Identity

Come hither, and behold the fruits,
Vain man! of all thy vain pursuits.
Take wise advice, and look behind,
Bring all past actions to thy mind.
Here you may see, as in a glass,
How soon all human pleasures pass;
How will it mortify thy pride,
To turn the true impartial side!
How will your eyes contain their tears,
When all the sad reverse appears!
    This cave within its womb confines
The last result of all designs:
Here lie deposited the spoils
Of busy mortals' endless toils:
Here, with an easy search, we find
The foul corruptions of mankind.
The wretched purchase here behold
Of traitors, who their country sold.
    This gulf insatiate imbibes
The lawyer's fees, the statesman's bribes.
Here, in their proper shape and mien,
Fraud, perj...

    Blossoms crimson, white, or blue,
        Purple, pink, and every hue,
    From sunny skies, to tintings drowned
        In dusky drops of dew,
    I praise you all, wherever found,
        And love you through and through; -
            But, Blossoms On The Trees,
            With your breath upon the breeze,
    There's nothing all the world around
        As half as sweet as you!

    Could the rhymer only wring
        All the sweetness to the lees
    Of all the kisses clustering
        In juicy Used-to-bes,
    To dip his rhymes therein and sing
        The blossoms on the trees, -
    "O Blossoms on the Trees,"
        He would twitter, trill and coo,
    "However sweet, such songs as these
        Are not as sweet as you...

Who knows the heart of the Christian? How does he reason?
What are his measures and balances? Which is his season
For laughter, forbearance or bloodshed, and what devils move him
When he arises to smite us? I do not love him.
He invites the derision of strangers, he enters all places.
Booted, bareheaded he enters. With shouts and embraces
He asks of us news of the household whom we reckon nameless.
Certainly Allah created him forty-fold shameless!

So it is not in the Desert. One came to me weeping,
The Avenger of Blood on his track, I took him in keeping.
Demanding not whom he had slain, I refreshed him, I fed him
As he were even a brother. But Eblis had bred him.

He was the son of an ape, ill at ease in his clothing.
He talked with his head, hands and feet. I en...

It isn't 'at aw want to rooam
An leeav thi bi thisen:
For aw'm content enuff at hooam,
Aw'm net like other men.
But then ther's thee an childer three,
To care for an protect,
It's reight 'at yo should luk to me,
An wrang should aw neglect.

Aw'm growin older ivvery day,
My race is ommost run,
Time's growin varry precious, lass,
An lots remains undone.
If aw wor called away, maybe,
Tha'd find some other man,
But tha cannot find a father,
For them lads, - do th' best tha can.

Another husband might'nt prove
As kind as aw have been;
An wedded life's a weary thing,
When love's shut aght o'th' scene.
Aw know aw've faults, aw'll own a lot, -
But then, tha must agree,
Aw've allus kept a tender spot
Within mi heart for thee...

I.

    Whan I sleep I dream,
        Whan I wauk I'm eerie,
    Sleep I canna get,
        For thinkin' o' my dearie.

II.

    Lanely night comes on,
        A' the house are sleeping,
    I think on the bonnie lad
        That has my heart a keeping.
            Ay waukin O, waukin ay and wearie,
                Sleep I canna get, for thinkin' o' my dearie.

III.

    Lanely nights come on,
        A' the house are sleeping,
    I think on my bonnie lad,
        An' I blear my een wi' greetin'!
            Ay waukin, &c.

'Twas up in a land long famed for gold, where women were far and rare,
Tellus, the smith, had taken to wife a maiden amazingly fair;
Tellus, the brawny worker in iron, hairy and heavy of hand,
Saw her and loved her and bore her away from the tribe of a Southern land;
Deeming her worthy to queen his home and mother him little ones,
That the name of Tellus, the master smith, might live in his stalwart sons.

Now there was little of law in the land, and evil doings were rife,
And every man who joyed in his home guarded the fame of his wife;
For there were those of the silver tongue and the honeyed art to beguile,
Who would cozen the heart from a woman's breast and damn her soul with a smile.
And there were women too quick to heed a look or a whispered word,
And once in a while a man...

