Works

When Want, with wasted mien and haggard eye,
Retires in silence to her cell to die;
When o'er her child she hangs with speechless dread,
Faint and despairing of to-morrow's bread;...

(With apologies to a beautiful poem.)


Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe decrease
By cautious birth-control and die in peace)
Mellow with learning lightly took the word...

She was a Philistine spick and span,
He was a bold Bohemian.
She had the mode, and the last at that;
He had a cape and a brigand hat.
She was so riant and chic and trim;...

And what are you that, wanting you
I should be kept awake
As many nights as there are days
With weeping for your sake?

And what are you that, missing you,
As many days as crawl...

Enough of thought, philosopher!
Too long hast thou been dreaming
Unlightened, in this chamber drear,
While summer's sun is beaming!
Space-sweeping soul, what sad refrain...

A Philosopher, included in the same sentence of condemnation with several guilty persons among whom he had been apprehended, sent the following lines, composed suddenly in the moment when he was going to death, to a certain Kin...

Know this, O King! that if thou shalt destroy
Me, no man's enemy and who have liv'd
Obedient to the Laws, thou may'st with ease
Strike off a wise man's head, but, taught the truth...

A long pause, during which EMPEDOCLES remains motionless, plunged in thought. The night deepens. He moves forward and gazes round him, and proceeds:


And you, ye stars,
Who slowly begin to marshal,...

Dulcis conscia lectuli lucerna.
MARTIAL, lib. xiv. epig. 89.


"Oh! love the Lamp" (my Mistress said),
"The faithful Lamp that, many a night,
"Beside thy Lais' lonely bed?...

The best of true philosophers
Are the children, after all,--
The children with laughing hearts
And the serious field and ball:
They have a bowl and bubbles,
And hours where rainbows are;...

PUPIL.
I am rejoiced, worthy sirs, to find you in pleno assembled;
For I have come down below, seeking the one needful thing.

ARISTOTLE....

(From 'A Faun's Holiday')


Meanwhile, though nations in distress
Cower at a comet's loveliness
Shaken across the midnight sky;
Though the wind roars, and Victory,...

Dearest, a look is but a ray
Reflected in a certain way;
A word, whatever tone it wear,
Is but a trembling wave of air;
A touch, obedience to a clause
In nature's pure material laws.
...

Hast thou the infant seen that yet, unknowing of the love
Which warms and cradles, calmly sleeps the mother's heart above
Wandering from arm to arm, until the call of passion wakes,...

I've wisdom from the East and from the West,
That's subject to no academic rule:
You may find it in the jeering of a jest,
Or distil it from the folly of a fool.
I can teach you with a quip, if I've a mind!...

Which among the philosophies will be enduring? I know not,
But that philosophy's self ever may last is my hope.

Aweel, I'm couped. But wha' could tell
The road wad rin sae sair?
I couldna gang yon pace mysel',
An' I winna try nae mair!

There's them wad coonsel me to stan',
But this is what I say:...

(A REPLY)


Yes, I was wrong about the phoebe-bird.
Two songs it has, and both of them I've heard:
I did not know those strains of joy and sorrow...

The Ph[oe]nix was, as you might say,
The burning question of his day:
The more he burned, the more he grew
Splendiferous in feathers new.
And from his ashes rising bland,...

Let the bird of loudest lay,
On the sole Arabian tree,
Herald sad and trumpet be,
To whose sound chaste wings obey.

But thou shrieking harbinger,
Foul precurrer of the fiend,...