Main Street, Other Poems | Page 3

spaces. This etext was transcribed from a 1917 (original) edition.]
To Mrs. Edmund Leamy
[A number of these poems originally appeared in various periodicals.]
Contents
Main Street?Roofs?The Snowman in the Yard?A Blue Valentine?Houses?In Memory?Apology?The Proud Poet?Lionel Johnson?Father Gerard Hopkins, S. J.?Gates and Doors?The Robe of Christ?The Singing Girl?The Annunciation?Roses?The Visitation?Multiplication?Thanksgiving?The Thorn?The Big Top?Queen Elizabeth Speaks?Mid-ocean in War-time?In Memory of Rupert Brooke?The New School?Easter Week?The Cathedral of Rheims?Kings?The White Ships and the Red
Main Street and Other Poems
Main Street
(For S. M. L.)
I like to look at the blossomy track of the moon upon the sea, But it isn't half so fine a sight as Main Street used to be When it all was covered over with a couple of feet of snow, And over the crisp and radiant road the ringing sleighs would go.
Now, Main Street bordered with autumn leaves, it was a pleasant thing, And its gutters were gay with dandelions early in the Spring; I like to think of it white with frost or dusty in the heat, Because I think it is humaner than any other street.
A city street that is busy and wide is ground by a thousand wheels, And a burden of traffic on its breast is all it ever feels: It is dully conscious of weight and speed and of work that never ends, But it cannot be human like Main Street, and recognise its friends.
There were only about a hundred teams on Main Street in a day, And twenty or thirty people, I guess, and some children out to play. And there wasn't a wagon or buggy, or a man or a girl or a boy That Main Street didn't remember, and somehow seem to enjoy.
The truck and the motor and trolley car and the elevated train They make the weary city street reverberate with pain:?But there is yet an echo left deep down within my heart?Of the music the Main Street cobblestones made beneath a butcher's cart.
God be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across the sky,?That's the path that my feet would tread whenever I have to die. Some folks call it a Silver Sword, and some a Pearly Crown, But the only thing I think it is, is Main Street, Heaventown.
Roofs
(For Amelia Josephine Burr)
The road is wide and the stars are out?and the breath of the night is sweet,?And this is the time when wanderlust should seize upon my feet. But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the starlight on my face, And to leave the splendour of out-of-doors for a human dwelling place.
I never have seen a vagabond who really liked to roam?All up and down the streets of the world and not to have a home: The tramp who slept in your barn last night and left at break of day Will wander only until he finds another place to stay.
A gypsy-man will sleep in his cart with canvas overhead;?Or else he'll go into his tent when it is time for bed.?He'll sit on the grass and take his ease so long as the sun is high, But when it is dark he wants a roof to keep away the sky.
If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do him wrong,?For he never goes a-travelling but he takes his home along. And the only reason a road is good, as every wanderer knows, Is just because of the homes, the homes, the homes to which it goes.
They say that life is a highway and its milestones are the years, And now and then there's a toll-gate where you buy your way with tears. It's a rough road and a steep road and it stretches broad and far, But at last it leads to a golden Town where golden Houses are.
The Snowman in the Yard
(For Thomas Augustine Daly)
The Judge's house has a splendid porch, with pillars and steps of stone, And the Judge has a lovely flowering hedge that came from across the seas; In the Hales' garage you could put my house and everything I own, And the Hales have a lawn like an emerald and a row of poplar trees.
Now I have only a little house, and only a little lot,?And only a few square yards of lawn, with dandelions starred; But when Winter comes, I have something there?that the Judge and the Hales have not,?And it's better worth having than all their wealth --?it's a snowman in the yard.
The Judge's money brings architects to make his mansion fair; The Hales have seven gardeners to make their roses grow;?The Judge can get his trees from Spain and France and everywhere, And raise his orchids under glass in the midst of all the snow.
But I have something no architect or gardener ever made,?A thing that is shaped by the busy touch of little mittened hands: And the Judge