Poem
The poem as written by Chapman:
- Out where the handclasp's a little stronger,
- Out where the smile dwells a little longer,
- That's where the West begins;
- Out where the sun is a little brighter,
- Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter,
- Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter,
- That's where the West begins.
- Out where the skies are a trifle bluer,
- Out where the friendship's a little truer,
- That's where the West begins;
- Out where a fresher breeze is blowing,
- Where there's laughter in every streamlet flowing,
- Where there's more of reaping and less of sowing,
- That's where the West begins.
- Out where the world is in the making,
- Where fewer hearts in despair are aching,
- That's where the West begins.
- Where there's more of singing and less of sighing,
- Where there's more of giving and less of buying,
- Where a man makes a friend without half trying,
- That's where the West begins.
Read more about this topic: Out Where The West Begins
Famous quotes containing the word poem:
“Every poem of value must have a residue [of language].... It cannot be exhausted because our lives are not long enough to do so. Indeed, in the greatest poetry, the residue may seem to increase as our experience increases—that is, as we become more sensitive to the particular ignitions in its language. We return to a poem not because of its symbolic [or sociological] value, but because of the waste, or subversion, or difficulty, or consolation of its provision.”
—William Logan, U.S. educator. “Condition of the Individual Talent,” The Sewanee Review, p. 93, Winter 1994.
“The poem of the mind in the act of finding
What will suffice. It has not always had
To find: the scene was set; it repeated what
Was in the script.
Then the theatre was changed
To something else. Its past was a souvenir.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“It must
Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may
Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman
Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)