Written by
Maya Angelou |
(also referred to as The Rock Cries Out To Us Today)
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear.
They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind.
Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot.
.
.
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need.
Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
|
Written by
Maya Angelou |
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Marked the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no more hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spilling words
Armed for slaughter.
The Rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A River sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come,
Clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I and the
Tree and the stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your
Brow and when you yet knew you still
Knew nothing.
The River sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing River and the wise Rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.
They hear.
They all hear
The speaking of the Tree.
Today, the first and last of every Tree
Speaks to humankind.
Come to me, here beside the River.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the River.
Each of you, descendant of some passed
On traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name, you
Pawnee, Apache and Seneca, you
Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then
Forced on bloody feet, left me to the employment of
Other seekers--desperate for gain,
Starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot .
.
.
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought
Sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree
I am yours--your Passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need.
Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me, the
Rock, the River, the Tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes, into
Your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
|
Written by
Maya Angelou |
A Rock, A River, A Tree
Hosts to species long since departed,
Mark the mastodon.
The dinosaur, who left dry tokens
Of their sojourn here
On our planet floor,
Any broad alarm of their of their hastening doom
Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully,
Come, you may stand upon my
Back and face your distant destiny,
But seek no haven in my shadow.
I will give you no hiding place down here.
You, created only a little lower than
The angels, have crouched too long in
The bruising darkness,
Have lain too long
Face down in ignorance.
Your mouths spelling words
Armed for slaughter.
The rock cries out today, you may stand on me,
But do not hide your face.
Across the wall of the world,
A river sings a beautiful song,
Come rest here by my side.
Each of you a bordered country,
Delicate and strangely made proud,
Yet thrusting perpetually under siege.
Your armed struggles for profit
Have left collars of waste upon
My shore, currents of debris upon my breast.
Yet, today I call you to my riverside,
If you will study war no more.
Come, clad in peace and I will sing the songs
The Creator gave to me when I
And the tree and stone were one.
Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your brow
And when you yet knew you still knew nothing.
The river sings and sings on.
There is a true yearning to respond to
The singing river and the wise rock.
So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew,
The African and Native American, the Sioux,
The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek,
The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh,
The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,
The privileged, the homeless, the teacher.
They hear.
They all hear
The speaking of the tree.
Today, the first and last of every tree
Speaks to humankind.
Come to me, here beside the river.
Plant yourself beside me, here beside the river.
Each of you, descendant of some passed on
Traveller, has been paid for.
You, who gave me my first name,
You Pawnee, Apache and Seneca,
You Cherokee Nation, who rested with me,
Then forced on bloody feet,
Left me to the employment of other seekers--
Desperate for gain, starving for gold.
You, the Turk, the Swede, the German, the Scot.
.
.
You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru,
Bought, sold, stolen, arriving on a nightmare
Praying for a dream.
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I am the tree planted by the river,
Which will not be moved.
I, the rock, I the river, I the tree
I am yours--your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage,
Need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes upon
The day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
Women, children, men,
Take it into the palms of your hands.
Mold it into the shape of your most
Private need.
Sculpt it into
The image of your most public self.
Lift up your hearts.
Each new hour holds new chances
For new beginnings.
Do not be wedded forever
To fear, yoked eternally
To brutishness.
The horizon leans forward,
Offering you space to place new steps of change.
Here, on the pulse of this fine day
You may have the courage
To look up and out upon me,
The rock, the river, the tree, your country.
No less to Midas than the mendicant.
No less to you now than the mastodon then.
Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.
|
Written by
Philip Levine |
The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island
Eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy.
"
She remembers trying to eat a banana
without first peeling it and seeing her first orange
in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman
who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her
with a red bandana and taught her the word,
"orange," saying it patiently over and over.
A long autumn voyage, the days darkening
with the black waters calming as night came on,
then nothing as far as her eyes could see and space
without limit rushing off to the corners
of creation.
