ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS
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William S. Braithwaite >> ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS
ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS
WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE, Editor
CONTENTS
HOME BOUND
JOSEPH AUSLANDER
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
KATHERINE LEE BATES
YELLOW CLOVER
KATHERINE LEE BATES
THE RETURNING
SYLVESTER BAXTER
TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL
ERNEST BENSHIMOL
A BANQUET
ERNEST BENSHIMOL
SONG
GEORGE CABOT LODGE
THE WORLDS
MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI
THE RIOT
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
HUNGER
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
EXIT GOD
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
ROUSSEAU
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
JOHN MASEFIELD
AMY BRIDGMAN
1620-1920
LE BARON RUSSEL BRIGGS
THE CROSS-CURRENT
ABBIE FARWELL BROWN
CANDLEMAS
ALICE BROWN
SUNRISE ON MANSFIELD MOUNTAIN
ALICE BROWN
BURNT ARE THE PETALS OF LIFE
ELSIE PUMPELLY CABOT
FOUR FOUNTAINS. AFTER RESPIGHI
JESSICA CARR
IN THE TROLLEY CAR
RUTH BALDWIN CHENERY
IN IRISH RAIN
MARTHA HASKELL CLARK
CRETONNE TROPICS
GRACE HAZARD CONKLING
TO HILDA OF HER ROSES
GRACE HAZARD CONKLING
DANDELION
HILDA CONKLING
RED ROOSTER
HILDA CONKLING
VElVETS
HILDA CONKLING
THE MOODS
FANNY STEARNS DAVIS
HILL-FANTASY
FANNY STEARNS DAVIS
THE MIRAGE
NATHAN HASKELL DOLE
THE ROAD BEYOND THE TOWN
MICHAEL EARLS, S.J.
THE LILAC
WALTER PRICHARD EATON
GOD, THROUGH HIS OFFSPRING NATURE, GAVE ME LOVE
CHARLES GIBSON
TO MUSIC
MAUDE GORDON-ROBY
THE VOICE IN THE SONG
MARY GERTRUDE HAMILTON
HYMNS AND ANTHEMS SUNG AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE
CAROLINE HAZARD
REUBEN ROY
HAROLD CRAWFORD STEARNS
COUNTRY ROAD
MARIE LOUISE HERSEY
WREATHS
CAROLYN HILLMAN
MEMPHIS
GORDON MALHERBE HILLMAN
SAINT COLUMBKILLE
E.J.V. HUIGINN
MISS DOANE
WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON
FALLEN FENCES
WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON
CROSS-CURRENTS
WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON
THE FAREWELL
WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON
SONG
OLIVER JENKINS
LOVE AUTUMNAL
OLIVER JENKINS
ECHOES
RUTH LAMBERT JONES
WAR PICTURES
RUTH LAMBERT JONES
AN OLD SONG
ARTHUR KETCHUM
ROADSIDE REST
ARTHUR KETCHUM
OLD LIZETTE ON SLEEP
AGNES LEE
MOTHERHOOD
AGNES LEE
ESSEX
GEORGE CABOT LODGE
THE SONG OF THE WAVE
GEORGE CABOT LODGE
FRIMAIRE
AMY LOWELL
PATTERNS
AMY LOWELL
A BATHER
AMY LOWELL
LEPRECHAUNS AND CLURICAUNS
DENNIS A. MCCARTHY
L'ENVOI
DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN
TO IMAGINATION
DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN
DRAGON
JEANETTE MARKS
GREEN GOLDEN DOOR
JEANETTE MARKS
SLEEPY HOLLOW, CONCORD
JOHN CLAIR MINOT
THE SWORD OF ARTHUR
JOHN CLAIR MINOT
THE DIVINE FOREST
CHARLES R. MURPHY
MAGIC
EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
MICHAEL PAT
EDWARD J. O'BRIAN
SONG
EDWARD J. O'BRIAN
IN MEMORIAM: FRANCIS LEDWIDGE
NORREYS JEPHSON O'CONNOR
EVENSONG
NORREYS JEPHSON O'CONNOR
THE PROPHET
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
HARVEST-MOON: 1914
JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
HORSEMAN SPRINGING FROM THE DARK: A DREAM
LILLA CABOT PERRY
THREE QUATRAINS
LILLA CABOT PERRY
A VALENTINE UNSENT
MARGARET PERRY
SHIPBUILDERS
ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER
UNFADING PICTURES
LOUELLA C. POOLE
WITH WAVES AND WINGS
CHARLOTTE PORTER
BLUEBERRIES
FRANK PRENTICE RAND
NOCTURNE
WILLIAM ROSCOIE THAYER
ENVOI
WILLIAM 'ROSCOE THAYER
THERE WHERE THE SEA
MARIE TUDOR
MARRIAGE
MARIE TUDOR
PITY
HAROLD VINAL
A ROSE TO THE LIVING
NIXON WATERMAN
THE STORM
G.O. WARREN
WHERE THEY SLEEP
G.O. WARREN
BEAUTY
G.O. WARREN
COMRADES
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
THE FLIGHT
GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY
HOME-BOUND
THE moon is a wavering rim where one fish
slips,
The water makes a quietness of sound;
Night is an anchoring of many ships
Home-bound.
