Written by
Andrew Barton Paterson |
We have sung the song of the droving days,
Of the march of the travelling sheep;
By silent stages and lonely ways
Thin, white battalions creep.
But the man who now by the land would thrive
Must his spurs to a plough-share beat.
Is there ever a man in the world alive
To sing the song of the Wheat!
It's west by south of the Great Divide
The grim grey plains run out,
Where the old flock-masters lived and died
In a ceaseless fight with drought.
Weary with waiting and hope deferred
They were ready to own defeat,
Till at last they heard the master-word—
And the master-word was Wheat.
Yarran and Myall and Box and Pine—
’Twas axe and fire for all;
They scarce could tarry to blaze the line
Or wait for the trees to fall,
Ere the team was yoked, and the gates flung wide,
And the dust of the horses’ feet
Rose up like a pillar of smoke to guide
The wonderful march of Wheat.
Furrow by furrow, and fold by fold,
The soil is turned on the plain;
Better than silver and better than gold
Is the surface-mine of the grain;
Better than cattle and better than sheep
In the fight with drought and heat;
For a streak of stubbornness, wide and deep,
Lies hid in a grain of Wheat.
When the stock is swept by the hand of fate,
Deep down in his bed of clay
The brave brown Wheat will lie and wait
For the resurrection day:
Lie hid while the whole world thinks him dead;
But the Spring-rain, soft and sweet,
Will over the steaming paddocks spread
The first green flush of the Wheat.
Green and amber and gold it grows
When the sun sinks late in the West;
And the breeze sweeps over the rippling rows
Where the quail and the skylark nest.
Mountain or river or shining star,
There’s never a sight can beat—
Away to the sky-line stretching far—
A sea of the ripening Wheat.
When the burning harvest sun sinks low,
And the shadows stretch on the plain,
The roaring strippers come and go
Like ships on a sea of grain;
Till the lurching, groaning waggons bear
Their tale of the load complete.
Of the world’s great work he has done his share
Who has gathered a crop of wheat.
Princes and Potentates and Czars,
They travel in regal state,
But old King Wheat has a thousand cars
For his trip to the water-gate;
And his thousand steamships breast the tide
And plough thro’ the wind and sleet
To the lands where the teeming millions bide
That say: “Thank God for Wheat!”
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Written by
Elizabeth Bishop |
From Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
In a cloud of fiery pale chemicals,
please come flying,
to the rapid rolling of thousands of small blue drums
descending out of the mackerel sky
over the glittering grandstand of harbor-water,
please come flying.
Whistles, pennants and smoke are blowing. The ships
are signaling cordially with multitudes of flags
rising and falling like birds all over the harbor.
Enter: two rivers, gracefully bearing
countless little pellucid jellies
in cut-glass epergnes dragging with silver chains.
The flight is safe; the weather is all arranged.
The waves are running in verses this fine morning.
Please come flying.
Come with the pointed toe of each black shoe
trailing a sapphire highlight,
with a black capeful of butterfly wings and bon-mots,
with heaven knows how many angels all riding
on the broad black brim of your hat,
please come flying.
Bearing a musical inaudible abacus,
a slight censorious frown, and blue ribbons,
please come flying.
Facts and skyscrapers glint in the tide; Manhattan
is all awash with morals this fine morning,
so please come flying.
Mounting the sky with natural heroism,
above the accidents, above the malignant movies,
the taxicabs and injustices at large,
while horns are resounding in your beautiful ears
that simultaneously listen to
a soft uninvented music, fit for the musk deer,
please come flying.
For whom the grim museums will behave
like courteous male bower-birds,
for whom the agreeable lions lie in wait
on the steps of the Public Library,
eager to rise and follow through the doors
up into the reading rooms,
please come flying.
We can sit down and weep; we can go shopping,
or play at a game of constantly being wrong
with a priceless set of vocabularies,
or we can bravely deplore, but please
please come flying.
