New Roads

FAR road for words that rush,
Arrowing space,
Swifter than meteors flush
Star-road in race.
Wireless! Tireless, leaping the wave!
Roger Bacon laughs in his grave.
One road, o'er-steep to climb
Since world began,
Winged in our wonder-time,
Sun-road for man.
Air-ship! Fair ship, soaring the blue!
Galileo had burned for you.
Dread road for Freedom's sons,
Sworn to release
Life from the threat of guns,
Red road to peace.
New knights! true knights! gleam of God's blade!
Lincoln leads in the Last Crusade.

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The End Of May

THE fragrant air is full of down,
Of floating, fleecy things
From some forgotten fairy town
Where all the folk wear wings.
Or else the snowflakes, soft arrayed
In dainty suits of lace,
Have ventured back in masquerade,
Spring's festival to grace.
Or these, perchance, are fleets of fluff,
Laden with rainbow seeds,
That count their cargo rich enough
Though all its wealth be weeds.
Or come they from the golden trees,
Where dancing blossoms were,
That now are drifting on the breeze,
Sweet ghosts of gossamer?

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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A Song Of Riches

What will you give to a barefoot lass,
Morning with breath like wine?
Wade, bare feet! In my wide morass
Starry marigolds shine.
Alms, sweet Noon, for a barefoot lass,
With her laughing looks aglow!
Run, bare feet! In my fragrant grass
Golden buttercups blow.

Gift, a gift for a barefoot lass,
O twilight hour of dreams!
Rest, bare feet, by my lake of glass,
Where the mirrored sunset gleams.

Homeward the weary merchants pass,
With the gold bedimmed by care.
Little they wise that the barefoot lass
Is the only millionaire.

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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The First Bluebirds

THE poor earth was so winter-marred,
Harried by storm so long,
It seemed no spring could mend her,
No tardy sunshine render
Atonement for such wrong.
Snow after snow, and gale and hail,
Gaunt trees encased in icy mail,
The glittering drifts so hard
They took no trace
Of scared, wild feet,
No print of fox and hare
Driven by dearth
To forage for their meat
Even in dooryard bare
And frosty lawn
Under the peril of the human race;
And then one primrose dawn,
Sweet, sweet, O sweet,
And tender, tender,
The bluebirds woke the happy earth

[...] Read more

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Wings

GRAY gulls that wheeled and dipped and rose
Where tossing crests like Alpine snows
Would shimmer and entice;
A stormy petrel, Judas soul,
Dark wanderer of the waste, whose goal
No mariner hath seen;
And flaming from the vanished sun
A wondrous wing vermilion,
A bird of Paradise,
A soaring wing that shone so far
The orient horizon bar
Flushed, and the sea between
Like an Arabian carpet glowed
With changeful hues where subtly flowed
Some magical device;
And one pale plume in heaven's dim dome
Above that fairy-colored foam,
The new moon's ghostly sheen.

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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To Italy

BRIGHT valor, smitten by so shrewd a blow,
Drooping thy golden wing like wounded plover,
What great, grieved faces o'er the battle hover,
Patriot Mazzini; Fra Angelico,
Forsaking his own seraphs for thy woe;
Savonarola, still his country's lover
Despite the flames; longing for walls to cover
With such a fresco, Michael Angelo.
Pity in those sweet eyes of Raphael
For all Madonnas whose young sons lie slain;
Chagrin in Dante's, that his far-famed hell
Fades to a fantasy but weak and vain
By scenes no wildest dream could parallel,
Vast agony of thy Venetian plain.

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Russia

WHAT sudden voice peals to the Caucasus,
To Finland and the bitter Caspian,
To those Siberian prisons whither man
Shall seek as to a shrine, that mutinous,
Divine word Liberty? Impetuous
She rises, Holy Russia, shakes the ban
From her stooped shoulders of colossal span,
A youth in diamond mail, miraculous.
Is this the foretaste of a harvest worth
All agony of its encrimsoned sod?
Are dreams come true? Does this wild roar of wars,
That wellnigh breaks the shuddering heart of earth,
Sound in the hearing of the far-off stars
A golden voice of Freedom, voice of God?

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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This Tattered Catechism

THIS tattered catechism weaves a spell,
Invoking from the Long Ago a child
Who deemed her fledgling soul so sin-defiled
She practised with a candle-flame at hell,
Burning small fingers, that would still rebel
And flinch from fire. Forsooth not all beguiled
By hymn and sermon, when her mother smiled,
That smile was fashioning an infidel.
'If I'm in hell,' the baby logic ran,
'Mother will hear me cry and come for me.
If God says no —I don't believe He can
Say no to mother.' Then at that dear knee
She knelt demure, a little Puritan
Whose faith in love had wrecked theology.

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Our President

GOD help him! Ay, and let us help him, too,
Help him with our one hundred million minds
Molded to loyalty, so that he finds
The faith of the Republic pulsing through
All clashes of opinion, faith still true
To its divine young vision of mankind's
Freedom and brotherhood. May all the winds,
North, south, east, west, waft him our honor due!
For he is one who, when the tempest breaks
In shattering fury, wild with thunder-jars
And javelins of lightning that transform
All the familiar scene to horror, makes
A hush about him in the heart of storm,
Remembering the quiet of the stars.

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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Graves At Christiania

WE bore them their own wild heather
And ash-boughs jeweled red,
There where they sleep together,
Greatest of Norway's dead.
More than the hush of churches
Is the hush where Ibsen lies,
Columned by poplars and birches,
Vaulted by glorious skies.
Over that heart undaunted
Soars a shaft of labrador,
Black yet beauty-haunted,
Marked with the hammer of Thor.
But what memorial lifted
To Björnson, loved of the folk?
We sought till our quest had drifted
Where tender voices spoke,
Where never a rail encloses
That resting-place of fame,
A little plot of roses,
Nameless nor needing name.

poem by Katharine Lee Bates
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