Newspaper Poetry

Author: desperaudio

  • Cellar Sobs

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, February 15, 1915.

    Listen, friends, and you shall hear
    Of a story sad and drear,
    And you’ll shed a briny tear,
        That I know;
    For it maketh strong men weep,
    Gives them spooks and loss of sleep,
    Makes the nerves go creepy creep
        With its woe.

    Once there lived a maiden fair,
    Blue of eye and brown of hair,
    Tall she was, a height most rare,
        Monstrous big;
    For the state she went to work,
    Not to dawdle or to shirk,
    Nor to gossip or to smirk,
        But to dig.

    Faithfully she worked and well
    Did this long and lanky belle,
    That is why I hate to tell
        How she fared.
    For they chucked her in the cellar,
    Where she daily grew more yeller.
    Did she weep and wail and beller?
        No one cared!

    So she went from day to day
    Down the smelly hall and gray
    And met spectres on her way
        Black and grim;
    Odors, spider-webs and bats,
    Dust and damp, and weird black cats,
    Lizards, bugs and sewer rats,
        Lean and slim.

    Germs she swallowed by the peck,
    Big, fat, juicy germs, by heck!
    And became a nervous wreck
        Pale with fear.
    She who used to be a winner
    Thinner grew, ye gods, still thinner,
    Till you’d swear she had no dinner
        For a year.

    Well, at last the family’s pride
    Lay her down upon her side
    And one dreary night she died
        All alone.
    Came the state house rats in flocks
    And they chewed her dark brown locks,
    Ate her clothes e’en to her socks,
        Gnawed her bones.

    When the janitors appeared
    In the morn, a thing more weird
    Then they’d ever seen or heered
        Struck their sight;
    For the girl who once was Belle
    Sure enough had gone to hell,
    Bones alone were left to tell,
        Stark and white.

    So they gathered up the mess
    That once sported a blue dress
    And with fitting solemness
        Laid her low.
    They took out a few big stones
    From the floor and put her bones
    There, and with some sighs and moans
        Let her go.

    Now they say that it is true
    That at night time dressed in blue
    Does she walk the long hall through
        And she shrieks;
    And calls curses on the head
    Of the ones that made her dead,
    Gives them nightmares in their bed,
        Weeks and weeks.

    And so every wretched feller
    Who helped send her to the cellar
    Where that gruesome fate befell her
        Pays his due.
    For she’s taking out her spite
    And they’re seein’ things at night
    Long and hairy things that bite
        And that chew.

  • Psyche

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, February 14, 1915. By Bliss Carman.

    Tender as the wind of summer
        That wanders among the flowers,
    Down worldly aisles with enchanted smiles
        She leads the mysterious hours.

    This is immortal Psyche,
        The winged soul of man—
    Ardor unspent and innocent
        As when the world began.

    Out of the ancient silence
        Over the darkling earth,
    As streamers swim on the sunrise rim,
        She moves between sorrow and mirth.

    The impulse of things eternal,
        The transport hidden in clay,
    Like a dancing beam on a noonday stream
        She signals along the way.

    Her feet are poised over peril,
        Her eyes are familiar with death,
    Her radiant wings are daring things,
        Frail as the beat of a breath.

    Over the ocean of being,
        In her gay, incredible flight,
    See her float and run in the gold of the sun
        Down to the gates of night.

    The storm may darken above her,
        The surges thunder below,
    But on through a rift where the gold lights drift,
        Still she will dancing go.

    Treasuring things forgotten,
        As dreams and destinies fade;
    Spirit of truth and ageless youth
        She laughs and is not afraid.

  • Live and Let Live

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, February 13, 1915.

    If we were cured
        Of all our ills,
    The man would starve
        Who makes the pills.

  • Around the Hearth

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, February 12, 1915. By John Greenleaf Whittier.

    Shut in from all the world without,
    We sat the clean winged hearth about,
    Content to let the north wind roar
    In baffled rage at pane and door
    While the red logs before us beat
    The frost line back with tropic heat;
    And ever, when a louder blast
    Shook beam and rafter as it passed,
    The merrier up its roaring draught
    The great throat of the chimney laughed.