With dynasties of negative constructions
darkening and dying around you,
with grammar that suddenly turns and shines
like flocks of sandpipers flying,
please come flying.
Come like a light in the white mackerel sky,
come like a daytime comet
with a long unnebulous train of words,
from Brooklyn, over the Brooklyn Bridge, on this fine morning,
please come flying.
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Written by
Katherine Mansfield |
Now it is Loneliness who comes at night
Instead of Sleep, to sit beside my bed.
Like a tired child I lie and wait her tread,
I watch her softly blowing out the light.
Motionless sitting, neither left or right
She turns, and weary, weary droops her head.
She, too, is old; she, too, has fought the fight.
So, with the laurel she is garlanded.
Through the sad dark the slowly ebbing tide
Breaks on a barren shore, unsatisfied.
A strange wind flows... then silence. I am fain
To turn to Loneliness, to take her hand,
Cling to her, waiting, till the barren land
Fills with the dreadful monotone of rain
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Written by
Eben E. Rexford |
1. Paul Venarez heard them say, in the frontier town that day,
That a band of Red Plume's warriors was upon the trail of death;
Heard them tell of a murder done: Three men killed at Rocky Run.
"They're in danger up at Crawford's," said Venarez, under breath.
2. "Crawford's"—thirty miles away—was a settlement, that lay
In a green and pleasant valley of the mighty wilderness;
Half a score of homes was there, and in one a maiden fair
Held the heart of Paul Venarez,—"Paul Venarez's little Bess."
3. So no wonder he grew pale when he heard the settler's tale
Of the men he had seen murdered yesterday at Rocky Run.
"Not a soul will dream," he said, "of the danger that's ahead.
By my love for little Bessie, I must see that something's done."
4. Not a moment he delayed when his brave resolve was made.
"Why, my man," his comrades told him, when they knew his daring plan,
"You are going straight to death." But he answered, "Save your breath.
I may fail to get to Crawford's, but I'll do the best I can."
5. O'er the forest trail he sped, and his thoughts flew on ahead
To the little band at Crawford's, thinking not of danger near.
"Oh, God help me save," cried he, "little Bess!" And fast and free,
Trusty Nell bore on the hero of the far-away frontier.
6. Low and lower sank the sun. He drew rein at Rocky Run.
"Here these men met death, my Nellie," and he stroked his horse's mane.
"So will we we go to warn, ere the breaking of the morn.
If we fail, God help us, Nellie!" Then he gave his horse the rein.
7. Sharp and keen a rifle-shot woke the echoes of the spot.
"Oh, my Nellie, I am wounded!" cried Venarez, with a moan,
And the warm blood from his side spurted out in a red tide,
And he trembled in the saddle, and his face had ashy grown.
8. "I will save them yet," he cried. "Bessie Lee shall know I died
For her sake." And then he halted in the shelter of a hill.
From his buckskin shirt he took, with weak hands, a little book;
And he tore a blank leaf from it. "This," said he, "shall be my will."
9. From a branch a twig he broke, and he dipped his pen of oak
In the red blood that was dripping from the wound below the heart.
"Rouse," he wrote, "before too late. Red Plume's warriors lie in wait.
Good-bye, Bess! God bless you always." Then he felt warm tears start.
10. Then he made his message fast, love's first letter, and its last.
To his saddle-bow he tied it, while his lips were white with pain.
"Bear my message, if not me, safe to little Bess," said he.
Then he leaned down in the saddle, and clutched hard the sweaty mane.
11. Just at dusk, a horse of brown, flecked with foam, came panting down
To the settlement at Crawford, and she stopped at Bessie's door.
But her rider seemed asleep. Ah, his slumber was so deep
Bessie's voice could never wake him, if she called forevermore.
12. You will hear the story told by the young and by the old
In the settlement at Crawford's, of the night when Red Plume came;
Of the sharp and bloody fight; how the chief fell, and the flight
Of the panic-stricken warriors. Then they speak Venarez's name
13. In an awed and reverent way, as men utter "Let us pray,"
As we speak the name of heroes, thinking how they lived and died;
So his memory is kept green, while his face and heaven between
Grow the flowers Bessie planted, ere they laid her by his side.
