A Dialogue
DEATH:
For my dagger is bathed in the blood of the brave,
I come, care-worn tenant of life, from the grave,
Where Innocence sleeps 'neath the peace-giving sod,
And the good cease to tremble at Tyranny's nod;
I offer a calm habitation to thee,--
Say, victim of grief, wilt thou slumber with me?
My mansion is damp, cold silence is there,
But it lulls in oblivion the fiends of despair;
Not a groan of regret, not a sigh, not a breath,
Fireflies
My fancies are fireflies, —
Specks of living light
twinkling in the dark.
The voice of wayside pansies,
that do not attract the careless glance,
murmurs in these desultory lines.
In the drowsy dark caves of the mind
dreams build their nest with fragments
Black Man's Dilemma
Where would we go if told to leave
This land where our kidnapped forefathers grieved
For life as it once were
And not as destiny's mind perceived
We have no heritage to call our own
Where could we go if summarily thrown
From this oasis of bigotry and hate
Long....our adopted home
Bigotry's Victim
I.
Dares the lama, most fleet of the sons of the wind,
The lion to rouse from his skull-covered lair?
When the tiger approaches can the fast-fleeting hind
Repose trust in his footsteps of air?
No! Abandoned he sinks in a trance of despair,
The monster transfixes his prey,
On the sand flows his life-blood away;
Whilst India's rocks to his death-yells reply,
Protracting the horrible harmony.
........Ism
He pulled the trigger
on that noisy morning
in the Bunker of Berlin.
The pages of Mein Kampf,
just briefly soaked
were used to start
the fire that would mark
the end of an epoch
that had, astonishingly, given
birth to itself in 1928.
Taught Racism
Children are born blind to hate and bigotry
With their big smiles and loving ways
They are taught ugliness
By unthinking adults and overheard conversation
This makes them use words and terms that for generations
Have caused hate and bitterness
To our fellow man.
Yes, they are taught, not born
To this social cancer.
*let The New Year 2k+9 Bloom!
In a world that is
Free from terrible terrorism and death
Full of happy harmony and warmth
Free from fateful wars and schisms
Full of hopping hopes and optimism
Free from wretched hatred and bigotry
Full of pure happiness and joy
Free from painful penury and poverty
Full of crystal understanding and aplomb
The Emigrants: Book I
Scene, on the Cliffs to the Eastward of the Town of
Brighthelmstone in Sussex. Time, a Morning in November, 1792.
Slow in the Wintry Morn, the struggling light
Throws a faint gleam upon the troubled waves;
Their foaming tops, as they approach the shore
And the broad surf that never ceasing breaks
On the innumerous pebbles, catch the beams
Of the pale Sun, that with reluctance gives
Golf Pro
There are two types of people:
Those who play golf,
And those who recognize it
for the idiotic malpractice that it is,
that recognize it for the land wasting,
water guzzling, pesticide and herbicide
carcinogen drenched
leeching into the groundwater,
sanitized version of nature,
Bob Hope celebrity goofball,
The Death Of Parson Caldwell's Wife
THE outrage of innocence in instances too numerous to be recorded, of the wanton barbarity of the soldiers of the King of England, as they patrolled the defenceless villages of America, was evinced nowhere more remarkably than in the burnings and massacres every that, marked the footsteps of the British troops as they from time to time ravaged the State of New Jersey. In their late excursion they had trod their deleterious path through a part of the country called the Connecticut Farms. It is needless to particularize many instances of their wanton rage and unprovoked devastation in and near Elizabethtown. The places dedicated to public worship did not escape their fury; these were destroyed more from licentious folly than any religious frenzy or bigotry, to which their nation had at times been liable. Yet through the barbarous transactions of this summer nothing excited more general resentment and compassion than the murder of the amiable and virtuous wife of a Presbyterian clergyman, attended with too many circumstances of grief on the one side and barbarism on the other to pass over in silence. This lady was sitting in her own house with her little domestic circle around her and her infant in her arms, unapprehensive of danger, shrouded by the consciousness of her own innocence and virtue, when a British barbarian pointed his musket into the window of her room, and instantly shot the her through the lungs. A hole was dug, the body thrown in, and the house of this excellent lady set on fire and consumed with all the property it contained. Mr. Caldwell, her affectionate husband, was absent; nothing had ever been alleged against his character, even by his enemies, but his zeal for the rights, and his attachment to his native land. For this he had been persecuted, and for this he was robbed of all that he held dear in life, by bloody hands of men in whose benevolence and politeness he had had much confidence until the fated day when this mistaken opinion led him to leave his beloved family, fearless of danger and certain of their security, from their innocence, virtue, and unoffending amiability. Mr. Caldwell afterward published the proofs of this cruel affair, attested on oath before magistrates by sundry persons who were in the house with Mrs. Caldwell and saw her fall back and expire immediately after the report of the gun. 'This was,' as observed by Mr. Caldwell, 'a violation of tender feeling; without provocation, deliberately committed in open day; nor was it ever frowned on by the commander.' The catastrophe of this unhappy family was completed within two years by the murder of Mr. Caldwell himself by some ruffian hands. His conscious integrity of heart had never suffered him to apprehend any personal danger, and the melancholy that pervaded all on the tragical death of his lady, who was distinguished for the excellence and respectability of her character, wrought up the resentment of that part of the country to so high a pitch that the most timid were aroused to deeds of desperate heroism. They were ready to swear, like Hannibal against the Romans, and to bind their sons to the oath of everlasting enmity to the name of Britain.
