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Ventures Into Verse / Being various ballads, ballades, rondeaux, triolets, songs, quatrains, odes and roundels, all rescued from the potters' field of old files and here given decent burial cover

Ventures Into Verse / Being various ballads, ballades, rondeaux, triolets, songs, quatrains, odes and roundels, all rescued from the potters' field of old files and here given decent burial

Chapter 35: I—Auroral[5]
By H. L. Mencken
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Poetry

About This Book

A compact collection of short lyric and narrative poems in a range of traditional forms—ballads, rondeaux, triolets, quatrains, odes, and roundels—blending satire, humor, and reflection. Many pieces evoke seafaring and martial scenes, while others focus on city life, love, faith, and social manners. The volume alternates formal experiments and light imitations with original verse, using narrative sketches, ironic commentary, and playful rhyme to probe human folly, courage, and everyday observation.

SONGS of THE CITY

SONGS OF THE CITY

I—Auroral[5]

Another day comes journeying with the sun,
The east grows ghastly with the dawning's gleam,
And e'er the dark has flown and night is done
The alley pavements with their many teem.
Another day of toil and grief and pain;
Life surely seems not sweet to such as these!
Yet they live toiling that they may but gain
The right to life and all life's miseries.

II—Madrigal

Ah! what were all the running brooks
From ocean-side to ocean-side,
And what were all the chattering wrens
That wake the wood with song,
And what were all the roses red
In all the flowery meadows wide,
And what were all the fairy clouds
That 'cross the heavens throng—
And what were all the joys that bide
In meadow, wood and down,
To me, if I were at your side
Within the joyless town?

III—Within the City Gates

We can but dream of murmuring rills
Mad racing down the wooded hills,
Of meadow flowers and balmy days
When robin sings his amorous lays;
And lost among the city's ways,
To us it is not given to gaze
In wonder as the morning haze
Lifts from the sea of daffodils,—
Of all but those on window-sills
We can but dream.

IV—April

At dawn a gay gallant comes to the eaves
And trills a song unto his lady fair,
And then, above the reach of boyish thieves,
A building nest sways in the balmy air;
One day a flower upon a window sill
Puts forth a bud, and as its beauty grows
The sun—gay prodigal!—with life-light glows,
The while he reads the doom of storms and snows;
And then—and then—there comes the springtime's thrill!

V—The Coming of Winter

A chill, damp west wind and a heavy sky,
With clouds that merge in one gray, darkling sea,
The last red leaves of autumn flutter by,
Wrest from the dead twigs of the street-side tree;
And then there comes an eddying cloud of white,
First dim, then blotting everything below;
Up to the eaves the sparrows haste in flight—
And thus upon the town descends the snow.

VI—The Snow

A song of birds adown a mine's dark galleries,
A scent of roses 'mid a waste of moor and fen,
A gush of sparkling waters from the desert sands,—
So comes the snow upon the town, an alien.

VII—Nocturne

How like a warrior on the battlefield
The city sleeps, with brain awake, and eyes
That know no closing. Ere the first star dies
It rises from its slumber, and with shield
In hand, full ready for the fray,
Goes forth to meet the day.

5.  Copyright, 1899, by Warren F. Kellogg.