Newspaper Poetry

Author: desperaudio

  • St. Patrick’s Day Without Shamrocks

    From The Sun, March 17, 1915.

    We sought them ‘neath the snowflakes
        And o’er all the frosty ground,
    But no leaflet like the shamrock
        On St. Patrick’s Day we found.
    And our hearts went back to Erin,
        To her dewy vales and hills,
    Where the shamrock twines and clusters
        O’er the fields and by the rills.

    Oh, no more, no more my country
        Shall thy loving daughter lay
    Her head upon thy bosom
        While she weeps her tears away;
    There the primrose and the daisy
        Bloom as in the days of old,
    And the violet comes in purple
        And the buttercup in gold.

    Kildare’s broad fields are fragrant
        With the shamrock’s breath today.
    Shamrocks bloom from Clare to Antrim,
        From Killarney to Lough Neagh;
    And they speak of Patrick’s preaching
        With a quiet, voiceless lore,
    And they breathe of faith and heaven
        All the trefoiled island o’er.

    Wandering listless by the Liffey,
        Stoop and pluck the shamrock green;
    What an emblem plain and simple
        Of the one true faith is seen;
    Of the Father and the Spirit
        Speaks the mystic triune leaf,
    Of the Son in anguish dying
        On the Cross in love and grief.

    Well humility may choose it
        For an emblem fair and meet,
    Close beside the poorest cabin
        It is pouring fragrance sweet.
    Modest is our darling shamrock,
        Useful, charitable, kind,
    Clothing mean, deserted places
        With its green leaves intertwined.

    Many a lesson thus it teaches,
        Many a wholesome thought recalls,
    Many a teardrop all unbidden
        To its cherished memory falls;
    Nor the green of Erin’s banner
        Still must stir the Irish heart,
    Which in Erin’s many sorrows
        Ever, ever must have part.

    Oh be true, be true to Erin,
        True to faith and true to God,
    To St. Patrick, His apostle,
        Who redeemed our native sod.
    Never more her mystic emblem
        In green Erin may you see,
    Let the faith it symbolizes
        Be the dearer unto thee.

  • Regret

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, March 16, 1915. By Henry Waldorf Francis.

    I am the brooding Ghost of words that should have been unspoken;
    I am the scourge of hearts that have the hearts of others broken;
    I am the lash of Conscience hurt by things past all undoing,
    Over the grave of other days bitter memories strewing!

    I am the biting aftermath of love and good neglected,
    I am the everlasting sting of better things rejected;
    I am the sharp, consuming grief unthought of in the breeding,
    Avenging wrath of all who give to Mercy’s voice no heeding!

    I am the Guest who comes unbid with voice forever chiding,
    Deep in the secret heart of man I am the long abiding;
    Would you avoid the pain of me, the mocking, cutting laughter,
    Pause ere you speak or act to ask if I may come thereafter!

  • Jimmy’s Hair Cut

    From the Harrisburg Telegraph, March 15, 1915.

    Jimmy’s had a hair cut!
        How the folks all stare!
    It’s so short you see his skin
        Showing through his hair.
    ‘Twasn’t what he had before,
        Cut all round a bowl;
    It was in that barber store
        By the candy pole.

    Jimmy’s had a hair cut!
        We were there to see,
    Looking through the window pane—
        All the boys with me.
    He was worried there alone,
        Trying hard to grin,
    On a kind of great big throne,
        Wrapped up to his chin.

    Jimmy’s had a hair cut!
        Course it scared him some.
    All those shears and cups and things
        Sort of struck him dumb.
    Jimmy’s mother saved a curl—
        She feels bad, I know,
    That he wasn’t born a girl,
        And could let it grow.

    Jimmy’s had a hair cut—
        My! It made him proud!
    Walking out, while all of us
        Followed in a crowd.
    He got pretty rich that day,
        ‘Fore he went to bed;
    He made every fellow pay
        Just to smell his head.

  • The Father of Mischief

    From The Sun, March 14, 1915. By Alfred J. Hough.

    Men don’t believe in a devil now as their fathers used to do;
    They’ve forced the door of the broadest creed to let his Majesty through.
    There is not a print of his cloven foot, of a fiery dart from his bow
    To be found in earth or air today, for the world has voted so.
    But who is it mixing the fatal draught that palsies heart and brain,
    And loads the bier of each passing year with ten hundred thousand slain?
    Who blights the bloom of the land today with the fiery breath of hell
    If the devil isn’t and never was? Won’t somebody rise and tell?

    Who dogs the steps of the toiling saint and digs the pits for his feet?
    Who sows the tares in the field, wherever God sows His wheat?
    The devil is voted not to be, and of course, the thing is true;
    But who is doing the kind of work the devil alone should do?
    We are told he does not go about as a roaring lion now;
    But whom shall we hold responsible for the everlasting row
    To be heard in Home, in Church and State to the earth’s remotest bound,
    If the devil by a unanimous vote is nowhere to be found?

    Won’t somebody step to the front forthwith and make his bow and show
    How the frauds and the crimes of a single day spring up? We want to know.
    The devil was fairly voted out, and of course, the devil’s gone;
    But simple people would like to know who carries his business on.

  • My Ships

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, March 13, 1915. By Jack Carter.

