The gums in the gully stand gloomy and stark,
A torrent beneath them is leaping,
And the wind goes about like a ghost in the dark
Where a chief of Wahibbi lies sleeping!
He dreams of a battle -- of foes of the past,
But he hears not the whooping abroad on the blast,
Nor the fall of the feet that are travelling fast.
Oh, why dost thou slumber, Kooroora?

They come o'er the hills in their terrible ire,
And speed by the woodlands and water;
They look down the hills at the flickering fire,
All eager and thirsty for slaughter.

Koening knew now there was no one on the river.
Entering its brown mouth choking with lilies
and curtained with midges, Koenig poled the shallop
past the abandoned ferry and the ferry piles
coated with coal dust. Staying aboard, he saw, up
in a thick meadow, a sand-colored mule,
untethered, with no harness, and no signs
of habitation round the ruined factory wheel
locked hard in rust, and through whose spokes the vines
of wild yam leaves leant from overweight;
the wild bananas in the yellowish sunlight

'T is when the lark goes soaring
And the bee is at the bud,
When lightly dancing zephyrs
Sing over field and flood;
When all sweet things in nature
Seem joyfully achime -
'T is then I wake my darling,
For it is kissing time!

Go, pretty lark, a-soaring,
And suck your sweets, 0 bee;
Sing, 0 ye winds of summer,
Your songs to mine and me;
For with your song and rapture
Cometh the moment when
It's half-past kissing time
And time to kiss again!

So - so the days go fleeting
Like golden fancies free,

Ask the sun; it has watched him pass-
a shadow mirrored on seas of glass;
ask the stars that he knew so well
if they beheld where a bird-man fell.
Ask the wind that has blown with him
over the edge of the oceans' rim,
far from the charted haunts of men,
to the utmost limits and back again.
Ask the clouds on the mountain height
the echoes that followed him in his flight,
the thunder that prowls the midnight sky,
if a silvered 'plane went riding by.

If the birds could talk, would they tell the fall

Hot August noon: already on that day
Since sunrise through the Wiltshire downs, most sad
Of mouth and eye, he had gone leagues of way;
Ay and by night, till whether good or bad

He was, he knew not, though he knew perchance
That he was Launcelot, the bravest knight
Of all who since the world was, have borne lance,
Or swung their swords in wrong cause or in right.

Nay, he knew nothing now, except that where
The Glastonbury gilded towers shine,
A lady dwelt, whose name was Guenevere;
This he knew also; that some fingers twine,

Keepe on your maske and hide your eye
For in beholding you I dye.
Your fatall beauty Gorgon-like
Dead with astonishment doth strike.
Your piercing eyes that now I see
Are worse than Basilisks to me.
Shut from mine eyes those hills of snow,
Their melting vally do not shew:
Those azure paths lead to despaire,
O vex me not, forbear, forbear;
For while I thus in torments dwell
The sight of Heaven is worse than Hell.
In those faire cheeks two pits doe lye
To bury those slaine by your eye:
So this at length doth comfort me

It was the steamer Alice May that sailed the Yukon foam.
And touched in every river camp from Dawson down to Nome.
It was her builder, owner, pilot, Captain Silas Geer,
Who took her through the angry ice, the last boat of the year;
Who patched her cracks with gunny sacks and wound her pipes with wire,
And cut the spruce upon the banks to feed her boiler fire;
Who headed her into the stream and bucked its mighty flow,
And nosed her up the little creeks where no one else would go;
Who bragged she had so small a draft, if dew were on the grass,

(Translated by G P Skratz)

o god our kaspar is dead
& now there's no-one to steal away with the burning flag &
snap it every day in the dark cloud's braided hair.

no-one to crank the coffee-mill in the ancient cask.

no-one to conjure idyllic deer from the petrified grocery bag.

no-one to sniff ships umbrellas bee-keepers udders of wind
spindles of ozone no-one to filet the pyramids.

o god god god our good old kaspar is dead. lord lord
kaspar is dead.

At her low quaint wheel she sits to spin,
Deftly drawing the long, light rolls
Of carded wool through her finders thin,
By the fireside at the Isles of Shoals.

She is not pretty, she is not young,
Poor homesick Karen, who sits and spins,
Humming a song in her tongue,
That falters and stops, and again begins,

While her wheel flies fast, with its drowsy hum,
And she makes a picture of pensive grace
As thoughts of her well-loved Norway come
And deepen the shadows across her face.

Her collar is white as the drifted snow,

A very humble pen I ply
Beneath a cottage thatch;
And in the sunny hours I try
To till my cabbage patch;
And in the gloaming glad am I
To lift the latch.
II
I do not plot to pile up pelf,
With jowl and belly fat;
To simple song I give myself,
And seek no gain at that:
Content if milk is on the shelf
To feed the cat.
III
I joy that haleness I possess,
Though fame has passed me by;
And see such gold of happiness
A-shining in the sky,