TO MY FATHER
| The eastern hill hath scarce unveiled his head, And the deliberate sky hath but begun To meditate upon a future sun, When thou dost rise from thy impatient bed. Thy morning prayer unto the stars is said. And not unlike a child, the penance done Of sleep, thou goest to thy serious fun, Exuberant—yet with a whisper tread. And when that lord doth to the world appear, The jovial sun, he leans on his old hill, And levels forth to thee a golden smile— Thee in his garden, where each warming year Thou toilest in all joy with him, to fill And flood the soil with Summer for a while. |
TO EDWARD S. MARTIN
FROM A PROFESSIONAL HOBO
| How old, my friend, is that fine-pointed pen Wherewith in smiling quietude you trace The maiden maxims of your writing-place, And on this gripped and mortal-sweating den And battle-pit of hunger now and then Dip out, with nice and intellectual grace, The faultless wisdoms of a nurtured race Of pale-eyed, pink, and perfect gentlemen! How long have art and wit and poetry, With all their power, been content, like you, To gild the smiling fineness of the few, To filmy-curtain what they dare not see, In multitudinous reality, The rough and bloody soul of what is true! |
(In an editorial in Life, Mr. Martin had described as "professional hoboes" a number of revolutionary agitators whom he did not like—Pancho Villa, William D. Haywood, Wild Joe O'Carroll—and he did me the honor to include me among them.)