Strong colour contrasts, turquoise, sapphire, now.
Tumbling the jade green billows from the west
Roars the wild sea-wind. Keep your sea. I go.
Stranger to me the fierce red-blooded zest,
The wild beast urge, the primitive behest.
Fierce primal impulses are thoughts I do not know.
I've ever dwelt 'mid worlds of vaguer tone,
All tints and colors merging soft and dim,
No garish flare of reds at the desert's rim—
The sea-winds murmur there a pleasing drone;
The sea-fogs grace the ocean, friendly, grey.
'Mid soft-hued woodlands shy nymphs have their play.
Ad so I'll none of all this garish joy,
These blazing dawns that leap like maids o'er-bold;
The flaming greens and reds and yellows cloy,
Barbaric tints of crimson, blazing gold.
The worlds I seek are like soft, golden chimes;
Soft merging tints that match the breeze's croon
And no false note plays in the world-scheme rhymes—
I seek soft, vague plateaus of the moon.
Ivory in the Night
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Maidens of star and of moon,
born from the mists of the age,
I thrill to the touch of your hands,
in the night when the shadows are o'er me.
Your eyes are like the gulfs of the night,
your limbs are like ivory gleaming—
But your lips are more red than is mortal,
and pointed the nails of your fingers.
Jack Dempsey
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Through the California mountains
And many a wooded vale
The wind from seaward whispers
The name of the Nonpareil
O'er many a peak snow covered
O'er many a woodland fair
The sea-breeze murmurs the wonderful tale
Of the lad from County Clare.
But never the wind from seaward
And never the brooks of the vale
Can speak the half of the glory,
The due of the Nonpareil.
Champion of all Champions,
Greatest in all times' bound,
The lad who held Fitzsimmons
For thirteen gory rounds.
But the ring's red history passes
To a swiftly roving tale,
And there's few who now remember
The name of the Nonpareil.
But here's to the greatest of fighters,
To a name that never shall fail,
To the name of the first Jack Dempsey
The wonderful Nonpareil.
John Kelley
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I hesitate to name your name,
John Kelley,
For I shrink from obscenity.
I hope you feel white,
After pilloring a child before a snarling pack
Of yellow-bellied swine, who after all,
Were whiter at heart than you, John Kelley.
You should feel proud, Honorable sir,
For the dung you have cast into the faces
Of the American people;
For the blow you have dealt at American womanhood,
And the woman-hood of your own color and race,
John Kelley.
You have betrayed the women of your race,
John Kelley,
And if you had the soul of a man instead of a hog,
Your dreams would be haunted by dim shapes
And quivering shadows,
By tear-dimmed eyes and pale faces and slender white hands,
By all the dim women down all Eternity,
Who suffered and passed through the red portals of Hell
To give you being, John Kelley.
This is my word to you,
And may you remember it.
It is my hope that your yellow-bellied pets
Will deal with you some day as you have dealt with your own
People;
That they will nail you into a barrel
Full of razor blades
And roll you down a hill into hell, John Kelley.
John L. Sullivan
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Bellowing, blustering, old John L.
Fearing nothing 'tween sky and hell!
Rushing, roaring, swinging his right.
Smashing, crashing, forcing the fight.
Battering foes until they fell,
Tilt your glasses to old John L.!
Mitchell he knocked, from the ring clear out!
Dropped Kilrain with a single clout!
Laflin he beat and Burke he flayed,
Knocked out the Maori Giant, Slade!
Packed in each fist, damnation and hell!
Tilt your glasses to old John L.!
Old John L.'s in town today
He's hitting it down the Great White way.
Look at his swallow tail coat, silk hat!
Mustache too, say he's on a bat!
Living it in, that you can tell,
Tilt your glasses to old John L.!
He's cleaned out the roughest, toughest saloon,
He's licked O'Rourke and Jem McClune,
Sampled every saloon on the streets,
Buying drinks for all he meets,
He's taking the bowery in pell-mell!
Tilt your glasses to old John L.!
Stick in your head in the grog-shop door,
Look at him! Listen to his roar!
"Set out eh whiskey. Jimmy, ye bum!
Belly the bar, ye half bred scum!
I can lick any guy from here to hell!"
Tilt your glasses to old John L.!
The world moves on and the ring moves too
Old fighters have long given way to new.
But here;s a health to the olden days,
To the wild old, mad old, bad old ways,
When a fight was a fight and not a sell,
And tilt your glasses to old John L.
Kid Lavigne is Dead
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Hang up the battered gloves; Lavigne is dead.
Bold and erect he went into the dark.
The crown is withered and the crowds are fled,
The empty ring stands bare and lone—yet hark:
The ghostly roar of many a phantom throng
Floats down the dusty years, forgotten long.
Hot blazed the lights above the crimson ring
Where there he reigned in his full prime, a king.
The throngs’ acclaim roared up beneath their sheen
And whispered down the night: "Lavigne! Lavigne!"
Red splashed the blood and fierce the crashing blows.
