Short Poems

Cigarettes will spoil yer life,
Ruin yer health and kill yer baby,
Poor little innocent child.

one step outside
the temple gate, it's Japan—
a tea-picker's song

Ants covering a sterile nut shell,
A quivering, shifting mass of lives …
Don't step on it!
That would make a god of you. …

The world and our life are too full of confusion;
From the German Professor I'll seek a solution.
'Tis he who can set human life in order,
For constructing a system, why, he is the man;
With his night-cap's tassel and dressing-gown border,
He'll stop you the chinks in creation's plan.

Though in drifts the snows may lie,
Though it hail, though storm winds cry,
Hurtling at my window pane,
Never more will I complain.
For within my heart I bear
Springtide joys and thoughts of Her.

Rarely did ye understand me,
You, I rarely understood;
But we understood each other
When we both were in the mud.

By a languishing son of the Muse be it said,
Kind lady, permit me to rest
In slumber this weary, poetical head
On your white and beautiful breast.
“How dare you say such things to me,
Sir, amongst all this company?”

When I told you with tears of my sorrow that day,
You all of you yawned, and had nothing to say.
When I made them the theme of my versification,
You vouchsafed me your liveliest approbation.

Again the echoing halls I tread
Where truth she promised, weeping.
And where her ready tears were shed
I see vile serpents creeping.

HERE lies Landor,
Whom they thought a goose,
But he proved a gander.