MADISON CAWEIN (1865-1914)
Can freckled August,-drowsing warm and blonde
Beside a wheat-shock in the white-topped mead,
In her hot hair the oxeyed daisies wound,-
O bird of rain, lend aught but sleepy heed
To Thee? when no plumed weed, no feather'd seed
Blows by her; and no ripple breaks the pond,
That gleams like flint between its rim of grasses,
Through which the dragonfly forever passes
Like splintered diamond.
Drouth weights the trees, and from the farmhouse eaves
The locust, pulse-beat of the summer day,
Throbs; and the lane, that shambles under leaves
Limp with the heat-a league of rutty way—
Is lost in dust; and sultry scents of hay
Breathe from the panting meadows heaped with sheaves.
Now, now, O bird, what hint is there of rain,
In thirsty heaven or on burning plain,
That thy keen eye perceives?
But thou art right. Thou prophesiest true.
For hardly hast thou ceased thy forecasting,
When, up the western fierceness of scorched blue,
Great water-carrier winds their buckets bring
Brimming with freshness. How their dippers ring
And flash and rumble! lavishing dark dew
On corn and forestland, that, streaming wet,
Their hilly backs against the downpour set,
Like giants vague in view.
The butterfly, safe under leaf and flower,
Has found a roof, knowing how true thou art;
The bumble-bee, within the last half-hour,
Has ceased to hug the honey to its heart;
While in the barnyard, under shed and cart,
Brood-hens have housed.-But I, who scorned thy power,
Barometer of the birds,-like August there,-
Beneath a beech, dripping from foot to hair,
Like some drenched truant, cower.
Here Is the Place Where Loveliness Keeps House
Here is the place where Loveliness keeps house,
Between the river and the wooded hills,
Within a valley where the Springtime spills
Her firstling wind-flowers under blossoming boughs:
Where Summer sits braiding her warm, white brows
With bramble-roses; and where Autumn fills
Her lap with asters; and old Winter frills
With crimson haw and hip his snowy blouse.
Here you may meet with Beauty. Here she sits
Gazing upon the moon, or all the day
Tuning a wood-thrush flute, remote, unseen:
Or when the storm is out, 'tis she who flits
From rock to rock, a form of flying spray,
Shouting, beneath the leaves' tumultuous green.
ANNE REEVE ALDRICH (1866-1892)
Recollection
How can it be that I forget
The way he phrased my doom,
When I recall the arabesques
That carpeted the room?
How can it be that I forget
His look and mien that hour,
When I recall I wore a rose,
And still can smell the flower?
How can it be that I forget
Those words that were the last,
When I recall the tune a man
Was whistling as he passed?
These things are what we keep from life's
Supremest joy or pain;
For Memory locks her chaff in bins
And throws away the grain.
I made the cross myself whose weight
Was later laid on me.
This thought is torture as I toil
Up life's steep Calvary.
To think mine own hands drove the nails!
I sang a merry song,
And chose the heaviest wood I had
To build it firm and strong,
If I had guessed-if I had dreamed
Its weight was meant for me,
I should have made a lighter cross
To bear up Calvary!
Reflections on a Mythic Beast,
Who's Quite Remarkable, at Least.
I never saw a Purple Cow;
I never Hope to See One;
But I can Tell you, Anyhow,
I'd rather See than Be One.
DORA READ GOODALE (1866-)
Thou hast done evil
And given place to the devil;
Yet so cunningly thou concealest
The thing which thou feelest,
That no eye espieth it,
Satan himself denieth it.
Go where it chooseth thee,
There is none that accuseth thee;
Neither foe nor lover
Will the wrong uncover;
The world's breath raiseth thee,
And thy own past praiseth thee.
Yet know thou this:
At quick of thy being
Is an eye all-seeing,
The snake's wit evadeth not,
The charmed lip persuadeth not;
So thoroughly it despiseth
The thing thy hand prizeth,
Though the sun were thy clothing,
It should count thee for nothing.
Thine own eye divineth thee,
Thine own soul arraigneth thee;
God himself cannot shrive thee
Till that judge forgive thee.
Sometime, it may be, you and I
In some deserted yard will lie
Where Memory fades away;
Caring no more for Love his dreams,
Busy with new and alien themes,
The saints and sages say.
But let our graves be side by side,
So idlers may at evening tide
Pause there a moment's space:
"Ah, they were lovers who lie here;
Else why these low graves laid so near,
In this forgotten place?"
EDGAR LEE MASTERS (1868-)
From "The New Spoon River"
MORGAN OAKLEY
There is a time for vine leaves in the hair,
And a time for thorns on the brow,
Even as life is both ecstasy and agony,
And as Nature grows both leaves and thorns.
In youth I knew love and victory;
In age loneliness and pain.
But life is to be lived neither as leaves,
Nor as thorns, but through both.
I came to the wisdom of barren boughs,
And the desolation of unleaved thorns,
Which remembered the leaves!
To recall and revision blue skies;
To imagine the summer's clouds;
To remember mountains and wooded slopes,
And he blue of October water;
To face the shark gray spray of the sea;
To listen in dreams to voices singing,
Voices departed, but never forgotten;
To feel the kisses of vanished lips,
And see the eyes of rapture,
And hear the whispers of sacred midnights.
To live over the richness of life,
Never fully lived;
To see it all, as from a window that looks
Upon a garden of flowers and distant hills,
From which your broken body is barred. . .
O life! O unutterable beauty,
To leave you, knowing that you were never loved enough,
Wishing to live you all over
With all the soul's wise will!
Ice cannot shiver in the cold,
Nor stones shrink from the lapping flame.
Eyes that are sealed, no more have tears;
Ears that are stopped hear nothing ill;
Hearts turned to silt are strange to pain;
Tongues that are dumb report no loss;
Hands stiffened, well may idle be;
No sigh is from a breathless breast.
Beauty may fade, but closed eyes see not;
Sorrow may wail, but stopped ears hear not;
Work is, but folded hands need work not;
Nothing to say is for dumb tongues.
The rolling earth rolls on and on
With trees and stones and winding streams-
My dream is what the hill-side dreams!
CLEANTHUS TRILLING
The urge of the seed: the germ.
The urge of the germ: the stalk.
The urge of the stalk: leaves.
The urge of leaves: the blossom.
The urge of the blossom: to scatter pollen.
The urge of the pollen: the imagined dream of life
The urge of life: longing for to-morrow.
The urge of to-morrow: Pain.
The urge of Pain: God.
As a boy old bachelors and old maids
Were pointed out to me as hearts of ideal devotion.
Consecrated to the memory of a lost love,
It was not that, as I learned for myself,
That kept their souls from marriage:
If the sun of March brings April breezes,
And tempts the blossoms forth
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