I.
FREE again! Free again! eastward and westward, before me, behind me,
Wide lies Australia! and free are my feet, as my soul is, to roam!
Oh joy unwonted of space undetermined! No limit assigned me!
Freedom conditioned by nought save the need and desire of a home!

Brook Of Sanguinetto,

© John Kenyon

NEAR THE LAKE OF THRASYMENE.

To Mr Fashionable Fiancee

© Peter McArthur

I SOMETIMES think it would be sweet
If we were like the olden lovers
The simple-hearted ones we meet
In musty books with vellum covers.

To The Reader

© John Bunyan

The title page will show, if there thou look,
Who are the proper subjects of this book.
They're boys and girls of all sorts and degrees,

Song of Myself

© Walt Whitman

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

Memory As a Hearing Aid

© Tony Hoagland

Somewhere, someone is asking a question,
and I stand squinting at the classroom
with one hand cupped behind my ear,
trying to figure out where that voice is coming from.

Hope, Like The Short-lived Ray That Gleams Awhile

© William Cowper

Hope, like the short-lived ray that gleams awhile
Through wintry skies, upon the frozen waste,
Cheers e'en the face of misery to a smile;
But soon the momentary pleasure's past.

"How dark, how quiet sleeps the vale below!"

© Robert Laurence Binyon

How dark, how quiet sleeps the vale below!
In the dim farms, look, not a window shines:
Distantly heard among the lonely pines,
How soft the languid autumn breezes flow

From 'In Egypt'

© Virna Sheard

O WHEN the desert blossomed like a mystic silver rose,
And the moon shone on the palace, deep guarded to the gate,
And softly touched the lowly homes fast barred against their foes,
And lit the faces hewn of stone, that seemed to watch and wait

Idem the Same: A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson

I knew too that through them I knew too that he was through, I knew too that he threw them. I knew too that they were through, I knew too I knew too, I knew I knew them.

From The Wreck

"Turn out, boys!" - "What's up with our super. to-night?
The man's mad - Two hours to daybreak I'd swear -
Stark mad - why, there isn't a glimmer of light."
"Take Bolingbroke, Alec, give Jack the young mare;

"Old Bob White"

Old Bob White's a funny bird!--

Funniest you ever heard!--

Asses

"I KNOW where I'd get
An ass that would do,
If I had the money
A pound or two."

The Tear

What bright soft thing is this?
Sweet Mary, the fair eyes’ expense?
A moist spark it is,
A wat’ry diamond; from whence
The very term, I think, was found
The water of a diamond.

(Amidst the rush and roar of life...)

© Anselm Hollo

Amidst the rush and roar of life, O beauty, carved in stone, you stand mute and still, alone and aloof.
Great Time sits enamoured at your feet and repeats to you:
Speak, speak to me, my love; speak, my mute bride!
But your speech is shut up in stone, O you immovably fair!