Southern Sampler - by Alma M. Womack


Poetry of Youth—Its Stories, Lessons, Inspiration, Wisdom

This article, one we ran a couple of years ago, appears again for your re-acquaintance with its enriching commentary from one of our columnists whose time and intentions in the hectic world of life’s demands and  families’ needs are not always her own to address. This version does, however, bear a bit of an update that includes Alma Womack’s always avid love of and concern about Our Nation.

  When I was a little girl, I loved to read poetry. Free verse was unknown to me, for poems were stories that rhymed; and if they didn’t rhyme, they weren’t poetry. It is easy and simple to be a child and have absolute convictions of right and wrong, proper and improper, without any alien ideas messing up an orderly little world. (Some would say I never left that world.)
  I read all types of poetry, but was especially seized by those poets who told us to buck up and get on with life. Rudyard Kipling was one of the leaders of this particular type of poetry along with Edgar Guest, another favorite. They believed there was no point wasting time longing for what never was or what might have been; just get on with life. You would never have caught me memorizing love poems even though I did read some of Robert Burns because he was a Scot. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways” was as far as I ever got on that one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
  Story poems were so worthwhile like “Little Orphant Annie,” “The Blue and The Gray,” “The Highwayman,” “Ostler Joe,” “Mary, Queen of Scots,” “Over the Hill to the Poorhouse,” “Little Boy Blue,” “Hiawatha,” “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “Kentucky Belle,” “Casey at the Bat,” and the really good “The Cremation of Sam McGee.” I never learned all of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” but I read it enough to be able to know that it never said, “Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.” Patriotic poetry was fine, too; for the poets of the 1800s and early 1900s believed in America; in the goodness of her people; in the justice of her laws; in the outright incontrovertible evidence that, if we weren’t already the greatest nation on earth, we soon would be.
  Memorizing historical and patriotic poems gave me an edge when it came to studying history and having to know dates. I learned one poem that went from 1492 to the Great War’s end in 1917. It was an old poem, to be sure, but it got me through a lot of American history. Then there was the president’s poem that began “First stands the lofty Washington, that noble, great, immortal one” and goes on down the line to Woodrow Wilson (another oldie). Poems about John Brown, Sheridan, and Maud Muller were Yankee poems, of course, because they celebrated the wrong side of the War Between the States, but I still read them anyway. “The Bonnie Blue Flag” was my favorite from that time period; for it was not only a good poem but also an excellent song, encouraging our courageous countrymen in their fight for liberty.
  It would be difficult to pick a favorite poem from all the ones I loved. I used to memorize them just for the sake of doing it; there was no teacher prodding me to learn something for next week’s English lesson. Even though we did memorize poems in the elementary grades, it was usually for some contest with another class or in class competition.
  In fifth grade, in Ms. Ollie Sanson’s room, we had several students memorize poems for the literary rally competition held in Harrisonburg, Louisiana, each spring. Carolyn Thompson learned “Father William” and I did “Johnny Appleseed.” I can’t remember what the boys did or who ended up going to the rally; but by the time our practice sessions were over, we could do each other’s poems as well as our own.
One year for Mother’s Day, I was going to memorize a poem for Mama called “Only One Mother.” I was on the front porch in a rocking chair going over my lines again to make certain they were just right. I was rocking and reciting; and when getting to the line “only one Mother the wide world over,” I rocked right off the porch onto the very hard ground. This was a drop of about five feet, which is pretty far if you’re sitting in a non-bouncing wooden chair. The fall stunned me for a bit; but after determining there were no broken bones or broken chair parts, I quietly put the chair back on the porch. Lucky for me there were no little brothers around, or they would have told on me, and I would have been in trouble for not paying attention to what I was doing.
  In high school, we all had to memorize poems, and sometimes the entire class had to do the same poem. I can still hear my friend Mildred Mount, reciting, “Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream; for the soul is dead that slumbers and things are not what they seem.” Mildred did not like poetry at all; but a grade was involved, so she did it with a lot of coaching from me.
  One year, probably junior year, our whole class had to pick a favorite poem to read in Mrs. Helen Riley’s class. Of course, nerd that I was, I picked some long-winded poem like “Kentucky Belle” while classmate Ken Foster picked the shortest one in our book, “Fog.” He was kinder to the class than I was.
  We also had to memorize the “Preamble to the Constitution,” the “Preamble to the Declaration of Independence,” “Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address,” and Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy from Macbeth, to name a few. My favorite memory from those recitations is from James White and his delivery of the “Gettysburg Address” in Mr. Reece Breithaupt’s history class. James was doing fine until he got to the part about “this Nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom,” and he made a little slip. Already nervous at having to do this insane assignment, he blurted out that “this Nation, by God, shall have a new birth of freedom!” He sat on the row next to me, and he was my friend, so I just laid my head down to keep from laughing. I can still see his earnest young face just trying to get through the ordeal. Two years later, he was killed in Viet Nam, fighting for the freedom and liberty he talked about that day in history class.
  His words still resonate with me now, for we are fighting for a new birth of freedom in our country, and may God be with us in our struggle to regain the freedoms we have lost. Maybe we all ought to read “The Concord Hymn” to see where we started all those many years ago.
  Now that I have three little grandsons, I have been re-reading some of my old poetry books, looking for things that will be suitable to read to them when they are a bit older. I found this little poem in an Edgar A. Guest poetry book, given to me by Ms. Marjorie Smith some years back. This book was originally given to her dad, Dr. Temple J. Smith, by Mr. Joe Trisler of Blue Cane Bend, Louisiana, for Christmas in 1923, which makes the book at least 88 Christmases old. The poem is called “Answering Him”; and reading it makes me a bit sad, knowing what we have lost from our culture since the early days of the twentieth century:

“When shall I be a man?” he said,
As I was putting him to bed.
“How many years will have to be
Before Time makes a man of me?
And will I be a man when I
Am grown up big?” I heaved a sigh,
Because it called for careful thought
To give the answer that he sought.

And so I sat him on my knee,
And said to him: “A man you’ll be
When you have learned that honor brings
More joy than all the crowns of kings;
That it is better to be true
To all who know and trust in you
Than all the gold of earth to gain
If winning it shall leave a stain.

“When you can fight the victory sweet,
Yet bravely swallow down defeat,
And cling to hope and keep the right,
Nor use deceit instead of might;
When you are kind and brave and clean,
And fair to all and never mean;
When there is good in all you plan,
That day, my boy, you’ll be a man.

“Some of us learn this truth too late,
That years alone can’t make us great;
That many who are three-score, ten
Have fallen short of being men,
Because in selfishness they fought
And toiled without refining thought;
And whether wrong or whether right
They lived but for their own delight.

“When you have learned that you must hold
Your honor dearer far than gold;
That no ill-gotten wealth or fame
Can pay you for your tarnished name;
And when in all you say or do
Of others you’re considerate, too,
Content to do the best you can
By such a creed, you’ll be a man.”

  These are wise words for little boys and for grown-ups, too. I wish that the politicians in Washington had been trained with these concepts when they were small and still teachable.