THE SUN-BROWNED DADS OF MAINE
Here’s ho for the masterful men o’ Maine,
—Grit and gumption, brawn and brain!
South they go and West they flow,
The men that do and the men that know.
And Fame and Honor, Power and Gain
Come to the call of the men o’ Maine.
But away up back on the rock-piled farms
Are the gnarled old dads with corded arms,
The dads that give these boys o’ Maine
Health and strength and grit and brain.
Now the masterful men who have gone their
ways
Need none of my humble words of praise.
So, here’s best I have for the dads, the ones
Who have slaved and saved to raise those sons.
Here’s hail and again for the Maine-bred lads,
Then a triple hail for the dear old Dads.
They are bowed and bent and wrinkled, and
their hands are browned and knurled
They would never pass as heroes in the busy,
careless world,
For they bear no sword or ribbon, and they
show no victor’s spoil,
Only such as they have wrested from the weeds
and rocky soil.
They have wrung reluctant dollars from the
land, and all their gain
Has been spent to nurture manhood in the
rugged State of Maine.
And they need no decorations, only loving
thanks from those
Who built upon the sacrifice that bought their
books and clothes.
I bring some homely laurel for those wrinkled,
sunburned brows
Of men whose hands are blistered by the
scythe-snaths and the plows,
—For men who wrestle Nature with their bare
and corded arms
In an everlasting struggle with these grudging
old Maine farms,
Who lay their lives and hopes and joys’neath
labor’s bitter rule
To coax from sullen Earth the price that keeps
their boys in school.
In manhood of America—’mongst brawn and
pluck and brain,
Set high these humble heroes of the upland
farms of Maine!
And with the cheers you lavish on the men
behind the guns
Crowd in one honest, sincere shout for those
behind the sons.
They labor here in stern old Maine and every
cent is ground
From out the earth by pluck and plod. In
youth they never found
That open sesame to wealth the cultured mind
employs,
Such as to-day their humble toil bestows upon
their boys.
Those crosses signed by toil-cramped hands in
probate courts in Maine
The wavering quirks and curliques no mortal
can explain,
Those speak with pathos all their own of days
of long ago
When “bound-out” children trudged to school
through miles of drifted snow;
When scattered weeks of schoolin’ in the win-
ter time were doled
To hungry little youngsters, ill-clad and numb
with cold.
Now you’ll find them, grown to manhood,
proud and eager to dilate
On the brightness of the children they have
paid to educate.
They have patiently worn patches that their
boys may wear good clothes;
As they’ve struggled on their acres only God,
the Father, knows
All the makeshifts and privations of these
rocky old Maine farms
Where the boys walk straight to comfort over
toiling dads and marms.
Yet those bent and weary parents ask no
praises from the world,
Their comfort is to push a son as high as their
old, knurled,
And aching muscles can reach up; and, when
they pass away,
To know that he will never work one half as
hard as they.
Such is the stuff our heroes are, and when you
cheer the guns
And those behind them, reckon in the men be-
hind the sons.
The zeal and valor of the land in battle’s crash
and blaze
And deeds of heroes seeking fame must win
due meed of praise,
And yet above them all I set the humble sacri-
fice
Of toiling men who cent by cent amass the
hard-won price
That buys the Future for a boy, bestows the
magic “Can,”
Lays Power in his eager grasp and sends him
forth A Man.
So, unto these bowed, weary men with earth-
stained, calloused palms,
Who daily tread the up-turned soil on rough
and rocky farms,
Who pile their hoard of dollars up, by sturdy
labor won,
Who pour those dollars freely out to educate
a son,
To all of these who seek no crown I bring my
wreath of bay
And set it on their sun-tanned brows and on
their locks of gray, ‘
And when their dreary, long campaign, their
bitter toil is done,
God grant that each may live again, new-born
in honored son.
Then three times three, I say again, for
Maine’s true heroes now,
Whose hands are blistered, gnarled, and worn
by scythe-snath and the plow,
Who vow themselves to poverty, accept its
bitter rule
To coax from sullen Earth the price that keeps
their sons in school.
Cheer if you will for those who kill—the men
behind the guns,
But cheer again for those who build—the men
behind the sons.