We have a small sculpture of Henry James on our terrace in New York City.

Nothing would surprise him.
The beast in the jungle was what he saw--
Edith Wharton's obfuscating older brother. . .

He fled the demons
of Manhattan
for fear they would devour
his inner ones
(the ones who wrote the books)
& silence the stifled screams
of his protagonists.

To Europe
like a wandering Jew--
WASP that he was--
but with the Jew's
outsider's hunger. . .

face pressed up
to the glass of sex

Mary and I were twenty-two
When we were wed;
A well-matched pair, right smart to view
The town's folk said.
For twenty years I have been true
To nuptial bed.
II
But oh alas! The march of time,
Life's wear and tear!
Now I am in my lusty prime
With pep to spare,
While she looks ten more years than I'm,
With greying hair.
III
'Twas on our trip dear friends among,
To New Orleans,
A stranger's silly trip of tongue
Kiboshed my dreams:

One day in March, my little girl and I had lunch together.
We looked outside, across the lawn, and talked about the weather.
The wind was strong; the cedar trees were in its billows dancing.
The clouds were moving swiftly by; the scene was quite entrancing.


'Look, daddy, 'Maureen said to me, 'how hard the wind is blowing!
I betcha on a colder day, that blowing would be snowing!
And what is it keeps yonder rocks from leaving where they're staying,

There are places I go when I am strong.
One is a marsh pool where I used to go
with a long-ear hound-dog.
One is a wild crabapple tree; I was there
a moonlight night with a girl.
The dog is gone; the girl is gone; I go to these
places when there is no other place to go.

Haunted? Ay, in a social way
By a body of ghosts in dread array;
But no conventional spectres they -
Appalling, grim, and tricky:
I quail at mine as I'd never quail
At a fine traditional spectre pale,
With a turnip head and a ghostly wail,
And a splash of blood on the dickey!

Mine are horrible, social ghosts, -
Speeches and women and guests and hosts,
Weddings and morning calls and toasts,
In every bad variety:
Ghosts who hover about the grave
Of all that's manly, free, and brave:
You'll find their names on the architrave

Air -- "Lily Dale"

I
Come all kind friends, wherever you may be,
Come listen to what I say,
It's of a little girl that was pleasant to see,
And she died while out doors at play.
II
CHORUS:

Oh! Hattie, dear Hattie,
Sweet little Hattie House --
May the flowers ever bloom o'er the little tomb,
Of our loved one, Hattie House.
III
She had blue eyes and light flaxen hair,
Her little heart was light and gay,
She said to her mother, that morning fair,
"Mother, can I go out and play?"
IV

I hear the halting footsteps of a lass
In Negro Harlem when the night lets fall
Its veil. I see the shapes of girls who pass
To bend and barter at desire's call.
Ah, little dark girls who in slippered feet
Go prowling through the night from street to street!

Through the long night until the silver break
Of day the little gray feet know no rest;
Through the lone night until the last snow-flake
Has dropped from heaven upon the earth's white breast,
The dusky, half-clad girls of tired feet
Are trudging, thinly shod, from street to street.

Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's
For cider, after school, in late September?
Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets
On Aaron Hatfield's farm when the frosts begin?
For many times with the laughing girls and boys
Played I along the road and over the hills
When the sun was low and the air was cool,
Stopping to club the walnut tree
Standing leafless against a flaming west.
Now, the smell of the autumn smoke,
And the dropping acorns,
And the echoes about the vales
Bring dreams of life. They hover over me.
They question me:

Near the village of Udorf, on the banks of the Rhine,
There lived a miller and his family, once on a time;
And there yet stands the mill in a state of decay,
And concerning the miller and his family, attend to my lay.

The miller and his family went to Church one Sunday morn,
Leaving behind their darling child, the youngest born,
In charge of brave Hanchen, the servant maid,
A kind-hearted girl and not the least afraid.

As Hanchen was engaged preparing dinner for the family
She chanced to turn round, and there she did see

Come you, cartoonists,
Hang on a strap with me here
At seven o’clock in the morning
On a Halsted street car.

Take your pencils
And draw these faces.

Try with your pencils for these crooked faces,
That pig-sticker in one corner—his mouth—
That overall factory girl—her loose cheeks.

Find for your pencils
A way to mark your memory
Of tired empty faces.

After their night’s sleep,
In the moist dawn
And cool daybreak,
Faces
Tired of wishes,
Empty of dreams.