The Spell of the Yukon
by Robert Service (1874-1958)

I wanted the gold, and I sought it;
         I scrabbled and mucked like a slave.
Was it famine or scurvy—I fought it;
         I hurled my youth into a grave.
I wanted the gold, and I got it—
         Came out with a fortune last fall,—
Yet somehow life’s not what I thought it,
         And somehow the gold isn’t all.

No! There’s the land. (Have you seen it?)
         It’s the cussedest land that I know,
From the big, dizzy mountains that screen it
         To the deep, deathlike valleys below.
Some say God was tired when He made it;
         Some say it’s a fine land to shun;
Maybe; but there’s some as would trade it
         For no land on earth—and I’m one.

You come to get rich (damned good reason);
         You feel like an exile at first;
You hate it like hell for a season,
         And then you are worse than the worst.
It grips you like some kinds of sinning;
         It twists you from foe to a friend;
It seems it’s been since the beginning;
         It seems it will be to the end.

I’ve stood in some mighty-mouthed hollow
         That’s plumb-full of hush to the brim;
I’ve watched the big, husky sun wallow
         In crimson and gold, and grow dim,
Till the moon set the pearly peaks gleaming,
         And the stars tumbled out, neck and crop;
And I’ve thought that I surely was dreaming,
         With the peace o’ the world piled on top.

The summer—no sweeter was ever;
         The sunshiny woods all athrill;
The grayling aleap in the river,
         The bighorn asleep on the hill.
The strong life that never knows harness;
         The wilds where the caribou call;
The freshness, the freedom, the farness—
         O God! how I’m stuck on it all.

The winter! the brightness that blinds you,
         The white land locked tight as a drum,
The cold fear that follows and finds you,
         The silence that bludgeons you dumb.
The snows that are older than history,
         The woods where the weird shadows slant;
The stillness, the moonlight, the mystery,
         I’ve bade ’em good-by—but I can’t.

There’s a land where the mountains are nameless,
         And the rivers all run God knows where;
There are lives that are erring and aimless,
         And deaths that just hang by a hair;
There are hardships that nobody reckons;
         There are valleys unpeopled and still;
There’s a land—oh, it beckons and beckons,
         And I want to go back—and I will.

They’re making my money diminish;
         I’m sick of the taste of champagne.
Thank God! when I’m skinned to a finish
         I’ll pike to the Yukon again.
I’ll fight—and you bet it’s no sham-fight;
         It’s hell!—but I’ve been there before;
And it’s better than this by a damsite—
         So me for the Yukon once more.

There’s gold, and it’s haunting and haunting;
         It’s luring me on as of old;
Yet it isn’t the gold that I’m wanting
         So much as just finding the gold.
It’s the great, big, broad land ’way up yonder,
         It’s the forests where silence has lease;
It’s the beauty that thrills me with wonder,
         It’s the stillness that fills me with peace.

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Lemon Pie
by Edgar Guest (1881-1959)

The world is full of gladness,
      There are joys of many kinds,
There’s a cure for every sadness,
      That each troubled mortal finds.
And my little cares grow lighter
      And I cease to fret and sigh,
And my eyes with joy grow brighter
      When she makes a lemon pie.

When the bronze is on the filling
      That’s one mass of shining gold,
And its molten joy is spilling
      On the plate, my heart grows bold
And the kids and I in chorus
      Raise one glad exultant cry
And we cheer the treat before us —
      Which is mother’s lemon pie.

Then the little troubles vanish,
      And the sorrows disappear,
Then we find the grit to banish
      All the cares that hovered near,
And we smack our lips in pleasure
      O’er a joy no coin can buy,
And we down the golden treasure
      Which is known as lemon pie.

