But the Hand that made us caught us up and hewed a nation
From the frozen fastness that so long was His alone.
· · · · · ·
Loud we sang adventuring and lustily we jested;
Quarreled, fought, and then forgot the taunt, the blow, the jeers;
Sinned and slaved and vanished—we, the giant-men who wrested
Truth from out a dream wherein we planned surpassing years.
Anna Hempstead Branch
Anna Hempstead Branch was born at New London, Connecticut. She graduated from Smith College in 1897 and has devoted herself to literature ever since.
Her two chief volumes, The Shoes That Danced (1905) and Rose of the Wind (1910), show a singer who is less fanciful than philosophic. Often, indeed, she weighs down her simple melodies with a heavy intellectuality, but, even more often, she attains a high level of lyricism. Her lines are admirably condensed, rich in personal value as well as poetic revelation; they maintain a high and austere level. A typical poem is “The Monk in the Kitchen,” which, with its spiritual loveliness and verbal felicity, is a celebration of cleanness that gives order an almost mystical nobility.