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The Christmas Tree
© Robert William Service
In the dark and damp of the alley cold,
Lay the Christmas tree that hadn't been sold;
By a shopman dourly thrown outside;
With the ruck and rubble of Christmas-tide;
Soldier Boy
© Robert William Service
My soldier boy has crossed the sea
To fight the foeman;
But he'll come back to make of me
And honest woman.
The Twins
© Robert William Service
There were two brothers, John and James,
And when the town went up in flames,
To save the house of James dashed John,
Then turned, and lo! his own was gone.
The Shooting Of Dan McGrew
© Robert William Service
A bunch of the boys were whooping it up in the Malamute saloon;
The kid that handles the music-box was hitting a jag-time tune;
Back of the bar, in a solo game, sat Dangerous Dan McGrew,
And watching his luck was his light-o'-love, the lady that's known as Lou.
Success
© Robert William Service
You ask me what I call Success -
It is, I wonder, Happiness?It is not wealth, it is not fame,
Nor rank, nor power nor honoured name.
It is not triumph in the Arts -
Home And Love
© Robert William Service
Just Home and Love! the words are small
Four little letters unto each;
And yet you will not find in all
The wide and gracious range of speech
Inspiration
© Robert William Service
How often have I started out
With no thought in my noodle,
And wandered here and there about,
Where fancy bade me toddle;
Rhyme Builder
© Robert William Service
I envy not those gay galoots
Who count on dying in their boots;
For that, to tell the sober truth
Sould be the privilege of youth;
But aged bones are better sped
To heaven from a downy bed.
The Cremation Of Sam McGee
© Robert William Service
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam 'round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he'd often say in his homely way that he'd "sooner live in hell".
Prelude to an Evening
© John Crowe Ransom
Do not enforce the tired wolf
Dragging his infected wound homeward
To sit tonight with the warm children
Naming the pretty kings of France.
Painted Head
© John Crowe Ransom
By dark severance the apparition head
Smiles from the air a capital on no
Column or a Platonic perhaps head
On a canvas sky depending from nothing;
Necrological
© John Crowe Ransom
The friar had said his paternosters duly
And scourged his limbs, and afterwards would have slept;
But with much riddling his head became unruly,
He arose, from the quiet monastery he crept.
Train Ride
© Federico Garcia Lorca
After rain, through afterglow, the unfolding fan
of railway landscape sidled onthe pivot
of a larger arc into the green of evening;
I remembered that noon I saw a gradual bud
Vocation
© Rabindranath Tagore
When the gong sounds ten in the morning and I walk to school by our
lane.
Every day I meet the hawker crying, "Bangles, crystal
bangles!"
The Wicked Postman
© Rabindranath Tagore
Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me,
mother dear?
The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all
wet, and you don't mind it.
The Rainy Day
© Rabindranath Tagore
Sullen clouds are gathering fast over the black fringe of the
forest.
O child, do not go out!
The palm trees in a row by the lake are smiting their heads
The Little Big Man
© Rabindranath Tagore
I am small because I am a little child. I shall be big when I am
as old as my father is.
My teacher will come and say, "It is late, bring your slate
and your books."
The Land of the Exile
© Rabindranath Tagore
Mother, the light has grown grey in the sky; I do not know what
the time is.
There is no fun in my play, so I have come to you. It is
Saturday, our holiday.
The Gardener XLIII: No, My Friends
© Rabindranath Tagore
No, my friends, I shall never be an
ascetic, whatever you may say.
I shall never be and ascetic if she
does not take the vow with me.
The Gardener LXXXIV: Over the Green
© Rabindranath Tagore
Over the green and yellow rice-fields
sweep the shadows of the autumn
clouds followed by the swift-chasing
sun.
