English

At Wednesbury there was a cocking,
A match between Newton and Scroggins;
The colliers and nailers left work,
And all to old Spittle's went jogging.
To see this noble sport,
Many noblemen resorted;
And though they'd but little money,
Yet that little they freely sported.

There was Jeffret and Colborn from Hampton,
And Dusty from Bilston was there;
Plummery he came from Darlaston,
And he was as rude as a bear.
There was old Will from Walsall,
And Smacker from Westbromwich come;

At twilight time, when the lamps are lit,
Father coyote comes to sit
At the chaparral's edge, on the mountain-side —
Comes to listen and to deride
The rancher's hound and the rancher's son,
The passer-by and everyone.
And we pause at milking-time to hear
His reckless carolling, shrill and clear, —
His terse and swift and valorous troll,
Ribald, rollicking, scornful, droll,
As one might sing in coyotedom:
" Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum! "

Yet well I wot there is little ease

At the top of the house the apples are laid in rows,
And the skylight lets the moonlight in, and those
Apples are deep-sea apples of green. There goes
A cloud on the moon in the autumn night

A mouse in the wainscot scratches, and scratches, and then
There is no sound at the top of the house of men
Or mice; and the cloud is blown, and the moon again
Dapples the apples with deep-sea light.

They are lying in rows there, under the gloomy beams;
On the sagging floor; they gather the silver streams

At the time of the White Dawn;
At the time of the White Dawn,
I arose and went away.
At Blue Nightfall I went away.

I ate the thornapple leaves
And the leaves made me dizzy.
I drank the thornapple flowers
And the drink made me stagger.

The hunter, Bow-Remaining,
He overtook and killed me,
Cut and threw my horns away.
The hunter, Reed-Remaining,
He overtook and killed me,
Cut and threw my feet away.

Now the flies become crazy
And they drop with flapping wings.

At the siege of Belle Isle,
I was there all the while--
All the while,
All the while,
At the siege of Belle Isle.

AT THE M UEZZIN'S CALL for prayer,
The kneeling faithful thronged the square,
And on Pushkara's lofty height
The dark priest chanted Brahma's might.
Amid a monastery's weeds
An old Franciscan told his beads,

While to the synagogue there came
A Jew, to praise Jehovah's name.
The one great God looked down and smiled
And counted each his loving child;
For Turk and Brahmin, monk and Jew
Had reached Him through the gods they knew.

At the head of Wear Water, about twelve at noon,
I heard a maid a-talking and this was her tune,
There are all sorts of callings, in every degree,
But of all sorts of callings a collier for me.

You may know a jolly collier as he walks on the street,
His clothing is so handsome, and so neat are his feet,
With teeth as white as ivory, and his eyes as black as sloes,
You may know a jolly collier wherever he goes.

You may know a jolly collier: he's a swaggering, young blade,
When he goes a-courting of his buxom fair maid,

AT THE FEAST of Belshazzar and Athousand of his lords,
While they drank from golden vessels, as the Book of Truth records,
In the night as they reveled in the royal palace hall,
They were seized with consternation — 'twas the Hand upon the wall!

See the brave captive, Daniel, as he stood before the throng,
And rebuked the haughty monarch for his mighty deeds of wrong;
As he read out the writing — 'twas the doom of one and all,
For the kingdom now was finished — said the Hand upon the wall!

At the equinox when the earth was veiled in a late rain, wreathed with wet poppies, waiting spring,
The ocean swelled for a far storm and beat its boundary, the ground-swell shook the beds of granite.

I gazing at the boundaries of granite and spray, the established sea-marks, felt behind me
Mountain and plain, the immense breadth of the continent, before me the mass and doubled stretch of water.

I said: You yoke the Aleutian seal-rocks with the lava and coral sowings that flower the south,

At the end of the garden,
Across the litter of weeds and grass cuttings,
The pumpkin spreads its coarse,
Bristled, hollow-stemmed lines,
Erupting in great leaves
Above flowers
The nobbly and prominent
Stigmas of which
Are like fuses
Waiting to be set by bees.

When, like a string
Of yellow mines
Across the garden,
The pumpkins will smolder
And swell,
Drawing their combustion from the sun
To make their own.
At night I lie
Waiting for detonations,
Half expecting