There are strange tunnelers in the dark, and whirs
Of wings that die, and hairy spiders spin
The silence into nets, and tenanters
Move softly in.
I step on shadows riding through the grass,
And feel the night lean cool against my face;
And challenged by the sentinel of space,
I pass.
JOSEPH AUSLANDE
AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
O BEAUTIFUL for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
O beautiful for pilgrim feet,
Those stern, impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self their country loved,
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine.
O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
KATHERINE LEE BATES
YELLOW CLOVER
MUST I, who walk alone,
come on it still,
This Puck of plants
The wise would do away with,
The sunshine slants
To play with,
Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover,
Which once in Parting for a time
That then seemed long,
Ere time for you was over,
We sealed our own?
Do you remember yet,
O Soul beyond the stars,
Beyond the uttermost dim bars
Of space,
Dear Soul, who found earth sweet,
Remember by love's grace,
In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song,
How suddenly we halted in our climb,
Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill,
Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet,
And gave them as a token
Each to Each,
In lieu of speech,
In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken,
Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet
With a strange dew of tears?
So it began,
This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover,
To be our tenderest language. All the years
It lent a new zest to the summer hours,
As each of us went scheming to surprise
The other with our homely, laureate flowers.
Sonnets and odes
Fringing our daily roads.
Can amaranth and asphodel
Bring merrier laughter to your eyes?
Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes,
Keep any wistful consciousness of earth,
Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love,
Simplicities of mirth,
Must follow them above
With touches of vague homesickness that pass
Like shadows of swift birds across the grass.
Beneath some foreign arch of sky,
How many a time the rover
You or I,
For life oft sundered look from look,
And voice from voice, the transient dearth
Schooling my soul to brook
This distance that no messages may span,
Would chance
Upon our wilding by a lonely well,
Or drowsy watermill,
Or swaying to the chime of convent bell,
Or where the nightingales of old romance
With tragical contraltos fill
Dim solitudes of infinite desire;
And once I joyed to meet
Our peasant gadabout
A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat,
Twinkling a saucy eye
As potentates paced by.
Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame
From friendship's altar fire!
How proudly we would pluck and tame
The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay!
How swiftly they were sent
Far, far away
On journeys wide,
By sea and continent,
Green miles and blue leagues over,
From each of us to each,
That so our hearts might reach,
And touch within the yellow clover,
Love's letter to be glad about
Like sunshine when it came!
My sorrow asks no healing; it is love;
Let love then make me brave
To bear the keen hurts of
This careless summertide,
Ay, of our own poor flower,
Changed with our fatal hour,
For all its sunshine vanished when you died;
Only white clover blossoms on your grave.
KATHERINE LEE BATES
THE RETURNING
We long for her, we yearn for her--
Yes, ardently we yearn
For her return.
Recalling those beloved days
(Days intimate with ways
Of friends so near to us
And life so dear to us),
We yearn unspeakably for her return.
And come she must. . .Yet while we trust
We soon may see the passing of this agony
Which makes intrusive years still seem
A fearsome dream,
We know that when she comes
She really comes not back again.
She'll come in other guise
And under fairer skies--
And yet to bitter pain!
