Jean Starr Untermeyer

Jean Starr Untermeyer Poems

How memory cuts away the years,
And how clean the picture comes
Of autumn days, brisk and busy;
...

I edged back against the night.
The sea growled assault on the wave-bitten shore.
And the breakers,
...

I stand between them and the outer winds,
But I am a crumbling wall.
They told me they could bear the blast alone,
They told me: that was all.
...

Across the hot square, where the barbaric sun
Pours coarse laughter on the crowds,
Trumpets throw their loud nooses
...

When an old man walks with lowered head
And eyes that do not seem to see,
I wonder does he ponder on
The worm he was or is to be.
...

Temper my spirit, oh Lord,
Burn out its alloy,
And make it a pliant steel for thy wielding,
Not a clumsy toy,
...

'Isn't it quaint,' he turned and said to me,
'To watch these village people at the fair?'
But I had seen too often what was there;
...

Since the earliest days I have dressed myself
In fanciful clothes;
Trying to satisfy a whispering insistence.
...

Plow not nor plant this arid mound.
Here is no sap for seed,
No ferment for your need-
Ungrateful ground!
...

They say I have a constant heart, who know
Not anything of how it turns and yields
First here, first there; nor how in separate fields
...

11.

Wind and wave and the swinging rope
Were calling me last night;
None to save and little hope,
No inner light.
...

The Best Poem Of Jean Starr Untermeyer

Autumn: To My Mother

How memory cuts away the years,
And how clean the picture comes
Of autumn days, brisk and busy;
Charged with keen sunshine.
And you, stirred with activity, 5
The spirit of those energetic days.

There was our back-yard,
So plain and stripped of green,
With even the weeds carefully pulled away
From the crooked red bricks that made the walk,
And the earth on either side so black.

Autumn and dead leaves burning in the sharp air.
And winter comforts coming in like a pageant.
I shall not forget them:—
Great jars laden with the raw green of pickles,
Standing in a solemn row across the back of the porch,
Exhaling the pungent dill;
And in the very centre of the yard,
You, tending the great catsup kettle of gleaming copper,
Where fat, red tomatoes bobbed up and down
Like jolly monks in a drunken dance.
And there were bland banks of cabbages that came by the wagon-load,
Soon to be cut into delicate ribbons
Only to be crushed by the heavy, wooden stompers.
Such feathery whiteness—to come to kraut!
And after, there were grapes that hid their brightness under a grey dust,
Then gushed thrilling, purple blood over the fire;
And enamelled crab-apples that tricked with their fragrance
But were bitter to taste.
And there were spicy plums and ill-shaped quinces,
And long string beans floating in pans of clear water
Like slim, green fishes.
And there was fish itself,
Salted, silver herring from the city….

And you moved among these mysteries,
Absorbed and smiling and sure;
Stirring, tasting, measuring,
With the precision of a ritual.
I like to think of you in your years of power—
You, now so shaken and so powerless—
High priestess of your home.

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