Here comes the elephant
Swaying along
With his cargo of children
All singing a song:
To the tinkle of laughter
He goes on his way,
And his cargo of children
Have crowned him with May.
His legs are in leather
And padded his toes;
He can root up an oak
With a whisk of his nose:
With a wave of his trunk
And a turn of his chin
He can pull down a house,
Or pick up a pin.
Beneath his grey forehead
A little eye peers!
Of what is he thinking
Between those wide ears?
Of what does he think?
If he wished to tease,

Here comes another, bumping over the sage
Among the greasewood, wobbling diagonally
Downhill, then skimming a moment on its edge,
Tilting lopsided, bouncing end over end
And springing from the puffs of its own dust
To catch at the barbed wire
And hang there, shaking, like a riddled prisoner.

Half the sharp seeds have fallen from this tumbler,
Knocked out for good by head-stands and pratfalls
Between here and wherever it grew up.
I carry it in the wind across the road
To the other fence. It jerks in my hands,

Here come three merchants a-riding,
A-riding, a-riding,
Here come three merchants a-riding,
Innamen, senaman, see.

2

What are you riding here for,
Here for, here for,
What are you riding here for,
Innamen, senaman, see.

3

We're riding here to get married,
Married, married,
We're riding here to get married,
Innamen, senaman, see.

4

You're awful dirty and ragged,
Ragged, ragged,
You're awful dirty and ragged,
Innamen, senaman, see.

5

We're just as good as you are,

Here clove the keels of centuries ago
Where now unvisited the flats lie bare.
Here seethed the sweep of journeying waters, where
No more the tumbling floods of Fundy flow,
And only in the samphire pipes creep slow
The salty currents of the sap. The air
Hums desolately with wings that seaward fare,
Over the lonely reaches beating low.

The wastes of hard and meagre weeds are thronged
With murmurs of a past that time has wronged;
And ghosts of many an ancient memory
Dwell by the brackish pools and ditches blind,

Here Caelia for thy sake I part
With all that grew so near my heart;
The passion that I had for thee,
The Faith, the Love, the Constancy,
And that I may successful prove
Transform my self to what you love.
Fool that I was so much to prize
Those simple virtues you despise,
Fool that with such dull Arrows strove,
Or hop'd to reach a flying Dove;
For you that are in motion still
Decline our force, and mock our skill.
Who like Don Quixot do advance
Against a Wind-mill our vain Launce.

Here by the gray north sea,
In the wintry heart of the wild,
Comes the old dream of thee,
Guendolen, mistress and child.

The heart of the forest grieves
In the drift against my door;
A voice is under the eaves,
A footfall on the floor.

Threshold, mirror and hall,
Vacant and strangely aware,
Wait for their soul's recall
With the dumb expectant air.

Here when the smouldering west
Burns down into the sea,
I take no heed of rest
And keep the watch for thee.

I sit by the fire and hear

(DECORATION DAY, 1883)

Here bring your purple and gold,
Glory of color and scent;
Scarlet of tulips bold,
Buds blue as the firmament.

Hushed is the sound of the fife
And the bugle piping clear.
The vivid and delicate life
In the soul of the youthful year

We bring to the quiet dead,
With a gentle and tempered grief:
O'er the mounds so mute we shed

Here at the wayside station, as many a morning,
I watch the smoke torn from the fumy engine
Crawling across the field in serpent sorrow.
Flat in the east, held down by stolid clouds,
The struggling day is born and shines already
On its warm hearth far off. Yet something here
Glimmers along the ground to show the seagulls
White on the furrows' black unturning waves.

But now the light has broadened.
I watch the farmstead on the little hill,
That seems to mutter: " Here is day again"
Unwillingly. Now the sad cattle wake

Will I ever again
seek cherry blossoms
in the royal fields of Katano?
Flowers of falling snow,
early dawn in spring.

Here at the country inn,
I lie in my quiet bed,
And the ardent onrush of armies
Throbs and throbs in my head.

Why, in this calm, sweet place,
Where only silence is heard,
Am I ware of the crash of conflict, —
Is my blood to battle stirred?

Without, the night is blessed
With the smell of pines, with stars;
Within, is the mood of slumber,
The healing of daytime scars.

'T is strange, — yet I am thrall
To epic agonies;
The tumult of myriads dying
Is borne to me on the breeze.

Mayhap in the long ago