Were i transported to some distant star
With fifty little children, girls and boys,
Or to some fabled land unknown, afar,
Where never sound could come of this world’s noise;
Our world begun anew, as when of yore
Sad Adam fled from Eden; I alone
The sole custodian of all human lore,—
No books to aid, all rules and records gone...
Were I as base as is the lowly plain,
And you, my Love, as high as heaven above,
Yet should the thoughts of me your humble swain
Ascend to heaven, in honor of my Love.
Were I as high as heaven above the plain,
And you, my Love, as humble and as low
As are the deepest bottoms of the main,
Wheresoe’er you were, with you my love should go...
Popularly Known as “The Heathen Chinee”
WHICH I wish to remark—
And my language is plain—
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar:
Which the same I would rise to explain.
Ah Sin was his name;
And I shall not deny
In regard to the same
What that name might...
The Mountain sat upon the Plain
In his tremendous Chair —
His observation omnifold,
His inquest, everywhere —
The Seasons played around his knees
Like Children round a sire —
Grandfather of the Days is He
Of Dawn, the Ancestor —
The Road to Paradise is plain,
And holds scarce one.
Not that it is not firm
But we presume
A Dimpled Road
Is more preferred.
The Belles of Paradise are few —
Not me — nor you —
But unsuspected things —
Mines have no Wings.
