Skip to main content

The Queen's Rival

QUEEN GULNAAR sat on her ivory bed,
Around her countless treasures were spread;

Her chamber walls were richly inlaid
With agate, porphory, onyx and jade;

The tissues that veiled her delicate breast,
Glowed with the hues of a lapwing's crest;

But still she gazed in her mirror and sighed
"O King, my heart is unsatisfied."

King Feroz bent from his ebony seat:
"Is thy least desire unfulfilled, O Sweet?

"Let thy mouth speak and my life be spent
To clear the sky of thy discontent."

Reviews
No reviews yet.

The Queen's Jubilee Celebrations

'Twas in the year of 1897, and on the 22nd of June,
Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee in London caused a great boom;
Because high and low came from afar to see,
The grand celebrations at Her Majesty's Diamond Jubilee.

People were there from almost every foreign land,
Which made the scene really imposing and grand;
Especially the Queen's carriage, drawn by eight coloured bays,
And when the spectators saw it joyous shouts they did raise.

Oh! if was a most gorgeous sight to be seen,
Numerous foreign magnatss were there for to see the queen;

Reviews
No reviews yet.

The Purse-Seine

Our sardine fishermen work at night in the dark
of the moon; daylight or moonlight
They could not tell where to spread the net,
unable to see the phosphorescence of the
shoals of fish.
They work northward from Monterey, coasting
Santa Cruz; off New Year's Point or off
Pigeon Point
The look-out man will see some lakes of milk-color
light on the sea's night-purple; he points,
and the helmsman
Turns the dark prow, the motorboat circles the

Reviews
No reviews yet.

The Puritan's Ballad

My love came up from Barnegat,
The sea was in his eyes;
He trod as softly as a cat
And told me terrible lies.

His hair was yellow as new-cut pine
In shavings curled and feathered;
I thought how silver it would shine
By cruel winters weathered.

But he was in his twentieth year,
Ths time I'm speaking of;
We were head over heels in love with fear
And half a-feared of love.

My hair was piled in a copper crown --
A devilish living thing --
And the tortise-shell pins fell down, fell down,

Reviews
No reviews yet.

The Psalm Of Adonis - from Fifteenth Idyll

O Queen that loves Golgi, and Idalium,
And the steep of Eryx,
O Aphrodite, that playes with gold,
Lo, from the stream eternal of Acheron
They have brought back to you Adonis---
Even in the twelfth month they have brought him,
The dainty-footed Hours.
Tardiest of the Immortals are the beloved Hours,
But dear and desired they come,
For always, to all mortals,
They bring some gift with them.
O Cypris, daughter of Dione,
From mortal to immortal, so men tell,
You have changed Berenice, dropping softly in

Reviews
No reviews yet.

The Prison Bell

Hark to the bell of sorrow! - 'tis awak'ning up again
Each broken spirit from its brief forgetfulness of pain.
Its sad sound seems to me to be a deathwail from the past,
An elegy for buried joys too pure and bright to last.
It haunts me like an echo from the dark depths of despair,
And conjures up the fiend-like forms of misery and care;
The saddest of the sorrowful, its tones bright dreams dispel,
For waking woes are summoned by the harsh-toned prison bell.

It tells me that I am not now what once I used to be,

Reviews
No reviews yet.

The Priestess of Panormita

Hear me, Lord of the Stars!
For thee I have worshipped ever
With stains and sorrows and scars,
With joyful, joyful endeavour.
Hear me, O lily-white goat!
O crisp as a thicket of thorns,
With a collar of gold for Thy throat,
A scarlet bow for Thy horns!

Here, in the dusty air,
I build Thee a shrine of yew.
All green is the garland I wear,
But I feed it with blood for dew!
After the orange bars
That ribbed the green west dying
Are dead, O Lord of the Stars,
I come to Thee, come to Thee crying.

Reviews
No reviews yet.

The Precocious Baby - a Very True Tale

An elderly person - a prophet by trade -
With his quips and tips
On withered old lips,
He married a young and a beautiful maid;
The cunning old blade!
Though rather decayed,
He married a beautiful, beautiful maid.

She was only eighteen, and as fair as could be,
With her tempting smiles
And maidenly wiles,
And he was a trifle past seventy-three:
Now what she could see
Is a puzzle to me,
In a prophet of seventy - seventy-three!

Of all their acquaintances bidden (or bad)
With their loud high jinks

Reviews
No reviews yet.

The Prayer of the Romands

Not done, but near its ending,
Is the work that our eyes desired;
Not yet fulfilled, but near the goal,
Is the hope that our worn hearts fired.
And on the Alban Mountains,
Where the blushes of dawn increase,
We see the flash of the beautiful feet
Of Freedom and of Peace!

How long were our fond dreams baffled!-
Novara's sad mischance,
The Kaiser's sword and fetter-lock,
And the traitor stab of France;
Till at last came glorious Venice,
In storm and tempest home;
And now God maddens the greedy kings,

Reviews
No reviews yet.

The Poplar

Why do you always stand there shivering
Between the white stream and the road?

The people pass through the dust
On bicycles, in carts, in motor-cars;
The waggoners go by at down;
The lovers walk on the grass path at night.

Stir from your roots, walk, poplar!
You are more beautiful than they are.

I know that the white wind loves you,
Is always kissing you and turning up
The white lining of your green petticoat.
The sky darts through you like blue rain,
And the grey rain drips on your flanks
And loves you.

Reviews
No reviews yet.