Short Poems

The Sun is Low, to Say the Least,
Although it is Well-Red;
Yet, Since it Rises in the Yeast,
It Should be Better Bred!

Sun and softness,
Sun and the beaten hardness of the earth,
Sun and the song of all the sun-stars
Gathered together—
Dark ones of Africa,
I bring you my songs
To sing on the Georgia roads.

Summer breeze, so softly blowing,
In my garden pinks are growing,
If you'll go and send the showers,
You may come and smell my flowers.

Sukey, you shall be my wife,
And I will tell you why:
I have got a little pig,
And you have got a sty;
I have got a dun cow,
And you can make good cheese;
Sukey, will you have me?
Say " yes, " if you please.

Suits hang half a year in
Westminster Hall;
At Tyburn half an hour's
hanging endeth all.

Stranger, approach this spot with gravity;
John Brown is filling his last cavity.

Strange,
That in this nigger place,
I should meet Life face to face
When for years, I had been seeking
Life in places gentler speaking
Until I came to this near street
And found Life — stepping on my feet!

The stethoscope tells what everyone fears:
You're likely to go on living for years,
With a nurse-maid waddle and a shop-girl simper,
And the style of your prose growing limper and limper.

Step to the garden from the cool-roomed house;
What sun-hot grass; what Canterbury Bells:
How rich along the lane the rustic smells
Of flowering elder and of hidden cows;
What buzzing happy silence where they browse;
What wealth of caverned shade among the boughs,
What breadth of light on the receiving corn!

Steer on, courageous sailor! Through mockery and jeering
while the skipper at the helm lowers a heedless hand.
Always, always westward! This is where the coast must loom
as it lies clear and shimmering before your mind's eye.
Trust in the guiding God and follow the silent seas!
If the coast was not there before, it would now rise from the waves.
Nature has an eternal pact with genius;
What the one promises, the other still surely attain.