his face sunk in his hands;
He looked up, as from sleeping --
but his eyes were blank with weeping
As if he saw not, creeping,
death's swiftly flowing sands.
He reached no hand for gun or blade
to halt the hand of Kane,
Nor even seemed to hear or see,
lost in black mists of memory,
Love turned to hate and treachery,
and bitter, cankering pain.
A moment Solomon Kane stood there,
the dagger poised before,
As a condor stoops above a bird,
and Francis Drake spoke not nor stirred
And Kane went forth without a word
and closed the cabin door.
One Who Comes at Eventide
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I think when I am old a furtive shape
Will sit beside me at my fireless hearth,
Dabbled with blood from stumps of severed wrists,
And flacked with blackened bits of mouldy earth.
My blood ran fire when the deed was done;
Now it runs colder than the moon that shone
On shattered fields where dead men lay in heaps
Who could not hear a ravished daughter's moan.
(Dim through the bloody dawn on bitter winds
The throbbing of the distant guns was brought
When I reeled like a drunkard from the hut
That hid the horror my red hands had wrought.)
So now I fire my veins with stinging wine,
And hoard my youth as misers hug their gold,
Because I know what shape will come and sit
Beside my crumbling hearth - when I am old.
An Open Window
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Behind the Veil what gulfs of Time and Space?
What blinking mowing Shapes to blast the sight?
I shrink before a vague colossal Face
Born in the mad immensities of Night.
Orientia
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Castinet, castanet!
When the floating sun has set,
And the silver splendor falls
Of the moon on harem walls,
Hear the bangles clashing chime—
While feet flit in dreamy rhyme.
Dark eyes flashing in the dusk
Luring scents of spice and musk,
White roofs ’neath a gen-set sky,
Floating songs from the dim serai.
Castinet, castanet!
Through the years I hear you yet.
Through the years of toil and fret.
Castinet, castanet!
Poet
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My soul is a blaze
Of passionate desire;
My soul is a blaze
That sets my pen on fire.
Private Magrath of the A.E.F.
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The night was dark as a Harlem coon
Smoke and clounds once lin' the moon;
Flares goin' up with a venomous sound,
Bustin' and throwin' a green light around.
An', yeah, there was me cursin' my soul
For losin' meself from the raidin' patrol.
Creepin' along in the mud and the slime,
Cussin' and havin' the Devil's own time.
Smeared and spattered with Flanders mire,
Tearin' me clothes on the loose barbwire.
I'm crawlin' along, keepin' close to the ground,
When all of a sudden I hears me a sound.
I halt and I listen, it's too dark for sight
But some bird's ahead of me there in the night.
I reached for my gun—then I swear through me teeth
For somewhere the thing's fallen out of its sheath.
But before I can move, I hear feet a-slush
And something to meself: "Come right ahead Fritz,
I've lost me gat but I've got me mitts."
I sidestep quick as he makes his spring,
His bay'net flashes, I duck, I swing!
Flush on the jaw my right he stops,
Down in the muck on his face he flops.
I'm cursin' him for a bloody Hun
As I loosen the bay'net off his gun.
I feel for his ribs 'neath his tunic drab
For I've only time for a single stab.
I feel a locket a-danglin there,
I jerk it out, then a rockets flare
Limns it in light like crimson flame
And I see the face of a white haired dame
And German letters beneath it run,
Which I take to mean "To my darlin' son."
I haul that Hun up onto his pegs,
And I says, "Get goin'; and shake your legs.
Your line are that way, now get gone."
And I hends him a boot to help him on.
Saying, "Make tracks on your homeward path,
With the compliments of Monk Magrath."
Prude
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I dare not join my sisters in the street;
I think of people's talk, the cynic stare.
Fierce envy makes me scornful of their play,
And hide my lust behind a haughty air.
A Rattlesnake Sings In The Grass
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Oh, brother coiling in the acrid grass,
Lift not for me your sibilant refrain:
Less deadly venom slavers from your fangs
Than courses fiercely in my every vein.
A single victim satisfied your hate,
But I would see walled cities crash and reel,
Gray-bearded sages blown from cannon-mouths,
And infants spitted on the reddened steel.
And I would see the stars come thundering down,
The foaming oceans break their brimming bowl –
Oh, universal ruin would not serve
To glut the fury of my maddened soul!
Rebellion
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The marble statues tossed against the sky
In gestures blind as though to rend and kill,
Not one upon his pedestal was still.
Stiff fingers clutched at winds that whispered by,
And from the white lips rose a deathly cry:
"Cursed be the hands that broke us from the hill!
There slumber of unbirth was ours till
The gave us life that cannot live or die."
And then as from a dream I stirred and woke—
Sublime and still each statue raised its head,
Etched pure and cold against the leafy green,
No limb was moved, no sigh the silence broke;
And people walked amid the grove and said: