The Laws of Motion
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away
The laws of science teach us a pound of gold weighs as
much as a pound of flour though if dropped from any
undetermined height in their natural state one would
reach bottom and one would fly away
We shall come tomorrow morning, who were not to have her love,
We shall bring no face of envy but a gift of praise and lilies
To the stately ceremonial we are not the heroes of.
Let the sisters now attend her, who are red-eyed, who are wroth;
They were younger, she was finer, for they wearied of the waiting
And they married them to merchants, being unbelievers both.
Beautifully Janet slept
Till it was deeply morning. She woke then
And thought about her dainty-feathered hen,
To see how it had kept.
One kiss she gave her mother,
Only a small one gave she to her daddy
Who would have kissed each curl of his shining baby;
No kiss at all for her brother.
It had better been hidden
But the Poets inform:
We are chattel and liege
Of an undying Worm.
Were you, Will, disheartened,
When all Stratford’ s gentry
Left their Queen and took service
In his low-lying country?
How many white cities
And grey fleets on the storm
Have proud-builded, hard-battled,
For this undying Worm?
Two evils, monstrous either one apart,
Possessed me, and were long and loath at going:
A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart,
And in the wood the furious winter blowing.
Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks,
And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter,
I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks,
Far from my cause, my proper heat and center.
Like a fawn from the arrow, startled and wild,
A woman swept by us, bearing a child;
In her eye was the night of a settled despair,
And her brow was o’ ershaded with anguish and care.
She was nearing the river — in reaching the brink,
She heeded no danger, she paused not to think!
For she is a mother — her child is a slave —
And she’ ll give him his freedom, or find him a grave!
Very soon the Yankee teachers
Came down and set up school;
But, oh! how the Rebs did hate it, —
It was agin’ their rule.
Our masters always tried to hide
Book learning from our eyes;
Knowledge did’ nt agree with slavery —
’ Twould make us all too wise.
The sale began — young girls were there,
Defenseless in their wretchedness,
Whose stifled sobs of deep despair
Revealed their anguish and distress.
And mothers stood, with streaming eyes,
And saw their dearest children sold;
Unheeded rose their bitter cries,
While tyrants bartered them for gold.
Heard you that shriek? It rose
So wildly on the air,
It seem’ d as if a burden’ d heart
Was breaking in despair.
Saw you those hands so sadly clasped —
The bowed and feeble head —
The shuddering of that fragile form —
That look of grief and dread?
PART I
I
In a far country, and a distant age,
Ere sprites and fays had bade farewell to earth,
A boy was born of humble parentage;
The stars that shone upon his lonely birth
Did seem to promise sovereignty and fame —
Yet no tradition hath preserved his name.