JOHN VANCE CHENEY

AMERICA, 1848

Evening Songs 1

I

The birds have hid, the winds are low,
The brake is awake, the grass aglow:
The bat is the rover,

No bee on the clover,

The day is over,

And evening come.

The heavy beetle spreads her wings,
The toad has the road, the cricket sings:

The bat is the rover,

No bee on the clover,

The day is over,

And evening come.

II

It is that pale, delaying hour
When nature closes like a flower,
And on the spirit lies,

The silence of the earth and skies.

"Poems," published by Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin,

1 From

& Co.,

Boston.

10

15

5

10

The world has thoughts she will not own

When shade and dream with night have flown;
Bright overhead, a star

Makes golden guesses what they are.

III

Now is Light, sweet mother, down the west,
With little Song against her breast;

She took him up, all tired with play,
And fondly bore him far away.

While he sleeps, one wanders in his stead,
A fainter glory round her head;

She follows happy waters after,

Leaving behind low, rippling laughter.

IV

Behind the hilltop drops the sun,
The curled heat falters on the sand,
While evening's ushers, one by one,
Lead in the guests of Twilight Land.

The bird is silent overhead,
Below the beast has laid him down;
Afar, the marbles watch the dead,
The lonely steeple guards the town.

The south wind feels its amorous course
To cloistered sweet in thickets found;
The leaves obey its tender force,
And stir 'twixt silence and a sound.

BLISS CARMAN

CANADA, 1861

A Vagabond Song'

There is something in the Autumn that is native to

my blood

--

Touch of manner, hint of mood;

And my heart is like a rhyme,

With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry
Of bugles going by.

And my lonely spirit thrills

To see the frosty asters like smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir; We must rise and follow her,

When from every hill of fame

She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

1 From "Songs from Vagabondia,' ," by Bliss Carman. Used by the courteous permission of the author and the publishers, Messrs. Small, Maynard, & Co,

5

10

15

JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

AMERICA, 1852-1916

Old Glory! say, who,

Qld Glory1

By the ships and the crew,

And the long, blended ranks of the gray and the blue— Who gave you, Old Glory, the name that you bear 5 With such pride everywhere,

As you cast yourself free to the rapturous air

And leap out full length, as we're wanting you to?— Who gave you that name, with the ring of the same, And the honor and fame so becoming to you?

10 Your stripes stroked in ripples of white and of red, With your stars at their glittering best overhead By day or by night

Their delightfullest light

Laughing down from their little square heaven of

blue!

15 Who gave you the name of Old Glory

Who gave you the name of Old Glory?

say, who

The old banner lifted and faltering then
In vague lisps and whispers fell silent again.

1 This and the following poems are used by the courteous permission of the publishers, Messrs. Bobbs, Merrill, & Co., Indianapolis.

Old Glory: the story we're wanting to hear

Is what the plain facts of your christening were, —
For your name just to hear it,

Repeat it, and cheer it, 's a tang to the spirit

As salt as a tear;

And seeing you fly, and the boys marching by,

There's a shout in the throat and a blur in the eye,
And an aching to live for you always or die,
If, dying, we still keep you waving on high
And so, by our love

For you, floating above,

And the scars of all wars and the sorrows thereof,
Who gave you the name of Old Glory, and why
Are we thrilled at the name of Old Glory?

5

10

15

Then the old banner leaped like a sail in the blast,
And fluttered an audible answer at last
And it spake with a shake of the voice, and it said:
By the driven snow-white and the living blood-red
Of my bars and their heaven of stars overhead
By the symbol conjoined of them all, skyward cast, 20
As I float from the steeple or flap at the mast,
Or droop o'er the sod where the long grasses nod,
My name is as old as the glory of God

. . . So I came by the name of Old Glory.