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The Cataract of Lodore
by Robert Southey (1774-1843)

“How does the water
Come down at Lodore?”
My little boy asked me
Thus, once on a time;
And moreover he tasked me
To tell him in rhyme.
Anon, at the word,
There first came one daughter,
And then came another,
To second and third
The request of their brother,
And to hear how the water
Comes down at Lodore,
With its rush and its roar,
As many a time
They had seen it before.
So I told them in rhyme,
For of rhymes I had store;
And ’twas in my vocation
For their recreation
That so I should sing;
Because I was Laureate
To them and the King.
From its sources which well
In the tarn on the fell;
From its fountains
In the mountains,
Its rills and its gills;
Through moss and through brake,
It runs and it creeps
For a while, till it sleeps
In its own little lake.
And thence at departing,
Awakening and starting,
It runs through the reeds,
And away it proceeds,
Through meadow and glade,
In sun and in shade,
And through the wood-shelter,
Among crags in its flurry,
Helter-skelter,
Hurry-skurry.
Here it comes sparkling,
And there it lies darkling;
Now smoking and frothing
Its tumult and wrath in,
Till, in this rapid race
On which it is bent,
It reaches the place
Of its steep descent.
The cataract strong
Then plunges along,
Striking and raging
As if a war waging
Its caverns and rocks among;
Rising and leaping,
Sinking and creeping,
Swelling and sweeping,
Showering and springing,
Flying and flinging,
Writhing and ringing,
Eddying and whisking,
Spouting and frisking,
Turning and twisting,
Around and around
With endless rebound:
Smiting and fighting,
A sight to delight in;
Confounding, astounding,
Dizzying and deafening the ear with its sound.

Collecting, projecting,
Receding and speeding,
And shocking and rocking,
And darting and parting,
And threading and spreading,
And whizzing and hissing,
And dripping and skipping,
And hitting and splitting,
And shining and twining,
And rattling and battling,
And shaking and quaking,
And pouring and roaring,
And waving and raving,
And tossing and crossing,
And flowing and going,
And running and stunning,
And foaming and roaming,
And dinning and spinning,
And dropping and hopping,
And working and jerking,
And guggling and struggling,
And heaving and cleaving,
And moaning and groaning;

,p>And glittering and frittering,
And gathering and feathering,
And whitening and brightening,
And quivering and shivering,
And hurrying and skurrying,
And thundering and floundering;

Dividing and gliding and sliding,
And falling and brawling and sprawling,
And driving and riving and striving,
And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling,
And sounding and bounding and rounding,
And bubbling and troubling and doubling,
And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling,
And clattering and battering and shattering;

Retreating and beating and meeting and sheeting,
Delaying and straying and playing and spraying,
Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,
Recoiling, turmoiling and toiling and boiling,
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
And rushing and flushing and brushing and gushing,
And flapping and rapping and clapping and slapping,
And curling and whirling and purling and twirling,
And thumping and plumping and bumping and jumping,
And dashing and flashing and splashing and clashing;
And so never ending, but always descending,
Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending
All at once and all o’er, with a mighty uproar, —
And this way the water comes down at Lodore.

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Chanson un peu naïve
by Louise Bogan (1967-1970)

What body can be ploughed,
Sown, and broken yearly?
She would not die, she vowed,
But she has, nearly.
         Sing, heart sing;
         Call and carol clearly.

And, since she could not die,
Care would be a feather,
A film over the eye
Of two that lie together.
         Fly, song, fly,
         Break your little tether.

So from strength concealed
She makes her pretty boast:
Plain is a furrow healed
And she may love you most.
         Cry, song, cry,
         And hear your crying lost.

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Soup
by Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

I saw a famous man eating soup.
I say he was lifting a fat broth
Into his mouth with a spoon.
His name was in the newspapers that day
Spelled out in tall black headlines
And thousands of people were talking about him.

            When I saw him,
He sat bending his head over a plate
Putting soup in his mouth with a spoon.

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Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal
by Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

    Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
    Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:
The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

    Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,
And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.
    Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,
And all thy heart lies open unto me.
    Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves
A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

    Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,
And slips into the bosom of the lake:
So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip
Into my bosom and be lost in me.

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Music I Heard
by Conrad Aiken (1889-1973)

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.
Now that I am without you, all is desolate,
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

Your hands once touched this table and this silver,
And I have seen your fingers hold this glass.
These things do not remember you, beloved:
And yet your touch upon them will not pass.

For it was in my heart you moved among them,
And blessed them with your hands and with your eyes.
And in my heart they will remember always:
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise!

