A slant of sun on dull brown walls, A forgotten sky of bashful blue.
Toward God a mighty hymn, A song of collisions and cries, Rumbling wheels, hoof-beats, bells, Welcomes, farewells, love-calls, final moans, Voices of joy, idiocy, warning, despair, The unknown appeals of brutes, The chanting of flowers, The screams of cut trees, The senseless babble of hens and wise men— A cluttered incoherency that says to the stars: “O God, save us!”
In Heaven, Some little blades of grass Stood before God. “What did you do?” Then all save one of the little blades Began eagerly to relate The merits of their lives. This one stayed a small way behind, Ashamed. Presently, God said, “And what did you do?” The little blade answered, “Oh, my Lord, Memory is bitter to me, For, if I did good deeds, I know not of them.” Then God, in all his splendor, Arose from his throne. “Oh, best little blade of grass!” he said.
Edwin Ford Piper was born at Auburn, Nebraska, February 8, 1871, and literally grew up in the saddle. In 1893 he entered the University of Nebraska, from which he received an A.B. in 1897 and A.M. in 1900. He studied at Harvard (1903–4), was one of the editors of _The Kiote_ (a magazine published from 1898 to 1902 in Lincoln, Nebraska), and, since 1905, has been an instructor of English at the State University of Iowa.
_Piper’s Barbed Wire and Other Poems_ (1918) is saturated with the color of his environment. His later poems are still more vivid and racy. “Sweetgrass Range” (with its self-acknowledged debt to Burns’s “Rattlin’ Roarin’ Willie”) and “Bindlestiff” are fresh evidences of this author’s creative interest in ballads and folk-lore.
_Oh, the lives of men, lives of men, In pattern-molds be run; But there’s you, and me, and Bindlestiff— And remember Mary’s Son._
At dawn the hedges and the wheel-ruts ran Into a brightening sky. The grass bent low With shimmering dew, and many a late wild rose Unrolled the petals from its odorous heart While birds held tuneful gossip. Suddenly, Each bubbling trill and whistle hid away As from a hawk; the fragrant silence heard Only the loving stir of little leaves; Then a man’s baritone broke roughly in:
_I’ve gnawed my crust of mouldy bread, Skimmed my mulligan stew; Laid beneath the barren hedge— Sleety night-winds blew._