Goodbye!

COME, thrust your hands in the warm earth

And feel her strength through all your veins;

Breathe her full odors, taste her mouth,

Which laughs away imagined pains;

Touch her life's womb, yet know

This substance makes your grave also.

Shrink not; your flesh is no more sweet

Than flowers which daily blow and die;

Nor are your mein and dress so neat,

Nor half so pure your lucid eye;

And, yet, by flowers and earth I swear

You're neat and pure and sweet and fair.

Richard Aldington

Rudkin

RUDKIN was one who cattle sold,

Laughed loud, talked bold;

Children got, drank at inns,

Nor thought much of his sins.

Stout his legs, broad his back;

To live and thrive he had the knack.

All who went out, all who came in,

By Threckington, knew stout Rudkin.

Long he's been dead; his name has gone

Clean out of mind at Threckington;

If one should ask for Rudkin there

The village folk would stare and stare.

Rudkin is dead; dead as Queen Anne:

Hangs on my wall his warming-pan;

In hall hard by, solemn and clear,

Ticks the tall clock he used to hear;

Little Miss Wright, all unaware,

Reads her paper in his chair.

Down by the bridge the parapet

Is still chipped where his wain upset;

By the old barn there's an old pear

When he was wed he planted there.

His drover's dog was very like

Our butcher's cur: a mongrel tyke;

He had a bull with a crooked horn,

A heifer like it I saw this morn.

Down at "The George" in market-place

There's a bold wench wears his bold face.

Kenneth H. Ashley

Care

Care now lies

Where care was not,

Shoved in the corner

But not forgot --

Care, in the corner

I would call Laughter

Out of the trees;

But Laughter has bird eyes,

And Laughter sees

Care, in the corner.

Janet Norris Bangs

Magnets

A FAR look in absorbed eyes, unaware

Of what some gazer thrills to gather there;

A happy voice, singing to itself apart,

That pulses new blood through a listener's heart;

Old fortitude; and, 'mid an hour of dread,

The scorn of all odds in a proud young head;--

These are themselves, and being but what they are,

Of others' praise or pity have no care,

Yet still are magnets to another's need.

Invisibly as wind, blowing stray seed,

Life breathes on life, though ignorant what it brings,

And spirit touches spirit on the strings

Where music is: courage from courage glows

In secret; shy powers to themselves unclose;

And the most solitary hope, that gray

Patience has sister'd, ripens far away

In young bosoms. Oh, we have failed and failed,

And never knew if we or the world ailed,

Clouded and thwarted; yet perhaps the best

Of all we do and dream of lives unguessed.

Laurence Binyon

<

City Girl

BENEATH the barren artifice of red

That hides a fertile freshness on your face

I see the hypocritical embrace

Of courtesan and virgin, each in dread

Of yielding to the other, while your mouth

Reveals their secret of uneasiness.

Your mind has listened to a northern stress:

Your heart has heard old rumours from the South.

This conflict, with its plaintive undertones,

Is like an idle phantom to your soul

Whose clear aloofness sometimes sears your eyes.

The sensual games that move your youthful bones

Are still for moments, while the distant goal

Of whispering horizons lures your sighs.

Maxwell Bodenheim

Wistaria

CLOUDS dream and disappear;

Waters dream in a rainbow and are gone;

Fire-dreams change with the sun

Or when a poppy closes;

But now is the time of year

For the dark earth, one by one,

To show her slower dreams. And nothing she has ever done

Has given more ease

To her perplexities

Than the dreaming of dreams like these:

Not irises,

Not any spear

Of lilies or cup of roses,

But these pale, purple images,

As if, from willows or from pepper trees,

Shadows were glimmering on Buddha's knees.

Witter Bynner

Fires

THE little fires that Nature lights --

The scilla's lamp, the daffodil --

She quenches, when of stormy nights

Her anger whips the hill.

