The Babe was laid in the Manger
 Between the gentle kine—
All safe from cold and danger—
 “But it was not so with mine,
(With mine! With mine!)

“Is it well with the child, is it well?”
 The waiting mother prayed.
“For I know not how he fell,
 And I know not where he is laid.”

A Star stood forth in Heaven;
 The Watchers ran to see
The Sign of the Promise given—
 “But there comes no sign to me.
(To me! To me!)

Azzoomm, azzoomm loud and strong —
Azzoomm, azzoomm a steady song —
And UP I went
UP and UP
For a ride
In an airplane.

The machinery roarrrred
And whirrred
And jiggled my ears
Yet I
Just sat right
On a chair
Inside that airplane
And made myself
Stare
Out of a window.

There
Way down below
I saw autos
Scuttling along.

The azur'd vault, the crystal circles bright,
The gleaming fiery torches powdered there,
The changing round, the shining beamy light,
The sad and bearded fires, the monsters fair:
The prodigies appearing in the air,
The rearding thunders, and the blustering winds,
The fowls, in hue, in shape, in nature rare,
The pretty notes that wing'd musicians finds:
In earth the sav'ry flowers, the metall'd minds,
The wholesome herbs, the haughty pleasant trees,
The silver streams, the beasts of sundry kinds,
The bounded roars, and fishes of the seas:

Azure, I come! from the caves of death withdrawn
To hear the waves break rhythmic on the shores,
To see swift galleys clear, across the dawn,
Lifting from darkness on the blades of golden oars.

My lonely hands now summon forth the kings
Whose salt-gray beards amuse my chaste fingers...
I wept. ... And each his gloomy triumph sings
And behind the stern of his bark the furrow lingers.

I hear sonorous conchs and clarion calls
Marking the lift of the oars and their even falls.
The clear chant of the undulant oarsmen charms

Azaleas —whitest of white!
White as the drifted snow
Fresh-fallen out of the night,
Before the coming glow
Tinges the morning light;
When the light is like the snow,
White,
And the silence is like the light:
Light, and silence, and snow,—
All—white!

White! not a hint
Of the creamy tint
A rose will hold,
The whitest rose, in its inmost fold;
Not a possible blush;
White as an embodied hush;
A very rapture of white;
A wedlock of silence and light:
White, white as the wonder undefiled

Aye, the good man, kind father, best of friends--
These are the words that grow like grass and nettles
Out of dead men, and speckled hatreds hide
Like toads among them.

Aye, lads, aye, we fought 'em,
And we sent 'em to the bottom,
And you'll say that I'm a-talkin' like a silly;
I hear your cheers and jokes,
But, lads, them's human folks
What is soakin' in the water off Manilly.

Aye, lads, and when we shot
It's just as like as not
We hit some mother's heart in old Granady.
She did n't sink no Maine,
'Way over there in Spain,
But she won't never see her laddy's body.

I kin see a black-eyed gal,
Somethin' like my little Sal,

A YE , at that time our days wer but vew,
An' our lim's wer but small, an' a-growen;
An' then the feäir worold wer new,
An' life wer all hopevul an' gaÿè;
An' the times o' the sprouten o' leaves,
An' the cheäk-burnen seasons o' mowen,
An' binden o' red-headed sheaves,
Wer all welcome seasons o' jaÿè.

Then the housen seem'd high, that be low,
An' the brook did seem wide that is narrow,
An' time, that do vlee, did goo slow,
An' veelens now feeble wer strong,
An' our worold did end wi' the neämes
Ov the Sha'sbury Hill or Bulbarrow;

Ay ! Unto thee belong
The pipe and song,
Theocritus, —
Loved by the satyr and the faun!
To thee the olive and the vine,
To thee the Mediterranean pine,
And the soft lapping sea!
Thine, Bacchus,
Thine, the blood-red revels,
Thine, the bearded goat!
Soft valleys unto thee,
And Aphrodite's shrine,
And maidens veiled in falling robes of lawn!
But unto us, to us,
The stalwart glories of the North;
Ours is the sounding main,
And ours the voices uttering forth
By midnight round these cliffs a mighty strain;

Ay , this is freedom! — these pure skies
Were never stained with village smoke:
The fragrant wind, that through them flies,
Is breathed from wastes by plough unbroke.
Here, with my rifle and my steed,
And her who left the world for me,
I plant me, where the red deer feed
In the green desert — and am free.

For here the fair savannas know
No barriers in the bloomy grass;
Wherever breeze of heaven may blow,
Or beam of heaven may glance, I pass.
In pastures, measureless as air,
The bison is my noble game;