She prayed in Russian and Yiddish
to find her family in New York, prayers
unheard or misunderstood or perhaps ignored
by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness
before she woke, that kept "The Mercy" afloat
while smallpox raged among the passengers
and crew until the dead were buried at sea
with strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom.
"The Mercy," I read on the yellowing pages of a book
I located in a windowless room of the library
on 42nd Street, sat thirty-one days
offshore in quarantine before the passengers
disembarked.
There a story ends.
Other ships
arrived, "Tancred" out of Glasgow, "The Neptune"
registered as Danish, "Umberto IV,"
the list goes on for pages, November gives
way to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore.
Italian miners from Piemonte dig
under towns in western Pennsylvania
only to rediscover the same nightmare
they left at home.
A nine-year-old girl travels
all night by train with one suitcase and an orange.
She learns that mercy is something you can eat
again and again while the juice spills over
your chin, you can wipe it away with the back
of your hands and you can never get enough.
|
Written by
Ogden Nash |
Foreigners are people somewhere else,
Natives are people at home;
If the place you’re at
Is your habitat,
You’re a foreigner, say in Rome.
But the scales of Justice balance true,
And tit leads into tat,
So the man who’s at home
When he stays in Rome
Is abroad when he’s where you’re at.
When we leave the limits of the land in which
Our birth certificates sat us,
It does not mean
Just a change of scene,
But also a change of status.
The Frenchman with his fetching beard,
The Scot with his kilt and sporran,
One moment he
May a native be,
And the next may find him foreign.
There’s many a difference quickly found
Between the different races,
But the only essential
Differential
Is living different places.
Yet such is the pride of prideful man,
From Austrians to Australians,
That wherever he is,
He regards as his,
And the natives there, as aliens.
Oh, I’ll be friends if you’ll be friends,
The foreigner tells the native,
And we’ll work together for our common ends
Like a preposition and a dative.
If our common ends seem mostly mine,
Why not, you ignorant foreigner?
And the native replies
Contrariwise;
And hence, my dears, the coroner.
So mind your manners when a native, please,
And doubly when you visit
And between us all
A rapport may fall
Ecstatically exquisite.
One simple thought, if you have it pat,
Will eliminate the coroner:
You may be a native in your habitat,
But to foreigners you’re just a foreigner.
|
Written by
Henry Lawson |
I am back from up the country -- very sorry that I went --
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have lost a lot of idols, which were broken on the track --
Burnt a lot of fancy verses, and I'm glad that I am back.
Further out may be the pleasant scenes of which our poets boast,
But I think the country's rather more inviting round the coast --
Anyway, I'll stay at present at a boarding-house in town
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes, taking baths and cooling down.
Sunny plains! Great Scot! -- those burning wastes of barren soil and sand
With their everlasting fences stretching out across the land!
Desolation where the crow is! Desert! where the eagle flies,
Paddocks where the luny bullock starts and stares with reddened eyes;
Where, in clouds of dust enveloped, roasted bullock-drivers creep
Slowly past the sun-dried shepherd dragged behind his crawling sheep.
Stunted "peak" of granite gleaming, glaring! like a molten mass
Turned, from some infernal furnace, on a plain devoid of grass.
Miles and miles of thirsty gutters -- strings of muddy waterholes
In the place of "shining rivers" (walled by cliffs and forest boles).
"Range!" of ridgs, gullies, ridges, barren! where the madden'd flies --
Fiercer than the plagues of Egypt -- swarm about your blighted eyes!
Bush! where there is no horizon! where the buried bushman sees
Nothing.
Nothing! but the maddening sameness of the stunted trees!
Lonely hut where drought's eternal -- suffocating atmosphere --
Where the God forgottcn hatter dreams of city-life and beer.
Treacherous tracks that trap the stranger, endless roads that gleam and glare,
Dark and evil-looking gullies -- hiding secrets here and there!
Dull, dumb flats and stony "rises," where the bullocks sweat and bake,
And the sinister "gohanna," and the lizard, and the snake.
Land of day and night -- no morning freshness, and no afternoon,
For the great, white sun in rising brings with him the heat of noon.
