Individually and collectively, Cherokee people possess an extraordinary ability to face down adversity and continue moving forward.
quote by Wilma Mankiller
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Related quotes
Cherokee Bend
His father was a man who could never understand
The shame on a red mans face
So they lived in the hills and they never came down
But to trade in the white mans place
It was early in the spring when the snow had disappeared
They came down with a bag of skins
In the fall of the year of 1910
Daddy died by the rope down in cherokee bend.
Daddy didnt like what the white man said
bout the dirty little kid at his side
Daddy didnt like what the white man did
Nor the deal or the way that he lied
There was blood on the floor of the government store
When the men took his daddy away
But the boy stayed back till he come to his end
And he run like the wind from cherokee bend.
Now the mother was alone and the winter was at hand
And she prayed to her spirit kin
It was warm in the lodge in the kentucky hills
On the day when the boy came in
Then a blizzard came down and it covered up the door
Till they thought that it never would end
And he told her the tale of the terrible affair
In the government store down in cherokee bend
Daddy didnt like what the white man said
bout the dirty little kid at his side
Daddy didnt like what the white man did
Nor the deal or the way that he lied
For three long days and three long nights
They wept and they mourned and then
She returned to her work and her weavin
And they tried to forget about cherokee bend
Now the boy wasnt big but he hunted what he could
And they lived for a time that way
But the food run low and the meat went bad
And she said to the boy one day
Im leaving tonight and I never will return
From the land of my spirit kin
You must take what you need and trade what you can
For a red mans grave down in cherokee bend
It wasnt very long till she closed her eyes
And he wrapped her in a robe
He found her a place on the side of the hill
And he buried her in the snow
Early in the spring he was seen in the town
With his load looking ragged and thin
Not a year had gone by till he stood once again
In the government store down in cherokee bend
He was ten years tall and a redskin too
So he hadnt much face to save
[...] Read more
song performed by Gordon Lightfoot
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Cherokee Louise
Cherokee louise is hiding in this tunnel
In the broadway bridge
Were crawling on our knees
Weve got flashlights and batteries
Weve got cold cuts from the fridge
Last year about this time
We used to climb up in the branches
Just to sway there in some breeze
Now the cops on the street
They want cherokee louise
People like to talk
Tongues are waggin over fences
Waggin over phones
All their doors are locked
God she cant even come to our house
But I know where shell go
To the place where you can stand
And press your hands like it was bubblebath
In dust piled high as me
Down under the street
My friend
Poor cherokee louise
Ever since we turned 13
Its like a minefield
Walking to the door
Going out you get the 3rd degree
And comin in you get the 3rd world war
Tuesday after school
We put our pennies on the rails
And when the train went by
We were jumpin round like fools
Goin look no heads or tails
Goin look my lucky prize
She runs home to her foster dad
He opens up a zipper
And he yanks her to her knees
Oh please be here-please
My friend
Poor cherokee louise
Cherokee louise is hiding in this tunnel
In the broadway bridge
Were crawling on our knees
Weve got archie and silver screen
I know where she is
The place where you can stand
And press your hand like it was bubblebath
In dust piled high as me
Down under the street
My friend
Poor cherokee louise
[...] Read more
song performed by Joni Mitchell
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Indian Outlaw
(tommy barnes/gene simmons/john d. loudermilk)
(track 6 - time 3:02)
Im an indian outlaw
Half cherokee and choctaw
My baby shes a chippewa
Shes one of a kind
All my friends call me bear claw
The village cheaftin is my paw-paw
He gets his orders from my maw-maw
She makes him walk the line
You can find me in my wigwam
Ill be beatin on my tom-tom
Pull out the pipe and smoke you some
Hey and pass it around
cause Im an indian outlaw
Half cherokee and choctaw
My baby shes a chippewa
Shes one of a kind
I aint lookin for trouble
We can ride my pony double
Make your little heart bubble
Lord like a glass of wine
I remember the medicine man
He caught runnin water in my hands
Drug me around by my headband
Said I wasnt her kind
cause Im an indian outlaw
Half cherokee and choctaw
My baby shes a chippewa
Shes one of a kind
I can kill a deer or buffalo
With just my arrow and my hickory bow
From a hundred yards dont you know
I do it all the time
They all gather round my teepee
Late at night tryin to catch a peek at me
In nothin but my buffalo briefs
I got em standin in line
cause Im an indian outlaw
Half cherokee and choctaw
My baby shes a chippewa
Shes one of a kind
Cherokee people
Cherokee tribe
So proud to live
So proud to die
song performed by Tim McGraw
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Two Chocolate Labs
This was wrote to my wife, Sharon about our two chocolate labs. Biloxi is male, Cherokee is female. One we named for the place we were engaged, the other the place we had our honeymoon.
