Lest We Forget

They shall not grow old. As we that are left grow old.
Age shall not weary them, Nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun, And in the morning,
We will remember them.

By Unknown

My Prairies

I love my prairies, they are mine
From the zenith to the horizon line,
Clipping a world of sky and sod
Like the bended arm and wrist of God.

I love their grasses. The skies
Are larger, and my restless eyes
Fasten of more of earth and air
Than seashore furnishes anywhere.

I love the hazel thickets;and the breeze,
The never resting prairie winds. The trees
That stand like the spear points high
Against the dark blue sky

Are wonderful to me. I love the gold
Of newly shaven stubble, rolled
A royal carpet toward the sun, fit to be
The pathway of a deity.

I love the life of pasture lands; the songs of birds
Are not more thrilling to me tha the herd's
Mad bellowing or the shadow stride
Of mounted herdsmen at my side.

I love my prairies, they are mine
From high sun to horizon line.
The mountians and the cold gray sea
Are not for me, are not for me.


By Hamlin Garland

The Thawing Wind

Come withe the rain, O loud Southwester!
Bring the singer, bring the nester;
Give the buried flower a dream;
Make the settled snow-bank steam;
Find the brown beneath the white;
But whate'er you do to-night,
Bathe my window, make if flow,
Malt it as the ice will go;
Melt the glass and leave the sticks
Like a hermit's crucifix;
Burst into my narrow stall;
Swing the picture on the wall;
Run the rattling pages o'er;
Scatter poems on the floor;
Turn the poet out the door.

By Robert Frost

Tiny Feet

A child's tiny feet, 

Blue, blue with the cold, 

How can they see and not protect you?

Oh, my God!

Tiny wounded feet, 

Bruised all over by pebbles,

Abused by snow and soil!

Man, being blind, ignores

That where you step, you leave

A blosson of bright light,

That where you have placed

Your bleeding little soles

A redolent tuberose grows.

Since, however, you walk

Through the streets so straight,

You are courageous, without fault.

Child's tiny feet, 

two suffering little gems,

How can the people pass, unseeing.

A Message to America

You have the grit and the guts, I know;

You are ready to answer blow for blow

You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard

But you honor ends with you own back-yard;

You have no feeling for the whole;

What singly none would tolerate

You let unpunished hit the state,

Unmindful that each man must share

The stain he lets his country wear,

And (what no traveller ignores)

That her good name is often yours.

You are proud in the pride that feels its might;

From you imaginary height

Men of another race or hue

Are men of a lesser breed to you:

The neighbor at your southern gate

You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate.

To lend a spice to your disrespect

You call him the "greaser". But reflect!

The greaser has spat on you more that once;

He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed;

He has gone untrounced fro the blood he spilled;

He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag

The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag;

And you, in the depths of your easy-chair--

What did you do. what did you care?

Did you find the season to cold and damp

To chance the counter for the camp?

Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico?

I can't imagine, but this I know--

You are impassioned vastly more

By the news of the daily baseball score

Than to hear that a dozen countrymen

Have perished somewhere in Darien,

That greasers have taken their innocent lives

And robbed their holdings and raped their wives.

Not by rough tongues and ready fists

Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists.

The armies of a littler folk

Shall pass you under the victor's yoke,

So be it a nation that trains her sons

To ride their horses and point their guns--

So be it a people that comprehends

the limit where private pleasure ends

And where their public dues begin,

A people made strong by discipline

Who are willing to give--what you've no mine to--

And understand--what you are blind to--

The things that the individual

Must sacrifice for the good of all.

You have a leader who knows-- the man

Most fit the be called American,

A prophet that once in generations

Is given to point at erring nations

Brighter ideals toward which the press

And lead them out of the wilderness.

Will you turn your back on him once again?

Will you give the tiller once more to men

Who have made your country the laughing-stock

For the older peoples to scorn and mock,

Who would make er servile, despised, and weak,

A country that turns the other cheek,

Who care not how bravely your flag may float,

Who answer an insult with a note,

Whose way is the easy way in all,

And, seeing that polished arms appal

Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist,

Would tell you menace does not exist?

Are these, in the world's great parliament,

The men you would choose to represent

Your honor, your manhood, and your pride,

And the virtues your fathers dignified?

Ohm bury them deeper than the sea

In universal obloquy;

forget the ground where they lie, or write

For epitaph: "Too proud to fight."

I have been to long from my country's shores

To reckon what state of mind is yours,

Nut as for myself I know right well

I would go through fire and shot and shell

And face new  perils and make my bed

In new privations, if ROOSEVELT led;

But I have given my heart and hand

To serve, in serving another land,

Ideals kept brights that with you are dim;

Here men can thrill to their country's hymn,

For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise

Is the same that fires the French these days,

And, when the flag that they love goes by,

With swelling bosom and moistened eye

They can look, for they know that it floats there still

By the might of their hands and the strength of their will,

And through perils countless and trials unknown

Its honor each man has made his own.

They wanted the war no more than you,

But they saw how the certain menace grew,

And they gave two years of their youth or three

The more to insure their liberty

When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears

Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers.

They wanted the war no more than you,

But when the dreadful summons blew

And the time to settle the quarrel came

They sprang to their guns, each man was game;

And mark if they fought not to the last

For their hearts, their altars, and their past:

Yea, fight till their veins have bled dry

For love of the country that WILL not die.

O friends, in your fortunate present ease

(Yet faced by the self-same facts as these),

If you would see how a race can soar

That has no love, but no fear, of war

How each can turn from his private role

That all my act as a perfect whole,

How man can live up to the place they claim

And a nation, jealous of its good name,

Be true to its proud inheritance,

Oh, look over here and learn from France.

By Alan Seeger

"I put this poem up here because I love some of the things that he was talking about. I love this nation and I want it to be the best that it can be. I'm not so sure about the whole France part but I believe that he makes some very good points."

The Living Dead

 

I am surrounded by luxury

I am blessed with family

I have plenty to eat

And more than enough treats

And yet the tears fall.

For no matter where you go

Even if you go high or if you go low

No matter the nation or culture

No matter the riches or wealth galore

Still the tears will fall.

Do you see their faces?

As they stand in the public places

They are the living dead

Do you a tear for them shed?

Or do you walk on in oblivion.

Do you see their eyes?

Do you see them were they lie?

There bones protrude

For the lack of food

And we walk on in oblivion.

They are the stuff of nightmares

They are the ghost that at us from the shadows glare

They are children

Forlorn and abandoned

And still we look away.

They are the outcasts

On the chain of power they are lower than the last

Did they deserve this treatment?

Their skin is withered their backs are bent

And we look away.

Look at what you have

Look at what I have

We live in one of the richest nations

With no fear of starvation

And from their eyes we hide away.

The poorest of the poor here

Is the richest of the rich there

How do we dare

Complain about our fair?

And from their eyes hide away.

Let the angels rejoice

Let them feast

For today

In dust to rise no more another one lays

And they leave this world forever. 

Let not tears from our eyes be shed

Nor let the mourners be led

For the dead do not mourn over a life they never had

Instead now they are glad

For they have left this world forever. 

By Kalyn Hassoldt 

Easter

Rise, heart, thy Lord is risen. Sing his praise
Without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand, that thou likewise
With him may'st rise:
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and, much more, just.


Awake, my lute, and struggle for they part
With all thy art,
The cross taught all wood to resound his name
Who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings what key
Is best to celebrate this most high day.


Consort, both heart and lute, and twist a song
Pleasant and long;
Or, since all music is but three parts vied
And multiplied
Oh let they blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art. 

By George Herbert