Kitabı oku: «Fifty years & Other Poems», sayfa 4

III
Teestay

 
Of tropic sensations, the worst
Is, sin duda, the tropical thirst.
 
 
When it starts in your throat and constantly grows,
Till you feel that it reaches down to your toes,
When your mouth tastes like fur
And your tongue turns to dust,
There's but one thing to do,
And do it you must,
Drink teestay.
 
 
Teestay, a drink with a history,
A delicious, delectable mystery,
"Cinco centavos el vaso, señor,"
If you take one, you will surely want more.
 
 
Teestay, teestay,
The national drink on a feast day;
How it coolingly tickles,
As downward it trickles,
Teestay, teestay.
 
 
And you wish, as you take it down at a quaff,
That your neck was constructed à la giraffe.
Teestay, teestay.
 

IV
The Lottery Girl

 
"Lottery, lottery,
Take a chance at the lottery?
Take a ticket,
Or, better, take two;
Who knows what the future
May hold for you?
Lottery, lottery,
Take a chance at the lottery?"
 
 
Oh, limpid-eyed girl,
I would take every chance,
If only the prize
Were a love-flashing glance
From your fathomless eyes.
 
 
"Lottery, lottery,
Try your luck at the lottery?
Consider the size
Of the capital prize,
And take tickets
For the lottery.
Tickets, señor? Tickets, señor?
Take a chance at the lottery?"
 
 
Oh, crimson-lipped girl,
With the magical smile,
I would count that the gamble
Were well worth the while,
Not a chance would I miss,
If only the prize
Were a honey-bee kiss
Gathered in sips
From those full-ripened lips,
And a love-flashing glance
From your eyes.
 

V
The Dancing Girl

 
Do you know what it is to dance?
Perhaps, you do know, in a fashion;
But by dancing I mean,
Not what's generally seen,
But dancing of fire and passion,
Of fire and delirious passion.
 
 
With a dusky-haired señorita,
Her dark, misty eyes near your own,
And her scarlet-red mouth,
Like a rose of the south,
The reddest that ever was grown,
So close that you catch
Her quick-panting breath
As across your own face it is blown,
With a sigh, and a moan.
 
 
Ah! that is dancing,
As here by the Carib it's known.
 
 
Now, whirling and twirling
Like furies we go;
Now, soft and caressing
And sinuously slow;
With an undulating motion,
Like waves on a breeze-kissed ocean:—
And the scarlet-red mouth
Is nearer your own,
And the dark, misty eyes
Still softer have grown.
 
 
Ah! that is dancing, that is loving,
As here by the Carib they're known.
 

VI
Sunset in the Tropics

 
A silver flash from the sinking sun,
Then a shot of crimson across the sky
That, bursting, lets a thousand colors fly
And riot among the clouds; they run,
Deepening in purple, flaming in gold,
Changing, and opening fold after fold,
Then fading through all of the tints of the rose into gray,
Till, taking quick fright at the coming night,
They rush out down the west,
In hurried quest
Of the fleeing day.
 
 
Now above where the tardiest color flares a moment yet,
One point of light, now two, now three are set
To form the starry stairs,—
And, in her fire-fly crown,
Queen Night, on velvet slippered feet, comes softly down.
 

AND THE GREATEST OF THESE IS WAR

 
Around the council-board of Hell, with Satan at their head,
The Three Great Scourges of humanity sat.
Gaunt Famine, with hollow cheek and voice, arose and spoke,—
"O, Prince, I have stalked the earth,
And my victims by ten thousands I have slain,
I have smitten old and young.
Mouths of the helpless old moaning for bread, I have filled with dust;
And I have laughed to see a crying babe tug at the shriveling breast
Of its mother, dead and cold.
I have heard the cries and prayers of men go up to a tearless sky,
And fall back upon an earth of ashes;
But, heedless, I have gone on with my work.
'Tis thus, O, Prince, that I have scourged mankind."
 
 
And Satan nodded his head.
 
 
Pale Pestilence, with stenchful breath, then spoke and said,—
"Great Prince, my brother, Famine, attacks the poor.
He is most terrible against the helpless and the old.
But I have made a charnel-house of the mightiest cities of men.
When I strike, neither their stores of gold or of grain avail.
With a breath I lay low their strongest, and wither up their fairest.
I come upon them without warning, lancing invisible death.
From me they flee with eyes and mouths distended;
I poison the air for which they gasp, and I strike them down fleeing.
'Tis thus, great Prince, that I have scourged mankind."
 
 
And Satan nodded his head.
 
