Hunger points a bony finger
To the workhouse on the hill,
But the little children linger
While there's flowers to gather still
For my sunny window sill.
In my hands I take their faces,
Smiling to my smiles they run.
Would that I could take their places
Where the murky bye-ways shun
The benedictions of the sun.
How they laugh and sing returning
Lightly on their secret way.
While I listen in my yearning
Their laughter fills the windy day
With gladness, youth and May.
And Dick said, "Look what I have found!"
And when we saw we danced around,
And made our feet just tip the ground.
We skipped our toes and sang, "Oh-lo.
Oh-who, oh-who, oh what do you know!
Oh-who, oh-hi, oh-loo, kee-lo!"
We clapped our hands and sang, "Oh-ee!"
It made us jump and laugh to see
The little new moon above the tree.
Withal a meagre man was Aaron Stark, --
Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose.
A miser was he, with a miser's nose,
And eyes like little dollars in the dark.
His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark;
And when he spoke there came like sullen blows
Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close,
As if a cur were chary of its bark.
Glad for the murmur of his hard renown,
Year after year he shambled through the town, --
A loveless exile moving with a staff;
And oftentimes there crept into his ears
A sound of alien pity, touched with tears, --
And then (and only then) did Aaron laugh.
Oh, I am grown so free from care
Since my heart broke!
I set my throat against the air,
I laugh at simple folk!
There's little kind and little fair
Is worth its weight in smoke
To me, that's grown so free from care
Since my heart broke!
Lass, if to sleep you would repair
As peaceful as you woke,
Best not besiege your lover there
For just the words he spoke
To me, that's grown so free from care
Since my heart broke!
At Pompeii I heard a woman laugh,
And turned to find the reason of her mirth ;
Saw but the silent figure of a girl
That centuries had mummied into earth :
The running figure of a little maid
With face half-hidden in her shielding arm,
Silent, yet screaming, yea, in ev'ry limb
The cruel torture of her dread alarm.
At Pompeii I heard a maiden shriek
All down the years from out the distant past ;
Blind in the awful darkness still she runs ;
Death in the mould of fear her form has cast.
A little maid once soft and sweet and white,
Full of the morning's hope, and love and joy,
That Nature, moving to the voice of Time,
Shook her dark wings to wither and destroy.
It is but coming and going;
Laughing or weeping;
In dark or day!
Life is but a lay:
Rings sad or gay.
Depending on our singing.
When the wind blows her veil
And uncovers her laughter
I cease, I turn pale.
When the wind blows her veil
From the woes I bewail
Of love and hereafter:
When the wind blows her veil
I cease, I turn pale.
Shake back your hair, O red-headed girl.
Let go your laughter and keep your two proud freckles
on your chin.
Somewhere is a man looking for a red-headed girl and
some day maybe he will look into your eyes for a
restaurant cashier and find a lover, maybe.
Around and around go ten thousand men hunting a
red headed girl with two freckles on her chin.
I have seen them hunting, hunting.
Shake back your hair; let go your laughter.
I SAW a mouth jeering. A smile of melted red iron ran
over it. Its laugh was full of nails rattling. It
was a child's dream of a mouth.
A fist hit the mouth : knuckles of gun-metal driven by an
electric wrist and shoulder. It was a child's dream
of an arm.
The fist hit the mouth over and over, again and again.
The mouth bled melted iron, and laughed its laughter
of nails rattling.
And I saw the more the fist pounded the more the mouth
laughed. The fist is pounding and pounding, and
the mouth answering.
Five circus clowns dying this year, morning newspapers
told their lives, how each one horizontal in a last
gesture of hands arranged by an undertaker, shook
thousands into convulsions of laughter from behind
rouge-red lips and powder-white face.
There was a high majestic fooling
Day before yesterday in the yellow corn.
And day after to-morrow in the yellow corn
There will be high majestic fooling.
The ears ripen in late summer
And come on with a conquering laughter,
Come on with a high and conquering laughter.
The long-tailed blackbirds are hoarse.
One of the smaller blackbirds chitters on a stalk
And a spot of red is on its shoulder
And I never heard its name in my life.
Some of the ears are bursting.
A white juice works inside.
Cornsilk creeps in the end and dangles in the wind.
Always — I never knew it any other way —
The wind and the corn talk things over together.
When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy,
And the dimpling stream runs laughing by;
When the air does laugh with our merry wit,
And the green hill laughs with the noise of it;
when the meadows laugh with lively green,
And the grasshopper laughs in the merry scene,
When Mary and Susan and Emily
With their sweet round mouths sing "Ha, ha he!"
When the painted birds laugh in the shade,
Where our table with cherries and nuts is spread:
Come live, and be merry, and join with me,
To sing the sweet chorus of "Ha, ha, he!"