Beachcomber

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1. The Things We Dare Not Tell The fields are fair in autumn yet, and the sun’s still shining there, But we bow our heads and we brood and fret, because of the masks we wear; Or we nod and smile the social while, and we say we’re doing well, But we break our hearts, oh, we break our hearts! for the […]...
2. Escape Tell me, Tramp, where I may go To be free from human woe; Say where I may hope to find Ease of heart and peace of mind; Is thee not some isle you know Where I may leave Care behind? So spoke one is sore distress, And I answered softly: “Yes, There’s an isle so […]...
3. COMFORT IN TEARS How happens it that thou art sad, While happy all appear? Thine eye proclaims too well that thou Hast wept full many a tear. “If I have wept in solitude, None other shares my grief, And tears to me sweet balsam are, And give my heart relief.” Thy happy friends invite thee now, Oh come, […]...
4. Atoll The woes of men beyond my ken Mean nothing more to me. Behold my world, and Eden hurled From Heaven to the Sea; A jeweled home, in fending foam Tempestuously tossed; A virgin isle none dare defile, Far-flung, forgotten, lost. And here I dwell, where none may tell Me tales of mortal strife; Let millions […]...
5. Sonnet – To Zante Fair isle, that from the fairest of all flowers, Thy gentlest of all gentle names dost take! How many memories of what radiant hours At sight of thee and thine at once awake! How many scenes of what departed bliss! How many thoughts of what entombed hopes! How many visions of a maiden that is […]...
6. Farewell FAREWELL, and when forth I through the Golden Gates to Golden Isles Steer without smiling, through the sea of smiles, Isle upon isle, in the seas of the south, Isle upon island, sea upon sea, Why should I sail, why should the breeze? I have been young, and I have counted friends. A hopeless sail […]...
7. If All the Skies If all the skies were sunshine, Our faces would be fain To feel once more upon them The cooling splash of rain. If all the world were music, Our hearts would often long For one sweet strain of silence, To break the endless song. If life were always merry, Our souls would seek relief, And […]...
8. Annus Mirabilis Sexual intercourse began In nineteen sixty-three (which was rather late for me) – Between the end of the Chatterley ban And the Beatles’ first LP. Up to then there’d only been A sort of bargaining, A wrangle for the ring, A shame that started at sixteen And spread to everything. Then all at once the […]...
9. Weep On, Weep On Weep on, weep on, your hour is past, Your dreams of pride are o’er; The fatal chain is round you cast, And you are men no more. In vain the hero’s heart hath bled; The sage’s tongue hath warn’d in vain; Oh, Freedom! once thy flame hath fled, It never lights again! Weep on perhaps […]...
10. The Covenant (Ezekiel, xxxvi. 25-28) The Lord proclaims His grace abroad! “Behold, I change your hearts of stone; Each shall renounce his idol-god, And serve, henceforth, the Lord alone. “My grace, a flowing stream, proceeds To wash your filthiness away; Ye shall abhor your former deeds, And learn my statutes to obey. “My truth the great design […]...
11. Washerwife The aged Queen who passed away Had sixty servants, so they say; Twice sixty hands her shoes to tie: Two soapy ones have I. The old Queen had of beds a score; A cot have I and ask no more. For when the last is said and done One can but die in one. The […]...
12. Pilgrims For oh, when the war will be over We’ll go and we’ll look for our dead; We’ll go when the bee’s on the clover, And the plume of the poppy is red: We’ll go when the year’s at its gayest, When meadows are laughing with flow’rs; And there where the crosses are greyest, We’ll seek […]...
13. Friendship Friend! the Great Ruler, easily content, Needs not the laws it has laborious been The task of small professors to invent; A single wheel impels the whole machine Matter and spirit; yea, that simple law, Pervading nature, which our Newton saw. This taught the spheres, slaves to one golden rein, Their radiant labyrinths to weave […]...
14. The World's All Right Be honest, kindly, simple, true; Seek good in all, scorn but pretence; Whatever sorrow come to you, Believe in Life’s Beneficence! The World’s all right; serene I sit, And cease to puzzle over it. There’s much that’s mighty strange, no doubt; But Nature knows what she’s about; And in a million years or so We’ll […]...
15. My Husbands My first I wed when just sixteen And he was sixty-five. He treated me like any queen The years he was alive. Oh I betrayed him on the sly, Like any other bitch, And how I longed for him to die And leave me young and rich! My second is a gigolo I took when […]...
16. Song of Innisfail They came from a land beyond the sea, And now o’er the western main Set sail, in their good ships, gallantly, From the sunny land of Spain. “Oh, where’s the isle we’ve seen in dreams, Our destined home or grave?” Thus sung they as, by the morning’s beams, They swept the Atlantic wave. And lo, […]...
17. Discord Unreconciled by life’s fleet years, that fled With changeful clang of pinions wide and wild, Though two great spirits had lived, and hence had sped Unreconciled; Though time and change, harsh time’s imperious child, That wed strange hands together, might not wed High hearts by hope’s misprision once beguiled; Faith, by the light from either’s […]...
18. The Scribe's Prayer When from my fumbling hand the tired pen falls, And in the twilight weary droops my head; While to my quiet heart a still voice calls, Calls me to join my kindred of the Dead: Grant that I may, O Lord, ere rest be mine, Write to Thy praise one radiant, ringing line. For all […]...
19. Psalm 128 Family blessings. O happy man, whose soul is filled With zeal and reverent awe! His lips to God their honors yield, His life adorns the law. A careful providence shall stand And ever guard thy head, Shall on the labors of thy hand Its kindly blessings shed. [Thy wife shall be a fruitful vine; Thy […]...
