Here where the wind is always north-north-east
And children learn to walk on frozen toes,
Wonder begets an envy of all those
Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast
Of love that you will hear them at a feast
Where demons would appeal for some repose,
Still clamoring where the chalice overflows
And crying wildest who have drunk the least.

Passion is here a soilure of the wits,
We're told, and Love a cross for them to bear;
Joy shivers in the corner where she knits
And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,

Birds all the summer day
Flutter and quarrel
Here in the arbour-like
Tent of the laurel.
II
Here in the fork
The brown nest is seated;
For little blue eggs
The mother keeps heated.
III
While we stand watching her
Staring like gabies,
Safe in each egg are the
Bird's little babies.
IV
Soon the frail eggs they shall
Chip, and upspringing
Make all the April woods
Merry with singing.
V
Younger than we are,
O children, and frailer,
Soon in the blue air they'll be,

Ten o'clock! the rain begins to fall,
And Nellie still from home!
Vainly now, her loving name we call,
Oh whither does she roam!
Can it be she wanders from the street,
Thro' the wood to find her lonely way,
Bless the child! I fear her little feet
Have carried her astray.

Wake the boys to search for Nellie!
Stay not for the dawn;
Who shall sleep when from the mother's fold
One little lamb is gone.

Eleven of o'clock! the little brothers wait,
Still hoping her return;
Peeping through the lattice of the gate,

On Forty-first Street
near Eighth Avenue
a frame house wobbles.

If houses went on crutches
this house would be
one of the cripples.

A sign on the house:
Church of the Living God
And Rescue Home for Orphan Children.

From a Greek coffee house
Across the street
A cabalistic jargon
Jabbers back.
And men at tables
Spill Peloponnesian syllables
And speak of shovels for street work.
And the new embankments of the Erie Railroad
At Painted Post, Horse's Head, Salamanca.

When I attended Mass today
A coloured maid sat down by me,
And as I watched her kneel and pray,
Her reverence was good to see.
For whether there may be or no'
A merciful and mighty God,
The love for Him is like a glow
That glorifies the meanest clod.

And then a starched and snotty dame
Who sat the other side of me
Said: "Monsieur, is it not a shame
Such things should be allowed to be?
In my homeland, I'm proud to say,
We know to handle niggers right,
And wouldn't let a black wench pray
And worship God beside a white."

In kindergarten classed
Dislike they knew;
And as the years went past
It grew and grew;
Until in maidenhood
Each sought a mate,
Then venom in their mood
Was almost hate.

The lure of love they learned
And they were wed;
Yet when they met each turned
Away a head;
Each went her waspish way
With muted damns--
Until they met one day
With baby prams.

Then lo! Away was swept
The scorn of years;
Hands clasped they almost wept

WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool,
Field, flock, and lonely tree,
All seem to look at me
Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;

Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,
As though the master's ways
Through the long teaching days
Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne.

And on them stirs, in lippings mere
(As if once clear in call,
But now scarce breathed at all)--
"We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!

Nature the gentlest mother is,
Impatient of no child,
The feeblest of the waywardest.
Her admonition mild

In forest and the hill
By traveller be heard,
Restraining rampant squirrel
Or too impetuous bird.

How fair her conversation
A summer afternoon,
Her household her assembly;
And when the sun go down,

Her voice among the aisles
Incite the timid prayer
Of the minutest cricket,
The most unworthy flower.

When all the children sleep,
She turns as long away

Who can contain his joy, say, on seeing the lotus-like lovely face of Nanda's darling child when he awakes?

His beauty infatuates sages,and destroys the pride of Kama, it captivates the hearts of hundreds of young girls. When he softly smiles the gleam of his teeth seems as though rubies have been stringed with pearls.

When my Lord, Nanda's lovely child goes out, says Suradasa, the people of Braj are bewitched by his loveliness.

Parted nightlong from his beloved child
Nanda could no longer restrain himself
and lifting from his face the coverlet gazed upon it;
no more the night was oppressive:
the gods it seemed had churned the sea,
and through its foam the moon was seen resplendent in the sky."

Says Suradasa, the cowherd lads and maids learning that their beloved Krishna was awake forgot all else and ran to his bedside.