Short Poems

Sparrows scream at the dawn one note:
how should they learn melody
in the street's noises?

Now is my Chloris fresh as May,
All clad in green and flowers gay.
O! might I think August were near,
That harvest joy might soon appear!
But she keeps May throughout the year,
And August never comes the near.
Yet I will hope, though she be May,
August will come another day.

The thirsty of soul soon learn to know
The moistureless froth of the social show,
The vulgar sham of the pompous feast
Where the heaviest purse is the highest priest;
The organized charity, scrimped and iced,
In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ.

I John Roberts writ This same,
I pasted it, and plaister'd it, and put it in a Frame:
In Honor of my Master's Master, King Charles the Second by Name.

When the club met in her home, embarrassed, she asked them not to begin: her father wanted to speak to them.
The members whispered to each other, “Who is her father?”
“I thank you, young men and women,” he said, “for the honor of your visit. I suppose you would like to hear some of my poems.” And he began to chant.

My ax sinks in—
surprising scent
from the winter tree.

( The Council of War ) The term of banishment having expired, Yudhishthir demanded that the kingdom of Indra-prastha should be restored to him. The old Dhrita-rashtra and his queen and the aged and virtuous councillors advised the restoration, but the jealous Duryodhan hated his cousins with a genuine hatred, and would not consent. All negotiations were therefore futile, and preparations were made on both sides for the most sanguinary and disastrous battle that had ever been witnessed in Northern India.

( Cattle-Lifting ) The conditions of the banishment of the sons of Pandu were hard. They must pass twelve years in exile, and then they must remain a year in concealment. If they were discovered within this last year, they must go into exile for another twelve years.

You may speak
of jewels shining in the night.
How can they
compare to drinking saké
and cleansing one's heart?

Homage be to the deliriously hot, the shaking, exciting, impetuous
fever! Homage to the cold fever, to him that in the past fulfilled desires!
May the fever that returns on the morrow, he that returns on two
successive days, the impious one, pass into this frog!