Short Poems

One cantaloupe is ripe and lush,
Another's green, another's mush.
I'd buy a lot more cantaloupe
If I possessed a fluoroscope.

The camel has a single hump;
The dromedary , two;
Or else the other way around.
I'm never sure. Are you?

My body is both white and round.
In water I may sink or swim.
The hand the kneads me may be rough,
But I still shall keep my true-red heart.

The butterfly is perfuming
It's wings in the scent
Of the orchid.

Bring me the livery of no other man.
I am my own to robe me at my pleasure.
Accepted rules to me disclose no treasure:
What is the chief who shall my garments plan?
No garb conventional but I 'll attack it.
(Come, why not don my spangled jacket?)

In the daytime, when she moved about me,
In the night, when she was sleeping at my side, --
I was wearied, I was wearied of her presence.
Day by day and night by night I grew to hate her --
Would God that she or I had died!

Mat. Prior


Petrolio, vaunting his Mercedes' power,
Vows she can cover eighty miles an hour.
I tried the car of old and know she can.
But dare he ever make her? Ask his man!

Las' time 'at Uncle Sidney come,
He bringed a watermelon home--
An' half the boys in town,
Come taggin' after him.--An' he
Says, when we et it,--'Gracious me!
'S the boy-house fell down?'

Slumber and Sleep, two brethren ordain'd by the gods to their service,

Were by Prometheus implored, comfort to give to his race;
But though so light to the gods, too heavy for man was their burden,

We in their slumber find sleep, we in their sleep meet with death.

His blindness lends a magic to his fingers,
As if his seeing subtlety were sensed
In them, and his wits left his eyes to work
In the nimble digits as they read for him.