Works

His father had a large family
Of girls and boys and he was born and bred
In a barn or kind of cattle shed.
But he was a hardy youngster and grew to be
A boy with eyes that sparkled like a rod...

Who is that calling through the night,
A wail that dies when the wind roars?
We heard it first on Shipley's Hill,
It faded out at Comingoer's.

Along five miles of wintry road...

Eyes wide for wisdom, calm for joy or pain,
Bright hair alloyed with silver, scarcely gold.
And gracious lips flower pressed like buds to hold
The guarded heart against excess of rain....

Nothing in life is alien to you:
I was a penniless girl from Summum
Who stepped from the morning train in Spoon River.
All the houses stood before me with closed doors
And drawn shades - l was barred out;...

I began with Sir William Hamilton's lectures.
Then studied Dugald Stewart;
And then John Locke on the Understanding,
And then Descartes, Fichte and Schelling,
Kant and then Schopenhauer -...

You would not believe, would you
That I came from good Welsh stock?
That I was purer blooded than the white trash here?
And of more direct lineage than the
New Englanders And Virginians of Spoon River?...

You wrote:
"Come over to Saugatuck
And be with me on the warm sand,
And under cool beeches and aromatic cedars."
And just then no one could do a thing in the city...

The sounds of mid-night trickle into the roar
Of morning over the water growing blue.
At ten o'clock the August sunbeams pour
A blinding flood on Michigan Avenue.
...

We paused to say good-by,
As we thought for a little while,
Alone in the car, in the corner
Around the turn of the aisle.

A quiver came in your voice,
Your eyes were sorrowful too;...

I arise in the silence of the dawn hour.
And softly steal out to the garden
Under the Favrile goblet of the dawning.
And a wind moves out of the south-land,
Like a film of silver,...

- His Own Words

IN MEMORY OF KIFFIN ROCKWELL

* * * * *

Eagle, whose fearless
Flight in vast spaces
Clove the inane,
While we stood tearless,...

I was a gun-smith in Odessa.
One night the police broke in the room
Where a group of us were reading Spencer.
And seized our books and arrested us.
But I escaped and came to New York...

Elenor Murray landing in New York,
After a weary voyage, none too well,
Staid in the city for a week and then
Upon a telegram from Irma Leese,
Born Irma Fouche, her aunt who lived alone...

They told me I had three months to live,
So I crept to Bernadotte,
And sat by the mill for hours and hours
Where the gathered waters deeply moving
Seemed not to move:
O world, that's you!...

Love is a madness, love is a fevered dream,
A white soul lost in a field of scarlet flowers,
Love is a search for the lost, the ever vanishing gleam
Of wings, desires and sorrows and haunted hours.
...

There is a quiet in my heart
Like one who rests from days of pain.
Outside, the sparrows on the roof
Are chirping in the dripping rain.

Rain in my heart; rain on the roof;...

Medical Unit -

Even as I see, and share with you in seeing,
The altar flame of your love's sacrifice;
And even as I bear before the hour the vision,
Your little hands in hospital and prison...

Two children in a garden
Shouting for joy
Were playing dolls and houses,
A girl and boy.
I smiled at a neighbor window,
And watched them play
Under a budding oak tree
On a wintry day.
...

Well, then, another drink! Ben Jonson knows,
So do you, Michael Drayton, that to-morrow
I reach my fifty-second year. But hark ye,
To-morrow lacks two days of being a month -...

We rode, we rode against the wind.
The countless lights along the town
Made the town blacker for their fire,
And you were always looking down.

To 'scape the blustering breath of March,...