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Alix baby beautiful Blithery blood blossoms blue Bobsled boys Buffalo Bill Canada thistle cheep Chihuahua Chillicothe clocks concertina cool tombs corn Cornhuskers cows crimson czar dark night dreams drum dust dust and dreams ears empty eyes face falltime feet finger fire fist Flanders Four Brothers ghosts girl gone good-night grass gray green guns hands head heart Illinois January wind kaiser keep kill kiss knucks LEATHER LEGGINGS listened loam look looking-glass LOUIS UNTERMEYER Manitoba million mist mockingbird moon morning star mothers MOUNTAIN INTERVAL mountains mouth muskrats never nigger numbers oval papoose potato prairie rain remember rider river road salt Shenandoah shirt shoulders silver sing slanting sleep smoke snow soldiers song Spottsylvania Court House steel street summer sunset things thousand throat to-day town valley Vladivostok wagon wheels white lips wilderness window wings women yellow
Popular passages
Page 126 - PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work — I am the grass; I cover all. And pile diem high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this?
Page 11 - I speak of new cities and new people. I tell you the past is a bucket of ashes. I tell you yesterday is a wind gone down, A sun dropped in the west I tell you there is nothing in the world Only an ocean of tomorrows, A sky of tomorrows.
Page 3 - Here between the sheds of the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, here now a morning star fixes a fire sign over the timber claims and cow pastures, the corn belt, the cotton belt, the cattle ranches. Here the gray geese go five hundred miles and back with a wind under their wings honking the cry for a new home. Here I know I will hanker after nothing so much as one more sunrise or a sky moon of fire doubled to a river moon of water. The prairie sings to me in the forenoon and I know in the night...
Page 120 - ... Wall Street, cash and collateral turned ashes ... in the dust, in the cool tombs. Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May, did she wonder? does she remember? ... in the dust, in the cool tombs? Take any streetful of people buying clothes and groceries, cheering a hero or throwing confetti and blowing tin horns . . . tell me if the lovers are losers . . . tell me if any get more than the lovers ... in the dust ... in the cool tombs.
Page 53 - Southern Pacific Huntington sleeps in a house six feet long. Huntington dreams of railroads he built and owned. Huntington dreams of ten thousand men saying: Yes, sir. Blithery sleeps in a house six feet long. Blithery dreams of rails and ties he laid. Blithery dreams of saying to Huntington: Yes, sir. Huntington, Blithery, sleep in houses six feet long. Washerwoman The washerwoman is a member of the Salvation Army.
Page 37 - Loam In the loam we sleep, In the cool moist loam, To the lull of years that pass And the break of stars, From the loam, then, The soft warm loam, We rise: To shape of rose leaf, Of face and shoulder. We stand then, To a whiff of life, Lifted to the silver of the sun Over and out of the loam A day.
Page 4 - In the city among the walls the overland passenger train is choked and the pistons hiss and the wheels curse. On the prairie the overland flits on phantom wheels and the sky and the soil between them muffle the pistons and cheer the wheels.
Page 9 - Blue bandannas are knotted at the ruddy chins. Falltime and winter apples take on the smolder of the five-o'clock November sunset: falltime, leaves, bonfires, stubble, the old things go, and the earth is grizzled.
Page 41 - O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart — and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where— For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness.
Page 40 - THERE is a wolf in me . . . fangs pointed for tearing gashes ... a red tongue for raw meat . . . and the hot lapping of blood — I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go.