20. To An Isle In The Water Shy one, shy one, Shy one of my heart, She moves in the firelight Pensively apart. She carries in the dishes, And lays them in a row. To an isle in the water With her would I go. With catries in the candles, And lights the curtained room, Shy in the doorway And shy in […]...
21. A Song Of Sixty-Five Brave Thackeray has trolled of days when he was twenty-one, And bounded up five flights of stairs, a gallant garreteer; And yet again in mellow vein when youth was gaily run, Has dipped his nose in Gascon wine, and told of Forty Year. But if I worthy were to sing a richer, rarer time, I’d […]...
22. ON HIMSELF A wearied pilgrim I have wander’d here, Twice five-and-twenty, bate me but one year; Long I have lasted in this world; ’tis true But yet those years that I have lived, but few. Who by his gray hairs doth his lustres tell, Lives not those years, but he that lives them well: One man has […]...
23. The Man to the Angel I HAVE wept a million tears: Pure and proud one, where are thine, What the gain though all thy years In unbroken beauty shine? All your beauty cannot win Truth we learn in pain and sighs: You can never enter in To the circle of the wise. They are but the slaves of light Who […]...
24. Self-Discipline WHEN the soul sought refuge in the place of rest, Overborne by strife and pain beyond control, From some secret hollow, whisper soft-confessed, Came the legend of the soul. Some bright one of old time laid his sceptre down So his heart might learn of sweet and bitter truth; Going forth bereft of beauty, throne, […]...
25. Mammy I often wonder how Life clicks because They don’t make women now Like Mammy was. When broods of two or three Content most men, How wonderful was she With children ten! Though sixty years have gone, As I look back, I see her rise at dawn, Our boots to black; Pull us from drowsy bed, […]...
26. Brave New World One spoke: “Come, let us gaily go With laughter, love and lust, Since in a century or so We’ll all be boneyard dust. When unborn shadows hold the screen, (Our betters, I’ll allow) ‘Twill be as if we’d never been, A hundred years from now. When we have played life’s lively game Right royally we’ll […]...
27. The Spirit of the Gay WITH the glamour of the Gay How you made our hearts to flame; Gave each life some airy aim: Ever round you seemed to play Sunlight from some inner day. Dazzling as with red and gold; Rich with beauty, love and youth- How were we to know the truth, That if all the tale were […]...
28. As Slow Our Ship As slow our ship her foamy track Against the wind was cleaving, Her trembling pennant still look’d back To that dear isle ’twas leaving. So loath we part from all we love, From all the links that bind us; So turn our hearts as on we rove, To those we’ve left behind us. When, round […]...
29. Maids In May Three maids there were in meadow bright, The eldest less then seven; Their eyes were dancing with delight, And innocent as Heaven. Wild flowers they wound with tender glee, Their cheeks with rapture rosy; All radiant they smiled at me, When I besought a posy. She gave me a columbine, And one a poppy brought […]...
30. Blizzard Snow falls: Years of anger following Hours that float idly down- The blizzard Drifts its weight Deeper and deeper for three days Or sixty years, eh? Then The sun! a clutter of Yellow and blue flakes- Hairy looking trees stand out In long alleys Over a wild solitude. The man turns and there- His solitary […]...
31. My Kingdom A little kingdom I possess Where thoughts and feelings dwell, And very hard I find the task Of governing it well; For passion tempts and troubles me, A wayward will misleads, And selfishness its shadow casts On all my words and deeds. How can I learn to rule myself, To be the child I should, […]...
32. The Blues What did I think, a storm clutching a clarinet And boarding a downtown bus, headed for lessons? I had pieces to learn by heart, but at twelve You think the heart and memory are different. “‘It’s a poor sort of memory that only works Backwards,’ the Queen remarked.” Alice in Wonderland. Although I knew the […]...
33. THE MAIDEN SPEAKS How grave thou loookest, loved one! wherefore so? Thy marble image seems a type of thee; Like it, no sign of life thou giv’st to me; Compared with thee, the stone appears to glow. Behind his shield in ambush lurks the foe, The friend’s brow all-unruffled we should see. I seek thee, but thou seek’st […]...
34. Psalm 144 part 3 v.12-15 L. M. Grace above riches; or, The happy nation. Happy the city where their sons, Like pillars round a palace set, And daughters, bright as polished stones, Give strength and beauty to the state. Happy the country where the sheep, Cattle, and corn, have large increase; Where men securely work or sleep, Nor sons […]...
35. Henry Mary and I were twenty-two When we were wed; A well-matched pair, right smart to view The town’s folk said. For twenty years I have been true To nuptial bed. But oh alas! The march of time, Life’s wear and tear! Now I am in my lusty prime With pep to spare, While she looks […]...
36. Daisies It is possible, I suppose that sometime We will learn everything There is to learn: what the world is, for example, And what it means. I think this as I am crossing From one field to another, in summer, and the Mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either Knows enough already or knows enough […]...
37. Holy Sonnet XIV: Batter My Heart, Three-Personed God Batter my heart, three-personed God; for you As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurped town, to another due, Labor to admit you, but O, to no end; Reason, […]...
38. My young son asks me My young son asks me: Must I learn mathematics? What is the use, I feel like saying. That two pieces Of bread are more than one’s about all you’ll end up with. My young son asks me: Must I learn French? What is the use, I feel like saying. This State’s collapsing. And if you […]...
39. Ulysses It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an aged wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink Life to the lees: all times I […]...
40. To Dan STEP me now a bridal measure, Work give way to love and leisure, Hearts be free and hearts be gay Doctor Dan doth wed to-day. Diagnosis, cease your squalling Check that scalpel’s senseless bawling, Put that ugly knife away Doctor Dan doth wed to-day. ‘Tis no time for things unsightly, Life’s the day and life […]...