Works

This is the room that thou wast ushered in.
Wouldst thou, perchance, a larger freedom win?
Wouldst thou escape for deeper or no breath?
There is no door but death.
...

June, but we kept the fire place piled with logs,
And every day it rained. And every morning
I heard the wind and rain among the leaves.
Try as I would my spirits grew no better....

There's the dragon banner, says Old King Cole,
And the tiger banner, he cries.
Pantagruel breaks into a laugh
As the monarch dries his eyes. - The Search

"The tiger banyer, that is what you call much...

I'm home at last. How long were you asleep?
I startled you. The time? It's midnight past.
Put on your slippers and your robe, my dear,
And make some coffee for me - what a night!...

Silvers and purples breathing in a sky
Of fiery mid-days, like a watching tiger,
Of the restrained but passionate July
Upon the marshes of the river lie,
Like the filmed pinions of the dragon fly.
...

Mother, my head is bloody, my breast is red with scars.
Well, foolish son, I told you so, why went you to the wars?

Mother, my soul is crucified, my thirst is past belief....

Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all are sleeping on the hill.

One passed in a fever,...

Why don't they come to me to find the cause
Of Elenor Murray's death? The house is first;
That is the world, and Jack is God, you know;
The malt is linen, purple, wine and food,...

Two children in a garden
Shouting for joy
Were playing dolls and houses,
A girl and boy.
I smiled at a neighbor window,
And watched them play
Under a budding oak tree
On a wintry day.
...

The jurymen are seated here and there
In Merival's great library. They smoke,
And drink a little beer or Scotch. Arise
At times to read the evidence taken down,
And typed for reference. Before them lie...

You and your landscape! There it lies
Stripped, resuming its disguise,
Clothed in dreams, made bare again,
Symbol infinite of pain,
Rapture, magic, mystery
Of vanished days and days to be....

What does one gain by living? What by dying
Is lost worth having? What the daily things
Lived through together make them worth the while
For their sakes or for life's? Where's the denying...

My brother, the god, and I grow sick
Of heaven's heights.
We plunge to the valley to hear the tick
Of days and nights.
We walk and loiter around the Loom
To see, if we may,...

From State street bridge a snow-white glimpse of sea
Beyond the river walled in by red buildings,
O'ertopped by masts that take the sunset's gildings,
Roped to the wharf till spring shall set them free....

Elenor Murray and Petain, the major,
The Promenade des Anglais walked at Nice.
A cloud was over him, and in her heart
A growing grief.

He knew her at the hospital,...

As a boy, Theodore, you sat for long hours
On the shore of the turbid Spoon
With deep-set eye staring at the door of the crawfish's burrow,
Waiting for him to appear, pushing ahead,...

I

The sea moans and the stars are bright,
The leaves lisp 'neath a rolling moon.
I shut my eyes against the night
And make believe the time is June,
The June that left us over-soon.
...

I saw a room where many feet were dancing.
The ceiling and the wall were mirrors glancing
Both flames of candles and the heaven's light,
Though windows there were none for air or flight....

There's not a soul on the square,
And the snow blows up like a sail,
Or dizzily drifts like a drunken man
Falling, before the gale.

And when the wind eddies it rifts
The snow that lies in drifts;...

I have seen many faces changed by the Sculptor Death,
But never a face like Harold's who passed in a throe of pain.
There were maidens and youths in the bud, and men in the lust of life;...