En.Citatepedia^®.ro

Joe

A meadow brown; across the yonder edge
A zigzag fence is ambling; here a wedge
Of underbush has cleft its course in twain,
Till where beyond it staggers up again;
The long, grey rails stretch in a broken line
Their ragged length of rough, split forest pine,
And in their zigzag tottering have reeled
In drunken efforts to enclose the field,
Which carries on its breast, September born,
A patch of rustling, yellow, Indian corn.
Beyond its shrivelled tassels, perched upon
The topmost rail, sits Joe, the settler’s son,
A little semi-savage boy of nine.
Now dozing in the warmth of Nature’s wine,
His face the sun has tampered with, and wrought,
By heated kisses, mischief, and has brought
Some vagrant freckles, while from here and there
A few wild locks of vagabond brown hair
Escape the old straw hat the sun looks through,
And blinks to meet his Irish eyes of blue.
Barefooted, innocent of coat or vest,
His grey checked shirt unbuttoned at his chest,
Both hardy hands within their usual nest—
His breeches pockets — so, he waits to rest
His little fingers, somewhat tired and worn,
That all day long were husking Indian corn.
His drowsy lids snap at some trivial sound,
With lazy yawns he slips towards the ground,
Then with an idle whistle lifts his load
And shambles home along the country road
That stretches on fringed out with stumps and weeds,
And finally unto the backwoods leads,
Where forests wait with giant trunk and bough
The axe of pioneer, the settler’s plough.

poem by Emily Pauline Johnson
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An etching

A meadow brown; across the yonder edge
A zigzag fence is ambling; here a wedge
Of underbush has cleft its course in twain,
Till where beyond it staggers up again;
The long, grey rails stretch in a broken line
Their ragged length of rough, split forest pine,
And in their zigzag tottering have reeled
In drunken efforts to enclose the field,
Which carries on its breast, September born,
A patch of rustling, yellow, Indian corn.
Beyond its shrivelled tassels, perched upon
The topmost rail, sits Joe, the settler's son,
A little semi-savage boy of nine.
Now dozing in the warmth of Nature's wine,
His face the sun has tampered with, and wrought,
By heated kisses, mischief, and has brought
Some vagrant freckles, while from here and there
A few wild locks of vagabond brown hair
Escape the old straw hat the sun looks through,
And blinks to meet his Irish eyes of blue.
Barefooted, innocent of coat or vest,
His grey checked shirt unbuttoned at his chest,
Both hardy hands within their usual nest--
His breeches pockets--so, he waits to rest
His little fingers, somewhat tired and worn,
That all day long were husking Indian corn.
His drowsy lids snap at some trivial sound,
With lazy yawns he slips towards the ground,
Then with an idle whistle lifts his load
And shambles home along the country road
That stretches on, fringed out with stumps and weeds,
And finally unto the backwoods leads,
Where forests wait with giant trunk and bough
The axe of pioneer, the settler's plough.

poem by Emily Pauline Johnson
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This Morning At The Barbershop

This morning at the barbershop,
a barber is busy with the hair
of a much older grey haired man
that he is trimming neatly
and a young man
sits in one of the barber’s chairs.

When I sit down to wait
the young man rises
turning to me
and asks if he can cut my hair.

I was happy to get attention immediately
while the other barber was finishing
with the older man,
as he looks to finely tuned to me.

My hair was smartly cut
with a pair of scissors
and the young barber
held his fingers
to determine the length
and I wanted it shorter
than just cutting off the ends

while the other barber
first took a hair blower
from a drawer,
sprayed something over his own hair
before he started to blow it in the mirror
and he then said
that he cannot go
to the bank to wait in line
with a head looking like Tut’s ass

and I saw my locks
falling dark brown
with dots of grey around me
and saw the other barber
combing his long hair
and smiled at myself
about the vanity of humanity
while I looked at myself
and were starting to look much better.

poem by Gert Strydom
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Pray But One Prayer For Us

