Newspaper Poetry

Author: desperaudio

  • Children of the Dead

    From The Sun, January 26, 1915. By H. S. Haskins.

    Gone are the hearts that bore them,
        Gone with the dead and missed.
    Lost are the hands which soothed them,
        Still are the lips that kissed.
    Silenced the songs which lulled them,
        Sweet at the close of day,
    Oh, for the angel mothers
        So far, so far away!

    Who is to plan their future?
        Who is to teach them games?
    Who is to answer questions?
        Who is to give them names?
    Where winds the path tomorrow?
        Where runs the road next year?
    Who is to guide their footsteps
        Up through the hills from here?

  • Epistle to a Friend

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, January 25, 1915. By Robert Burns.

    I lang hae thought, my youthfu’ friend,
        A something to have sent you,
    Tho’ it should serve nae ither end
        Than just a kind momento;
    But how the subject-theme may gang,
        Let time and chance determine;
    Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
        Perhaps turn out a sermon.

    Ye’ll try the world fu’ soon, my lad,
        And, Andrew dear, believe me,
    Ye’ll find mankind an unco squad,
        And muckle they may grieve ye.
    For care and trouble set your thought,
        Even when your end’s attained;
    And a’ your views may come to nought,
        Where ev’ry nerve is strained.

    I’ll no say, men are villains a’;
        The real, harden’d wicked,
    What hae nae check but human law,
        Are to a few restricked;
    But, och! mankind are unco weak,
        And little to be trusted;
    If self the wavering balance shake,
        It’s rarely right adjusted!

    Yet they wha fa’ in fortune’s strife,
        Their fate we shouldna censure;
    For still, the important end of life
        They equally may answer;
    A man may hae an honest heart,
        Tho’ poortith hourly stare him;
    A man may tak a neibor’s part,
        Yet hae nae cash to spare him.

    Aye free, aff-han’ your story tell,
        When wi’ a bosom crony;
    But still keep something to yoursel’,
        Ye scarcely tell to ony.
    Conceal yoursel’ as weel’s ye can
        Frae critical dissection;
    But keek thro’ ev’ry other man,
        Wi’ sharpen’d, sly inspection.

    The sacred lowe o’ well-plac’d love,
        Luxuriantly indulge it;
    But never tempt th’ illicit rove,
        Tho’ naething should divulge it:
    I waive the quantum o’ the sin,
        The hazard of concealing;
    But, och! it hardens a’ within,
        And petrifies the feeling!

    To catch Dame Fortune’s golden smile,
        Assiduous wait upon her;
    And gather gear by every wile
        That’s justified by honour;
    Not for to hide it in a hedge,
        Nor for a train attendant;
    But for the glorious privilege
        Of being independent.

    The fear o’ hell’s a hangman’s whip,
        To haud the wretch in order;
    But where ye feel your honour grip,
        Let that aye be your border;
    Its slightest touches, instant pause—
        Debar a’ side-pretences;
    And resolutely keep its laws,
        Uncaring consequences.

    The great Creator to revere,
        Must sure become the creature;
    But still the preaching cant forbear,
        And even the rigid feature;
    Yet ne’er with wits profane to range,
        Be complaisance extended;
    An atheist-laugh’s a poor exchange
        For Deity offended!

    When ranting round in Pleasure’s ring,
        Religion may be blinded;
    Or if she gie a random sting,
        It may be little minded;
    But when on life we’re tempest-driv’n,
        A conscience but a canker—
    A correspondence fix’d wi’ Heav’n,
        Is sure a noble anchor!

    Adieu, dear amiable youth!
        Your heart can ne’er be wanting!
    May prudence, fortitude, and truth,
        Erect your brow undaunting!
    In ploughman phrase, “God send you speed,”
        Still daily to grow wiser;
    And may you better reck the rede,
        Than ever did th’ adviser!

  • Story of the Little Brothers

    From The Birmingham Age Herald, January 24, 1915. By E. B. Barry.

    We are the little brothers, homeless in cold and heat,
    Four footed little beggars, roaming the city street,
    Snatching a bone from the gutter, creeping thro’ alleys drear,
    Stoned and sworn at and beaten, our hearts consumed with fear.
    You pride yourselves on the beauty of your city, fair and free,
    Yet we are dying by thousands in coverts you never see;
    You boast of your mental progress, of your libraries, schools and halls,
    But we who are dumb denounce you, as we crouch beneath their walls.
    You sit in your tinseled playhouse and weep o’er a mimic wrong;
    Our woes are the woes of the voiceless, our griefs are unheeded in song.
    You say that the same God made us; when before his throne you come,
    Shall you clear yourselves in his presence on the plea that he made us dumb?
    Are your hearts too hard to listen to a starving kitten’s cries?
    Or too gay for the patient pleading in a dog’s beseeching eyes?
    Behold us, your little brothers, starving, beaten, oppressed—
    Stretch out a hand to help us that we may have food and rest.
    Too long have we roamed neglected, too long have we sickened with fear,
    The mercy you hope and pray for you can grant us now and here.

  • An Epoch of Unanimity

    From the Evening Star, January 23, 1915. By Philander Johnson.

    A baby is the pet of fate.
        The people who draw near it
    All say that it is something great
        And gather round to cheer it.

    Its smiles are sought by every one;
        Its frown is viewed with terror,
    And nothing it has said or done
        Is ever called an error.

