I. MEDITATION AND THE SEARCHING SPIRIT
II. LOCAL COLOR
Prodigal-Glenn W. Rainey
Fog-Agues Kendrick Gray
Okefenokee Swamp-Ernest Hartsock
Tallulah Dam-Ernest Hartsock
Forest Fire-Ernest Hartsock
Cotton Field-Minnie Hite Moody
An Old Battlefield-Frank L. Stanton
The Covered Bridge-Anderson M. Scruggs
Country Store-Ernest Hartsock
Day-Coach, August-Ernest Hartsock
Georgia Camp Meeting-Ernest Hartsock
County Square-Gilbert Maxwell
Lynched-Frank L. Stanton
Pharaoh's Army-Agnes Kendrick Gray
Georgia Monday-Minnie Hite Moody
Dark Atlanta-Sonnet Sequence-Minnie
Hite Moody
Auburn Avenue-Colored Emergency
Buttermilk Bottom-Decatur Street
Peachtree Creek-Lincoln Cemetery
Centennial Sonnets-Agnes Kendrick
Gray
The Founding-Resurgens-Dogwood-
Stone Mountain
III. PORTRAITS AND PERSONALITIES
IV. CITIES
VI. NATURE
Georgia, your red hills tremble with a dim foreboding
Of dogwood, soon to rise like a white soul
Impatient of substantial clay.
The dogwood is the first full breath of spring
Chilled by the glance of envious winter
Into a heavy vapor
That shoulders through the valleys
And presses back the green along the slopes.
The dogwood is a mist of summer butterflies
Caught in a net of craftiest weaving,
Fluttering for release.
The dogwood has cool fingers to lay upon my temples.
Alpha and Omega, this is the moist earth
From which the dogwood petals come,
To which at length return,
Not falteringly, as to some solemn judgment,
But lightly
Back to the many-mansioned house
Where vanished centuries of April
Sleep in essential ambush.
Out of this earth April shall spring
Upon our children's children,
Unwary ever as we
Of these too sudden forays of the dogwood.
The pines, least credulous of trees,
Spread yet their winter robes about their limbs,
Gravely disdaining April.
The catbird is a monarch in the willow thicket.
This same young sun
That warmed the pilgrims on the road to Canterbury
Is a tonic more ardent than sassafras
To drive the sullen humors from my blood.
Georgia, your red hills,
Hills of dogwood in the spring,
Know a ministry more ancient than wandering,
Gentler than returning.
-GLENN W. RAINEY.
Level and lovely in the dawn's dim air,
Nacoochee veils her valley floor in mist;
The circling hills are hushed and shadowed there
With muted tones of green and amethyst.
And in the mist De Soto moves again,
Marching his soldiers as they marched of old-
The Valley is a very vale of Spain,
With morions and spears and glints of gold!
The fog dissolves... the ghostly Spaniards go,
Driven away by sunlight like a dream ...
A great blue heron, flying, circles low,
And a white crane is wading in the stream.
Her changing races vanish, one by one-
Nacoochee keeps her tryst.., with fog... and sun!
-AGNES KENDRICK GRAY.
OKEFENOKEE SWAMP
A wilderness of water-oaks and moss
And moccasins like limbs of rotting logs--
This is a jungle mortals dare not cross,
Dim-sentineled by hoot owls and by frogs.
The lily and the pickerel weed grow rank
Where turtles sun their. geometric roofs.
A hog bear cracks the brush; where a deer drank
There snaps the clattering of elfin hoofs.
This is a refuge for all hunted things.
So wildcat and the crocodile, veneered
By nature, lurk for soft, unwary wings.
This is a refuge for the wild and weird,
And those who know declare that hunted men
May enter here and not be seen again.
-ERNEST HARTSOCK.
TALLULAH DAM
Where once the flood of flowering thunder roared
Over the cliff in barbarous eloquence,
Cleaving its conquest with a golden sword
Down through the granite's black embattlements,
Today a dam of concrete sternly stifles
A thousand tons of silence in its breast,
That distant engines like continual rifles
May fire the electric challenge of unrest.
Now does the river's song cleave to its mouth;
Stopped with the gags of commerce is its tongue.
Beauty is silent now. And only drouth
Echoes the glory that the thunder sung.
How shall the sons of industry rejoice,
Who robbed the singing river of its voice?
-ERNEST HARTSOCK.
