Works

(What the Mendicant Said)


The moon's a monk, unmated,
Who walks his cell, the sky.
His strength is that of heaven-vowed men
Who all life's flames defy.

They turn to stars or shadows,...

My stretcher is one scarlet stain,
And as I tries to scrape it clean,
I tell you wot - I'm sick with pain
For all I've 'eard, for all I've seen;
Around me is the 'ellish night,...

I'm a broken-hearted miner, who loves his cup to drain,
Which often times has caused me to lie in frost and rain.
Roaming about the country, looking for some work to do,...

There's the whitebox and pine on the ridges afar,
Where the iron-bark, blue-gum, and peppermint are;
There is many another, but dearest to me,
And the king of them all was the stringy-bark tree.
...

"He was always the one to figure things," remarked Humboldt. "Always the smart ass type, big jawed lazy bones - couldn't make a good farmer out of that sort. Didn't want to do much of anything 'cept run. All his money went on h...

Quieter than any twilight
Shed over earth's last deserts,
Quiet and vast and shadowless
Is that unfounded keep,
Higher than the roof of the night's high chamber
Deep as the shaft of sleep.
...

There's a warrior hunting o'er prairie and hill,
Who in sunshine or starlight is eager to kill,
Who ne'er sleeps by his fire on the wild river's shore,
Where the green cedars shake to the white rapids' roar....

Upon the wreckage of thy yesterday
Design the structure of to-morrow. Lay
Strong corner stones of purpose, and prepare
Great blocks of wisdom, cut from past despair....

A minx of seventeen, with rather fine
Brown eyes and freckles and a cheerful grin,
She saunters up the ward, and stricken sin
Nods and looks pleasant (why should one repine?)....

So soon he fell, the world will never know
What possibilities within him lay,
What hopes irradiated his young life,
With high ambition and with ardor rife;
But ah! the speedy summons came, and so...

THE BARON OF ST. CASTINE

Baron Castine of St. Castine
Has left his chateau in the Pyrenees,
And sailed across the western seas.
When he went away from his fair demesne...

I have slept upon my couch,
But my spirit did not rest,
For the labours of the day
Yet my weary soul opprest;

And, before my dreaming eyes
Still the learned volumes lay,...

One summer morning, when the sun was hot,
Weary with labor in his garden-plot,
On a rude bench beneath his cottage eaves,
Ser Federigo sat among the leaves
Of a huge vine, that, with its arms outspread,...

THE COBBLER OF HAGENAU

I trust that somewhere and somehow
You all have heard of Hagenau,
A quiet, quaint, and ancient town
Among the green Alsatian hills,
A place of valleys, streams, and mills,...

EMMA AND EGINHARD

When Alcuin taught the sons of Charlemagne,
In the free schools of Aix, how kings should reign,
And with them taught the children of the poor...

Yet in the darksome crypt I left so late,
Whose only altar is its rusted grate, -
Sepulchral, rayless, joyless as it seems,
Shamed by the glare of May's refulgent beams, -...

I

"Poor wanderer," said the leaden sky,
"I fain would lighten thee,
But there be laws in force on high
Which say it must not be."

II

- "I would not freeze thee, shorn one," cried...

'Tis thy Muse's delight to sing God's pity to mortals;
But, that they pitiful are, is it a matter for song?

Miles and miles of quiet houses, every house a harbour,
Each for some unquiet soul a haven and a home,
Pleasant fires for winter nights, for sun the trellised arbour,...

Oh, who in creation would fail to descend
That wonderful hole in the ground? -
That, feeling its way like a hypocrite-friend
In sinuous fashion, seems never to end;
While thunder and lightning abound.
...