winter

Not only on cross and gibbet,
By sword, and fire, and flood,
Have perished the world’s sad martyrs
Whose names are writ in blood.

A woman lay in a hovel,
Mean, dismal, gasping for breath;
One friend alone was beside her—
The name of him was—Death.

For the sake of her orphan children,
For money to buy them food,
She had slaved in the dismal hovel
And wasted her womanhood.

Winter and Spring and Summer
Came each with a load of cares;
And Autumn to her brought only

The time of year has grown indifferent.
Mildew of summer and the deepening snow
Are both alike in the routine I know:
I am too dumbly in my being pent.

The wind attendant on the solstices
Blows on the shutters of the metropoles,
Stirring no poet in his sleep, and tolls
The grand ideas of the villages.

The malady of the quotidian . . .
Perhaps if summer ever came to rest
And lengthened, deepened, comforted, caressed
Through days like oceans in obsidian

Horizons, full of night's midsummer blaze;

There came to Grasmere's pleasant vale
A stranger maid in tatters clad,
Whose eyes were wild, whose cheek was pale,
While oft she cried, "Poor Kate is mad!"

Four words were all she'd ever say,
Nor would she shelter in a cot;
And e'en in winter's coldest day
She still would cry, "My brain is hot."

A look she had of better days;
And once, while o'er the hills she ranged,
We saw her on her tatters gaze,
And heard her say, "How Kate is changed!"

Whene'er she heard the death-bell sound,

arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies' Betterment League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You'd better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!

Little Cowboy, what have you heard,
Up on the lonely rath's green mound?
Only the plaintive yellow bird
Sighing in sultry fields around,
Chary, chary, chary, chee-ee! -
Only the grasshopper and the bee? -
'Tip-tap, rip-rap,
Tick-a-tack-too!
Scarlet leather, sewn together,
This will make a shoe.
Left, right, pull it tight;
Summer days are warm;
Underground in winter,
Laughing at the storm! '
Lay your ear close to the hill.
Do you not catch th etiny clamour,
Busy click of an elfin hammer.

1 Dere 'a s beeg jam up de reever, w'ere rapide is runnin' fas',
2 An' de log we cut las' winter is takin' it all de room;
3 So boss of de gang is swearin', for not'ing at all can pass
4 An' float away down de current till somebody break de boom.

5 'Here 's for de man will tak' de job, holiday for a week
6 Extra monee w'en pay day come, an' ten dollar suit of clothes.
7 'T is n't so hard work run de log, if only you do it quick--
8 W'ere 's de man of de gang den is ready to say, ` Here goes?''

He said:

"In the winter dusk
When the pavements were gleaming with rain,
I walked thru a dingy street
Hurried, harassed,
Thinking of all my problems that never are solved.
Suddenly out of the mist, a flaring gas-jet
Shone from a huddled shop.
I saw thru the bleary window
A mass of playthings:
False-faces hung on strings,
Valentines, paper and tinsel,
Tops of scarlet and green,
Candy, marbles, jacks--
A confusion of color
Pathetically gaudy and cheap.
All of my boyhood

Let us quit the leafy arbor,
And the torrent murmuring by;
For the sun is in his harbor,
Weary of the open sky.

Evening now unbinds the fetters
Fashioned by the glowing light;
All that breathe are thankful debtors
To the harbinger of night.

Yet by some grave thoughts attended
Eve renews her calm career;
For the day that now is ended,
Is the longest of the year.

Dora! sport, as now thou sportest,
On this platform, light and free;
Take thy bliss, while longest, shortest,

the time i dropped your almost body down
down to meet the waters under the city
and run one with the sewage to the sea
what did i know about waters rushing back
what did i know about drowning
or being drowned

you would have been born in winter
in the year of the disconnected gas
and no car
we would have made the thin walk
over the genecy hill into the canada winds
to let you slip into a stranger's hands
if you were here i could tell you
these and some other things

[How different people and different animals look upon the moon: showing that each creature finds in it his own mood and disposition]


The Old Horse in the City

The moon's a peck of corn. It lies
Heaped up for me to eat.
I wish that I might climb the path
And taste that supper sweet.

Men feed me straw and scanty grain
And beat me till I'm sore.
Some day I'll break the halter-rope
And smash the stable-door,

Run down the street and mount the hill
Just as the corn appears.