Poems – Page 11 – Poetry Out Loud

HAIL, happy day, when, smiling like the morn,
Fair Freedom rose New-England to adorn:
The northern clime beneath her genial ray,
Dartmouth, congratulates thy blissful sway:
Elate with hope her race no longer mourns,
Each soul expands, each grateful bosom burns,
While in thine hand with pleasure we behold
The silken reins, and Freedom’s charms unfold.
Long lost to realms beneath the northern skies

She shines supreme, while hated faction dies:
Soon as appear’d the Goddess long desir’d,
Sick at the view, she languish’d and expir’d;
Thus from the splendors of the morning light
The owl in sadness seeks the caves of night.
No more, America, in mournful strain
Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain,
No longer shalt thou dread the iron chain,
Which wanton Tyranny with lawless hand
Had made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land.

Should you, my lord, while you peruse my song,
Wonder from whence my love of Freedom sprung,
Whence flow these wishes for the common good,
By feeling hearts alone best understood,
I, young in life, by seeming cruel fate
Was snatch’d from Afric’s fancy’d happy seat:
What pangs excruciating must molest,
What sorrows labour in my parent’s breast?
Steel’d was that soul and by no misery mov’d
That from a father seiz’d his babe belov’d:
Such, such my case. And can I then but pray
Others may never feel tyrannic sway?

For favours past, great Sir, our thanks are due,
And thee we ask thy favours to renew,
Since in thy pow’r, as in thy will before,
To sooth the griefs, which thou did’st once deplore.
May heav’nly grace the sacred sanction give
To all thy works, and thou for ever live
Not only on the wings of fleeting Fame,
Though praise immortal crowns the patriot’s name,
But to conduct to heav’ns refulgent fane,
May fiery coursers sweep th’ ethereal plain,
And bear thee upwards to that blest abode,
Where, like the prophet, thou shalt find thy God.

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.

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.

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.

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!

(He Crosses)

He rode across like a cavalier,
Spurs clicking hard and loud;
And where he tarried dropped his tear
On heads he left low-bowed.

But, “Even Stephen,” he cried, and struck
His steed an urgent blow;
He swore by youth he was a buck
With savage oats to sow.

To even up some standing scores,
From every flower bed
He passed, he plucked by threes and fours
Till wheels whirled in his head.

But long before the drug could tell,
He took his anodyne;
With scornful grace, he bowed farewell
And retraversed the line.

Under the harvest moon,
When the soft silver
Drips shimmering
Over the garden nights,
Death, the gray mocker,
Comes and whispers to you
As a beautiful friend
Who remembers.

Under the summer roses
When the flagrant crimson
Lurks in the dusk
Of the wild red leaves,
Love, with little hands,
Comes and touches you
With a thousand memories,
And asks you
Beautiful, unanswerable questions.

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
  ⁠The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
  With large and sinewy hands,
And the muscles of his brawny arms
  Are strong as iron bands.

His hair is crisp, and black, and long;
  His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
  He earns whate’er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
  For he owes not any man.

Week in, week out, from morn till night,
  You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
  With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
  When the evening sun is low.

And children coming home from school
  Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
  And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
  Like chaff from a threshing-floor.

He goes on Sunday to the church,
  And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
  He hears his daughter’s voice
Singing in the village choir,
  And it makes his heart rejoice.

It sounds to him like her mother’s voice
  Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
  How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
  A tear out of his eyes.

Toiling,—rejoicing,—sorrowing,
  Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
  Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
  Has earned a night’s repose.

Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
  For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
  Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
  Each burning deed and thought.

Thou sing’st alone on the bare wintry bough,
As if Spring with its leaves were around thee now;
And its voice that was heard in the laughing rill,
And the breeze as it whispered o’er meadow and hill,
Still fell on thine ear, as it murmured along
To join the sweet tide of thine own gushing song.
Sing on—though its sweetness was lost on the blast,
And the storm has not heeded thy song as it passed,
Yet its music awoke in a heart that was near,
A thought whose remembrance will ever prove dear;
Though the brook may be frozen, though silent its voice,
And the gales through the meadows no longer rejoice,
Still I felt, as my ear caught thy glad note of glee,
That my heart in life’s winter might carol like thee.

1. Because pockets are not a natural right.

2. Because the great majority of women do not want pockets. If they did they would have them.

3. Because whenever women have had pockets they have not used them.

4. Because women are required to carry enough things as it is, without the additional burden of pockets.

5. Because it would make dissension between husband and wife as to whose pockets were to be filled.

6. Because it would destroy man’s chivalry toward woman, if he did not have to carry all her things in his pockets.

7. Because men are men, and women are women. We must not fly in the face of nature.

8. Because pockets have been used by men to carry tobacco, pipes, whiskey flasks, chewing gum and compromising letters. We see no reason to suppose that women would use them more wisely.