    The songs that mother used to sing!
        How tenderly those ditties roll,
        And to the dirges in my soul
    The happy notes of gladness bring!
    Where'er my vagrant feet may roam
    From pleasures of my childhood's home,
    This life of mine with rapture throngs,
    When thinking of my mother's songs.

    They were not made of magic lays;
        No perfect melodies were found,
        That with the strains of fairy sound
    Would charm the stranger's ear to praise;
    But I can never hope to meet
    Another music half so sweet,
    And all my longing love will cling
    To songs that mother used to sing.

    With gentleness of crooning cries,
        She freed the aching limbs from pain,
        And lulled the eyes ...

    Lord, where are Thy prerogatives?
            Why, men have more than Thou hast kept;
    The king rewards, remits, forgives,
            The poet to a throne has stept.

    And Thou, despoiled, hast given away
            Worship to men, success to strife,
    Thy glory to the heavenly day,
            And made Thy sun the lord of life.

    Is one too precious to impart,
            One property reserved to Christ?
    One, cherished, grappled to that heart?
            -To be alone the Sacrificed?

    O Thou who lovest to redeem,
            One whom I know lies sore oppressed.
    Thou wilt not suffer me to dream
            That I can bargain for her rest.

    Seven hours I swiftly sleep, while she
            Measures the ...

Wot’s that you’re readin’? a novel? A novel! well, darn my skin!
You a man grown and bearded and histin’ such stuff ez that in
Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you’re thin ez a knife.
Look at me clar two hundred and never read one in my life!

That’s my opinion o’ novels. And ez to their lyin’ round here,
They belong to the Jedge’s daughter the Jedge who came up last year
On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o’ pine and fir;
And his daughter well, she read novels, and that’s what’s the matter with her.

Yet she was sweet on the Jedge, and stuck by him day and night,
Alone in the cabin up ‘yer till she grew like a ghost, all white.
She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away
Ez rifle smoke blown through the woods, but she w...

A lily in a twilight place?
A moonflow'r in the lonely night? -
Strange beauty of a woman's face
    Of wildflow'r-white!

The rain that hangs a star's green ray
Slim on a leaf-point's restlessness,
Is not so glimmering green and gray
    As was her dress.

I drew her dark hair from her eyes,
And in their deeps beheld a while
Such shadowy moonlight as the skies
    Of Hell may smile.

She held her mouth up redly wan,
And burning cold, - I bent and kissed
Such rosy snow as some wild dawn
    Makes of a mist.

God shall not take from me that hour,
When round my neck her white arms clung!
When 'neath my lips, like some fierce flower,
    Her white throat swung!

Or words she murmured while she leaned!
Witch-words,...

Tune - "Banks of Banna."



I.

    Yestreen I had a pint o' wine,
        A place where body saw na';
    Yestreen lay on this breast o' mine
        The gowden locks of Anna.
    The hungry Jew in wilderness
        Rejoicing o'er his manna,
    Was naething to my hinny bliss
        Upon the lips of Anna.

II.

    Ye monarchs tak the east and west,
        Frae Indus to Savannah!
    Gie me within my straining grasp
        The melting form of Anna.
    There I'll despise imperial charms,
        An empress or sultana,
    While dying raptures in her arms
        I give and take with Anna!

III.

    Awa, thou flaunting god o' day!
        Awa, thou pale Diana!
    Ilk star gae hi...

I, who was always counted, they say,
Rather a bad stick any way,
Splintered all over with dodges and tricks,
Known as "the worst of the Deacon's six;"
I, the truant, saucy and bold,
The one black sheep in my father's fold,
"Once on a time," as the stories say,
Went over the hill on a winter's day--
Over the hill to the poor-house.

Tom could save what twenty could earn;
But givin' was somethin' he ne'er would learn;
Isaac could half o' the Scriptur's speak--
Committed a hundred verses a week;
Never forgot, an' never slipped;
But "Honor thy father and mother" he skipped;
So over the hill to the poor-house.

