Yes, ’tis the pulse of life! my fears were vain!
Yes, ’tis the pulse of life! my fears were vain! I wake, I breathe, and am myself again. Still in this nether world; no seraph yet! Nor walks my spirit, when the sun is set, With troubled step to haunt the fatal board, Where I died last—by poison or the sword; Blanching each honest cheek […]
New Hampshire by Robert Frost
I met a lady from the South who said (You won’t believe she said it, but she said it): “None of my family ever worked, or had A thing to sell.” I don’t suppose the work Much matters. You may work for all of me. I’ve seen the time I’ve had to work myself. The […]
At the Galleria Shopping Mall by Tony Hoagland
Just past the bin of pastel baby socks and underwear, there are some 49-dollar Chinese-made TVs; one of them singing news about a far-off war, one comparing the breast size of an actress from Hollywood to the breast size of an actress from Bollywood. And here is my niece Lucinda, who is nine and a […]
Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress by Vachel Lindsay
I The arts are old, old as the stones From which man carved the sphinx austere. Deep are the days the old arts bring: Ten thousand years of yesteryear. II She is madonna in an art As wild and young as her sweet eyes: A frail dew flower from this hot lamp That is today’s […]
Blanche Sweet by Vachel Lindsay
MOVING-PICTURE ACTRESS (After seeing the reel called “Oil and Water.”) Beauty has a throne-room In our humorous town, Spoiling its hob-goblins, Laughing shadows down. Rank musicians torture Ragtime ballads vile, But we walk serenely Down the odorous aisle. We forgive the squalor And the boom and squeal For the Great Queen flashes From the moving […]
The Sleepers by Walt Whitman
1 I WANDER all night in my vision, Stepping with light feet, swiftly and noiselessly stepping and stopping, Bending with open eyes over the shut eyes of sleepers, Wandering and confused, lost to myself, ill-assorted, contradictory, Pausing, gazing, bending, and stopping. How solemn they look there, stretch’d and still! How quiet they breathe, the little […]
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. by Walt Whitman
1 FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face; Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me! On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are […]
Carol of Words. by Walt Whitman
1 EARTH, round, rolling, compact—suns, moons, animals—all these are words to be said; Watery, vegetable, sauroid advances—beings, premonitions, lispings of the future, Behold! these are vast words to be said. Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? those curves, angles, dots? No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the […]