Works

Oh! What is living but moving about,
Buoyed up with hope and crushed down by doubt?
What is the draught of breath we harp on as life?
Naught but a sip of peace, a cup full of strife -
What's the use?
...

The birds against the April wind
Flew northward, singing as they flew;
They sang, "The land we leave behind
Has swords for corn-blades, blood for dew."

"O wild-birds, flying from the South,...

"I hear the birds sing, mother,
Yet know not what they say;
I've listened to them often
Until they flew away.

"Say if their words, dear mother,
To you are clear and plain,...

O Joy of creation
To be!
O rapture to fly
And be free!
Be the battle lost or won,
Though its smoke shall hide the sun,
I shall find my love, the one
Born for me!
...

Over the chimney the night-wind sang
And chanted a melody no one knew;
And the Woman stopped, as her babe she tossed,
And thought of the one she had long since lost,...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)

The moon's an open furnace door
Where all can see the blast,
We shovel in our blackest griefs,
Upon that grate are cast...

What was it the Engines said,
Pilots touching, head to head
Facing on the single track,
Half a world behind each back?
This is what the Engines said,
Unreported and unread.
...

She came through shade and shine,
By scarlet trumpetvine
And fragrant buttonbush,
That heaped the wayside hush
And oh!
The orange-red of the butterfly weed,
And pink of the milkweed's plume,...

The moon is but a candle-glow
That flickers thro' the gloom:
The starry space, a castle hall:
And Earth, the children's room,
Where all night long the old trees stand
To watch the streams asleep:...

Where now the huts are empty,
Where never a camp-fire glows,
In an abandoned canyon,
A Gambler's Ghost arose.
He muttered there, "The moon's a sack
Of dust." His voice rose thin:...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)

The moon's a gong, hung in the wild,
Whose song the fays hold dear.
Of course you do not hear it, child.
It takes a FAIRY ear.
...

The moon is but a golden skull,
She mounts the heavens now,
And Moon-Worms, mighty Moon-Worms
Are wreathed around her brow.

The Moon-Worms are a doughty race:
They eat her gray and golden face....

Trust my father, saith the eldest-born;
I did trust him ere the earth began;
Not to know him is to be forlorn;
Not to love him is--not to be man.

He that knows him loves him altogether;...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)

The moon's a brass-hooped water-keg,
A wondrous water-feast.
If I could climb the ridge and drink
And give drink to my beast;...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)

Two statesmen met by moonlight.
Their ease was partly feigned.
They glanced about the prairie.
Their faces were constrained....

The moon went under a ragged cloud,
The owl cried out of the ruined wall,
Slow and solemn, distinct and loud,
His melancholy call:
Tu-whit, tu-whit, tu-whoo!
Like a creature in a shroud.
...

By the well, where the bullocks go
Silent and blind and slow,
By the field where the young corn dies
In the face of the sultry skies,
They have heard, as the dull Earth hears...

Winds of the summer time what are you saying,
What are ye seeking, and what do you miss?
Locks like the thistledown floating and straying,
Cheeks like the budding rose, tinted to kiss.
...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)

The moon's a little prairie-dog.
He shivers through the night.
He sits upon his hill and cries
For fear that I will bite.
...

The dim-winged spirits of the night
Do fear and serve me well.
They creep from out the hedges of
The garden where I dwell.

I wave my arms across the walk.
The troops obey the sign,...