Why, Mistress Chloe, do you bother

They clambered and rollicked in heathenish styleIn the boughs of their cocoanut tree.They didn’t fret much about clothing and suchAnd they recked not a whit of the illsThat sometimes accrueFrom having to doWith tailor and laundry bills.The two little skeezucks once heard of a FairFar off from their native isle,And they asked of King Fan…

The wild-flowers uv the hillside bent down their heads to hearThe music uv the little feet that had somehow grown so dear;The magpies, like winged shadders, wuz a-flutterin’ to an’ froAmong the rocks an’ holler stumps in the ragged gulch below;The pines an’ hemlocks tosst their boughs (like they wuz arms) and madeSoft, sollum music…

Over the stretch of sands;A sullen rock in a sea of white–A ghostly shadow in ghostly light,Peering and moaning it stands.‘Oh, is it the king that rides this way–Oh, is it the king that rides so free?I have looked for the king this many a day,But the years that mock me will not sayWhy tarrieth…

Come now, O lute, I pri’ thee come–Inspire a song of Latium.A Lesbian first thy glories proved–In arms and in repose he lovedTo sweep thy dulcet strings and raiseHis voice in Love’s and Liber’s praise;The Muses, too, and him who clingsTo Mother Venus’ apron-strings,And Lycus beautiful, he sungIn those old days when you were young.O…

And oh, the bitter sadness with which my soul was fraughtWhen I rambled home at nightfall with the puny string I’d caught!And, oh, the indignation and the valor I’d displayWhen I claimed that all the biggest fish I’d caught had got away!Sometimes it was the rusty hooks, sometimes the fragile lines,And many times the treacherous…

We’ve neither spinsters nor relics out West–These do I love, and these alone.