A Naughty Little Comet
There was a little comet who lived near the Milky Way!
She loved to wander out at night and jump about and play.
The mother of the comet was a very good old star;
She used to scold her reckless child for venturing out too far.
She told her of the ogre, Sun, who loved on stars to sup,
And who asked no better pastime than in gobbling comets up.
But instead of growing cautious and of showing proper fear,
A Woman's Last Word
I.
Let's contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
---Only sleep!
II.
What so wild as words are?
A Song For The New Year {1915}
THE Year of the Sorrows went out with great wind:
Lift up, lift up, O broken hearts, your Lord is kind,
And He shall call His flock home where no storms be
Into a sheltered haven out of sound of the sea.
There shall be bright sands there and a milken hill,
They shall lie in the sun there and drink their fill,
They shall have dew and shade there and grass to the knee,
Safe in a sheltered haven out of sound of the sea.
Auld Farmer's New-Year-Morning
A Guide New-year I wish thee, Maggie!
Hae, there's a ripp to thy auld baggie:
Tho' thou's howe-backit now, an' knaggie,
I've seen the day
There could hae gaen like ony staggie,
Out-owre the lay.
Tho' now thou's dowie, stiff an' crazy,
An' thy auld hide as white's a daisie,
I've seen the dappl't, sleek an' glaizie,
A Naughty Little Comet
There was a little comet who lived near the Milky Way!
She loved to wander out at night and jump about and play.
The mother of the comet was a very good old star;
She used to scold her reckless child for venturing out too far.
She told her of the ogre, Sun, who loved on stars to sup,
And who asked no better pastime than in gobbling comets up.
But instead of growing cautious and of showing proper fear,
A Woman's Last Word
I.
Let's contend no more, Love,
Strive nor weep:
All be as before, Love,
---Only sleep!
II.
What so wild as words are?
A Choice
They please me not-- these solemn songs
That hint of sermons covered up.
'T is true the world should heed its wrongs,
But in a poem let me sup,
Not simples brewed to cure or ease
Humanity's confessed disease,
But the spirit-wine of a singing line,
Or a dew-drop in a honey cup!
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,
A Red, Red Rose
O my Luve's like a red, red rose
That's newly sprung in June;
O my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly play'd in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a' the seas gang dry:
Children
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom said, 'Speak to us of Children.'
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
A Father's Prayer
Lord, make me tolerant and wise;
Incline my ears to hear him through;
Let him not stand with downcast eyes,
Fearing to trust me and be true.
Instruct me so that I may know
The way my son and I should go.
When he shall err, as once did I,
Or boyhood folly bids him stray,
Let me not into anger fly
Fool
O Fool, try to carry thyself upon thy own shoulders!
O beggar, to come beg at thy own door!
Leave all thy burdens on his hands who can bear all,
and never look behind in regret.
Thy desire at once puts out the light from the lamp it touches with its breath.
It is unholy---take not thy gifts through its unclean hands.
Accept only what is offered by sacred love.
A Narrow Girdle Of Rough Stones And Crags
A narrow girdle of rough stones and crags,
A rude and natural causeway, interposed
Between the water and a winding slope
Of copse and thicket, leaves the eastern shore
Of Grasmere safe in its own privacy:
And there myself and two beloved Friends,
One calm September morning, ere the mist
Had altogether yielded to the sun,
Sauntered on this retired and difficult way.
----Ill suits the road with one in haste; but we
Alone
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
Dreams
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
Hark! Hark! The Lark
Hark! hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings,
And Phoebus 'gins arise,
His steeds to water at those springs
On chalic'd flowers that lies;
And winking Mary-buds begin
To ope their golden eyes;
With everything that pretty is,
My lady sweet, arise:
Arise, arise!
A House Upon The Height
399
A House upon the Height—
That Wagon never reached—
No Dead, were ever carried down—
No Peddler's Cart—approached—
Whose Chimney never smoked—
Whose Windows—Night and Morn—
Caught Sunrise first—and Sunset—last—
Alfred Moir
Why was I not devoured by self-contempt,
And rotted down by indifference
And impotent revolt like Indignation Jones?
Why, with all of my errant steps
Did I miss the fate of Willard Fluke?
And why, though I stood at Burchard's bar,
As a sort of decoy for the house to the boys
To buy the drinks, did the curse of drink
Fall on me like rain that runs off,
Leaving the soul of me dry and clean?
Epilogue To Lessing's Laocooen
One morn as through Hyde Park we walk'd,
My friend and I, by chance we talk'd
Of Lessing's famed Laocooen;
And after we awhile had gone
In Lessing's track, and tried to see
What painting is, what poetry--
Diverging to another thought,
'Ah,' cries my friend, 'but who hath taught
Why music and the other arts
Oftener perform aright their parts
Hope
We speak with the lip, and we dream in the soul,
Of some better and fairer day;
And our days, the meanwhile, to that golden goal
Are gliding and sliding away.
Now the world becomes old, now again it is young,
But 'The better' 's forever the word on the tongue.
At the threshold of life hope leads us in-
Hope plays round the mirthful boy;
Though the best of its charms may with youth begin,