    The house dog on his paws outspread
    Laid to the fire his drowsy head,
    The cat’s dark silhouette on the wall
    A couchant tiger’s seemed to fall;
    And, for the winter fireside meet,
    Between the andirons’ straddling feet,
    A mug of cider simmering slow,
    The apples sputtered in a row,
    And close at hand, the basket stood
    With nuts from brown October’s wood.

  • The Lord’s Still Runnin’ Things

    From the Rock Island Argus, February 11, 1915. By The Bentztown Bard.

    Lots of complainin’ wherever you go
    Of people not gettin’ the kind of a show
    They think life owes ‘em, while others cry
    The best things always keep passin’ ‘em by,
    And this isn’t right, and that’s all wrong,
    But down in my heart there’s an old, sweet song
    That brings me the lesson, mid all it sings,
    That the Lord in his heaven’s still runnin’ things.

    I wouldn’t go crazy with grief and care
    Even if things went a little square—
    As all things will in their time and place—
    For I’ve always found there’s the same old grace
    And beauty and comfort in loss and pain,
    As there is in moments of triumph and gain—
    In the feelin’ and trust and believin’ that rings
    Through the thought that the Lord is still runnin’ things.

    I pity the sorrowful, God knows that,
    And to those who suffer I doff my hat;
    And I try to be tender to those whose cross
    Is heavy to bear in this world of loss;
    But I can’t believe, as I list to the song
    Of the sweet old faith, that a thing goes wrong
    Without some blessin’ that ere long brings
    The thought that the Lord is still runnin’ things.

  • Mysteries

    From The Topeka State Journal, February 10, 1915. By Edmund Vance Cooke.

    Twenty bad men in the bar one night,
        Each one shoving his foot on the rail;
    None of them sober and most of them tight,
    Every one cussing to kick up a fight,
        Each one a devil and swinging his tail;
    Most of them dead when the scrap was done—
    Nobody knew how the row had begun!

    A squally day and a celluloid boat,
        Launched on a river of gasoline;
    “As freaky a craft as was ever afloat,”
    The captain swore in his husky throat,
        “With her firebox next to her magazine.”
    He lighted his pipe and tossed his match—
    Now how could the conflagration catch?

    Generals, admirals, emperors, kings,
        And babes from the cradle trained to kill;
    Davids swinging Goliath slings,
    Navies filled with eagle wings,
        Nations of armies, life a drill.
    Courtiers cunning in wild excuse—
    What a surprise when the war broke loose!

  • Little Brown Hands

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, February 9, 1915.

    They drive home the cows from the pasture
    Up thro’ the long, shady lane,
    Where the quail whistles loud in the wheat field
    That is yellow with ripening grain.

    They find in the thick, waving grasses
    Where the scarlet-lipped strawberry grows;
    They gather the earliest snowdrops
    And the first crimson buds of the rose.

    They toss the hay in the meadow,
    They gather the elder-bloom white;
    They find where the dusky grapes purple
    In the soft-tinted October light.

    They know where the apples hang ripest
    And are sweeter than Italy’s wines;
    They know where the fruit hangs thickest
    On the long, thorny blackberry vines.

    They gather the delicate seaweeds,
    And build tiny castles of sand;
    They pick up the beautiful seashells,
    Fairy barks, that have drifted to land.

    They wave from the tall, rocking tree-tops,
    Where the oriole’s hammock-nest swings;
    And at night time are folded in slumber
    By a song that a fond mother sings.

    Those who toil bravely are strongest,
    The humble and poor become great;
    And from those brown-handed children
    Shall grow mighty rulers of state.

    The pen of the author and statesman,
    The noble and wise of our land—
    The sword and the chisel and palette
    Shall be held in the little brown hand.

  • ’Tis Life Beyond

    From the Newark Evening Star, February 8, 1915.