That day she went away
Our homes with laughing youth were filled.
Where then was happiness
Is now distress,
The laughter stilled;
For when she left
Youth followed her-
We stay bereft.
So all our golden joy
For what she brings
Must carry gray alloy:
The sorrow that she can not lay,
The mysery that she can not stay-
While all the gladsome songs she sings
Must bear for undertones
Old sighs and echoed moans.
As they who go away
In flush of youth
May come quite worn and gray
And bringing naught but ruth-
So, when the strife shall cease,
And when she comes at last,
When all the armies vast
Shall at her feet
Kneel down to greet
Thrice welcome Peace,
This world will be so changed
(So many dear ones dead,
So many friends estranged,
So many blessings fled,
So many wonted ways forever barred,
So many coming days forever marred)
That then
She truly comes not back again--
She, the Peace we knew.
Yet how we long for her!
How ardently we yearn
For her return!
SYLVESTER BAXTER
TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL
I.
YOUTH
I LOVE to watch the world from here, for all
The numberless living portraits that are drawn
Upon the mind. Far over is the sea,
Fronting the sand, a few great yellow dunes,
A salt marsh stumbling after, rank and green,
With brackish gullies wandering in between,
All this from the hill.
And more: a clump of dwarfed and twisted cedars,
Sentinels over the marsh, and bright with the sun
A field of daises wandering in the wind
As though a hidden serpent glided through,
A broken wall, a new-plowed field, and then
The dusty road and the abodes of men
Surrounding the hill.
How small the enclosure is wherein there lives
Each phase and passion of life, the distant sail
Dips in the limpid bosom of the sea,
From that far place to where in state the turf
Raises a throne for me upon the hill,
Each little love and lust of a living thing
Can thus be compassed in a rainbow ring
And seen from the hill.
II.
AGE
Why did I build my cottage on a hill
Facing the sea?
Why did I plan each terraced lawn to slope
Down to the deep blue billowy breast of hope,
Surging and sweeping,
laughing and leaping,
Tumbling its garments of foam upon the shore,
Rustling the sands that know my step no more,
I should have found a valley, deep and still,
To shelter me.
There flows the river, and it seems asleep
So far away,
Yet I remember whip of wave and roar
Of wind that rose and smote against the oar,
Smote and retreated,
Proud but defeated,
While I rejoiced and rowed into the brine,
Drawing on wet and heavy -straining line
The great cod quivering from the deep
As counterplay.
What is the solace of these hills and vales
That rise and fall?
What is there glorious in the greenwood glen,
Or twittering thrush or wing of darting wren?
Give me the gusty,
Raucous and rusty
Call of the sea gull in the echoing sky,
The wild shriek of the winds that cannot die,
Give me the life that follows the bending sails,
Or none at all!
ERNEST BENSHIMOL
A BANQUET
ONE MEMORY FROM SOCRATES
AFTER the song the love, and after the love the play,
Flute girl and pretty boy blowing
Bubbles of sparkling
Wine into darkling
Beards of a former austerity, stern even now, but
Fast growing
Foolish, with less of a stately
Reserve that held them sedately.
Oh Zeus, what a sight! With the wine dripping off it,
The grin of an ass on a bald-pated prophet.
After the feast the night, and after the night the day,
Fool and philosopher stirring
With the day dawning,
Stretching and yawning,
While in each wine-throbbing, desolated brain is the
Wheeling and whirring
Of thousands of bats, that the slaking
Of throats will not hinder from aching,
No wine for the brow that is beating to bursting,
But water at morning is quench for the thirsting!
ERNEST BENSHIMOL
SONG
OUT of one heart the birds and I together,
Earth hushed in twilight,
Low through the live-oaks hung heavy with silver,
Gemmed with the sky-light,
Under the great wet star
Shaking with light, we jar
Lute-voiced the silence with intervaled music.
While under the margined world the slow sun
lingers,
Flaming earth's portal,
Over the lilac dusk spreads his great fingers-
Earth is immortal!
While the frail beauty dies.
Dream in the dreamer's eyes,
All the good gladness turns praise for the singers.