When you look at our two Chocolate Labs tell me what do you see.
Do you see just two big dogs named Biloxi and the other Cherokee.
Next time you look at them, look at them hard.
They are more than two Chocolate Labs out in our yard.
Cherokee is a symbol of our never ending love.
She is to remind us that our marriage is blessed from above.
Cherokee is the place that I ask you to marry me by a cold rolling mountain stream.
This is the place that we will hold in our hearts and keep in our dreams.
Biloxi is a symbol of the love that we have and share.
He is to remind us of a place that is the answer to our prayers.
Biloxi is the place where our honeymoon was to be.
This is the place that sealed our love for then, now and all eternity.
Biloxi and Cherokee are more than two Chocolate Labs you see.
Yes, they are two symbols of two special places called Biloxi and the other Cherokee.
So next time you look at them, look and them with love.
These are our two special gifts to us, from heaven above.
poem by Eddie Fullbright
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The House Of Dust: Complete
I.
The sun goes down in a cold pale flare of light.
The trees grow dark: the shadows lean to the east:
And lights wink out through the windows, one by one.
A clamor of frosty sirens mourns at the night.
Pale slate-grey clouds whirl up from the sunken sun.
And the wandering one, the inquisitive dreamer of dreams,
The eternal asker of answers, stands in the street,
And lifts his palms for the first cold ghost of rain.
The purple lights leap down the hill before him.
The gorgeous night has begun again.
'I will ask them all, I will ask them all their dreams,
I will hold my light above them and seek their faces.
I will hear them whisper, invisible in their veins . . .'
The eternal asker of answers becomes as the darkness,
Or as a wind blown over a myriad forest,
Or as the numberless voices of long-drawn rains.
We hear him and take him among us, like a wind of music,
Like the ghost of a music we have somewhere heard;
We crowd through the streets in a dazzle of pallid lamplight,
We pour in a sinister wave, ascend a stair,
With laughter and cry, and word upon murmured word;
We flow, we descend, we turn . . . and the eternal dreamer
Moves among us like light, like evening air . . .
Good-night! Good-night! Good-night! We go our ways,
The rain runs over the pavement before our feet,
The cold rain falls, the rain sings.
We walk, we run, we ride. We turn our faces
To what the eternal evening brings.
Our hands are hot and raw with the stones we have laid,
We have built a tower of stone high into the sky,
We have built a city of towers.
Our hands are light, they are singing with emptiness.
Our souls are light; they have shaken a burden of hours . . .
What did we build it for? Was it all a dream? . . .
Ghostly above us in lamplight the towers gleam . . .
And after a while they will fall to dust and rain;
Or else we will tear them down with impatient hands;
And hew rock out of the earth, and build them again.
II.
[...] Read more
poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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Face To Face
We never talk to one another
We just disagree
Im the one who runs for cover
And you turn your back on me
They say nothings gonna last forever
But some things are worth fighting for
Yeah, well love could bring us back together
But love dont come round here no more
The words unspoken in the night
Locked away in my heart
And Im feeling out of place
But if love is the key
Let it open the door
So well be standing -- face to face
You never want to see me face to face
Think it over
Face to face
If only it could be just face to face
Baby you and me
Face to face
I may be better off without it
I cant go on this way
Time has come to talk about it
This is our judgement day
You know we swore it would last forever
Always felt so sure it would
But its looking like now or never
Time to turn a bad thing into good
The words that echo in the night
Theyre fading away
And theyre gone without a trace
Now its up to you and me
Lets open the door
And meet each other -- face to face
Its time we saw each other face to face
To talk it over
Face to face
You know its gotta be just face to face
Baby you and me
Face to face
We gotta see each other -- face to face
And talk about it
Face to face
Hope it aint too late to meet face to face
Just you and me
(solo)
Face to face
Its time we saw each other face to face
To talk it over
Face to face
[...] Read more
song performed by Foreigner
Added by Lucian Velea
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Lancelot And Elaine
Elaine the fair, Elaine the loveable,
Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat,
High in her chamber up a tower to the east
Guarded the sacred shield of Lancelot;
Which first she placed where the morning's earliest ray
Might strike it, and awake her with the gleam;
Then fearing rust or soilure fashioned for it
A case of silk, and braided thereupon
All the devices blazoned on the shield
In their own tinct, and added, of her wit,
A border fantasy of branch and flower,
And yellow-throated nestling in the nest.
