"Arcturus" is his other name
“Arcturus” is his other name
I’d rather call him “Star.”
It’s very mean of Science
To go and interfere!
I slew a worm the other day
A “Savant” passing by
Murmured “Resurgam” “Centipede”!
“Oh Lord how frail are we”!
I pull a flower from the woods
A monster with a glass
Computes the stamens in a breath
And has her in a “class”!
Whereas I took the Butterfly
Aforetime in my hat
He sits erect in “Cabinets”
The Clover bells forgot.
What once was “Heaven”
Is “Zenith” now
Where I proposed to go
When Time’s brief masquerade was done
Is mapped and charted too.
What if the poles should frisk about
And stand upon their heads!
I hope I’m ready for “the worst”
Whatever prank betides!
Perhaps the “Kingdom of Heaven’s” changed
I hope the “Children” there Won’t be “new fashioned” when I come
And laugh at me and stare
I hope the Father in the skies
Will lift his little girl
Old fashioned naught everything
Over the stile of “Pearl.”
Related poetry:
- The Argument Of His Book I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds, and bowers, Of April, May, of June, and July-flowers. I sing of May-poles, hock-carts, wassails, wakes, Of bridegrooms, brides, and of their bridal-cakes. I write of youth, of love, and have access By these to sing of cleanly wantonness. I sing of dews, of rains, and piece by […]...
- OPEN TABLE MANY a guest I’d see to-day, Met to taste my dishes! Food in plenty is prepar’d, Birds, and game, and fishes. Invitations all have had, All proposed attending. Johnny, go and look around! Are they hither wending? Pretty girls I hope to see, Dear and guileless misses, Ignorant how sweet it is Giving tender kisses. […]...
- I'm the little "Heart's Ease"! I’m the little “Heart’s Ease”! I don’t care for pouting skies! If the Butterfly delay Can I, therefore, stay away? If the Coward Bumble Bee In his chimney corner stay, I, must resoluter be! Who’ll apologize for me? Dear, Old fashioned, little flower! Eden is old fashioned, too! Birds are antiquated fellows! Heaven does not […]...
- Up Life's Hill with my my little Bundle Up Life’s Hill with my my little Bundle If I prove it steep If a Discouragement withhold me If my newest step Older feel than the Hope that prompted Spotless be from blame Heart that proposed as Heart that accepted Homelessness, for Home...
- Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
- An Old-Fashioned Garden Strange, is it not? She was making her garden, Planting the old-fashioned flowers that day- Bleeding-hearts tender and bachelors-buttons- Spreading the seeds in the old-fashioned way. Just in the old fashioned way, too, our quarrel Grew until, angrily, she set me free- Planting, indeed, bleeding hearts for the two of us,- Ordaining bachelor’s buttons for […]...
- The Man And His Horse Within a Meadow, on the way, A sordid Churl resolv’d to stay, And give his Horse a Bite; Purloining so his Neighbours Hay, That at the Inn he might not pay For Forage all the Night. With Heart’s content th’ unloaded Steed Began to neigh, and frisk, and feed; For nothing more he car’d, Since […]...
- The End of the World Here, at the end of the world, The flowers bleed As if they were hearts, The hearts ooze a darkness Like india ink, & poets dip their pens in & they write. “Here, at the end of the world,” They write, Not knowing what it means. “Here, where the sky nurses on black milk, Where […]...
- I would to heaven that I were so much clay I would to heaven that I were so much clay, As I am blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling – Because at least the past were passed away – And for the future – (but I write this reeling, Having got drunk exceedingly today, So that I seem to stand upon the ceiling) I say – […]...
- Cheerfulness Taught By Reason I THINK we are too ready with complaint In this fair world of God’s. Had we no hope Indeed beyond the zenith and the slope Of yon gray blank of sky, we might grow faint To muse upon eternity’s constraint Round our aspirant souls; but since the scope Must widen early, is it well to […]...
