In grayish doubt and black despair,
I drafted hymns to the earth and the air,
pretending to joy, although I lacked it.
The age had made lament redundant.
So here's the question -- who can answer it --
Was he a brave man or a hypocrite?
En Børneflok paa Fødselsdagen bad,
Og Barnets Ønske groer som Rosens Blad;
Hvert snoer sig her om Glasset, som vi tømme;
En Hustru lægger Perlen paa dets Bund.
Hun kysse Livets Lykke paa din Mund!
Til Virkelighed blive Hjertets Drømme! -
Imellem fattigt Græs og Urt
Tidt blomstrer Skjønheds Rose,
Og Liliens Bæger reent og puurt
Staaer frem fra vildsom Mose.
Spørg ikke om hvor Planten groer,
Men hvad af Gud der i den boer!
Remembrance for a great man is this.
The newsies are pitching pennies.
And on the copper disk is the man’s face.
Dead lover of boys, what do you ask for now?
Tall timber stood here once, hee on a corn belt farm along the Monon.
Here the roots of a half-mile of trees dug their runners deep in the loam for a grip and a hold against wind storms.
Then the axemen came and the chips flew to the zing of steel and handle--the lank railsplitters cut the big ones first, the beeches and the oaks, then the brush.
Dynamite, wagons, and horses took the stumps--the plows sunk their teeth in--now it is first class corn land--omproved property--and the hogs grunt over the fodder crops.
407
If What we could—were what we would—
Criterion—be small—
It is the Ultimate of Talk—
The Impotence to Tell—
The sentencing goes blithely on its way
And takes the playfully objected rhyme
As surely as it takes the stroke and time
In having its undeviable say.
In a mountain village
at autumn’s end—
that’s where you learn
what sadness means
in the blast of the wintry wind.
This field of stones, he said,
May well call forth a sigh;
Beneath them lie the dead,
On them the living lie.
Like an old tree uprooted by the wind
And flung down cruelly
With roots bared to the sun and stars
And limp leaves brought to earth —
Torn from its house —
So do I seem to myself
When you have left me.
