Question

why has the requieste lift or spirit never been found

Answer 1

The little old house was out with a little new shed

In front at the edge of the road where the traffic sped, 

A roadside stand that too pathetically pled, 

It would not be fair to say for a dole of bread, 

But for some of the money, the cash, whose flow supports

The flower of cities from sinking and withering faint. 

The polished traffic passed with a mind ahead, 

Or if ever aside a moment, then out of sorts

At having the landscape marred with the artless paint

Of signs that with N turned wrong and S turned wrong

Offered for sale wild berries in wooden quarts, 

Or crook-necked golden squash with silver warts, 

Or beauty rest in a beautiful mountain scene, 

You have the money, but if you want to be mean, 

Why keep your money (this crossly) and go along. 

The hurt to the scenery wouldn’t be my complaint

So much as the trusting sorrow of what is unsaid: 

Here far from the city we make our roadside stand

And ask for some city money to feel in hand

To try if it will not make our being expand, 

And give us the life of the moving-pictures’ promise

That the party in power is said to be keeping from us. 

It is in the news that all these pitiful kin

Are to be bought out and mercifully gathered in

To live in villages, next to the theatre and the store, 

Where they won’t have to think for themselves anymore, 

While greedy good-doers, beneficent beasts of prey, 

Swarm over their lives enforcing benefits

That are calculated to soothe them out of their wits, 

And by teaching them how to sleep they sleep all day, 

Destroy their sleeping at night the ancient way. 

Sometimes I feel myself I can hardly bear

The thought of so much childish longing in vain, 

The sadness that lurks near the open window there, 

That waits all day in almost open prayer

For the squeal of brakes, the sound of a stopping car, 

Of all the thousand selfish cars that pass, 

Just one to inquire what a farmer’s prices are. 

And one did stop, but only to plow up grass

In using the yard to back and turn around; 

And another to ask the way to where it was bound; 

And another to ask could they sell it a gallon of gas

They couldn’t (this crossly); they had none, didn’t it see?