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Read Ebook: Chimneysmoke by Morley Christopher Fogarty Thomas Illustrator
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Ebook has 455 lines and 21163 words, and 10 pages
Beware, oh, valiant merchantman, Tread cautious on the pave! Lest some day come some realist, Some haggard soul and grave, A puritan efficientist Who deems thy toys a sin-- He'll stalk thee madly from behind And prick them with a pin!
LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S BOOK PLATE
All lovely things in truth belong To him who best employs them; The house, the picture and the song Are his who most enjoys them.
Perhaps this book holds precious lore, And you may best discern it. If you appreciate it more Than I--why don't return it!
TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL
How many humble hearts have dipped In you, and scrawled their manuscript! Have shared their secrets, told their cares, Their curious and quaint affairs!
Your pool of ink, your scratchy pen, Have moved the lives of unborn men, And watched young people, breathing hard, Put Heaven on a postal card.
THE CRIB
I sought immortality Here and there-- I sent my rockets Into the air: I gave my name A hostage to ink; I dined a critic And bought him drink.
I spurned the weariness Of the flesh; Denied fatigue And began afresh-- If men knew all, How they would laugh! I even planned My epitaph....
And then one night When the dusk was thin I heard the nursery Rites begin:
I heard the tender Soothings said Over a crib, and A small sweet head.
Then in a flash It came to me That there was my Immortality!
THE POET
The barren music of a word or phrase, The futile arts of syllable and stress, He sought. The poetry of common days He did not guess.
The simplest, sweetest rhythms life affords-- Unselfish love, true effort truly done, The tender themes that underlie all words-- He knew not one.
The human cadence and the subtle chime Of little laughters, home and child and wife, He knew not. Artist merely in his rhyme, Not in his life.
TO A DISCARDED MIRROR
Dear glass, before your silver pane My lady used to tend her hair; And yet I search your disc in vain To find some shadow of her there.
I thought your magic, deep and bright, Might still some dear reflection hold: Some glint of eyes or shoulders white, Some flash of gowns she wore of old.
Your polished round must still recall The laughing face, the neck like snow-- Remember, on your lonely wall, That Helen used you long ago!
TO A CHILD
The greatest poem ever known Is one all poets have outgrown: The poetry, innate, untold, Of being only four years old.
Still young enough to be a part Of Nature's great impulsive heart, Born comrade of bird, beast and tree And unselfconscious as the bee--
And yet with lovely reason skilled Each day new paradise to build; Elate explorer of each sense, Without dismay, without pretence!
In your unstained transparent eyes There is no conscience, no surprise: Life's queer conundrums you accept, Your strange divinity still kept.
Being, that now absorbs you, all Harmonious, unit, integral, Will shred into perplexing bits,-- Oh, contradictions of the wits!
And Life, that sets all things in rhyme, May make you poet, too, in time-- But there were days, O tender elf, When you were Poetry itself!
TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN
My child, what painful vistas are before you! What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps-- Indignities from aunts who "just adore" you, And chicken-pox and measles, croup and mumps! I don't wish to dismay you,--it's not fair to, Promoted now from bassinet to crib,-- But, O my babe, what troubles flesh is heir to Since God first made so free with Adam's rib!
TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET
Most tender poet, when the gods confer They save your gracile songs a nook apart, And bless with Time's untainted lavender The ageless April of your singing heart.
You, in an age unbridled, ne'er declined The appointed patience that the Muse decrees, Until, deep in the flower of the mind The hovering words alight, like bridegroom bees.
BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING
When withered leaves are lost in flame Their eddying ghosts, a thin blue haze, Blow through the thickets whence they came On amberlucent autumn days.
The cool green woodland heart receives Their dim, dissolving, phantom breath; In young hereditary leaves They see their happy life-in-death.
My minutes perish as they glow-- Time burns my crazy bonfire through; But ghosts of blackened hours still blow, Eternal Beauty, back to you!
BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER
These are folios of April, All the library of spring, Missals gilt and rubricated With the frost's illumining.
Ruthless, we destroy these treasures, Set the torch with hand profane-- Gone, like Alexandrian vellums, Like the books of burnt Louvain!
Yet these classics are immortal: O collectors, have no fear, For the publisher will issue New editions every year.
A VALENTINE GAME
The climax and the end consist In kissing, and in being kissed.
FOR A BIRTHDAY
At two years old the world he sees Must seem expressly made to please! Such new-found words and games to try, Such sudden mirth, he knows not why, So many curiosities!
As life about him, by degrees Discloses all its pageantries He watches with approval shy At two years old.
With wonders tired he takes his ease At dusk, upon his mother's knees: A little laugh, a little cry, Put toys to bed, then "seepy-bye"-- The world is made of such as these At two years old.
KEATS
When sometimes, on a moony night, I've passed A street-lamp, seen my doubled shadow flee, I've noticed how much darker, clearer cast, The full moon poured her silhouette of me.
Just so of spirits. Beauty's silver light Limns with a ray more pure, and tenderer too: Men's clumsy gestures, to unearthly sight, Surpass the shapes they show by human view.
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