Robert Kirkland Kernighan Poems

Two newsboys stood where warehouse shade
Fell on the sidewalk chill and dun,
And left the long and splendid street
One half in shadow, half in sun ;
...

Ah ! life is like the street to-day :
One side is dark, the other bright,
And of the road that points that way
One half is wrong, the other right
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The baby had a drunken father,
And he left the child to die.
Years rolled on, the poor old father
Staggered to the gates on high,
...

I see her every day at noon
Slip thro' the crowded street
Like some sweet spirit clad in black,
So noiseless are her feet.
...

' How sweet to ride in birch canoe
That, anchored yonder, frets and bounds,
And painless float upon thy breast
Into the happy hunting grounds.
...

In the beautiful meadow of long ago,
My memory turns, with a longing fond,
To the place in the meadows of long ago
Where nestled the dimpled and lilied pond;
...

Where willows flickered their shadows down
On our blistered backs and our faces brown ;
Where all day long in the sunny weather,
When you and I were boys together,
...

Homesick to-night ! My heart is sick,
And, as days of yore,
I walk again the village street,
I see the village store
...

When I crawl and creep in the withered grass,
And, hid among rocks, I lie ;
When my nimble tongue is as smooth as glass,
And I hiss at the passer-by ;
...

I uster think that Joe was rough,
An rather fond uv a row.
You remember the man with the bushy hair,
An the big black eyes with the angry flare,
...