Mr. Flood's Party

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will."

Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

"Only a very little, Mr. Flood—
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do."
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang—

"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below—
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago. 

Richard Cory

Whenever Richard Cory went down to town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich — yes, richer than a king —
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

---

A song was written by Simon & Garfunkel based on this poem.

The Dark Hills

Dark hills at evening in the west,
Where sunset hovers like a sound
Of golden horns that sang to rest
Old bones of warriors underground,
Far now from all the bannered ways
Where flash the legions of the sun,
You fade — as if the last of days
Were fading, and all wars were done.

Ballade of a Ship

Down by the flash of the restless water
     The dim white Ship like a white bird lay;
Laughing at life and the world they sought her,
     And out she swung to the silvering bay.
Then off they flew on their roystering way,
     And the keen moon fired the light foam flying
Up from the flood where the faint stars play,
     And the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.

'Twas was a king's fair son with a king's fair daughter,
     And full three hundred beside, they say, —
Revelling on for the lone, cold slaughter
     So soon to seize them and hide them for aye;
But they danced and they drank and their souls grew gay,
     Nor ever they knew of a ghoul's eye spying
Their splendor a flickering phantom to stray
     Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.

Through the mist of a drunken dream they brought her
     (This wild white bird) for the sea-fiend's prey:
The pitiless reef in his hard clutch caught her,
     And hurled her down where the dead men stay.
A torturing silence of wan dismay —
     Shrieks and curses of mad souls dying —
Then down they sank to slumber and sway
     Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.

                       ENVOY

Prince, do you sleep to the sound alway
     Of the mournful surge and the sea-birds' crying? —
Or does love still shudder and steel still slay,
     Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying?