Poets From The United States

"I have tried very hard to find meaning in what I do, but I have found instead a vast and limitless nothingness. I tried to embrace the nothingness, but it slipped through my grasp, and now there is nothing where the nothingness was. This may sound meaningful, but it isn't."

"What is fame? Fame is but a slow decay— Even this shall pass away."

"Pain is hard to bear," he cried, "But with patience, day by day, Even this shall pass away."

"So, lest I be inclined To render ill for ill,— Henceforth in me instil, O God, a sweet good-will To all mankind."

""What is wealth?" the king would say, "Even this shall pass away"."

"Pleasure comes, but not to stay; Even this shall pass away."

"Sweet ladies, long may ye bloom, and toughly I hope ye may thole, But was she not lucky? In flowers and lace and mourning, In love and great honour we bade God rest her soul After six little spaces of chill, and six of burning."

"Two evils, monstrous either one apart, Possessed me, and were long and loath at going: A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart, And in the wood the furious winter blowing."

"I won a noble fame; But with a sudden frown, The people snatched my crown, And, in the mire, trod down My lofty name."

"Here lies a lady of beauty and high degree. Of chills and fever she died, of fever and chills, The delight of her husband, her aunts, an infant of three, And of medicos marveling sweetly on her ills."

"But I account it worth All pangs of fair hopes crost— All loves and honors lost,— To gain the heavens, at cost Of losing earth."

"Twirling your blue skirts crossing the sward Under the towers of your seminary Go listen to your teachers, old and contrary Without believing a word. Tie the white filets then about your hair And think no more of what will come to pass Than bluebirds that go flying in the air Or chattering on the grass. Practice your beauty, blue girls, ere it fail, And I with my loud lips will publish Beauty that all our powers cannot establish It is so frail. For I could tell you a story which is true; I know a lady with a terrible tongue, Blear eyes fallen from blue, All her perfections tarnished — Yet it is not long Since she was lovelier than any of you."

"And weeping fast as she had breath Janet implored us, "Wake her from her sleep!" And would not be instructed in how deep Was the forgetful kingdom of death."

"God have mercy on the sinner Who must write with no dinner, No gravy and no grub, No pewter and no pub, No belly and no bowels, Only consonants and vowels."

"And a wandering beauty is a blade out of its scabbard. You know how dangerous, gentlemen of threescore? May you know it yet ten more."

"I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle — And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, And not a single regret."

"The earth keeps some vibration going There in your heart, and that is you. And if the people find you can fiddle, Why, fiddle you must, for all your life."

"Blind as I was, I tried to get out As the carriage fell in the ditch, And was caught in the wheels and killed."

"Go by reverently, and read with sober care How a great people, riding with defiant shouts The centaur of Revolution, Spurred and whipped to frenzy, Shook with terror, seeing the mist of the sea Over the precipice they were nearing, And fell from his back in precipitate awe To celebrate the Feast of the Supreme Being."

"And when you are poor and have to carry The Christian creed and wife and children All on your back, it is too much! That's why I made the Elixir of Youth, Which landed me in the jail at Peoria Branded a swindler and a crook By the upright Federal Judge!"

"In my Spanish cloak, And old slouch hat, And overshoes of felt, And Tyke, my faithful dog, And my knotted hickory cane, I slipped about with a bull's-eye lantern From door to door on the square"

"You may think, passer-by, that Fate Is a pit-fall outside of yourself, Around which you may walk by the use of foresight And wisdom."

"When Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology came out in Italian, suddenly there was widespread interest in North American writing."

"In time you shall see Fate approach you In the shape of your own image in the mirror; Or you shall sit alone by your own hearth, And suddenly the chair by you shall hold a guest, And you shall know that guest, And read the authentic message of his eyes."

"Man's books are but man's alphabet, Beyond and on his lessons lie — The lessons of the violet, The large gold letters of the sky; The love of beauty, blossomed soil, The large content, the tranquil toil:The toil that nature ever taught, The patient toil, the constant stir, The toil of seas where shores are wrought, The toil of Christ, the carpenter; The toil of God incessantly By palm-set land or frozen sea."

"Behold this sea, that sapphire sky! Where nature does so much for man, Shall man not set his standard high, And hold some higher, holier plan? Some loftier plan than ever planned By outworn book of outworn land?Where God has done so much for man, Shall man for God do aught at all? The soul that feeds on books alone — I count that soul exceeding small That lives alone by book and creed,— A soul that has not learned to read."

"Almost his first words were, "Well, let us go and talk with the poets!" In vain I assured this untamed poet that the "Bards of San Francisco Bay," whom he had so naively saluted, had taken the vows of neither brotherhood nor sisterhood; that they feasted at no common board; flocked not; discoursed with no beaded rills; neither did their skilled hands sweep any strings whatever, and he must, therefore, listen in vain for the seraphic song."

"O, the sea of lights for streaming When the thousand flags are furled— When the gleaming bay lies dreaming As it duplicates the world!You will come my dearest, truest! Come my sovereign queen often; My blue skies will then be bluest; My white rose be whitest then:Then the song! Ah, then the sabre Flashing up the walls of night! Hate of wrong and love of neighbor Rhymes of battle for the Right!"