Battle Of Corruna
The tide of fate rolls on!--heart-pierced and pale,
The gallant soldier lies, nor aught avail,
The shield, the sword, the spirit of the brave,
From rapine's armed hand thy vales to save,
Land of illustrious heroes, who, of yore,
Drenched the same plains with the invader's gore,
Stood frowning, in the front of death, and hurled
Defiance to the conquerors of the world!
Oh, when we hear the agonising tale
Of those who, faint, and fugitive, and pale,
Let Love Spread
Hatred smites too often
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
shaking our faith in mankind
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
We raise our hands to Heavens
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
for peace and love to descend
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
But there's more to be done
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Conversation
Though nature weigh our talents, and dispense
To every man his modicum of sense,
And Conversation in its better part
May be esteem'd a gift, and not an art,
Yet much depends, as in the tiller’s toil,
On culture, and the sowing of the soil.
Words learn'd by rote a parrot may rehearse,
But talking is not always to converse;
Not more distinct from harmony divine,
The constant creaking of a country sign.
Book Ninth [residence In France]
EVEN as a river,--partly (it might seem)
Yielding to old remembrances, and swayed
In part by fear to shape a way direct,
That would engulph him soon in the ravenous sea--
Turns, and will measure back his course, far back,
Seeking the very regions which he crossed
In his first outset; so have we, my Friend!
Turned and returned with intricate delay.
Or as a traveller, who has gained the brow
Of some aerial Down, while there he halts
Song Of America
And now, when poets are singing
Their songs of olden days,
And now, when the land is ringing
With sweet Centennial lays,
My muse goes wandering backward,
To the groundwork of all these,
To the time when our Pilgrim Fathers
Came over the winter seas.
The sons of a mighty kingdom,
Of a cultured folk were they;
Cheers Canada 150 +
Let us all join hands
In celebration
Confederation
Let us all remember
Those who settled the land
Now slaves for worthy cause
Let us all remember
Children's lost innocence
Failures in Infinitives
why am i doing this? Failure
to keep my work in order so as
to be able to find things
to paint the house
to earn enough money to live on
to reorganize the house so as
to be able to paint the house &
to be able to find things and
earn enough money so as
to be able to put books together
' 2011/04/03 Sad Images (Rev.)
The lonely malnourished Spanish man who lives
by himself in a house without a kitchen practising
Franciscan-learnt Latin; the lonely widow offering
Nicholas Shrady a walking stick, the poor people in
Bosnia relying on apparitions of the Virgin Mary
for an income, the bloated corpses in the Ganges
Lonely hamlets in India where people live and die
without ever learning to read and write, the young
boys with rotting teeth working like pack animals;
Expostulation
Why weeps the muse for England? What appears
In England's case to move the muse to tears?
From side to side of her delightful isle
Is she not clothed with a perpetual smile?
Can Nature add a charm, or Art confer
A new-found luxury, not seen in her?
Where under heaven is pleasure more pursued
Or where does cold reflection less intrude?
Her fields a rich expanse of wavy corn,
Pour'd out from Plenty's overflowing horn;
A Full Blood Moon
Zealot, I hear your heart is lost to them
Death resides in your hateful opinions
With toxic blame and killing floor speeches
Switchblade slick words that flick swift to murder
Snick back so smoothly into bigotry
Bloodlust shines brightly in my young son's eyes
As you lay tombstones of segregation
You grow audiences of snarling wolves
While you erect your church upon our graves