Part 16 (2/2)

”Oh Man!”

Man hath harnessed the lightning; Man hath soared to the skies; Mountain and hill are clay to his will; Skilful he is, and wise.

Sea to sea hath he wedded, Canceled the chasm of s.p.a.ce, Given defeat to cold and heat; Splendour is his, and grace.

His are the topless turrets; His are the plumbless pits; Earth is slave to his architrave, Heaven is thrall to his wits.

And so in the golden future, He who hath dulled the storm (As said above) may make a glove That'll keep my fingers warm.

An Ode in Time of Inauguration

(March 4, 1913)

Thine aid, O Muse, I consciously beseech; I crave thy succour, ask for thine a.s.sistance That men may cry: ”Some little ode! A peach!”

O Muse, grant me the strength to go the distance!

For odes, I learn, are dithyrambs, and long; Exalted feeling, dignity of theme And complicated structure guide the song.

(All this from Webster's book of high esteem.)

Let complicated structure not becloud My lucid lines, nor weight with overloading.

To Sh.e.l.ley, Keats, and Wordsworth and that crowd I yield the bays for ground and lofty oding.

Mine but the task to trace a country's growth, As evidenced by each inauguration From Was.h.i.+ngton's to Wilson's primal oath-- In these U. S., the celebrated nation.

But stay! or ever that I start to sing, Or e'er I loose my fine poetic forces, I ought, I think, to do the decent thing, To wit: give credit to my many sources: Barnes's ”Brief History of the U. S. A.,”

Bryce, Ridpath, Scudder, Fiske, J. B. McMaster, A book of odes, a Webster, a Roget-- The bibliography of this poetaster.

Flow, flow, my pen, as gently as sweet Afton ever flowed!

An thou dost ill, shall this be still a poor thing, but mine ode.

G. W., initial prex, Right down in Wall Street, New York City, Took his first oath. Oh, multiplex The whimsies quaint, the comments witty One might evolve from that! I scorn To mock the spot where he was sworn.

On next Inauguration Day He took the avouchment sempiternal Way down in Phil-a-delph-i-a, Where rises now the L. H. Journal.

His Farewell Speech in '96 Said: ”'Ware the Trusts and all their tricks!”

John Adams fell on darksome days: March Fourth was bl.u.s.tery and sleety; The French behaved in horrid ways Until John Jay drew up a treaty.

Came the Eleventh Amendment, too, Providing that--but why tell _you_?

<script>