Newspaper Poetry

Category: Newspapers

  • Lucky Kid

    From the Rock Island Argus, October 17, 1912.
By Duncan M. Smith.
 

 My pa he handles popcorn balls,
   And he sells peanuts, too,
 And lots of other things like that
   That make you want to chew.
 And sometimes I can go along
   And help him wait on trade,
 Especially if it’s a time
   He’s selling lemonade.
 
 My pa he fills his basket up,
   And he goes everywhere.
 When other people have to pay
   He walks right in the fair.
 Sometimes he lets me go along
   The gatemen they just grin
 And say when pa says, “That’s my kid,”
   “Just take him right on in.”
 
 My pa he has a lot of friends
   For everywhere he goes
 It seems that every one he meets
   Is some one that he knows.
 They chat with him a little while
   And then most always say,
 “I guess I’ll take some peanuts or
   A ball of corn today.”
 
 I’m awful sorry for the kids
   Whose fathers work in banks
 Or blacksmith shops or offices
   Or where they fill the tanks.
 They never get to go along,
   They must feel mighty bad.
 But I can go most anywhere,
   Because I help my dad.

  • A Comparison

    From The Detroit Times, October 16, 1912.
By Ida M. Budd.
 

 Old Biddy Minorca was out on the fallow,
   Briskly digging out worms for her downy young brood,
 Working now on the hillside and now in the hollow,
   (She found no small task to provide them with food.)
 When suddenly, out of the somewhere-or-other,
   A flash and a wide-sweeping circle of wings;
 ’Twas a great hungry hawk, and the chicks flew to mother
   With the cry of alarm such a happening brings.
 
 With great self-possession she called them to shelter,
   Just settling herself, with a cluck, on the ground,
 While her babies ducked under her, helter-te-skelter,
   And when the hawk swooped not a chick could be found.
 Then old Biddy turned on him, the principal factors
   Of her lightning maneuvers, her fierce beak and claw,
 And, when you consider the size of the actors,
   ’Twas as handsome a battle as ever you saw.
 
 And the hen came off best—oh, but say! how they praised her
   And called her a “jewel” and all the nice things!
 I am sure their attentions must quiet have amazed her
   As she hovered her brood ‘neath her motherly wings.
 Then, seeing no more of the dreaded sky-ranger,
   She led them away, clucking softly and low
 To assure them that she would protect them from danger
   At the risk of her life, let who might be the foe.
 
 But here’s Mrs. McBlankton who wishes the ballot
   And modestly asks for it—yes, suffragette—
 Not the kind that resort to the hammer or mallet,
   But she has boys and girls and the district is “wet”
 Or from other conditions she seeks to defend them,
   Yet you call her unwomanly, wanting a voice
 In her country’s laws, either to make or amend them,
   And you claim that the men have the sole right of choice.
 
 Now, why should a hen be considered a jewel
   For protecting her children so nobly and well,
 And a woman unwomanly (ah! that sounds cruel!)
   For the very same reason? Can anyone tell?
 You have them before you—the bird and the human.
   Just study them please, for a moment and then
 If you charge that the one’s an unwomanly woman
   I insist that the other’s an unhenly hen.

  • Courage

    From the New York Tribune, October 15, 1912.
By Edgar A. Guest.
 

 Discouraged, eh? The world looks dark,
   And all your hopes have gone astray;
 Your finest shots have missed the mark,
   You’re heartsick and discouraged, eh?
 
 Plans that you built from all went wrong,
   You cannot seem to find the way
 And it seems vain to plod along,
   You’re heartsick and discouraged, eh?
 
 Take heart! Each morning starts anew,
   Return unto the battle line;
 Against far greater odds than you
   Brave men have fought with courage fine.
 
 Despite the buffetings of fate,
   They’ve risen, time and time again,
 To stand, face front and shoulders straight
   As leaders of their fellow men.
 
 And you, now blinded by despair,
   Heartsick and weary of the fight,
 On every hand beset by care,
   Can, if you will, attain the light.

