Works

I spied John Mouldy in his cellar,
Deep down twenty steps of stone;
In the dusk he sat a-smiling,
Smiling there alone.

He read no book, he snuffed no candle;
The rats ran in, the rats ran out;...

De cloud is hide de moon, but dere's plain-tee light above,
Steady Johnnie, steady,kip your head down low,
Move de paddle leetle quicker, an' de ole canoe we'll shove
T'roo de water nice an' quiet...

I.

Now Farmer Jones was noted for fast horses on his place,
And also as the father of a son with freckled face,
And hair so red it looked as if it had been dyed in blood,...

JOSEPH

Mary, art thou the little maid
Who plucked me flowers in Spring?
I know thee not: I feel afraid:
Thou'rt strange this evening.

A sweet and rustic girl I won...

Trained in the holy art whose lifted shield
Wards off the darts a never-slumbering foe,
By hearth and wayside lurking, waits to throw,
Oppression taught his helpful arm to wield...

As Jove once on his judgment-seat,
Opened the trap-door at his feet;
Up flew the murmurs of creation,
Of every brute that had sensation.
The Thunderer, therefore, called his Eagle,...

The night of affliction, with its long hours of sadness,
Will soon pass away to be remembered no more;
And the weeping will end in a morning of gladness;
For no sorrow is known on the evergreen shore.
...

Non men gran grasia, donna.


Too much good luck no less than misery
May kill a man condemned to mortal pain,
If, lost to hope and chilled in every vein,
A sudden pardon comes to set him free....

Joy's is the magic sweet,
That makes Youth's pulses beat,
Puts music in young feet,
The old heart hears, the sad heart hears, that 's near it:

And Joy's the pleasant pain,...

When the spring comes round, and a certain day
Looks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees
And says, Remember,
I begin again, as if it were new,
A day of like date I once lived through,...

In Rome, when Morgan came to town,
They nailed the Colosseum down.
A great Collector! Once his Fad
Was Coins, but when in time he had
Collected all the coin in sight,...

We quarreled that morning,
For he was sixty - five, and I was thirty,
And I was nervous and heavy with the child
Whose birth I dreaded.
I thought over the last letter written me...

I rode one evening with Count Maddalo
Upon the bank of land which breaks the flow
Of Adria towards Venice: a bare strand
Of hillocks, heaped from ever-shifting sand,...

O dwellers in the stately towns,
What come ye out to see?
This common earth, this common sky,
This water flowing free?

As gayly as these kalmia flowers
Your door-yard blossoms spring;...

List a tale a fairy sent us
Fresh from dear Mundi Juventus.
When Love and all the world was young,
And birds conversed as well as sung;
And men still faced this fair creation...

I.

Summer evenings, when it's warm,
In the yard we sit and swing:
And it's better than a farm,
Watching how the fireflies swarm,
Listening to the crickets sing,
And the katydids that cry,...

Keep those eyes still purely mine,
Tho' far off I be:
When on others most they shine,
Then think they're turned on me.

Should those lips as now respond
To sweet minstrelsy,...

(Translated From The Gaelic. Taken down in Gaelic by Dewar.)

King Arthur on a journey went,
His men and he on hunting bent.

Came to the hill for victories known;
He, and Sir Balva, armed alone....

[Written while a field-worker in the Anti-Saloon League of Illinois.]


King Arthur's men have come again.
They challenge everywhere
The foes of Christ's Eternal Church.
Her incense crowns the air....

I read that once in Affrica
A princely wight did raine,
Who had to name Cophetua,
As poets they did faine.
From natures lawes he did decline,
For sure he was not of my minde,...