- I reckon when I count it all I reckon when I count it all First Poets Then the Sun Then Summer Then the Heaven of God And then the List is done But, looking back the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole The Others look a needless Show So I write Poets All Their Summer lasts a Solid Year They can […]...
- Willard Fluke My wife lost her health, And dwindled until she weighed scarce ninety pounds. Then that woman, whom the men Styled Cleopatra, came along. And we we married ones All broke our vows, myself among the rest. Years passed and one by one Death claimed them all in some hideous form, And I was borne along […]...
- The Space Coast Florida An Airedale rolling through green frost, Cabbage palms pointing their accusing leaves At whom, petulant waves breaking at my feet. I ran from them. Nights, yellow lights Scoured sand. What was ever found But women in skirts folded around the men They loved that Friday? No one found me. And how could that have […]...
- A Good Knight In Prison Wearily, drearily, Half the day long, Flap the great banners High over the stone; Strangely and eerily Sounds the wind’s song, Bending the banner-poles. While, all alone, Watching the loophole’s spark, Lie I, with life all dark, Feet tether’d, hands fetter’d Fast to the stone, The grim walls, square-letter’d With prison’d men’s groan. Still strain […]...
- Storm and Sunlight I In barns we crouch, and under stacks of straw, Harking the storm that rides a hurtling legion Up the arched sky, and speeds quick heels of panic With growling thunder loosed in fork and clap That echoes crashing thro’ the slumbrous vault. The whispering woodlands darken: vulture Gloom Stoops, menacing the skeltering flocks of […]...
- Like Some Old fashioned Miracle Like Some Old fashioned Miracle When Summertime is done Seems Summer’s Recollection And the Affairs of June As infinite Tradition As Cinderella’s Bays Or Little John of Lincoln Green Or Blue Beard’s Galleries Her Bees have a fictitious Hum Her Blossoms, like a Dream Elate us till we almost weep So plausible they seem Her […]...
- Authorship You say that father write a lot of books, but what he write I don’t Understand. He was reading to you all the evening, but could you really Make out what he meant? What nice stores, mother, you can tell us! Why can’t father Write like that, I wonder? Did he never hear from his […]...
- You love the Lord you cannot see You love the Lord you cannot see You write Him every day A little note when you awake And further in the Day. An Ample Letter How you miss And would delight to see But then His House is but a Step And Mine’s in Heaven You see....
- How noteless Men, and Pleiads, stand How noteless Men, and Pleiads, stand, Until a sudden sky Reveals the fact that One is rapt Forever from the Eye Members of the Invisible, Existing, while we stare, In Leagueless Opportunity, O’ertakenless, as the Air Why didn’t we detain Them? The Heavens with a smile, Sweep by our disappointed Heads Without a syllable...
- TO WILLIAM E. CHANNING The pages of thy book I read, And as I closed each one, My heart, responding, ever said, “Servant of God! well done!” Well done! Thy words are great and bold; At times they seem to me, Like Luther’s, in the days of old, Half-battles for the free. Go on, until this land revokes The […]...
- To A New England Poet Though skilled in Latin and in Greek, And earning fifty cents a week, Such knowledge, and the income, too, Should teach you better what to do: The meanest drudges, kept in pay, Can pocket fifty cents a day. Why stay in such a tasteless land, Where all must on a level stand, (Excepting people, at […]...
- To An Old Mate Old Mate! In the gusty old weather, When our hopes and our troubles were new, In the years spent in wearing out leather, I found you unselfish and true I have gathered these verses together For the sake of our friendship and you. You may think for awhile, and with reason, Though still with a […]...
- Ianthe! You are Call'd to Cross the Sea Ianthe! you are call’d to cross the sea! A path forbidden me! Remember, while the Sun his blessing sheds Upon the mountain-heads, How often we have watcht him laying down His brow, and dropt our own Against each other’s, and how faint and short And sliding the support! What will succeed it now? Mine is […]...
- Historion No man hath dared to write this thing as yet, And yet I know, how that the souls of all men great At times pass athrough us, And we are melted into them, and are not Save reflexions of their souls. Thus am I Dante for a space and am One Francois Villon, ballad-lord and […]...
