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

by H. L. Mencken

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