Property:Has text
From Off the Road Database
This is a property of type Text.
B
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<p>Incredulous of his own bad luck.<br />
And then becoming reconciled<br />
To everything, he gave it up<br />
And came down like a coasting child.
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<p>Between the house and barn the gale<br />
Got him by something he had on<br />
And blew him out on the icy crust<br />
That cased the world, and he was gone!
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<p>But now he snapped his eyes three times;<br />
Then shook his lantern, saying, “Ile’s<br />
’Bout out!” and took the long way home<br />
By road, a matter of several miles.
</p>
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<div class="poem">
<p>He reeled, he lurched, he bobbed, he checked;<br />
He fell and made the lantern rattle<br />
(But saved the light from going out.)<br />
So half-way down he fought the battle
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<p>Yankees are what they always were.<br />
Don’t think Brown ever gave up hope<br />
Of getting home again because<br />
He couldn’t climb that slippery slope;
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<p>And many must have seen him make<br />
His wild descent from there one night,<br />
’Cross lots, ’cross walls, ’cross everything,<br />
Describing rings of lantern light.
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<div class="poem">
<p>“Well—I—be——” that was all he said,<br />
As standing in the river road,<br />
He looked back up the slippery slope<br />
(Two miles it was) to his abode.
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<p>Sometimes as an authority<br />
On motor-cars, I’m asked if I<br />
Should say our stock was petered out,<br />
And this is my sincere reply:
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<p>Walls were all buried, trees were few:<br />
He saw no stay unless he stove<br />
A hole in somewhere with his heel.<br />
But though repeatedly he strove
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<p>It must have looked as if the course<br />
He steered was really straight away<br />
From that which he was headed for—<br />
Not much concerned for them, I say.
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C
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<p>We will sidestep, and to the final smirk<br />
Dally the doom of that inevitable thumb<br />
That slowly chafes its puckered index toward us,<br />
Facing the dull squint with what innocence<br />
And what surprise!
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<div class="poem">
<p>And yet these fine collapses are not lies<br />
More than the pirouettes of any pliant cane;<br />
Our obsequies are, in a way, no enterprise.<br />
We can evade you, and all else but the heart:<br />
What blame to us if the heart live on.
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<p>The game enforces smirks; but we have seen<br />
The moon in lonely alleys make<br />
A grail of laughter of an empty ash can,<br />
And through all sound of gaiety and quest<br />
Have heard a kitten in the wilderness.
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<p>For we can still love the world, who find<br />
A famished kitten on the step, and know<br />
Recesses for it from the fury of the street,<br />
Or warm torn elbow coverts.
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<p>We make our meek adjustments,<br />
Contented with such random consolations<br />
As the wind deposits<br />
In slithered and too ample pockets.
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<p>Can we think a few old cells<br />
were left—we are left—<br />
grains of honey,<br />
old dust of stray pollen<br />
dull on our torn wings,<br />
we are left to recall the old streets ?
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<div class="poem">
<p>Can we believe—by an effort<br />
comfort our hearts:<br />
it is not waste all this,<br />
not placed here in disgust,<br />
street after street,<br />
each patterned alike,<br />
no grace to lighten<br />
a single house of the hundred<br />
crowded into one garden-space.
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