I first discovered what was killing these men. I had three sons who worked with their father in the tunnel: Cecil, aged 23, Owen, aged 21, Shirley, aged 17. They used to work in a coal mine, not steady work for the mines were not going much of the time. A power Co. foreman learned that we made home brew, he formed a habit of dropping in evenings to drink, persuading the boys and my husband —
See, Winter comes to rule the varied year, Sullen and sad, with all his rising train— Vapours, and clouds, and storms. Be these my theme, These, that exalt the soul to solemn thought And heavenly musing. Welcome, kindred glooms! Congenial horrors, hail! With frequent foot, Pleas’d have I, in my cheerful morn of life, When nurs’d by careless solitude I liv’d And sung of Nature with unceasing joy, Pleas’d have I wander’d through your rough domain; Trod the pure virgin-snows, myself as pure; Heard the winds roar, and the big torrent burst; Or seen the deep-fermenting tempest brew’d In the grim evening-sky. Thus pass’d the time, Till through the lucid chambers of the south
I In a far country, and a distant age, Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth, A boy was born of humble parentage; The stars that shone upon his lonely birth Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame— Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.
II ’T is said that on the night when he was born, A beauteous shape swept slowly through the room; Its eyes broke on the infant like a morn, And his cheek brightened like a rose in bloom;
Even as the sun with purple-colour’d face
Had ta’en his last leave of the weeping morn,
Rose-cheek’d Adonis tried him to the chase;
Hunting he lov’d, but love he laugh’d to scorn;
Sick-thoughted Venus makes amain unto him,
And like a bold-fac’d suitor ‘gins to woo him.
Nondum amabam, et amare amabam, quaerebam quid amarem, amans amare.— Confess. St. August. Earth, ocean, air, belovèd brotherhood! If our great Mother has imbued my soul With aught of natural piety to feel Your love, and recompense the boon with mine;
I “There is a Thorn—it looks so old, In truth, you’d find it hard to say How it could ever have been young, It looks so old and grey. Not higher than a two years' child It stands erect, this aged Thorn; No leaves it has, no prickly points; It is a mass of knotted joints, A wretched thing forlorn. It stands erect, and like a stone With lichens is it overgrown.
Set where the upper streams of Simois flow Was the Palladium, high 'mid rock and wood; And Hector was in Ilium, far below, And fought, and saw it not—but there it stood!
It stood, and sun and moonshine rain'd their light On the pure columns of its glen-built hall. Backward and forward roll'd the waves of fight Round Troy—but while this stood, Troy could not fall.
So, in its lovely moonlight, lives the soul. Mountains surround it, and sweet virgin air; Cold plashing, past it, crystal waters roll; We visit it by moments, ah, too rare!
In vain thou bid’st me strike the lyre, And sing a song of mirth and glee, Or, kindling with poetic fire, Attempt some higher minstrelsy; In vain, in vain! for every thought That issues from this throbbing brain, Is from its first conception fraught With gloom and darkness, woe and pain. From earliest youth my path has been Cast in life’s darkest, deepest shade, Where no bright ray did intervene, Nor e’er a passing sunbeam strayed; But all was dark and cheerless night, Without one ray of hopeful light. From childhood, then, through many a shock,
Robinson at cards at the Algonquin; a thin Blue light comes down once more outside the blinds. Gray men in overcoats are ghosts blown past the door. The taxis streak the avenues with yellow, orange, and red. This is Grand Central, Mr. Robinson.
Robinson on a roof above the Heights; the boats Mourn like the lost. Water is slate, far down. Through sounds of ice cubes dropped in glass, an osteopath,
The time I’ve lost in wooing, In watching and pursuing The light, that lies In woman’s eyes, Has been my heart’s undoing. Though Wisdom oft has sought me, I scorn’d the lore she brought me, My only books Were woman’s looks, And folly’s all they’ve taught me.
Her smile when Beauty granted, I hung with gaze enchanted, Like him the Sprite, Whom maids by night
There was ance a may, and she lo’ed na men; She biggit her bonnie bow’r doun i’ yon glen; But now she cries, Dool and a well-a-day! Come doun the green gait and come here away!
When bonnie young Johnnie cam’ owre the sea He said he saw naething sae lovely as me; He hecht me baith rings and monie braw things;
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes, Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise; My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream, Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream.
Thou stock-dove, whose echo resounds thro' the glen, Ye wild whistling blackbirds in yon thorny den, Thou green-crested lapwing, thy screaming forbear, I charge you disturb not my slumbering fair.
How lofty, sweet Afton, thy neighbouring hills, Far mark'd with the courses of clear winding rills; There daily I wander as noon rises high, My flocks and my Mary's sweet cot in my eye.
Since all that beat about in Nature's range, Or veer or vanish; why should'st thou remain The only constant in a world of change, O yearning Thought! that liv'st but in the brain? Call to the Hours, that in the distance play, The faery people of the future day— Fond Thought! not one of all that shining swarm Will breathe on thee with life-enkindling breath, Till when, like strangers shelt'ring from a storm, Hope and Despair meet in the porch of Death! Yet still thou haunt'st me; and though well I see, She is not thou, and only thou are she, Still, still as though some dear embodied Good, Some living Love before my eyes there stood With answering look a ready ear to lend,
Last May a braw wooer cam down the lang glen, And sair wi' his love he did deave me; I said there was naething I hated like men: The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me, believe me, The deuce gae wi 'm to believe me.
He spak o' the darts in my bonie black een, And vow'd for my love he was diein; I said he might die when he liked for Jean: The Lord forgie me for liein, for liein, The Lord forgie me for liein!
A weel-stocked mailen, himsel for the laird, And marriage aff-hand, were his proffers: I never loot on that I ken'd it, or car'd,
With one black shadow at its feet, The house thro' all the level shines, Close-latticed to the brooding heat, And silent in its dusty vines: A faint-blue ridge upon the right, An empty river-bed before, And shallows on a distant shore, In glaring sand and inlets bright.
When chapman billies leave the street, And drouthy neebors neebors meet, As market-days are wearing late, And folk begin to tak the gate; While we sit bousin, at the nappy, And gettin fou and unco happy, We think na on the lang Scots miles, The mosses, waters, slaps, and stiles, That lie between us and our hame, Whare sits our sulky, sullen dame, Gathering her brows like gathering storm, Nursing her wrath to keep it warm.
This truth fand honest Tam o' Shanter, As he frae Ayr ae night did canter:
The time has been that these wild solitudes, Yet beautiful as wild, were trod by me Oftener than now; and when the ills of life Had chafed my spirit—when the unsteady pulse Beat with strange flutterings—I would wander forth And seek the woods. The sunshine on my path Was to me a friend. The swelling hills, The quiet dells retiring far between, With gentle invitation to explore Their windings, were a calm society That talked with me and soothed me. Then the chant Of birds, and chime of brooks, and soft caress Of the fresh sylvan air, made me forget The thoughts that broke my peace, and I began
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