The Giant Book of Poetry

by William H. Roetzheim, Editor

  if you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

  or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

  or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,

  and yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

  if you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

  if you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;

  if you can meet with triumph and disaster

  and treat those two imposters just the same;

  if you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

  twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

  or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

  and stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;

  if you can make one heap of all your winnings

  and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

  and lose, and start again at your beginnings

  and never breath a word about your loss;

  if you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

  to serve your turn long after they are gone,

  and so hold on when there is nothing in you

  except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”;

  if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

  or walk with kings—nor lose the common touch;

  if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

  if all men count with you, but none too much;

  if you can fill the unforgiving minute

  with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run—

  yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

  and—which is more—you’ll be a Man my son!

  The Way Through the Woods1

  They shut the road through the woods

  seventy years ago.

  Weather and rain have undone it again,

  and now you would never know

  there was once a road through the woods

  before they planted the trees.

  It is underneath the coppice and heath

  and the thin anemones.

  Only the keeper sees

  that, where the ring-dove broods,

  and the badgers roll at ease,

  there was once a road through the woods.

  Yet if you enter the woods

  of a summer evening late,

  when the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools

  where the otter whistles his mate,

  (they fear not men in the woods,

  because they see so few.)

  You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,

  and the swish of a skirt in the dew,

  steadily cantering through

  the misty solitudes,

  as though they perfectly knew

  the old lost road through the woods…

  but there is no road through the woods.

  We and They1

  Father and Mother, and Me,

  Sister and Auntie say

  all the people like us are We,

  and every one else is They.

  And They live over the sea,

  while We live over the way,

  but-would you believe it?—They look upon We

  as only a sort of They!

  We eat pork and beef

  with cow-horn-handled knives.

  They who gobble Their rice off a leaf,

  are horrified out of Their lives;

  while they who live up a tree,

  and feast on grubs and clay,

  (isn’t it scandalous? ) look upon We

  as a simply disgusting They!

  We shoot birds with a gun.

  They stick lions with spears.

  Their full-dress is un-.

  We dress up to Our ears.

  They like Their friends for tea.

  We like Our friends to stay;

  and, after all that, They look upon We

  as an utterly ignorant They!

  We eat kitcheny food.

  We have doors that latch.

  They drink milk or blood,

  under an open thatch.

  We have Doctors to fee.

  They have Wizards to pay.

  And (impudent heathen!) They look upon We

  as a quite impossible They!

  All good people agree,

  and all good people say,

  all nice people, like Us, are We

  and every one else is They:

  but if you cross over the sea,

  instead of over the way,

  you may end by (think of it!) looking on We

  as only a sort of They!

  William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

  A Dream of Death1

  I dreamed that one had died in a strange place

  near no accustomed hand,

  and they had nailed the boards above her face,

  the peasants of that land,

  wondering to lay her in that solitude,

  and raised above her mound

  a cross they had made out of two bits of wood,

  and planted cypress round;

  and left her to the indifferent stars above

  until I carved these words:

  she was more beautiful than thy first love,

  but now lies under boards.

  Politics2

  ‘In our time the destiny of man presents its meanings in political terms.’ Thomas Mann

  How can I, that girl standing there,

  my attention fix

  on Roman or on Russian

  or on Spanish politics?

  Yet here’s a traveled man that knows

  what he talks about,

  and there’s a politician

  that has both read and thought,

  and maybe what they say is true

  of war and war’s alarms,

  but O that I were young again

  and held her in my arms.

  The Ballad of Father Gilligan1

  The old priest Peter Gilligan

  was weary night and day;

  for half his flock were in their beds,

  or under green sods lay.

  Once, while he nodded on a chair,

  at the moth-hour of eve,

  another poor man sent for him,

  and he began to grieve.

  ‘I have no rest, nor joy, nor peace,

  for people die and die’;

  and after cried he, ’God forgive!

  my body spake, not I!’

  He knelt, and leaning on the chair

  he prayed and fell asleep;

  and the moth-hour went from the fields,

  and stars began to peep.

