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I snatch at my eagle plumes and long hair.
A hand cut my hair; my robes did deplete.
Left heart all unchanged; the work incomplete.
These favors unsought, I’ve paid since with care.
Dear teacher, you wished so much good to me,
That though I was blind, I strove hard to see.
Had you then, no courage frankly to tell
Old-race problems, Christ e’en failed to expel?

My light has grown dim, and black the abyss
That yawns at my feet. No bordering shore;
No bottom e’er found my hopes sunk before.
Despair I of good from deeds gone amiss.
My people, may God have pity on you!
The learning I hoped in you to imbue
Turns bitterly vain to meet both our needs.
No Sun for the flowers, vain planting seeds.

I’ve lost my long hair; my eagle plumes too.
From you my own people, I’ve gone astray.
A wanderer now, with no where to stay.
The Will-o-the-wisp learning, it brought me rue.
It brings no admittance. Where I have knocked
Some evil imps, hearts, have bolted and locked.
Alone with the night and fearful Abyss
I stand isolated, life gone amiss.

Intensified hush chills all my proud soul.
Oh, what am I? Whither bound thus and why?
Is there not a God on whom to rely?
A part of His Plan, the atoms enroll?
In answer, there comes a sweet Voice and clear,
My loneliness soothes with sounding so near.
A drink to my thirst, each vibrating note.
My vexing old burdens fall far remote.

“Then close your sad eyes. Your spirit regain.
Behold what fantastic symbols abound,
What wondrous host of cosmos around.
From silvery sand, the tiniest grain
To man and the planet, God’s at the heart.
In shifting mosaic, souls doth impart.
His spirits who pass through multiformed earth
Some lesson of life must learn in each birth.”

Divinely the Voice sang. I felt refreshed.
And vanished the night, abyss and despair.
Harmonious kinship made all things fair.
I yearned with my soul to venture unleashed.
Sweet freedom. There stood in waiting, a steed
All prancing, well bridled, saddled for speed.
A foot in the stirrup! Off with a bound!
As light as a feather, making no sound.

Through ether, long leagues we galloped away.
An angry red river, we shyed in dismay,
For here were men sacrificed (cruel deed)
To reptiles and monsters, war, graft, and greed.
A jungle of discord drops in the rear.
By silence is quelled suspicious old fear,
And spite-gnats’ low buzz is muffled at last.
Exploring the spirit, I must ride fast.

Away from these worldly ones, let us go,
Along a worn trail, much travelled and—Lo!
Familiar the scenes that come rushing by.
Now billowy sea and now azure sky.
Amid that enchanted spade, as they spun
Sun, moon, and the stars, their own orbits run!
Great Spirit, in realms so infinite reigns;
And wonderful wide are all His domains.

Hark! Here in the Spirit-world, He doth hold
A village of Indians, camped as of old.
Earth-legends by their fires, some did review,
While flowers and trees more radiant grew.
“Oh, You were all dead! In Lethe you were tossed!”
I cried, “Every where ’twas told you were lost!
Forsooth, they did scan your footprints on sand.
Bereaved, I did mourn your fearful sad end.”

Then spoke One of the Spirit Space, so sedate.
“My child, We are souls, forever and aye.
The signs in our orbits point us the way.
Like planets, we do not tarry nor wait.
Those memories dim, from Dust to the Man,
Called Instincts, are trophies won while we ran.
Now various stars where loved ones remain
Are linked to our hearts with Memory-chain.”

“In journeying here, the Aeons we’ve spent
Are countless and strange. How well I recall
Old Earth trails: the River Red; above all
The Desert sands burning us with intent.
All these we have passed to learn some new thing.
Oh hear me! Your dead doth lustily sing!
‘Rejoice! Gift of Life pray waste not in wails!
The maker of Souls forever prevails!’”