    I am sitting alone in the gloaming
    With the firelight flickering low,
    And the sky so dark and lowering
    Is tinged by the sun’s red glow,
    And the many ships that I freighted,
    With hopes too bright to last
    How they haunt me, haunt me, haunt me,
    Those wrecks of the lone dead past.

    There’s the ship that I launched at twenty—
    It was laden with thoughts sublime.
    I would plan out the lives of nations,
    When my life reached its summer time.
    I would see that all strife and warfare,
    And oppressions be swept from the deck.
    Alas, for the dreary eventide,
    My ship came home a wreck.

    Then I sent out another vessel,
    And the cargo it carried was love.
    There was home and a wife and children,
    And the bliss was from heaven above.
    But the joys could not last forever
    And the storm clouds rose on her lea.
    She ran on the rocks, they crushed her,
    And she sank down into the sea.

    Once more I sent out a vessel,
    It was trim from stem to stern.
    It went for to bring me riches,
    And with orders to never return
    Till ’twas full of all precious substance,
    And its wake left a golden track.
    A crash, and t’was gone forever.
    Not even a plank came back.

    But there’s one came back from the shadows
    Out of all my ships just one—
    Shall I tell you the cargo it brought me?
    It was only the deeds I had done
    For the troubled, the suffering, the outcast;
    I’d forgotten them all long ago.
    The whisper from lips just passing,
    And the sad, sad tale of woe.

    A life to the one who had fallen,
    A striving to ease the pain.
    Just bread cast out on the waters,
    And it all came back again.
    And you never can buy this vessel.
    The wealth of the whole wide world
    Cannot pilot it out of the harbor
    For its sails and its flag are furled.

  • Lame Ducks

    From the Evening Star, March 12, 1915. By Philander Johnson.

    Everybody has some fancy he’s compelled to toss aside,
    Some little plan for profit or some little point of pride;
    Some fond romance that flourished only just to fade away,
    As a sigh of disappointment stilled the laughter once so gay.
    Everybody has to feel that he is slighted, more or less,
    And we’re all lame ducks together, if we only would confess.

    The present may seem pleasant, but the pleasure doesn’t last;
    The triumph of the moment swiftly fades into the past;
    The glory that is ended makes the darkness seem more dense
    That is hung about the future like a barrier of suspense.
    Everybody has some hope that he is struggling still to clutch;
    We are all lame ducks together, though we may not say as much.

  • The Gunmen

    From the Evening Star, March 11, 1915. By Philander Johnson.

    “We had this old world going,”
        Said the sad philanthropist,
    “Toward the milk and honey flowing,
        With no sorrows on the list;
    We had pictures fair and buildings,
        And the work seemed nobly done
    With its carvings and its gildings—
        Then somebody pulled a gun!

    “We had ships that sailed the ocean
        With a majesty serene,
    Till a strange and fierce commotion
        Scattered terror o’er the scene.
    We went forth beyond the setting
        And the rising of the sun
    In our giving and our getting—
        Then somebody pulled a gun.

    We had hopes for youth to cherish;
        We had pride to solace age.
    Now ideals all swiftly perish,
        Melted in a blast of rage.
    We were planning a tomorrow
        When a victory should be won
    That would conquer every sorrow—
        Then somebody pulled a gun.

  • A Prayer in Time of War

    From the Albuquerque Morning Journal, March 10, 1915. By Alfred Noyes.

    Thou, whose deep ways are in the sea,
        Whose footsteps are not known,
    Tonight a world that turned from Thee
        Is waiting—at Thy Throne.

    The towering Babels that we raised
        Where scoffing sophists brawl,
    The little Antichrists we praised—
        The night is on them all.

    The fool hath said * * * The fool hath said * * *
        And we, who deemed him wise,
    We who believed that Thou wast dead,
        How should we seek Thine eyes?

    How should we seek to Thee for power
        Who scorned Thee yesterday?
    How should we kneel in this dread hour?
        Lord, teach us how to pray!

    Grant us the single heart once more
        That mocks no sacred thing;
    The Sword of Truth our fathers wore
        When Thou wast Lord and King.

    Let darkness unto darkness tell
        Our deep, unspoken prayer;
    For, while our souls in darkness dwell,
        We know that Thou art there.

  • The Way It Goes

    From The Topeka State Journal, March 9, 1915. By Roy K. Moulton.

    She ransacked every novel
        And the dictionary, too,
    But nothing ever printed
        For her baby’s name would do;
    She hunted appellations
        From the present and the past,
    And this is what she named him
        When they christened him at last:

    Julian Harold Egbert
        Ulysses Victor Paul
    Algernon Marcus Cecil
        Sylvester George McFall.
    But after all the trouble
        She’d taken for his sake,
    His father called him Fatty,
        And his schoolmates called him Jake.

  • Neutral

    From the Evening Star, March 8, 1915. By Philander Johnson.

    When you find yourself a-pinin’
        Fur a slow, sunshiny day,
    An’ a chance to throw a line in
        Where the shadows are at play,
    You forget ambitious dreamin’
        An’ the hard an’ selfish wish;
    All the plannin’ an’ the schemin’
        Make no difference to the fish.

    They don’t ask you how you voted,
        When they give your line a look.
    Though you’re humble and unnoted,
        That won’t keep ‘em from the hook.
    An’ the deal is square you’re gettin’
        Where the waters gently swish.
    All the argument an’ frettin’
        Make no difference to the fish.