English

A poet said, “I'll write a song that every one will sing,
A verse with just the human note that carries fast and far—
I shall be known forever as the man who wrote that thing;
The papers will reprint it from here to Zanzibar!”

He wrote the piece, “Those Old Blue Jeans.” It made a ready hit,
And in the mazes of the press the song began to range;
But someone's hasty scissors snipped the author's name from it,
And everywhere he saw it, it was credited “Exchange.”

Anthologies, the rural press and patent almanacs

When withered leaves are lost in flame
Their eddying ghosts, a thin blue haze,
Blow through the thickets whence they came
On amberlucent autumn days.

The cool green woodland heart receives
Their dim, dissolving, phantom breath
In young hereditary leaves
They see their happy life-in-death.

My minutes perish as they glow—
Time burns my crazy bonfire through;
But ghosts of blackened hours still blow,
Eternal Beauty, back to you!

A woman's crowning glory is her tact,
The art of knowing when and what to say;
When to be grave, indifferent, or gay,
And seem so charming in her every act
That, as a magnet, she will men attract
And easily compel them to her sway.
So shall she rule, or golden hair or gray,
The subtlest type of womanhood in fact.

For tact is more than beauty, more than wit,
Akin to genius, and the sum of all
Which makes the woman who is blessed with it
A Queen by right, in hovel or in hall;
Sweet as the honeyed lines by poet writ

When my lord, who fain would look on
Great Tsukúba, double-crested,
To the highlands of Hitáchi
Bent his steps, then I, his servant,
Panting with the heats of summer,
Down my brow the sweat-drops dripping,
Breathlessly toil'd onward, upward,
Tangled roots of timber clutching.
“There, my lord! behold the prospect!”
Cried I when we scal'd the summit.
And the gracious goddess gave us
Smiling welcome, while her consort
Condescended to admit us
Into these his sacred precincts,
O'er Tsukuba double-crested,

The sense of comradeship which now we feel
Grew slowly as an oak does, and as strong.
For now to one another we belong
In all that makes a man and woman leal;
Our lives are linked as firm as welded steel
And in our thoughts sweet harmonies do throng.
Like half-remembered echoes of a song
As days and nights above our pathway wheel.

So do the perfume and the joy of days
Live with us and the season's sway dispute.
Spring, Summer, Autumn, they may go their ways
And bring nor bud nor blossom an it suit;

In shadow-haunted hush of lonely place
With ripples lapping by the reedy shores,
And glint of stars along the watery floors
I see again the profile of your face;
The moonlight trailed across your wrist like lace
Then disappeared behind its cloudy doors,
While we sat idly, with the idle oars
Twixt earth and sky, as balancing in space.

How strange and beautiful to us it seemed,
Held in the hollow of the night to float,
With muffled liquid whisperings round the boat
While overhead the constellations dreamed;

Sure this is blessed Erin an' this the same glen,
The gold is on the whin-bush, the wather sings again,
The Fairy Thorn's in flower,—an' what ails my heart then?
Flower o' the May,
Flower o' the May,
What about the May time, an' he far away!

Summer loves the green glen, the white bird loves the sea,
An' the wind must kiss the heather top, an' the red bell hides a bee;
As the bee is dear to the honey-flower, so one is dear to me.
Flower o' the rose,
Flower o' the rose,
A thorn pricked me one day, but nobody knows.

I flushed for shame,—I thought about his grave:
No loved ones watch his mound with tender sighs
No place on earth for him who for us dies—
Our patriot Sailor! Ah, how deck the brave
Who slowly sink to some dim ocean cave!
O where shall love, looking through Memory's eye
Strew flowers for him—for him who, drifting, lie
Whelmed in the dark unfathomable wave?

Take heart! our Sailors gone—that silent host
Far from our sight—rest not ungarlandèd;
The Daughters of the West, each year in May,

Mother, for thy sake I have been
Where the wakana grow,
To bring thee back some fresh green leaves;
And see—my koromo
Is sprinkled with the snow!