Short Poems

Traveller, this is no prison,
He is not dead, but risen.
Then is there need,
To fill his grave,
And truth to save,
That we should read, —
In Pursy's favor
Here lies the engraver.

Upon de mountain chillun call.
Cain't make a dollah, save mah soul.
Chillun hungry, nothin' to eat,
Get no money, walkin' de street.
Ast mah Cap'n cain he use a man.
Use a man, not a skeleton.
How cain ah make? Ah don' know.
Tired of starvin' won' starve no mo'.

Methinks that by a strict behavior
I could elicit back the brightest star
That lurks behind a cloud.

Who last shall kiss the lips of love, when love is dead?
Who last shall fold her hands and pillow soft her head?
Who last shall vigil keep beside her lonely bier?
I ask, and from the dark, cold height without, I hear
The mystic answer: " I, her mother, Earth, shall press
Her lips the last, in my infinite tenderness. "

Not unconcerned Wachusett rears his head
Above the fields so late from nature won
With patient brow unmoved as one who read
New annals in the history of man.

Under thy shadow may I lurke a while,
Death's busie search I'le easily beguile:
Thy shadow Peter , must shew me the Sun,
My light's thy shadowes shadow, or 'tis done.

Under this sod lies a great bucking hoss
There never lived a cowboy he couldn't toss.
His name was Midnight, his coat was black as coal,
If there is a hoss-heaven, please, God, rest his soul.

Death cannot come too soon
Where it can come at all,
But always is too late
Unless the fates it call.

Two or three visits, and two or three bows,
Two or three civil things, two or three vows,
Two or three kisses, with two or three sighs,
Two or three Jesus's--and let me dies--
Two or three squeezes, and two or three towses,
With two or three thousand pound lost at their houses,
Can never fail cuckolding two or three spouses.

'T will soon appear if we but look
At evening into earth's day book,
Which way the great account doth stand
Between the heavens and the land.