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Oh wow, thanks for the thread resurrection. Some fine examples have been added.
Thanks for posting that. I love Chesterton. One of, if not the most fertile, expansive minds of the past 100 years.
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Here's a good one for you Midwesterners that offers a great description of a place at a point in time.
Chicago
By Carl Sandburg
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen
your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true
I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is:
On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city,
and give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head
singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job,
here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action,
Cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse,
and under his ribs is the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating,
proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads
and Freight Handler to the Nation.
Here's a good one for you Midwesterners that offers a great description of a place at a point in time.
Chicago
By Carl Sandburg
Hog Butcher for the World,
Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat
Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
Stormy, husky, brawling
City of the Big Shoulders:
They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen
your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true
I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is:
On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city,
and give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head
singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job,
here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities;
Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action,
Cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,
Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse,
and under his ribs is the heart of the people,
Laughing!
Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth, half-naked, sweating,
proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with Railroads
and Freight Handler to the Nation.
Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
Much of the poem is about Saint Gaudens' monument on the Boston Common to commemorate the Massachusetts' 54th, the first Black troops in the Union army, who were slaughtered on the beach in South Carolina. Sadly, this past summer the monument was defaced and damaged by Black Lives Matter protestors.Nicely crafted! Intense poem.
Let be be finale of seem.
As one walks the forests of New England he realizes that most of it hasn't been forest forever- he keeps having to climb or step over dry stone walls in the middle of an otherwise dense wilderness. 200 years ago it was all cleared and enclosed pasture- today's forests of Vermont and New Hampshire once looked like the hills of Yorkshire and Northumberland. And at this time of year as you walk those woods every once in a while you catch the scent of warm, ripened grapes from once cultivated vines long since gone wild. Usually when you find wild grapes the cellar hole of what was once a home is nearby if you take the time to look. I always stop and eat a few grapes; they're usually sour, but I stop and think of the people who planted and tended those vines hundreds of years ago and who left those stony hills for the greener fields of the Ohio territory or the mills of the Merrimack River.October by Robert Frost.
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
October by Robert Frost.
O hushed October morning mild,
Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;
Tomorrow’s wind, if it be wild,
Should waste them all.
The crows above the forest call;
Tomorrow they may form and go.
O hushed October morning mild,
Begin the hours of this day slow.
Make the day seem to us less brief.
Hearts not averse to being beguiled,
Beguile us in the way you know.
Release one leaf at break of day;
At noon release another leaf;
One from our trees, one far away.
Retard the sun with gentle mist;
Enchant the land with amethyst.
Slow, slow!
For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,
Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,
Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—
For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
Excellent.As one walks the forests of New England he realizes that most of it hasn't been forest forever- he keeps having to climb or step over dry stone walls in the middle of an otherwise dense wilderness. 200 years ago it was all cleared and enclosed pasture- today's forests of Vermont and New Hampshire once looked like the hills of Yorkshire and Northumberland. And at this time of year as you walk those woods every once in a while you catch the scent of warm, ripened grapes from once cultivated vines long since gone wild. Usually when you find wild grapes the cellar hole of what was once a home is nearby if you take the time to look. I always stop and eat a few grapes; they're usually sour, but I stop and think of the people who planted and tended those vines hundreds of years ago and who left those stony hills for the greener fields of the Ohio territory or the mills of the Merrimack River.
Thanks for the Frost poem.
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