American fiction -- 19th century; American poetry -- 19th century; American wit and humor; Short stories, American
When the car arrived at that street the conductor rang the bell and
the car stopped.
"Peas Avenue, ma'am," he said, climbing off to assist her from the
car.
The lady raised the little boy to his knees and pointed out the window
at the name of the street which was on a board, nailed to the corner
of a fence.
"Look, Freddy," she said, "that tall, straight letter with a funny
little curl at the top is a '_P_.' Now don't forget it again. You
can go on, conductor; we get off at Gray Street."
"Only to Lie--"
Only to lie in the evening,
Watching the drifting clouds,
O'er the blue heavens sailing;
Mystical, dreamlike shrouds.
Watching the purple shadows
Filling the woodland glades,
Only to lie in the twilight
Deep in the gathering shade.
Only to lie at midnight,
Climbing the pitch-dark stairs;
Wife at the top of them waiting;
Upwards are rising our hairs.
Only to lie as she asks us--
"Where have you been so late?"
Only to lie with judgment--
"Cars blocked; I had to wait."
The Pewee
In the hush of the drowsy afternoon.
When the very mind on the breast of June
Lies settled, and hot white tracery
Of the shattered sunlight flitters free
Through the unstinted leaves to the pied cool sward,
On a dead tree branch sings the saddest bard
Of the birds that be.
'Tis the lone pewee;
Its note is a sob, and its song is pitched
In a single key like a soul bewitched
To a mournful minstrelsy.
"Pewee, Pewee," doth it ever cry;
A sad, sweet, minor threnody
That threads the aisles of the dim hot grove
Like a tale of a wrong or a vanished love,
And the fancy comes that the wee dun bird
Perchance was a maid, and her heart was stirred
By some lover's rhyme
In a golden time,
And broke when the world turned false and old;
And her dreams grew dark and her faith grew cold,
In some fairy far-off clime.
And her soul crept into the pewee's breast;
And forever she cries with a strange unrest
For something lost, in the afternoon;
For something missed from the lavish June;
For the heart, that died in the long ago;
For the livelong pain that pierceth so;
Thus the pewee cries,
While the evening lies
Steeped in the languorous still sunshine,
Rapt, to the leaf and the bough and the vine,
Of some hopeless paradise.
The Sunday Excursionist
Somebody--who it was doesn't make any difference--has said something
like the following: "There is something grand in the grief of the
Common People, but there is no sadder sight on earth than that of a
Philistine enjoying himself."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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