Over the autumn mountains sere with drouth,
A redder, more tremendous autumn blight
Blown by the wind from heaven's caustic mouth
Guzzles the earth with rabid appetite,
Consuming trees in blue typhoons of fire,
Tower on tower, spire on howling spire!
Screaming, the chestnut waves its flaming arms,
Maple and spruce and pine shout to the sky;
Buzzards and crows cry terrible alarms,
But oaks that cannot flee must stand and die.
Nibbled by rodent blaze to pith and marrow
The turk's cap lily, phlox and jewel-weed,
Laurel and aster, bergamot and yarrow,
Crackle in ashes, writhe and parch and bleed.
Nothing that lives can stay the Vulcan lord
Who clears new Edens with the flaming sword.
Nor are green things alone the lashed and lost,
But thrush and rabbit, rat and fox and wren
Perish in havoc in the holocaust
Lit by the callow indolence of men.
This is an autumn hills will long remember,
Billow on billow, char and spark and fume.
Not fifty springs can resurrect the ember
That was a golden wood before its doom--
Where now black trunks in deathly regiments
Accuse the killers of earth's innocents!
-ERNEST HARTSOCK.
There is a glory past the heart's believing
In the brown bosom of this acreage;
Here have the labor and the desperate grieving
Of fettered men evolved a heritage
Of hope and beauty out of ageless sorrow--
How many tears have wrought this snowy yield?
A yesterday is but a lost tomorrow
Within the borders of a cotton field.
Yet sun and stars seem strangely closer here
Than to more formal premises of earth:
These furrows have spurned weariness and fear
With the persistency of death and birth
Which brood forever over those who know
Nothing of life but cotton, row on row.
-MINNIE HITE MOODY.
The softest whisperings of the scented South,
And rust and roses in the cannon's mouth.
And where the thunders of the fight were born,
The wind's sweet tenor in the tinkling corn.
With song of larks, low-lingering in the loam,
And blue skies bending over love and home.
But still the thought: Somewhere-upon the hills,
Or where the vales ring with the whip-poor-wills,
Sad, wistful eyes and broken hearts that beat
For the loved sound of unreturning feet;
And when the oaks their leafy banners wave,
Dream of the battle and an unmarked grave!
-FRANK L. STANTON.
Some part of life becomes oblivion;
Something with roots deep buried in the heart
Of simple folk is lost, as one by one,
These pioneers of other days depart.
Only the country folk, whose careless tread
Endears a dusty road, can ever know
The peaceful, clattering joy of rude planks spread
Above a drowsy creek that gleams below.
Here was a refuge from the sudden showers
That swept like moving music field and wood,
And here cool, tunnelled dark when sultry hours
Danced with white feet beyond the bridge's hood...
Yet, there are soulless men whose hand and brain
Tear down what time will never give again.
-ANDERSON M. SCRUGGS.
In this emporium of soap and cheese,
Percale, molasses, snuff and ipecac,
The grizzled sages, mouthing mysteries,
Expertly spit tobacco at a crack.
One on a sugar-barrel picks his nose
With unction as he solves religion's riddles;
Two greybeard veterans' shrill tremolos
Fight out the war again like squabbling fiddles.
The room fuming with sweat and turf, grows warmer.
The village nitwit lolls gap-toothedly by;
The pot-faced sheriff Snores; a fox-red farmer
Sips paregoric and lambastes a fly.
Wise is the host to this senate of slackers;
He hides a rat-trap in each bin of crackers!
-ERNEST HARTSOCK.
Stifled by soot and cinders, grit and grime,
On red plush rodent years have nibbled bare,
These souls pursue the Odysseys of time.
Women with haggard eyes and straggling hair
Wrestle with grip and bundle, bag and box;
Small, egg-smeared urchins peer with eyes like glue
At irate men who fiercely study stocks.
Two newlyweds trade chocolates and coo.
The smoker steams. The seasoned salesman chokes
Within the ribald drouth, his red eyes blurry
With stale tobacco and the staler jokes.
Here are the humor and the hope and hurry-
That old humanity which made him merry
Who once. saw pilgrims bent for Canterbury.
-ERNEST HARTSOCK.
With massive voice and hectic metaphor
The preacher soars and flings his arms about;
He pounds the pulpit and stomps on the floor
Till sisters sob and whiskered brethren shout.
Thin children squirm; hot babies slobber and bawl.
Fat ladies fan while sunshine roasts the roof;
On bald heads dancing flies hold festival.
