Glory to the dollar! The colleges are full
Of students burning incense to the great god Bull.
A Song of Greenwich
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The lords of Greenwich sallied forth
The men, also the maids;
The dames had cut and combed their hair,
The men wore theirs in braids.
They came unto a comrade’s room,
They laid on him their hands
Said they, “Oh fiend, oh cringing wretch!
“Behold the traitor stands!”
They punched him thrice upon the nose,
They blacked his gleaming eye;
They nailed his trousers to the wall
And left him there to die.
But people came and cut him down
And gave him other pants.
“And tell us now,” the people said
“How this thing came to chance?”
“Alas for me!” the wretch replied,
“My sinful lust for gold!
“My former friends are down on me—
I wrote a book that sold!”
The Song of the Bats
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The dusk was on the mountain
And the stars were dim and frail
When the bats came flying, flying
From the river and the vale
To wheel against the twilight
And sing their witchy tale.
"We were kings of old!" they chanted,
"Rulers of a world enchanted;
"Every nation of creation
"Owned our lordship over men.
"Diadems of power crowned us,
"Then rose Solomon to confound us,
"In the form of beasts he bound us,
"So our rule was broken then."
Whirling, wheeling into westward,
Fled they in their phantom flight;
Was it but a wing-beat music
Murmured through the star-gemmed night?
Or the singing of a ghost clan
Whispering of forgotten might?
The Song of the Sage
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Thus spoke Scutto on the mountains in the twilight,
Sage and seer and councilor to lords of Hindustand,
“Life,my bold young bastards, according to my light,
“Is but a bucking galley by a band of monkeys manned.”
A Song Out of Midian
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These will I give you, Astair: an armlet of frozen gold,
Gods cut from the living rock, and carven gems in an amber crock,
And a purple woven Tyrian smock, and wine from a pirate's hold.
Kings shall kneel at your feet, Astair, emperors kiss your hand;
Captive girls for your joy shall dance, slim and straight as a striking lance,
Who tremble and bow at your mildest glance and kneel at your least command.
Galleys shall break the crimson seas seeking delights for you;
With silks and silvery fountain gleams I will weave a world that glows and seems
A shimmering mist of rainbow dreams, scarlet and white and blue.
Or is it glory you wish, Astair, the crash and the battle-flame?
The winds shall break on the warship's sail and Death ride free at my horse's tail,
Till all the tribes of the earth shall wail at the terror of your name.
I will break the thrones of the world, Astair, and fling them at your feet;
Flame and banners and doom shall fly, and my iron chariots rend the sky,
Whirlwind on whirlwind heaping high, death and a deadly sleet.
Why are you sad and still, Astair, counting my words as naught?
From slave to queen I have raised you high, and yet you stare with a weary eye,
And never the laugh has followed the sigh, since you from your land were brought.
Do you long for the lowing herds, Astair? For the desert's dawning white?
For the hawk-eyed tribesman's coarse hard fare, and the brown firm limbs that are hard and bare,
And the eagle's rocks and the lion's lair, and the tents of the Israelite?
I have never chained your limbs, Astair; free as the winds that whirl
Go if you wish. The doors are wide, since less to you is an empire's pride
Than the open lands where the tribesmen ride, wooing the desert girl.
Sonora to Del Rio
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Sonora to Del Rio is a hundred barren miles
Where the sotol weave and shimmer in the sun—
Like a host of swaying serpents straying down the bare defiles
When the silver, scarlet webs of dawn are spun.
There are little 'dobe ranchoes, brooding far along the sky
On the sullen, dreary bosoms of the hills.
Not a wolf to break the quiet, not a single bird to fly;
Where the silence is so utter that it thrills.
Maybe, in the heat of evening, comes a wind from Mexico
Laden with the heat of seven Hells,
And the rattler in the yucca and the buzzard dark and slow
Hear and understand the grisly tales it tells.
Gaunt and stark and bare and mocking rise the everlasting cliffs
Like a row of sullen giants carved of stone,
Till the traveler, mazed with silence, thinks to look at hieroglyphs,
Thinks to see a carven pharaoh on his throne.
And the road goes on forever, o'er the barren hill forever,
And there's little to hint of flowing wine—
But beyond the hills and sotol there's a mellow curving river
And a land of sun and mellow wine.
Summer Morn
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Am-ra stood on a mountain height
At the break of a summer morn;
He watched in wonder the starlight fail
And the eastern scarlet flare and pale
As the flame of day was born.
Am-ra the Ta-an
Out of the land of the morning sun,
Am-ra the Ta-an came.
Outlawed by the priests of the Ta-an,
His people spoke not his name.
Am-ra, the mighty hunter,
Am-ra, son of the spear,
Strong and bold as a lion,
Lithe and swift as a deer.
Into the land of the tiger,
Came Am-ra the fearless, alone,
With his bow of pliant lance-wood,
And his spear with the point of stone.
He saw the deer and the bison,
The wild horse and the bear,
The elephant and the mammoth,
To him the land seemed fair. Face to face met he the tiger,
And gripping his spear’s long haft,
Gazed fearless into the snarling face,
“Good hunting!” cried he, and laughed!