Pray but one prayer for me ’twixt thy closed lips,
Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips,
Faint and grey ’twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars,
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn
Patient and colourless, though Heaven’s gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,
The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dim;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn,
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn.
Speak but one word to me over the corn,
Over the tender, bow’d locks of the corn.

poem by William Morris
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Summer Dawn

Pray but one prayer for me 'twixt thy closed lips,
Think but one thought of me up in the stars.
The summer night waneth, the morning light slips,
Faint and grey 'twixt the leaves of the aspen, betwixt the cloud-bars
That are patiently waiting there for the dawn:
Patient and colourless, though Heaven's gold
Waits to float through them along with the sun.
Far out in the meadows, above the young corn,
The heavy elms wait, and restless and cold
The uneasy wind rises; the roses are dun;
Through the long twilight they pray for the dawn,
Round the lone house in the midst of the corn,
Speak but one word to me over the corn,
Over the tender, bow'd locks of the corn.

poem by William Morris
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The Stockyard Liar

If ever you're handling a rough one
There's bound to be perched on the rails
Of the Stockyard some grizzled old tough one
Whose flow of advice never fails;
There are plenty of course, who aspire
To make plain that you're only a dunce,
But the most insupportable liar
Is the man who has ridden 'em once.
He will tell you a tale and a rum one,
With never a smile on his face,
How he broke for old Somebody Some-one
At some unapproachable place;
How they bucked and they snorted and squealed,
How he spurred 'em and flogged 'em, and how
He would gallop 'em round till they reeled -
But he's 'getting too old for it now'.

How you're standing too far from her shoulder,
Or too jolly close to the same,
How he could have taught you to hold her
In the days when he 'followed the game';
He will bustle, annoy and un-nerve us
Till even our confidence fails -
O Shade of old Nimrod! preserve us
From the beggar that sits on the rails!

How your reins you are holding too tightly,
Your girths might as well be unloosed,
How 'young chaps' don't handle them rightly,
And horses don't buck 'like they used';
Till at last, in a bit of passion,
You ask him in choicest 'Barcoo'
To go and be hanged in a fashion
That turns the whole atmosphere blue!

And the chances are strong the old buffer
Has been talking for something to say,
And never rode anything rougher
Than the shaft of old Somebody's dray;
And the horses he thinks he has broken
Are clothes-horses sawn out of pine,
And his yarns to us simply betoken
The start of a senile decline.

There are laws for our proper protection
From murder and theft and the rest,
But the criminal wanting inspection
Is riding a rail in the West;
And the law that the country requires
At the hands of her statesmen of sense
Is the law that makes meat of the liars
That can sit a rough buck - on the fence!

poem by William Henry Ogilvie
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The Widower

Oh I have worn my mourning out,
And on her grave the green grass grows;
So I will hang each sorry clout
High in the corn to scare the crows.
And I will buy a peacock tie,
And coat of cloth of Donegal;
Then to the Farmer's Fair I'll hie
And peek in at the Barley Ball.

But though the fiddlers saw a jig
I used to foot when I was wed,
I'll walk me home and feed the pig,
And go a lonesome man to bed.

So I will wait another year,
As any decent chap would do,
Till I can think without a tear
Of her whose eyes were cornflower blue.

Then to the Harvest Ball I'll hie,
And I will wear a flower-sprigged vest;
For Maggie has a nut-brown eyes,
And we will foot it with the best.

And if kind-minded she should be
To wife me - 'tis the will if God . . .
But Oh the broken heart f me
For her who lies below the sod!

poem by Robert William Service
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In Fisherrow

A hard north-easter fifty winters long
Has bronzed and shrivelled sere her face and neck;
Her locks are wild and grey, her teeth a wreck;
Her foot is vast, her bowed leg spare and strong.
A wide blue cloak, a squat and sturdy throng
Of curt blue coats, a mutch without a speck,
A white vest broidered black, her person deck,
Nor seems their picked, stern, old-world quaintness wrong.
Her great creel forehead-slung, she wanders nigh,
Easing the heavy strap with gnarled, brown fingers,
The spirit of traffic watchful in her eye,
Ever and anon imploring you to buy,
As looking down the street she onward lingers,
Reproachful, with a strange and doleful cry.

poem by William Ernest Henley
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Pre-Existence

I laid me down upon the shore
And dreamed a little space;
I heard the great waves break and roar;
The sun was on my face.

