The Mysterious Cat
A chant for a children’s pantomime dance, suggested by a picture painted by George Mather Richards. I saw a proud, mysterious cat, I saw a proud, mysterious cat Too proud to catch a mouse
The Flower of Mending
(To Eudora, after I had had certain dire adventures.) When Dragon-fly would fix his wings, When Snail would patch his house, When moths have marred the overcoat Of tender Mister Mouse, The pretty creatures
The Scissors-Grinder
The old man had his box and wheel For grinding knives and shears. No doubt his bell in village streets Was joy to children’s ears. And I bethought me of my youth When such
Above the Battle's Front
St. Francis, Buddha, Tolstoi, and St. John – Friends, if you four, as pilgrims, hand in hand, Returned, the hate of earth once more to dare, And walked upon the water and the land,
Darling Daughter of Babylon
Too soon you wearied of our tears. And then you danced with spangled feet, Leading Belshazzar’s chattering court A-tinkling through the shadowy street. With mead they came, with chants of shame. DESIRE’S red flag
On The Garden Wall
Oh, once I walked a garden In dreams. ‘Twas yellow grass. And many orange-trees grew there In sand as white as glass. The curving, wide wall-border Was marble, like the snow. I walked that
The Bankrupt Peace-Maker
I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room. The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom. His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor. He had hammer and nails that
Euclid
OLD Euclid drew a circle On a sand-beach long ago. He bounded and enclosed it With angles thus and so. His set of solemn greybeards Nodded and argued much Of arc and circumference, Diameter
On Reading Omar Khayyam
[During an anti-saloon campaign, in central Illinois.] In the midst of the battle I turned, (For the thunders could flourish without me) And hid by a rose-hung wall, Forgetting the murder about me; And
The Congo: A Study of the Negro Race
I. THEIR BASIC SAVAGERY Fat black bucks in a wine-barrel room, Barrel-house kings, with feet unstable, Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table, A deep rolling bass. Pounded on the table, Beat an
The Spider and the Ghost of the Fly
Once I loved a spider When I was born a fly, A velvet-footed spider With a gown of rainbow-dye. She ate my wings and gloated. She bound me with a hair. She drove me
Honor Among Scamps
We are the smirched. Queen Honor is the spotless. We slept thro’ wars where Honor could not sleep. We were faint-hearted. Honor was full-valiant. We kept a silence Honor could not keep. Yet this
What the Moon Saw
Two statesmen met by moonlight. Their ease was partly feigned. They glanced about the prairie. Their faces were constrained. In various ways aforetime They had misled the state, Yet did it so politely Their
The Eagle That is Forgotten
Sleep softly… eagle forgotten… under the stone. Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own. “We have buried him now,” thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced. They made
The Lion
The Lion is a kingly beast. He likes a Hindu for a feast. And if no Hindu he can get, The lion-family is upset. He cuffs his wife and bites her ears Till she