Brief words, when actions wait, are well: The prompter's hand is on his bell; The coming heroes, lovers, kings, Are idly lounging at the wings; Behind the curtain's mystic fold...
Do I sleep? do I dream? Do I wonder and doubt? Are things what they seem? Or is visions about? Is our civilization a failure? Or is the Caucasian played out?
Have you heard the story that gossips tell Of Burns of Gettysburg? No? Ah, well: Brief is the glory that hero earns, Briefer the story of poor John Burns. He was the fellow who won renown,...
'Crying!' Of course I am crying, and I guess you would be crying, too, If people were telling such stories as they tell about me, about you. Oh yes, you can laugh if you want to, and smoke as you didn't care how,...
Which I wish to remark, And my language is plain, That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar, Which the same I would rise to explain. ...
Why, as to that, said the engineer, Ghosts ain't things we are apt to fear; Spirits don't fool with levers much, And throttle-valves don't take to such; And as for Jim, What happened to him...
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...
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! ...