Dismal country for the exile, when the shades begin to fall
From the sad, heart-breaking sunset, to the new-chum, worst of all.
Dreary land in rainy weather, with the endless clouds that drift
O'er the bushman like a blanket that the Lord will never lift --
Dismal land when it is raining -- growl of floods and oh! the "woosh"
Of the rain and wind together on the dark bed of the bush --
Ghastly fires in lonely humpies where the granite rocks are pil'd
On the rain-swept wildernesses that are wildest of the wild.
Land where gaunt and haggard women live alone and work like men,
Till their husbands, gone a-droving, will return to them again --
Homes of men! if homes had ever such a God-forgotten place,
Where the wild selector's children fly before a stranger's face.
Home of tragedy applauded by the dingoes' dismal yell,
Heaven of the shanty-keeper -- fitting fiend for such a hell --
And the wallaroos and wombats, and, of course, the "curlew's call" --
And the lone sundowner tramping ever onward thro' it all!
I am back from up the country -- up the country where I went
Seeking for the Southern poets' land whereon to pitch my tent;
I have left a lot of broken idols out along the track,
Burnt a lot of fancy verses -- and I'm glad that I am back --
I believe the Southern poet's dream will not be realised
Till the plains are irrigated and the land is humanised.
I intend to stay at present -- as I said before -- in town
Drinking beer and lemon-squashes -- taking baths and cooling down.
|
Written by
Andrew Barton Paterson |
Beyond the land where Leichhardt went,
Beyond Sturt's Western track,
The rolling tide of change has sent
Some strange J.
P.
's out back.
And Saltbush Bill, grown old and grey,
And worn for want of sleep,
Received the news in camp one day
Behind the travelling sheep
That Edward Rex, confiding in
His known integrity,
By hand and seal on parchment skin
Had made hiim a J.
P.
He read the news with eager face
But found no word of pay.
"I'd like to see my sister's place
And kids on Christmas Day.
"I'd like to see green grass again,
And watch clear water run,
Away from this unholy plain,
And flies, and dust, and sun.
"
At last one little clause he found
That might some hope inspire,
"A magistrate may charge a pound
For inquest on a fire.
"
A big blacks' camp was built close by,
And Saltbush Bill, says he,
"I think that camp might well supply
A job for a J.
P.
"
That night, by strange coincidence,
A most disastrous fire
Destroyed the country residence
Of Jacky Jack, Esquire.
'Twas mostly leaves, and bark, and dirt;
The party most concerned
Appeared to think it wouldn't hurt
If forty such were burned.
Quite otherwise thought Saltbush Bill,
Who watched the leaping flame.
"The home is small," said he, "but still
The principle's the same.
"Midst palaces though you should roam,
Or follow pleasure's tracks,
You'll find," he said, "no place like home --
At least like Jacky Jack's.
"Tell every man in camp, 'Come quick,'
Tell every black Maria
I give tobacco, half a stick --
Hold inquest long-a fire.
"
Each juryman received a name
Well suited to a Court.
"Long Jack" and "Stumpy Bill" became
"John Long" and "William Short".
While such as "Tarpot", "Bullock Dray",
And "Tommy Wait-a-While",
Became, for ever and a day,
"Scot", "Dickens", and "Carlyle".
And twelve good sable men and true
Were soon engaged upon
The conflagration that o'erthrew
The home of John A.
John.
Their verdict, "Burnt by act of Fate",
They scarcely had returned
When, just behind the magistrate,
Another humpy burned!
The jury sat again and drew
Another stick of plug.
Said Saltbush Bill, "It's up to you
Put some one long-a Jug.
"
"I'll camp the sheep," he said, "and sift
The evidence about.
"
For quite a week he couldn't shift,
The way the fires broke out.
The jury thought the whole concern
As good as any play.
They used to "take him oath" and earn
Three sticks of plug a day.
At last the tribe lay down to sleep
Homeless, beneath a tree;
And onward with his travelling sheep
Went Saltbush bill, J.
