Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Agnes Lee

OVER the house the evening settled down.

The little phaeton stood before the door.

Out came her husband, strong and weather-brown:

“Why, Judith, what on earth are you waiting for?”—

He stroked the pony—“And the boy—where’s he?

I thought you’d gone.”

“We were just starting, when

Will heard a droning, and he said to me:

‘It’s from the mine—I know the sound. The men

Forgot to shut things off—I’ll go and see.

Mother, you take the reins and wait a bit—

I won’t be long.’ And now it’s fully three

Long quarters of an hour, and here I sit.”

“Will knows what he’s about,” said Alan. “Well,

There’s time enough, Jude. Why it isn’t eight!

You might stay out a little longer spell,

Taking the road around by Fostergate.

I’m glad he’s learning how to run the mine—

Here we’ve a coal-mine right on our own place,

And it’ll go to him. How keen and fine

He is!—it can’t help showing in his face.

I thought he might come home half-heartedly,

Feeling himself too tall for us, somehow

Grown different in his ways, and wishing we

Could be more …”

“Alan, don’t talk nonsense, now!—

You might have known he’d always be the same.

They couldn’t make him love us any less,

Not all the colleges your tongue could name.”

“You’re right enough, you’re right enough, I guess.”

“He’d rather take his mother for a drive

Than be the governor of Illinois!

Now there’s the moon, as sure as I’m alive!

Alan, step back and see what keeps the boy.”

And Alan, young at fifty, straight and proud,

Strode from the narrow box-path’s mossy tiling

Over the lawn where the cool branches bowed.

And he was humming to himself, and smiling;

For all the scent and sound of evening blended

In one voice, singing, “Our son!” The high grain-stack,

Crowned by the moon, where the long pasture ended,

Sang out, “Our son!” And his heart sang it back.

He entered through a doorway in the ground.

Down in the mine he groped his way about,

Calling, “Ho—Will!” There came no answering sound.

And still went echoing Alan’s shout on shout.

Now like a menacing troop of giant foes

Dark in the mine loomed shadowy shapes of steel.

Dark in his brain a dream of dread arose.

A darker something whirled upon a wheel.