Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE BASKET-MAKER, by VIRGINIA TAYLOR MCCORMICK


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE BASKET-MAKER, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Day after day he sits
Last Line: And the freshness of summer rain.
Subject(s): Weavers And Weaving


Day after day he sits,
His back like a low, round hill,
While with knotted and work-worn hands
(That have gained each year new skill)
He plaits the reeds and withes
Into intricate, beautiful things,
Whose patterns, like thoughts, go out
In infinite wanderings. . . .
Patterns that bring to the man,
Crouched under the matted hair
(Gone grey with the sorrow of days
And leaden nights of despair)
Dear dreams of a wild-spent youth,
When the fields and the roads called, Come!
Of a girl, madonna-faced, pale,
Whose beauty had left him dumb.

For the heritage of his race
Was silence . . . he found no word . . .
Love cowered and shrank away
Like a wing-clipped, frightened bird.
Ambitionless, dull, half dead,
Day in, day out he stayed
Bent over his wooden bench. . . .
Plain useful baskets were made. . . .
Then something stirred in his soul
And wakened the beauty that lay
Dormant through weary years,
Too numb to hope or pray. . . .

So the twisted yet habile hands
Forever laid aside
The patterns old and plain. . . .
Fine flexible reeds were dyed
With exquisite colours, soft
As lights in the skies of June
When the gold of the setting sun
Gives place to an argent moon:
With crimson and blue and green,
With deep, rich purple of Tyre,
And delicate amber and bronze
Like the flame of a driftwood fire.

Now ever the strong gnarled hands
Weave patterns whose splendour seems
To crown the bowed grey head
With a halo of wonderful dreams!
And always the wearied back
Leans over light shapes so rare
That the spirit of ancient Greece
Appears incarnate there.
And deep in the grief-seared heart
Where beauty has bloomed from pain,
Is the music of rustling wings
And the freshness of summer rain.





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