Our Cape Cod Home
O ancient Cape Cod house whose drooping eaves
Prim as the bonnet of a Pilgrim maid
Are sere and grey as Autumn’s driven leaves,
What comfort seems to drowse beneath their shade
Comfort that fairly drips like Heaven’s own dew -
The tranquil calm that our forefathers knew.
How many gales about those eaves have roared,
How many summer heats have come and gone,
And left their imprint on each weathered board
Time seasoned and discolored, handed on
To younger generations. Quaint and queer
You seem, but O your wealth of homey cheer!
Your architects were of a sombre breed,
Their doctrines gnarled and knotty to the core,
And yet you gave them refuge, ’twas their need;
What battlemented towers had yielded more?
A treasure galleon, in your roomy hold
Were sanctuary from the storm and cold.
And beauty thralled them too, those builders dour,
Though beauty was to them, sedate and plain;
They wrought in harmony with marsh and moor
In simple lines, and time’s enduring stain
On crumbling shingles, where the lichens grow
To mingle with the greys their golden glow.
With broad axe and with adze those builders wrought
And in the wilderness foundations laid
For our great nation. Liberty they sought
With toil and thrift - sound virtues roughly made
Of homespun stuff, quite like the clothes they wore
As out of fashion as your buckled floor!
The times were hard, the men who lived them rude,
They lacked the many luxuries we know;
The life within your walls was drab and crude,
At least our demagogues have told us so;
And yet along your pathway rimmed with flowers
How shallow flows this flippant life of ours!
The new apartment in the city’s maze
Has fixtures that your age had never seen,
Machine made gadgets, till our very days
Seem spun for us, upon a vast machine;
And we ourselves an inconspicuous part
Of some grim Frankenstein without a heart.
Caught in the maelstrom of the times we strive
To please our gods of gold with feet of clay;
Exchange your solace for a noisy hive;
Clutch at the shell and throw the pearl away;
And your unbounded views of ocean’s foam
Shut out with walls that never can be home.
O quaint old Cape Cod house, precarious link
Between the past and present, Life, no doubt,
Means progress, - so at least we’re taught to think
Though often wonder what ’tis all about -
But as we smile at customs you have known
How are the angels saddened at our own!