This statue of Liberty, busy man, Here erect in the city square, I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning, Strangely wistful, And half tristful, Have turned her from foul to fair; ...
"I hear the piano playing Just as a ghost might play." " O, but what are you saying? There's no piano to-day; Their old one was sold and broken; Years past it went amiss."...
O my trade it is the rarest one, Simple shepherds all - My trade is a sight to see; For my customers I tie, and take 'em up on high, And waft 'em to a far countree!
Once more the cauldron of the sun Smears the bookcase with winy red, And here my page is, and there my bed, And the apple-tree shadows travel along....
Ah - it's the skeleton of a lady's sunshade, Here at my feet in the hard rock's chink, Merely a naked sheaf of wires! - Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers...
The sun threw down a radiant spot On the face in the winding-sheet - The face it had lit when a babe's in its cot; And the sun knew not, and the face knew not That soon they would no more meet. ...
As newer comers crowd the fore, We drop behind. - We who have laboured long and sore Times out of mind, And keen are yet, must not regret To drop behind.
He bends his travel-tarnished feet To where she wastes in clay: From day-dawn until eve he fares Along the wintry way; From day-dawn until eve repairs Unto her mound to pray.
In his early days he was quite surprised When she told him she was compromised By meetings and lingerings at his whim, And thinking not of herself but him; While she lifted orbs aggrieved and round...
Its roots are bristling in the air Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair; The loud south-wester's swell and yell Smote it at midnight, and it fell. Thus ends the tree...
Just at the corner of the wall We met yes, he and I - Who had not faced in camp or hall Since we bade home good-bye, And what once happened came back all - Out of those years gone by. ...
I travel on by barren farms, And gulls glint out like silver flecks Against a cloud that speaks of wrecks, And bellies down with black alarms. I say: "Thus from my lady's arms...
How do you know that the pilgrim track Along the belting zodiac Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds Is traced by now to the Fishes' bounds And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud...
"These Gothic windows, how they wear me out With cusp and foil, and nothing straight or square, Crude colours, leaden borders roundabout, And fitting in Peter here, and Matthew there! ...
At midnight, in the room where he lay dead Whom in his life I had never clearly read, I thought if I could peer into that citadel His heart, I should at last know full and well ...
Now that my page upcloses, doomed, maybe, Never to press thy cosy cushions more, Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore, Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me:
Does he want you down there In the Nether Glooms where The hours may be a dragging load upon him, As he hears the axle grind Round and round Of the great world, in the blind Still profound...