P.
His sheep delivered, safe and sound,
His horse to town he turned,
And drew some five-and-twenty pound
For fees that he had earned.
And where Monaro's ranges hide
Their little farms away --
His sister's children by his side --
He spent his Christmas Day.
The next J.
P.
that went out back
Was shocked, or pained, or both,
At hearing every pagan black
Repeat the juror's oath.
No matter how he turned and fled
They followed faster still;
"You make it inkwich, boss," they said,
"All same like Saltbush Bill.
"
They even said they'd let him see
The fires originate.
When he refused they said that he
Was "No good magistrate".
And out beyond Sturt's western track,
And Leichhardt's farthest tree,
They wait till fate shall send them back
Their Saltbush Bill, J.
P.
|
Written by
Robert Burns |
YE Irish lords, ye knights an’ squires,
Wha represent our brughs an’ shires,
An’ doucely manage our affairs
In parliament,
To you a simple poet’s pray’rs
Are humbly sent.
Alas! my roupit Muse is hearse!
Your Honours’ hearts wi’ grief ’twad pierce,
To see her sittin on her ****
Low i’ the dust,
And scriechinh out prosaic verse,
An like to brust!
Tell them wha hae the chief direction,
Scotland an’ me’s in great affliction,
E’er sin’ they laid that curst restriction
On aqua-vit&æ;
An’ rouse them up to strong conviction,
An’ move their pity.
Stand forth an’ tell yon Premier youth
The honest, open, naked truth:
Tell him o’ mine an’ Scotland’s drouth,
His servants humble:
The muckle deevil blaw you south
If ye dissemble!
Does ony great man glunch an’ gloom?
Speak out, an’ never fash your thumb!
Let posts an’ pensions sink or soom
Wi’ them wha grant them;
If honestly they canna come,
Far better want them.
In gath’rin votes you were na slack;
Now stand as tightly by your tack:
Ne’er claw your lug, an’ fidge your back,
An’ hum an’ haw;
But raise your arm, an’ tell your crack
Before them a’.
Paint Scotland greetin owre her thrissle;
Her mutchkin stowp as toom’s a whissle;
An’ d—mn’d excisemen in a bussle,
Seizin a stell,
Triumphant crushin’t like a mussel,
Or limpet shell!
Then, on the tither hand present her—
A blackguard smuggler right behint her,
An’ cheek-for-chow, a chuffie vintner
Colleaguing join,
Picking her pouch as bare as winter
Of a’ kind coin.
Is there, that bears the name o’ Scot,
But feels his heart’s bluid rising hot,
To see his poor auld mither’s pot
Thus dung in staves,
An’ plunder’d o’ her hindmost groat
By gallows knaves?
Alas! I’m but a nameless wight,
Trode i’ the mire out o’ sight?
But could I like Montgomeries fight,
Or gab like Boswell, 2
There’s some sark-necks I wad draw tight,
An’ tie some hose well.
God bless your Honours! can ye see’t—
The kind, auld cantie carlin greet,
An’ no get warmly to your feet,
An’ gar them hear it,
An’ tell them wi’a patriot-heat
Ye winna bear it?
Some o’ you nicely ken the laws,
To round the period an’ pause,
An’ with rhetoric clause on clause
To mak harangues;
Then echo thro’ Saint Stephen’s wa’s
Auld Scotland’s wrangs.
Dempster, 3 a true blue Scot I’se warran’;
Thee, aith-detesting, chaste Kilkerran; 4
An’ that glib-gabbit Highland baron,
The Laird o’ Graham; 5
An’ ane, a chap that’s damn’d aulfarran’,
Dundas his name: 6
Erskine, a spunkie Norland billie; 7
True Campbells, Frederick and Ilay; 8
An’ Livistone, the bauld Sir Willie; 9
An’ mony ithers,
Whom auld Demosthenes or Tully
Might own for brithers.
See sodger Hugh, 10 my watchman stented,
If poets e’er are represented;
I ken if that your sword were wanted,
Ye’d lend a hand;
But when there’s ought to say anent it,
Ye’re at a stand.