    Alas, these days it must forsake!
        As it is growing older,
    The people who observe it make
        Their criticisms bolder.

    Although in life it travels far—
        To high position, maybe—
    No man can be as popular
        As when he was a baby!

  • The Glorious Day

    From The Topeka State Journal, January 22, 1915.

    Gray dawn, and the boom of a fortress gun;
    A cry of death, and the fight’s begun.
    The grass is wet with the night dew yet;
    It will drown in blood ere the sun has set.
    The killers start up from their beds in the clay,
    Their faces as gray as the new born day.
    Just a moment they shrink, for the morn is chill,
    But their hearts leap quick, and their pulses thrill
    As they lunge to their work, and they kill with a will,
    And they kill and they kill and they kill and they kill—
        For the fight is on.

    High noon, and the din of a thousand tones;
    Curses and shrieks and sobs and moans;
    Clashing of steel and the rattle of guns,
    And the drip, drip, drip where the red blood runs.
    Stench on the air, and the vultures come;
    The starved dogs wait and the green flies hum.
    Death in a hundred shapes, death everywhere,
    On plain and hill, in the mine, in the air!
    And the killers toil on, and they kill with a will.
    And they kill and they kill and they kill and they kill—
        For the fight goes on!

    Black night, and the killers lie down from their toil,
    Throw their blood stained arms on the blood soaked soil;
    And they sleep and they dream of their unfinished work,
    While the starved dogs gorge in the gloom and the murk.
    And the chief of the killers walks forth on the plain,
    Where he stumbles and falls on the forms of the slain.
    And his tin medals rattle, the baubles he’s won,
    And he curses the dead, but he mutters, “Well done!
    ’Twas a glorious day, but there’s work to do still,
    And we’ll kill and we’ll kill and we’ll kill and we’ll kill
        Till the last fight’s won!”

  • An Employment Seeker

    From the Evening Star, January 21, 1915. By Philander Johnson.

    I long to serve my native land
        With efforts intellectual.
    I seek to lend a helping hand
        To struggles ineffectual.
    I will appeal to wealth and ease
        And likewise to the gallery.
    But first one question, if you please;
        Let’s talk about the salary.

    I fain would educate mankind
        To standards altitudinous.
    The manners we must leave behind
        That are considered rude in us.
    This world we’ll turn into a school,
        Likewise a sanitarium;
    But, touching on the golden rule,
        What is the honorarium?

  • Discontent

    From the Grand Forks Daily Herald, January 20, 1915.

    Formed of the elemental fierce unrest
    That seethes forever in the human breast,
    Coeval with the race of Man am I.
    I seem a curse from which he fain would fly;
    And in his efforts to escape from me
    He pits his might against Immensity,
    And bends the laws of Nature to his will;
    Yet I shall goad him ever on until
    He solve the problem of Infinity
    And read the meaning of life’s mystery.
    Then when he rests on heights as yet untrod,
    And learns that he himself is part of God,
    He’ll know that I first taught him to aspire—
    That I, the Curse, impelled him from the mire.

  • Tests of Life

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, January 19, 1915. By Minedith Hurst.

    The severest tests of the elements
        Produce the old oak tree—
    King—with a forest’s reverence,
        Enwrapped in majesty.

    Nor yet supreme, for needs must he
        Maintain his monarchy.
    So let the storms rage wild and free,
        And winds blow wrathfully.

    Strong characters in life evolve
        Through constant stress and pain,
    And only by perpetual strife
        May they that height sustain.

  • The Day

    From the Evening Journal, January 18, 1915. By Henry Chappell.

    (The author of this magnificent poem is a railway porter at Bath, England, and is known to his comrades as the “Bath Railway Poet.” A poem such as this lifts him to the rank of a national poet).

    You boasted the Day, and you toasted the Day,
        And now the Day has come.
    Blasphemer, braggart, and coward all,
    Little you reck of the numbing ball,
    The blasting shell, or the “white arm’s” fall,
        As they speed poor humans home.

    You spied for the Day, you lied for the Day,
        And woke the Day’s red spleen.
    Monster, who asked God’s aid divine,
    Then strewed His seas with the ghastly mine;
    Not all the waters of all the Rhine
        Can wash thy foul hands clean.

    You dreamed for the Day, you schemed for the Day;
        Watch how the Day will go.
    Slayer of age and youth and prime
    (Defenceless slain for never a crime)
    Thou art steeped in blood as a hog in slime,
        False friend and cowardly foe.

    You have sown for the Day, you have grown for the Day;
        Yours is the harvest red.
    Can you hear the groans and the awful cries?
    Can you see the heap of slain that lies,
    And sightless turned to the flame-split skies
        The glassy eyes of the dead?

    You have wronged for the Day, you have longed for the Day
        That lit the awful flame.
    ’Tis nothing to you that hill and plain
    Yield sheaves of dead men amid the grain;
    That widows mourn for their loved ones slain,
        And mothers curse thy name.

    But after the Day there’s a price to pay
        For the sleepers under the sod.
    And Him you have mocked for many a day—
    Listen, and hear what He has to say,
    “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.”
        What can you say to God?

  • The True Trail

    From The Sun, January 17, 1915.

    There’s a trail that’s rough and rocky,
        And it stretches to the sun,
    Through the heart of mart and jungle,
        Where earth’s valiant deeds are done.

    ’Tis the trail of true endeavor,
        Which the men of ages trod,
    And it runs beyond the sunset
        To the golden throne of God.