Works

He wore, I think, a chasuble, the day when first we met;
A stole and snowy alb likewise, I recollect it yet.
He called me 'daughter,' as he raised his jeweled hand to bless;...

I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row
That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow....

Waltz in, waltz in, ye little kids, and gather round my knee,
And drop them books and first pot-hooks, and hear a yarn from me.
I kin not sling a fairy tale of Jinnys fierce and wild,...

It was the stage-driver's story, as he stood with his back to the wheelers,
Quietly flecking his whip, and turning his quid of tobacco;
While on the dusty road, and blent with the rays of the moonlight,...

An empty bench, a sky of grayest etching,
A bare, bleak shed in blackest silhouette,
Twelve years of platform, and before them stretching
Twelve miles of prairie glimmering through the wet.
...

Name of my heroine, simply 'Rose;'
Surname, tolerable only in prose;
Habitat, Paris, that is where
She resided for change of air;
Aetat twenty; complexion fair;
Rich, good looking, and debonnaire;...

We hev tumbled ez dust
Or ez worms of the yearth;
Wot we looked for hez bust!
We are objects of mirth!
They have played us old Pards of the river! they hev played us for all we was worth!
...

As I stand by the cross on the lone mountain's crest,
Looking over the ultimate sea,
In the gloom of the mountain a ship lies at rest,
And one sails away from the lea:...

The skies they were ashen and sober,
The streets they were dirty and drear;
It was night in the month of October,
Of my most immemorial year.
Like the skies, I was perfectly sober,...

Of all the fountains that poets sing,
Crystal, thermal, or mineral spring,
Ponce de Leon's Fount of Youth,
Wells with bottoms of doubtful truth,
In short, of all the springs of Time...

It is the story of Thompson of Thompson, the hero of Angels.
Frequently drunk was Thompson, but always polite to the stranger;
Light and free was the touch of Thompson upon his revolver;...

Sauntering hither on listless wings,
Careless vagabond of the sea,
Little thou heedest the surf that sings,
The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,
Give me to keep thy company.
...

'Speak, O man, less recent! Fragmentary fossil!
Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,
Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
Of volcanic tufa!

'Older than the beasts, the oldest Palaeotherium;...

"Speak, O man less recent!
Fragmentary fossil!
Primal pioneer of pliocene formation,
Hid in lowest drifts below the earliest stratum
Of volcanic tufa!
...

Which it is not my style
To produce needless pain
By statements that rile
Or that go 'gin the grain,
But here's Captain Jack still a-livin', and Nye has no skelp on his brain!
...

Beg your pardon, old fellow! I think
I was dreaming just now when you spoke.
The fact is, the musical clink
Of the ice on your wine-goblet's brink
A chord of my memory woke.
...

Our window's not much, though it fronts on the street;
There's a fly in the pane that gets nothin' to eat;
But it's curious how people think it's a treat
For me to look out of the window!
...

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,...

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.
...