  • The Disappearing Balance

    From The Seattle Star, October 14, 1912.
By Berton Braley.
 

 I never can figure my bank account out,
 I’m always in trouble and always in doubt,
 And just when I think I have lots to go on
 The bank sends a notice—“account overdrawn.”
 I don’t understand it; I fuss and I fret,
 But I can’t make the bank “get me,” you bet.
 They point to their figures and I must remit,
 Although I can’t see any reason for it.
 
 I’m sure I am right in the balance I claim,
 But they make me come through when they ask, just the same.
 And they smile in a way condescending and bland,
 When I say that their system I can’t understand;
 For this is the puzzle my brain cells to vex—
 Why doesn’t my money keep pace with my checks?

  • To the Passing Seasons

    From The Washington Herald, October 13, 1912.
By George Sands Johnson.
 

 There are no blossoms left to tell
   The happy days of Spring!
 While parting anthems of farewell
   Through haunted chambers ring.
 
 Amid vast shrines where ages dwell
   In peace and joy, unseen,
 Deep voices of glad visions well
   And sparkle through the green.
 
 Sweet memory of joyous hours
   That charm the backward gaze,
 Clusters around the folded flowers,
   Still gleam through autumn haze.
 
 And as the summer passes by,
   Where autumn’s shadows brood,
 Gray specters of dead beauty sigh
   In solemn solitude.
 
 How fleet and strange is fate and time!
   As life is swept along
 Through seasons dreary and sublime
   To join the vanished throng.

  • Pride of Ancestry

    From the Rock Island Argus, October 12, 1912.
By Duncan M. Smith.
 

 His ancestor a pirate was,
   And proudly he gave tongue
 Unto the fact that his forbear
   Had from a yardarm swung.
 For if you take it in the days
   When history was made
 A pirate was, you are aware,
   A very decent trade.
 
 He had his picture on the wall
   Where every one could look;
 His history was written up
   And printed in a book.
 And he was just a trifle proud
   And thought that he was great
 Because he had descended from
   That tough old ancient skate.
 
 He had a sort of pity for
   The person who came down
 From ancestors who never robbed
   A coast or burned a town.
 They might be all right in a way,
   But it was understood
 They couldn’t be so much, because
   Their ancestors were good.
 
 He wouldn’t hurt a worm himself;
   He wouldn’t kill a fly.
 He was a modest man without
   A wicked, piercing eye.
 I often wondered, could we turn
   Back to the ancient crowd,
 If that old fiery ancestor
   Of him would have been proud.

  • The Actor

    From The Tacoma Times, October 11, 1912.
By Berton Braley.
 

 We laugh at the way he swaggers and poses
   And talks of his triumphs in various parts,
 We grin at the tale which he grandly discloses,
   And yet—there is sympathy deep in our hearts;
 For his is a life which is brief in its glory
   And long, oh, so long, in its struggle and strain!
 Who minds if he boasts of a fame transitory
   And tells of it over and over again?
 
 For when on the stage he is placing before us
   The passion and beauty and wonder of life,
 The work of the masters who never can bore us,
   The love and the laughter, the stress and the strife.
 He makes us forget, for the time, all the real,
   The everyday world, in the world of romance;
 He wakes us again to our youthful ideal
   When love was a melody, life was a dance!
 
 And this he must do, though his own heart is breaking,
   Though life has been cruel and fortune a jade;
 Though fame stays a day and is years in the making,
   The “play is the thing,” and the role must be played!
 He serves us full well where the footlights are gleaming,
   So give him his “bravo,” his glad curtain call,
 And leave him in peace to his boasts and his dreaming—
   He’s earned them, in truth, and he’s paid for them all!

  • Coming Home from School

    From The Tacoma Times, October 10, 1912.
By Edmund Vance Cooke.
 

