’Mid the stone piles of his slingers surged my men of Samarcand, And we conquered our opponent on that polished teakwood stand. Thus reality was riven by the wisdom of a wraith, By the images inanimate that fought for love and faith; By the images inanimate that came from Samarcand To show their knightly courtesy upon a teakwood stand. THE DINOSAURS’ EGGS One morn in old Mongolia, In Asia’s arid lands, Men found the eggs of dinosaurs Upon the Gobi sands. The one-time myths in miniature, The seeds that turned to stone; The mirage of forgotten things Upon the sands were strown. Fate left them to strange lassitudes, The lonely and the still, That could have tusked creation’s flanks But for some sudden chill. The roses pined in weary wastes Yet won to garden wall; The honey-loving humming-birds Outlived a waterfall; The does a-down the centuries Soft nosed each little fawn; The robin’s breast was o’er her brood, All gentle things were born. With sweet significance the bowers Gave beckonings and smiles, And then came Eden’s wistful mates To walk in Eden’s aisles. But in the Gobi solitudes, The tombs time left unlatched-- There lay in wind-blown shrouds of sand The eggs that never hatched. THE FIRST STORY Mid seaweed on a sultry strand, ten thousand years ago, A sun-burned baby sprawling lay, a-playing with his toe. The babe was dreaming of the day that he might swing a club, When lo! He saw a fishy thing, a-squirming in the mud. The creature was an octopus, and dangerous to pat, But the prehistoric infant never stopped to think of that. The baby’s fingernails were sharp, his appetite was prime, He clutched that deep-sea monster, for ’twas nearing supper-time, Oh! Suddenly, from out the pulp a fluid black did flow, ’Twas flavored like a barberry wine and gave a sort of glow; It squirted in the baby’s eyes; it made him gasp and blink, But to that octopus he held, and drank up all the ink. The ink was in the baby--he was bound to write a tale; So he wrote the first of stories with his little fingernail. THE THREE-CORNERED LOT Said the farmer to his daughter: “When I die, as like as not, I’ll leave to you the title to the old three-cornered lot. “’Tis the vale beyond the pastures, never any good to me, With the huckleberry bushes and the silver maple-tree. “Fair scenery for song birds, but too small to cultivate; Yet there’s a wall around it, like a foolish man’s estate.” Fell a blight upon the corn fields; stood an empty barn and cot; The farmer’s holdings dwindled to the old three-cornered lot. He saw his home dismantled; learned that permanence, alas, Is the portrait of a swallow painted on the shadow grass. Came his daughter as a seeress, and she said: “As like as not, I’m giving back the title to the old three-cornered lot.