Page:Anthology of Magazine Verse (1921).djvu/74
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You never ran away
To sit for hours with gray men
Who talked of Hong-Kong and Sumatra
Of Singapore and Java
As one talks of the corner grocery
Or the cobbler next street.
You never had idle ships and wharves
And empty granite warehouses
For playgrounds
Nor roamed through great
Three-story houses with infinite rooms,
All full of dust of the departed
Where even the mice were venerable.
To sit for hours with gray men
Who talked of Hong-Kong and Sumatra
Of Singapore and Java
As one talks of the corner grocery
Or the cobbler next street.
You never had idle ships and wharves
And empty granite warehouses
For playgrounds
Nor roamed through great
Three-story houses with infinite rooms,
All full of dust of the departed
Where even the mice were venerable.
All this I did, and
I can see Salem.
I would like to show it to you,
But if I touch it,
It crumbles.
I can see Salem.
I would like to show it to you,
But if I touch it,
It crumbles.
The NationH. C. Gauss
PRAYER
O thou elemental
Rain, sun, and body of the quick warm earth:
Hear these words from the cells of thy blood,
Multitudinous, various!
Rain, sun, and body of the quick warm earth:
Hear these words from the cells of thy blood,
Multitudinous, various!
Let the waters at the dim roots of the grass be sweet,
And the milk be abundant in the breasts of time—
Yet a little while, till the pearl-gray banners of smoke
Be dissolved, and the flowing of rivulets be but a distant murmur
In the shout and the far white splendor of thy coming.
And the milk be abundant in the breasts of time—
Yet a little while, till the pearl-gray banners of smoke
Be dissolved, and the flowing of rivulets be but a distant murmur
In the shout and the far white splendor of thy coming.
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