(Europe Conquers America.)
Strong for the strong and in his own conceit;
Half-boy, half-madman, playing with the fire;
...
Seeds in a dry pod, tick, tick, tick,
Tick, tick, tick, like mites in a quarrel--
Faint iambics that the full breeze wakens--
But the pine tree makes a symphony thereof.
...
Tell me ye King-craft of to-day
Where is Athens, who made men free;
Then sank into stupor by the way,
Subdued by the Spartan tyranny? ...
...
Only the chemist can tell, and not always the chemist,
What will result from compounding
Fluids or solids.
And who can tell
...
I was the first fruits of the battle of Missionary Ridge.
When I felt the bullet enter my heart
I wished I had staid at home and gone to jail
For stealing the hogs of Curl Trenary,
...
When Reuben Pantier ran away and threw me
I went to Springfield. There I met a lush,
Whose father just deceased left him a fortune.
He married me when drunk. My life was wretched.
...
Glorious daughter of time! Thou of the mild blue eye --
Thou of the virginal forehead --pallid, unfurrowed of tears--
...
What do you see now?
Globes of red, yellow, purple.
Just a moment! And now?
My father and mother and sisters.
...
I won the prize essay at school
Here in the village,
And published a novel before I was twenty-five.
I went to the city for themes and to enrich my art;
...
He ran away and was gone for a year.
When he came home he told me the silly story
Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan
And kept in chains so he could not write me.
...