believe

Being a writer I receive
Sweet screeds from folk of every land;
Some are so weird you'd scarce believe,
And some quite hard to understand:
But as a conscientious man
I type my thanks to all I can.

So when I got a foreign scrawl
That spider-webbed across the page,
Said I: "This is the worst of all;
No doubt a child of tender age
Has written it, so I'll be kind,
And send an answer to her mind.

Promptly I typed a nice reply
And thought that it would be the end,

I SAW my Lady weep,
And Sorrow proud to be advanced so
In those fair eyes where all perfections keep.
   Her face was full of woe;
But such a woe (believe me) as wins more hearts
Than Mirth can do with her enticing parts.

   Sorrow was there made fair,
And Passion wise; Tears a delightful thing;
Silence beyond all speech, a wisdom rare:
   She made her sighs to sing,
And all things with so sweet a sadness move
As made my heart at once both grieve and love.

   O fairer than aught else

Sitting in the dentist's chair,
Wishing that I wasn't there,
To forget and pass the time
I have made this bit of rhyme.

I had a rendez-vous at ten;
I rushed to get in line,
But found a lot of dames and men
Had waited there since nine;
I stared at them, then in an hour
Was blandly ushered in;
But though my face was grim and sour
He met me with a grin.

He told me of his horse of blood,
And how it "also ran",
He plans to own a racing stud -
(He seems a wealthy man.)

When I was small the Lord appeared
Unto my mental eye
A gentle giant with a beard
Who homed up in the sky.
But soon that vasty vision blurred,
And faded in the end,
Till God is just another word
I cannot comprehend.

I envy those of simple faith
Who bend the votive knee;
Who do not doubt divinely death
Will set their spirits free.
Oh could I be like you and you,
Sweet souls who scan this line,
And by dim altar worship too

"Why is my District death-rate low?"
Said Binks of Hezabad.
"Well, drains, and sewage-outfalls are
"My own peculiar fad.
"I learnt a lesson once, It ran
"Thus," quoth that most veracious man: --


It was an August evening and, in snowy garments clad,
I paid a round of visits in the lines of Hezabad;
When, presently, my Waler saw, and did not like at all,
A Commissariat elephant careering down the Mall.

I couldn't see he driver, and across my mind it rushed

The fear was on the cattle, for the gale was on the sea,
An' the pens broke up on the lower deck an' let the creatures free --
An' the lights went out on the lower deck, an' no one near but me.

I had been singin' to them to keep 'em quiet there,
For the lower deck is the dangerousest, requirin' constant care,
An' give to me as the strongest man, though used to drink and swear.

I see my chance was certain of bein' horned or trod,
For the lower deck was packed with steers thicker'n peas in a pod,

"what?" they say, "you got a
computer?"

it's like I have sold out to
the enemy.

I had no idea so many
people were prejudiced
against
computers.

even two editors have
written me letters about
the computer.

one disparaged the
computer in a mild and
superior way.
the other seemed
genuinely
pissed.

I am aware that a
computer can't create
a poem.
but neither can a
typewriter.

yet, still, once or
twice a week

He ran away and was gone for a year.
When he came home he told me the silly story
Of being kidnapped by pirates on Lake Michigan
And kept in chains so he could not write me.
I pretended to believe it, though I knew very well
What he was doing, and that he met
The milliner, Mrs. Williams, now and then
When she went to the city to buy goods, as she said.
But a promise is a promise
And marriage is marriage,
And out of respect for my own character
I refused to be drawn into a divorce

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.

He found her by the ocean's moaning verge,
Nor any wicked change in her discerned;
And she believed his old love had returned,
Which was her exultation, and her scourge.
She took his hand, and walked with him, and seemed
The wife he sought, though shadow-like and dry.
She had one terror, lest her heart should sigh,
And tell her loudly she no longer dreamed.
She dared not say, 'This is my breast: look in.'
But there's a strength to help the desperate weak.
That night he learned how silence best can speak