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The Ballad of Rudolph Reed
© Gwendolyn Brooks
Rudolph Reed was oaken.
His wife was oaken too.
And his two good girls and his good little man
Oakened as they grew.
One Wants A Teller In A Time Like This
© Gwendolyn Brooks
One cannot walk this winding street with pride
Straight-shouldered, tranquil-eyed,
Knowing one knows for sure the way back home.
One wonders if one has a home.
The Casterbridge Captains
© Thomas Hardy
THREE captains went to Indian wars,
And only one returned:
Their mate of yore, he singly wore
The laurels all had earned.
The Dame of Athelhall
© Thomas Hardy
"Soul! Shall I see thy face," she said,
"In one brief hour?
And away with thee from a loveless bed
To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower,
And be thine own unseparated,
And challenge the world's white glower?
Additions
© Thomas Hardy
She cried, "O pray pity me!" Nought would he hear;
Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed,
She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi' her.
The pa'son was told, as the season drew near
To throw over pu'pit the names of the pe?ir
As fitting one flesh to be made.
The Colonel's Solilquy
© Thomas Hardy
"The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . .
It's true I've been accustomed now to home,
And joints get rusty, and one's limbs may grow
More fit to rest than roam.
San Sebastian
© Thomas Hardy
"I watched her to-day; a more comely maid,
As she danced in her muslin bowed with blue,
Round a Hintock maypole never gayed."
--"Aye, aye; I watched her this day, too,
As it happens," the Sergeant said.
The Alarm
© Thomas Hardy
In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
And twilight cloaked the croft.
In Vision I Roamed
© Thomas Hardy
IN vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,
So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,
As though with an awed sense of such ostent;
And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on
In The Old Theatre, Fiesole.
© Thomas Hardy
I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline
Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,
Till came a child who showed an ancient coin
That bore the image of a Constantine.
The Dead Drummer
© Thomas Hardy
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined--just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
The Peasant's Confession
© Thomas Hardy
Good Father!
Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
Mens bones all Europe through.
The Souls of the Slain
© Thomas Hardy
The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race {1} -
Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face -
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
To brood and be still.
Catullus: XXXI
© Thomas Hardy
(After passing Sirmione, April 1887.) Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands
That Neptune strokes in lake and sea,
With what high joy from stranger lands
Doth thy old friend set foot on thee!
Night In The Old Home
© Thomas Hardy
When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast,
And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me,
And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest,
My perished people who housed them here come back to me.
The Burghers
© Thomas Hardy
THE sun had wheeled from Grey's to Dammer's Crest,
And still I mused on that Thing imminent:
At length I sought the High-street to the West.
The Fire At Tranter Sweatley's
© Thomas Hardy
She cried, "O pray pity me!" Nought would he hear;
Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed,
She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi' her.
The pa'son was told, as the season drew near
To throw over pu'pit the names of the peäir
As fitting one flesh to be made.
Song of the Soldier's Wifes.
© Thomas Hardy
I At last! In sight of home again,
Of home again;
No more to range and roam again
As at that bygone time?
The Well-Beloved
© Thomas Hardy
I wayed by star and planet shine
Towards the dear one's home
At Kingsbere, there to make her mine
When the next sun upclomb.
The Caged Thrush Freed and Home Again (Villanelle)
© Thomas Hardy
"Men know but little more than we,
Who count us least of things terrene,
How happy days are made to be!
