Short Poems

Plain hoss-sense in poetry-writin'
Would jes' knock sentiment a-kitin'!
Mostly poets is all star-gazin'
And moanin' and groanin' and paraphrasin'!

*****When I saw that clumsy crow

Flap from a wasted tree,
A shape in the mind rose up:

When I go I will give you surely
What you will wear if you go with me;
A blanket of red and a bright girdle,
Two new moccasins and a silver necklace.
When I go I will give you surely
What you will wear if you go with me!

When I am dead, withhold, I pray, your blooming legacy;
Beneath the willows did I bide, and they should cover me;
I longed for light and fragrance, and I sought them far and near,
O, it would grieve me utterly, to find them on my bier!

1735 1820
When Daniel Boone goes by, at night,
The phantom deer arise
And all lost, wild America
Is burning in their eyes.

I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two —
And see what worms are eating

What's the railroad to me?
I never go to see
Where it ends.
It fills a few hollows,
And makes banks for the swallows,
It sets the sand a-blowing,
And the blackberries a-growing.

She knows
The end of the evening will come, —
It has come before.
And if it should never come again.
Well, —
Just that much more

What spirit touched the faded lambrequin,
And slept? The doorway's lintel, ambered, rosed
With age, overlooks a stunted ilex tree
Grown in the middle path. Its branches guard
The house in silence, or with green dark gesture
Spreading protection, whisper pleadingly:
" The past is asleep behind the lambrequin.
Do not go in. The door is closed. "

What poets feel not, when they make,
A pleasure in creating,
The world, in its turn, will not take
Pleasure in contemplating.