Works

Devine came back the other day.
We'd planned a great home-comin'.
No long trombone we had to play,
No fine, heroic drummin'.
With two sticks and a milk-can Borne
Put up a martial clatter,...

When you fear the barber's mirror when you go to get a crop,
Or in sorrow every morning comb your hair across the top:
When you titivate and do the little things you never used,...

I. M. - Margaret Emma Henley (1888-1894)



When you wake in your crib,
You, an inch of experience -
Vaulted about
With the wonder of darkness;
Wailing and striving...

Where lies the truth? has Man, in wisdom's creed,
A pitiable doom; for respite brief
A care more anxious, or a heavier grief?
Is he ungrateful, and doth little heed
God's bounty, soon forgotten; or indeed,...

The old farm-home is Mother's yet and mine,
And filled it is with plenty and to spare,
But we are lonely here in life's decline,
Though fortune smiles around us everywhere:
We look across the gold...

The old farm-home is Mother's yet and mine,
And filled it is with plenty and to spare, -
But we are lonely here in life's decline,
Though fortune smiles around us everywhere:
We look across the gold...

"It is sad that so many of worth,
Still in the flesh," soughed the yew,
"Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth
Secludes from view.

"They ride their diurnal round
Each day-span's sum of hours...

While the yellow constellations shine with pale and tender glory,
In the lilac-scented stillness, let us listen to Earth's story.
All the flow'rs like moths a-flutter glimmer rich with dusky hues,...

1
The moon hummed like a refrigerator,
light thru shadows
- the solitude of dusk closing in;
black scars visible across
the moon's face shaped like
mountainous hands, all...

You could have driven
a pick-up truck
thru spokes of that moon, so big and radiant
this upended water chestnut -
ground mist weeping
in the shadows
flutter of an old woman's shawl,...

Now the autumn maize is growing,
Now the corn-cob fills,
Where the Little River flowing
Winds among the hills.
Over mountain peaks outlying
Clear against the blue
Comes a scout in silence flying,...

Down in a cellar cottage
In a dark and lonely street,
Was sat a widow and her boy,
With nothing left to eat.

The night was wild and stormy,
The wind howl'd round the door,...

Who is a Christian in this Christian land
Of many churches and of lofty spires?
Not he who sits in soft upholstered pews
Bought by the profits of unholy greed,
And looks devotion, while he thinks of gain....

Who learns my lesson complete?
Boss, journeyman, apprentice, churchman and atheist,
The stupid and the wise thinker, parents and offspring, merchant, clerk, porter and customer,...

Who'll wear the beaten colours, and cheer the beaten men?
Who'll wear the beaten colours, till our time comes again?
Where sullen crowds are densest, and fickle as the sea,...

Jes' a little bit o' feller - I remember still -
Ust to almost cry fer Christmas, like a youngster will.
Fourth o' July's nothin' to it! - New Year's ain't a smell!...

Why do ye call the poet lonely,
Because he dreams in lonely places?
He is not desolate, but only
Sees, where ye cannot, hidden faces.

These fresh beauties, we can prove,
Once were virgins, sick of love,
Turn'd to flowers: still in some,
Colours go and colours come.

Why should I care for the men of thames
Or the cheating waves of charter'd streams
Or shrink at the little blasts of fear
That the hireling blows into my ear

Tho born on the cheating banks of Thames...

Why was Cupid a boy,
And why a boy was he?
He should have been a girl,
For aught that I can see.

For he shoots with his bow,
And the girl shoots with her eye,...