William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

Accomplished Facts

EVERY year Emily Dickinson sent one friend

the first arbutus bud in her garden.

In a last will and testament Andrew Jackson

remembered a friend with the gift of George

Washington’s pocket spy-glass.

Napoleon too, in a last testament, mentioned a silver

watch taken from the bedroom of Frederick the Great,

and passed along this trophy to a particular friend.

O. Henry took a blood carnation from his coat lapel

and handed it to a country girl starting work in a

bean bazaar, and scribbled: “Peach blossoms may or

may not stay pink in city dust.”

So it goes. Some things we buy, some not.

Tom Jefferson was proud of his radishes, and Abe Lincoln

blacked his own boots, and Bismarck called Berlin a wilderness of brick and newspapers.

So it goes. There are accomplished facts.

Ride, ride, ride on in the great new blimps—

Cross unheard-of oceans, circle the planet.

When you come back we may sit by five hollyhocks.

We might listen to boys fighting for marbles.

The grasshopper will look good to us.

So it goes.…

Poetry, A Magazine of Verse