Works

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...

What I want is my husband, sir,
And if you're a man, sir,
You'll give me an answer,
Where is my Joe?

Penrhyn, sir, Joe,
Caernarvonshire.
Six months ago
Since we came here...

Dramatis Person'

First Tourist
Second Tourist
Yuba Bill, Driver
A Stranger



First Tourist

Look how the upland plunges into cover,...

I read last night of the grand review
In Washington's chiefest avenue,
Two hundred thousand men in blue,
I think they said was the number,
Till I seemed to hear their trampling feet,...

Know I not whom thou mayst be
Carved upon this olive-tree,
'Manuela of La Torre,'
For around on broken walls
Summer sun and spring rain falls,
And in vain the low wind calls
'Manuela of La Torre.'...

Behind the footlights hangs the rusty baize,
A trifle shabby in the upturned blaze
Of flaring gas and curious eyes that gaze.

The stage, methinks, perhaps is none too wide,...

We know him well: no need of praise
Or bonfire from the windy hill
To light to softer paths and ways
The world-worn man we honor still.

No need to quote the truths he spoke...

Good! said the Padre, believe me still,
'Don Giovanni,' or what you will,
The type's eternal! We knew him here
As Don Diego del Sud. I fear
The story's no new one! Will you hear?
...

As you look from the plaza at Leon west
You can see her house, but the view is best
From the porch of the church where she lies at rest;

Where much of her past still lives, I think,...

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?

Which expressions are strong;...

I mind it was but yesterday:
The sun was dim, the air was chill;
Below the town, below the hill,
The sails of my son's ship did fill,
My Jacob, who was cast away.
...

Being asked by an intimate party,
Which the same I would term as a friend,
Though his health it were vain to call hearty,
Since the mind to deceit it might lend;
For his arm it was broken quite recent,...

Father Felipe

I speak not the English well, but Pachita,
She speak for me; is it not so, my Pancha?
Eh, little rogue? Come, salute me the stranger
Americano.
...

Didn't know Flynn,
Flynn of Virginia,
Long as he's been 'yar?
Look 'ee here, stranger,
Whar hev you been?

Here in this tunnel
He was my pardner,
That same Tom Flynn,...

Shrewdly you question, Senor, and I fancy
You are no novice. Confess that to little
Of my poor gossip of Mission and Pueblo
You are a stranger!

Am I not right? Ah! believe me, that ever...

When I bought you for a song,
Years ago Lord knows how long!
I was struck I may be wrong
By your features,
And a something in your air
That I couldn't quite compare
To my other plain or fair...

Brown foundling of the Western wood,
Babe of primeval wildernesses!
Long on my table thou hast stood
Encounters strange and rude caresses;
Perchance contented with thy lot,...

This is the reed the dead musician dropped,
With tuneful magic in its sheath still hidden;
The prompt allegro of its music stopped,
Its melodies unbidden.

But who shall finish the unfinished strain,...

BOBBY, aetat. 3'. JOHNNY, aetat. 4'.


BOBBY
DO you know why they've put us in that back room,
Up in the attic, close against the sky,
And made believe our nursery's a cloak-room?...

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.
...