Short Poems

In contact, lo! the flint and steel,
By spark and flame, the thought reveal
That he the metal, she the stone,
Had cherished secretly alone.

A spelling reformer indicted
For fudge was before the court cicted.
The judge said: “Enough—
His candle we'll snough,
And his sepulchre shall not be whicted.”

Fiercely the battle raged and, sad to tell,
Our corporal heroically fell!
Fame from her height looked down upon the brawl
And said: “He had n't very far to fall.”

The cur foretells the knell of parting day;
The loafing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The wise man homeward plods; I only stay
To fiddle-faddle in a minor key.

Some heaps of trash upon a vacant lot
Where long the village rubbish had been shot
Displayed a sign among the stuff and stumps—
“Hypochondriasis.” It meant The Dumps.

Blow, blow, ye spicy breezes—
O'er Ceylon blow your breath,
Where every prospect pleases,
Save only that of death.

Stand close around, ye Stygian set,
With Dirce in one boat convey'd,
Or Charon, seeing, may forget
That he is old, and she a shade.

The herdboy returns, none too early—
beside the stream, heavy wind and rain!
Looking behind—a mother's love for her baby:
it is running after her, but can't seem to catch up.

Weapon shapely, naked, wan,
Head from the mother's bowels drawn,
Wooded flesh and metal bone, limb only one and lip only one,
Gray-blue leaf by red-heat grown, helve produced from a little seed sown,
Resting the grass amid and upon,
To be lean'd and to lean on.

Li Bo put it in a poem, this West-of-the-Waters Abbey
Old trees and crooked cliffs, wind in the upper rooms
Between drunk and sober I drifted three days
While blossoms white and crimson opened in the misty rain.