My idle hands and fingers brown
Played with the pebbles grey;
The waves came up, the waves went down,
Most thundering and gay.

The pebbles, they were smooth and round
And warm upon my hands,
Like little people I had found
Sitting among the sands.

The grains of sands so shining-small
Soft through my fingers ran;
The sun shone down upon it all,
And so my dream began:

How all of this had been before;
How ages far away
I lay on some forgotten shore
As here I lie to-day.

The waves came shining up the sands,
As here to-day they shine;
And in my pre-pelasgian hands
The sand was warm and fine.

I have forgotten whence I came,
Or what my home might be,
Or by what strange and savage name
I called that thundering sea.

I only know the sun shone down
As still it shines to-day,
And in my fingers long and brown
The little pebbles lay.

poem by Frances Darwin Cornford
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The Grey Road

A sun-flash on his mounting wing,
A wild note soaring high—
The lark is up, the minstrel king,
The poet of the sky.
To thrill, to sing of Youth and Spring
Those golden numbers flowed.
What message then
Has he for men
Who tread the long grey road?
Knee-deep in grass the cattle stand,
The river winds along,
And chants through sunny meadow land
A low mysterious song.
Ah! sunlit vale and lover’s tale
Youth’s day is quickly gone—
Past current-beat
And meadow-sweet
The grey road stretches on!

Grim bastions frowning down below—
And rising, tier on tier,
Sublime, and crowned with ageless snow
The awful peaks appear.
The heights belong unto the strong
Who scale, by crags untried,
The great cliffs face—
But at its base
The grey road turns aside!

No hope in Heaven, no minstrel strain,
No vales where summer shone
A leaden sky, a silent plain,
The grey road stretching on.
O Christ, who trod the thorny path,
And bore the bitter load,
Have mercy then
On weary men
Who tread the long grey road!

poem by George Essex Evans
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Exile

These hills are sandy. Trees are dwarfed here. Crows
Caw dismally in skies of an arid brilliance,
Complain in dusty pine-trees. Yellow daybreak
Lights on the long brown slopes a frost-like dew,
Dew as heavy as rain; the rabbit tracks
Show sharply in it, as they might in snow.
But it’s soon gone in the sun — what good does it do?
The houses, on the slope, or among brown trees,
Are grey and shrivelled. And the men who live here
Are small and withered, spider-like, with large eyes.

Bring water with you if you come to live here —
Cold tinkling cisterns, or else wells so deep
That one looks down to Ganges or Himalayas.
Yes, and bring mountains with you, white, moon-bearing,
Mountains of ice. You will have need of these
Profundities and peaks of wet and cold.

Bring also, in a cage of wire or osier,
Birds of a golden colour, who will sing
Of leaves that do not wither, watery fruits
That heavily hang on long melodious boughs
In the blue-silver forests of deep valleys.

I have now been here — how many years? Years unnumbered.
My hands grow clawlike. My eyes are large and starved.
I brought no bird with me, I have no cistern
Where I might find the moon, or river, or snow.
Some day, for lack of these, I’ll spin a web
Between two dusty pine-tree tops, and hang there
Face downward, like a spider, blown as lightly
As ghost of leaf. Crows will caw about me.
Morning and evening I shall drink the dew.

poem by Conrad Potter Aiken
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To The Theoretical Selector

WOULD YOU be the King, the strong man, first in council and in toil,
To the men who war with nature for possession of the soil?
Take an axe upon your shoulder, take a billy and a rug,
And go forward in the forest where no man has cut and dug,
Where the scrub-ferns grow like magic, and the gum-trees you must fell
Have their topmost boughs in heaven, and their tap-roots deep as hell.

