Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.
Songs of Deliverance
By Orrick Johns
I. The Song of YouthT
This is the cause of myself;
I knew my father well and he was a fool,
Therefore will I have my own foot in the path before I take a step;
I will go only into new lands,
And I will walk on no plank-walks.
The horses of my family are wind-broken,
And the dogs are old,
And the guns rusty;
I will make me a new bow from an ash-tree,
And cut up the homestead into arrows.
(There are always crowds of people standing around,
Whose legs have no knees)—
While the engineers put up steel work …
Is it something to catch the sunlight,
Jewelry and gew-gaw?
I have no time to wait for them to build bridges for me;
Where awful the gap seems stretching there is no gap,
Leaping I take it at once from a thought to a thought.
I can no more walk in the stride of other men
Than be father of their children.
And I went to it young and desirous.
Lo, as it stood there in its great chests,
The wise men came up with the keys,
Crying, “Blasphemy, blasphemy!”
For I had broken the locks.…
And when the procession went waving to a funeral,
They cried it again;
For I stayed in my home and spoke truth about the dead.
At the door of a great man I waited on one foot and then on the other.
The files passed in and out before me to the antechamber, for at that door I was not favored:
(O costly preferment!)
Yet I watched them coming and going,
And I learned the great man by heart from the stories on their faces.
When presently the retainers arrived, one above the other in a row, saying:
“The great man is ready,”
I had long been a greater than he.
When I used to go in the races, I had but one prayer,
And I went first before the judges, saying;
“Give everyone a distance, such as you consider best;
I will run scratch.”