Outside, the horses paw with restless hoof.
Far off there chats the impious mocking-bird.
And now drifts in the reek of clove-rich ham.
The distant clink of dinner pans is heard
Till deacons ache about the diaphragm.
So at the sinners' call they rise and quicken,
Lured by a waiting heaven of fried chicken!
-ERNEST HARTSOCK.
Will never the memory of that sullen town,
With curious eye and hard unpitying glance,
Be written out of me? Must I go down
Even to death aware that neither chance
Nor favor will remove it from my mind?
Between the covers of the book I read,
Imagination struggling, still goes blind
On all envisioned scenes.., the brain takes heed
Of none but this: the muddy square at noon,
The buzzing flies, the gossips still haranguing
After the thing was done;-the village loon
Staring in witless glee, and him high-hanging,
That had no friends, no money in his pockets,
With both his eyes bulged out of their black sockets.
-GILBERT MAXWELL.
The tramp of horse adown a sullen glen;
Dark forms of stern, unmerciful masked men:
A clash of arms, a cloven prison door,
And a man's cry for mercy! . . . Then high o'er
The barren fields, dim outlined in the storm,
The swaying of a lifeless human form.
And close beside, in horror and affright,
A widowed woman wailing to the night.
FRANK L. STANTON.
I saw the gang from the County Farm
Breaking rock in a dusky swarm;
The guard had a gun in the crook of his arm,
But the convicts sang as the picks swung wide ...
When I git to heaven, gwine to sing an' shout,
An' nobody there, gwine to put me out:
Pharaoh's army done drownded!
The guard sat askew on the rump of a mule;
The prisoners under his drowsy rule
Were dusty and black as a black tar-pool,
And their clothes were striped like a zebra's hide . .
Pharaoh's aríy done drownded!
The granite rock was a weary load
For the men to pile on the County road;
Their muscles pulled and their backs were bowed,
But they sang like free men in their pride...
When I git to glory gwine to put on my shoes
An' walk all over heaven, jus' spreadin' the news;
Pharaoh's army done drownded!
-AGNES KENDRICK GRAY.
I know how washday comes in other places:
The roar of trucks, a laundry whistle's scream,
Frowns, dark as thunderclouds, on housewives' faces,
And kitchen windows frosty-white with steam;
But hereabouts a sunny springtime Monday
Is only laughter and a joyous song
Dark tongues have cherished overnight from Sunday-
A sort of [hallelujah] all day long.
I cannot paint in words the piney sweetness
Of lightwood fires beneath the black washpots;
I only know the day finds strange completeness
In clotheslines flapping over garden plots,
And I know too that sun on red clay hills
Spins brighter gold than even daffodils!
-MINNIE HITE MOODY.
AUBURN AVENUE
Two miles perhaps, and barely shared with other
Than his own blood, here is the negro's street--
Sister to dusky sister, brother to brother,
Here is his cradle and his last retreat.
Cabin and church and chinaberry tree,
Barbecue pit and funeral parlor, all
He finds beside him as his need may be,
Refuge, redemption, shade and food and pall.
Here too at night, on dark familiar wings,
Love and quick death move strangely, hand in hand;
Here is a place of furtive, hidden things,
Of drums that beat like rain on distant sand,
And lights that stab the sky like swift spears hurled
Deep in the jungles of another world.
COLORED EMERGENCY - GRADY HOSPITAL
Here two worlds meet, with pain their common kin,
The white man's wisdom and the black man's magic.
Here come the residue of chance and sin;
The pitiful, the weak, the maimed, the tragic.
On silent rubber wheels are borne away
Civilization's victims, one by one;
Here scalpel, probe and needle must gainsay
The scarlet deeds of razor, knife and gun.
Remote as beauty from this sterile place
Are the unearthly gestures of the past:
The dancing witch-man's lithe, mysterious grace,
The spells recalled, the conjurations cast,
The tom-tom's thump, the witch-pot's various brew-
Lily and lion-tail, deer's hoof and dew!
BUTTERMILK BOTTOM
The cabins crouch like hounds before the wind.
Winter comes here with awful bitterness;
Sad is the black man when the sun has thinned;
His hearth is always hungry, more or less.
But when bright April wakens, gold and green,
He pulls the stuffing from the broken pane
And cocks his feet up, happy and serene--
Winter has gone, summer will come again.
