There were estrangements on the road of love:
Betrayals and false passions, angers, lusts.
There were keen nights and sated noons and trusts
Grudgingly given and held light to prove
Your self-sufficiency, your manhood's dower,
And mockery at my faith, — my single power.

There were renewals all along the way,
Of pledges and of weeping, new delights.
But no new meaning till that night of nights
You groped beyond to where my meaning lay.
And when you knelt to me you found me kneeling,
Proud of love's pain and humble to its healing.

There was this gym-teacher
Who took his chance while giving
A lesson to a smooth lad —
He whisked him over his knee, and started
Doing his press-ups there right up him, hand
Working his balls. At which moment the father
Comes looking for his son; the gym-teacher
Throws the boy flat on his back,
Leaps on top and grips him tight round the neck.
Father knows a thing or two about wrestling
And says, " Easy, please! You'll have it right off."

The joy Thou giv'st no man can take away
For it is born of him who lives within
He comes the power of death o'er all to slay
And cleanse the heart of every secret sin
Thou shalt not see his face and mourn again
Save that thy mourning works thee double joy
For he can rich reward thy slightest pain
And give thee hope when sorrows here annoy
Come know with me the riches of his grace
Freely he offers them to all beside
And he will show us soon his Father's face
And bid the stream of grief however wide
Its waters here may roll, be dry and we

There was once upon a time a man who lost the
Dictionary and he kept saying ladies and gentlemen
I have nothing up my sleeves and the audience smiled
Since the children were present and after all the children
Were happy and the happiness of children is a serious matter
If one lives in Rutherford New Jersey and owns a car and
Can never be caught in the wrong church on Sunday I mean
That if you suddenly saw a field of sunflowers and
Remembered your wife telling the maid that your room
Must be cleaned this time as a room should be cleaned

THERE WAS once two Irish labouring men; to England they came over;
They tramped about in search of work from Liverpool to Dover.
Says Pat to Mick, " I'm tired of this; we're both left in the lurch;
And if we don't get work, bedad, I'll go and rob a church. "
" What, rob a church! " says Mick to Pat; " How dare you be so vile?
There's something sure to happen as you're treading down the aisle.
But if you go I go with you; we'll get out safe, I hope; "
So, if you'll listen, I'll tell you here how Paddy stole the rope.

There was a young lady of Ryde
Who ate a green apple and died.
The apple fermented
Within the lamented
And made cider inside her inside.

There was once a man who smiled
Because the day was bright,
Because he slept at night,
Because God gave him sight
To gaze upon his child;
Because his little one,
Could leap and laugh and run;
Because the distant sun
Smiled on the earth he smiled.

He smiled because the sky
Was high above his head,
Because the rose was red,
Because the past was dead!
He never wondered why
The Lord had blundered so
That all things have to go
The wrong way, here below
The over-arching sky.

There was no union in the land,
Though wise men labored long
With links of clay and ropes of sand
To bind the right and wrong.

There was no temper in the blade
That once could cleave a chain;
Its edge was dull with touch of trade
And clogged with rust of gain.

The sand and clay must shrink away
Before the lava tide:
By blows and blood and fire assay
The metal must be tried.

Here sledge and anvil met, and when
The furnace fiercest roared,
God's undiscerning workingmen
Reforged His people's sword.

I waited long but now my joy is great
For that which once I sowed begins to appear
Though slow yet sure my harvest tis not late
For Him who guides the oft revolving year
I watch not for the crops that dying earth
Yields from her bosom to the tribes of men
I watch for those who come of heavenly birth
A Father's care a Father's love have been
But lightly spent do they repay the toil
My hand upon my vineyard oft bestows
Come learn to reap for me the wine and oil
From every field in plenty overflows
I bid thee enter as a laborer now

There was Dai Puw. He was no good.
They put him in the fields to dock swedes,
And took the knife from him, when he came home
At late evening with a grin
Like the slash of a knife on his face.

There was Llew Puw, and he was no good.
Every evening after the ploughing
With the big tractor he would sit in his chair,
And stare into the tangled fire garden,
Opening his slow lips like a snail.

There was Huw Puw, too. What shall I say?
I have heard him whistling in the hedges
On and on, as though winter