Fronting a Dear Child and an Infamy You sat; and watched, with dusk-on-the-mountain eyes, The marching river of the beer go by, Alert in vain for a band-crash of surprise. I also! Dawn, that in respectful way Entered a-liveried, could no lightnings rouse For which I watched; the calling-card of day Flushed with no guilt your Hebridean brows. Wherefore the Infamy and I went down Into a street of windows high and blind. His face, his tongue, his words, his soul, were brown. But from a window lofty and left behind, Like a silver trumpet over the gutter-dirt, You waved!—(I know not what; perhaps a shirt.) IV. PORTRAIT OF A SPIRITUALLY DISTURBED GENTLEMAN O piece of garbage rotting on a rug,— To what a final ending hast thou come! Art thou predestined fodder of a bug? Shalt thou no more behold thy Dresden home? When green disintegration works its last Ruin, and all thy atoms writhe and start, Shall no frilled-paper memories from the past Drift spectral down the gravy of thy heart? Can the cold grease from off the dirty plate Make thee forget the ice-box of thy prime, And soon, among the refuse-cans, thy fate Blot out the gay fork-music of old time? Ah well! all music has its awkward flats— And after all, there are the alley-cats! V. PORTRAIT OF THE INCOMPARABLE JOHN COWPER POWYS, ESQ. When first the rebel hosts were hurled From heaven,—and as they downward sped Flashed by them world on glimmering world Like mileposts on that road of dread,— One ruined angel by strange chance On earth lit stranded with spent wing. There, when revived, he took his stance In slightly battered triumphing. And still he stands; though lightning-riven, More riotous than ere he fell,— Upon his brow the lights of heaven Mixed with a foregleam out of hell. VI. TO AN OUTRAGEOUS PERSON God forgive you, O my friend! For, be sure, men never will. Their most righteous wrath shall bend Toward you all the strokes of ill. You are outcast—Who could bear, Laboring dully, to behold That glad carelessness you wear, Dancing down the sunlight’s gold? Who, a self-discovered slave, As the burdens on him press, Could but curse you, arrant knave, For your crime of happiness? All the dogmas of our life Are confuted by your fling,— Taking dullness not to wife, But with wonder wantoning. All the good and great of earth, Prophecying your bad end, Sourly watch you dance in mirth Up the rainbow, O my friend! VII. IN A BAR ROOM