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Over in Kentucky
“THIS is the smokiest city in the world,” | |
| A slight voice, wise and weary, said, “I know. | |
| My sash is tied, and, if my hair was curled, | |
| I ’d like to have my prettiest hat and go | |
| There where some violets had to stay, you said, | 5 |
| Before your torn-up butterflies were dead— | |
| Over in Kentucky.” | |
| |
| Then one whose half-sad face still wore the hue | |
| The North Star loved to light and linger on, | |
| Before the war, looked slowly at me too, | 10 |
| And darkly whispered: “What is gone is gone. | |
| Yet, though it may be better to be free, | |
| I ’d rather have things as they used to be | |
| Over in Kentucky.” | |
| |
| Perhaps I thought how fierce the master’s hold, | 15 |
| Spite of all armies, kept the slave within; | |
| How iron chains, when broken, turned to gold, | |
| In empty cabins, where glad songs had been | |
| Before the Southern sword knew blood and rust, | |
| Before wild cavalry sprang from the dust, | 20 |
| Over in Kentucky. | |
| |
| Perhaps—But, since two eyes, half full of tears, | |
| Half full of sleep, would love to keep awake | |
| With fairy pictures from my fairy years, | |
| I have a phantom pencil that can make | 25 |
| Shadows of moons, far back and faint, to rise | |
| On dewier grass and in diviner skies, | |
| Over in Kentucky. | |
| |
| For yonder river, wider than the sea, | |
| Seems sometimes in the dusk a visible moan | 30 |
| Between two worlds,—one fair, one dear to me. | |
| The fair has forms of ever-glimmering stone, | |
| Weird-whispering ruin, graves where legends hide, | |
| And lies in mist upon the charmèd side, | |
| Over in Kentucky. | 35 |
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| The dear has restless, dimpled, pretty hands, | |
| Yearning toward unshaped steel, unfancied wars, | |
| Unbuilded cities, and unbroken lands, | |
| With something sweeter than the faded stars | |
| And dim, dead dews of my lost romance, found | 40 |
| In beauty that has vanished from the ground | |
| Over in Kentucky. | |
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