Poems – Page 11 – Poetry Out Loud

When the heavens with stars are gleaming

Like a diadem of light,

And the moon’s pale rays are streaming,

Decking earth with radiance bright;

When the autumn’s winds are sighing,

O’er the hill and o’er the lea,

When the summer time is dying,

Wanderer, wilt thou think of me?

When thy life is crowned with gladness,

And thy home with love is blest,

Not one brow o’ercast with sadness,

Not one bosom of unrest—

When at eventide reclining,

At thy hearthstone gay and free,

Think of one whose life is pining,

Breathe thou, love, a prayer for me.

Should dark sorrows make thee languish,

Cause thy cheek to lose its hue,

In the hour of deepest anguish,

Darling, then I’ll grieve with you.

Though the night be dark and dreary,

And it seemeth long to thee,

I would whisper, “be not weary;”

I would pray love, then, for thee.

Well I know that in the future,

I may cherish naught of earth;

Well I know that love needs nurture,

And it is of heavenly birth.

But though ocean waves may sever

I from thee, and thee from me,

Still this constant heart will never,

Never cease to think of thee.

Here blooms the legend, fed by Time and Chance,
Fresh as the morning, though with centuries old,
The whitest lily on the shield of France,
With heart of virgin gold.

Along the square she moved, sweet Joan of Arc,
With face more pallid than a daylit star,
Half-seen, half-doubted, while before her dark
Stretched the array of war.

Swift passed the battle-smoke of lying breath
From off her path, as if a wind had blown,
Showing no faithless King, but righteous Death
On the low wooden throne.

He would reward her: she who meekly wore
Alike the gilded mail and peasant gown,
As meekly now received one honor more,
The formless, fiery crown.

A white dove trembled up the heated air,
And in the opening zenith found its goal;
Soft as a downward feather, dropped a prayer
For each repentant soul.

The prison-house in which I live

Is falling to decay,

But God renews my spirit’s strength

Within these walls of clay.

For me a dimness slowly creeps

Around earth’s fairest light,

But heaven grows clearer to my view,

And fairer to my sight.

It may be earth’s sweet harmonies

Are duller to my ear,

But music from my Father’s house

Begins to float more near.

Then let the pillars of my home

Crumble and fall away;

Lo, God’s dear love within my soul

Renews it day by day.

Shake your brown feet, honey,
Shake your brown feet, chile,
Shake your brown feet, honey,
Shake ’em swift and wil’–
Get way back, honey,
Do that low-down step.
Walk on over, darling,
Now! Come out
With your left.
Shake your brown feet, honey,
Shake ’em, honey chile.

Sun’s going down this evening–
Might never rise no mo’.
The sun’s going down this very night–
Might never rise no mo’–
So dance with swift feet, honey,
(The banjo’s sobbing low)
Dance with swift feet, honey–
Might never dance no mo’.

Shake your brown feet, Liza,
Shake ’em, Liza, chile,
Shake your brown feet, Liza,
(The music’s soft and wil’)
Shake your brown feet, Liza,
(The banjo’s sobbing low)
The sun’s going down this very night–
Might never rise no mo’.

Now if a thousand perfect men were to appear it would not amaze me,
Now if a thousand beautiful forms of women appear’d it would not astonish me.

Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons,
It is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.

Here a great personal deed has room,
(Such a deed seizes upon the hearts of the whole race of men,
Its effusion of strength and will overwhelms law and mocks all authority and all argument against it.)

Here is the test of wisdom,
Wisdom is not finally tested in schools,
Wisdom cannot be pass’d from one having it to another not having it,
Wisdom is of the soul, is not susceptible of proof, is its own proof,
Applies to all stages and objects and qualities and is content,
Is the certainty of the reality and immortality of things, and the excellence of things;
Something there is in the float of the sight of things that provokes it out of the soul.

Now I re-examine philosophies and religions,
They may prove well in lecture-rooms, yet not prove at all under the spacious clouds and along the landscape and flowing currents.

Here is realization,
Here is a man tallied—he realizes here what he has in him,
The past, the future, majesty, love—if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Only the kernel of every object nourishes;
Where is he who tears off the husks for you and me?
Where is he that undoes stratagems and envelopes for you and me?

Here is adhesiveness, it is not previously fashion’d, it is apropos;
Do you know what it is as you pass to be loved by strangers?
Do you know the talk of those turning eye-balls?

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a crowbar.
Let me pry loose old walls.
Let me lift and loosen old foundations.

Lay me on an anvil, O God.
Beat me and hammer me into a steel spike.
Drive me into the girders that hold a skyscraper together.
Take red-hot rivets and fasten me into the central girders.
Let me be the great nail holding a skyscraper through blue nights into white stars.

