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Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,

And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed

So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
(Now am I free to be poetical?)

I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows-
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away

Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.

Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.

And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood

Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me

And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.
Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company.

The Joy of the Hills

Edwin Markham

For biographical note concerning the author, see "The Man with the Hoe," page 103.

There is joy and expansion in this poem. Deliver it with sweep and abandon. Because the scene changes so often, it is best to read this selection from the book.

I RIDE on the mountain-tops, I ride;

I have found my life and am satisfied.

Onward I ride in the blowing oats,

Checking the field-lark's rippling notes-
Lightly I sweep

From steep to steep:

Over my head through the branches high
Come glimpses of a rushing sky;

The tall oats brush my horse's flanks;
Wild poppies crowd on the sunny banks;
A bee booms out of the scented grass;
A jay laughs with me as I pass.

I ride on the hills, I forgive, I forget
Life's hoard of regret-

All the terror and pain
Of the chafing chain.
Grind on, O cities, grind:

I leave you a blur behind.

I am lifted elate-the skies expand:

Here the world's heaped gold is a pile of sand.
Let them weary and work in their narrow walls:
I ride with the voices of waterfalls!

I swing on as one in a dream—I swing
Down the airy hollows, I shout, I sing!
The world is gone like an empty word:

My body's a bough in the wind, my heart a bird!

Reprinted by permission of the author. Copyright by Edwin Markham.

The Hills

Berton Braley

Berton Braley was born in 1882. He is a newspaper man, a poet, and a novelist. During the war he was a special correspondent in northern Europe.

Read this poem with a rugged grandeur akin to that of the mountains that are described. Note, however, the change in mood

in the early part of the last stanza.

PARTNER, remember the hills?

The gray, barren, bleak old hills
We knew so well-

Not those gentle, placid slopes that swell
In lazy undulations, lush and green.
No; the real hills, the jagged crests,

The sharp and sheer-cut pinnacles of earth
That stand against the azure-gaunt, serene,
Careless of all our little worsts and bests,
Our sorrow and our mirth!

Partner, remember the hills?

Those snow-crowned, granite battlements of hills
We loved of old.

They stood so calm, inscrutable and cold,
Somehow it never seemed they cared at all
For you or me, our fortunes or our fall,

And yet we felt their thrall;

And ever and forever to the end
We shall not cease, my friend,

To hear their call,

Partner, remember the hills?

The grim and massive majesty of hills

That soared so far,

Seeming, at night, to scrape against a star.

Do you remember how we lay at night

(When the great herd had settled down to sleep) And watched the moonshine-white

Against the peaks all garlanded with snow,
While soft and low

The night wind murmured in our ears-and so
We wrapped our blankets closer, looked again
At those great shadowy mountain-tops, and then
Sank gently to our deep

And quiet sleep?

Partner, remember the hills?

The real hills, the true hills.

Ah, I have tried

To brush the memory of them aside;

To learn to love

Those fresh, green hills the poets carol of;

But the old gray hills of barrenness still hold
My heart so much in thrall

That I forget the beauty all about,

The grass and flowers and all;

And just cry out

To take again the faint and wind-swept trail,

To see my naked mountains, shale and snow,

To feel again the hill-wind and to know

The spell that shall not fail.

Reprinted by permission of, and special arrangement with, Geo. H. Doran Company, from Songs of the Workaday World. Copyright, 1915.

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