Full fifty merry maids I heard
One summer morn a-singing;
And each was like a joyous bird
With spring-clear not a-ringing.
It was an old-time soldier song
That held their happy voices:
Oh how it's good to swing along
When youth rejoices!

Then lo! I dreamed long years had gone,
They passed again ungladly.
Their backs were bent, their cheeks were wan,
Their eyes were staring sadly.
Their ranks were thinned by full a score
From death's remorseless reaping

We were smoking some of this knockout weed when
Operation Memory was announced. To his separate bed
Each soldier went, counting backwards from a hundred
With a needle in his arm. And there I was, in the middle
Of a recession, in the middle of a strange city, between jobs
And apartments and wives. Nobody told me the gun was loaded.

We'd been drinking since early afternoon. I was loaded.
The doctor made me recite my name, rank, and serial number when
I woke up, sweating, in my civvies. All my friends had jobs

If ever I am old, and all alone,
I shall have killed one grief, at any rate;
For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait
Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown.
The devil only knows what I have done,
But here I am, and here are six or eight
Good friends, who most ingenuously prate
About my songs to such and such a one.

But everything is all askew to-night,—
As if the time were come, or almost come,
For their untenanted mirage of me
To lose itself and crumble out of sight,
Like a tall ship that floats above the foam

FATE now allows us,

'Twixt the departing

And the upstarting,
Happy to be;
And at the call of

Memory cherish'd,

Future and perish'd
Moments we see.

Seasons of anguish,--

Ah, they must ever

Truth from woe sever,
Love and joy part;
Days still more worthy

Soon will unite us,

Fairer songs light us,
Strength'ning the heart.

We, thus united,

Think of, with gladness,

Rapture and sadness,
Sorrow now flies.
Oh, how mysterious

Fortune's direction!

RORATE coeli desuper!
   Hevins, distil your balmy schouris!
For now is risen the bricht day-ster,
   Fro the rose Mary, flour of flouris:
   The cleir Sone, quhom no cloud devouris,
Surmounting Phebus in the Est,
   Is cumin of his hevinly touris:
   Et nobis Puer natus est.

Archangellis, angellis, and dompnationis,
   Tronis, potestatis, and marteiris seir,
And all ye hevinly operationis,

Though after Death, Thanks lessen into Praise,
And Worthies be not crown'd with gold, but bayes;
Shall we not thank? To praise Thee all agree;
We Debtors must out doe it, heartily.
Deserved Nobility of True Descent,
Though not so old in Thee grew Ancient:
We number not the Tree of Branched Birth,
But genealogie of Vertue, spreading forth
To many Births in value. Piety,
True Valour, Bounty, Meeknesse, Modesty,
These noble off-springs swell Thy Name as much,
As Richards, Edwards, three, foure, twenty such:

THERE 's little joy in life for me,
And little terror in the grave ;
I 've lived the parting hour to see
Of one I would have died to save.

Calmly to watch the failing breath,
Wishing each sigh might be the last ;
Longing to see the shade of death
O'er those belovèd features cast.

The cloud, the stillness that must part
The darling of my life from me ;
And then to thank God from my heart,
To thank Him well and fervently ;

Although I knew that we had lost
The hope and glory of our life ;

Good Heav'n, I thank thee, since it was design'd
I shou'd be fram'd, but of the weaker kinde,
That yet, my Soul, is rescu'd from the Love
Of all those Trifles, which their Passions move.
Pleasures, and Praise, and Plenty haue with me
But their just value. If allow'd they be,
Freely, and thankfully as much I tast,
As will not reason, or Religion wast.
If they're deny'd, I on my selfe can Liue,
And slight those aids, unequal chance does give.
When in the Sun, my wings can be display'd,
And in retirement, I can bless the shade.

(WASHINGTON SQUARE)


I met him, as one meets a ghost or two,
Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.
“King Solomon was right, there’s nothing new,”
Said he. “Behold a ruin who meant well.”

He led me down familiar steps again,
Appealingly, and set me in a chair.
“My dreams have all come true to other men,”
Said he; “God lives, however, and why care?

“An hour among the ghosts will do no harm.”
He laughed, and something glad within me sank.
I may have eyed him with a faint alarm,

Old Mother Laidinwool had nigh twelve months been dead.
She heard the hops was doing well, an' so popped up her head
For said she: "The lads I've picked with when I was young and fair,
They're bound to be at hopping and I'm bound to meet 'em there!"

Let me up and go
Back to the work I know, Lord!
Back to the work I know, Lord!
For it is dark where I lie down, My Lord!
An' it's dark where I lie down!

Old Mother Laidinwool, she give her bones a shake,
An' trotted down the churchyard-path as fast as she could make.