John Charles McNeill

John Charles McNeill was a prominent American poet known for his works that vividly depicted the landscapes and spirit of North Carolina. Born on July 26, 1874, in Wagram, North Carolina, he won acclaim with his book 'Songs Merry and Sad,' which won the Patterson Cup in 1905. His poetry primarily reflects rural life and Southern traditions. Sadly, McNeill's promising career was cut short when he died on October 17, 1907, at the young age of 33.

July 26, 1874

October 17, 1907

English

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97": The Fast Mail

        Where the rails converge to the station yard
        She stands one moment, breathing hard,

        And then, with a snort and a clang of steel,
        She settles her strength to the stubborn wheel,

        And out, through the tracks that lead astray,
        Cautiously, slowly she picks her way,

        And gathers her muscle and guards her nerve,
        When she swings her nose to the westward curve,

        And takes the grade, which slopes to the sky,
        With a bound of speed and a conquering cry.

        The hazy horizon is all she sees,
        Nor cares for the meadows, stirred with bees,

        Nor the long, straight stretches of silent land,
        Nor the ploughman, that shades his eye with his hand,

John Charles McNeill

A Caged Mocking-Bird

        I pass a cobbler's shop along the street
            And pause a moment at the door-step, where,
        In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet,
            The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near,
            Fly o'er the fields at fullness of the year,
        And twitter where the autumn hedges run,
        Join all the months of music into one.

        I shut my eyes:    the shy wood-thrush is there,
            And all the leaves hang still to catch his spell;
        Wrens cheep among the bushes; from somewhere
            A bluebird's tweedle passes o'er the fell;
            From rustling corn bob-white his name doth tell;
        And when the oriole sets his full heart free
        Barefooted boyhood comes again to me.

      ...

John Charles McNeill

A Christmas Hymn

        Near where the shepherds watched by night
            And heard the angels o'er them,
        The wise men saw the starry light
            Stand still at last before them.
        No armored castle there to ward
            His precious life from danger,
        But, wrapped in common cloth, our Lord
            Lay in a lowly manger.
        No booming bells proclaimed his birth,
            No armies marshalled by,
        No iron thunders shook the earth,
            No rockets clomb the sky;
        The temples builded in his name
            Were shapeless granite then,
        And all the choirs that sang his fame
            Were later breeds of men.
        But, while the world about him slept,
            Nor cared that he was born,

John Charles McNeill

A Photograph

        When in this room I turn in pondering pace
        And find thine eyes upon me where I stand,
        Led on, as by Enemo's silken strand,
        I come and gaze and gaze upon thy face.

        Framed round by silence, poised on pearl-white grace
        Of curving throat, too sweet for beaded band,
        It seems as if some wizard's magic wand
        Had wrought thee for the love of all the race.

        Dear face, that will not turn about to see
        The tulips, glorying in the casement sun,
        Or, other days, the drizzled raindrops run

        Down the damp walls, but follow only me,
        Would that Pygmalion's goddess might be won
        To change this lifeless image into thee!

John Charles McNeill

A Prayer

        If many years should dim my inward sight,
            Till, stirred with no emotion,
        I might stand gazing at the fall of night
            Across the gloaming ocean;

        Till storm, and sun, and night, vast with her stars,
            Would seem an oft-told story,
        And the old sorrow of heroic wars
            Be faded of its glory;

        Till, hearing, while June's roses blew their musk,
            The noise of field and city,
        The human struggle, sinking tired at dusk,
            I felt no thrill of pity;

        Till dawn should come without her old desire,
            And day brood o'er her stages,--
        O let me die, too frail for nature's hire,
            And rest a million ages.

John Charles McNeill

A Secret

        A little baby went to sleep
            One night in his white bed,
        And the moon came by to take a peep
            At the little baby head.

        A wind, as wandering winds will do,
            Brought to the baby there
        Sweet smells from some quaint flower that grew
            Out on some hill somewhere.

        And wind and flower and pale moonbeam
            About the baby's bed
        Stirred and woke the funniest dream
            In the little sleepy head.

        He thought he was all sorts of things
            From a lion to a cat;
        Sometimes he thought he flew on wings,
            Or fell and fell, so that

        When morning broke he was right glad
            But much surprised to s...

John Charles McNeill

Alcestis

        Not long the living weep above their dead,
        And you will grieve, Admetus, but not long.
        The winter's silence in these desolate halls
        Will break with April's laughter on your lips;
        The bees among the flowers, the birds that mate,
        The widowed year, grown gaunt with memory
        And yearning toward the summer's fruits, will come
        With lotus comfort, feeding all your veins.
        The vining brier will crawl across my grave,
        And you will woo another in my stead.
        Those tender, foolish names you called me by,
        Your passionate kiss that clung unsatisfied,
        The pressure of your hand, when dark night hushed
        Life's busy stir, and left us two alone,
        Will you remember? or, when da...

John Charles McNeill

An Easter Hymn

        The Sun has come again and fed
            The lily's lamp with light,
        And raised from dust a rose, rich red,
            And a little star-flower, white;
        He also guards the Pleiades
            And holds his planets true:
        But we--we know not which of these
            The easier task to do.

        But, since from heaven he stoops to breathe
            A flower to balmy air,
        Surely our lives are not beneath
            The kindness of his care;
        And, as he guides the blade that gropes
            Up from the barren sod,
        So, from the ashes of our hopes,
            Will beauty grow toward God.

        Whate'er thy name, O Soul of Life,--
            We know but that thou art,--
     ...

John Charles McNeill

An Idyl

        Upon a gnarly, knotty limb
            That fought the current's crest,
        Where shocks of reeds peeped o'er the brim,
            Wild wasps had glued their nest.