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To – –
by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

                              I
One word is too often profaned
      For me to profane it,
One feeling too falsely disdained
      For thee to disdain it;
One hope is too like despair
      For prudence to smother,
And pity from thee more dear
      Than that from another.

                              II
I can give not what men call love,
      But wilt thou accept not
The worship the heart lifts above
      And the Heavens reject not,—
The desire of the moth for the star,
      Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
      From the sphere of our sorrow?

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The Fish
by Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)

In a cool curving world he lies
And ripples with dark ecstasies.
The kind luxurious lapse and steal
Shapes all his universe to feel
And know and be; the clinging stream
Closes his memory, glooms his dream,
Who lips the roots o’ the shore, and glides
Superb on unreturning tides.
Those silent waters weave for him
A fluctuant mutable world and dim,
Where wavering masses bulge and gape
Mysterious, and shape to shape
Dies momently through whorl and hollow,
And form and line and solid follow
Solid and line and form to dream
Fantastic down the eternal stream;
An obscure world, a shifting world,
Bulbous, or pulled to thin, or curled,
Or serpentine, or driving arrows,
Or serene slidings, or March narrows.
There slipping wave and shore are one,
And weed and mud. No ray of sun,
But glow to glow fades down the deep
(As dream to unknown dream in sleep);
Shaken translucency illumes
The hyaline of drifting glooms;
The strange soft-handed depth subdues
Drowned colour there, but black to hues,
As death to living, decomposes—
Red darkness of the heart of roses,
Blue brilliant from dead starless skies,
And gold that lies behind the eyes,
The unknown unnameable sightless white
That is the essential flame of night,
Lustreless purple, hooded green,
The myriad hues that He between
Darkness and darkness! . . .

                     And all’s one.
Gentle, embracing, quiet, dun,
The world he rests in, world he knows,
Perpetual curving. Only—grows
An eddy in that ordered falling,
A knowledge from the gloom, a calling
Weed in the wave, gleam in the mud—
The dark fire leaps along his blood;
Dateless and deathless, blind and still,
The intricate impulse works its will;
His woven world drops back; and he,
Sans providence, sans memory,
Unconscious and directly driven,
Fades to some dank sufficient heaven.

O world of lips, O world of laughter,
Where hope is fleet and thought flies after,
Of lights in the clear night, of cries
That drift along the wave and rise
Thin to the glittering stars above,
You know the hands, the eyes of love!
The strife of limbs, the sightless clinging,
The infinite distance, and the singing
Blown by the wind, a flame of sound,
The gleam, the flowers, and vast around
The horizon, and the heights above—
You know the sigh, the song of love!

But there the night is close, and there
Darkness is cold and strange and bare;
And the secret deeps are whisperless;
And rhythm is all deliciousness;
And joy is in the throbbing tide,
Whose intricate fingers beat and glide
In felt bewildering harmonies
Of trembling touch; and music is
The exquisite knocking of the blood.
Space is no more, under the mud;
His bliss is older than the sun.
Silent and straight the waters run.
The lights, the cries, the willows dim,
And the dark tide are one with him.

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Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae
by Ernest Dowson (1867-1900)

Last night, ah, yesternight, betwixt her lips and mine,
There fell thy shadow, Cynara! thy breath was shed
Upon my soul between the kisses and the wine;
And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
         Yea, I was desolate and bowed my head:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

All night upon my heart I felt her warm heart beat,
Night-long within my arms in love and sleep she lay;
Surely the kisses of her bought red mouth were sweet;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
         When I awoke and found the dawn was grey:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I have forgot much, Cynara! gone with the wind,
Flung roses, roses riotously with the throng,
Dancing, to put thy pale, lost lilies out of mind;
But I was desolate and sick of an old passion,
         Yea, all the time, because the dance was long:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

I cried for madder music and for stronger wine,
But when the feast is finished and the lamps expire,
Then falls thy shadow, Cynara! the night is thine;
And I am desolate and sick of an old passion,
         Yea, hungry for the lips of my desire:
I have been faithful to thee, Cynara! in my fashion.

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