Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two. Various

The slow hawk stoops To his prey in the deeps; The sunflower droops To the lazy wave; the wind sleeps— Then swirling in dazzling links and loops, A riot of shadow and shine, A glory of olive and amber and wine, To the westering sun the colors run Through the deeps of the ripening wheat. O glorious land! My western land, Outspread beneath the setting sun! Once more amid your swells, I stand, And cross your sod-lands dry and dun. I hear the jocund calls of men Who sweep amid the ripened grain With swift, stern reapers; once again The evening splendor floods the plain, The crickets' chime Makes pauseless rhyme, And toward the sun, The colors run Before the wind's feet In the wheat! Hamlin Garland.

The Broken Pinion

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I walked through the woodland meadows,

Where sweet the thrushes sing;

And I found on a bed of mosses

A bird with a broken wing.

I healed its wound, and each morning

It sang its old sweet strain,

But the bird with a broken pinion

Never soared as high again.

I found a young life broken

By sin's seductive art;

And touched with a Christlike pity,

I took him to my heart.

He lived with a noble purpose

And struggled not in vain;

But the life that sin had stricken

Never soared as high again.

But the bird with a broken pinion

Kept another from the snare;

And the life that sin had stricken

Raised another from despair.

Each loss has its compensation,

There is healing for every pain;

But the bird with a broken pinion

Never soars as high again.

Hezekiah Butterworth.

Jamie Douglas

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It was in the days when Claverhouse

Was scouring moor and glen,

To change, with fire and bloody sword,

The faith of Scottish men.

They had made a covenant with the Lord

Firm in their faith to bide,

Nor break to Him their plighted word,

Whatever might betide.

The sun was well-nigh setting,

When o'er the heather wild,

And up the narrow mountain-path,

Alone there walked a child.

He was a bonny, blithesome lad,

Sturdy and strong of limb—

A father's pride, a mother's love,

Were fast bound up in him.

His bright blue eyes glanced fearless round,

His step was firm and light;

What was it underneath his plaid

His little hands grasped tight?

It was bannocks which, that very morn,

His mother made with care.

From out her scanty store of meal;

And now, with many a prayer,

Had sent by Jamie her ane boy,