Fiction_L Archives Poetry Query - 2nd Shot Dates: 12/2/00,7:55 AM  through  12/2/00,11:15 AM  (3 postings) Search for: Select one or more indexes to search: 2011-current     2009-2010     2004-2008    1995-2003    (Matches from each index will be displayed separately in the results page.) Return to December 2000 thread menu   |   Fiction_L Archives Menu

FROM: "Rolf W. Laun" <[removed]@swbell.net>
REC'D: 12/2/00, 7:55 AM

I posted this query a while ago put didn't have much information to go on.
Since then the patron who originally asked the question got together with
her brothers and came up with a bit more to go on. While originally we
thought it might be Kipling, it may more likely be an American poet. The
poem was apparently written after the Philippine Insurrection (either
1896-98 or 1899-1902). If any one has any idea or knows the best places to
search this type of information, I would sure appreciate it...it's driving
me crazy to have this much of the poem and still not be able to determine
where it came from. Here's what they remember:

There's a transport in the harbor
out beyond old Corrigedor
I've heard the bullets whistle
I've seen the bolo kill
I've heard the war tribes chanting
From their outposts on the hill.

I've seen the Moro in the palm grove
Murder shining in his eye.
I've felt the hot breath of the leopard
As he's lying down to die.
I know the plague smells of Manila
And the Chino's wily ways
And what it means to be a soldier for fifty cents a day.

So its home again, home again
America for me
My heart is turning home again
And there I long to be.

To a mother and a sweetheart
Who long and look and wait for me
There's a transport in the harbor
And I'm going home today.

->Rolf Laun<-
San Antonio Public Library

FROM: Kathleen Stipek <[removed]@exchange.acld.lib.fl.us>
REC'D: 12/2/00, 8:28 AM

This sounds like a take on Henry van Dyke's "America for Me." Best-Loved
Poems of the American People (the poem's on p. 424) doesn't give a date for
it, but Van Dyke was 1852-1933 according to Granger's, so the time period
would be in the ballpark. In my giddy girlhood, I had a 6th-grade teacher
who inflicted a great deal of sentimental and patriotic poetry on us, and
the refrain about "home again and home again" seems to have stuck in an
innocent neuron many years ago. I looked at the poem in Best-Loved Poems,
and it scans the same as what you gave us..

Kathleen Stipek, Alachua County Library District (FMG), 401 E.
University AV, Gainesville, FL 32601
[removed]@exchange.acld.lib.fl.us
352-334-3938 (voice)
352-334-3948 (fax)

Non, Merci--Cyrano de Bergerac


-----Original Message-----
From: Rolf W. Laun [[removed]@swbell.net]
Sent: Saturday, December 02, 2000 8:51 AM
To: Fiction_L
Subject: Poetry Query - 2nd Shot


I posted this query a while ago put didn't have much information to go on.
Since then the patron who originally asked the question got together with
her brothers and came up with a bit more to go on. While originally we
thought it might be Kipling, it may more likely be an American poet. The
poem was apparently written after the Philippine Insurrection (either
1896-98 or 1899-1902). If any one has any idea or knows the best places to
search this type of information, I would sure appreciate it...it's driving
me crazy to have this much of the poem and still not be able to determine
where it came from. Here's what they remember:

There's a transport in the harbor
out beyond old Corrigedor
I've heard the bullets whistle
I've seen the bolo kill
I've heard the war tribes chanting
From their outposts on the hill.

I've seen the Moro in the palm grove
Murder shining in his eye.
I've felt the hot breath of the leopard
As he's lying down to die.
I know the plague smells of Manila
And the Chino's wily ways
And what it means to be a soldier for fifty cents a day.

So its home again, home again
America for me
My heart is turning home again
And there I long to be.

To a mother and a sweetheart
Who long and look and wait for me
There's a transport in the harbor
And I'm going home today.

->Rolf Laun<-
San Antonio Public Library

FROM: "Kathryn Mannix" <[removed]@hotmail.com>
REC'D: 12/2/00, 11:15 AM

The poem "America for Me" by Henry Van Dyke does have a similar refrain, but
other parts do not correspond to your patrons poem at all. But here is the
poem if you want to take a look:

Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.

I know that Europe's wonderful, yet something seems to lack;
The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back.

Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plow the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.

Kate Mannix
Readers Advisory

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