  They slowly into millions grew,

  and leaves shook in the wind;

  and God covered the world with shade,

  and whispered to mankind.

  Upon the time of sparrow-chirp

  when the moths came once more.

  The old priest Peter Gilligan

  stood upright on the floor.

  ‘Mavrone, mavrone! the man has died

  while I slept on the chair’;

  he roused his horse out of its sleep,

  and rode with little care.

  He rode now as he never rode,

  by rocky lane and fen;

  the sick man’s wife opened the door:

  ‘Father! you come again!’

  ‘And is the poor man dead?’ he cried.

  ‘He died an hour ago.’

  The old priest Peter Gilligan

  in grief swayed to and fro.

  ‘When you were gone, he turned and died

  as merry as a bird.’

  The old priest Peter Gilligan

  he knelt him at that word.

  ‘He Who hath made the night of stars

  for souls who tire and bleed,

  sent one of His great angels down

  to help me in my need.

  ‘He Who is wrapped in purple robes,

  with planets in His care,

  had pity on the least of thingsr />
  asleep upon a chair.’

  The Indian upon God1

  I passed along the water’s edge below the humid trees,

  my spirit rocked in evening light,

  the rushes round my knees,

  my spirit rocked in sleep and sighs;

  and saw the moor-fowl pace

  all dripping on a grassy slope,

  and saw them cease to chase

  each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak:

  who holds the world between His bill

  and made us strong or weak

  is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky.

  The rains are from His dripping wing,

  the moonbeams from His eye.

  I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk:

  who made the world and ruleth it,

  He hangeth on a stalk,

  for I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide

  is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide.

  A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes

  brimful of starlight, and he said:

  The Stamper of the Skies,

  he is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He

  conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me?

  I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say:

  who made the grass and made the worms

  and made my feathers gay,

  he is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night

  his languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

  The Sad Shepherd2

  There was a man whom Sorrow named his Friend,

  and he, of his high comrade Sorrow dreaming,

  went walking with slow steps along the gleaming

  and humming Sands, where windy surges wend:

  and he called loudly to the stars to bend

  from their pale thrones and comfort him, but they

  among themselves laugh on and sing alway:

  and then the man whom Sorrow named his friend

  cried out, Dim sea, hear my most piteous story!

  The sea Swept on and cried her old cry still,

  rolling along in dreams from hill to hill.

  He fled the persecution of her glory

  and, in a far-off, gentle valley stopping,

  cried all his story to the dewdrops glistening.

  But naught they heard, for they are always listening,

  the dewdrops, for the sound of their own dropping.

  And then the man whom Sorrow named his friend

  sought once again the shore, and found a shell,

  and thought, I will my heavy story tell

  till my own words, re-echoing, shall send

  their sadness through a hollow, pearly heart;

  and my own tale again for me shall sing,

  and my own whispering words be comforting,

  and lo! my ancient burden may depart.

  Then he sang softly nigh the pearly rim;

  but the sad dweller by the sea-ways lone

  changed all he sang to inarticulate moan

  among her wildering whirls, forgetting him.

  Shiki (Masaoka Tseunenori) (1867 – 1902)

  By that fallen house1

  Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson

  By that fallen house

  the pear-tree stands full-blooming …

  an ancient battle-site

  Edgar Lee Masters (1868 – 1950)

  Alexander Throckmorton1

  In youth my wings were strong and tireless,

  but I did not know the mountains.

  In age I knew the mountains

  but my weary wings could not follow my vision—

  genius is wisdom and youth.

  Aner Clute2

  Over and over they used to ask me,

  while buying the wine or the beer,

  in Peoria first, and later in Chicago,

  Denver, Frisco, New York, wherever I lived,

  how I happened to lead the life,

  and what was the start of it.

  Well, I told them a silk dress,

  and a promise of marriage from a rich man—

  (it was Lucius Atherton).

  But that was not really it at all.

  Suppose a boy steals an apple

  from the tray at the grocery store,

  and they all begin to call him a thief,

  the editor, minister, judge, and all the people—

  “A thief,” “a thief,” “a thief,” wherever he goes.

