, and the pitch
of the church

spire, not true, from which a man in scarlet lets
 down a rope as a spider spins a thread;
he might be part of a novel, but on the sidewalk a
sign says C. J. Poole, Steeple Jack,
 in black and white; and one in red
and white says

Danger. The church portico has four fluted
 columns, each a single piece of stone, made
modester by white-wash. Theis would be a fit haven for
waifs, children, animals, prisoners,
 and presidents who have repaid
sin-driven

senators by not thinking about them. The
 place has a school-house, a post-office in a
store, fish-houses, hen-houses, a three-masted schooner on
the stocks. The hero, the student, 
 the steeple-jack, each in his way,
is at home.

It could not be dangerous to be living
 in a town like this, of simple people,
who have a steeple-jack placing danger signs by the church
while he is gilding the solid-
 pointed star, which on a steeple
stands for hope.