Works

June 4th! Do you know what that date means?
June 4th! By this air and these pines!
Well, only you know how I hate scenes,
These might be my very last lines!
For perhaps, sir, you'll kindly remember...

I'm sitting alone by the fire,
Dressed just as I came from the dance,
In a robe even you would admire,
It cost a cool thousand in France;
I'm be-diamonded out of all reason,
My hair is done up in a cue:...

Being asked by an intimate party,
Which the same I would term as a friend,
Though his health it were vain to call hearty,
Since the mind to deceit it might lend;
For his arm it was broken quite recent,...

Down the picket-guarded lane
Rolled the comfort-laden wain,
Cheered by shouts that shook the plain,
Soldier-like and merry:
Phrases such as camps may teach,
Sabre-cuts of Saxon speech,...

Father Felipe

I speak not the English well, but Pachita,
She speak for me; is it not so, my Pancha?
Eh, little rogue? Come, salute me the stranger
Americano.
...

Didn't know Flynn,
Flynn of Virginia,
Long as he's been 'yar?
Look 'ee here, stranger,
Whar hev you been?

Here in this tunnel
He was my pardner,
That same Tom Flynn,...

Shrewdly you question, Senor, and I fancy
You are no novice. Confess that to little
Of my poor gossip of Mission and Pueblo
You are a stranger!

Am I not right? Ah! believe me, that ever...

Say there! P'r'aps
Some on you chaps
Might know Jim Wild?
Well, no offense:
Thar ain't no sense
In gittin' riled!

Jim was my chum
Up on the Bar:
That's why I come...

Have you heard the story that gossips tell
Of Burns of Gettysburg? No? Ah, well:
Brief is the glory that hero earns,
Briefer the story of poor John Burns.
He was the fellow who won renown,...

When I bought you for a song,
Years ago Lord knows how long!
I was struck I may be wrong
By your features,
And a something in your air
That I couldn't quite compare
To my other plain or fair...

This is that hill of awe
That Persian Sindbad saw,
The mount magnetic;
And on its seaward face,
Scattered along its base,
The wrecks prophetic.

Here come the argosies...

Wot's that you're readin'? a novel? A novel! well, darn my skin!
You a man grown and bearded and histin' such stuff ez that in
Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you're thin ez a knife....

Captain of the Western wood,
Thou that apest Robin Hood!
Green above thy scarlet hose,
How thy velvet mantle shows!
Never tree like thee arrayed,
O thou gallant of the glade!
...

It was spring the first time that I saw her, for her papa and mamma moved in
Next door, just as skating was over, and marbles about to begin;...

And you are the poet, and so you want
Something what is it? a theme, a fancy?
Something or other the Muse won't grant
To your old poetical necromancy;
Why, one half you poets you can't deny...

Oh, you're the girl lives on the corner? Come in if you want to come quick!
There's no one but me in the house, and the cook but she's only a stick....

'Crying!' Of course I am crying, and I guess you would be crying, too,
If people were telling such stories as they tell about me, about you.
Oh yes, you can laugh if you want to, and smoke as you didn't care how,...

My papa knows you, and he says you're a man who makes reading for books;
But I never read nothing you wrote, nor did Papa, I know by his looks....

Maud Muller all that summer day
Raked the meadow sweet with hay;

Yet, looking down the distant lane,
She hoped the Judge would come again.

But when he came, with smile and bow,...

Lo! where the castle of bold Pfeiffer throws
Its sullen shadow on the rolling tide,
No more the home where joy and wealth repose,
But now where wassailers in cells abide;...