Hark, 'tis the breath of life! Hush! and I need it;
Northern, gigantic,-
Questing the silences, herding the sudden foam
Down the Atlantic;
Leaves from the autumn's store
Shrill at my desert door,
They and I out of one heart that is grieving.
GEORGE CABOT LODGE
THE WORLDS
I SAW an idler on a summer day
Piping with Iris by a dancing brook;
And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay,
And languid Follies smiled from every nook.
I saw an artist in a world of dreams,
His rainbow rising from his radiant task,
To throw its magic prism beams
O'er Fancy's changeful masque and counter-
masque.
I saw Toil--stooping underneath a world
Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread,
His skyward pinions ever closer furled
Before the grim necessity of bread!
I saw a sinner working hard to be
Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time;
I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea
Was hearth and hope and love and wedding-
chime.
I saw a mother living in her child--
I saw a saint among his fellow men--
Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled
And solemn-hearted scholars--Sudden then
I cried: "The stars are no less neighborly
In their ethereal remoteness swung,
Than these near human orbits wherein we
Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue!
"Love seek through all--less there be one
Least soul unlit within the night--
And over all, the selfsame sun
Give each creation light!"
MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI
THE RIOT
YOU may think my life is quiet.
I find it full of change,
An ever-varied diet,
As piquant as 'tis strange.
Wild thoughts are always flying,
Like sparks across my brain,
Now flashing out, now dying,
To kindle soon again.
Fine fancies set me thrilling,
And subtle monsters creep
Before my sight unwilling:
They even haunt my sleep.
One broad, perpetual riot
Enfolds me night and day.
You think my life is quiet?
You don't know what you say.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
HUNGER
I'VE been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a
saint,
Their bend of weary knees and their con-
tortions long and faint,
And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred
thousand pins,
A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins.
I love to wander widely, but I understand a cell,
Where you tell and tell your beads because you've
nothing else to tell,
Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild
fantastic tricks,
Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix.
I cannot speak for others, but my inmost soul is
torn
With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn.
There are moments when I would untread the paths
that I have trod.
I'm a haunter of the devil, but I hunger after God.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
EXIT GOD
Of old our father's God was real,
Something they almost saw,
Which kept them to a stern ideal
And scourged them into awe.
They walked the narrow path of right
Most vigilantly well,
Because they feared eternal night
And boiling depths of Hell.
Now Hell has wholly boiled away
And God become a shade.
There is no place for him to stay
In all the world He made.
The followers of William James
Still let the Lord exist,
And call Him by imposing names,
A venerable list.
But nerve and muscle only count,
Gray matter of the brain,
And an astonishing amount
Of inconvenient pain.
I sometimes wish that God were back
In this dark world and wide;
For though sonic virtues He might lack,
He had his pleasant side.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
ROUSSEAU
THAT odd, fantastic ass, Rousseau,
Declared himself unique.
How men persist in doing so,
Puzzles me more than Greek.
The sins that tarnish whore and thief
Beset me every day.
My most ethereal belief
Inhabits common clay.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
JOHN MASEFIELD
I
MASEFIELD (HIMSELF)
GOD said, and frowned, as He looked on
Shropshire clay:
"Alone, 'twont do; composite, would I make
This man-child rare; 'twere well, methinks, to take
A handful from the Stratford tomb, and weigh
A few of Shelley's ashes; Bunyan may
Contribute, too, and, for my sweet Son's sake,
I'll visit Avalon; then, let me slake
The whole with Wyclif-water from the Bay.
A sailor, he! Too godly, though, I fear;
Offset it with tobacco! Next, I'll find
Hedge-roses, star-dust, and a vagrant's mind;
His mother's heart now let me breathe upon;
When west winds blow, I'll whisper in her ear:
"Apocalypse awaits him; call him John!"
II
HIS PORTRAIT
A Man of Sorrows! with such haunted eyes,
I trow, the Master looked across the lake,--
Looked from the Judas-heart, so soon to make
Of Him the world's historic sacrifice;
Moreover, as I gaze, do more arise;
Great souls, great pallid ghosts of pain, who wake
And wander yet; all, weary men who brake
Their hearts; all hemlock-drunk, with growing
wise:
Hudson adrift; Defoe; the Wandering Jew;
Tannhauser; Faust; Andrea; phantoms, all,
In Masefield's eyes you lodge; and to the wall
I turn you,--hand a-tremble,--lest you make
Of mine own stricken eyes a mirror, too.