    I watched a sail until it dropped from sight
    Over a rounding sea. A gleam of white—
    A last far-flashed farewell, and like a thought
    Slipt out of mind, it vanished and was not.

    Yet to the helmsman standing at the wheel
    Broad seas still stretched beneath the gliding keel.
    Disaster? Change? He felt no slightest sign,
    Nor dreamed he of that far horizon line.

    So may it be, perchance, when down the tide
    Our dear ones vanish, peacefully they glide
    On level seas, nor mark the unknown bound.
    We call it death—to them ’tis life beyond.

  • My Son!

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, February 7, 1915.

    Yes, sir, I know; and your words are kind, an’ I tell you, sir, I’ve tried
    To think we can find the things we’ve lost, when we get to the other side.
    I’d give all I’ve got, sir, to know ’twas true, but I can’t, I just can’t see
    How some of those lost, those dear lost things’ll ever come back to me.
    I shall see her there; I know she stands right close to the pearly gate,
    Waitin’; and soon I too’ll be there; she won’t have long to wait,
    But when she asks for the boy—our boy—‘at she left when she went away—
    Asks all those questions a mother will—Oh, what am I going to say?
    Well, as I know he’s been dead this many and many a year,
    Do you think I’d dare to ask up there, “What! haven’t you seen him here?”

    God gives men power for good or ill that ain’t for this world alone;
    They can lift a soul to the gates up there in the light of the great white throne,
    Or sink it low as they sunk my boy—such beautiful eyes he had—
    Brown like his mother’s—you’d never have thought such eyes could have turned out so bad.
    An’ he wern’t bad either, but true and good, but—perhaps you know the rest—
    There was only one for to bring him up, and I tried to do my best;
    But the world, an’ the flesh, an’ the drink are strong an’ some men’s hearts are stone,
    An’ I tell you it seemed sometimes as if I was fightin’ ‘em all alone.
    For them as’ll lift their fellowmen there’s waitin’ a starry crown,
    But honor and power and wealth is got by them as’ll pull ‘em down.

    Most men they hope for the crown sometime, but they want it the shortest way,
    An’ they do their best an’ their hardest work for a different sort o’ pay.
    So, the world spins on at its rattlin’ gait as hard as ever she can,
    An’ it don’t much matter that boys are lost if they belong to some other man.
    One night—dead drunk—they brought him home—my boy—an’ I laid him there,
    The blood of a street fight on his face, an’ the gutter mud in his hair.
    He never knew me nor spoke again, drunk an’ asleep he died,
    An’ I prayed that his mother’d never know how we laid him by her side.
    Yes, the golden streets an’ the jasper walls—I’ve read of ‘em all—but then
    Do you believe, sir, that over there I shall find my boy again?

  • Creeds

    From The Bridgeport Evening Farmer, February 6, 1915.

    Believe as I believe, no more, no less;
    That I am right, and no one else, confess;
    Feel as I feel, think only as I think;
    Eat what I eat, and drink but what I drink;
    Look as I look, do always as I do,
    And then, and only then, I’ll fellowship with you.

    That I am right, and always right, I know,
    Because my own convictions tell me so;
    And to be right is simply this to be
    Entirely and in all respects like me;
    To deviate a hair’s breadth, or begin
    To question, doubt, or hesitate, is sin.

    I reverence the Bible if it be
    Translated first and then explained by me;
    By churchly laws and customs I abide,
    If they with my opinion coincide;
    All creeds and doctrines I admit divine,
    Excepting those which disagree with mine.

    Let sink the drowning if he will not swim
    Upon the plank that I throw out to him;
    Let starve the hungry if he will not eat
    My kind and quality of bread and meat;
    Let freeze the naked if he will not be
    Clothed in such garments as are made for me.

    ‘Twere better that the sick should die than live,
    Unless they take the medicine I give;
    ‘Twere better sinners perish than refuse
    To be conformed to my peculiar views;
    ‘Twere better that the world stand still than move
    In any other way than that which I approve.