Take the land the Powers would cheerfully devote to Smith or Brown,
Two miles or more from water and a hundred miles from town;
Fell, and scrub, and hew, and hunger, and when seven weeks are gone
You may have a clearing large enough to build a hut upon.
Then you furnish it with saplings and you carpet it with loam,
And you bring the kids and missus to their charming country home!

Rising early with the jackass, like a man of pith and push,
With axe in hand you sally forth to face the stubborn bush.
’Tis a mighty undertaking, and the odds are hard enough,
But the settler must be stubborn, and the settler must be tough,
And he strikes from morn till even with his strong arm bare and brown,
And he counts his gain by inches when the big gum rattles down.

So you slave and strive and suffer, for it’s fearful work and slow
Ere the cabbages are solid and the spuds have room to grow.
By and bye to fruit and fowls and swine, as city swells advise,
You resort to make a fortune; but the venture proves unwise,
For the fruit-trees blight and wither, and the pigs die in their pens,
And the drought destroys the ducklings, and the dingoes eat the hens.

Years go on, and still the bush-wall rings your narrow clearing round,
But you’ve won a few good acres and a crop is on the ground,
And you harvest single-handed, and you rake the stubble clean,
For you lack the cash for wages and the marvellous machine;
Still you’re thankful for small mercies—though you’re often sorely pushed—
When the missus hasn’t sunstroke and the baby isn’t bushed.

Then, at last, when worn with work, and warped with years, and very grey,
When your mastering the mortgage and the railroad runs your way,
When your farm is looking home-like, and your sons are grown-up men,
You may talk to brown-faced farmers—you may try to teach them then.
And if any kid-gloved critic starts to give you points on grain,
And a little hot-house farming does to make your errors plain,
You will rise up with a waddy, and you’ll sympathise with Cain.

poem by Edward George Dyson
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At husking time

At husking time the tassel fades
To brown above the yellow blades,
Whose rustling sheath enswathes the corn
That bursts its chrysalis in scorn
Longer to lie in prison shades.

Among the merry lads and maids
The creaking ox-cart slowly wades
Twixt stalks and stubble, sacked and torn
At husking time.

The prying pilot crow persuades
The flock to join in thieving raids;
The sly racoon with craft inborn
His portion steals; from plenty's horn
His pouch the saucy chipmunk lades
At husking time.

poem by Emily Pauline Johnson
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The Barefooted Friar

I'll give thee, good fellow, a twelvemonth or twain,
To search Europe through, from Byzantium to Spain;
But ne'er shall you find, should you search till you tire,
So happy a man as the Barefooted Friar.

Your knight for his lady pricks forth in career,
And is brought home at even-song bunny'd through with a spear;
I confess him in haste - for his lady desires
No comfort on earth save the Barefooted Friar's.

Your monarch? - Pshaw! many a prince has been known
To barter his robes for our cowl and our gown,
But which of us e'er felt the idle desire
To exchange for a crown the grey hood of a Friar!

The Friar has walk'd out, and where'er he has gone,
The land and its fatness is mark'd for his own;
He can roam where he lists, he can stop when he tires,
For every man's house is the Barefooted Friar's.

He's expected at noon, and no wight till he comes
May profane the great chair, or the porridge of plums
For the best of the cheer, and the seat by the fire,
Is the undenied right of the Barefooted Friar.

He's expected at night, and the pasty's made hot,
They broach the brown ale, and they fill the black pot,
And the goodwife would wish the goodman in the mire,
Ere he lack'd a soft pillow, the Barefooted Friar.

Long flourish the sandal, the cord, and the cope,
The dread of the devil and trust of the Pope;
For to gather life's roses, unscathed by the briar,
Is granted alone to the Barefooted Friar.

poem by Sir Walter Scott
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A Brown Study

LET them sing of their primrose and cowslip,
Their daffodil-gold-coloured hair,
Their bluebells, blue eyes, and white violets,
All the pale dreamy things they find fair;
Give me stir of brown leaves in the sunshine,
The whir of brown wings through the wheat,
The rush of brown hares through the clover,
And the light in brown eyes of my sweet!