Nor rested thus content, but day by day,
Leaving her household and good father, climbed
That eastern tower, and entering barred her door,
Stript off the case, and read the naked shield,
Now guessed a hidden meaning in his arms,
Now made a pretty history to herself
Of every dint a sword had beaten in it,
And every scratch a lance had made upon it,
Conjecturing when and where: this cut is fresh;
That ten years back; this dealt him at Caerlyle;
That at Caerleon; this at Camelot:
And ah God's mercy, what a stroke was there!
And here a thrust that might have killed, but God
Broke the strong lance, and rolled his enemy down,
And saved him: so she lived in fantasy.
How came the lily maid by that good shield
Of Lancelot, she that knew not even his name?
He left it with her, when he rode to tilt
For the great diamond in the diamond jousts,
Which Arthur had ordained, and by that name
Had named them, since a diamond was the prize.
For Arthur, long before they crowned him King,
Roving the trackless realms of Lyonnesse,
Had found a glen, gray boulder and black tarn.
A horror lived about the tarn, and clave
Like its own mists to all the mountain side:
For here two brothers, one a king, had met
And fought together; but their names were lost;
And each had slain his brother at a blow;
And down they fell and made the glen abhorred:
And there they lay till all their bones were bleached,
And lichened into colour with the crags:
And he, that once was king, had on a crown
Of diamonds, one in front, and four aside.
And Arthur came, and labouring up the pass,
All in a misty moonshine, unawares
[...] Read more
poem by Alfred Lord Tennyson
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Give Your Heart To The Hawks
1 he apples hung until a wind at the equinox,
That heaped the beach with black weed, filled the dry grass
Under the old trees with rosy fruit.
In the morning Fayne Fraser gathered the sound ones into a
basket,
The bruised ones into a pan. One place they lay so thickly
She knelt to reach them.
Her husband's brother passing
Along the broken fence of the stubble-field,
His quick brown eyes took in one moving glance
A little gopher-snake at his feet flowing through the stubble
To gain the fence, and Fayne crouched after apples
With her mop of red hair like a glowing coal
Against the shadow in the garden. The small shapely reptile
Flowed into a thicket of dead thistle-stalks
Around a fence-post, but its tail was not hidden.
The young man drew it all out, and as the coil
Whipped over his wrist, smiled at it; he stepped carefully
Across the sag of the wire. When Fayne looked up
His hand was hidden; she looked over her shoulder
And twitched her sunburnt lips from small white teeth
To answer the spark of malice in his eyes, but turned
To the apples, intent again. Michael looked down
At her white neck, rarely touched by the sun,
But now the cinnabar-colored hair fell off from it;
And her shoulders in the light-blue shirt, and long legs like a boy's
Bare-ankled in blue-jean trousers, the country wear;
He stooped quietly and slipped the small cool snake
Up the blue-denim leg. Fayne screamed and writhed,
Clutching her thigh. 'Michael, you beast.' She stood up
And stroked her leg, with little sharp cries, the slender invader
Fell down her ankle.
