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May

Come queen of months in company
Wi all thy merry minstrelsy
The restless cuckoo absent long
And twittering swallows chimney song
And hedge row crickets notes that run
From every bank that fronts the sun
And swathy bees about the grass
That stops wi every bloom they pass
And every minute every hour
Keep teazing weeds that wear a flower
And toil and childhoods humming joys
For there is music in the noise
The village childern mad for sport
In school times leisure ever short
That crick and catch the bouncing ball

Maui Victor

Unhewn in quarry lay the Parian stone,
   Ere hands, god-guided, of Praxiteles
Might shape the Cnidian Venus. Long ungrown
   The ivory was which, chiselled, robbed of ease
   Pygmalion, sculptor-lover. Now are these,
The stone and ivory, immortal made.
   The golden apples of Hesperides
Shall never, scattered, in blown dust be laid,
   Till Time, the dragon-guard, has lived his last decade.

The Cnidian Venus, Galatea's shape,

Maud Muller Mutatur

In 1909 toilet goods were not considered a serious matter and no special department of the catalogs were devoted to it. A few perfumes and creams were scattered here and there among bargain goods.

In 1919 an assortment of perfumes that would rival any city department store is shown, along with six pages of other toilet articles, including rouge and eyebrow pencils.

--From "How the Farmer Has Changed in a Decade: Toilet Goods," in Farm and Fireside's advertisement.


Maud Muller, on a summer's day,
Powdered her nose with Bon Sachet.

Matrimony

There is an awe in mortals' joy,
A deep mysterious fear
Half of the heart will still employ,
As if we drew too near
To Eden's portal, and those fires
That bicker round in wavy spires,
Forbidding, to our frail desires,
What cost us once so dear.

We cower before th' heart-searching eye
In rapture as its pain;
E'en wedded Love, till Thou be nigh,
Dares not believe her gain:
Then in the air she fearless springs,
The breath of Heaven beneath her wings,
And leaves her woodnote wild, and sings

Matins

The trembling pulses of the dawn
Fill with faint glow the violet skies,
And on the moist, day-smitten lawn
The peace of morning lies.

A blessed truce of woe and sin,
A glad surcease of care's annoy;
The waking world has pleasure in
Its matin light and joy.

And all the joy that fills the air,
And all the light that gilds the blue,
I see it in your eyes and hair,
I know it, love, in you.

O'er lips and eyes and golden floss
There floats a charm I cannot reach,
A glimpse of gain, a threat of loss,

Mating

Round clouds roll in the arms of the wind,
The round earth rolls in a clasp of blue sky,
And see, where the budding hazels are thinned,
The wild anemones lie
In undulating shivers beneath the wind.

Over the blue of the waters ply
White ducks, a living flotilla of cloud;
And, look you, floating just thereby,
The blue-gleamed drake stems proud
Like Abraham, whose seed should multiply.

In the lustrous gleam of the water, there
Scramble seven toads across the silk, obscure leaves,

Mary, the Maid o' the Tay

Ye banks and braes o' bonnie Tay,
Whaur me and my Mary oft did stray;
But noo she is dead and gone far away,
Sae I maun mourn for lovely Mary, the Maid o' the Tay,

The first time I met her 'twas in the month of May,
And the sun was shining bricht on the Silvery Tay;
I asked her name and she modestly did say,
"Some fouks ca's me lovely Mary, the Maid o' the Tay."

Oh, charming Mary o' the Tay,
Queen o' my soul by nicht and day;
But noo thou'rt gane and left me here
To weep for you, sweet Mary dear.

Mary smith

Away down East where I was reared amongst my Yankee kith,
There used to live a pretty girl whose name was Mary Smith;
And though it's many years since last I saw that pretty girl,
And though I feel I'm sadly worn by Western strife and whirl;
Still, oftentimes, I think about the old familiar place,
Which, someway, seemed the brighter for Miss Mary's pretty face,
And in my heart I feel once more revivified the glow
I used to feel in those old times when I was Mary's beau.

I saw her home from singing school--she warbled like a bird.

Marthy's younkit

The mountain brook sung lonesomelike, and loitered on its way
Ez if it waited for a child to jine it in its play;
The wild-flowers uv the hillside bent down their heads to hear
The music uv the little feet that had somehow grown so dear;
The magpies, like winged shadders, wuz a-flutterin' to an' fro
Among the rocks an' holler stumps in the ragged gulch below;
The pines an' hemlocks tosst their boughs (like they wuz arms) and made
Soft, sollum music on the slope where he had often played;
But for these lonesome, sollum voices on the mountain-side,

Marriage

This institution,
perhaps one should say enterprise
out of respect for which
one says one need not change one's mind
about a thing one has believed in,
requiring public promises
of one's intention
to fulfill a private obligation:
I wonder what Adam and Eve
think of it by this time,
this firegilt steel
alive with goldenness;
how bright it shows --
"of circular traditions and impostures,
committing many spoils,"
requiring all one's criminal ingenuity
to avoid!
Psychology which explains everything
explains nothing