Ah, Almon Keefer! what a boy you were, With your back-tilted hat and careless hair, And open, honest, fresh, fair face and eyes With their all-varying looks of pleased surprise...
I had fed the fire and stirred it, till the sparkles in delight Snapped their saucy little fingers at the chill December night; And in dressing-gown and slippers, I had tilted back "my throne"...
If I knew what poets know, Would I write a rhyme Of the buds that never blow In the summer-time? Would I sing of golden seeds Springing up in ironweeds? And of raindrops turned to snow,...
Tell you a story - an' it's a fac': - Wunst wuz a little boy, name wuz Jack, An' he had sword an' buckle an' strap Maked of gold, an' a "'visibul cap;"...
On old Brandywine - about Where White's Lots is now laid out, And the old crick narries down To the ditch that splits the town, Kingry's Mill stood. Hardly see Where the old dam ust to be;...
O heart of mine, we shouldn't Worry so! What we've missed of calm we couldn't Have, you know! What we've met of stormy pain, And of sorrow's driving rain, We can better meet again, If it blow!...
1 Tell you what I like the best - 'Long about knee-deep in June, 'Bout the time strawberries melts On the vine, some afternoon Like to jes' git out and rest, And not work at nothin' else! ...
Dear Lord, to Thee my knee is bent - Give me content - Full-pleasured with what comes to me, Whate'er it be: An humble roof - a frugal board, And simple hoard; The wintry fagot piled beside...
Jes' a little bit o' feller - I remember still, - Ust to almost cry far Christmas, like a youngster will. Fourth o' July's nothin' to it! - New-Year's ain't a smell:...
There are many things that boys may know - Why this and that are thus and so, - Who made the world in the dark and lit The great sun up to lighten it: Boys know new things every day -...
Old Man Whiskery-Whee-Kum-Wheeze Lives 'way up in the leaves o' trees. An' wunst I slipped up-stairs to play In Aunty's room, while she 'uz away; An' I clumbed up in her cushion-chair...
1 The kind of a man for you and me! He faces the world unflinchingly, And smites, as long as the wrong resists, With a knuckled faith and force like fists: He lives the life he is preaching of,...
As one who cons at evening o'er an album all alone, And muses on the faces of the friends that he has known, So I turn the leaves of fancy till, in shadowy design,...
They rode right out of the morning sun - A glimmering, glittering cavalcade Of knights and ladies and every one In princely sheen arrayed; And the king of them all, O he rode ahead,...
I put by the half-written poem, While the pen, idly trailed in my hand, Writes on, "Had I words to complete it, Who'd read it, or who'd understand?" But the little bare feet on the stairway,...