Fayne snatched for it and missed;
Michael stood by rejoicing, his rather small
Finely cut features in a dance of delight;
Fayne with one sweep flung at his face
All the bruised and half-spoiled apples in the pan,
[...] Read more
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Race Babbling
This world is moving much to fast
Theyre race babbling
This world is moving much to fast
The ends unravelling
Mans production
Lifes corruption
World destruct
Help me people
Save you people
Gods induction
Lifes construction
These instruct
Will save every living thing
Cant you see that
Lifes connected
You need us to live
Both we dont need you
This world is moving much to fast
Theyre race babbling
This world is moving much to fast
Theyre race babbling
This world is moving much to fast
The ends unravelling
This world is moving much too fast
You cant conceive the nucleus of all
Begins inside a tiny seed
And what you see as insignificant
Mans production
Lifes corruption
World destruct
Help me people
Save you people
Gods induction
Lifes construction
These instruct
Will save every living thing
Cant you see that
Lifes connected
You need us to live
Both we dont need you
This world is moving much to fast
This world is moving much to fast
Theyre race babbling
This world is moving much to fast
Theyre space travelling
This world is moving much to fast
Theyre race babbling
This world is moving much to fast
The ends unravelling
This world is moving much to fast
[...] Read more
song performed by Stevie Wonder
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From A Moving Train
Written by gerry beckley, 1998
Found on human nature.
Ive seen the ides of march
And Ive seen the fall of rome
Ive seen all kinds of stuff
But I never see my home
If my life-line is
These million miles of track
One thing I know by now
There is no turning back
From a moving train
From a moving train
From a moving train
From a moving train
If every venture was
A path to no avail
Id still be rolling down
This never ending trail
If we had a destination
In our sights
We would be helpless as
We passed it in the night
From a moving train (hear the engine running)
From a moving train (you can get on board)
From a moving train (hear the motor humming)
From a moving train (see, youve gotta see the light)
And if by chance you find a woman
That you might love along the way
You better hold her tight
Tell her everythings alright
Or she might jump along the way
From a moving train (hear the engine running)
From a moving train (you can get on board)
From a moving train (hear the motor humming)
From a moving train (see, youve gotta see the light)
From a moving train (hear the engine running)
From a moving train (you can get on board)
From a moving train (hear the motor humming)
From a moving train (see, youve gotta see the light)
song performed by America
Added by Lucian Velea
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Sixth Book
THE English have a scornful insular way
Of calling the French light. The levity
Is in the judgment only, which yet stands;
For say a foolish thing but oft enough,
(And here's the secret of a hundred creeds,–
Men get opinions as boys learn to spell,
By re-iteration chiefly) the same thing
Shall pass at least for absolutely wise,
And not with fools exclusively. And so,
We say the French are light, as if we said
The cat mews, or the milch-cow gives us milk:
Say rather, cats are milked, and milch cows mew,
For what is lightness but inconsequence,
Vague fluctuation 'twixt effect and cause,
Compelled by neither? Is a bullet light,
That dashes from the gun-mouth, while the eye
Winks, and the heart beats one, to flatten itself
To a wafer on the white speck on a wall
A hundred paces off? Even so direct,
So sternly undivertible of aim,
Is this French people.
All idealists
Too absolute and earnest, with them all
The idea of a knife cuts real flesh;
And still, devouring the safe interval
Which Nature placed between the thought and act,
They threaten conflagration to the world
And rush with most unscrupulous logic on
Impossible practice. Set your orators
To blow upon them with loud windy mouths
Through watchword phrases, jest or sentiment,
Which drive our burley brutal English mobs
Like so much chaff, whichever way they blow,–
This light French people will not thus be driven.
They turn indeed; but then they turn upon
Some central pivot of their thought and choice,
And veer out by the force of holding fast.
–That's hard to understand, for Englishmen
Unused to abstract questions, and untrained
To trace the involutions, valve by valve,
In each orbed bulb-root of a general truth,
And mark what subtly fine integument
Divides opposed compartments. Freedom's self
Comes concrete to us, to be understood,
Fixed in a feudal form incarnately
To suit our ways of thought and reverence,
The special form, with us, being still the thing.
With us, I say, though I'm of Italy
My mother's birth and grave, by father's grave
And memory; let it be,–a poet's heart
[...] Read more
poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning from Aurora Leigh (1856)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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Adversity
Adversity, adversity, how strange is your fate.
To most it’s loss and sorrow compounded by a spate
Of shallow glances, lost chances
Nourishing doubts and fears,
With ignominious ignorance,
Washed down by gushing tears.
For these sad souls adversity is a cruel happenstance.
Even before its advent they were afforded little chance.
Though adversity, intrinsically favors neither side,
Some souls advance… even enhance their dance,
While all others continue their downward slide.
This august group knows adversity by another name.
Adversity and opportunity to them sound much the same.
Travails, trauma, thunder clouds are all ways they learn.
