Poem by Vachel Lindsay

Sunshine

FOR A VERY LITTLE GIRL, NOT A YEAR OLD. 
CATHARINE FRAZEE WAKEFIELD.

The sun gives not directly
The coal, the diamond crown;
Not in a special basket
Are these from Heaven let down.

The sun gives not directly
The plough, man’s iron friend;
Not by a path or stairway 
Do tools from Heaven descend. 

Yet sunshine fashions all things
That cut or burn or fly;
And corn that seems upon the earth
Is made in the hot sky.

The gravel of the roadbed, 
The metal of the gun, 
The engine of the airship 
Trace somehow from the sun.

And so your soul, my lady—
(Mere sunshine, nothing more)—
Prepares me the contraptions
I work with or adore.

Within me cornfields rustle,
Niagaras roar their way,
Vast thunderstorms and rainbows
Are in my thought to-day.

Ten thousand anvils sound there
By forges flaming white,
And many books I read there,
And many books I write;

And freedom’s bells are ringing,
And bird-choirs chant and fly—
The whole world works in me to-day
And all the shining sky,

Because of one small lady
Whose smile is my chief sun.
She gives not any gift to me
Yet all gifts, giving one. . . .

Amen.

1. To the United States Senate
2. To Reformers in Despair
3. The Perfect Marriage
4. On the Building of Springfield
5. Upon Returning to the Country Road

Robert Service Sunshine ("Flat as a drum-head stretch the haggard snows")

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