WEBVTT

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And then a poem which
perhaps has been more

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anthologized than any
other poem of mine--

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"Bells for John
Whiteside's Daughter."

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I want to make a little
comment before reading it.

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That's better than waiting
till afterwards [LAUGHTER]

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and trying to explain
what I've been reading.

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"John Whiteside's Daughter"
is not giving her a name.

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And the fact is that
it's a neighbor talking

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who lives in an
upstairs apartment,

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and looks down over the
playground of the little girl.

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And the phrase that
may not be familiar.

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Well, I always ask about that,
and half the people know it

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and half don't know it.

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Her brown study.

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Now my father used
to scold me if I

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seem to be thinking
about something else when

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he had to give me a command.

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And he would say "Come
out of that brown study,

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and listen to what
I have to tell you."

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And I was told by my
New England friends

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it was a common phrase there,
and it may be common generally.

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But it simply an
absent minded state.

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There was such speed
in her little body,

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and such lightness
in her footfall,

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it is no wonder her brown
study astonishes us all.

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Her wars were bruited
in our high window.

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We looked among orchard
trees and beyond,

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where she took arms against
her shadow or harried unto

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the pond.

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The lazy geese, like a snow
cloud dripping their snow

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on the green grass.

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Tricking and stopping,
sleepy and proud.

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Who cried in goose, alas,
for the tireless heart

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within the little
lady with rod, that

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made them rise from
their noon apple-dreams

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and scuttle goose
fashion under the skies.

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But now go the bells,
and we are ready.

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In one house, we
are sternly stopped

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to say we are vexed
at her brown steady,

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lying so primly propped.

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About the geese, they
seem very stupid.

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They haven't much voices.

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They quack, hiss.

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They haven't a very graceful
manner of locomotion--

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they waddle.

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And it bothered me, the
greatest difficulty ahead here

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was to say to put the
geese on her side.

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To say this is a
dangerous thing.

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This little girl
has too much energy.

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She's bound to come to
grief, and so I finally

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had it-- "who cried in goose,
alas, for the tireless heart

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within the little lady
with rod" and so on.

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So they're quite sensitive,
like the old couple

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looking from the upper
window, about the danger.

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And finally, it has come.

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And now she lies propped up in
her lasting brown study, which

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she will not come out again.

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And he says "We are
sternly stopped here"

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with the feelings of her
great chagrin and regret.

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And I published--

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I mean, I wrote in the
early days of my publication

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a number of poems about death.

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And I had the feeling that
that's the classical thing

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to do.

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Among the Greeks
and the Romans, it

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was necessary to have
intimations of mortality

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and to know that
our day would come.

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And some of the gravest and
bravest of human sentiments

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are involved there.

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