Short Poems

Tell them in Lacedaemon, passer-by,
We kept the Spartan code, and here we lie.

Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,
Go upstairs.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,
Say your prayers.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,
Turn out the light.
Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear,
Say good night.

Take, gentle marble, to thy trust,
And keep untouched this sacred dust:
Grown moist sometimes, that I may see
Thou weep'st in sympathy with me;
And when by him I here shall sleep,
My ashes also safely keep.
And from rude hands preserve us both, until
We rise to Sion Mount from Herndon-Hill.

Take a pen in your uncertain fingers,
Trust, and be assured
That the whole world is a sky-blue butterfly,
and that words are the nets to capture it.

There was an old man who said — " Hum!
I am always a-spraining my Thumb."
When they said " Tell us how?"
He made them a bow, —
And said, " I've no jints in my Thumb!"

Swans sing before they die — 'twere no bad thing
Should certain persons die before they sing.

Summer has doft his latest green,
And Autumn ranged the barley-mows.
So long away when have you been?
And are you coming back to close
The year? It sadly wants repose.

Sung-ling road in setting sunlight;
the embankment so long it nearly circles town.
A pagoda twists up, the lake is shimmering;
a bridge beckons where moon reflections come.
The city is silent: people have fled taxation;
the river, wide: travelers escape the troops.
My friends of twenty years ago — all scattered;
wine in hand, I sigh at fleeting fame.

The sun sets, the pagoda is darkened.
A distant bell sounds from the misty ridge:
there must be a man who is not asleep,
coldly awakened to the deepest insight.

Success and failure are not our affairs:
in frosty woods, ten thousand things fade.
A northern wind blows down the avenue;
the wine of parting is served on the river bridge.
A driving snow turns back the journeying goose;
low clouds oppress the angry hawk.
Once you were an official in Yen and Chao;
your time of desolation is this morning.