Journeys unclear and dangers near they miss not a turn
In their effort to bestow good fortune they have received
So less fortunate souls may sense what it is to be relieved.
poem by Gregory Huyette
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Inertia Creeps
3d
Recollect me darling raise me to your lips
2 undernourished egos 4 rotating hips
Hold on to me tightly Im a sliding scale
Cant endure then you can inhale
Clearly out of body experience
Interferes and dreams of flying I fit nearly
Surrounds me though I get lonely
Slowly
Moving up slowly
Inertia keeps
Shes moving up slowly
Slowly
Moving up slowly
Interia creeps
Moving up slowly
She comes moving up slowly
She comes moving up slowly
Inertia creeps
Moving up slowly
She comes
Moving up slowly (x2)
In my home no chrome as clear as
See me now with my nearest dearest
Been there when Im over-careering
Room shifting is endearing
Between us is our kitchen
Where she finds my irritants itching
Been here before been here forever
Moving up slowly
Inertia keeps moving up slowly
Inertia creeps moving up slowly
Inertia keeps moving up slowly
She comes
Moving up slowly (x2)
She comes moving up slowly
Inertia creeps moving up slowly
She comes
There be no sound in my eiderdown
Awake I lie in the morning blue
Room is still my antenna in you
Nylon burns the bedspread with 2
Gravity zero see me stall
I bounce off the walls lose my footing and fall
It can be sweet though incomplete though
And the frames will freeze see me on all 4s
Its been a long time
She comes (x2)
Comes
I want to x you, she comes
[...] Read more
song performed by Massive Attack
Added by Lucian Velea
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Revolve
I want to crawl inside your womb,
I want to watch the rose on your cheeks bloom.
I want to be the face in the moon,
And watch the stars spin around your room.
All your carefully worded letters,
And your carefully spoken words.
I will continue to evolve,
I will continue to revolve around your sun.
cause you are the only one!...
Who understands who reaches out with both hands.
And even while your fading Im just shivering and waiting.
I will continue to evolve,
I will continue to revolve around your sun.
cause you are the only one!...
I want to drink deep from your well,
I want to be the heart for which you fell.
I want to be a shooting star,
Across the heavens to be where you are.
All your carefully worded letters,
And your carefully spoken words.
I will continue to evolve,
I will continue to revolve around your sun.
cause you are the only one!...
Who understands who reaches out with both hands.
And even while your fading Im just shivering and waiting.
I will continue to evolve,
I will continue to revolve around your sun.
cause you are the only one!...
I want to crawl inside your womb,
I want to watch the rose on your cheeks bloom.
I will continue to evolve,
I will continue to revolve around your sun.
cause you are the only one!...
Who understands who reaches out with both hands.
And even while your fading Im just shivering and waiting.
Who understands who reaches out with both hands.
And even while your fading Im just shivering and waiting.
I will continue to evolve,
I will continue to revolve around your sun.
cause you are the only one!...
Time missing out.
Youre missing out.
Im missing out.
Were missing out.
You are the only one...
Time missing out.
Youre missing out.
Im missing out.
Were missing out.
You are the only one...
song performed by Nine Days
Added by Lucian Velea
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Tamar
I
A night the half-moon was like a dancing-girl,
No, like a drunkard's last half-dollar
Shoved on the polished bar of the eastern hill-range,
Young Cauldwell rode his pony along the sea-cliff;
When she stopped, spurred; when she trembled, drove
The teeth of the little jagged wheels so deep
They tasted blood; the mare with four slim hooves
On a foot of ground pivoted like a top,
Jumped from the crumble of sod, went down, caught, slipped;
Then, the quick frenzy finished, stiffening herself
Slid with her drunken rider down the ledges,
Shot from sheer rock and broke
Her life out on the rounded tidal boulders.
The night you know accepted with no show of emotion the little
accident; grave Orion
Moved northwest from the naked shore, the moon moved to
meridian, the slow pulse of the ocean
Beat, the slow tide came in across the slippery stones; it drowned
the dead mare's muzzle and sluggishly
Felt for the rider; Cauldwell’s sleepy soul came back from the
blind course curious to know
What sea-cold fingers tapped the walls of its deserted ruin.
Pain, pain and faintness, crushing
Weights, and a vain desire to vomit, and soon again
die icy fingers, they had crept over the loose hand and lay in the
hair now. He rolled sidewise
Against mountains of weight and for another half-hour lay still.
