Something to Think About
Something to Think About
“Ah!” sighed the World, as he
turned in bed
With a pillow of cloud for
his poor old head
And lowered the roller
shade of Night
And blew out a star that
shone too bright–
“The year is gone with his
toil and strife,
The storm and surge of the
tide of life.
The crazy brawl of the
human breed,
And I’ll rest at last – for
it’s rest I need!”
Down came an elf through the
moonlight pale
From the Milky Way
on a comet’s tail;1
He turned up the lamps
that were burning low
And prodded the World
with a small pink toe.
“Get up!” he cried, “That’s
enough for you!
There’s a heap of things for
a World to do!
“There are wounds to bind,
there’s a map to fix,
There’s a beautiful tangle
of politics,
There are towns to build
there are wheels to
start
There’s a load of crowns
for the junkman’s cart
There’s an ancient fraud in
a
brand new dress,
There are lovely riddles for
men to guess,
There are dreams to dream
There are heights to climb,
And you can’t lie there and
waste your2
time!”
So the World rose up
with a plaintive groan,
Stubbing his toe on a
tumbled throne,
To round the Sun on his
wonted track -
The deep-grooved trail of the
Zodiac,
That way of sorrows and
joys
and aches,
Of noble efforts and fool
mistakes.
But it’s good for the poor
old World, at that;
For a drowsy Planet gets
much too fat.
-
Arthur Guiterman:
A Ballad-Maker’s Pack
New Year,
1919
by Arthur Guiterman
from A Ballad-Maker’s Pack
1 Gramma
left out this stanza between “comet’s tail” and “He turned up”:
His
traveling-bag, in letters clean
Was
marked, “A.D. Nineteen-nineteen.”
2 Guiterman used “my”.