Skip to main content

The Battle

Helmet and rifle, pack and overcoat
Marched through a forest. Somewhere up ahead
Guns thudded. Like the circle of a throat
The night on every side was turning red.

They halted and they dug. They sank like moles
Into the clammy earth between the trees.
And soon the sentries, standing in their holes,
Felt the first snow. Their feet began to freeze.

At dawn the first shell landed with a crack.
Then shells and bullets swept the icy woods.
This lasted many days. The snow was black.
The corpses stiffened in their scarlet hoods.

King Philip

Philip, has the white man's charm
Chilled with fear thy kingly breast?
Has his spell unnerved thy arm,
Made thee woman like the rest?

Say, is this the arm, whose shock,
Straight as blazing bolt from heaven,
Sent thy flashing tomahawk, —
And the white man's skull was riven?

Is this the hand, whence arrow flew
Winged with eagle's lightning speed?
Did this urge thy light canoe,
Quivering like yon wind-struck reed?

Yes — this is still the arm, the hand, —
And there my father's dwelling place;

The Waiting Chords

Heedless she strayed from note to note,
A maid, scarce knowing that she sang;
The dainty accents from her throat
In undulations lightly rang.

She sang in laughing rhythms sweet;
A bird of spring was in her voice;
Till, on through measures deft and fleet,
She caught the ditty of her choice.

A song of love, in words of fire,
Now made her breast with passion stir;
It breathed across her living lyre,
And thrilled the waiting chords in her.

Uplifted like a quivering dart,
One moment poised the tones on high,

Decorations

The hedge
the leaning tower
the gourd
the lamp
are all decorations
that people have left.
Are the greatest monuments humans have made.
There's nothing more to say.
When autumn comes I visit the village of Windsor.
From peasants, father and son, like those
in Victorian illustrations of Aesop's Fables ,
I bought a yellow pear,
peeled it with a shiny crescent-shaped
Sheffield knife, and ate it.
That itinerant bear-tormenting man had stopped coming.
With a child wearing a silk hat
I exchanged hips for acorns.

He'd Nothing but His Violin

H E'D nothing but his violin,
I'd nothing but my song,
But we were wed when skies were blue
And summer days were long;
And when we rested by the hedge,
The robins came and told
How they had dared to woo and win,
When early Spring was cold.

We sometimes supped on dew-berries,
Or slept among the hay,
But oft the farmers' wives at eve
Came out to hear us play;
The rare old songs, the dear old tunes, —
We could not starve for long
While my man had his violin,
And I my sweet love-song.

Two Young Men, 23 to 24 Years Old

He'd been sitting in the café since ten-thirty
expecting him to turn up any minute.
Midnight had gone, and he was still waiting for him.
It was now after one-thirty, and the café was almost deserted.
He'd grown tired of reading newspapers
mechanically. Of his three lonely shillings
only one was left: waiting that long,
he'd spent the others on coffees and brandy.
And he'd smoked all his cigarettes.
So much waiting had worn him out.
Because alone like that for so many hours,
he'd also begun to have disturbing thoughts

Mark

The heavy mists have crept away,
Heavily swims the sun,
And dim in mystic cloudlands gray
The stars fade one by one;
Out of the dusk enveloping
Come marsh and sky and tree,
Where erst has rested night's dark ring
Over the Kankakee.

" Mark right! " Afar and faint outlined
A flock of mallards fly,
We crouch within the reedy blind
Instantly at the cry.
" Mark left! " We peer through wild rice-blades,
And distant shadows see,
A wedge-shaped phalanx from the shades
Of far-off Kankakee.

Winter Will Follow

The heaving roses of the hedge are stirred
By the sweet breath of summer, and the bird
Makes from within his jocund voice be heard.

The winds that kiss the roses sweep the sea
Of uncut grass, whose billows rolling free
Half drown the hedges which part lea from lea.

But soon shall look the wondering roses down
Upon an empty field cut close and brown,
That lifts no more its height against their own.

And in a little while those roses bright,
Leaf after leaf, shall flutter from their height,
And on the reaped field lie pink and white.
Subscribe to English