With a gush of liquid noises
The wave covered him head and all, his body
Crawled without consciousness and like a creature with no bones,
a seaworm, lifted its face
Above the sea-wrack of a stone; then a white twilight grew about
the moon, and above
The ancient water, the everlasting repetition of the dawn. You
shipwrecked horseman
So many and still so many and now for you the last. But when it
grew daylight
He grew quite conscious; broken ends of bone ground on each
other among the working fibers
While by half-inches he was drawing himself out of the seawrack
up to sandy granite,
Out of the tide's path. Where the thin ledge tailed into flat cliff
he fell asleep. . . .
Far seaward
The daylight moon hung like a slip of cloud against the horizon.
The tide was ebbing
From the dead horse and the black belt of sea-growth. Cauldwell
seemed to have felt her crying beside him,
[...] Read more
poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Cruel
Oh yeah
Born no longer a baby
Always trying to keep
In one place for long, oh long enough to sleep
Oh sleep and dreams are here the same
Gone'n got no rest
They'll no longer speak to you. moving on again
I'm moving on... moving on again
Well I'm moving...moving on again
Baby you're so cruel
You're cruel to yourself you never understand
Boy'll never do ya no harm
For you to build the frame of the bed you sleep upon
So spill your milk and honey
And get your kicks off your next man
Bigger than you think and you make him go, go on
Oh you make him...moving on again
Oh he's moving on...moving on again
Baby you're so cruel
Thought about the dream is so real now
These are dreams of mine you're so aimless...so aimless
You baby, you're so cruel
Wonder what you're gonna think of yourself
When the phone calls fade away
As you hold his shoulders, did you think it would come to this day
Ask yourself why he's off
When others surround you
He was one of many on the day that he found you
Oh you're moving...moving on again
Yeah you're moving...moving on again
Yeah you're moving...moving on again
Baby you're so cruel
song performed by Default
Added by Lucian Velea
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People In The City
P.e.o.p.l.e.c.i.t.y
People in the city
P.e.o.p.l.e.c.i.t.y
People in the city
P.e.o.p.l.e.c.i.t.y
People in the city
P.e.o.p.l.e.c.i.t.y
People in the city
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
P.e.o.p.l.e.c.i.t.y
People in the city
P.e.o.p.l.e.c.i.t.y
People in the city
P.e.o.p.l.e.c.i.t.y
People in the city
P.e.o.p.l.e.c.i.t.y
People in the city
On the sidewalk (people in the city)
Near the street lamp (people in the city)
At the bus stop (people in the city)
Down the station (people in the city)
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling.
song performed by Air
Added by Lucian Velea
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Thurso’s Landing
I
The coast-road was being straightened and repaired again,
A group of men labored at the steep curve
Where it falls from the north to Mill Creek. They scattered and hid
Behind cut banks, except one blond young man
Who stooped over the rock and strolled away smiling
As if he shared a secret joke with the dynamite;
It waited until he had passed back of a boulder,
Then split its rock cage; a yellowish torrent
Of fragments rose up the air and the echoes bumped
From mountain to mountain. The men returned slowly
And took up their dropped tools, while a banner of dust
Waved over the gorge on the northwest wind, very high
Above the heads of the forest.
Some distance west of the road,
On the promontory above the triangle
Of glittering ocean that fills the gorge-mouth,
A woman and a lame man from the farm below
Had been watching, and turned to go down the hill. The young
woman looked back,
Widening her violet eyes under the shade of her hand. 'I think
they'll blast again in a minute.'
And the man: 'I wish they'd let the poor old road be. I don't
like improvements.' 'Why not?' 'They bring in the world;
We're well without it.' His lameness gave him some look of age
but he was young too; tall and thin-faced,
With a high wavering nose. 'Isn't he amusing,' she said, 'that
boy Rick Armstrong, the dynamite man,
How slowly he walks away after he lights the fuse. He loves to
show off. Reave likes him, too,'
She added; and they clambered down the path in the rock-face,
little dark specks
Between the great headland rock and the bright blue sea.
