Thomas Bailey
Thomas Bailey
suicide thinking blue
So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane.
passion men air
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates And through them presses a wild motley throng Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn These bringing with them unknown gods and rites Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws In street and alley what strange tongues are loud Accents of menace alien to our air Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! O Liberty, white Goddess! Is it well To leave the gates unguarded?
rain wind rivers
We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind,-and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain.
memorial-day land tears
With the tears a Land hath shed. Their graves should ever be green.
vocabulary age next
What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next.
laughing optimism joy
This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile, taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath. This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while laughs in the teeth of Death.
letting-go kings war
My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of kings
forever speak affair
Shakespeare is forever coming into our affairs -- putting in his oar, so to speak -- with some pat word or sentence.
father able banking
My father invested his money so securely in the banking business that he was never able to get any of it out again.
sleep turns delicate
Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
sleep mystery probing
What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?
death-penalty murder intolerance
The fanatic has the courage of his conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have anyone electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject.
sunset sea fire
Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West; the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.
wine waiting tonight
I beg you come tonight and dine A welcome waits you and sound wine The Roederer chilly to a charm As Juno's breasts the claret warm ...