The Penguin Book of American Verse

by Geoffrey Moore

  And he unrolled his feathers

  And rowed him softer home –

  Than Oars divide the Ocean,

  Too silver for a seam –

  Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon

  Leap, plashless as they swim.

  341 ‘After great pain, a formal feeling comes’

  After great pain, a formal feeling conies –

  The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs –

  The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,

  And Yesterday, or Centuries before?

  The Feet, mechanical, go round –

  Of Ground, or Air, or Ought –

  A Wooden way

  Regardless grown,

  A Quartz contentment, like a stone –

  This is the Hour of Lead –

  Remembered, if outlived,

  As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –

  First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

  401 ‘What Soft – Cherubic Creatures’

  What Soft – Cherubic Creatures –

  These Gentlewomen are –

  One would as soon assault a Plush –

  Or violate a Star –

  Such Dimity Convictions

  A Horror so refined

  Of freckled Human Nature –

  Of Deity – ashamed –

  It’s such a common – Glory –

  A Fisherman’s – Degree –

  Redemption – Brittle Lady –

  Be so – ashamed of Thee –

  449 ‘I died for Beauty – but was scarce’

  I died for Beauty – but was scarce

  Adjusted in the Tomb

  When One who died for Truth, was lain

  In an adjoining Room –

  He questioned softly ‘Why I failed’?

  ‘For Beauty’, I replied –

  ‘And I – for Truth – Themself are One –

  We Bretheren, are’. He said –

  And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night –

  We talked between the Rooms –

  Until the Moss had reached out lips –

  And covered up – our names –

  465 ‘I heard a Fly buzz – when I died’

  I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –

  The Stillness in the Room

  Was like the Stillness in the Air –

  Between the Heaves of Storm –

  The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –

  And Breaths were gathering firm

  For that last Onset – when the King

  Be witnessed – in the Room –

  I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away

  What portion of me be

  Assignable – and then it was

  There interposed a Fly –

  With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –

  Between the light – and me –

  And then the Windows failed – and then

  I could not see to see –

  510 ‘It was not Death, for I stood up’

  It was not Death, for I stood up,

  And all the Dead, lie down –

  It was not Night, for all the Bells

  Put out their Tongues, for Noon.

  It was not Frost, for on my Flesh

  I felt Siroccos – crawl –

  Nor Fire – for just my Marble feet

  Could keep a Chancel, cool –

  And yet, it tasted, like them all,

  The Figures I have seen

  Set orderly, for Burial,

  Reminded me, of mine –

  As if my life were shaven,

  And fitted to a frame,

  And could not breathe without a key,

  And ’twas like Midnight, some –

  When everything that ticked – has stopped –

  And Space stares all around –

  Or Grisly frosts – first Autumn morns,

  Repeal the Beating Ground –

  But, most, like Chaos – Stopless – cool –

  Without a Chance, or Spar –

  Or even a Report of Land –

  To justify – Despair.

  547 ‘I’ve seen a Dying Eye’

  I’ve seen a Dying Eye

  Run round and round a Room –

  In search of Something – as it seemed –

  Then Cloudier become –

  And then – obscure with Fog –

  And then – be soldered down

  Without disclosing what it be

  ’Twere blessed to have seen –

  585 ‘I like to see it lap the Miles’

  I like to see it lap the Miles –

  And lick the Valleys up –

  And stop to feed itself at Tanks –

  And then – prodigious step

  Around a Pile of Mountains –

  And supercilious peel

  In Shanties – by the sides of Roads –

  And then a Quarry pare

  To fit its Ribs –

  And crawl between

  Complaining all the while

  In horrid – hooting stanza –

  Then chase itself down Hill –

  And neigh like Boanerges –

  Then – punctual as a Star

  Stop – docile and omnipotent

  At its own stable door –

  640 ‘I cannot live with You’

  I cannot live with You –

  It would be Life –

  And Life is over there –

  Behind the Shelf

  The Sexton keeps the Key to –

  Putting up

  Our Life – His Porcelain –

  Like a Cup –

  Discarded of the Housewife –

  Quaint – or Broke –

  A newer Sevres pleases –

  Old Ones crack –

  I could not die – with You –

  For One must wait

  To shut the Other’s Gaze down –

  You – could not –

  And I – Could I stand by

  And see You – freeze –

  Without my Right of Frost –

  Death’s privilege?