The fires she lifts against the cloud --

The irised bow, the burning tree --

She batters down with curses loud,

Nor cares that death should be.

The fire she kindles in the soul --

The poet's mood, the rebel's thought --

She cannot master, for their coal

In other mines is wrought.

Joseph Campbell

The Widow

GRIEF hath pacified her face;

Even hope might share so still a place;

Yet, on the silence of her heart,

Haply, if a strange footfall start,

Or a chance word of ecstasy

Cry through dim cloistered memory,

Into her eyes her soul will steal

To gaze into the irrevocable --

As if death had not power to keep

One who has loved her long asleep.

Now all things lovely she looks on

Seem lovely in oblivion;

And all things mute what shall not be

Richer than any melody.

Her narrow hands, like birds that make

A nest for some old instinct's sake,

Have hollowed a refuge for her face --

A narrow and a quiet place --

Where, far from the world's light, she may

See clearer what is passed away.

And only little children know

Through what dark gates her smile may go.

Walter De La Mare

nobody loses all the time

nobody loses all the time

i had an uncle named

Sol who was a born failure and

nearly everybody said he should have gone

into vaudeville perhaps because my Uncle Sol could

sing McCann He Was A Diver on Xmas Eve like Hell Itself which

may or may not account for the fact that my Uncle

Sol indulged in that possibly most inexcusable

of all to use a highfalootin phrase

luxuries that is or to

wit farming and be

it needlessly

added

my Uncle Sol's farm

failed because the chickens

ate the vegetables so

my Uncle Sol had a

chicken farm till the

skunks ate the chickens when

my Uncle Sol

had a skunk farm but

the skunks caught cold and

died and so

my Uncle Sol imitated the

skunks in a subtle manner

or by drowning himself in the watertank

but somebody who'd given my Uncle Sol a Victor

Victrola and records while he lived presented to

him upon the auspicious occasion of his decease a

scruptious not to mention splendiferous funeral with

tall boys in black gloves and flowers and everything and

i remember we all cried like the Missouri

when my Uncle Sol's coffin lurched because

somebody pressed a button

(and down went

my Uncle

Sol

and started a worm farm)

e. e. cummings

At Ithaca

OVER and back,

the long waves crawl

and track the sand with foam;

night darkens, and the sea

takes on that desperate tone

of dark that wives put on

when all their love is done.

Over and back,

the tangled thread falls slack,

over and up and on;

over and all is sewn;

now while I bind the end,

I wish some fiery friend

would sweep impetuously

these fingers from the loom.

My weary thoughts

play traitor to my soul,

just as the toil is over;

swift while the woof is whole,             [sic]

turn now, my spirit, swift,

and tear the pattern there,

the flowers so deftly wrought,

the borders of sea blue,

the sea-blue coast of home.

The web was over-fair,

that web of pictures there,

enchantments that I thought

he had, that I had lost;

weaving his happiness

within the stitching frame,

weaving his fire and frame,

I thought my work was done,

I prayed that only one

of those that I had spurned

might stoop and conquer this

long waiting with a kiss.

But each time that I see

my work so beautifully

inwoven and would keep

the picture and the whole,

Athene steels my soul.

Slanting across my brain,

I see as shafts of rain

his chariot and his shafts,

I see the arrows fall,

I see the lord who moves

like Hector lord of love,

I see him matched with fair

bright rivals, and I see

those lesser rivals flee.

H.D.

Megalosaurus

A MONSTER like a mountain, leathern limbed,

With eyes of sluggish ore and claws of stone,

He heaved his thunder-throated body, rimmed

By marsh fires human eyes have never known.

A monolith carved out of savage night,

He hid in his impenetrable hide

Muscle and blood, and nerves to sense delight

And agony that tore him when he died.

The clumsy terror of his frame has gone

The way of his blind, simple savagery.

Out of his casual bones men build the dawn

That bore and bred such brutish game as he.

