Sunset and silence! A man: around him earth savage, earth broken;
Beside him two horses -- a plough!
Earth savage, earth broken, the brutes, the dawn man there in the sunset,
And the Plough that is twin to the Sword, that is founder of cities!
"Brute-tamer, plough-maker, earth-breaker! Can'st hear? There are ages
between us.
Is it praying you are as you stand there alone in the sunset?
"Surely our sky-born gods can be naught to you, earth child and earth
master?
Surely your thoughts are of Pan, or of Wotan, or Dana?

A tale of earnest effort and human perfidy

It's all very well for preachin',
But preachin' and practice don't gee:
I've give the thing a fair trial,
And you can't ring it in on me.
So toddle along with your pledge, Squire,
Ef that's what you want me to sign;
Betwixt me and you, I've been thar,
And I'll not take any in mine.

A year ago last Fo'th July
A lot of the boys was here.
We all got corned and signed the pledge
For to drink no more that year.
There was Tilmon Joy and Sheriff McPhail

She is not Folly -- that I know.
Her steadfast eyelids tell me so
When, at the hour the lights divide,
She steals as summonsed to my side.

When, finger on the pursed lip
In secret, mirthful fellowship,
She, heralding new -- framed delights,
Breathes, "This shall be a Night of Nights!"

Then, out of Time and out of Space,
Is built an Hour and a Place
Where all an earnest, baffled Earth
Blunders and trips to make us mirth;

Whence from the trivial flux of Things,
Rise inconceived miscarryings,

Quixotic is his enterprise, and hopeless his adventure is,
Who seeks for jocularities that haven't yet been said.
The world has joked incessantly for over fifty centuries,
And every joke that's possible has long ago been made.
I started as a humorist with lots of mental fizziness,
But humour is a drug which it's the fashion to abuse;
For my stock-in-trade, my fixtures, and the goodwill of the
business
No reasonable offer I am likely to refuse.
And if anybody choose
He may circulate the news
That no reasonable offer I'm likely to refuse.

I was alone with a chair on a plain
Which lost itself in an empty horizon.

The plain was flawlessly paved.
Nothing, absolutely nothing but the chair and I
were there.

The sky was forever blue,
No sun gave life to it.

An inscrutable, insensible light
illuminated the infinite plain.

To me this eternal day seemed to be projected --
artificially-- from a different sphere.

I was never sleepy nor hungry nor thirsty,
never hot nor cold.

Time was only an abstruse ghost

Pipes of the misty moorlands,
Voice of the glens and hills;
The droning of the torrents,
The treble of the rills!
Not the braes of bloom and heather,
Nor the mountains dark with rain,
Nor maiden bower, nor border tower,
Have heard your sweetest strain!

Dear to the Lowland reaper,
And plaided mountaineer, -
To the cottage and the castle
The Scottish pipes are dear; -
Sweet sounds the ancient pibroch
O'er mountain, loch, and glade;
But the sweetest of all music
The pipes at Lucknow played.

What holy rites Mohammed's laws ordain,
What various duties bind his faithful train,--
What pious zeal his scatter'd tribes unites
In fix'd observance of these holy rites,--
At Mecca's shrine what votive crowds surround
With annual pomp the consecrated ground,--
The muse shall tell:--revolving years succeed,
And Time still venerates Mohammed's creed.


Nor faint the glory shed o'er Mecca's brow:
Land of the Prophet! known to fame art thou.
Here first in peace his infant hopes were known,

Youth's gay springtime scarcely knowing
Went I forth the world to roam--
And the dance of youth, the glowing,
Left I in my father's home,
Of my birthright, glad-believing,
Of my world-gear took I none,
Careless as an infant, cleaving
To my pilgrim staff alone.
For I placed my mighty hope in
Dim and holy words of faith,
"Wander forth--the way is open,
Ever on the upward path--
Till thou gain the golden portal,
Till its gates unclose to thee.
There the earthly and the mortal,
Deathless and divine shall be!"

'Tis noon of night; the sable clouds,
Hang weeping in the sky;
Alone I sit, where fancies flit
Like spectral shadows by.
Me thinks I see familiar forms,
And on before them all--
So fair, so calm, so wondrous like, wondrous like
The picture on the wall.

Among the brave and loyal,
How many lov'd ones fall!
Whose friends bereft,
Have only left, only left
A picture on the wall.

I hear the press of eager feet,
Upon my parlor floor;
A moment, and my willing arms
Enclasp my boy once more.

O Blest unfabled Incense Tree,
That burns in glorious Araby,
With red scent chalicing the air,
Till earth-life grow Elysian there!

Half buried to her flaming breast
In this bright tree, she makes her nest,
Hundred sunn'd Phoenix! When she must
Crumble at length to hoary dust!

Her gorgous death-bed! Her rich pyre
Burnt up with aromatic fire!
Her urn, sight high from spoiler men!
Her birthplace when self-born again!

The mountainless green wilds among,
Here ends she her unechoing song!
With amber tears and oderous sighs