Arouse, my boys! exert your mettle,
To get auld Scotland back her kettle;
Or faith! I’ll wad my new pleugh-pettle,
Ye’ll see’t or lang,
She’ll teach you, wi’ a reekin whittle,
Anither sang.
This while she’s been in crankous mood,
Her lost Militia fir’d her bluid;
(Deil na they never mair do guid,
Play’d her that pliskie!)
An’ now she’s like to rin red-wud
About her whisky.
An’ Lord! if ance they pit her till’t,
Her tartan petticoat she’ll kilt,
An’durk an’ pistol at her belt,
She’ll tak the streets,
An’ rin her whittle to the hilt,
I’ the first she meets!
For God sake, sirs! then speak her fair,
An’ straik her cannie wi’ the hair,
An’ to the muckle house repair,
Wi’ instant speed,
An’ strive, wi’ a’ your wit an’ lear,
To get remead.
Yon ill-tongu’d tinkler, Charlie Fox,
May taunt you wi’ his jeers and mocks;
But gie him’t het, my hearty cocks!
E’en cowe the cadie!
An’ send him to his dicing box
An’ sportin’ lady.
Tell you guid bluid o’ auld Boconnock’s, 11
I’ll be his debt twa mashlum bonnocks,
An’ drink his health in auld Nance Tinnock’s 12
Nine times a-week,
If he some scheme, like tea an’ winnocks,
Was kindly seek.
Could he some commutation broach,
I’ll pledge my aith in guid braid Scotch,
He needna fear their foul reproach
Nor erudition,
Yon mixtie-maxtie, ***** hotch-potch,
The Coalition.
Auld Scotland has a raucle tongue;
She’s just a devil wi’ a rung;
An’ if she promise auld or young
To tak their part,
Tho’ by the neck she should be strung,
She’ll no desert.
And now, ye chosen Five-and-Forty,
May still you mither’s heart support ye;
Then, tho’a minister grow dorty,
An’ kick your place,
Ye’ll snap your gingers, poor an’ hearty,
Before his face.
God bless your Honours, a’ your days,
Wi’ sowps o’ kail and brats o’ claise,
In spite o’ a’ the thievish kaes,
That haunt St.
Jamie’s!
Your humble poet sings an’ prays,
While Rab his name is.
POSTSCRIPTLET half-starv’d slaves in warmer skies
See future wines, rich-clust’ring, rise;
Their lot auld Scotland ne’re envies,
But, blythe and frisky,
She eyes her freeborn, martial boys
Tak aff their whisky.
What tho’ their Phoebus kinder warms,
While fragrance blooms and beauty charms,
When wretches range, in famish’d swarms,
The scented groves;
Or, hounded forth, dishonour arms
In hungry droves!
Their gun’s a burden on their shouther;
They downa bide the stink o’ powther;
Their bauldest thought’s a hank’ring swither
To stan’ or rin,
Till skelp—a shot—they’re aff, a’throw’ther,
To save their skin.
But bring a Scotchman frae his hill,
Clap in his cheek a Highland gill,
Say, such is royal George’s will,
An’ there’s the foe!
He has nae thought but how to kill
Twa at a blow.
Nae cauld, faint-hearted doubtings tease him;
Death comes, wi’ fearless eye he sees him;
Wi’bluidy hand a welcome gies him;
An’ when he fa’s,
His latest draught o’ breathin lea’es him
In faint huzzas.
Sages their solemn een may steek,
An’ raise a philosophic reek,
An’ physically causes seek,
In clime an’ season;
But tell me whisky’s name in Greek
I’ll tell the reason.
Scotland, my auld, respected mither!
Tho’ whiles ye moistify your leather,
Till, whare ye sit on craps o’ heather,
Ye tine your dam;
Freedom an’ whisky gang thegither!
Take aff your dram!
Note 1.
This was written before the Act anent the Scotch distilleries, of session 1786, for which Scotland and the author return their most grateful thanks.
