Newspaper History

Tag: Edmund Vance Cooke

  • Mysteries

    From The Topeka State Journal, February 10, 1915. By Edmund Vance Cooke.

    Twenty bad men in the bar one night,
        Each one shoving his foot on the rail;
    None of them sober and most of them tight,
    Every one cussing to kick up a fight,
        Each one a devil and swinging his tail;
    Most of them dead when the scrap was done—
    Nobody knew how the row had begun!

    A squally day and a celluloid boat,
        Launched on a river of gasoline;
    “As freaky a craft as was ever afloat,”
    The captain swore in his husky throat,
        “With her firebox next to her magazine.”
    He lighted his pipe and tossed his match—
    Now how could the conflagration catch?

    Generals, admirals, emperors, kings,
        And babes from the cradle trained to kill;
    Davids swinging Goliath slings,
    Navies filled with eagle wings,
        Nations of armies, life a drill.
    Courtiers cunning in wild excuse—
    What a surprise when the war broke loose!

  • Father

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, December 3, 1913. By Edmund Vance Cooke.

    He was not the kind of a father that you read about in books,
    He wasn’t long on language and he wasn’t strong on looks.
    He was not the sort of father that you hear about in plays.
    He was just a human father with a human father’s ways.

    No, he never balked at working, but when he was through it once,
    Right down to the grass was father, with the children doing stunts.
    All of us would pile up on him and he’d welcome all the pack,
    But I’m wondering after play time, did we stay there—on his back?

    Wasn’t strong on dissipation, said his “gambol on the green”
    Was to fill the platter faster than the kids could lick it clean.
    And the next best game he knew of was an equal one to beat;
    It was keeping leather covers up to the supply of feet.

    Always on the job was father, plugging steady like and strong,
    Never making any noise, but helping all his little world along.
    And to think! Lord! ain’t it funny you can see things years and years
    And yet never know you’ve seen them, till your eyes are blind with tears.

    Quit his job one day and left us, smiling as he went away;
    Eulogy seems all so foolish. What can anybody say?
    Seemed like even in his leaving he was saving someone bother,
    For the one word on the granite which lies over him is “Father.”

  • Thanksgiving Thoughts

    From the Omaha Daily Bee, November 27, 1913. By Edmund Vance Cooke.

    Come! Let us take our prated prayers, review them and examine;
    Are they because our feast is full while others share a famine?
    Are they because we ride the road which others pick and shovel?
    Are they because our walls are wide while others crowd a hovel?
    Are they because our limbs are swathed, while some are rawed by weather?
    Or are they only for the gifts we all may share together?

    Thanks are not thanks which only make another’s want our measure,
    Or only by another’s pain to gauge a selfish pleasure.
    Thanks are not thanks whose words are stones to pelt a lesser brother,
    Or that we make our blessedness the burden of another.
    Thanks are not thanks for tender palms that others be as leather;
    Thanks are but thanks for such good gifts as all hands hold together.

    Give us to know the larger day which deprecates Thanksgiving,
    Save for the universal feast which spreads for all the living.
    Give us to pray the larger prayer whereby our senses quicken
    And sees no gain in any good whereby another’s stricken.
    Give us to scorn the captured spoil which asks no why or whether.
    Give us to toil toward that gain which all may share together.

  • Coming Home from School

    From The Tacoma Times, October 10, 1912.
By Edmund Vance Cooke.
 

 The buoyant boys, the gladsome girls are coming home from school!
 My blood runs red with revelry, though years have made it cool.
 The flit of little bodies and the bobbing mob of heads,
 Canary yellows, raven blacks, thrush browns and robin reds!
 The swirl of girlish garments and the letting loose of lungs,
 The babble and the Babel, yet the fusion of the tongues.
 O, Wisdom, thou'rt a droning dunce! O, Learning, thou'rt a fool!
 O, let me be a child again, and coming home from school.
 
 O, School house, I remember well how once I stood In awe
 Of your massive, passive countenance, your wide, omnivorous maw.
 An Ogre, you, with appetite for little girls and boys;
 You swallowed us in silence and you spewed us out with noise.
 Your stony stare glared at us as we hastened from or to you,
 But you never smiled, you never frowned in all the years I knew you,
 But we — we shrieked in ecstasy to rid us of your rule,
 And it's oh, to be a child again and coming home from school.
 
 As many hours as Jonah's days within the spacious fish
 The tyrant school house held us, and as much against our wish,
 And the vitals of our liberty had scarce begun to sprout
 Till this new Promethean vulture, all relentless, tore them out.
 Yet, even as a traveler across the scorching sands
 Is all the more rejoiced because he comes to fertile lands,
 So we leaped as from a desert to a garden sweet and cool;
 So it's oh, to be a child again and coming home from school!
 
 Of course, I've not forgotten that the troubles of our youth
 Were as vital in their seeming as our real ones are, in truth,
 But, by our backward vision now, how fruitful was our day!
 And the work we thought was irksome gave us appetite for play.
 And shall our eyes be wiser, when our present day is past?
 Tucked in our turf-trimmed coverlet, shall we behold, at last,
 That Life was all a lessonhouse, which irked us by its rule,
 But we are children once again and coming home from school.