Our President
GOD help him! Ay, and let us help him, too,
Help him with our one hundred million minds
Molded to loyalty, so that he finds
The faith of the Republic pulsing through
All clashes of opinion, faith still true
To its divine young vision of mankind's
Freedom and brotherhood. May all the winds,
North, south, east, west, waft him our honor due!
For he is one who, when the tempest breaks
In shattering fury, wild with thunder-jars
And javelins of lightning that transform
All the familiar scene to horror, makes
A hush about him in the heart of storm,
Remembering the quiet of the stars.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Graves At Christiania
WE bore them their own wild heather
And ash-boughs jeweled red,
There where they sleep together,
Greatest of Norway's dead.
More than the hush of churches
Is the hush where Ibsen lies,
Columned by poplars and birches,
Vaulted by glorious skies.
Over that heart undaunted
Soars a shaft of labrador,
Black yet beauty-haunted,
Marked with the hammer of Thor.
But what memorial lifted
To Björnson, loved of the folk?
We sought till our quest had drifted
Where tender voices spoke,
Where never a rail encloses
That resting-place of fame,
A little plot of roses,
Nameless nor needing name.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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April In September
WHAT song is in the sap of this brave oak-tree
That to the north-star faces,
Ravened each June by caterpillar masses
Till all its leaves are laces,
Poor shreds whose very shadow grieves the grasses?
I leave it then, but roses and the smoke-tree
Look from the lawn below it
And watch for that gold witch, Midsummer Weather,
With magic breath to blow it
Free of its foes, whose wings make mirth together.
Vital as Igdrasil, immortal folk-tree,
When I return, its losses
Are all restored, its fresh, soft foliage gleaming
With peach and citron glosses,
A Druid that is never done with dreaming.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Starlight At Sea
OVER the murmurous choral of dim waves
The constellations glow against the soft
Ethereal dusk, —forever fair, aloft,
Serene, while man climbs painfully from caves
To cities, clamorous cities, life that raves
Like surf against the rocks. It is not oft
Our cities glimpse the stars, their luster scoffed
Away by low, hard glitter that outbraves
Night's blessing of the dark. But here upon
Mid-ocean, all whose muffled voices ring
A rapture lost to our vexed human wills,
We see the primal radiance that shone
On chaos, —see the young God shepherding
His gleaming flocks on the empurpled hills.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Our Crown Of Praise
A PRAISE beyond all other praise of ours
This nation holds in jealous trust for him
Who may approve himself, even in these dim,
Swift days of destiny, the soul that towers
Above the turmoil of contending powers,
A beacon firm, while seas of fury brim
The world's long-labored fields and vineyards trim,
Remembering forests and unconscious flowers.
Our nation longs for such a living light,
Kindred to stars and their eternal dreams,
A steadfast glow whatever breakers roll,
Cleaving confusions of the stormy night
With gracious lusters and revealing gleams,
—Longs for the shining of a Lincoln soul.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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To Our President
HOPE of the Nations, lift thy stricken heart.
Thyself art Sorrow, and to thee the cry
Of battle-anguish comes more piercingly
Than even in those months of sneer and smart,
When thou so steadfastly didst bear thy part,
True Champion of Peace. And now, when high
The war-storm rages, when horne's darlings die
By mangled thousands, lift thy stricken heart
For a white shield of mercy, torch that throws
Its reconciling gleam across the seas.
O thou in love and grief pre-eminent,
Divine shall be thy comfort to appease
These bleeding Christian armies, sudden foes
That slaughter in a fierce astonishment.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Three Steps
THREE steps there are our human life must climb.
The first is Force.
The savage struggled to it from the slime
And still it is our last, ashamed recourse.
Above that jagged stretch of red-veined stone
Is marble Law,
Carven with long endeavor, monotone
Of patient hammers, not yet free from flaw.
Three steps there are our human life must climb.
The last is Love,
Wrought from such starry element sublime
As touches the White Rose and Mystic Dove.
Poor world, that stumbles up with many a trip,
A child that clings
To the great Hand, whose lifting guardianship
Quickens in wayward feet the dream of wings!
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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George Macdonald
I HEARD him preach in Oxford years ago,
A snowy-haired and tender-faced apostle.
I watched the beech against the window blow,
And listened to the throstle.
And still a waving branch to memory brings
Those deepset eyes and drooping lids as pressed
Upon too much by earthly visionings
And wistful for their rest.
Still in the flutings of a thrush will sound
Words that upon us then but lightly fell,
Because they were as simple and profound
As some brief parable
Told by the Master to the hungry folk,
While the disciples murmured, but the foam
Wrote it again on Patmos, and it spoke
Above the rage of Rome.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The Presence Chamber
(Switzerland)
BEHOLD a temple builded not by hands.
Columns of mist, all shimmering with sun,
Stream heavenward from the deep-cut vales that run
Between the mountains, and the vault expands,
Splendor of turquoise, groined with opal bands.
Cloud tapestries, of pearl and amber spun,
Veil in that glorious pavilion,
Mosaic-paved with cities, lakes and lands.
But far withdrawn in utter light of light,
Holy of Holies, is the God to whom
Our souls, that make their own enshrouding night,
Lift piteous prayer: 'Deliver us from gloom,'
Yet shrink aftrighted from the answering, white,
Unbearable Divine that would illume.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Glory
At the crowded gangway they kissed good-bye.
He had half a mind to scold her.
An officer's mother and not keep dry
The epaulet on his shoulder.
He had forgotten mother and fame,
His mind in a blood-mist floated,
But when reeling back from carnage they came,
One told him: "You are promoted!"
His friend smiled up from the wet red sand,
The look was afar, eternal,
But he tried to salute with his shattered hand:
"Room now for another colonel!"
Again he raged in that lurid hell
Where the country he loved had thrown him.
"You are promoted!" shrieked a shell.
His mother would not have known him.
poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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