Loneliness

The wisest scholler of the wight most wise
By Phoebus doom, with sugred sentence sayes,
That vertue, if it once met with our eyes,
Strange flames of loue it in our souls would raise;
But for that man with paine this truth descries,
Whiles he each thing in Senses balance wayes,
And so nor will nor can behold those skies
Which inward sunne to heroick mind displaies
Vertue of late, with vertuous care to ster
Loue of herself, tooke Stellas shape, that she
To mortall eyes might sweetly shine in her.
It is most true; for since I her did see,
Vertues great beauty in that face I proue,
And find th' effect, for I do burn in loue.

    Up street, and down street,
        Each window's made of glass;
    If you go to Tommy Tickler's house,
        You'll find a pretty lass.

A way enhanced with glass and beads
There is, that to the Chapel leads;
Whose structure, for his holy rest,
Is here the Halcyon's curious nest;
Into the which who looks, shall see
His Temple of Idolatry;
Where he of god-heads has such store,
As Rome's Pantheon had not more.
His house of Rimmon this he calls,
Girt with small bones, instead of walls.
First in a niche, more black than jet,
His idol-cricket there is set;
Then in a polish'd oval by
There stands his idol-beetle-fly;
Next, in an arch, akin to this,
His idol-canker seated is.
Then in a round, is placed by these
His golden god, Cantharides.
So that where'er ye look, ye see
No capital, no cornice free,
Or frieze, from this fine frippery.
Now this the Fairies would have known,

I wish I knew that woman's name,
So, when she comes this way,
To hold my life, and hold my ears,
For fear I hear her say

She's 'sorry I am dead,' again,
Just when the grave and I
Have sobbed ourselves almost to sleep, --
Our only lullaby.

The Briarwood.

The fateful slumber floats and flows
About the tangle of the rose;
But lo! the fated hand and heart
To rend the slumberous curse apart!

The Council Room.

The threat of war, the hope of peace,
The Kingdom's peril and increase
Sleep on, and bide the latter day,
When fate shall take her chain away.

The Garden Court.

The maiden pleasance of the land
Knoweth no stir of voice or hand,
No cup the sleeping waters fill,
The restless shuttle lieth still.

The Rosebower.

Here lies the hoarded love, the key
To all the treasure that shall be;
Come fated hand the gift to take,
And smite this sleeping world awake.

    The cuckoo's a vine bird,
        A zengs as a vlies;
    A brengs us good tidins,
        And tells us no lies;
    A zucks th' smael birds' eggs,
        To make his voice clear;
    And the mwore a cries "cuckoo!"
        The zummer draws near.

    I was sick, but more than that, I was mad
    At the crooked police, and the crooked game of life.
    So I wrote to the Chief of Police at Peoria:
    "l am here in my girlhood home in Spoon River,
    Gradually wasting away.
    But come and take me, I killed the son
    Of the merchant prince, in Madam Lou's
    And the papers that said he killed himself
    In his home while cleaning a hunting gun -
    Lied like the devil to hush up scandal
    For the bribe of advertising.
    In my room I shot him, at Madam Lou's,
    Because he knocked me down when I said
    That, in spite of all the money he had,
    I'd see my lover that night."

Love took chambers on our street
Opposite to mine;
On his door he tacked a neat,
Clearly lettered sign.

Straightway grew his custom great,
For his sign read so:
“Hearts united while you wait.
Step in. Love and Co.”

Much I wondered who was “Co.”
In Love’s partnership;
Thought across the street I’d go,
Learn from Love’s own lip.

So I went; and since that day
Life is hard for me.
I was buncoed! (By the way,
“Co.” is Jealousy.)

'Twas a Funny Little Fellow
Of the very purest type,
For he had a heart as mellow
As an apple over-ripe;
And the brightest little twinkle
When a funny thing occurred,
And the lightest little tinkle
Of a laugh you ever heard!

His smile was like the glitter
Of the sun in tropic lands,
And his talk a sweeter twitter
Than the swallow understands;
Hear him sing - and tell a story -
Snap a joke - ignite a pun, -
'Twas a capture - rapture - glory,
And explosion - all in one!

Though he hadn't any money -
That condiment which tends
To make a fellow "honey"
For the palate of his friends; -
Sweet simples he compounded -
Sovereign antidotes for sin
Or taint, - a faith unbounded
That his friends were genuine.