Gold hair? Well, I never could love it,
Yet gold, I suppose, has its worth;
The head that I love is as dusky
As the breast of our mother, the earth;
With a gleam like the shine of wet seaweed,
Round pools that the tide has left clear,
And warm like the breast of a linnet,
And as brown, is the hair of my dear.

From the edge of the cliff we look downwards
On the shore, and the bay, and the town,
And brown is the short turf we lean on,
The fishing-boats' sails are all brown:
The sky may be blue--that's the background,--
But the picture itself, to be fair,
However it's shaded and varied,
Should be brown as the dress that you wear.

A lark bursts to sudden sweet singing--
That tuft of brown grass is his home--
And now, a brown speck, he is rising
Against the clear windy sky-dome;
And he sings--how I know? Love instructs me
To know all his notes, what they mean--
That it isn't the colour I care for,
But yourself, oh, my gipsy, my queen!

Ah! the lark knows my heart--I his language;
It's my heart he sings out to the skies;
It is you that I love, and what matter
The colour of hair or of eyes?
No doubt I should love you as dearly
Were your hair like an apricot's down,
And your eyes like the grey of the morning;
But I'm glad, all the same, that they're brown.

poem by Edith Nesbit
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Love In The Sunlight

we lie on the grass
in the late afternoon sunlight
the breeze rustles the leaves
of a scorched palm tree
hair sprawl on the grass
brown eyes look into blue eyes
blue eyes look into brown eyes
her fingers run though my hair
I close my eyes
I feel the warmth of the sun
I feel the sweetness of her fingers
running through my hair
it feels good
it feels right
our loves meet

poem by Georgios Andritsos
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Caw

The January wind

Freezes a crow

In mid-flight

And mid-caw

And suspends it

In the icy blue sky.

It's black eyes bulge.

Its caw,

Stuck on high,

Dogs me deep

Into a corn field,

Slicing through

All the crunching and

Rustling of the brittle,

Frost tinged

Corn stalks

Scraping my coat

As I brush by.

poem by Francis Santaquilani
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Soldier Grey

The young soldier boy stood rain soaked,
In a battle torn, well-worn grey coat.
The coat was drawn at the waist,
With big buckled belt in place.

His coat slashed opened by an enemy's sword,
The result of an attack by the enemy hord.
His boots worn from days of marching to the flute,
They were once a blue coats boot.

He had few treasures the soldier boy,
A small cracked photograph his greatest joy.
He looked at his mother and father with muffled sighs,
And remembered warm pies, and Virginia skies.

His soaked hat and long hair hid a battle worn fear,
As he searched for sight of blue his eye had a tear.
And his thoughts switched from this time of war,
To his hometown girl and farming chores.

Instantly soldier grey was shaken from his thoughts,
Canon blasted taking life, brave young men distort.
Maiming and claiming limbs cutting men down,
Then comes a silence from across the ground.

Minutes passed then came a blue uniformed wall,
First the volley shot and the smoky pall.
Now a bayonet drove out of the smoky mist,
Driven to his shoulder and agonies twist.

Now wounded the soldier grey is down,
On a slush of blood and muddy ground.
He would see years spent in the enemy's jail,
Battles all in his past, no more of deaths wail.

At wars end and grey soldier broken released,
And his thought turn home yet his battle not ceased.
In the north he is still the enemy of old,
Staying out towns walking through snow so cold.

As southern accents as more frequent sound,
His foreboding slowly unwound.
Pats of appreciation on his shoulder,
Little by little he walked a little bolder.

Welcoming rebel yells as he entered home hamlet,
Kisses from mother, sister and sweetest Juliet.
For years he carried the scaring years of war dream,
Marry and farm only half the man that may have been.

