Why do you speak of “hypocritic days”?
Are days dissembling then, prone to deceit,
And given o'er to falsely cunning ways
That threaten mischief when they seem most sweet?

For once, my best loved Poet, do you seem
To me to stumble in your path of light—
The days indulge no hypocritic dream
To lure mankind from peace to depths of night.

'Tis we, not they, who make them what they are.
They come to us of guile and pretence free:
Clean, clear, and spotless on the calendar,
God's Messengers of Opportunity!

In all humility sacrifices are made to the east
Banana leaves filled with good food to atone for our sins
Are offered to the grieved souls making their way upstream
Hearkening to the endless sadness and prayers
The wooden mortar carved and polished out of ancient wood
shakes and rolls
Sonorous exhortations shake the mountains and the sea
The dark night, like a giant python, devours
Love and hate, kindness and enmity, increase and destruction
The sacrificial song, weeping and plaintive,
penetrates the cracks of time and space

The way was black,
The night was mad with lightning; I bestrode
My wild young colt, upon a mountain road.
And, crunching onward, like a monster's jaws,
His ringing hoof-beats their glad rhythm kept,
Breaking the glassy surface of the pools,
Where hidden waters slept.
A million buzzing insects in the air
On droning wing made sullen discord there.

But suddenly, afar, beyond the wood,
Beyond the dark pall of my brooding thought,
I saw lights cluster like a swarm of wasps
Among the branches caught.
“The inn!” I cried, and on his living flesh

Henry Schwartz was an expert watch-repairer.
You could see him in the window of the Sixth Avenue shop any day;
And day and every day.
He'd been hard at it since 1899.
This spring his daughter, who lives in Arizona, induced him to visit her for a week.
Among the week's excursions was a trip to the Grand Canyon.
Schwartz thought it was all right but nothing to rave about—
When you saw one piece of scenery you saw them all.
The day he got back to the shop a man brought in a watch to be repaired.

Pure at heart we wander now:
Comrade on the quest divine,
Turn not from the stars your brow
That your eyes may rest on mine.

Pure at heart we wander now:
We have hopes beyond to-day;
And our quest does not allow
Rest or dreams along the way.

We are, in our distant hope,
One with all the great and wise:
Comrade, do not turn or grope
For some lesser light that dies.

We must rise or we must fall:
Love can know no middle way:
If the great life do not call,
Then is sadness and decay.

The street is deserted, the night is cold,
The moon glides veiled amid cloud-banks dun;
The lattice above is tightly closed,
And the notes ring clearly one by one
Under his fingers light and strong,
While the voice that sings tells tender things,
As the player strikes on his sweet guitar
The fragile strings.

The street is deserted, the night is cold,
A cloud has covered the moon from sight.
The lattice above is tightly closed,
And the notes are growing more soft and light.
Perhaps the sound of the serenade

It's Micky Eamon Diver and he's only skin and bone,
With acres holm and heather, that, and money of his own—
It's all day long he's sitting with his elbow on the hob,
The crabbit Micky Eamon with his dudheen in his gob;
A near old scranny scrape-the-pot that's askin' dusk and dawn.
“Boy! are ye never gettin' on with diggin' Garrybawn!”

My gallowses are hangin' down and twistin' round my legs;
The girls can see the most of me that's stickin' through my rags;
It's dribs and drabs on back and front and freezin' to the pelt—

On Chagóla the air was full of butterflies,
They fluttered down the valleys of bright blue;
White they were, snow-tinted, soft as the soft sea-foam
That far inland breaks in mysterious bloom:

Invisibly, as Spring lapping dark hills,
It breaks into a billow pale as snow;
From Chagóla there rolls a shadowy tide
Of harebells, drops of brightly quivering blue.

The sky it had not rained its azure down
But hoarded still its deep soft purple air;
A glacier shone, a cold, a cold white bride
From some dark home of earth there raptly flown:

The angels bending
To kiss her brow,
Sang unending—
“Come with us now.”

The child replying,
The angels drew
To her cradle lying:—
“I'll go with you.”

The angel faces
'Mid wings of gold,
Took her embraces
Within their hold.

And with the breaking
Of pallid day,
The crib forsaking,
They flew away.

Buried deep in the darkness,
Far from the sun's warm light,
See you not the blind worm
In his night?

He was born in the darkness,
Fated there to creep,
Sleepless, in the kingdom
Of eternal deep.

Like a worm in the darkness,
Dumb and blind and frail,
You pass childhood's wonder-years,
Weak and pale.

Near your cradle your mother
Sings no song
Of a happy, quiet life-time,
Sweet and long.

Nor of fields and gardens
Where a boy
Plays and spends the daylight hours,
Wild with joy.