lost

She let her golden ball fall down the well
And begged a cold frog to retrieve it;
For which she kissed his ugly, gaping mouth -
Indeed, he could scarce believe it.

And seeing him transformed to his princely shape,
Who had been by hags enchanted,
She knew she could never love another man
Nor by any fate be daunted.

But what would her royal father and mother say?
They had promised her in marriage
To a cousin whose wide kingdom marched with theirs,
Who rode in a jeweled carriage.

FRIEND OF HUMANITY.

"Needy Knife-grinder! whether are you going?
Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order--
Bleak blows the Blast;--your hat has got a hole in't,
So have your breeches!


"Weary Knife-grinder! little think the proud ones
Who in their coaches roll along the turnpike-
-road, what hard work 'tis crying all day, 'Knives and
'Scissars to grind O!'


"Tell me Knife-grinder, how came you to grind knives?
Did some rich man tyrannically use you?

1.1 Lo now! four other acts upon the stage,
1.2 Childhood, and Youth, the Manly, and Old-age.
1.3 The first: son unto Phlegm, grand-child to water,
1.4 Unstable, supple, moist, and cold's his Nature.
1.5 The second: frolic claims his pedigree;
1.6 From blood and air, for hot and moist is he.
1.7 The third of fire and choler is compos'd,
1.8 Vindicative, and quarrelsome dispos'd.
1.9 The last, of earth and heavy melancholy,
1.10 Solid, hating all lightness, and all folly.

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would

He shone in the senate, the camp, and the grove,
The mirror of manhood, the darling of love.
He fought for his country, the star of the brave,
And died for it’s weal when to die was to save.

And Wisdom and Valour long over him wept,
And Beauty, for ages, strewed flowers where he slept.

And the bards of the people inwrought with their lays
The light of his glory, the sound of his praise.

But afar in the foreworld have faded their strains,
And now of his being what record remains?

He asked for one thing in this life
Wisdom
He was graced with talent, dreams, ambition
But he asked for wisdom.

Despite all his gifts, opportunity eluded him
Politics destroyed him
Success and fame never came
Lovers and friends betrayed him, called him a fool.

Lost, alone and in despair
He came to understand
What most people never know
And, in the end, it made him a better man.

His wish had been granted.

I knew a boor - a clownish card
(His only friends were pigs and cows and
The poultry of a small farmyard),
Who came into two hundred thousand.

Good fortune worked no change in BROWN,
Though she's a mighty social chymist;
He was a clown - and by a clown
I do not mean a pantomimist.

It left him quiet, calm, and cool,
Though hardly knowing what a crown was -
You can't imagine what a fool
Poor rich uneducated BROWN was!

He scouted all who wished to come
And give him monetary schooling;

I caught a tremendous fish
and held him beside the boat
half out of water, with my hook
fast in a corner of his mouth.
He didn't fight.
He hadn't fought at all.
He hung a grunting weight,
battered and venerable
and homely. Here and there
his brown skin hung in strips
like ancient wallpaper,
and its pattern of darker brown
was like wallpaper:
shapes like full-blown roses
stained and lost through age.
He was speckled with barnacles,
fine rosettes of lime,
and infested

The Fir-Tree looked on stars, but loved the Brook!
"O silver-voiced! if thou wouldst wait,
My love can bravely woo." All smiles forsook
The brook's white face. "Too late!
Too late! I go to wed the sea.
I know not if my love would curse or bless thee.
I may not, dare not, tarry to caress thee,
Oh, do not follow me!

The Fir-Tree moaned and moaned till spring;
Then laughed in manic joy to feel
Early one day, the woodsmen of the King
Sign him with a sign of burning steel,

THE WATERS make a music low:
The river reeds
Are trembling to the tunes of long ago—
Dead days and deeds
Become alive again, as on
I float, and float,
Through shadows of the golden summers gone
And springs remote.

Above my head the trees bloom out
In white and red
Great blossoms, that make glad the air about;
And old suns shed

Their rays athwart them. Ah, the light
Is bright and fair!
No suns that shine upon me now are bright