Songs for a Little House | Page 6

erections fall;?Have wept--then flung away our tools, and laughed.?Fled is the dream, but working year by year?We see our buildings rising, tier on tier.
THE MADONNA OF THE CURB
On the curb of a city pavement,?By the ash and garbage cans,?In the stench and rolling thunder?Of motor trucks and vans,?There sits my little lady,?With brave but troubled eyes,?And in her arms a baby?That cries and cries and cries.
She cannot be more than seven;?But years go fast in the slums,?And hard on the pains of winter?The pitiless summer comes.?The wail of sickly children?She knows; she understands?The pangs of puny bodies,?The clutch of small hot hands.
In the deadly blaze of August,?That turns men faint and mad,?She quiets the peevish urchins?By telling a dream she had--?A heaven with marble counters,?And ice, and a singing fan;?And a God in white, so friendly,?Just like the drug-store man.
Her ragged dress is dearer?Than the perfect robe of a queen!?Poor little lass, who knows not?The blessing of being clean.?And when you are giving millions?To Belgian, Pole and Serb,?Remember my pitiful lady--?Madonna of the Curb!
MY PIPE
My pipe is old?And caked with soot;?My wife remarks:?"How can you put?That horrid relic,?So unclean,?Inside your mouth??The nicotine?Is strong enough?To stupefy?A Swedish plumber."?I reply:
"This is the kind?Of pipe I like:?I fill it full?Of Happy Strike,?Or Barking Cat?Or Cabman's Puff,?Or Brooklyn Bridge?(That potent stuff)?Or Chaste Embraces,?Knacker's Twist,?Old Honeycomb?Or Niggerfist.
I clamp my teeth?Upon its stem--?It is my bliss,?My diadem.?Whatever Fate?May do to me,?This is my favourite?B?B B.?For this dear pipe?You feign to scorn?I smoked the night?The boy was born."
TO A GRANDMOTHER
At six o'clock in the evening,?The time for lullabies,?My son lay on my mother's lap?With sleepy, sleepy eyes!?(_O drowsy little manny boy,?With sleepy, sleepy eyes!_)
I heard her sing, and rock him,?And the creak of the swaying chair,?And the old dear cadence of the words?Came softly down the stair.
And all the years had vanished,?All folly, greed, and stain--?The old, old song, the creaking chair,?The dearest arms again!?(_O lucky little manny boy,?To feel those arms again!_)
A HANDFUL OF SONNETS
I
I have no hope to make you live in rhyme?Or with your beauty to enrich the years--?Enough for me this now, this present time;?The greater claim for greater sonneteers.?But O how covetous I am of NOW--?Dear human minutes, marred by human pains--?I want to know your lips, your cheek, your brow,?And all the miracles your heart contains.?I wish to study all your changing face,?Your eyes, divinely hurt with tenderness;?I hope to win your dear unstinted grace?For these blunt rhymes and what they would express.?Then may you say, when others better prove:--?"_Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love._"
II
When all my trivial rhymes are blotted out,?Vanished our days, so precious and so few,?If some should wonder what we were about?And what the little happenings we knew:?I wish that they might know how, night by night,?My pencil, heavy in the sleepy hours,?Sought vainly for some gracious way to write?How much this love is ours, and only ours.?How many evenings, as you drowsed to sleep,?I read to you by tawny candle-glow,?And watched you down the valley dim and deep?Where poppies and the April flowers grow.?Then knelt beside your pillow with a prayer,?And loved the breath of pansies in your hair.
PEDOMETER
My thoughts beat out in sonnets while I walk,?And every evening on the homeward street?I find the rhythm of my marching feet?Throbs into verses (though the rhyme may balk.)?I think the sonneteers were walking men:?The form is dour and rigid, like a clamp,?But with the swing of legs the tramp, tramp, tramp?Of syllables begins to thud, and then--?Lo! while you seek a rhyme for _hook_ or _crook_?Vanished your shabby coat, and you are kith?To all great walk-and-singers--Meredith,?And Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Rupert Brooke!?Free verse is poor for walking, but a sonnet--?O marvellous to stride and brood upon it!
ARS DURA
How many evenings, walking soberly?Along our street all dappled with rich sun,?I please myself with words, and happily?Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run;?And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies?Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask,?Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes?And traitor hand that fails the well loved task!
Who ever learned the sonnet's bitter craft?But he had put away his sleep, his ease,?The wine he loved, the men with whom he laughed,?To brood upon such thankless tricks as these??And yet, such joy does in that craft abide?He greets the paper as the groom the bride!
O. HENRY--APOTHECARY
"O. Henry" once worked in a drug-store in Greensboro, N. C.
Where once he measured camphor, glycerine,?Quinine and potash, peppermint in bars,?And all the oils and essences so keen?That druggists keep in rows of stoppered jars--?Now, blender of strange drugs more volatile,?The master pharmacist of joy and pain?Dispenses sadness tinctured with a smile?And laughter that dissolves in tears again.
O brave apothecary! You who knew?What dark and acid doses life prefers,?And yet with friendly face resolved to brew?These sparkling potions