But still endures his dull, confounding shape:

In wars of the wise offspring of the ape.

Babette Deutsch

<

The Town Rabbit in the Country

THREE hours ago in Seven Dials

She lived awaiting all the trials

That haunt her race, but now shall be

Freed on the lawn to play with me.

In the dim shop her eyes were grey

And languid; but in this bright day

To a full circle each dilates,

And turns the blue of Worcester plates

In the unaccustomed sun; she stares

At strange fresh leaves; the passing airs,

Outstretching from her box's brink,

She gulps as if her nose could drink.

Now o'er the edge she scrambles slow,

Too pleased to know which way to go --

Half dazed with pleasure she explores

This sunny, eatable out-of-doors.

Then shakes and tosses up her ears

Like plumes upon bold cavaliers --

The dust flies out as catherine-wheels

Throw sparks as round she twirls and reels --

Her spine it quivers like an eel's --

Over her head she flings her heels,

Comes down askew, then waltzes till

She must reverse or else feel ill --

Reverses, then lies down and pants

As one who has no further wants,

Staring with half-believing eyes

Like souls that wake in Paradise.

Camilla Doyle

Emperor Tang -- Skeptic

CLOSER than my body's shadow

Follows the blind nameless One,

Carrying in his tightened, yellow fist

Time, the thin sputtering candle,

And in his swollen cheeks

Death, the grey wind.

So fill and refill my deep, golden horn

With the strongest wine,

O wise men of China,

Before declaiming in magnificent verse

My immortality,

That I may nod,

My eyes glittering with dreams,

And believe --

Paul Eldridge

Serenade in Firelight

from Five Serenades

SIT here where I could touch your hand

If that should be my sudden will:

Among the shadows where we wait

I shall not stir.

Sit here where I could feel your lips

If they should breathe the faintest sound:

As the slow-moving midnight slips

I ask no speech.

Sit here where I could lay my head

Wearily down upon your knees:

I shall sit upright as I watch

The tangled fire.

Arthur Davison Ficke

An Epilogue

GHOSTS of my fathers, while you keep

On ghostly hills your ghostly sleep,

If for a moment you should turn

The pages of this book to learn

What trade your offspring's taken to,

Forgive me that my flocks and herds

Are only barren bleating words.

Wilfred Wilson Gibson

Earth and Sea

IT does me good to see the ships

Back safely from the deep sea main;

To see the slender mizzen tips

And all the ropes that stood the strain;

To hear the old men shout, "Ahoy!"

Glad-hearted at the journey done,

Who fix the favourite to the buoy

Of sea and wind and moon and sun.

To meet, when sails are lashed to spars,

The men for whom earth's free from care,

And heaven a clock with certain stars,

And hell a word by which to swear.

Oliver St. John Gogarty

Epitaph on a Vagabond

CARELESS I lived, accepting day by day

The lavish benison of sun and rain,

Watching the changing seasons pass away

And come again.

Now the great harvester has stilled my breath;

In this cold house I neither hear nor see.

Though in my life I never thought of death,

Death thought of me.

Alexander Gray

Ephemera

THERE is a woman who makes my eye

A place of shadows, as now and then

I see her dimly going by,

And faintly coming back again.

She moves as many others move;

There is no uttrance in her tread

To tempt an echo, nor to prove

What other footsteps have not said.

As often as she comes and goes

She is forgotten, as now and then

The wind is forgotten until it blows

A blur of dust down the street again.

Hazel Hall

Chapter Heading

FOR we have thought the longer thoughts

And gone the shorter way.

And we have danced to devil's tunes

Shivering home to pray;

To serve one master in the night,

Another in the day.

Ernest Hemingway

Sky Line

A WORKMAN climbed a lofty tower,

None beside him being able;

Gripped and struggled half an hour

Binding up a broken cable;

Paused to glimpse the toy-house town,

Spat, swung outward, and came down.

Prescott Hoard

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