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old book
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« Reply #2 on: May 17, 2010, 03:45:18 PM » |
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Here are some:
Christmas Blessings
As when a pigeon, loos'd in realms remote, Takes instant wing, and seeks his native cote, So speed my blessings from a barb'rous clime To thee and Providence at Christmas time!
Christmastide
The cottage hearth beams warm and bright, The candles gaily glow; The stars emit a kinder light Above the drifted snow.
Down from the sky a magic steals To glad the passing year, And belfries sing with joyous peals, For Christmastide is here!
Christmas Snows
As Christmas snows (as yet a poet's trope) Call back one's bygone days of youth and hope, Four metrick lines I send--they're quite enough-- Tho' once I fancy'd I could write the stuff!
And don't neglect the barking lemurs:
Hallowe'en in a Suburb
The steeples are white in the wild moonlight, And the trees have a silver glare; Past the chimneys high see the vampires fly, And the harpies of upper air, That flutter and laugh and stare.
For the village dead to the moon outspread Never shone in the sunset's gleam, But grew out of the deep that the dead years keep Where the rivers of madness stream Down the gulfs to a pit of dream.
A chill wind blows through the rows of sheaves In the meadows that shimmer pale, And comes to twine where the headstones shine And the ghouls of the churchyard wail For harvests that fly and fail.
Not a breath of the strange grey gods of change That tore from the past its own Can quicken this hour, when a spectral power Spreads sleep o'er the cosmic throne, And looses the vast unknown.
So here again stretch the vale and plain That moons long-forgotten saw, And the dead leap gay in the pallid ray, Sprung out of the tomb's black maw To shake all the world with awe.
And all that the morn shall greet forlorn, The ugliness and the pest Of rows where thick rise the stones and brick, Shall some day be with the rest, And brood with the shades unblest.
Then wild in the dark let the lemurs bark, And the leprous spires ascend; For new and old alike in the fold Of horror and death are penned, For the hounds of Time to rend.
Nor the perhaps related little tiger:
Little Tiger
Little Tiger, burning bright With a subtle Blakeish light, Tell what visions have their home In those eyes of flame and chrome! Children vex thee - thoughtless, gay - Holding when thou wouldst away: What dark lore is that which thou, Spitting, mixest with thy meow?
And on a brighter note:
Ode for July Fourth, 1917
As Columbia’s brave scions, in anger array’d, Once defy’d a proud monarch and built a new nation; ‘Gainst their brothers of Britain unsheath’d the sharp blade That hath ne’er met defeat nor endur’d desecration; So must we in this hour Show our valour and pow’r, And dispel the black perils that over us low’r: Whilst the sons of Britannia, no longer our foes, Will rejoice in our triumphs and strengthen our blows!
See the banners of Liberty float in the breeze That plays light o’er the regions our fathers defended; Hear the voice of the million resound o’er the leas, As deeds of the past are proclaim’d and commended; And in splendour on high Where our flags proudly fly, See the folds we tore down flung again to the sky: For the Emblem of England, in kinship unfurl’d, Shall divide with Old Glory the praise of the world!
Bury’d now are the hatreds of subject and King, And the strife that once sunder’d an Empire hath vanish’d. With the fame of the Saxon the heavens shall ring As the vultures of darkness are baffled and banish’d; And the broad British sea, Of her enemies free, Shall in tribute bow gladly, Columbia to thee: For the friends of the Right, in the field side by side, Form a fabric of Freedom no hand can divide!
And a fragment from Waste Paper: A Poem of Profound Insignificance (a parody of T. S. Elliot's The Waste Land, 1922):
... "Shantih, shantih, shantih"..."Shanty House" Was the name of a novel by I forget whom Published serially in the "All-Story Weekly" Before it was a weekly. Advt. Disillusion is wonderful, I've been told, And I take quinine to stop a cold But it makes my ears... always... Always ringing in my ears... It is the ghost of the Jew I murdered that Christmas day ...
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