        And in a sprawling cypress' grot,
            Sheltered and safe from flood,
        Dirt-daubers each had chosen a spot
            To shape his house of mud.

        In a warm crevice of the bark
            A basking scorpion clung,
        With bright blue tail and red-rimmed eyes
            And yellow, twinkling tongue.

        A lunging trout flashed in the sun,
            To do some petty slaughter,
        And set the spiders all a-run
            On little stilts of water.

        Toward noon upon the swamp there stole
            A deep, ...

John Charles McNeill

An Invalid

        I care not what his name for God may be,
            Nor what his wisdom holds of heaven and hell,
            The alphabet whereby he strives to spell
        His lines of life, nor where he bends his knee,
        Since, with his grave before him, he can see
            White Peace above it, while the churchyard bell
            Poised in its tower, poised now, to boom his knell,
        Seems but the waiting tongue of liberty.

        For names and knowledge, idle breed of breath,
            And cant and creed, the progeny of strife,
            Thronging the safe, companioned streets of life,
        Shrink trembling from the cold, clear eye of death,
            And learn too late why dying lips can smile:
            That goodness is the only creed worth...

John Charles McNeill

At Sea

        When the dim, tall sails of the ships were in motion,
            Ghostly, and slow, and silent-shod,
        We gazed where the dusk fled over the ocean,
            A great gray hush, like the shadow of God.

        The sky dome cut with its compass in sunder
            A circle of sea from the darkened land,--
        A circle of tremulous waste and wonder,
            O'er which one groped with a childish hand.

        The true stars came to their stations in heaven,
            The false stars shivered deep down in the sea,
        And the white crests went like monsters, driven
            By winds that never would let them be,

        And there, where the elements mingled and muttered,
            We stood, each man with a lone dumb heart,

John Charles McNeill

Attraction

        He who wills life wills its condition sweet,
        Having made love its mother, joy its quest,
        That its perpetual sequence might not rest
        On reason's dictum, cold and too discreet;

        For reason moves with cautious, careful feet,
        Debating whether life or death were best,
        And why pale pain, not ruddy mirth, is guest
        In many a heart which life hath set to beat.

        But I will cast my fate with love, and trust
        Her honeyed heart that guides the pollened bee
        And sets the happy wing-seeds fluttering free;

        And I will bless the law which saith, Thou must!
        And, wet with sea or shod with weary dust,
        Will follow back and back and back to thee!

John Charles McNeill

Away Down Home

        'T will not be long before they hear
            The bullbat on the hill,
        And in the valley through the dusk
            The pastoral whippoorwill.
        A few more friendly suns will call
            The bluets through the loam
        And star the lanes with buttercups
                Away down home.

        "Knee-deep!" from reedy places
            Will sing the river frogs.
        The terrapins will sun themselves
            On all the jutting logs.
        The angler's cautious oar will leave
            A trail of drifting foam
        Along the shady currents
                Away down home.

        The mocking-bird will feel again
            The glory of his wings,
        And wanton through the balmy air

John Charles McNeill

Barefooted

        The girls all like to see the bluets in the lane
            And the saucy johnny-jump-ups in the meadow,
        But, we boys, we want to see the dogwood blooms again,
            Throwin' a sort of summer-lookin' shadow;
        For the very first mild mornin' when the woods are white
            (And we needn't even ask a soul about it)
        We leave our shoes right where we pulled them off at night,
            And, barefooted once again, we run and shout it:
            You may take the country over--
            When the bluebird turns a rover,
            And the wind is soft and hazy,
            And you feel a little lazy,
            And the hunters quit the possums--
            It's the time for dogwood blossoms.

        We feel so light we ...

John Charles McNeill

Before Bedtime

        The cat sleeps in a chimney jam
            With ashes in her fur,
        An' Tige, from on the yuther side,
            He keeps his eye on her.

        The jar o' curds is on the hearth,
            An' I'm the one to turn it.
        I'll crawl in bed an' go to sleep
            When maw begins to churn it.

        Paw bends to read his almanax
            An' study out the weather,
        An' bud has got a gourd o' grease
            To ile his harness leather.

        Sis looks an' looks into the fire,
            Half-squintin' through her lashes,
        An' I jis watch my tater where
            It shoots smoke through the ashes.

John Charles McNeill

Dawn

        The hills again reach skyward with a smile.
            Again, with waking life along its way,
        The landscape marches westward mile on mile
            And time throbs white into another day.

        Though eager life must wait on livelihood,
            And all our hopes be tethered to the mart,
        Lacking the eagle's wild, high freedom, would
            That ours might be this day the eagle's heart!

John Charles McNeill

Folk Song

        When merry milkmaids to their cattle call
            At evenfall
            And voices range
        Loud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,

        Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,
            Like migrant doves,
            Wake and give wing
        To passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing.

        The new still holds the old moon in her arms;
            The ancient charms
            Of dew and dusk
        Still lure her nomad odors from the musk,

        And, at each day's millennial eclipse,
            On new men's lips,
            Some old song starts,
        Made of the music of millennial hearts,

        Whereto one listens as from long ago
            And learns to know

John Charles McNeill

For Jane's Birthday

        If fate had held a careless knife
            And clipped one line that drew,
        Of all the myriad lines of life,
            From Eden up to you;
        If, in the wars and wastes of time,
            One sire had met the sword,
        One mother died before her prime
            Or wed some other lord;

        Or had some other age been blest,
            Long past or yet to be,
        And you had been the world's sweet guest
            Before or after me:
        I wonder how this rose would seem,
            Or yonder hillside cot;
        For, dear, I cannot even dream
            A world where you are not!

        Thus heaven forfends that I shall drink
            The gall that might have been,
        If aught had...

John Charles McNeill

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