- A Star in a Stoneboat For Lincoln MacVeagh Never tell me that not one star of all That slip from heaven at night and softly fall Has been picked up with stones to build a wall. Some laborer found one faded and stone-cold, And saving that its weight suggested gold And tugged it from his first too certain hold, He […]...
- Death Nor dread nor hope attend A dying animal; A man awaits his end Dreading and hoping all; Many times he died, Many times rose again. A great man in his pride Confronting murderous men Casts derision upon Supersession of breath; He knows death to the bone – Man has created death....
- Psalm 71 part 1 v.5-9 C. M. The aged saint’s reflection and hope. My God, my everlasting hope, I live upon thy truth; Thine hands have held my childhood up, And strengthened all my youth. My flesh was fashioned by thy power, With all these limbs of mine; And from my mother’s painful hour, I’ve been entirely thine. Still […]...
- "I Love You Sweatheart" A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
- Grandad Heaven’s mighty sweet, I guess; Ain’t no rush to git there: Been a sinner, more or less; Maybe wouldn’t fit there. Wicked still, bound to confess; Might jest pine a bit there. Heaven’s swell, the preachers say: Got so used to earth here; Had such good times all the way, Frolic, fun and mirth here; […]...
- Sonnet III THe souerayne beauty which I doo admyre, Witnesse the world how worthy to be prayzed: The light wherof hath kindled heauenly iyre, In my fraile spirit by her from basenesse raysed. That being now with her huge brightnesse dazed, Base thing I can no more endure to view: But looking still on her I stand […]...
- Amoretti III: The Sovereign Beauty The sovereign beauty which I do admire, Witness the world how worthy to be praised: The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fire In my frail spirit, by her from baseness raised; That being now with her huge brightness dazed, Base thing I can no more endure to view; But looking still on her, I stand […]...
- Loitering with a Vacant Eye Loitering with a vacant eye Along the Grecian gallery, And brooding on my heavy ill, I met a statue standing still. Still in marble stone stood he, And stedfastly he looked at me. “Well met,” I thought the look would say, “We both were fashioned far away; We neither knew, when we were young, These […]...
- Shakespeare Would that in body and spirit Shakespeare came Visible emperor of the deeds of Time, With Justice still the genius of his rhyme, Giving each man his due, each passion grace, Impartial as the rain from Heaven’s face Or sunshine from the heaven-enthroned sun. Sweet Swan of Avon, come to us again. Teach us to […]...
- Bird On The Wire Like a bird on the wire, Like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free. Like a worm on a hook, Like a knight from some old fashioned book I have saved all my ribbons for thee. If I, if I have been unkind, I hope that you […]...
- Style Flaubert wanted to write a novel About nothing. It was to have no subject And be sustained upon the style alone, Like the Holy Ghost cruising above The abyss, or like the little animals In Disney cartoons who stand upon a branch That breaks, but do not fall Till they look down. He never wrote […]...
- Golden Days Another day of toil and strife, Another page so white, Within that fateful Log of Life That I and all must write; Another page without a stain To make of as I may, That done, I shall not see again Until the Judgment Day. Ah, could I, could I backward turn The pages of that […]...
- Drowning is not so pitiful Drowning is not so pitiful As the attempt to rise Three times, ’tis said, a sinking man Comes up to face the skies, And then declines forever To that abhorred abode, Where hope and he part company For he is grasped of God. The Maker’s cordial visage, However good to see, Is shunned, we must […]...
- Anna Who Was Mad Anna who was mad, I have a knife in my armpit. When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages. Am I some sort of infection? Did I make you go insane? Did I make the sounds go sour? Did I tell you to climb out the window? Forgive. Forgive. Say not I did. Say […]...
- Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
- The Creation I The God separated a spirit from Himself and fashioned it into Beauty. He showered upon her all the blessings of gracefulness and kindness. He gave her the cup of happiness and said, “Drink not from this cup unless you forget the past and the future, for happiness is naught but the moment.” And He also […]...