  Nor could I rise – with You –

  Because Your Face

  Would put out Jesus’ –

  That New Grace

  Glow plain – and foreign

  On my homesick Eye –

  Except that You than He

  Shone closer by –

  They’d judge Us – How –

  For You – served Heaven – You know,

  Or sought to –

  I could not –

  Because You saturated Sight –

  And I had no more Eyes

  For sordid excellence

  As Paradise

  And were You lost, I would be –

  Though My Name

  Rang loudest

  On the Heavenly fame –

  And were You – saved –

  And I – condemned to be

  Where You were not –

  That self – were Hell to Me –

  So We must meet apart –

  You there – I – here –

  With just the Door ajar

  That Oceans are – and Prayer –

  And that White Sustenance –

  Despair –

  712 ‘Because I could not stop for Death’

  Because I could not stop for Death –

  He kindly stopped for me –

  The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

  And Immortality.

  We slowly drove – He knew no haste

  And I had put away

  My labor and my leisure too,

  For His Civility –

  We passed the School, where Children strove

  At Recess – in the Ring –

  We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain –

  We passed the Setting Sun –

  Or rather – He passed Us –

  The Dews drew quivering and chill –

  For onl
y Gossamer, my Gown –

  My Tippet – only Tulle –

  We paused before a House that seemed

  A Swelling of the Ground –

  The Roof was scarcely visible –

  The Cornice – in the Ground –

  Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet

  Feels shorter than the Day

  I first surmised the Horses’ Heads

  Were toward Eternity –

  829 ‘Ample make this Bed’

  Ample make this Bed –

  Make this Bed with Awe –

  In it wait till Judgment break

  Excellent and Fair.

  Be its Mattress straight –

  Be its Pillow round –

  Let no Sunrise’ yellow noise

  Interrupt this Ground –

  986 ‘A narrow Fellow in the Grass’

  A narrow Fellow in the Grass

  Occasionally rides –

  You may have met Him – did you not

  His notice sudden is –

  The Grass divides as with a Comb –

  A spotted shaft is seen –

  And then it closes at your feet

  And opens further on –

  He likes a Boggy Acre

  A Floor too cool for Corn –

  Yet when a Boy, and Barefoot-

  I more than once at Noon

  Have passed, I thought, a Whip lash

  Unbraiding in the Sun

  When stooping to secure it

  It wrinkled, and was gone –

  Several of Nature’s People

  I know, and they know me –

  I feel for them a transport

  Of cordiality –

  But never met this Fellow

  Attended, or alone

  Without a tighter breathing

  And Zero at the Bone –

  1624 ‘Apparently with no surprise’

  Apparently with no surprise

  To any happy Flower

  The Frost beheads it at its play –

  In accidental power –

  The blonde Assassin passes on –

  The Sun proceeds unmoved

  To measure off another Day

  For an Approving God.

  1732 ‘My life closed twice before its close’

  My life closed twice before its close –

  It yet remains to see

  If Immortality unveil

  A third event to me

  So huge, so hopeless to conceive

  As these that twice befell.

  Parting is all we know of heaven,

  And all we need of hell.

  George A. Strong 1832–1912

  From The Song of Milkanwatha

  ‘WHEN HE KILLED THE MUDJOKIVIS’

  When he killed the Mudjokivis,

  Of the skin he made him mittens,

  Made them with the fur side inside,

  Made them with the skin side outside,

  He, to get the warm side inside

  Put the inside skin side outside;

  He, to get the cold side outside,

  Put the warm side fur side inside.

  That’s why he put fur side inside,

  Why he put the skin side outside,

  Why he turned them inside outside.

  Francis Bret Harte 1836–1902

  Plain Language from Truthful James

  TABLE MOUNTAIN, 1870

  Which I wish to remark,

  And my language is plain,

  That for ways that are dark

  And for tricks that are vain,

  The heathen Chinee is peculiar,

  Which the same I would rise to explain.

  Ah Sin was his name;

  And I shall not deny,

  In regard to the same,

  What that name might imply;

  But his smile it was pensive and childlike,

  As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.

  It was August the third,

  And quite soft was the skies:

  Which it might be inferred

  That Ah Sin was likewise;

  Yet he played it that day upon William

  And me in a way I despise.

  Which we had a small game,

  And Ah Sin took a hand:

  It was Euchre. The same

  He did not understand;

  But he smiled as he sat by the table,

  With the smile that was childlike and bland.

  Yet the cards they were stocked

  In a way that I grieve,

  And my feelings were shocked

  At the state of Nye’s sleeve,

  Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,

  And the same with intent to deceive.

  But the hands that were played

  By that heathen Chinee,

  And the points that he made,

  Were quite frightful to see, –

  Till at last he put down a right bower,

  Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.

  Then I looked up at Nye,

  And he gazed upon me;

  And he rose with a sigh,

  And said, ‘Can this be?

  We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,’ –

  And he went for that heathen Chinee.

