Short Poems

I've learnt to laugh now at adversity
Though once if but its shadow fell on me,
I wept. I'm friends with fate, not out of fear
For in my heart I am its enemy
My freedom's a veneer, I entered life
But not of my own choice, shall be at strife
With fate upon my deathbed. You who call me
Free, do you not know I've got a wife?

In court to serve decked with fresh array,
Of sugar'd meats feeling the sweet repast,
The life in banquets, and sundry kinds of play
Amid the press of lordly looks to waste
Hath with it join'd oft times such bitter taste,
That who so joys such kinds of life to hold,
In prison joys, fetter'd with chains of gold.

If it
Were lighter touch
Than petal of flower resting
On grass oh still too heavy it were

I WENT to sleep smiling,
I wakened despairing—
Where was my soul,
On what terror-path faring?
What grief shall befall me,
By midnight or noon,
What thing has my soul learned
That I shall know soon?

I was born upon thy bank river
My blood flows in thy stream
And thou meanderest forever
At the bottom of my dream

I told the Sun that I was glad,
I'm sure I don't know why;
Somehow the pleasant way he had
Of shining in the sky,
Just put a notion in my head
That wouldn't it be fun
If, walking on the hill, I said
"I'm happy" to the Sun.

I think human nature is pretty much the same all along.
On the whole perhaps Pussycat nature is the best.

There was an old person who sung,
‘Bloo—Sausages! Kidnies! and Tongue!
Bloo! Bloo! my dear Madam,
My name is Old Adam.
Bloo! Sausages—Kidnies, and Tongue!’

I mock thee not, tho' I by thee am mocked,
Thou call'st me madman, but I call thee blockhead.

Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.