But is his now down is the plough and the sword,
They say he has gone home to be with his Lord.
He lived his life considering the futility of war,
Peace his dream and he has it now evermore.

R. K. Hart 30/10/2012

poem by R.K. Hart
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The Hillman’s Lass

OVER the field where the grass is cool,
(Follow the road who must !)
With a song for the beech and the brown pool,
And the noiseless tread in the dust,
With a laugh for the lazy hours that go,
And the folk who pass us by.
(The trees they grow so broad, so low,
They shut me from the sky.)

Here be strawberries wild and sweet,
(Follow the road who may !)
And here's a rest for a bairn's feet
And a kiss at the close o' day.
And here's a cloud from the shining sea
Like a white moth in the night.
(On the edge o' the barley field, may be
The stars would show more bright.)

Cut me a flute where the reeds are brown.
(Follow the road who will !)
O, I'll dress you fair in a green gown
And a cloak that is finer still.
Your sleeves shall be o' the fairies' lawn,
Your shoon as red as the rose.
(Do you think that the wind which wakes at dawn
Will bring us a breath o' the snows ?)

O, the world's wide, and the world is long.
(Follow the road who may !)
And here's a lilt of the wild song
The Romany pipers play.
And 'Mine,' it sings, 'is the moon's shield,
And the cloak o' the cloud is mine.'
(Do you think that the lowland clover field
Is sweet as the upland pine ?)

poem by Marjorie Lowry Christie Pickthall
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Three Corn Patches

(words & music by leiber - stoller)
I said three corn patches about four cotton fields away
I said three corn patches about four cotton fields away
Lives the prettiest girl in the whole darn u.s.a.
I said a
Shes got big brown eyes and long black wavy hair, mmm
Shes got big brown eyes and long black wavy hair
Shes so beautiful, people it dont seem fair
Well Ive been to chicago, been to new orleans
Yes, Ive been to chicago, been to new orleans
But Id rather see my baby workin in her old blue jeans
I said three corn patches
About four cotton fields away
I said three corn patches
About four cotton fields away
Lives the prettiest girl in the whole darn u.s.a.
I said a
She keeps a big bull dog out in the yard all night
She keeps a big bull dog out in the yard all night
And it barks like a bear oh, but he dont bite
Yeah,
I said three corn patches
About four cotton fields away
I said three corn patches
About four cotton fields away
Lives the prettiest girl in the whole darn u.s.a.
I said a
Gimme three, gimme four
I said three, well four

song performed by by Elvis Presley
Submitted by Lucian Velea
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The Opening Run

The rain-sodden grass in the ditches is dying,
The berries are red to the crest of the thorn ;
Coronet-deep where the beech leaves are lying
The hunters stand tense to the twang of the horn ;
Where rides are re-filled with the green of the mosses,
All foam-flecked and fretful their long line is strung,
You can see the white gleam as a starred forehead tosses,
You can hear the low chink as a bit-bar is flung.
The world's full of music. Hounds rustle the rover
Through brushwood and fern to a glad 'Gone away!'
With a 'Come along, Pilot! '-one spur-touch and over-
The huntsman is clear on his galloping grey;
Before him the pack's running straight on the stubble-
Toot-toot-too-too-too-oot ! ,_, Tow-row-ow-ow-ow ! '
The leaders are clambering up through the double
And glittering away on the brown of the plough.
The front rank, hands down, have the big fence's measure;
The faint hearts are craning to left and to right;
The Master goes through with a crash on The Treasure,
The grey takes the lot like a gull in his flight.
There's a brown crumpled up, lying still as a dead one.
There 's a roan mare refusing, as stubborn as sin,
While the breaker flogs up on a green underbred one
And smashes the far-away rail with a grin.
The chase carries on over hilltop and hollow,
The life of Old England, the pluck and the fun;
And who would ask more than a stiff line to follow
With hounds running hard in the Opening Run?

poem by William Henry Ogilvie
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