Once, in the city of Kalamazoo, The gods went walking, two and two, With the friendly phoenix, the stars of Orion, The speaking pony and singing lion. For in Kalamazoo in a cottage apart Lived the girl with the innocent heart.
Thenceforth the city of Kalamazoo Was the envied, intimate chum of the sun. He rose from a cave by the principal street. The lions sang, the dawn-horns blew, And the ponies danced on silver feet. He hurled his clouds of love around; Deathless colors of his old heart Draped the houses and dyed the ground.
The unpurged images of day recede; The Emperor's drunken soldiery are abed; Night resonance recedes, night-walkers' song After great cathedral gong; A starlit or a moonlit dome disdains All that man is, All mere complexities, The fury and the mire of human veins.
PART I 'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, And the owls have awakened the crowing cock; Tu—whit! Tu—whoo! And hark, again! the crowing cock, How drowsily it crew. Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; From her kennel beneath the rock She maketh answer to the clock, Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour; Ever and aye, by shine and shower, Sixteen short howls, not over loud; Some say, she sees my lady's shroud.
As rising from the vegetable World My Theme ascends, with equal Wing ascend, My panting Muse; and hark, how loud the Woods Invite you forth in all your gayest Trim. Lend me your Song, ye Nightingales! oh pour The mazy-running Soul of Melody Into my varied Verse! while I deduce, From the first Note the hollow Cuckoo sings,
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
Now swarthy Summer, by rude health embrowned, Precedence takes of rosy fingered Spring; And laughing Joy, with wild flowers prank'd, and crown'd, A wild and giddy thing, And Health robust, from every care unbound, Come on the zephyr's wing, And cheer the toiling clown.
You are a friend then, as I make it out, Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us Will put an ass's head in Fairyland As he would add a shilling to more shillings, All most harmonious, — and out of his Miraculous inviolable increase Fills Ilion, Rome, or any town you like Of olden time with timeless Englishmen; And I must wonder what you think of him — All you down there where your small Avon flows By Stratford, and where you're an Alderman. Some, for a guess, would have him riding back To be a farrier there, or say a dyer; Or maybe one of your adept surveyors; Or like enough the wizard of all tanners.
Do not allow me to sink, I said To a top floating ribbon of kelp. As I was lifted on each wave And made to slide into the vale I wanted not to drown. I wanted To make it all right with my dear, To tell my cat I’ll be away, To have them all destroyed, the poems
'There it is!– You play beside a death-bed like a child, Yet measure to yourself a prophet's place To teach the living. None of all these things, Can women understand. You generalise, Oh, nothing!–not even grief! Your quick-breathed hearts, So sympathetic to the personal pang,
To-night again the moon’s white mat Stretches across the dormitory floor While outside, like an evil cat The pion prowls down the dark corridor, Planning, I know, to pounce on me, in spite For getting leave to sleep in town last night. But it was none of us who made that noise, Only the old brown owl that hoots and flies
The Mayor of Scuttleton burned his nose Trying to warm his copper toes; He lost his money and spoiled his will By signing his name with an icicle-quill; He went bare-headed, and held his breath, And frightened his grandame most to death; He loaded a shovel, and tried to shoot, And killed the calf in the leg of his boot; He melted a snow-bird, and formed the habit Of dancing jigs with a sad Welsh rabbit; He lived on taffy, and taxed the town; And read his newspaper upside down; Then he sighed, and hung his hat on a feather, And bade the townspeople come together; But the worst of it all was, nobody knew
There we go in cars, did you guess we wore sandals? Carrying the till, memorizing its numbers, apt at the essential such as rearranging languages. They occur from route to route like savages who wear shells.
“I cannot place him.” Yet I do. He must ascend indefinitely as airs he must regard his image as plastic,
There may be chaos still around the world, This little world that in my thinking lies; For mine own bosom is the paradise Where all my life’s fair visions are unfurled. Within my nature’s shell I slumber curled, Unmindful of the changing outer skies, Where now, perchance, some new-born Eros flies, Or some old Cronos from his throne is hurled.
These of living emanate a formidable light, Which is equal to death, and when used Gives increase eternally. What fortifies in separate thought Is not drawn by wind or by man defiled. So whispers the parable of doubleness. As it is necessary not to submit To power which weakens the hidden forms;
I don’t mind the human race. I’ve got pretty used to them In these past twenty-five years. I don’t mind if they sit next To me on streetcars, or eat In the same restaurants, if It’s not at the same table. However, I don’t approve
There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.
I am leading a quiet life in Mike’s Place every day watching the champs of the Dante Billiard Parlor and the French pinball addicts. I am leading a quiet life on lower East Broadway. I am an American.
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