With eagle intrepidity, she eyes
The pole that slants from gatepost to the ground,
Stretches a wing in arrogant surmise,
And then, defiantly, as if she frowned
At danger, ventures up the pole with most
Precarious balancings with claw and feather
Till she attains the summit of the post,
A vaster altitude, a loftier weather.
She pauses there an instant, plump with pride,
Then flaps to outer earth where no grass grows.
Shelter and corn are on the other side,
But she, demurely clucking, only knows,
With chicken-headed pertinacity,
Fences are for escaping and she is free.
–Saturday Evening Post, 1947?
–republished in Halfway Up the Sky
Even a Hen
Dispensable
Whoever has resigned
Himself to fate, will find
Fate without hesitation,
Accepts his resignation.
–Saturday Evening Post, 1947?
Of Courage
I have loved courage; I have loved the word,
Its look on any printed pate, its shape
On any lips, its meaning, clear unblurred,
In weather faces, seeking no escape
In bitterness from bitter circumstances,
And I have loved it in the candid mind
That, scorning easy falsities, advances
Toward truth, however, seemingly unkind.
I have loved well each winter-blooming flower
And each gaunt, stubborn, twisted tree, that brought
New courage to me in a desperate hour;
For, loving courage, I have always sought
For it in everything that I have known,
Because I have scant courage of my own
–From Think About These Things (written in 1947?)