  And he can’t get work, and he can’t get bread

  without stealing it, why, the boy will steal.

  It’s the way the people regard the theft of the apple

  that makes the boy what he is.

  Conrad Siever3

  Not in that wasted garden

  where bodies are drawn into grass

  that feeds no flocks, and into evergreens

  that bear no fruit—

  there where along the shaded walks

  vain sighs are heard,

  and vainer dreams are dreamed

  of close communion with departed souls—

  but here under the apple tree

  I loved and watched and pruned

  with gnarled hands

  in the long, long years;

  here under the roots of this northern-spy

  to move in the chemic change and circle of life,

  into the soil and into the flesh of the tree,

  and into the living epitaphs

  of redder apples!

  Fiddler Jones1

  The earth keeps some vibration going

  there in your heart, and that is you.

  And if the people find you can fiddle,

  why, fiddle you must, for all your life.

  What do you see, a harvest of clover?

  Or a meadow to walk through to the river?

  The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands

  for beeves hereafter ready for market;

  or else you hear the rustle of skirts

  like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.

  To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust

  or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;

  they looked to me like Red-Head Sammy

  stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”

  How could I till my forty acres

  not to speak of getting more,

  with a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos

  stirred in my brain by crows and robins

  and the creak of a wind-mill—only these?

  And I never started to plow in my life

  that some one did not stop in the road

  and take me away to a dance or picnic.

  I ended up with forty acres;

  I ended up with a broken fiddle—

  and a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,

  and not a single regret.

  Silas Dement2

  It was moon-light, and the earth sparkled

  with new-fallen frost.

  It was midnight and not a soul abroad.

  Out of the chimney of the court-house

  a gray-hound of smoke leapt and chased

  the northwest wind.

  I carried a ladder to the landing of the stairs

  and leaned it against the frame of the trap-door

  in the ceiling of the portico,

  and I crawled under the roof amid the rafters

  and flung among the seasoned timbers

  a lighted handful of oil-soaked waste.

  Then I came down and slunk away.

  In a little while the fire-bell rang—

  Clang! Clang! Clang!

  And the Spoon River ladder company

  came with a dozen buckets and began to pour water

  on the glorious bon-fire, growing hotter,

  higher and brighter, till the walls fell in,

  and the limestone colu
mns where Lincoln stood

  crashed like trees when the woodman fells them…

  when I came back from Joliet

  there was a new court house with a dome.

  For I was punished like all who destroy

  the past for the sake of the future.

  Tom Beatty1

  I was a lawyer like Harmon Whitney

  or Kinsey Keene or Garrison Standard,

  for I tried the rights of property,

  although by lamp-light, for thirty years,

  in that poker room in the opera house.

  And I say to you that Life’s a gambler

  head and shoulders above us all.

  No mayor alive can close the house.

  And if you lose, you can squeal as you will;

  you’ll not get back your money.

  He makes the percentage hard to conquer;

  he stacks the cards to catch your weakness

  and not to meet your strength.

  And he gives you seventy years to play:

  for if you cannot win in seventy

  you cannot win at all.

  So, if you lose, get out of the room—

  get out of the room when your time is up.

  It’s mean to sit and fumble the cards,

  and curse your losses, leaden-eyed,

  whining to try and try.

  Roka (1868 – 1927)

  Winter rain deepens2

  Translated from the Japanese by Peter Beilenson

  Winter rain deepens

  lichened letters on the grave …

  and my old sadness

  Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935)

  Amaryllis1

  Once, when I wandered in the woods alone,

  an old man tottered up to me and said,

  “Come, friend, and see the grave that I have made

  for Amaryllis.” There was in the tone

  of his complaint such quaver and such moan

  that I took pity on him and obeyed,

  and long stood looking where his hands had laid

  an ancient woman, shrunk to skin and bone.

  Far out beyond the forest I could hear

  the calling of loud progress, and the bold

  incessant scream of commerce ringing clear;

  but though the trumpets of the world were glad,

  it made me lonely and it made me sad