Wherein the sad world's sadder for your sake.
III
HIS "DAUBER"
O Masefield's "Dauber!" You, who being dead,
Yet speak: heroic, dauntless, flaming soul,
Too suddenly snuffed out! Here take fresh toll
Of cognizance, and, in your ocean bed,
Serenely rest, assured that who has read
What you would fain have pictured of the Pole
Would gladly match your part against the whole
Of many a modern artist, Paris-bred.
And more than this: if you, indeed, are his,
Then, by a dual truth, he, too, is yours;
For, marked and credited by what endures,
Were it the only thing, which bears his name,
(O deathless Soul, I speak you true in this!)
"The Dauber" has brought Masefield to his fame.
IV
HIS "GALLIPOLI"
"Small wonder," speaks my pensive self, "that he
Whose passion 'tis to sing of men who fail,--
(Belabored, broken by The Unseen Flail)
Small wonder that be makes Gallipoli
His fervent text, for could there be
A costlier failure in Earth's shuddering tale?
Think of heroic Sulva's bloody swale;
Of Anzac's tortured thirst and agony!"
But as I read, protesting voices cry: "Not we,
Not we, who fell among the daffodils,
Who conquered Death among those blistered hills,
And found our glory after mortal pain;
Not we, who failed and lost Gallipoli;
The sad, strange failure theirs who mourn in vain!"
V
HIS MEAD
So, Masefield, have your royal words once more
Called forth the praise of men, where praise is due;
Your great elegiac, tragically true,
Must leave all Britain prouder than before;
And, in spite of all that breaking hearts deplore,
And all that anguished consciences must rue,
One arrowed gladness surely pierces through
From London's centre to Canadian shore:
When England, sobbing, mourns Gallipoli,
When warm tears flow for Rupert Brooke
And all the splendid Youth her error took
As hostage from the fields of daffodils,
Let this a present, living solace be:
You are not sleeping in those cruel hills!
AMY BRIDGEMAN
1620-1920
BEFORE him rolls the dark, relentless ocean;
Behind him stretch the cold and barren sands;
Wrapt in the mantle of his deep devotion
The Pilgrim kneels, and clasps his lifted hands;
"God of our fathers, who hast safely brought us
Through seas and sorrows, famine, fire, and
sword;
Who, in Thy mercies manifold hast taught us
To trust in Thee, our leader and our Lord;
"God, who hast send Thy truth to shine before us,
A fiery pillar, beaconing on the sea;
God, who hast spread thy wings of mercy o'er us;
God, who hast set our children's children free,
"Freedom Thy new-born nation here shall cherish;
Grant us Thy covenant, changing, sure:
Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish;
Freedom and Truth, immortal shall endure."
Face to the Indian arrows.
Face to the Prussian guns,
From then till now the Pilgrim's vow
Has held the Pilgrim's sons.
He braved the red man's ambush,
He loosed the black man's chain;
His spirit broke King George's yoke
And the battleships of Spain.
He crossed the seething ocean;
He dared the death-strewn track;
He charged in the hell of Saint Mihiel
And hurled the tyrant back.
For the voice of the lonely Pilgram
Who knelt upon the strand
A people hears three hundred years
In the conscience of the land.
Daughter of Truth and mother of Courage,
Conscience, all hail!
Heart of New England, strength of the Pilgrims,
Thou shalt prevail.
Look how the empires rise and fall!
Athens robed in her learning and beauty,
Rome in her royal lust for power-
Each has flourished for her little hour,
Risen and fallen and ceased to be.
What of her by the Western Sea,
Born and bred as the child of Duty,
Sternest of them all?
She it is and she alone
Who built on faith as her corner stone;
Of all the nations none but she
Knew that the truth shall make us free.
Daughter of Courage, mother of heros,
Freedom divine.
Light of New England, Star of the Pilgrim,
Still shalt thou shine.
