Oh how I love the laughing sea,

Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill,And the breakers in the bay are moaning drear.The toilful hours are sped, the boys are long abed,And I alone a weary vigil keep;In the sightless, sullen sky I can hear the night-hawk cry,And the frogs in frenzied chorus from the creek.And somehow the embers’…

And let the grains sift through his handWith infantile delight;Just like a child, so soft and fair,Though he was twenty-five –An innocent, my mother -careHad kept so long alive.Oh it is hard to bear a crossFor five-and-twenty years;A daft son and a husband’s lossAre woes out-weighing tears.Yet bright and beautiful was he,Though barely could he…

For I was wanton as the windAnd tameless as the tide;So scornful of domestic hearth,And bordered garden path,I sought the wilder ways of earth,The roads of wrath.It scares me now to think of howFoolhardily I fared;Though mighty scarred of pelt and powA dozen deaths I’ve dared;Yet there are trails I would explore,And wilds that for…

I bough a pile of noble stones,And half a year a sculptor spentTo hew my marble monument,The stateliest to rear its headIn all this city of the dead.And generations passing throughWill gape, and ask: What did he doTo earn this tomb so rich and rare,In Attic grace beyond compare?How was his life in honour spent,To…

Whether he die in the light o’ day or under the peak-faced moon;In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead–I swore on…

Purveyed me on a silver tray,Immaculately dressed.I rouse me when the dawn is bright;I leap into the sea,Returning with a rare delightTo honey, toast and tea.My appetite was razor edgedWhen I was in my prime;To eggs and bacon I was pledged . . .Ala! the March of Time;For now a genial old gentWith journal on…