Orrick Johns
Orrick Johns was born at St. Louis, Missouri, in 1887. He schooled himself to be an advertising copy writer, his creative work being kept as an avocation.
Asphalt and Other Poems (1917) is a queer mixture. Cheap stanzas crowd against lines of singular beauty; poor dialect verse elbows lyrics that sing without a false note. The same incongruity is evident in Black Branches (1920), where much that is strained and artificial mingles with poetry that is not only spontaneous but searching. At his best, notably in the refreshing “Country Rhymes,” Johns is a true singer, a lyricist of no little stature.
The Interpreter
In the very early morning when the light was low
She got all together and she went like snow,
Like snow in the springtime on a sunny hill,
And we were only frightened and can’t think still.
We can’t think quite that the katydids and frogs
And the little crying chickens and the little grunting hogs,
And the other living things that she spoke for to us
Have nothing more to tell her since it happened thus.
She never is around for any one to touch,
But of ecstasy and longing she too knew much...
And always when any one has time to call his own
She will come and be beside him as quiet as a stone.
Little Things
There’s nothing very beautiful and nothing very gay
About the rush of faces in the town by day;
But a light tan cow in a pale green mead,
That is very beautiful, beautiful indeed...
And the soft March wind and the low March mist
Are better than kisses in a dark street kissed...
The fragrance of the forest when it wakes at dawn,
The fragrance of a trim green village lawn,
The hearing of the murmur of the rain at play—
These things are beautiful, beautiful as day!
And I shan’t stand waiting for love or scorn
When the feast is laid for a day new-born
Oh, better let the little things I loved when little
Return when the heart finds the great things brittle;
And better is a temple made of bark and thong
Than a tall stone temple that may stand too long.