POETRY & SONG
'If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.' ~ Charles Darwin
The Liberty & Property Legends are littered with poetry, song and literature references. From the classic verse of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to beloved cowboy songs, from lively discussions on Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and the time-honored works of Jane Austen to flirtatious celebrations of Walt Whitman, Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Shakespeare. Philosophers, modern and old world, too.
It’s difficult to imagine a world without computer-driven tech, without television or radio. Once, poets, writers and composers, their books and music, defined the hearts and souls of nations and their peoples. Touched people profoundly, right to the core, gave them identity. Spoke about who they were, and who other nations were. The world celebrated cultural identity and embraced ideas from around the globe.
The richness of what has been left to us is beyond measure. As human beings we haven’t changed, but we are not able to stop creating, so we march on with thousands of newly created things and ideas every day; but when we look back, spend time in the past, we see where they came from and our creative and cultural connection to history.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
1807-1882
The following poems by HWL
enrich the pages of the Legends
so far...
The Courtship of Miles Standish
A Psalm of Life
The Children's Hour
Snowflakes
The Cross of Snow
The Song of Hiawatha
My Lost Youth
Keramos
The Clock on the Stairs
Emma & Eginhard
Song: Stay at Home
The Light of Stars
Fragments
Interlude: The Student's Tale
The Two Rivers
Palingenesis
To the Avon
Hawthorne
It Is Not Always May
The Spanish Student
Something Left Undone
The Rainy Day
The Meeting
The Golden Legend
The Baron of Castine
Hast ever been in Omaha
Where rolls the dark Missouri down,
And four strong horses scarce can draw
An empty wagon through the town?
Where sand is blown from every mound
To fill the eyes and ears and throat -
Where all the steamers are aground
And all the shanties are afloat?
​
Where whiskey shops the livelong night
Are vending their poison juice:
Where men are often very tight,
And women deemed a trifle loose?
Where taverns have an anxious guest
For every corner, shelf and crack;
With half the people going west,
And all the others going back?
​
Where theaters are all the run
And bloody scalpers come to trade;
Where everything is overdone
And everybody underpaid?
If not, take heed to what I say:
You'll find it just as I have found it;
And if it lies upon your way,
For God's sake, reader, go around it!
Harper's Magazine, 1869
in 'Leaves of Grass ' by Walt Whitman
O you whom I often and silently come where you are that I may be with you,
as I walk by your side or sit near,
or remain in the same room with you,
little you know the subtle electric fire that for your sake is playing within me.
We often hear couples say, 'that's our song'! It's not long after sheriff Cliff Ryan and feisty young reporter Emmaline Roberts meet in EMPIRE FOR LIBERTY Dangerous Lullaby that the pair find they have 'a poem' which gives some form of expression to their 'relationship'. It is Love's Philosophy by Shelley. As Cliff says, it is 'considered to be one of the most romantic poems in English literature'. While Emmaline is struggling to foil his advances, the poem happens to be one of her favorites. Here it is in full.
Love's Philosophy
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
1792-1822
The fountain mingles with the river,
And the rivers with the ocean
The winds of heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion.
Nothing in the world is single
All things by law divine
In one another's being mingle
Why not I with thine?
See the mountains kiss high heaven
And the waves clasp one another
No sister flower would be forgiven
If it disdained its brother:
And sunlight clasps the earth
And the moonbeams kiss the sea
What is all this sweet work worth
If thou kiss not me?
(published in The Indicator, 1819,
by Leigh Hunt)
Traditional Cowboy Songs
My Home
by Kelley Diana Keaton
penned at age 15
​
In HEARTLAND, Kelley has written the poem below, and she reads and shows it to her Mama, Amy Keaton, who promptly tells Kelley that her penmanship is improving and all her letters are slanting the same way. The pragmatic tone of Amy Keaton's response comes from my own experience. Anyone else have a similar experience?
Oh, heart's desire, come, for
I have waited long,
My majestic mountain land.
My winter wonderland
of snow and ice.
My summer land rich in pasture,
Sustaining peoples past and present.
My eternal place,
where end of land
and edge of sky
meet to dance together in timeless ritual to the song of constant wind.
My river land,
where a diamond-studded snake hugs the road from the gorge below,
or sweeps away at its own bidding,
absorbing color from the sky
and brilliance from the sun.
Come be in my heart and in
my soul for ever more.
Excerpts from:
The Good Morrow
by John Donne (1572 - 1631)
​
I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, til we lov'd? were we not wean'd till then?
...
If ever any beauty I did see,
Which I desir'd, and got, 'twas but a dreame of thee.
​
​
​And now good-morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one little roome an everywhere.
...
Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one.
​...
Whatever dyes, was not mixt equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.
