Poems – Page 46 – Poetry Out Loud

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.

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.

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.

Ah, not this marble, dead and cold:

Far from its base and shaft expanding—the round zones circling, comprehending,

Thou, Washington, art all the world’s, the continents’ entire—not yours alone, America,

Europe’s as well, in every part, castle of lord or laborer’s cot,

Or frozen North, or sultry South—the African’s—the Arab’s in his tent,

Old Asia’s there with venerable smile, seated amid her ruins;

(Greets the antique the hero new? ’tis but the same—the heir legitimate, continued ever,

The indomitable heart and arm—proofs of the never-broken line,

Courage, alertness, patience, faith, the same—e’en in defeat defeated not, the same:)

Wherever sails a ship, or house is built on land, or day or night,

Through teeming cities’ streets, indoors or out, factories or farms,

Now, or to come, or past—where patriot wills existed or exist,

Wherever Freedom, pois’d by Toleration, sway’d by Law,

Stands or is rising thy true monument.

I wander among the hills of alien lands
Where Nature her prerogative resigns
To Man; where Comfort in her shack reclines
And all the arts and sciences commands.
But in my soul
The eastern billows roll—
I hear the voices of my native strands.

My lingering eyes, a lonely hemlock fills
With grace and splendor rising manifold;
Beneath her boughs the maples spread their gold
And at her feet, the silver of rills.
But in my heart
A peasant void of art
Echoes the voices of my native hills.

On every height a studied art confines
All human joy in social pulchritude;
The boxwood frowns where beckoning birches stood,
And where the thrushes caroled Fashion dines.
But through the spreading cheer
The shepherd’s reed I hear
Beneath my Lebanon terebinths and pines.

And though no voices here are heard of toil,
Nor accents least of sorrow, nor the din
Of multitudes, nor even at the Inn
The City is permitted aught to spoil,
Yet in my breast,
A shack at best,
Laments the mother of my native soil.

Even where the sumptuous solitudes deny
A shelter to a bird or butterfly,
As in the humblest dwelling of the dale
A gracious welcome’s shown the passer-by;
But evermore clear
Allwhere I hear
The calling of my native hut and sky.

Land of my birth! a handful of thy sod
Resuscitates the flower of my faith;
For whatsoever the seer of science sayth,
Thou art the cradle and the tomb of God;
And forever I behold
A vision old
Of Beauty weeping where He once hath trod.

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.

(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.

I. Apart

One place—one roof—one name—their daily bread
In daily sacrament they break
Together, and together take
Perpetual counsel, such as use has fed
The habit of, in words which make
No lie. For courtesy’s sweet sake
And pity’s, one brave heart whose joy is dead,
Smiles ever, answering words which wake
But weariness; hides all its ache,—
Its hopeless ache, its longing and its dread;
Strong as a martyr at the stake
Renouncing self; striving to slake
The pangs of thirst on bitter hyssop red
With vinegar! O brave, strong heart!
God sets all days, all hours apart,
Joy cometh at his hour appointed.

II. Together

No touch—no sight—no sound—wide continents
And seas clasp hands to separate
Them from each other now. Too late!
Triumphant Love has leagued the elements
To do their will. Hath light a mate
For swiftness? Can it overweight
The air? Or doth the sun know accidents?
The light, the air, the sun, inviolate
For them, do constant keep and state
Message of their ineffable contents
And raptures, each in each. So great
Their bliss of loving, even fate
In parting them, hath found no instruments
Whose bitter pain insatiate
Doth kill it, or their faith abate
In presence of Love’s hourly sacraments.

Not to dance with her
Was such a trivial thing

There were girls more fair than she,––

To-day
Ten girls dressed in white.
Each had a white rose wreath.

They made a dead man’s arch
And ten strong men
Carried a body through.

Not to dance with her
Was a trivial thing.

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.