Yet even as we in our pride rejoice,
Hark to the prophet's warning voice:
"The Pilgrim's thrift is vanished
And the Pilgrim's faith is dead,
And the Pilgrim's God is banished,
And Mammon reigns in his stead;
And work is damned as an evil,
And men and women cry,
In their restless haste, 'Let us spend and waste,
And live; for to-morrow we die.'
"And law is trampled under;
And the nations stand aghast,
As they hear the distant thunder
Of the storm that marches fast;
And we,--whose ocean borders
Shut off the sound and the sight,
We will wait for marching orders;
The world has seen us fight;
We have earned our days of revel;
'On with the dance'! we cry.
It is pain to think; we will eat and drink!
And live; for to-morrow we die."
"We have laughed in the eyes of danger;
We have given our bravest and best;
We have succored the starving stranger;
Others shall heed the rest.'
And the revel never ceases;
And the nations hold their breath;
And our laughter peals, and the mad world reels,
To a carnival of death.
"Slaves of sloth and the senses,
Clippers of Freedom's wings,
Come back to the Pilgrim's Army
And fight for the King of Kings;
Come back to the Pilgrim's conscience;
Be born in the nation's birth;
And strive again as simple men
For the freedom of the earth.
Freedom a free-born nation still shall cherish,
Be this our covenant, unchanging, sure:
Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish;
Freedom and Truth immortal shall endure."
Land of our fathers, when the tempest rages,
When the wide earth is racked with war and crime,
Founded forever on the Rock of Ages,
Beaten in vain by surging seas of time,
Even as the shallop on the breakers riding,
Even as the Pilgrim kneeling on the shore,
Firm in thy faith and fortitude abiding,
Hold thou thy children free forever more.
And when we sail as Pilgrims' sons and daughters
The spirit's Mayflower into seas unknown,
Driving across the waste of wintry waters
The voyage every soul shall make alone,
The Pilgrim's faith, the Pilgrim's courage grant us;
Still shines the truth that for the Pilgrim shone.
We are his seed; nor life nor death shall daunt us.
The port is Freedom! Pilgrim heart, sail on!
LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS
THE CROSS-CURRENT
THROUGH twelve stout generations
New England blood I boast;
The stubborn pastures bred them,
The grim, uncordial coast,
Sedate and proud old cities,--
Loved well enough by me,
Then how should I be yearning
To scour the earth and sea.
Each of my Yankee forbears
Wed a New England mate:
They dwelt and did and died here,
Nor glimpsed a rosier fate.
My clan endured their kindred;
But foreigners they loathed,
And wandering folk, and minstrels,
And gypsies motley-clothed.
Then why do patches please me,
Fantastic, wild array?
Why have I vagrant fancies
For lads from far away.
My folk were godly Churchmen,--
Or paced in Elders' weeds;
But all were grave and pious
And hated heathen creeds.
Then why are Thor and Wotan
To dread forces still?
Why does my heart go questing
For Pan beyond the hill?
My people clutched at freedom.--
Though others' wills they chained,--
But made the Law and kept it,--
And Beauty, they restrained.
Then why am I a rebel
To laws of rule and square?
Why would I dream and dally,
Or, reckless, do and dare?
O righteous, solemn Grandsires,
O dames, correct and mild,
Who bred me of your virtues!
Whence comes this changing child?--
The thirteenth generation,--
Unlucky number this!--
My grandma loved a Pirate,
And all my faults are his!
A gallant, ruffled rover,
With beauty-loving eye,
He swept Colonial waters
Of coarser, bloodier fry.
He waved his hat to danger,
At Law he shook his fist.
Ah, merrily he plundered,
He sang and fought and kissed!
Though none have found his treasure,
And none his part would take,--
I bless that thirteenth lady
Who chose him for my sake!
ABBIE FARWELL BROWN
CANDLEMAS
O HEARKEN, all ye little weeds
That lie beneath the snow,
(So low, dear hearts, in poverty so low!)
The sun hath risen for royal deeds,
A valiant wind the vanguard leads;
Now quicken ye, lest unborn seeds
Before ye rise and blow.
O furry living things, adream
On winter's drowsy breast,
(How rest ye there, how softly, safely rest!)
Arise and follow where a gleam
Of wizard gold unbinds the stream,
And all the woodland windings seem
With sweet expectance blest.