FRIDAY, MAY 8, 1942
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN, LAWRENCE, KANSAS
PAGE THREE
Visitation By Bill Feeney
(Editor's note: This poem won first prize in the Carruth Poetry contest.)
Sand dunes, living, restless, hungry heaps, Slowly pursued and swallowed tiny patches of green along the shore of Lake Michigan; While grey-blue waters watched the endless, unfair struggle And gulls soared overhead, majestic and unconcerned.
To this wilderness came men with charts and dreams and surveying instruments;
For here they planned to build a steel mill.
Now the sand dunes face a foe much stronger than tiny patches of green.
Alien sounds rise.
Shouting men, and clang of digging tools and machinery Drown the even thunder of waves pounding on hard, wet sands at the shoreline
Spotted with driftwood and decaying fish.
The harsh, shrill squealing of the gulls is stilled And tiny lizards flee before the heavy tread of strangers. Man-made towers lunge at the sky, and exhale thick clouds of smoke; Soot tints the sands, sometimes silvery, sometimes black. Steel must be made for bridges and buildings—and guns And sand dunes must retreat before the march of working men Who want steel to push to the sky, and to probe the earth for its treasures. Sand dunes are not productive, they destroy Tiny patches of green along the shore of Lake Michigan.
When I walk through the dunes, and climb to the top of the highest,
So that I may look at the distant mills
With a dirty city huddled close, as a child huddles close to its parents
For the mills are parents of the city.
(Workers must have a place to live, so they built one
After they built the mills.)
Sometimes I wonder.
Steel is used for bombs and shells and guns
Someday, maybe, the steel will return to the place where it was born.
For steel mills are military objectives
For steel mills are military objectives.
Then the dunes will sweep in and over ruined mills and a city of dead men And tiny lizards can frolic and sun themselves, unafraid While grey-blue waters roll along a sandy shore, and watch An endless, unfair struggle between sand dunes and green patches along the shore of Lake Michigan.
But all this is pure speculation And I must not spend too much time here For I go to work on the midnight shift and the sun is almost set.
Gilpin's Heavenly Address
By Ilse Nesbitt (Second prize winner)
Good gentlemen and saints, now that the plates With speed phenomenal have disappeared,
And on the table only wine awaits The lip—such mellow wine the curling beard Of Bacchus never touched—I can afford My happy thanks for opportunity You gave me of enjoying the rewards Of heaven while still living and still free. (I fear the messenger from climes remote Made evening copy with his airy tread; My office colleagues were amazed to note His gaudy wings of most unnerving spread.) Aware that time allowed me is at end, You have invited me to stay and fly With blessed choirs; allow me to extend Again my grateful thanks, and my reply. My late grandfather said that heaven would shine With towered castles perched on sparkling mist; It does. My father said there would be wine And angels playing harps of amethyst. Yes, radiant seraphs flap in holy droves And pour estatic praise on the walls Of marble, pour champagne in sacred groves And mention God who floats in distant halls. I scarcely dare believe that this is real, So well my kin defined the pure extent. I wonder at your quite excessive zeal In thus retaining an establishment So long outmoded, and don't understand How you can bear this beauty so profuse It isn't beauty any more. My hand I offer you in friendship, but refuse.
I know my rugged heaven is a ring
Of wrinkled ground where tulips flame and die,
And that my harp is but a slender string
Of vine. Have you forgotten, here on high,
How puddles can be most magnificent?
Your heaven is too perfect. I'm a rough
Reporter. I have faults—my life is rent
With faults; your fields are not impure enough
For me. Ah, when I die, my dust of sins
Inter beneath a yard of singing grass
Long-haired and cool, unkempt with hyacinths
And doughty marigolds in scraggled mass!
If my unknown, immortal soul can't rage
Against a wrong, or roll in honest weeds
Up here, I'll join the blackened equipage
Of Lucifer! Now there's a man who needs
A little help! You think that I would choose
To suffocate mid these resplendent spires?
I'd rather fry a bit and introduce
Reform! For me, no hallowed, chanting choirs!
No. I, George Gilpin, citizen of Earth,
Return where I can hurl the precious dirt
With mocking taunts into the fuming skies.
How delicate is man! How truly girt
With clinging weakness—but observe how wise
This clod who knows he lives in paradise!
New Orleans —(UP) — Two years ago Edwina Cuney, 20, then a sophomore at Newcomb College, loved the study of English, but disliked the teacher, Edward Stone, 29. Lately her interest in English has waned. She and Stone are married.
We suggest a recent novel or biography, a book of verse or a book on art or music; a garden book or one on collecting antiques. We have a wide selection from which to choose.
For Mother's Day
Come in and see them.
THE BOOK NOOK
1021 Mass. Tel. 666
CHURCH NOTES
First Baptist Church 0.45
First Baptist Church
9:45. Sunday school.
11:00. Morning service and sermon by the minister. Subiect: "Making a Christian Home." No evening service.
7:45. Bible study.
First Christian Church
10:45. Morning service and sermon. Subject: "Father, Mother, Child."
Royal Humbert, associate minister 9:30 Sunday school.
Presbyterian Church
11:00. Morning service and sermon. Subject: "A Five Star Mother."
First Methodist Church
7:30. Evening service. Sermon:
"A Bible Exposition of the 10 Commandments."
9:45. Sunday school.
10. 50. Morning service and sermon. Subject: "The Highest Function of the Home."
Vinland Presbyterian Church
11:00. Morning service and sermon: "Tried and True."
Evening Baccalaureate sermon for the Vinland High School. Subject:
"The Coin that Rings True."
Assembly of God
11:00. Morning sermon: "The Meaning of Mothers."
7:45. Evening sermon: "A Greater than Solomon."
9:45. Sunday school.
United Brethren Church 0456
7:30 Evening sermon by Reverend
Bragg. Subject: "The Pull of God"
10:45. Morning worship. Sermon by Emerson D. Bragg, Hamilton, Ohio. Subject: "Some Thoughts for Mother's Day."
10:00, Sunday Bible school.
Church of the Nazarene
11:00. Morning sermon: "Honoring Mother."
7:45. Evening sermon: "Jesus Fesses By."
9:45. Sunday school.
First Evangelical Church
11:00. Morning worship and ternmon: "The Essence of a Mother's Love."
Plymouth Congregational Church
9:45. Church school.
11:00. Morning worship.
THINK what it means when the Rexall Druggist fills your prescription. Out of a thousand and one bottles he selects his essences, tinctures, extracts, etc. . . carefully measures them, and then Double CHECKS the result. Only fresh, full strength materials are used by qualified, registered pharmacists.