 
Then the red monster, War, rose up and spoke,—
His blood-shot eyes glared 'round him, and his thundering voice
Echoed through the murky vaults of Hell.—
"O, mighty Prince, my brothers, Famine and Pestilence,
Have slain their thousands and ten thousands,—true;
But the greater their victories have been,
The more have they wakened in Man's breast
The God-like attributes of sympathy, of brotherhood and love
And made of him a searcher after wisdom.
But I arouse in Man the demon and the brute,
I plant black hatred in his heart and red revenge.
From the summit of fifty thousand years of upward climb
I haul him down to the level of the start, back to the wolf.
I give him claws.
I set his teeth into his brother's throat.
I make him drunk with his brother's blood.
And I laugh ho! ho! while he destroys himself.
O, mighty Prince, not only do I slay,
But I draw Man hellward."
 
 
And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said,—
"O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief."
 
 
And Hell rang with the acclamation of the Fiends.
 

A MID-DAY DREAMER

 
I love to sit alone, and dream,
And dream, and dream;
In fancy's boat to softly glide
Along some stream
Where fairy palaces of gold
And crystal bright
Stand all along the glistening shore:
A wondrous sight.
 
 
My craft is built of ivory,
With silver oars,
The sails are spun of golden threads,
And priceless stores
Of precious gems adorn its prow,
And 'round its mast
An hundred silken cords are set
To hold it fast.
 
 
My galley-slaves are sprightly elves
Who, as they row,
And as their shining oars they swing
Them to and fro,
Keep time to music wafted on
The scented air,
Made by the mermaids as they comb
Their golden hair.
 
 
And I the while lie idly back,
And dream, and dream,
And let them row me where they will
Adown the stream.
 

THE TEMPTRESS

 
Old Devil, when you come with horns and tail,
With diabolic grin and crafty leer;
I say, such bogey-man devices wholly fail
To waken in my heart a single fear.
 
 
But when you wear a form I know so well,
A form so human, yet so near divine;
'Tis then I fall beneath the magic of your spell,
'Tis then I know the vantage is not mine.
 
 
Ah! when you take your horns from off your head,
And soft and fragrant hair is in their place;
I must admit I fear the tangled path I tread
When that dear head is laid against my face.
 
 
And at what time you change your baleful eyes
For stars that melt into the gloom of night,
All of my courage, my dear fellow, quickly flies;
I know my chance is slim to win the fight.
 
 
And when, instead of charging down to wreck
Me on a red-hot pitchfork in your hand,
You throw a pair of slender arms about my neck,
I dare not trust the ground on which I stand.
 
 
Whene'er in place of using patent wile,
Or trying to frighten me with horrid grin,
You tempt me with two crimson lips curved in a smile;
Old Devil, I must really own, you win.
 

GHOSTS OF THE OLD YEAR

 
The snow has ceased its fluttering flight,
The wind sunk to a whisper light,
An ominous stillness fills the night,
A pause—a hush.
At last, a sound that breaks the spell,
Loud, clanging mouthings of a bell,
That through the silence peal and swell,
And roll, and rush.
 
 
What does this brazen tongue declare,
That falling on the midnight air
Brings to my heart a sense of care
Akin to fright?
'Tis telling that the year is dead,
The New Year come, the Old Year fled,
Another leaf before me spread
On which to write.
 
 
It tells the deeds that were not done,
It tells of races never run,
Of victories that were not won,
Barriers unleaped.
It tells of many a squandered day,
Of slighted gems and treasured clay,
Of precious stores not laid away,
Of fields unreaped.
 
 
And so the years go swiftly by,
Each, coming, brings ambitions high,
And each, departing, leaves a sigh
Linked to the past.
Large resolutions, little deeds;
Thus, filled with aims unreached, life speeds
Until the blotted record reads,
"Failure!" at last.
 

THE GHOST OF DEACON BROWN

 
In a backwoods town
Lived Deacon Brown,
And he was a miser old;
He would trust no bank,
So he dug, and sank
In the ground a box of gold,
Down deep in the ground a box of gold.
 
 
He hid his gold,
As has been told,
He remembered that he did it;
But sad to say,
On the very next day,
He forgot just where he hid it:
To find his gold he tried and tried
Till he grew faint and sick, and died.
 
 
Then on each dark and gloomy night
A form in phosphorescent white,
A genuine hair-raising sight,
Would wander through the town.
And as it slowly roamed around,
With a spade it dug each foot of ground;
So the folks about
Said there was no doubt
'Twas the ghost of Deacon Brown.
 
 
Around the church
This Ghost would search,
And whenever it would see
The passers-by
Take wings and fly
It would laugh in ghostly glee,
Hee, hee!—it would laugh in ghostly glee.
 
 
And so the town
Went quickly down,
For they said that it was haunted;
And doors and gates,
So the story states,
Bore a notice, "Tenants wanted."
 
 
And the town is now for let,
But the ghost is digging yet.