The craving of Samuel Rouse for clearance to create was surely as hot as the iron that buffeted him. His passion for freedom so strong that it molded the smouldering fashions he laced, for how also could a slave plot or counterplot such incomparable shapes,
form or reform, for house after house, the intricate Patio pattern, the delicate Rose and Lyre, the Debutante Settee,
Slip-pilings on the Brooklyn littoral —the poles still tarry, flimsy; the ferry terminus with its walledup doors wan doorshapes on eroded sills. Downstream, the strutwork of the Williamsburg cable tower threw its cool shadow half a mile inland
Thus far, O Friend! have we, though leaving much Unvisited, endeavour'd to retrace My life through its first years, and measured back The way I travell'd when I first began To love the woods and fields; the passion yet Was in its birth, sustain'd, as might befal, By nourishment that came unsought, for still, From week to week, from month to month, we liv'd A round of tumult: duly were our games Prolong'd in summer till the day-light fail'd; No chair remain'd before the doors, the bench And threshold steps were empty; fast asleep The Labourer, and the old Man who had sate, A later lingerer, yet the revelry Continued, and the loud uproar: at last,
Dans l'adversité de nos meilleurs amis nous trouvons quelque chose, qui ne nous déplaît pas. ["In the hard times of our best friends we find something that doesn't displease us."] As Rochefoucauld his maxims drew From Nature, I believe 'em true: They argue no corrupted mind In him; the fault is in mankind.
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes! No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats, Nor the cropp'd herbage shoot another head. But when the fields are still, And the tired men and dogs all gone to rest, And only the white sheep are sometimes seen
From the high terrace porch I watch the dawn. No light appears, though dark has mostly gone, Sunk from the cold and monstrous stone. The hills Lie naked but not light. The darkness spills Down the remoter gulleys; pooled, will stay Too low to melt, not yet alive with day. Below the windows, the lawn, matted deep Under its close-cropped tips with dewy sleep,
I When Bishop Berkeley said "there was no matter," And proved it—'twas no matter what he said: They say his system 'tis in vain to batter, Too subtle for the airiest human head; And yet who can believe it! I would shatter Gladly all matters down to stone or lead, Or adamant, to find the World a spirit, And wear my head, denying that I wear it.
II What a sublime discovery 'twas to make the Universe universal egotism, That all's ideal—all ourselves: I'll stake the World (be it what you will) that that's no schism.
He went to the city and goosed all the girls With a stall on his finger for whittling the wills To a clause in his favour and Come to me Sally, One head in my chambers and one up your alley And I am as old as my master.
I followed him further and lost all my friends, The grease still thick on his fistful of pens. I laced up his mutton and paddled his lake
Cyriack, whose grandsire on the royal bench Of British Themis, with no mean applause, Pronounced, and in his volumes taught, our laws, Which others at their bar so often wrench, Today deep thoughts resolve with me to drench In mirth that after no repenting draws; Let Euclid rest, and Archimedes pause, And what the Swede intend, and what the French. To measure life learn thou betimes, and know Toward solid good what leads the nearest way; For other things mild Heaven a time ordains, And disapproves that care, though wise in show, That with superfluous burden loads the day, And, when God sends a cheerful hour, refrains.
It’s up and away from our work to-day, For the breeze sweeps over the down; And it’s hey for a game where the gorse blossoms flame, And the bracken is bronzing to brown. With the turf ’neath our tread and the blue overhead, And the song of the lark in the whin; There’s the flag and the green, with the bunkers between— Now will you be over or in?
The doctor may come, and we’ll teach him to know A tee where no tannin can lurk; The soldier may come, and we’ll promise to show Some hazards a soldier may shirk; The statesman may joke, as he tops every stroke, That at last he is high in his aims;
His eye was wild and his face was taut with anger and hate and rage, And the things he muttered were much too strong for the ink of the printed page. I found him there when the dusk came down, in his golf clothes still was he, And his clubs were strewn around his feet as he told his grief to me: “I’d an easy five for a seventy-nine—in sight of the golden goal— An easy five and I took an eight—an eight on the eighteenth hole!
“I’ve dreamed my dreams of the ‘seventy men,’ and I’ve worked year after year,
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
I Under the makeshift arbor of leaves a hot wind blowing smoke and laughter. Music out of the renegade west, too harsh and loud, many dark faces moved among the sweating whites.
The village life, and every care that reigns O'er youthful peasants and declining swains; What labour yields, and what, that labour past, Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; What forms the real picture of the poor, Demands a song—the Muse can give no more. Fled are those times, if e'er such times were seen, When rustic poets praised their native green;
All seas are seas in the moon to these lonely and full of light. High above laundries and rooftops the pinstriped silhouettes speak nightmare as do the faces full of fire and orange peel. Every citizen knows what’s the trouble: America’s longest river is—New York; that’s what they say, and I say so.
O what a physical effect it has on me To dive forever into the light blue sea Of your acquaintance! Ah, but dearest friends, Like forms, are finished, as life has ends! Still, It is beautiful, when October Is over, and February is over,
I’m talking about Mount Street. Jackhammers give it the staggers. They’re tearing up dear Mount Street. It’s got a torn-up face like Mick Jagger’s.
I mean, this is Mount Street! Scott’s restaurant, the choicest oysters, brilliant fish; Purdey, the great shotgun maker—the street is complete Posh plush and (except for Marc Jacobs) so English.
Remember the old Mount Street, The quiet that perfumed the air Like a flowering tree and smelled sweet As only money can smell, because after all this was Mayfair?
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