I dwell among the fair;
For you have no room for Mary;
She was ever in your way;
And fears the good will shun her!
Will they, darling mother, say?
Tell me—tell me truly—mother,
Ere life’s closing hour doth come,
Do you think that they will keep me
In the shining angels’ home?
I was not so wayward, mother,
Nor so very—very bad,
But that tender love would nourish,
And make Mary’s heart so glad!
Oh! I yearned for pure affection,
In this world of bitter woe;
And I long for bliss immortal,
In the land where I must go!
Tell me once again, dear mother,
Ere you take the parting kiss,
Will the angels bid me welcome,
To that land of perfect bliss?
LITTLE BOY BLUE
The little toy dog is covered with dust,
But sturdy and staunch he stands;
And the little toy soldier is red with rust,
And his musket moulds in his hands.
Time was when the little toy dog was new,
And the soldier was passing fair;
And that was the time when our Little Boy Blue
Kissed them and put them there.
“Now, don’t you go till I come,” he said,
“And don’t you make any noise!”
So, toddling off to his trundle-bed,
He dreamt of the pretty toys;
And, as he was dreaming, an angel song
Awakened our Little Boy Blue—
Oh! the years are many, the years are long,
But the little toy friends are True!
Ay, faithful to Little Boy Blue they stand,
Each in the same old place—
Awaiting the touch of a little hand,
The smile of a little face;
And they wonder as waiting the long years through
In the dust of the little chair,
What has become of our Little Boy Blue
Since he kissed them and put them there.
Lineation
Lineation refers to choice of line length, a technique essential to much modern poetry, which often relies heavily on placement on the page, length of lines, and physical presentation. Compare, for example, poetry by Walt Whitman, Marianne Moore, and Allen Ginsberg, with their long lines and biblical cadences that sweep majestically from margin to margin; poems such as Susan Musgrave’s “Lure” (TBAP 882) or William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow” and “This Is Just To Say,” which often seem to hug the left-hand margin of the page; and poems by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Judith Rodriguez, and others which seem scattered almost at random, with lines punctuating expanses of white space.
The poet’s choice of form often dictates basic line length, however, particularly in traditional metrical forms. Note the different effects in the following poems:
M
i
A thousand wives lie close to heart,
intimáte,
shape shivering breasts to word-dream
couplings,
bald lips to consummation
in the lust
of vividry
and elán vital of transmutation
pressing painful birth into a wilder universe
part and part and part and intimation
timbreling into
completion
ii
A thousand secret selves clamor
for carved ears,
a thousand altérnate selves,
elementals recording what is/seems and was
and what may be—
a thousand pale prospective nightmares
dreams
expulsive energies define
and
redefine into infinity
iii
A thousand deaths thrive here
a thousand
apparitional
cheddar-scaled goldfish
floating in blue tepid water and
cannibalizing
bloated skull and unzipped spine
of one that once was of their own kind
when it still lived—
but failed
transmutation
became
consummation
rocking on aquarial blue-plastic coated stones
iv
A thousand children sleep soundly
in typic beds—
progeny