"We plant this stone as some small seed Is sown at springtime, warm with earth; We sow this seed as some good deed Is sown, to grow until its worth Shall grow, through rugged steeps of time, To touch the God-built stars sublime."

"Man's books are but a climbing stair, Lain step by step, like stairs of stone; The stairway here, the temple there — Man's lampad honor, and his trust, The God who called him from the dust."

"A thousand miles of mighty wood Where thunder-storms stride fire-shod; A thousand flowers every rod, A stately tree on every rood; Ten thousand leaves on every tree, And each a miracle to me; And yet there be men who question God!"

"The mountains from that fearful first Named day were God's own house. Behold, 'Twas here dread Sinai's thunders burst And showed His face. 'Twas here of old His prophets dwelt. Lo, it was here The Christ did come when death drew near."

"These stony altars they have hurled Oppression back, have kept the boon Of liberty. Behold, how free The mountains stand, and eternally."

"Where storm-born shadows hide and hunt I knew thee, in thy glorious youth, And loved thy vast face, white as truth; I stood where thunderbolts were wont To smite thy Titan-fashioned front, And heard dark mountains rock and roll; I saw the lightning's gleaming rod Reach forth and write on heaven's scroll The awful autograph of God!"

"This creature comes from out the dim Far centuries, beyond the rim Of time's remotest reach or stir."

"I dared not dream she loved me. Nay, Her love was proud; and pride is loth To look with favor, own it fond Of one the world loves not to-day … No matter if she loved or no, God knows I loved enough for both, And knew her as you shall not know Till you have known sweet death, and you Have cross'd the dark; gone over to The great majority beyond."

"For the Right, through thickest night, Till the man-brute Wrong be driven From high places; till the Right Shall lift like some grand beacon light. For the Right! Love, Right and duty; Lift the world up, though you fall Heaped with dead before the wall; God can find a soul of beauty Where it falls, as gems of worth Are found by miners dark in earth."

"Lo! all things moving must go by. The sea lies dead. Behold, this land Sits desolate in dust beside His snow-white, seamless shroud of sand; The very clouds have wept and died, And only God is in the sky."

"The sunlight of a sunlit land, A land of fruit, of flowers, and A land of love and calm delight; A land where night is not like night, And noon is but a name for rest, And love for love is reckoned best. Where conversations of the eyes Are all enough; where beauty thrills The heart like hues of harvest-home; Where rage lies down, where passion dies, Where peace hath her abiding place. . . ."

"A face that lifted up; sweet face That was so like a life begun, That rose for me a rising sun Above the bended seven hills Of dead and risen old new Rome.Not that I deem'd she loved me. Nay, I dared not even dream of that. I only say I knew her; say She ever sat before me, sat All still and voiceless as love is, And ever look'd so fair, divine, Her hush'd, vehement soul fill'd mine, And overflowed with Runic bliss, And made itself a part of this."

"These be but men. We may forget The wild sea-king, the tawny brave, The frowning wold, the woody shore, The tall-built, sunburnt men of Mars. . .But what and who was she, the fair? The fairest face that ever yet Look'd in a wave as in a glass; That look'd as look the still, far stars, So woman-like, into the wave To contemplate their beauty there, Yet look as looking anywhere?"

"I only saw her as she pass'd — A great, sad beauty, in whose eyes Lay all the loves of Paradise. . . . You shall not know her — she who sat Unconscious in my heart all time I dream'd and wove this wayward rhyme, And loved and did not blush thereat."

"O you had loved her sitting there, Half hidden in her loosen'd hair: Why, you had loved her for her eyes, Their large and melancholy look Of tenderness, and well mistook Their love for light of Paradise."

"Her mouth Was roses gather'd from the south, The warm south side of Paradise, And breathed upon and handed down, By angels on a stair of stars."

"He seem'd as lithe and free and tall And restless as the boughs that stir Perpetual topt poplar trees. And one, that one, had eyes to teach The art of love, and tongue to preach Life's hard and sober homilies; And yet his eager hands, his speech, All spoke the bold adventurer; While zoned about the belt of each There swung a girt of steel, till all Did seem a walking arsenal."

"Come listen, O Love, to the voice of the dove, Come, hearken and hear him say, THERE ARE MANY TO-MORROWS, MY LOVE, MY LOVE, — THERE IS ONLY ONE TO-DAY."

"Is it worthwhile that we jostle a brother, Bearing his load on the rough road of life? Is it worthwhile that we jeer at each other, In blackness of heart — that we war to the knife? God pity us all in our pitiful strife."

"In men whom men condemn as ill I find so much of goodness still. In men whom men pronounce divine I find so much of sin and blot I hesitate to draw a line Between the two, where God has not."

"He rode as rides the hurricane; He seem'd to swallow up the plain; He rode as never man did ride, He rode, for ghosts rode at his side, And on his right a grizzled grim — No, no, this tale is not of him."

"Each gives to each, and like the star Gets back its gift in tenfold pay.To get and give and give amain The rivers run and oceans roll. O generous and high-born rain When reigning as a splendid whole! That man who lives for self alone Lives for the meanest mortal known."