Works

Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,
O Willer masked and dumb!
Who makest Life become, -
As though by labouring all-unknowingly,
Like one whom reveries numb.
...

I love the inoffensive frog,
'A little child, a limber elf,'
With health and spirits all agog,
He does the long jump in a bog
Or teaches men to swim and dive.
If he should be cut up alive,...

The dawn was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone...

Green angel lights
stream from the willow tree,
in direct symmetrical bearing
three birds are drawn to it.

In gold, soft patches
of light overreach
the earth,
shadows trace ridges...

I have stars drying in my eyes.
Heavy seas, in wind.
They have sealed me from the heavy
dragging sockets, otherwise my green eye shields.

I have scars all over my eyes,...

Ho! green fields and running brooks!
Knotted strings and fishing-hooks
Of the truant, stealing down
Weedy backways of the town.

Where the sunshine overlooks,
By green fields and running brooks,...

Green fields of England! wheresoe'er
Across this watery waste we fare,
Your image at our hearts we bear
Green fields of England, everywhere.

Sweet eyes in England, I must flee...

I was gathering
Leaves of the Wakana
In springtime.
Why did the snow fall
On my dress?

From the Japanese of the Mikado Ko-ko Ten-no, (ninth century).

'We' have not passed into a doleful City,
We who were led to-day down a grim dell,
By some too boldly named "the Jaws of Hell:"
Where be the wretched ones, the sights for pity?...

When breezes are soft and skies are fair,
I steal an hour from study and care,
And hie me away to the woodland scene,
Where wanders the stream with waters of green,...

Silence, whose drowsy eyelids are soft leaves,
And whose half-sleeping eyes are the blue flowers,
On whose still breast the water-lily heaves,
For all her speech the whisper of the showers.
...

Come to these peaceful seats, and think no more
Of cold, of midnight watchings, or the roar
Of Ocean, tossing on his restless bed!
Come to these peaceful seats, ye who have bled...

I spread a scanty board too late;
The old-time guests for whom I wait
Come few and slow, methinks, to-day.
Ah! who could hear my messages
Across the dim unsounded seas
On which so many have sailed away!...

Written for the Alumni of Albion College, Michigan; and sung at their last re-union, June, 1881.


The gliding years have rolled along,
And once again we come,
With greeting hand and choral song,...

What do I find right at the center of my interpersonal
relationships: a slightly dispersed but indisputably
tinctured core of brutality: go to the hospital

...

A leafy cot, where no dry rot
Had ever been by tenant seen,
Where ivy clung and wopses stung,
Where beeses hummed and drummed and strummed,
Where treeses grew and breezes blew...

Gregory Wenner's brother married the mother
Of Alma Bell, the daughter of a marriage
The mother made before. Kinship enough
To justify a call on Wenner's power
When Alma Bell was face to face with shame....

Greitna, father, that I'm gauin,
For fu' well ye ken the gaet;
I' the winter, corn ye're sawin,
I' the hairst again ye hae't.

I'm gauin hame to see my mither;
She'll be weel acquant or this!...

The Queen she sent to look for me,
The sergeant he did say,
'Young man, a soldier will you be
For thirteen pence a day?'

For thirteen pence a day did I
Take off the things I wore,...

When you went, how was it you carried with you
My missal book of fine, flamboyant hours?
My book of turrets and of red-thorn bowers,
And skies of gold, and ladies in bright tissue?
...