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From “Primapara”
MY step-grandfather sat during the noon spell | |
| Against the wild crabapple tree, by the vines. | |
| Flies about the high hot fern played, or fell | |
| To his beard, or upon the big vein of his hand. | |
| With their playing he seemed helpless and old, in a land | 5 |
| Where new stumps, piles of green brush, fresh-burnt pines, | |
| Were young and stubborn. He mentioned the old times | |
| As if he thought of this: “I have marched, and run | |
| Over the old hills, old plowed land, with my gun | |
| Bumping furrows—oh, years old. But in this new place | 10 |
| There is nothing I know. I ride a strange colt.” | |
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| “You know old times, and have seen some big man’s face: | |
| Out of the old times, what do you remember most?” | |
| “General Lee. Once they called us out in a cold | |
| Plowed field, to parade for him. He was old with frost. | 15 |
| I remember our style of dress; my dead friends last long, | |
| (I would have thought longer); and there were peaked women | |
| Who watched us march, and joked with us as they were trimming | |
| The green shoots of wild roses to eat. But these with me | |
| Lack what the other has—they are not so strong. | 20 |
| And lost battles?—I would be prouder starving in rain | |
| And beaten and running every day, with General Lee, | |
| Than fat and warm, winning under another man.” | |
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| Alone presently, I laid myself face down | |
| To avoid seeing the field; and thought of how the book | 25 |
| Describes Esther; and imagined how that queen might look, | |
| Preferred for beauty, in her old fields red and brown. | |
| “I am like my step-grandfather,” I thought, “and could | |
| Follow whatever I love, blind and bold; | |
| Or go hungry and in great shame, and, for a cause, be proud.” | 30 |
| And I came to work, sad to see him so old. | |
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