The Second Book of Modern Verse Part 34

Think of the years that he has had to wait.

~But if I let Love in I shall be late.

Another has come first -- there is no room.

And I am thoughtful of the endless loom -- Let Love be patient, the importunate.~

O Life, be idle and let Love come in, And give thy dreamy hair that Love may spin.

~But Love himself is idle with his song.

Let Love come last, and then may Love last long.~

Be patient, Life, for Love is not the last.

Be patient now with Death, for Love has pa.s.sed.

Song. [Margaret Widdemer]

The Spring will come when the year turns, As if no Winter had been, But what shall I do with a locked heart That lets no new year in?

The birds will go when the Fall goes, The leaves will fade in the field, But what shall I do with an old love Will neither die nor yield?

Oh! youth will turn as the world turns, And dim grow laughter and pain, But how shall I hide from an old dream I never may dream again?

The Bitter Herb. [Jeanne Robert Foster]

O bitter herb, Forgetfulness, I search for you in vain; You are the only growing thing Can take away my pain.

When I was young, this bitter herb Grew wild on every hill; I should have plucked a store of it, And kept it by me still.

I hunt through all the meadows Where once I wandered free, But the rare herb, Forgetfulness, It hides away from me.

O bitter herb, Forgetfulness, Where is your drowsy breath?

Oh, can it be your seed has blown Far as the Vales of Death?

Behind the House is the Millet Plot. [Muna Lee]

Behind the house is the millet plot, And past the millet, the stile; And then a hill where melilot Grows with wild camomile.

There was a youth who bade me goodby Where the hill rises to meet the sky.

I think my heart broke; but I have forgot All but the smell of the white melilot.

Men of Harlan. [William Aspinwall Bradley]

Here in the level country, where the creeks run straight and wide, Six men upon their pacing nags may travel side by side.

But the mountain men of Harlan, you may tell them all the while, When they pa.s.s through our village, for they ride in single file.

And the children, when they see them, stop their play and stand and cry, "Here come the men of Harlan, men of Harlan, riding by!"

O the mountain men of Harlan, when they come down to the plain, With dangling stirrup, jangling spur, and loosely hanging rein, They do not ride, like our folks here, in twos and threes abreast, With merry laughter, talk and song, and lightly spoken jest; But silently and solemnly, in long and straggling line, As you may see them in the hills, beyond Big Black and Pine.

For, in that far strange country, where the men of Harlan dwell, There are no roads at all, like ours, as we've heard travelers tell.

But only narrow trails that wind along each shallow creek, Where the silence hangs so heavy, you can hear the leathers squeak.

And there no two can ride abreast, but each alone must go, Picking his way as best he may, with careful steps and slow,

Down many a shelving ledge of shale, skirting the trembling sands, Through many a pool and many a pa.s.s, where the mountain laurel stands So thick and close to left and right, with holly bushes, too, The clinging branches meet midway to bar the pa.s.sage through, -- O'er many a steep and stony ridge, o'er many a high divide, And so it is the Harlan men thus one by one do ride.

Yet it is strange to see them pa.s.s in line through our wide street, When they come down to sell their sang, and buy their stores of meat, These silent men, in sombre black, all clad from foot to head, Though they have left their lonely hills and the narrow creek's rough bed.

And 't is no wonder children stop their play and stand and cry: "Here come the men of Harlan, men of Harlan, riding by."

Have you an Eye. [Edwin Ford Piper]

Have you an eye for the trails, the trails, The old mark and the new?

What scurried here, what loitered there, In the dust and in the dew?

Have you an eye for the beaten track, The old hoof and the young?

Come name me the drivers of yesterday, Sing me the songs they sung.

O, was it a schooner last went by, And where will it ford the stream?

Where will it halt in the early dusk, And where will the camp-fire gleam?

They used to take the shortest cut The cattle trails had made; Get down the hill by the easy slope To the water and the shade.

But it's barbed wire fence, and section line, And kill-horse travel now; Scoot you down the canyon bank, -- The old road's under plough.

Have you an eye for the laden wheel, The worn tire or the new?

Or the sign of the prairie pony's hoof Was never trimmed for shoe?