Country Road by Marie Louise Hersey. William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. 1922. Anthology of Massachusetts Poets

William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Massachusetts Poets. 1922.

Country Road

Marie Louise Hersey


I CAN’T forget a gaunt grey barn
Like a face without an eye
That kept recurring by field and tarn
Under a Cape Cod sky.

I can’t forget a woman’s hand,	5
Roughened and scarred by toil
That beckoned clear-eyed children tanned
By sun and wind and soil.

Beauty and hardship, bent and bound
Under the selfsame yoke:	10
Babies with bare knees plump and round
And stooping women folk.