Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two. Various

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I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it. I've never seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things; That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings. I know that house isn't haunted and I wish it were, I do, For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two. This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass, And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass. It needs new paint and shingles and vines should be trimmed and tied, But what it needs most of all is some people living inside. If I had a bit of money and all my debts were paid, I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade. I'd buy that place and fix it up the way that it used to be, And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free. Now a new home standing empty with staring window and door Looks idle perhaps and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store, But there's nothing mournful about it, it cannot be sad and lone For the lack of something within it that it has never known. But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and helped up his stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet. So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back, Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart. Joyce Kilmer.

Color in the Wheat

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Like liquid gold the wheat field lies,

A marvel of yellow and russet and green,

That ripples and runs, that floats and flies,

With the subtle shadows, the change, the sheen,

That play in the golden hair of a girl—

A ripple of amber—a flare

Of light sweeping after—a curl

In the hollows like swirling feet

Of fairy waltzers, the colors run

To the western sun

Through the deeps of the ripening wheat.

Broad as the fleckless, soaring sky,

Mysterious, fair as the moon-led sea,

The vast plain flames on the dazzled eye

Under the fierce sun's alchemy.

The slow hawk stoops

To his prey in the deeps;

The sunflower droops

To the lazy wave; the wind sleeps—

Then swirling in dazzling links and loops,

A riot of shadow and shine,

A glory of olive and amber and wine,

To the westering sun the colors run

Through the deeps of the ripening wheat.

O glorious land! My western land,

Outspread beneath the setting sun!

Once more amid your swells, I stand,

And cross your sod-lands dry and dun.

I hear the jocund calls of men

Who sweep amid the ripened grain

With swift, stern reapers; once again

The evening splendor floods the plain,

The crickets' chime

Makes pauseless rhyme,

And toward the sun,

The colors run

Before the wind's feet

In the wheat!

Hamlin Garland.

The Broken Pinion

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I walked through the woodland meadows,