A MORE ANCIENT MARINER By Bliss Carman HE swarthy bee is a buccaneer, As he sails the seas of clover. A waif of the goblin pirate crew, He steers for the open verge of blue His flimsy sails abroad on the wind Are shivered with fairy thunder; On a line that sings to the light of his wings He harries the ports of the Hollyhocks, He hangs in the Willows a night and a day; He woos the Poppy and weds the Peach, And then like a tramp abandons each There's not a soul in the garden world Or, so they say! But I have my doubts; He dares to boast, along the coast, He pilfers from every port of the wind, His morals are mixed, but his will is fixed; And follows an instinct, compass-sure, And that is why, when he comes to die, Than some one I know who thinks just so, He never could box the compass round; But he knows the gates of the Sundown Straits, He never could see the Rule of Three, He knows the smell of the hydromel Out in the day, hap-hazard, alone, He steers and steers on the slant of the gale, And there's never an unknown course to sail He drones along with his rough sea-song This devil-may-care, till he makes his lair He looks like a gentleman, lives like a lord, With the mercury at zero. THE SONG THE ORIOLE SINGS By William Dean Howells HERE is a bird that comes and sings In a professor's garden-trees; Upon the English oak he swings, And tilts and tosses in the breeze. I know his name, I know his note, O oriole, it is the song You sang me from the cottonwood, Too young to feel that I was young, Too glad to guess if life were good. And while I hark, before my door, And on the bank that rises steep, The blackbirds jangle in the tops Below, the bridge—a noonday fear And on these alien coasts, above, Where silver ripples break the stream's Ah, nothing, nothing! Commonest things: And all the rest belongs to death. But oriole, my oriole, Were some bright seraph sent from bliss With songs of heaven to win my soul From simple memories such as this, What could he tell to tempt my ear From you? What high thing could there be, So tenderly and sweetly dear As my lost boyhood is to me? |