He was...

One must be for ever drunken: that is the sole question of importance. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time that bruises your shoulders and bends you to the earth, you must be drunken without cease. But how? With wine, with poetry, with virtue, with what you please. But be drunken. And if sometimes, on the steps of a palace, on the green grass by a moat, or in the dull loneliness of your chamber, you should waken up, your intoxication already lessened or gone, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the timepiece; ask of all that flees, all that sighs, all that revolves, all that sings, all that speaks, ask of these the hour; and wind and wave and star and bird and timepiece will answer you:
"It is the hour to be drunken! Lest you be the martyred slaves of Time, intoxicate yourselves, be drunken withou...

    Above the city at his feet,
    Above the dome, above the sea,
    He rises unconfined and free
    To break upon the noonday heat.

    He turns around the parapet,
    Black-robed against the marble tower;
    His singing gains or loses power
    In pacing round the minaret.

    A brother to the singing birds
    He never knew restraining walls,
    But freely rises, freely falls
    The rhythm of the sacred words.

    I would that it to me were given
    To climb each day the muezzin's stair
    And in the warm and silent air
    To sing my heart out into Heaven.

A sickness of this world it most occasions
When best men die;
A wishfulness their far condition
To occupy.

A chief indifference, as foreign
A world must be
Themselves forsake contented,
For Deity.

There is an old Italian legend which says that on the eve of the beloved festival of All Saints (Hallowe'en) the souls of the dead return to earth for a little while and go by on the wind. The feast of All Saints is followed by the feast of the dead, when for a day only the sound of the Miserere is heard throughout the cities of Italy.


Hark! Hark to the wind! 'Tis the night, they say,
When all souls come back from the far away -
The dead, forgotten this many a day!

And the dead remembered - ay! long and well -
And the little children whose spirits dwell
In God's green garden of asphodel.

Have you reached the country of all content,
0 souls we know, since the day you went
From this time-worn world, where your years were spent?

Would you come back to the ...

Frail are the best of us, brothers
God's charity cover us all
Yet we ask for perfection in others,
And scoff when they stumble and fall.
Shall we give him a fish or a serpent
Who stretches his hand in his need?
Let the proud give a stone, but the manly
Will give him a hand full of bread.

Let us search our own hearts and behavior
Ere we cast at a brother a stone,
And remember the words of the Savior
To the frail and unfortunate one;
Remember when others displease us
The Nazarene's holy command,
For the only word written by Jesus
Was charity writ in the sand.

Over back where they speak of life as staying
('You couldn't call it living, for it ain't'),
There was an old, old house renewed with paint,
And in it a piano loudly playing.

Out in the plowed ground in the cold a digger,
Among unearthed potatoes standing still,
Was counting winter dinners, one a hill,
With half an ear to the piano's vigor.

All that piano and new paint back there,
Was it some money suddenly come into?
Or some extravagance young love had been to?
Or old love on an impulse not to care,

Not to sink under being man and wife,
But get some color and music out of life?

When the walls were red
That now are seen
To be overspread
With a mouldy green,
A fresh fair head
Would often lean
From the sunny casement
And scan the scene,
While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree.

But storms have raged
Those walls about,
And the head has aged
That once looked out;
And zest is suaged
And trust is doubt,
And slow effacement
Is rife throughout,
While fiercely girds the wind at the long-limbed sycamore tree!

Rise, household gods, and let us go;
But whither I myself not know.
First, let us dwell on rudest seas;
Next, with severest savages;
Last, let us make our best abode
Where human foot as yet ne'er trod:
Search worlds of ice, and rather there
Dwell than in loathed Devonshire.

                    TO R. K.


As long I dwell on some stupendous
And tremendous (Heaven defend us!)
Monstr'-inform'-ingens-horrendous
Demoniaco-seraphic
Penman's latest piece of graphic.
                -    Robert Browning    .

Will there never come a season
    Which shall rid us from the curse
Of a prose which knows no reason
    And an unmelodious verse:
When the world shall cease to wonder
    At the genius of an Ass,
And a boy's eccentric blunder
    Shall not bring success to pass:

When mankind shall be delivered
    From the clash of magazines,
And the inkstand shall be shivered
    Into countless smithereens:
When there stands a muzzled stripling,
    Mute, beside a muzzled bore:
When the Rudyards...