I must not be too obvious—there
I'll shift my dress, demurely and let him see
A quick glance of an ankle very trim;
Then blush and smooth my skirts down hastily
As if 'twere unintentional—Hell!
The fool's not even got his eyes on me.
A Great Man Speaks
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They set me up on high, a marble saint,
As if to guard the virtue of the park.
My flanks are gaunt, my gaze is cold and stark,
For I must look the part the liars paint,
They've cleansed my history of fleshy taint.
The elders bid the younger people mark
How virtuous I gleam against the dark—
Could I but speak I'd make the bastards faint.
Great God, how could they know the lusty zest,
The love of life that made my sinews dance?—
Below me now, against my base, inert,
A lousy tramp, a sleeping house-maid rest,
I yearn for that square flask in his old pants.
My fingers burn to feel beneath her skirt.
The Grey Lover
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Lover, grey lover, your arms are about me
Through your green billows I sink to my rest;
Never again shall futilities flout me
Rousing dim torments to harry my breast.
Royal lost galleys about me are riding
Tides ever surging their sea treasures bring.
Here shall I slumber the years without number,
Dreaming unharried like some magic king.
The Harp of Alfred
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I heard the harp of Alfred
As I went o'er the downs,
When thorn-trees stood at even
Like monks in dusky gowns;
I heard the music Guthrum heard
Beside the wasted towns:
When Alfred, like a peasant,
Came harping down the hill,
And the drunken danes made merry
With the man they sought to kill,
And the Saxon king laughed in their beards
And bent them to his will.
I heard the harp of Alfred
As the twilight waned to night;
I heard ghost armies tramping
As the dim stars flamed white;
And Guthrum walked at my left hand,
And Alfred at my right.
High Blue Halls
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There’s a kingdom far from the sun and star
With never a wind to dree;
Where the golden balls of the silence falls
In the high blue halls of the sea.
There’s death to change in that kingdom strange,
For its days are all the same;
Its blue floors blaze in a golden maze
Through a purple haze of flame.
Through an emerald sheen dim shapes careen
And white limbs trail and quiver;
In rose pale fire ’round spear and spire
In white desire they shiver.
There’s never a tree for eye to see
But ever in ghostly showers
Great petals white drift down the night
Like a wild delight of flowers.
There’s a kingdom dim ’neath a ghost tree’s limb,
That throbs eternally,
Life’s furtherest halls where magic calls
In the high blue halls of the sea.
How to Select a Successful Evangelist
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First, find a man who has a goodly voice,
Whose yell shall shake the very topmost spire
When he proclaims some rival rev a liar.
Pass up the knowledge if he has the noise.
Next, see he mixes freely with the boys.
A man with carefully concealed desire,
But one whose sex appeal is like a fire—
Then he is sure of all the women’s choice.
Yet let him be discreet—Let not a rumor
Attend his trail. Let him condemn all thought
Most loudly as the evil he has fought.
Enough vulgarity to pass as humor.
He shall be sure then, gathering the tin
And lead ten thousand from the ways of sin.
Illusion
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I stood upon surf-booming cliffs
And heard the tide-race roaring, roaring strong and deep and free;
On tall wind wings the white clouds sudded by.
Far to the eat the ocean met the sky
And the booming cliffs re-echoed to the thunder of the sea.
Green are the waves and fringed with white the crest:
Strong colour contrasts, turquoise, sapphire, now.
Tumbling the jade green billows from the west
Roars the wild sea-wind. Keep your sea. I go.
Stranger to me the fierce red-blooded zest,
The wild beast urge, the primitive behest.
Fierce primal impulses are thoughts I do not know.
I've ever dwelt 'mid worlds of vaguer tone,
All tints and colors merging soft and dim,
No garish flare of reds at the desert's rim—
The sea-winds murmur there a pleasing drone;
The sea-fogs grace the ocean, friendly, grey.
'Mid soft-hued woodlands shy nymphs have their play.
Ad so I'll none of all this garish joy,
These blazing dawns that leap like maids o'er-bold;
The flaming greens and reds and yellows cloy,
Barbaric tints of crimson, blazing gold.
The worlds I seek are like soft, golden chimes;
Soft merging tints that match the breeze's croon
And no false note plays in the world-scheme rhymes—
I seek soft, vague plateaus of the moon.
Ivory in the Night
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Maidens of star and of moon,
born from the mists of the age,
I thrill to the touch of your hands,
in the night when the shadows are o'er me.
Your eyes are like the gulfs of the night,
your limbs are like ivory gleaming—
But your lips are more red than is mortal,
and pointed the nails of your fingers.
Jack Dempsey
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Through the California mountains
And many a wooded vale
The wind from seaward whispers
The name of the Nonpareil
O'er many a peak snow covered
O'er many a woodland fair
The sea-breeze murmurs the wonderful tale
Of the lad from County Clare.
But never the wind from seaward