That now, when days are growing drear,
As summer dreams that she is old,
Hangs out a myriad pleasure-bells
Of mottled gold!
Thine only, these, thou lonely road!
Though hands that take, and naught restore,
Rob thee of other treasured things,
Thine these are, for
A fairy, cradled in each bloom,
To all who pass the charmèd spot
Whispers in warning:—“Friend, admire,—
But touch me not!
“Leave me to blossom where I sprung,
A joy untarnished shall I seem;
Pluck me, and you dispel the charm
And blur the dream!”
The Bellman Florence Earle Coates
IRISH
My father and mother were Irish,
And I am Irish, too;
I pipe you my bag of whistles,
And it is Irish, too.
’Twill sing with you in the morning,
And play with you at noon,
And dance with you in the evening
To a little Irish tune.
For my father and mother were Irish,
And I am Irish, too;
And here is my bag of whistles,
For it is Irish, too.
Boston Transcript Edward J. O’Brien
THE REGENTS’ EXAMINATION
Muffled sounds of the city climbing to me at the window,
Here in the summer noon-tide students busily writing,
Children of quaint-clad immigrants, fresh from the hut and the Ghetto,
Writing of pious Æneas and funeral rites of Anchises.
Old-World credo and custom, alien accents and features,
Plunged in the free-school hopper, grist for the Anglo-Saxons—
Old-World sweetness and light, and fiery struggle of heroes,
Flashed on the blinking peasants, dull with the grime of their bondage!
Race that are infant in knowledge, ancient in grief and traditions—
Lore that is tranquil with age and starry with gleams of the future—
What is the thing that will come from the might of the elements blending?
Neuter and safe shall it be? Or a flame to burst us asunder?