—R.
B.
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Note 2.
James Boswell of Auchinleck, the biographer of Johnson.
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Note 3.
George Dempster of Dunnichen.
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Note 4.
Sir Adam Ferguson of Kilkerran, Bart.
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Note 5.
The Marquis of Graham, eldest son of the Duke of Montrose.
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Note 6.
Right Hon.
Henry Dundas, M.
P.
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Note 7.
Probably Thomas, afterward Lord Erskine.
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Note 8.
Lord Frederick Campbell, second brother of the Duke of Argyll, and Ilay Campbell, Lord Advocate for Scotland, afterward President of the Court of Session.
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Note 9.
Sir Wm.
Augustus Cunningham, Baronet, of Livingstone.
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Note 10.
Col.
Hugh Montgomery, afterward Earl of Eglinton.
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Note 11.
Pitt, whose grandfather was of Boconnock in Cornwall.
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Note 12.
A worthy old hostess of the author’s in Mauchline, where he sometimes studies politics over a glass of gude auld Scotch Drink.
—R.
B.
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|
Written by
William Butler Yeats |
I
Many ingenious lovely things are gone
That seemed sheer miracle to the multitude,
protected from the circle of the moon
That pitches common things about.
There stood
Amid the ornamental bronze and stone
An ancient image made of olive wood -
And gone are phidias' famous ivories
And all the golden grasshoppers and bees.
We too had many pretty toys when young:
A law indifferent to blame or praise,
To bribe or threat; habits that made old wrong
Melt down, as it were wax in the sun's rays;
Public opinion ripening for so long
We thought it would outlive all future days.
O what fine thought we had because we thought
That the worst rogues and rascals had died out.
All teeth were drawn, all ancient tricks unlearned,
And a great army but a showy thing;
What matter that no cannon had been turned
Into a ploughshare? Parliament and king
Thought that unless a little powder burned
The trumpeters might burst with trumpeting
And yet it lack all glory; and perchance
The guardsmen's drowsy chargers would not prance.
Now days are dragon-ridden, the nightmare
Rides upon sleep: a drunken soldiery
Can leave the mother, murdered at her door,
To crawl in her own blood, and go scot-free;
The night can sweat with terror as before
We pieced our thoughts into philosophy,
And planned to bring the world under a rule,
Who are but weasels fighting in a hole.
He who can read the signs nor sink unmanned
Into the half-deceit of some intoxicant
From shallow wits; who knows no work can stand,
Whether health, wealth or peace of mind were spent
On master-work of intellect or hand,
No honour leave its mighty monument,
Has but one comfort left: all triumph would
But break upon his ghostly solitude.
But is there any comfort to be found?
Man is in love and loves what vanishes,
What more is there to say? That country round
None dared admit, if Such a thought were his,
Incendiary or bigot could be found
To burn that stump on the Acropolis,
Or break in bits the famous ivories
Or traffic in the grasshoppers or bees.
|
Written by
Robert William Service |
When I was brash and gallant-gay
Just fifty years ago,
I hit the ties and beat my way
From Maine to Mexico;
For though to Glasgow gutter bred
A hobo heart had I,
And followed where adventure led,
Beneath a brazen sky.
And as I tramped the railway track
I owned a single shirt;
Like canny Scot I bought it black
So's not to show the dirt;
A handkerchief held all my gear,
My razor and my comb;
I was a freckless lad, I fear,
With all the world for home.
Yet oh I thought the life was grand
And loved my liberty!
Romance was my bed-fellow and
The stars my company.
And I would think, each diamond dawn,
"How I have forged my fate!
Where are the Gorbals and the Tron,
And where the Gallowgate?"
Oh daft was I to wander wild,
And seek the Trouble Trail,
As weakly as a wayward child,
And darkly doomed to fail .
.
.
Aye, bindle-stiff I hit the track
Just fifty years ago .
.
.
Yet now .
.
.
I drive my Cadillac
From Maine to Mexico.
|