So once his fathers welcomed the hot blue sky
After a season of storm and dripping days,
Spreading their few possessions out to dry-
He has come honestly by his merest ways:
Their blood is his as sand is ever sand,
Bedding the rivers of land on utmost land.
DECATUR STREET
I saw her peering in a showcase under
Three high gilt balls of ancient implication:
Her face a thing of longing and of wonder,
His hands a moving symbol of persuasion.
And suddenly the hour, the city faded,
Her dusky grace, his avid, urging eyes,
And here were other lands and times invaded:
The gun glared hot from Abyssinian skies,
And in the market place he spread his wares,
Bracelets and beads, and hoops of glittering gold,
Bangles and chains, earrings in gleaming pairs--
Here is a drama countless ages old:
A dark-skinned maid, bright hope, a sparkling gem;
A haggling merchant from Jerusalem.
PEACHTREE CREEK
All night they fish here by the yellow flare
Of lanterns and low fires. At dusk they come,
When the mockingbird's song quivers on the air,
And the bullfrog pounds his lusty sunset drum.
All night their eager eyes watch the limp lines;
Their tongues are hushed against their sharp suspense;
Behind them the willows hung with shadowy vines
Erect a shelter and a dark defense
Not even the stars can cleave with their windy sailing
Above the clouds, the same high stars that spun
Over the palms that heard the fearful wailing
Of captive men, urged by the alien gun
So long ago these fishers cannot dream
How they came fishing by a Georgia stream.
LINCOLN CEMETERY
These were arranged upon a fresh clay mound:
Feathers, a stone, a bit of glass, a shell-
As if his fathers had claimed him underground,
Beyond the hour of Christian burial.
And it may be, indeed, that savage blood
Seeks out its own at last, wherever laid,
Even as frost reclaims the arrogant bud,
Straying from shelter early, unafraid.
Little he knew of far-off heathen ways;
Nothing at all of his forgotten sires;
A new world wove the pattern of his days-
He would have been unhappy by their fires-
Yet they have claimed him, breath and heart and bone,
With feathers and glass, a shell, a shining stone.
-MINNIE HITE MOODY.
CENTENNIAL SONNETS - 1837 ATLANTA 1937
THE FOUNDING
The "Iron Horses" from the east and west
And from the south met here among the hills;
And patient pioneers who felled and dressed
The virgin timber, forged with iron wills
A future city by the Indian Trail,
Straining with muscled arms and sinewy back
To build the log hut and to lay the rail,
Through early years of loneliness and lack,
In time of struggle and of battle-stress
They worked, endured and warred courageously.
And from their labor in the wilderness.
From out their vision, strength, and valiancy,
Hewn out of stalwart spirit, flesh and bone,
A city great and bountiful has grown!
RESURGENS
City resurgent from the fire and sword,
That like the risen Phoenix lives again,
Builded anew to bring triumphant word
Of life reborn from ashes, loss and pain-
Younger than cities that have known the tread
Of Spanish Don and pioneering priest,
You stand, with gallant eyes and lifted head,
Among your elder sisters, not the least.
Though you have been beset and sorely pressed
By bitterness of battle smoke and flame,
The years and peace have healed your wounded breast,
A century has laureled you with fame,
And now you rise, forgetting grief and wrong,
Like the burned Phoenix, beautiful and strong!
DOGWOOD
Drifts of unearthly white upon the air,
With flush of rose-red boughs like clouds at dawn!
What glory of the dogwood glimmers there,
What glory over hollow, hill and lawn!
Trees that are towers of ivory in the spring:
Green mansions for the birds in summer days;
And through serene October, crimsoning
With leaves and berries in autumnal blaze!
All seasons are their own, enchantress trees,
But March and April lend them sovereign power;
What miracles of white, what ecstasies,
To hold us breathless in their starry hour!
Fortunate city, beauty's chosen town,
That wears the dogwood as a bridal crown.
STONE MOUNTAIN
City forever sentineled by stone,
With the great mountain guardian at your gate,
Austerely bare as earth's primeval bone
And strong and proud as some impassive fate;
This strength and deep serenity of rock
Are in your steadfast spirit and your will;
No dark defeat mar crush or sorrow mock
While this grey granite guards your portal still.
And on the base of foothills' flinty land,
You build, secure, your boundaries spreading far,
A city set upon the rock you stand,
And for your talisman, your avatar,
Stone Mountain lifts in timeless majesty--
A symbol and a sign of destiny!
-AGNES KENDRICK GRAY.