Direct from the Spirit-world came my steed.
The phantom has place in what was all planned.
He carried me back to God and the land
Where all harmony, peace and love are the creed.
In triumph, I cite my Joyous return.
The smallest wee creature I dare not spurn.
I sing “Gift of Life, pray waste not in wails!
The Maker of Souls forever prevails!”

This poem is in the public domain Expand +

Zitkála-Šá (“Red Bird”), also known as Gertrude Simmons Bonnin, (1876 - 1938) was Yankton Dakota writer, editor, translator, musician, educator, and political activist who fought for women's suffrage and Indigenous voting rights in the early 20th century. Her writings and activism led to citizenship and voting rights for not only women, but all Indigenous people. She was the author of "American Indian Stories", "Old Indian Legends," "Americanize The First American," and others. Member of the Woman's National Foundation, League of American Pen-Women, and the Washington Salon. This poem recounts the cutting of her hair by employees of White’s Indiana Manual Labor Institute in Wabash, Indiana, where Zitkála-Šá was boarded for three years. More

         A Home Song

I read within a poet's book
A word that starred the page:
"Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage!"

Yes, that is true; and something more
You'll find, where'er you roam,
That marble floors and gilded walls
Can never make a home.

But every house where Love abides,
And Friendship is a guest,
Is surely home, and home-sweet-home:
For there the heart can rest.

This poem is in the public domain. Expand +

Fearless riders of the gale,
In your bleak eyes is the memory
Of sinking ships:
Desire, unsatisfied,
Droops from your wings.

You lie at dusk
In the sea’s ebbing cradles,
Unresponsive to its mood;
Or hover and swoop,
Snatching your food and rising again,
Greedy,
Unthinking.

You veer and steer your callous course,
Unloved of other birds;
And in your soulless cry
Is the mocking echo
Of woman’s weeping in the night.
 
This poem is in the public domain. Expand +

Leonora Speyer, (1872 - 1956) was an American poet and professional violinist born in Washington, D.C. She studied music in Brussels, Paris, and Leipzig. When she moved back to N.Y. in 1915, she started writing poetry. Speyer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1927 for her poetry collection "Fiddler’s Farewell". She went to write other poetry collections.

Ah, how poets sing and die!
Make one song and Heaven takes it;
Have one heart and Beauty breaks it;
Chatterton, Shelley, Keats, and I
—Ah, how poets sing and die!

This poem is in the public domain. Expand +

Anne Bethel Spencer (born Bannister) (1882 – 1975). American poet, teacher, civil rights activist, librarian, and gardener. She was born in Henry County, Virginia. She was the first Virginian and one of three African American women included in the highly influential Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1973). Her writing was elegant and of the classical style. While a librarian at the all-black Dunbar High School, a position she held for 20 years, she supplemented the original three library books by bringing others from her own collection at home. She was an important member of the Harlem Renaissance and she was instrumental in reviving the chapter of the NAACP in Lynchburg, Virginia, along with her husband Edward, close friend Mary Rice Hayes Allen and others.

To serve my country day by day
At any humble post I may;
To honor and respect her Flag,
To live the traits of which I brag;
To be American in deed
As well as in my printed creed.

To stand for truth and honest toil,
To till my little patch of soil
And keep in mind the debt I owe
To them who died that I might know
My country, prosperous and free,
And passed this heritage to me.

I must always in trouble’s hour
Be guided by the men in power;
For God and country I must live,
My best for God and country give;
No act of mine that men may scan
Must shame the name American.

To do my best and play my part,
American in mind and heart;
To serve the flag and bravely stand
To guard the glory of my land;
To be American in deed,
God grant me strength to keep this creed. Expand +

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream, and not make dreams your master;
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And, which is more, you'll be a Man, my son!

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Joseph Rudyard Kipling (1865 – 1936) English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist. He was born in India, which inspired much of his work. His works of fiction include  "The Man Who Would be King" and the "Jungle Book"/ His Poems include "Mandalay", "The Gods of the Copybook Headings", "Gunga Din" and "If...."