Trees and Other Poems | Page 9

to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store. But
there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone For the lack
of something within it that it has never known.
But a house that has done what a house should do,
a house that has
sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and
his wife, A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his
stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your
eyes could meet.
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the
empty house without stopping and looking back, Yet it hurts me to look
at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, For I can't help
thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.
Dave Lilly
There's a brook on the side of Greylock that used to be full of trout, But
there's nothing there now but minnows; they say it is all fished out. I
fished there many a Summer day some twenty years ago,
And I never
quit without getting a mess of a dozen or so.
There was a man, Dave Lilly, who lived on the North Adams road, And
he spent all his time fishing, while his neighbors reaped and sowed. He
was the luckiest fisherman in the Berkshire hills, I think. And when he
didn't go fishing he'd sit in the tavern and drink.
Well, Dave is dead and buried and nobody cares very much;
They
have no use in Greylock for drunkards and loafers and such. But I
always liked Dave Lilly, he was pleasant as you could wish; He was
shiftless and good-for-nothing, but he certainly could fish.
The other night I was walking up the hill from Williamstown And I
came to the brook I mentioned,
and I stopped on the bridge and sat
down.
I looked at the blackened water with its little flecks of white
And I heard it ripple and whisper in the still of the Summer night.

And after I'd been there a minute it seemed to me I could feel The
presence of someone near me, and I heard the hum of a reel. And the
water was churned and broken, and something was brought to land By
a twist and flirt of a shadowy rod in a deft and shadowy hand.
I scrambled down to the brookside and hunted all about;
There wasn't
a sign of a fisherman; there wasn't a sign of a trout. But I heard
somebody chuckle behind the hollow oak
And I got a whiff of
tobacco like Lilly used to smoke.
It's fifteen years, they tell me, since anyone fished that brook; And
there's nothing in it but minnows that nibble the bait off your hook. But
before the sun has risen and after the moon has set
I know that it's full
of ghostly trout for Lilly's ghost to get.
I guess I'll go to the tavern and get a bottle of rye
And leave it down
by the hollow oak, where Lilly's ghost went by. I meant to go up on the
hillside and try to find his grave
And put some flowers on it -- but
this will be better for Dave.
Alarm Clocks
When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and
yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And
poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but
not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And
barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"
Take by his grace a new and
alien charm.
But in the city, like a wounded thing
That limps to cover from the
angry chase,
He steals down streets where sickly arc-lights sing,

And wanly mock his young and shameful face;
And tiny gongs with
cruel fervor ring
In many a high and dreary sleeping place.
Waverley

1814-1914
When, on a novel's newly printed page
We find a maudlin eulogy of
sin,
And read of ways that harlots wander in,
And of sick souls that
writhe in helpless rage;
Or when Romance, bespectacled and sage,

Taps on her desk and bids the class begin
To con the problems that
have always been
Perplexed mankind's unhappy heritage;
Then in what robes of honor habited
The laureled wizard of the North
appears!
Who raised Prince Charlie's cohorts from the dead,
Made
Rose's mirth and Flora's noble tears,
And formed that shining legion
at whose head
Rides Waverley, triumphant o'er the years!
[End of Trees and Other Poems.]
The following biographical information is taken from the 1917 edition
of Jessie B. Rittenhouse's anthology of Modern Verse.
Kilmer, Joyce. Born at New Brunswick, New Jersey, December 6, 1886,
and graduated at Columbia University in 1908. After a short period of
teaching