Sometimes I can almost see, around our heads,
Like gnats around a streetlight in summer,
The children we could have,
The glimmer of them.

Sometimes I feel them waiting, dozing
In some antechamber - servants, half-
Listening for the bell.

Sometimes I see them lying like love letters
In the Dead Letter Office

And sometimes, like tonight, by some black
Second sight I can feel just one of them
Standing on the edge of a cliff by the sea
In the dark, stretching its arms out
Desperately to me.

Just how it came to rest where it rested,
miles out, miles from the last farmhouse even,
was a fair question. Dropped by hurricane
or aeroplane perhaps for some reason,
put down as a cairn or marker, then lost.
Tractor-size, six or seven feet across,
it was sloughed, unconscious, warm to the touch,
its gashed, rhinoceros, sea-lion skin
nursing a gallon of rain in its gut.
Lashed to the planet with grasses and roots,
it had to be cut. Stood up it was drunk
or slugged, wanted nothing more than to slump,
to spiral back to its circle of sleep,

O now that the genius of Bewick were mine,
And the skill which he learned on the banks of the Tyne.
Then the Muses might deal with me just as they chose,
For I'd take my last leave both of verse and of prose.

What feats would I work with my magical hand!
Book-learning and books should be banished the land:
And, for hunger and thirst and such troublesome calls,
Every ale-house should then have a feast on its walls.

The traveller would hang his wet clothes on a chair;
Let them smoke, let them burn, not a straw would he care!

Good children, list, if you're inclined,
And wicked children too -
This pretty ballad is designed
Especially for you.

Two ogres dwelt in Wickham Wold -
Each TRAITS distinctive had:
The younger was as good as gold,
The elder was as bad.

A wicked, disobedient son
Was JAMES M'ALPINE, and
A contrast to the elder one,
Good APPLEBODY BLAND.

M'ALPINE - brutes like him are few -
In greediness delights,
A melancholy victim to
Unchastened appetites.

Good, well-bred children every day
He ravenously ate, -

There were two little skeezucks who lived in the isle
Of Boo in a southern sea;
They clambered and rollicked in heathenish style
In the boughs of their cocoanut tree.
They didn't fret much about clothing and such
And they recked not a whit of the ills
That sometimes accrue
From having to do
With tailor and laundry bills.

The two little skeezucks once heard of a Fair
Far off from their native isle,
And they asked of King Fan if they mightn't go there
To take in the sights for awhile.
Now old King Fan

Two genii are there, from thy birth through weary life to guide thee;
Ah, happy when, united both, they stand to aid beside thee?
With gleesome play to cheer the path, the one comes blithe with beauty,
And lighter, leaning on her arm, the destiny and duty.
With jest and sweet discourse she goes unto the rock sublime,
Where halts above the eternal sea the shuddering child of time.
The other here, resolved and mute and solemn, claspeth thee,
And bears thee in her giant arms across the fearful sea.
Never admit the one alone!--Give not the gentle guide

Air -- "The Texas Rangers"

I
My friends, I pray you listen,
A story I will tell;
It's of two noble soldiers,
And they were known full well;
They were killed in the rebellion,
As you shall plainly hear,
Those brave and noble soldiers,
No danger did they fear.
II
They enlisted in Grand Rapids,
In eighteen and sixty-two,
'Twas in the month of August,
About the middle, too;
These two brave, noble soldiers,
They joined the cavalry;
They fought to save their country,
United it yet may be.
III

We walked along, while bright and red
Uprose the morning sun;
And Matthew stopped, he looked, and said,
'The will of God be done!'

A village schoolmaster was he,
With hair of glittering grey;
As blithe a man as yon could see
On a spring holiday.

And on that morning, through the grass,
And by the steaming rills,
We travelled merrily, to pass
A day among the hills.

'Our work,' said I, 'was well begun,
Then, from thy breast what thought,
Beneath so beautiful a sun,
So sad a sigh has brought?'

Unknown faces in the street
And winter coming on. I
Stand in the last moments of
The city, no more a child,
Only a man, -- one who has
Looked upon his own nakedness
Without shame, and in defeat
Has seen nothing to bless.
Touched once, like a plum, I turned
Rotten in the meat, or like
The plum blossom I never
Saw, hard at the edges, burned
At the first entrance of life,
And so endured, unreckoned,
Untaken, with nothing to give.
The first Jew was God; the second
Denied him; I am alive.

In a little town in Devonshire, in the mellow September moonlight,
A gentleman passing along a street saw a pitiful sight,
A man bending over the form of a woman on the pavement.
He was uttering plaintive words and seemingly discontent.

"What's the matter with the woman?" asked the gentleman,
As the poor, fallen woman he did narrowly scan.
"There's something the matter, as yer honour can see,
But it's not right to prate about my wife, blame me."

"Is that really your wife?" said the gentleman.
"Yes, sor, but she looks very pale and wan."