Short Poems

Time flies on restless pinions--constant never.
Be constant--and thou chainest time forever.

Wouldst thou find my ashes? Look

In the pages of my book;

And as these thy hand doth turn,

Know here is my funeral urn.

What’s become of you why this white hair and pink
Why this forehead these eyes rent apart heart-rending
The great misunderstanding of the marriage of radium
Solitude chases me with its rancour.

Good from the good,--to the reason this is not hard of conception;
But the genius has power good from the bad to evoke.
'Tis the conceived alone, that thou, imitator, canst practise;
Food the conceived never is, save to the mind that conceives.

Tear forever the garland of Homer, and number the fathers
Of the immortal work, that through all time will survive!
Yet it has but one mother, and bears that mother's own feature,
'Tis thy features it bears,--Nature,--thy features eterne!

The hunter crouches in his blind
'Neath camouflage of every kind
And conjures up a quacking noise
To lend allure to his decoys
This grown-up man, with pluck and luck
is hoping to outwit a duck

A stone face higher than six horses stood five thousand years gazing at the world seeming to clutch a secret.
A boy passes and throws a niggerhead that chips off the end of the nose from the stone face; he lets fly a mud ball that spatters the right eye and cheek of the old looker-on.
The boy laughs and goes whistling “ee-ee-ee ee-ee-ee.” The stone face stands silent, seeming to clutch a secret.

Ever honor the whole; individuals only I honor;
In individuals I always discover the whole.

Ever since You were the home of love for me, my love has lived where You have lived. Because of You, I have delighted in the wrath of my enemies; let them be, let them torment the one whom You tormented. It was from You that they learned their wrath, and I love them, for they hound the wounded one whom You struck down. Ever since You despised me, I have despised myself, for I will not honour what You despise. So be it, until Your anger has passed, and again You will redeem
Your own possession, which You once redeemed.**

**From the bondage of Egypt.

I shoot the Hippopotamus
With bullets made of platinum,
Because if I use leaden ones
His hide is sure to flatten 'em.