II
The road-workers had made their camp
North of this headland, where the sea-cliff was broken down and
sloped to a cove. The violet-eyed woman's husband,
Reave Thurso, rode down the slope to the camp in the gorgeous
autumn sundown, his hired man Johnny Luna
Riding behind him. The road-men had just quit work and four
or five were bathing in the purple surf-edge,
The others talked by the tents; blue smoke fragrant with food
and oak-wood drifted from the cabin stove-pipe
And slowly went fainting up the vast hill.
Thurso drew rein by
a group of men at a tent door
And frowned at them without speaking, square-shouldered and
heavy-jawed, too heavy with strength for so young a man,
He chose one of the men with his eyes. 'You're Danny Woodruff,
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poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Three Women
My love is young, so young;
Young is her cheek, and her throat,
And life is a song to be sung
With love the word for each note.
Young is her cheek and her throat;
Her eyes have the smile o' May.
And love is the word for each note
In the song of my life to-day.
Her eyes have the smile o' May;
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
And the song of my life to-day
Is love, beautiful love.
Her heart is the heart of a dove,
Ah, would it but fly to my breast
Where love, beautiful love,
Has made it a downy nest.
Ah, would she but fly to my breast,
My love who is young, so young;
I have made her a downy nest
And life is a song to be sung.
1
I.
A dull little station, a man with the eye
Of a dreamer; a bevy of girls moving by;
A swift moving train and a hot Summer sun,
The curtain goes up, and our play is begun.
The drama of passion, of sorrow, of strife,
Which always is billed for the theatre Life.
It runs on forever, from year unto year,
With scarcely a change when new actors appear.
It is old as the world is-far older in truth,
For the world is a crude little planet of youth.
And back in the eras before it was formed,
The passions of hearts through the Universe stormed.
Maurice Somerville passed the cluster of girls
Who twisted their ribbons and fluttered their curls
In vain to attract him; his mind it was plain
Was wholly intent on the incoming train.
That great one eyed monster puffed out its black breath,
Shrieked, snorted and hissed, like a thing bent on death,
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poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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The Aeneid of Virgil: Book 7
AND thou, O matron of immortal fame,
Here dying, to the shore hast left thy name;
Cajeta still the place is call’d from thee,
The nurse of great Æneas’ infancy.
Here rest thy bones in rich Hesperia’s plains; 5
Thy name (’t is all a ghost can have) remains.
Now, when the prince her fun’ral rites had paid,
He plow’d the Tyrrhene seas with sails display’d.
From land a gentle breeze arose by night,
Serenely shone the stars, the moon was bright, 10
And the sea trembled with her silver light.
Now near the shelves of Circe’s shores they run,
(Circe the rich, the daughter of the Sun,)
A dang’rous coast: the goddess wastes her days
In joyous songs; the rocks resound her lays: 15
In spinning, or the loom, she spends the night,
And cedar brands supply her father’s light.
From hence were heard, rebellowing to the main,
The roars of lions that refuse the chain,
The grunts of bristled boars, and groans of bears, 20
And herds of howling wolves that stun the sailors’ ears.
These from their caverns, at the close of night,
Fill the sad isle with horror and affright.
Darkling they mourn their fate, whom Circe’s pow’r,
(That watch’d the moon and planetary hour,) 25
With words and wicked herbs from humankind
Had alter’d, and in brutal shapes confin’d.
Which monsters lest the Trojans’ pious host
Should bear, or touch upon th’ inchanted coast,
Propitious Neptune steer’d their course by night 30
With rising gales that sped their happy flight.
Supplied with these, they skim the sounding shore,
And hear the swelling surges vainly roar.
Now, when the rosy morn began to rise,
And wav’d her saffron streamer thro’ the skies; 35
When Thetis blush’d in purple not her own,
And from her face the breathing winds were blown,
A sudden silence sate upon the sea,
And sweeping oars, with struggling, urge their way.
The Trojan, from the main, beheld a wood, 40
Which thick with shades and a brown horror stood:
Betwixt the trees the Tiber took his course,
With whirlpools dimpled; and with downward force,
That drove the sand along, he took his way,
And roll’d his yellow billows to the sea. 45
About him, and above, and round the wood,
The birds that haunt the borders of his flood,
That bath’d within, or basked upon his side,
To tuneful songs their narrow throats applied.
The captain gives command; the joyful train 50
[...] Read more
poem by Publius Vergilius Maro
Added by Poetry Lover
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