A coal miner does not need the sun's illumination. He carries his own light.
The world has brought not anything
To make me glad to-day!
The swallow had a broken wing,
And after all my journeying
There was no water in the spring—
My friend has said me nay.
But yet somehow I needs must sing
As on a luckier day.
Dusk fails as gray as any tear,
There is no hope in sight!
But something in me seems so fair,
That like a star I needs must wear
A safety made of shining air
Between me and the night.
Such inner weavings do I wear
All fashioned of delight!
I need not for these robes of mine
The loveliness of earth,
But happenings remote and fine
Like threads of dreams will blow and shine
In gossamer and crystalline,
And I was glad from birth.
So even while my eyes repine,
My heart is clothed in mirth.
Anna Hempstead Branch.
From "The Shoes That Danced, and Other Poems."
IT WON'T STAY BLOWED
It is easier to fail than succeed. It is easier to drift downstream than up. But just as pent steam finds an escape somewhere, so will the man who persists break at one point or another through confining circumstance.
To the sniffing pickaninny once his good old mammy said,
"Yo' lil' black nose am drippin' from de cold dat's in yo' head,
An' yo' sleeve am slick and shiny like de hillside when it snows.
Why doan' you pump de bellers from de inside ob yo' nose?"
"Ain't I been," the child replied to her, "a-doin' ob jes' dat
Twel I's got a turble empty feel right whur I wears muh hat?
De traffic soht o' nacherly keeps gittin' in de road.
I blow muh nose a-plenty, but
it
won't
stay
blowed.
"What's de use ob raisin' chickens ef dey won't stay riz?
What's de use ob freezin' sherbet ef it won't stay friz?
What's de use ob payin' debts off ef dey's gwine stay owed?
What's de use ob blowin' noses ef dey won't stay blowed?"