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Written by
Emile Verhaeren |
The spot is flaked with mist, that fills,
Thickening into rolls more dank,
The thresholds and the window-sills,
And smokes on every bank.
The river stagnates, pestilent
With carrion by the current sent
This way and that—and yonder lies
The moon, just like a woman dead,
That they have smothered overhead,
Deep in the skies.
In a few boats alone there gleam
Lamps that light up and magnify
The backs, bent over stubbornly,
Of the old fishers of the stream,
Who since last evening, steadily,
—For God knows what night-fishery—
Have let their black nets downward slow
Into the silent water go.
The noisome water there below.
Down in the river's deeps, ill-fate
And black mischances breed and hatch.
Unseen of them, and lie in wait
As for their prey. And these they catch
With weary toil—believing still
That simple, honest work is best—
At night, beneath the shifting mist
Unkind and chill.
So hard and harsh, yon clock-towers tell.
With muffled hammers, like a knell,
The midnight hour.
From tower to tower
So hard and harsh the midnights chime.
The midnights harsh of autumn time,
The weary midnights' bell.
The crew
Of fishers black have on their back
Nought save a nameless rag or two;
And their old hats distil withal,
And drop by drop let crumbling fall
Into their necks, the mist-flakes all.
The hamlets and their wretched huts
Are numb and drowsy, and all round
The willows too, and walnut trees,
'Gainst which the Easterly fierce breeze
Has waged its feud.
No bayings from the forest sound,
No cry the empty midnight cuts—
The midnight space that grows imbrued
With damp breaths from the ashy ground.
The fishers hail each other not—
Nor help—in their fraternal lot;
Doing but that which must be done.
Each fishes for himself alone.
And this one gathers in his net,
Drawing it tighter yet,
His freight of petty misery;
And that one drags up recklessly
Diseases from their slimy bed;
While others still their meshes spread
Out to the sorrows that drift by
Threateningly nigh;
And the last hauls aboard with force
The wreckage dark of his remorse.
The river, round its corners bending,
And with the dyke-heads intertwined.
Goes hence—since what times out of mind?—
Toward the far horizon wending
Of weariness unending.
Upon the banks, the skins of wet
Black ooze-heaps nightly poison sweat.
And the mists are their fleeces light
That curl up to the houses' height.
In their dark boats, where nothing stirs,
Not even the red-flamed torch that blurs
With halos huge, as if of blood.
The thick felt of the mist's white hood,
Death with his silence seals the sere
Old fishermen of madness here.
The isolated, they abide
Deep in the mist—still side by side.
But seeing one another never;
Weary are both their arms—and yet
Their work their ruin doth beget.
Each for himself works desperately,
He knows not why—no dreams has he;
Long have they worked, for long, long years,
While every instant brings its fears;
Nor have they ever
Quitted the borders of their river,
Where 'mid the moonlit mists they strain
To fish misfortune up amain.
If but in this their night they hailed each other
And brothers' voices might console a brother!
But numb and sullen, on they go,
With heavy brows and backs bent low,
While their small lights beside them gleam,
Flickering feebly on the stream.
Like blocks of shadow they are there.
Nor ever do their eyes divine
That far away beyond the mists
Acrid and spongy—there exists
A firmament where 'mid the night.
Attractive as a loadstone, bright
Prodigious planets shine.
The fishers black of that black plague,
They are the lost immeasurably,
Among the knells, the distance vague,
The yonder of those endless plains
That stretch more far than eye can see:
And the damp autumn midnight rains
Into their souls' monotony.
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Written by
Emily Dickinson |
From all the Jails the Boys and Girls
Ecstatically leap --
Beloved only Afternoon
That Prison doesn't keep
They storm the Earth and stun the Air,
A Mob of solid Bliss --
Alas -- that Frowns should lie in wait
For such a Foe as this --
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