Look not thou on beauty's charming;
Sit thou still when kings are arming;
Taste not when the wine-cup glistens;
Speak not when the people listens;
Stop thine ear against the singer;
From the red gold keep thy finger;
Vacant heart and hand and eye,
Easy live and quiet die.
Cor zu' bravo sbordone a manimanca,
Du' pellegrini a or de vemmaria
Cercaveno indov'era l'osteria,
Perc'uno aveva male in d'una cianca.
Ce s'incontra er zor Lotte, e je spalanca
Er portone dicenno: "A casa mia"
E loro je risposeno: "Per dia
Dimani sarai fio de l'oca bianca".
Quelli ereno du' angeli, fratello,
Che ar vedelli passà li Ghimorrini
Se sentinno addrizzà tutti l'ucello.
E arrivonno a strillà, fiji de mulo:
"Lotte, mannece giù li pellegrini,
Mr. Blake was a regular out-and-out hardened sinner,
Who was quite out of the pale of Christianity, so to speak,
He was in the habit of smoking a long pipe and drinking a glass of
grog on a Sunday after dinner,
And seldom thought of going to church more than twice or - if Good
Friday or Christmas Day happened to come in it - three times a
week.
He was quite indifferent as to the particular kinds of dresses
That the clergyman wore at church where he used to go to pray,
In a southern city lived a wealthy family;
In a southern city was the happy home
Of a father and mother and a little daughter.
In peace and contentment they lived alone.
II
But one summer evening there happened a misfortune,
Which caused the parents to weep and mourn,
For this little daughter, a loving little treasure,
Was a poor little wanderer far, far from home.
III
It happened thus, -- the mother went out calling
On a widow friend, who lived all alone;
She left her little daughter in the care of her father,
It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes-- and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,
We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.
(When we left high school nothing else had died
For us to figure we had died like.)
FYTTE I.
'Look at the Clock!' quoth Winifred Pryce,
As she open'd the door to her husband's knock,
Then paus'd to give him a piece of advice,
'You nasty Warmint, look at the Clock!
Is this the way, you
Wretch, every day you
Treat her who vow'd to love and obey you?
Out all night!
Me in a fright;
Staggering home as it's just getting light!
You intoxified brute! you insensible block!
Look at the Clock!-- Do!-- Look at the Clock!'
Winifred Pryce was tidy and clean,
London, hast thou accused me
Of breach of laws, the root of strife?
Within whose breast did boil to see,
So fervent hot, thy dissolute life,
That even the hate of sins that grow
Within thy wicked walls so rife,
For to break forth did convert so
That terror could it not repress.
The which, by words since preachers know
What hope is left for to redress,
By unknown means it liked me
My hidden burden to express,
Whereby it might appear to thee
That secret sin hath secret spite;
Softly the water ripples
Against the canoe's curving side,
Softly the birch trees rustle
Flinging over us branches wide.
Softly the moon glints and glistens
As the water takes and leaves,
Like golden ears of corn
Which fall from loose-bound sheaves,
Or like the snow-white petals
Which drop from an overblown rose,
When Summer ripens to Autumn
And the freighted year must close.
From the shore come the scents of a garden,
And between a gap in the trees
'Twas in the year of 1900, and on the 5th of June,
Lord Roberts entered Pretoria in the afternoon;
His triumphal entry was magnificent to see,
The British Army marching behind him fearlessly.
With their beautiful banners unfurled to the breeze,
But the scene didn't the Boers please;
And they immediately made some show of fight,
But at the charge of the bayonet they were put to flight.
The troops, by the people, were received with loud cheers,
While many of them through joy shed joyous tears;
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,
Someone sailed the ocean blue.
Somebody borrowed the fare in Spain
For a business trip on the bounding main,
And to prove to the people, by actual test,
You could get to the East by sailing West.
Somebody said, Sail on! Sail on!
And studied China and China's lingo,
And cried from the bow, There's China now!
And promptly bumped into San Domingo.
Somebody murmured, Oh dear, oh dear!
I've discovered the Western Hemisphere.
And that, you may think, my friends, was that.
