“GIVE ME THREE GRAINS OF CORN, MOTHER!”
“No,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “I can’t really say that I care
for Trowbridge. All that you have said is true enough, but he fails
to interest me.”
“What do you like in literature?” I asked, regarding her with
interest, for I had never heard her say. It must need be something
characteristic of herself.
“I like strength, and I like simplicity, and I like emotion, and I
like vital things always. And I like poetry rather than prose. Just
now,” said Annabel Lee, “I am thinking of an old-fashioned bit of
verse that to me is all that a poem need be. To have written it is
to have done enough in the way of writing, because it’s real--like
your Trowbridge.”
“Oh, will you repeat it for me!” I said.
“It is called, ‘Give Me Three Grains of Corn, Mother.’ It is of
a famine in Ireland a great many years ago--a lad and his mother
starving.”
And then she went on:
“‘Give me three grains of corn, mother,
Give me three grains of corn,
’Twill keep the little life I have
Till the coming of the morn.
I am dying of hunger and cold, mother,
Dying of hunger and cold,
And half the agony of such a death
My lips have never told.
“‘It has gnawed like a wolf at my heart, mother,
A wolf that is fierce for blood,
All the livelong day and the night, beside--
Gnawing for lack of food.
I dreamed of bread in my sleep, mother,
And the sight was heaven to see--
I awoke with an eager, famishing lip,
But you had no bread for me.
“‘How could I look to you, mother,
How could I look to you
For bread to give to your starving boy,
When you were starving, too?
For I read the famine in your cheek
And in your eye so wild,
And I felt it in your bony hand,
As you laid it on your child.
“‘The queen has lands and gold, mother,
The queen has lands and gold,
While you are forced to your empty breast
A skeleton babe to hold--
A babe that is dying of want, mother,
As I am dying now,
With a ghastly look in its sunken eye
And the famine upon its brow.
“‘What has poor Ireland done, mother,
What has poor Ireland done,
That the world looks on and sees us die,
Perishing one by one?
Do the men of England care not, mother,
The great men and the high,
For the suffering sons of Erin’s isle,--
Whether they live or die?
“‘There’s many a brave heart here, mother,
Dying of want and cold,
While only across the channel, mother,
Are many that roll in gold.
There are great and proud men there, mother,
With wondrous wealth to view,
And the bread they fling to their dogs to-night
Would bring life to me and you.
“‘Come nearer to my side, mother,
Come nearer to my side,
And hold me fondly, as you held
My father when he died.
Quick, for I can not see you, mother,
My breath is almost gone.
Mother, dear mother, ere I die,
Give me three grains of corn!’
“What do you think,” said my friend Annabel Lee, “is it not full
of power and poetry and pathos?”
“Yes, it could not in itself be better,” I replied. “And it has
the simplicity.”
“And pretends nothing,” said Annabel Lee.
“And who wrote it?” I asked.
“Oh, some forgotten Englishwoman,” said Annabel Lee. “I believe
her name was Edwards. She perhaps wrote a poem, now and then, and
died.”
“And are the poems forgotten, also?” I inquired.
“Yes, forgotten, except by a few. But when they remember them, they
remember them long.”
“Then which is better, to be remembered, and remembered shortly, by
the multitudes; or to be forgot by the multitudes and remembered
long by the one or two?”
“It is incomparably better to be remembered long by the one or
two,” said Annabel Lee. “To be forgotten by any one or anything
that once remembered you is sorely bitter to the heart.”