In A Northern Wood
FRAGRANT are the cedar-boughs stretching green and level,
Feasting-halls where waxwings flit at their spicy revel,
But O the pine, the questing pine, that flings its arms on high
To search the secret of the sun and escalade the sky!
Rueful hemlocks, gaunt and old, with boughs a-droop, despairing,
Clutch for touch of mother-earth; the while the pine is daring
To rock the stars amid its cones and lull them with its croon,
And snare the silver eagle that is nested in the moon.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Great Twin Brethren, The
The battle will not cease
Till once again on those white steeds ye ride,
O heaven-descended Twins,
Before humanity's bewildered host.
Our javelins
Fly wide,
And idle is our cannon's boast.
Lead us, triumphant Brethren, Love and Peace.
A fairer Golden Fleece
Our more adventurous Argo fain would seek,
But save, O Sons of Jove,
Your blended light go with us, vain employ
It were to rove
This bleak,
Blind waste. To unimagined joy
Guide us, immortal Brethren, Love and Peace.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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New Roads
FAR road for words that rush,
Arrowing space,
Swifter than meteors flush
Star-road in race.
Wireless! Tireless, leaping the wave!
Roger Bacon laughs in his grave.
One road, o'er-steep to climb
Since world began,
Winged in our wonder-time,
Sun-road for man.
Air-ship! Fair ship, soaring the blue!
Galileo had burned for you.
Dread road for Freedom's sons,
Sworn to release
Life from the threat of guns,
Red road to peace.
New knights! true knights! gleam of God's blade!
Lincoln leads in the Last Crusade.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The End Of May
THE fragrant air is full of down,
Of floating, fleecy things
From some forgotten fairy town
Where all the folk wear wings.
Or else the snowflakes, soft arrayed
In dainty suits of lace,
Have ventured back in masquerade,
Spring's festival to grace.
Or these, perchance, are fleets of fluff,
Laden with rainbow seeds,
That count their cargo rich enough
Though all its wealth be weeds.
Or come they from the golden trees,
Where dancing blossoms were,
That now are drifting on the breeze,
Sweet ghosts of gossamer?
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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A Song Of Riches
What will you give to a barefoot lass,
Morning with breath like wine?
Wade, bare feet! In my wide morass
Starry marigolds shine.
Alms, sweet Noon, for a barefoot lass,
With her laughing looks aglow!
Run, bare feet! In my fragrant grass
Golden buttercups blow.
Gift, a gift for a barefoot lass,
O twilight hour of dreams!
Rest, bare feet, by my lake of glass,
Where the mirrored sunset gleams.
Homeward the weary merchants pass,
With the gold bedimmed by care.
Little they wise that the barefoot lass
Is the only millionaire.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The First Bluebirds
THE poor earth was so winter-marred,
Harried by storm so long,
It seemed no spring could mend her,
No tardy sunshine render
Atonement for such wrong.
Snow after snow, and gale and hail,
Gaunt trees encased in icy mail,
The glittering drifts so hard
They took no trace
Of scared, wild feet,
No print of fox and hare
Driven by dearth
To forage for their meat
Even in dooryard bare
And frosty lawn
Under the peril of the human race;
And then one primrose dawn,
Sweet, sweet, O sweet,
And tender, tender,
The bluebirds woke the happy earth
[...] Read more
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Wings
GRAY gulls that wheeled and dipped and rose
Where tossing crests like Alpine snows
Would shimmer and entice;
A stormy petrel, Judas soul,
Dark wanderer of the waste, whose goal
No mariner hath seen;
And flaming from the vanished sun
A wondrous wing vermilion,
A bird of Paradise,
A soaring wing that shone so far
The orient horizon bar
Flushed, and the sea between
Like an Arabian carpet glowed
With changeful hues where subtly flowed
Some magical device;
And one pale plume in heaven's dim dome
Above that fairy-colored foam,
The new moon's ghostly sheen.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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To Italy
BRIGHT valor, smitten by so shrewd a blow,
Drooping thy golden wing like wounded plover,
What great, grieved faces o'er the battle hover,
Patriot Mazzini; Fra Angelico,
Forsaking his own seraphs for thy woe;
Savonarola, still his country's lover
Despite the flames; longing for walls to cover
With such a fresco, Michael Angelo.
Pity in those sweet eyes of Raphael
For all Madonnas whose young sons lie slain;
Chagrin in Dante's, that his far-famed hell
Fades to a fantasy but weak and vain
By scenes no wildest dream could parallel,
Vast agony of thy Venetian plain.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Russia
WHAT sudden voice peals to the Caucasus,
To Finland and the bitter Caspian,
To those Siberian prisons whither man
Shall seek as to a shrine, that mutinous,
Divine word Liberty? Impetuous
She rises, Holy Russia, shakes the ban
From her stooped shoulders of colossal span,
A youth in diamond mail, miraculous.
Is this the foretaste of a harvest worth
All agony of its encrimsoned sod?
Are dreams come true? Does this wild roar of wars,
That wellnigh breaks the shuddering heart of earth,
Sound in the hearing of the far-off stars
A golden voice of Freedom, voice of God?
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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This Tattered Catechism
THIS tattered catechism weaves a spell,
Invoking from the Long Ago a child
Who deemed her fledgling soul so sin-defiled
She practised with a candle-flame at hell,
Burning small fingers, that would still rebel
And flinch from fire. Forsooth not all beguiled
By hymn and sermon, when her mother smiled,
That smile was fashioning an infidel.
'If I'm in hell,' the baby logic ran,
'Mother will hear me cry and come for me.
If God says no —I don't believe He can
Say no to mother.' Then at that dear knee
She knelt demure, a little Puritan
Whose faith in love had wrecked theology.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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