The Forum Lyman Bryson
NEWPORT
On these brown rocks the waves dissolve in spray
As when our fathers saw them first alee.
If such a one could come again and see
This ancient haven in its latter day,
These haughty palaces and gardens gay,
These dense, soft lawns, bedecked by many a tree
Borne like a gem from Ind or Araby;
If he could see the race he bred, at play—
Bright like a flock of tropic birds allured
To pause a moment on the southward wing
By these warm sands and by these summer seas—
Would he not cry, “Alas, have I endured
Exile and famine, hate and suffering,
To win religious liberty for these?”
Smart Set Alice Duer Miller
TO A PHOTOGRAPHER
I have known joy and woe and toil and fight
I have lived largely, I have dreamed and planned,
And Time, the sculptor, with a master hand,
Upon my face has wrought for all men’s sight
The lines and seams of Life, of growth and blight,
Of struggle and of service and command;
And now you show me This—this waxen, bland
And placid face—unlined, untroubled, white!
This is not I—this fatuous face you show
Retouched and prettified and smoothed to please,
Put back the wrinkles and the lines I know;
I have spent blood and brain achieving these,
Out of the pain, the sorrow and the wrack,
They are my scars of battle—PUT THEM BACK!
Harper’s Weekly Berton Braley
SONG
Flesh unto flowers,
And flame unto wind,
The cleansing of showers
Shall come to thee blind.
In the night of thy sleeping
The sound of the tide
Shall waken thee weeping
To turn to my side.