 The buoyant boys, the gladsome girls are coming home from school!
 My blood runs red with revelry, though years have made it cool.
 The flit of little bodies and the bobbing mob of heads,
 Canary yellows, raven blacks, thrush browns and robin reds!
 The swirl of girlish garments and the letting loose of lungs,
 The babble and the Babel, yet the fusion of the tongues.
 O, Wisdom, thou'rt a droning dunce! O, Learning, thou'rt a fool!
 O, let me be a child again, and coming home from school.
 
 O, School house, I remember well how once I stood In awe
 Of your massive, passive countenance, your wide, omnivorous maw.
 An Ogre, you, with appetite for little girls and boys;
 You swallowed us in silence and you spewed us out with noise.
 Your stony stare glared at us as we hastened from or to you,
 But you never smiled, you never frowned in all the years I knew you,
 But we — we shrieked in ecstasy to rid us of your rule,
 And it's oh, to be a child again and coming home from school.
 
 As many hours as Jonah's days within the spacious fish
 The tyrant school house held us, and as much against our wish,
 And the vitals of our liberty had scarce begun to sprout
 Till this new Promethean vulture, all relentless, tore them out.
 Yet, even as a traveler across the scorching sands
 Is all the more rejoiced because he comes to fertile lands,
 So we leaped as from a desert to a garden sweet and cool;
 So it's oh, to be a child again and coming home from school!
 
 Of course, I've not forgotten that the troubles of our youth
 Were as vital in their seeming as our real ones are, in truth,
 But, by our backward vision now, how fruitful was our day!
 And the work we thought was irksome gave us appetite for play.
 And shall our eyes be wiser, when our present day is past?
 Tucked in our turf-trimmed coverlet, shall we behold, at last,
 That Life was all a lessonhouse, which irked us by its rule,
 But we are children once again and coming home from school.

  • The Silent Man

    From the Evening Star, October 9, 1912.
By Walt Mason.
 

 Judge Rinktum makes no foolish breaks, no blunders bald or shocking; he goes his way day after day, and no one hears him talking. He answers “no” in accents low when some one asks a question, or murmurs “yes,” as in distress from verbal indigestion. He won’t debate, he won’t orate, or break his solemn quiet; he shakes his head—all has been said—he wants no wordy riot. So in the town he has renown as being crammed with knowledge; his bunch of brains more lore contains than Yale or Harvard college. We’re proud of him, this jurist grim, this man who never chatters; the referee and umpire he in all our village matters. The dames are proud when he has bowed in stately recognition; if Rinktum stands and shakes your hands, he betters your condition. Yet this old boy, our pride and joy, whom some consider greater than Cicero or G. Pinchot, is but a selling plater. If he should drain his massive brain and take out all that’s in it, he wouldn’t need to do the deed, much more than half a minute. Oh, just look wise and you will rise and have good things before you; but talk too much and you’re in Dutch, and no one will adore you.

  • Midnight Attack

    From the Rock Island Argus, October 8, 1912.
By Duncan M. Smith.
 

 Oft in the stilly night
 When the cats begin to fight
 On the fence behind the lot
 Then I form a little plot
 As the window wide I throw
 And the yard I knee-deep sow
 With lots of bric-a-brac
 That was resting on the rack.
 
 Do the cats in wild alarm
 Run lest I should do them harm?
 Do they let the concert slide
 And proceed in haste to hide?
 No; they do not seem to know
 As I throw and throw and throw
 That a single thing is wrong
 With their piercing midnight song.
 
 Then I heave a pair of shoes
 That I wouldn’t care to lose,
 And I throw a kitchen chair,
 Followed by my wife’s false hair,
 Books and tables, sofa, rugs,
 Pots and kettles, pans and mugs,
 Writing pads, my rubber stamp,
 The piano and the lamp.
 
 Then the bedding and the bed
 From the tail piece to the head
 All are hurled into the gloom
 Till there’s nothing in the room.
 But the cats are good as new
 On the job when I am through.
 Nor do they a moment pause.
 They regard it as applause.