33 quotes
States are not made, nor patched; they grow:
Grow slow through centuries of pain,
And grow correctly in the main;
But only grow by certain laws,
Of certain bits in certain jaws.
My blood did leap, my flesh did revel,
Saul Kane was tokened to the devil.
The Everlasting Mercy (1919)
The social states of human kinds
Are made by multitudes of minds,
And after multitudes of years
A little human growth appears
Worth having, even to the soul
Who sees most plain it's not the whole.
And in the ghostly palm-trees the sleepy tune
Of the quiet voice calling me, the long low croon
Of the steady Trade Winds blowing.
Salt-Water Ballads (1902)
Will you not come home, brother? you have been long away,
It's April, and blossom time, and white is the spray;
And bright is the sun, brother, and warm is the rain, -
Will you not come home, brother, home to us again?
Salt-Water Ballads (1902)
From '41 to '51
I was my folk's contrary son;
I bit my father's hand right through
And broke my mother's heart in two.
The Everlasting Mercy (1919)
What have I done, or tried, or said
In thanks to that dear woman dead?
Men triumph over women still,
Men trample women's rights at will,
And man's lust roves the world untamed.
* * * *
O grave, keep shut lest I be shamed.
Ballads and Poems (1910)
When the last sea is sailed and the last shallow charted,
When the last field is reaped and the last harvest stored,
When the last fire is out and the last guest departed
Grant the last prayer that I shall pray, Be good to me, O Lord.
Then watchers of the life of man will know
How spirits quickened in this ended reign,
Till what was centuries stagnant 'gan to flow
And what was centuries fettered moved again;
How with this Ruler entered into rest
The country's very self from slumber stirred,
To charity as guide and hope as guest
And ventured to a nobler marching word.
On the Passing of King George V (1936)
It's a warm wind, the west wind, full of birds' cries;
I never hear the west wind but tears are in my eyes.
For it comes from the west lands, the old brown hills,
And April's in the west wind, and daffodils.
Salt-Water Ballads (1902)
Each one could be a Jesus mild,
Each one has been a little child,
A little child with laughing look,
A lovely white unwritten book;
A book that God will take, my friend,
As each goes out at journey's end.
On the long dusty ribbon of the long city street,
The pageant of life is passing me on multitudinous feet,
With a word here of the hills, and a song there of the sea
And—the great movement changes—the pageant passes me.
Out beyond the sunset, could I but find the way,
Is a sleepy blue laguna which widens to a bay,
And there's the Blessed City -- so the sailors say --
The Golden City of St. Mary.
Salt-Water Ballads (1902)