English

Billy rode on a pinto horse—
Billy The Kid, I mean—
And he met Clyde Barrow riding
In a little gray machine.

Billy drew his bridle rein
And Barrow stopped his car,
And the dead man talked to the living man
Under the morning star.

Billy said to the Barrow boy,
“Is this the way you ride,
In a car that does its ninety per,
Machine guns at each side?”

“I only had my pinto horse
And my six-gun tried and true,
And I could shoot, but they got me at last,
And some day they'll get you!”

In the year eighteen hundred sixty-one
Our last rebellion it begun;
It was a hard and bloody fight,
It lasted four years day and night.

We know that battle must be fought,
Cruel war, how sad the thought;
For men must go and risk their lives
And leave their children and their wives.

Fathers and mothers frail and gray
Must bid their sons farewell;
Today their blood runs hot through their vein
As they vow they will avenge the Maine.

America's blood is raised at last,
The cup is bitter but cannot pass,

I who look up at you
Am a blue-jay
Crested,
And my only way
Of saying to you,
My sky,
That I have wings of your color
Is—

O! I could laugh to hear the midnight wind,
That, rushing on its way with careless sweep,
Scatters the ocean waves. And I could weep
Like to a child. For now to my raised mind
On wings of winds comes wild-eyed Phantasy,
And her rude visions give severe delight.
O winged bark! how swift along the night
Pass'd thy proud keel! nor shall I let go by
Lightly of that drear hour the memory,
When wet and chilly on thy deck I stood,
Unbonnetted, and gazed upon the flood,
Even till it seemed a pleasant thing to die,—

Thou glorious mocker of the world! I hear
Thy many voices ringing through the glooms
Of these green solitudes; and all the clear,
Bright joyance of their song enthralls the ear,
And floods the heart. Over the spherëd tombs
Of vanished nations rolls thy music-tide:
No light from History's starlit page illumes
The memory of these nations; they have died:
None care for them but thou; and thou mayst sing
O'er me, perhaps, as now thy clear notes ring
Over their bones by whom thou once wast deified.

I want to die with the dying day,
on the high sea and with my face to the sky,
where the pangs of death may seem a dream
and the soul a mew on soaring wing.

At the last, to hear no other voice,
alone already with the sky and sea,
no other voice, no other sobbing knell,
than the mighty heaving of the deep.

To die when the melancholy light
withdraws its golden nets from the green waves,
and be as yonder slowly expiring sun,
a thing of exceeding brightness, perishing.

To die, and young; before the pleasant crown

of this profusion
a robin flies carrying
food on its tongue
and a flag

red white and
blue hangs
motionless. Return
from the sick

wean the mind
again from among
the foliage also of
infection. There

is a brass band at
the monument
and the children
that paraded

the blistering streets
are giving lustily
to the memory
of our war dead.

Remain and listen or
use up the time
perhaps
among the side streets

watching the elms

On Salza's quiet tide the westering sun
Gleams mildly; and the lengthening shadows dun,
Chequered with ruddy streaks from spire and roof,
Begin to weave fair twilight's mystic woof,
Till the dim tissue, like a gorgeous veil,
Wraps the proud city, in her beauty pale.
A minute since, and in the rosy light
Dome, casement, spire, were glowing warm and bright;
A minute since, St. Rupert's stately shrine,
Rich with the spoils of many a Hartzwald mine,
Flung back the golden glow; now, broad and vast,

S ERVOZ , sweet Servoz, there is not a vale,
On earth's green bosom nursed, more beautiful
Than thou. How lovely yon cerulean sky,
Glittering with blue and gold, and all the charms
It canopies:—the purple vines, which feed
On thy rich veins; the flowers, whose fragrant breath
Satiates the sense with sweetness; the tall groves,
With their eternal whisperings in thy ear
Of blessedness and joy; thy guardian fence
Of hills, which round thee rise, Alp over Alp,
As though each peer'd above his fellow, anxious

He wakened quivering on a golden rack
Inlaid with gems: no sign of change, no fear
Or hope of death came near;
Only the empty ether hovered black
About him stretched upon his living bier,
Of old by Merlin's Master deftly wrought:
Two Seraphim of Gabriel's helpful race
In that far nook of space
With iron levers wrenched and held him taut.

The Seraph at his head was Agony;
Delight, more terrible, stood at his feet:
Their sixfold pinions beat
The darkness, or were spread immovably