The World State Oh, how I love Humanity, With love so pure and pringlish, And how I hate the horrid French, Who never will be English! The International Idea, The largest and the clearest, Is welding all the nations now, Except the one that’s nearest. This compromise has long been known, This scheme of partial […]
The Logical Vegetarian “Why shouldn’t I have a purely vegetarian drink? Why shouldn’t I take vegetables in their highest form, so to speak? The modest vegetarians ought to stick to wine or beer, plain vegetable drinks, instead of filling their goblets with the blood of bulls and elephants, as all conventional meat-eaters do, I suppose”–Dalroy. […]
Ecclesiastes There is one sin: to call a green leaf gray, Whereat the sun in heaven shuddereth. There is one blasphemy: for death to pray, For God alone knoweth the praise of death. There is one creed: ’’neath no world-terror’s wing Apples forget to grow on apple-trees. There is one thing is needful everything The […]
The Skeleton Chattering finch and water-fly Are not merrier than I; Here among the flowers I lie Laughing everlastingly. No; I may not tell the best; Surely, friends, I might have guessed Death was but the good King’s jest, It was hid so carefully. G.K. Chesterton
Confessional Now that I kneel at the throne, O Queen, Pity and pardon me. Much have I striven to sing the same, Brother of beast and tree; Yet when the stars catch me alone Never a linnet sings- And the blood of a man is a bitter voice And cries for foolish things. Not for […]
The Ballad of God-Makers A bird flew out at the break of day From the nest where it had curled, And ere the eve the bird had set Fear on the kings of the world. The first tree it lit upon Was green with leaves unshed; The second tree it lit upon Was red with […]
Wine and Water Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale, He ate his egg with a ladle in a egg-cup big as a pail, And the soup he took was Elephant Soup and fish he took was Whale, But they all were small to the cellar he took when […]
The Convert After one moment when I bowed my head And the whole world turned over and came upright, And I came out where the old road shone white, I walked the ways and heard what all men said, Forests of tongues, like autumn leaves unshed, Being not unlovable but strange and light; Old riddles […]
A Child of the Snows There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim, And never before or again, When the nights are strong with a darkness long, And the dark is alive with rain. Never we know but in sleet and in snow, The place where the great fires are, That the midst […]
On the Disastrous Spread of Aestheticism in all Classes Impetuously I sprang from bed, Long before lunch was up, That I might drain the dizzy dew From the day’s first golden cup. In swift devouring ecstasy Each toil in turn was done; I had done lying on the lawn Three minutes after one. For me, […]
The Aristocrat The Devil is a gentleman, and asks you down to stay At his little place at What’sitsname (it isn’t far away). They say the sport is splendid; there is always something new, And fairy scenes, and fearful feats that none but he can do; He can shoot the feathered cherubs if they fly […]
The Donkey When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, […]