Rise O days from your fathomless deeps, till you loftier, fiercer sweep,

Long for my soul hungering gymnastic I devour’d what the earth gave me,

Long I roam’d amid the woods of the north, long I watch’d Niagara pouring,

I travel’d the prairies over and slept on their breast, I cross’d the Nevadas, I cross’d the plateaus,

I ascended the towering rocks along the Pacific, I sail’d out to sea,

I sail’d through the storm, I was refresh’d by the storm,

I watch’d with joy the threatening maws of the waves,

I mark’d the white combs where they career’d so high, curling over,

I heard the wind piping, I saw the black clouds,

Saw from below what arose and mounted, (O superb! O wild as my heart, and powerful!)

Heard the continuous thunder as it bellow’d after the lightning,

Noted the slender and jagged threads of lightning as sudden and fast amid the din they chased each other across the sky;

These, and such as these, I, elate, saw—saw with wonder, yet pensive and masterful,

All the menacing might of the globe uprisen around me,

Yet there with my soul I fed, I fed content, supercilious.

‘Twas well, O soul—’twas a good preparation you gave me,

Now we advance our latent and ampler hunger to fill,

Now we go forth to receive what the earth and the sea never gave us,

Not through the mighty woods we go, but through the mightier cities,

Something for us is pouring now more than Niagara pouring,

Torrents of men, (sources and rills of the Northwest are you indeed inexhaustible?)

What, to pavements and homesteads here, what were those storms of the mountains and sea?

What, to passions I witness around me to-day? was the sea risen?

Was the wind piping the pipe of death under the black clouds?

Lo! from deeps more unfathomable, something more deadly and savage,

Manhattan rising, advancing with menacing front—Cincinnati, Chicago, unchain’d;

What was that swell I saw on the ocean? behold what comes here,

How it climbs with daring feet and hands—how it dashes!

How the true thunder bellows after the lightning—how bright the flashes of lightning!

How Democracy with desperate vengeful port strides on, shown through the dark by those flashes of lightning!

(Yet a mournful wall and low sob I fancied I heard through the dark,

In a lull of the deafening confusion.)

Thunder on! stride on, Democracy! strike with vengeful stroke!

And do you rise higher than ever yet O days, O cities!

Crash heavier, heavier yet O storms! you have done me good,

My soul prepared in the mountains absorbs your immortal strong nutriment,

Long had I walk’d my cities, my country roads through farms, only half satisfied,

One doubt nauseous undulating like a snake, crawl’d on the ground before me,

Continually preceding my steps, turning upon me oft, ironically hissing low;

The cities I loved so well I abandon’d and left, I sped to the certainties suitable to me,

Hungering, hungering, hungering, for primal energies and Nature’s dauntlessness,

I refresh’d myself with it only, I could relish it only,

I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire—on the water and air waited long;

But now I no longer wait, I am fully satisfied, I am glutted,

I have witness’d the true lightning, I have witness’d my cities electric,

I have lived to behold man burst forth and warlike America rise,

Hence I will seek no more the food of the northern solitary wilds,

No more the mountains roam or sail the stormy sea.

Staccato! Staccato!
Leggier agitato!
   In and out does the melody twist—
Unique proposition
Is this composition.
   (Alas! for the player who hasn’t the wrist!)
Now in the dominant
Theme ringing prominent,
   Bass still repeating its one monotone,
Double notes crying,
Up keyboard go flying,
   The change to the minor comes in like a groan.
Without a cessation
A chaste modulation
   Hastens adown to subdominant key,
Where melody mellow-like
Singing so ’cello-like
   Rises and falls in a wild ecstasy.
Scarce is this finished
When chords all diminished
   Break loose in a patter that comes down like rain;
A pedal-point wonder
Rivaling thunder,
   Now all is mad agitation again.
Like laughter jolly
Begins the finale;
   Again does the ’cello its tones seem to lend
Diminuendo ad molto crescendo.
   Ah! Rubinstein only could make such an end!

Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
       To stay at home is best.

Weary and homesick and distressed,
They wander east, they wander west,
And are baffled and beaten and blown about
By the winds of the wilderness of doubt;
       To stay at home is best.

Then stay at home, my heart, and rest;
The bird is safest in its nest;
O’er all that flutter their wings and fly
A hawk is hovering in the sky;
       To stay at home is best.

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
     I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
     He did a lazy sway . . .
     He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
     O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
     Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
     O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
     “Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
       Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
       I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
       And put ma troubles on the shelf.”

Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
     “I got the Weary Blues
       And I can’t be satisfied.
       Got the Weary Blues
       And can’t be satisfied—
       I ain’t happy no mo’
       And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.