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TITLE: MAIN STREET, ETC
AUTHOR: JOYCE KILMER
EBOOK: E02711 (O'Briens Book Cellar)

Main Street and Other Poems
by Joyce Kilmer

[Alfred Joyce Kilmer, American (New Jersey & New York) Poet -- 1886-1918.]

[Note on text: There were no significant italics in this text.
Lines longer than 75 characters have been broken according to metre,
from a 1917 (original) edition.]

To Mrs. Edmund Leamy

[A number of these poems originally appeared in various periodicals.]

Contents

Main Street
Roofs
The Snowman in the Yard
A Blue Valentine
Houses
In Memory
Apology
The Proud Poet
Lionel Johnson
Father Gerard Hopkins, S. J.
Gates and Doors
The Robe of Christ
The Singing Girl
The Annunciation
Roses
The Visitation
Multiplication
Thanksgiving
The Thorn
The Big Top
Queen Elizabeth Speaks
Mid-ocean in War-time
In Memory of Rupert Brooke
The New School
Easter Week
The Cathedral of Rheims
Kings
The White Ships and the Red

Main Street and Other Poems

Main Street

(For S. M. L.)

I like to look at the blossomy track of the moon upon the sea,
But it isn't half so fine a sight as Main Street used to be
When it all was covered over with a couple of feet of snow,
And over the crisp and radiant road the ringing sleighs would go.

Now, Main Street bordered with autumn leaves, it was a pleasant thing,
And its gutters were gay with dandelions early in the Spring;
I like to think of it white with frost or dusty in the heat,
Because I think it is humaner than any other street.

A city street that is busy and wide is ground by a thousand wheels,
And a burden of traffic on its breast is all it ever feels:
It is dully conscious of weight and speed and of work that never ends,
But it cannot be human like Main Street, and recognise its friends.

There were only about a hundred teams on Main Street in a day,
And twenty or thirty people, I guess, and some children out to play.
And there wasn't a wagon or buggy, or a man or a girl or a boy
That Main Street didn't remember, and somehow seem to enjoy.

The truck and the motor and trolley car and the elevated train
They make the weary city street reverberate with pain:
But there is yet an echo left deep down within my heart
Of the music the Main Street cobblestones made beneath a butcher's cart.

God be thanked for the Milky Way that runs across the sky,
That's the path that my feet would tread whenever I have to die.
Some folks call it a Silver Sword, and some a Pearly Crown,
But the only thing I think it is, is Main Street, Heaventown.

Roofs

(For Amelia Josephine Burr)

The road is wide and the stars are out
  and the breath of the night is sweet,
And this is the time when wanderlust should seize upon my feet.
But I'm glad to turn from the open road and the starlight on my face,
And to leave the splendour of out-of-doors for a human dwelling place.

I never have seen a vagabond who really liked to roam
All up and down the streets of the world and not to have a home:
The tramp who slept in your barn last night and left at break of day
Will wander only until he finds another place to stay.

A gypsy-man will sleep in his cart with canvas overhead;
Or else he'll go into his tent when it is time for bed.
He'll sit on the grass and take his ease so long as the sun is high,
But when it is dark he wants a roof to keep away the sky.

If you call a gypsy a vagabond, I think you do him wrong,
For he never goes a-travelling but he takes his home along.
And the only reason a road is good, as every wanderer knows,
Is just because of the homes, the homes, the homes to which it goes.

They say that life is a highway and its milestones are the years,
And now and then there's a toll-gate where you buy your way with tears.
It's a rough road and a steep road and it stretches broad and far,
But at last it leads to a golden Town where golden Houses are.

The Snowman in the Yard

(For Thomas Augustine Daly)

The Judge's house has a splendid porch, with pillars and steps of stone,
 And the Judge has a lovely flowering hedge that came from across the seas;
In the Hales' garage you could put my house and everything I own,
 And the Hales have a lawn like an emerald and a row of poplar trees.

Now I have only a little house, and only a little lot,
 And only a few square yards of lawn, with dandelions starred;
But when Winter comes, I have something there
  that the Judge and the Hales have not,
 And it's better worth having than all their wealth --
   it's a snowman in the yard.

The Judge's money brings architects to make his mansion fair;
 The Hales have seven gardeners to make their roses grow;
The Judge can get his trees from Spain and France and everywhere,
 And raise his orchids under glass in the midst of all the snow.

But I have something no architect or gardener ever made,
 A thing that is shaped by the busy touch of little mittened hands:
And the Judge would give up his lonely estate, where the level snow is laid
 For the tiny house with the trampled yard,
   the yard where the snowman stands.

They say that after Adam and Eve were driven away in tears
 To toil and suffer their life-time through,
   because of the sin they sinned,
The Lord made Winter to punish them for half their exiled years,
 To chill their blood with the snow, and pierce
   their flesh with the icy wind.

But we who inherit the primal curse, and labour for our bread,
 Have yet, thank God, the gift of Home, though Eden's gate is barred:
And through the Winter's crystal veil, Love's roses blossom red,
 For him who lives in a house that has a snowman in the yard.

A Blue Valentine

(For Aline)

Monsignore,
    Right Reverend Bishop Valentinus,
Sometime of Interamna, which is called Ferni,
Now of the delightful Court of Heaven,
I respectfully salute you,
I genuflect
And I kiss your episcopal ring.

It is not, Monsignore,
The fragrant memory of your holy life,
Nor that of your shining and joyous martyrdom,
Which causes me now to address you.
But since this is your august festival, Monsignore,
It seems appropriate to me to state
According to a venerable and agreeable custom,
That I love a beautiful lady.
Her eyes, Monsignore,
Are so blue that they put lovely little blue reflections
On everything that she looks at,
Such as a wall
Or the moon
Or my heart.
It is like the light coming through blue stained glass,
Yet not quite like it,
For the blueness is not transparent,
Only translucent.
Her soul's light shines through,
But her soul cannot be seen.
It is something elusive, whimsical, tender, wanton, infantile, wise
And noble.
She wears, Monsignore, a blue garment,
Made in the manner of the Japanese.
It is very blue --
I think that her eyes have made it more blue,
Sweetly staining it
As the pressure of her body has graciously given it form.
Loving her, Monsignore,
I love all her attributes;
But I believe
That even if I did not love her
I would love the blueness of her eyes,
And her blue garment, made in the manner of the Japanese.

Monsignore,

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