Songs of a Sourdough Book

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 66 QUATRAINS. It's all decreed: the mighty earthquake crash; The countless constellations' wheel and flash; The rise and fall of empires, war's red tide, The composition of your dinner hash. There's no hap-hazard in this world of ours: Cause and effect are grim, relentless powers. They rule the world. (A king was shot last night. Last night I held the joker and both bowers.) From out the mesh of fate our heads we thrust. We can't do what we would, but what we must. Heredity has got us in a cinch. (Consoling thought, when you've been on a "bust.") Hark to the song where spheral voices blend: " There's no beginning, never will be end." It makes ua nutty; hang the astral chimes! The table's spread; come, let us dine, my friend. THE MEN THAT DON'T FIT IN. There's a race of men that don't fit in, A race that can't stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gipsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: " Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!" So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake. 68 THE J/£T THAT DOX'T FIT IX. And each forgets, as he strips and runs, With a brilliant, fitful pace, It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day with a hope that's dead Iti the glare of the truth at last. He has failed, he has failed;...Read More