Puck's Song See you the dimpled track that runs, All hollow through the wheat? O that was where they hauled the guns That smote King Philip's fleet! See you our little mill that clacks, So busy by the brook? She has ground her corn and paid her tax Ever since Domesday Book. See you our... Read More

IN the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale, and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, and the crab and the dab, and the plaice and the dace, and the skate and his mate, and the mackereel and the pickereel, and the really truly twirly-whirly... Read More

O ye who tread the Narrow Way By Tophet-flare to Judgment Day, Be gentle when 'the heathen' pray To Buddha at Kamakura! Buddha at Kamakura. He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher—the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum. Who... Read More

“Let us now praise famous men”— Men of little showing— For their work continueth, And their work continueth, Greater than their knowing. Western wind and open surge Tore us from our mothers; Flung us on a naked shore (Twelve bleak houses by the shore! Seven summers by the shore!) ‘Mid two hundred brothers. There we... Read More

The Law, as quoted, lays down a fair conduct of life, and one not easy to follow. I have been fellow to a beggar again and again under circumstances which prevented either of us finding out whether the other was worthy. I have still to be brother to a Prince, though I once came near... Read More

TO JAMES CONLAND, M.D., Brattleboro, Vermont I ploughed the land with horses, But my heart was ill at ease, For the old sea-faring men Came to me now and then, With their sagas of the seas. Longfellow. The weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the North Atlantic fog, as the big... Read More

So we settled it all when the storm was done As comf’y as comf’y could be; And I was to wait in the barn, my dears, Because I was only three; And Teddy would run to the rainbow’s foot, Because he was five and a man; And that’s how it all began, my dears, And... Read More

"Or ever the knightly years were gone With the old world to the grave, I was a king in Babylon And you were a Christian slave," —W.E. Henley. His name was Charlie Mears; he was the only son of his mother who was a widow, and he lived in the north of London, coming into... Read More

Hit a man an’ help a woman, an’ ye can’t be far wrong anyways.—Maxims of Private Mulvaney. The Inexpressibles gave a ball. They borrowed a seven-pounder from the Gunners, and wreathed it with laurels, and made the dancing-floor plate-glass, and provided a supper, the like of which had never been eaten before, and set two... Read More

May no ill dreams disturb my rest, Nor Powers of Darkness me molest. —Evening Hymn. One of the few advantages that India has over England is a great Knowability. After five years’ service a man is directly or indirectly acquainted with the two or three hundred Civilians in his Province, all the Messes of ten... Read More

Look, you have cast out Love! What Gods are these You bid me please? The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so! To my own Gods I go. It may be they shall give me greater ease Than your cold Christ and tangled Trinities. The Convert. She was the daughter of Sonoo, a... Read More