  In the scene that ensued

  I did not take a hand,

  But the floor it was strewed

  Like the leaves on the strand

  With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,

  In the game ‘he did not understand.’

  In his sleeves, which were long,

  He had twenty-four packs, –

  Which was coming it strong,

  Yet I state but the facts;

  And we found on his nails, which were taper,

  What is frequent in tapers, – that’s wax.

  Which is why I remark,

  And my language is plain,

  That for ways that are dark

  And for tricks that are vain,

  The heathen Chinee is peculiar, –

  Which the same I am free to maintain.

  Anonymous

  The Old Chisholm Trail

  Come along, boys, and listen to my tale,

  I’ll tell you of my troubles on the old Chisholm Trail.

  (Refrain)

  Coma ti yi youpy, youpy yea, youpy yea,

  Coma ti yi youpy, youpy yea.

  I started up the trail October twenty-third,

  I started up the trail with the 2-U herd.

  Oh, a ten-dollar hoss and a forty-dollar saddle,

  And I’m goin’ to punchin’ Texas cattle.

  I woke up one morning on the old Chisholm Trail,

  Rope in my hand and a cow by the tail.

  I’m up in the mornin’ afore daylight

  And afore I sleep the moon shines bright.

  Old Ben Bolt was a blamed good boss,

  But he’d go to see the girls on a sore-backed hoss.

  Old Ben Bolt was a fine old man

  And you’d know there was whiskey wherever he’d land.

  It’s cloudy in the West, a-looking like rain,

  And my damned old slicker’s in the wagon again.

  Crippled my hoss, I don’t know how,

  Ropin’ at the horns of a 2-U cow.

  We hit Caldwell and we hit her on the fly,

  We bedded down the cattle on the hill close by.

  No chaps, no slicker, and it’s pouring down rain,

  And I swear by god, I’ll never night-herd again.

  Feet in the stirrups and seat in the saddle,

  I hung and rattled with them long-horn cattle.

  Last night I was on guard and the leader broke the ranks,

  I hit my horse down the shoulders, and I spurred him in the flanks.

  The wind commenced to blow, and the rain began to fall,

  Hit looked, by grab, like we was goin’ to lose ’em all.

  Foot in the stirrup and hand on the horn,

  Best damned
cowboy ever was born.

  We rounded ’em up and put ’em on the cars,

  And that was the last of the old Two Bars.

  Oh it’s bacon and beans most every day, –

  I’d as soon be a-eatin’ prairie hay.

  I’m on my best horse and I’m goin’ at a run,

  I’m the quickest shootin’ cowboy that ever pulled a gun.

  I went to the wagon to get my roll,

  To come back to Texas, dad-burn my soul.

  I went to the boss to draw my roll,

  He had it figgered out I was nine dollars in the hole.

  With my knees in the saddle and my scat in the sky,

  I’ll quit punching cows in the sweet by and by.

  Coma ti yi youpy, youpy yea, youpy yea,

  Coma ti yi youpy, youpy yea.

  John Henry

  John Henry was a li’l baby, uh-huh,

  He sat on his daddy’s knee;

  Said: ‘De Big Bend Tunnel on de C. & O. road

  Gonna cause de death of me,

  Lawd, Lawd, gonna cause de death of me.’

  Cap’n says to John Henry,

  ‘Gonna bring me a steam drill ’round,

  Gonna take dat steam drill out on dejob,

  Gonna whop dat steel on down,

  Lawd, Lawd, gonna whop dat steel on down.’

  John Henry to!’ his cap’n

  Dat a man wuz a natural man,

  An’ befo’ he’d let dat steam drill run him down,

  He’d fall dead wid a hammer in his han’,

  He’d fall dead wid a hammer in his han’.

  John Henry sez to his cap’n:

  ‘Send me a twelve-poun’ hammer aroun’,

  A twelve-poun’ hammer wid a fo’-foot handle,

  An’ I beat yo’ steam drill down,

  An’ I beat yo’ steam drill down.’

  John Henry started on de right han’,

  De steam drill started on de lef’ –

  ‘Before I’d let dis steam drill beat me down,

  I’d hammer my fool self to death,

  Lawd, Lawd, I’d hammer my fool self to death.’

  Sun shine hot an’ burnin’,

  Wer’n’t no breeze a-tall,

  Sweat ran down like water down a hill,

  Dat day John Henry let his hammer fall,

  Lawd, Lawd, dat day John Henry let his hammer fall.

  White man tol’ John Henry:

  ‘Nigger, damn yo’ soul,

  You might beat dis steam an’ drill of mine,

  When de rocks in dis mountain turn to gol’,