Short Poems

Could I retrace the pleasures of my years
Through all its changes of its joys & fears
Could I revisit all those scenes thats past
I'd make a dream so perfect as twod last

“Under my touch the old impetuous music
Revives and cries a moment in the darkness,
Broken and wandering, with sudden echoes
That circle forth and seek for you alone.”

She comes smiling into the car
With iridescent bubbles of children.
She blooms in the close plush seats
Like a narcissus in a bowl of stones.
She croons to a baby in her lap—
The trees come swinging by to listen,
And the electric lights in the ceiling are stars.

They weren fully glad of their gude hap
And tasten all the pleasaunces of joy.

From jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits,
And such conceits as clownage keeps in pay,
We'll lead you to the stately tent of war,
Where you shall hear the Scythian Tamburlaine
Threatening the world with high astounding terms,
And scourging kingdoms with his conquering sword.
View but his picture in this tragic glass,
And then applaud his fortunes as you please.

With Earth's first Clay They did the Last Man knead,
And there of the Last Harvest sowed the Seed:
And the first Morning of Creation wrote
What the Last Dawn of Reckoning shall read.

My heritage lost through disorder and famine,
My brothers and sisters flung eastward and westward,
My fields and gardens wrecked by the war,
My own flesh and blood become scum of the street,
I moan to my shadow like a lone-wandering wildgoose,
I am torn from my root like a water-plant in autumn:
I gaze at the moon, and my tears run down
For hearts, in five places, all sick with one wish.

Thine hour is now; ay, though the Hand
Have kingdoms yet in store,
He that to-day is king will stand
As if there were no more.

Night strengthens star by star,
And tint by tint the day;
The dearer blisses are
The longest on the way.

Lost Joy, who now is at your side
From morning until eventide;
Who has you softly by the hand,
All up and down the summer land?