As for Susan, her heart was kind
An' good--what there was of it, mind;
Nothin' too big, an' nothin' too nice,
Nothin' she wouldn't ...

Scarce had the solemn Sabbath-bell
Ceased quivering in the steeple,
Scarce had the parson to his desk
Walked stately through his people,
When down the summer-shaded street
A wasted female figure,
With dusky brow and naked feet,
Came rushing wild and eager.
She saw the white spire through the trees,
She heard the sweet hymn swelling:
O pitying Christ! a refuge give
The poor one in Thy dwelling!
Like a scared fawn before the hounds,
Right up the aisle she glided,
While close behind her, whip in hand,
A lank-haired hunter strided.
She raised a keen and bitter cry,
To Heaven. and Earth appealing;
Were manhood's generous pulses dead?
Had woman's heart no feeling?
A score of stout hands rose between
The hunter and the flying:
Age clench...

I thought you a fire
On Heron-Plantation Hill,
Dealing out mischief the most dire
To the chattels of men of hire
There in their vill.

But by and by
You turned a yellow-green,
Like a large glow-worm in the sky;
And then I could descry
Your mood and mien.

How well I know
Your furtive feminine shape!
As if reluctantly you show
You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw
Aside its drape . . .

How many a year
Have you kept pace with me,
Wan Woman of the waste up there,
Behind a hedge, or the bare
Bough of a tree!

No novelty are you,
O Lady of all my time,
Veering unbid into my view
Whether I near Death's mew,
Or Life's top cyme!

I can't extend to every friend
    In need a helping hand -
No matter though I wish it so,
    'Tis not as Fortune planned;
But haply may I fancy they
    Are men of different stripe
Than others think who hint and wink, -
    And so - I smoke my pipe!

A golden coal to crown the bowl -
    My pipe and I alone, -
I sit and muse with idler views
    Perchance than I should own: -
It might be worse to own the purse
    Whose glutted bowels gripe
In little qualms of stinted alms;
    And so I smoke my pipe.

And if inclined to moor my mind
    And cast the anchor Hope,
A puff of breath will put to death
    The morbid misanthrope
That lurks inside - as errors hide
    In standing forms of type
To mar at birth some line of wo...

From the wheel and the drift of Things
Deliver us, Good Lord,
And we will face the wrath of Kings,
The faggot and the sword!

Lay not thy Works before our eyes
Nor vex us with thy Wars,
Lest we should feel the straining skies
O'ertrod by trampling stars.

Hold us secure behind the gates
Of saving flesh and bone,
Lest we should dream what Dream awaits
The Soul escaped alone.

Thy Path, thy Purposes conceal
From our beleaguered realm
Lest any shattering whisper steal
Upon us and o'erwhelm.

A veil 'twixt us and Thee, Good Lord,
A veil 'twixt us and Thee,
Lest we should hear too clear, too clear,
And unto madness see!

The Woman at the Washtub,
She works till fall of night;
With soap and suds and soda
Her hands are wrinkled white.
Her diamonds are the sparkles
The copper-fire supplies;
Her opals are the bubbles
That from the suds arise.

The Woman at the Washtub
Has lost the charm of youth;
Her hair is rough and homely,
Her figure is uncouth;
Her temper is like thunder,
With no one she agrees,
The children of the alley
They cling around her knees.

The Woman at the Washtub,
She too had her romance;
There was a time when lightly
Her feet flew in the dance.
Her feet were silver swallows,
Her lips were flowers of fire;
Then she was Bright and Early,
The Blossom of Desire.

0 Woman at the Washtub,
And do you ever dream<...

The poet in his lone yet genial hour
Gives to his eyes a magnifying power:
Or rather he emancipates his eyes
From the black shapeless accidents of size -
In unctuous cones of kindling coal,
Or smoke upwreathing from the pipe's trim bole,
        His gifted ken can see
        Phantoms of sublimity.