Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

Learning to Read

© Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

Very soon the Yankee teachers
Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it,—
It was agin’ their rule.

The Dole Of Jarl Thorkell

© John Greenleaf Whittier

THE land was pale with famine
And racked with fever-pain;
The frozen fiords were fishless,
The earth withheld her grain.

The Wheel

© Vinda Karandikar

Someone is about to come but doesn't. Is about

to turn on the stairs but doesn't.

Before a Statue of Achilles

© George Santayana

I

Behoild Pelides with his yellow hair,

Sire

© William Stanley Merwin

Here comes the shadow not looking where it is going,
And the whole night will fall; it is time.
Here comes the little wind which the hour
Drags with it everywhere like an empty wagon through leaves.
Here comes my ignorance shuffling after them
Asking them what they are doing.

Paeans

© Virna Sheard

Oh! I will hold fast to Joy!
I will not let him depart--
He shall close his beautiful rainbow wings
And sing his song in my heart.

The Raggedy Man

© James Whitcomb Riley

O the Raggedy Man! He works fer Pa;

An' he's the goodest man ever you saw!

Akiba

THE WAY OUT

Famous

The loud voice is famous to silence,
which knew it would inherit the earth
before anybody said so.

America

I

Where the wings of a sunny Dome expand

Lines In Memory Of Edmund Morris

How shall we transmit in tendril-like images,
The tenuous tremor in the tissues of ether,
Before the round of colour buds like the dome of a shrine,
The preconscious moment when love has fluttered in the bosom,
Before it begins to ache?

Almswomen

Many a time they kiss and cry, and pray
That both be summoned in the self-same day,
And wiseman linnet tinkling in his cage
End too with them the friendship of old age,
And all together leave their treasured room
Some bell-like evening when the may's in bloom.