Works

And wherefore have they come, this warlike band,
That o'er the ocean many a weary day
Have tossed; and now beside Suakim's Bay,
With faces stern and resolute, do stand,...

Awf'lest boy in this-here town
Er anywheres is Elmer Brown!
He'll mock you - yes, an' strangers, too,
An' make a face an' yell at you, -
"Here's the way you look!"
...

What but the love of God could have softened
And made forgiving the people of Spoon River
Toward me who wronged the bed of Thomas Merritt
And murdered him beside?
Oh, loving hearts that took me in again...

[Original]

'Aprende las cosas elementarias!
'Para aquellos a quienes les ha llegado la hora nunca es demasadio tarde!
Aprende el abecedario. No bastar',
'pero apr'ndolo! 'No dejes que te desanimen!...

In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;
What means this tumult in a vestal's veins?...

Eloise! Eloise!
It is morn on the seas,
And the waters are curling and flashing;
And our rock-sheltered seat,
Where the waves ever beat
With a cadenced and rhythmical dashing,
Is here - just here,...

The eve was a burning copper,
The night was a boundless black
Where wells of the lightning crumbled
And boiled with blazing rack,
When I came to the coal-black castle
With the wild rain on my back....

I was a peasant girl from Germany,
Blue-eyed, rosy, happy and strong.
And the first place I worked was at Thomas Greene's.
On a summer's day when she was away
He stole into the kitchen and took me...

Little elfin maid,
Old, though scarce two years,
With your big dark hazel eyes
Tenderer than tears,

And your rosebud mouth
Lisping jocund things,
Breaking brooding silence with...

The herring loves the merry moon-light,
The mackerel loves the wind,
But the oyster loves the dredging sang,
For they come of a gentle kind.

Now haud your tongue, baith wife and carle,...

I

My soul goes out to her who says,
"Come, follow me and cast off care!"
Then tosses back her sun-bright hair,
And like a flower before me sways
Between the green leaves and my gaze:...

I have found a place of loneliness
Lonelier than Lyonesse
Lovelier than Paradise;

Full of sweet stillness
That no noise can transgress
Never a lamp distress.
...

From the dust, and the drought, and the heat,
I am borne on the pinions of leave,
From the things that are bad to repeat
To the things that are good to receive.

From the glare of the day at its height...

Past the despairing wail
And the bright banquets of the Elysian vale
Melt every care away!
Delight, that breathes and moves forever,
Glides through sweet fields like some sweet river!...

No rack can torture me,
My soul's at liberty
Behind this mortal bone
There knits a bolder one

You cannot prick with saw,
Nor rend with scymitar.
Two bodies therefore be;...

This is the street and the dwelling,
Let me count the houses o'er;
Yes,--one, two, three from the corner,
And the house that I love makes four.

That is the very window
Where I used to see her head...

Charity.

By the river
In the black wet night as the furtive rain slinks down,
Dropping and starting from sleep
Alone on a seat
A woman crouches.

I must go back to her.
...

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)



Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,
And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,
And Henry's army leapt afloat to win...

I said, "My youth is gone
Like a fire beaten out by the rain,
That will never sway and sing
Or play with the wind again."

I said, "It is no great sorrow
That quenched my youth in me,...

As you enter into dream -
its the unconsciousness
which stifles,
the thin embers
called flame
that outdistance
the controlled rubric
of desire.