Works

As I sat smoking, alone, yesterday,
And lazily leaning back in my chair,
Enjoying myself in a general way -
Allowing my thoughts a holiday
From weariness, toil and care, -...

Lying listless in the mosses
Underneath a tree that tosses
Flakes of sunshine, and embosses
Its green shadow with the snow -
Drowsy-eyed, I sink in slumber
Born of fancies without number -...

She will not smile;
She will not stir;
I marvel while
I look on her.
The lips are chilly
And will not speak;
The ghost of a lily
In either cheek.

Her hair - ah me!...

The past is like a story
I have listened to in dreams
That vanished in the glory
Of the Morning's early gleams;
And - at my shadow glancing -
I feel a loss of strength,
As the Day of Life advancing...

There! Little girl; don't cry!
They have broken your doll, I know;
And your tea-set blue,
And your play-house too,
Are things of the long ago;
But childish troubles will soon pass by....

Settin' round the stove, last night,
Down at Wess's store, was me
And Mart Strimples, Tunk, and White,
And Doc Bills, and two er three
Fellers o' the Mudsock tribe
No use tryin' to describe!...

He leant against a lamp-post, lost
In some mysterious reverie:
His head was bowed; his arms were crossed;
He yawned, and glanced evasively:
Uncrossed his arms, and slowly put...

He faced his canvas (as a seer whose ken
Pierces the crust of this existence through)
And smiled beyond on that his genius knew
Ere mated with his being. Conscious then...

A song of Long Ago:
Sing it lightly - sing it low -
Sing it softly - like the lisping of the lips we used to know
When our baby-laughter spilled
From the glad hearts ever filled...

She sang a song of May for me,
Wherein once more I heard
The mirth of my glad infancy -
The orchard's earliest bird -
The joyous breeze among the trees
New-clad in leaf and bloom,...

"Now who shall say he loves me not."

He wooed her first in an atmosphere
Of tender and low-breathed sighs;
But the pang of her laugh went cutting clear
To the soul of the enterprise;...

A dark, tempestuous night; the stars shut in
With shrouds of fog; an inky, jet-black blot
The firmament; and where the moon has been
An hour agone seems like the darkest spot....

I.

An afternoon as ripe with heat
As might the golden pippin be
With mellowness if at my feet
It dropped now from the apple-tree
My hammock swings in lazily.


II.
...

Curly Locks! Curly Locks! wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not wash the dishes, nor yet feed the swine, -
But sit on a cushion and sew a fine seam,
And feast upon strawberries, sugar and cream.
...

DAWN

As though a gipsy maiden with dim look,
Sat crooning by the roadside of the year,
So, Autumn, in thy strangeness, thou art here
To read dark fortunes for us from the book...

Ot's a leedle Christmas story
Dot I told der leedle folks -
Und I vant you stop dot laughin'
Und grackin' funny jokes' -
So-help me Peter-Moses!
Ot's no time for monkeyshine',...

There was a curious quiet for a space
Directly following: and in the face
Of one rapt listener pulsed the flush and glow
Of the heat-lightning that pent passions throw...

"How did you rest, last night?" -
I've heard my gran'pap say
Them words a thousand times - that's right -
Jes them words thataway!
As punctchul-like as morning dast
To ever heave in sight...

To the Elect of Love, - or side-by-side
In raptest ecstasy, or sundered wide
By seas that bear no message to or fro
Between the loved and lost of long ago.



...

Parunts knows lots more than us,
But they don't know all things, -
'Cause we ketch 'em, lots o' times,
Even on little small things.

One time Winnie ask' her Ma,
At the winder, sewin',...