Selected Poems

H.L. Davis

H.L. Davis brings humans and nature together in his poems, believing that from one we can understand something of the other. Davis writes the natural world with the knowledge of an ecologist, and the sensibility of an artist who knows his trees, winds and birds, but also has an ear for rhythm, and for making his words move and sing. Thomas Hornsby Ferril said, “He enjoyed pipe-organ analogy in poetry: vowels, the open sounds, bumping up against the consonants or steps. These events within the line are common in his poems and poetic passages in his novels.” Davis won the Pulitzer Prize in 1935 for his novel, Honey in the Horn.

A sample poem from the book

Proud Riders

We rode hard, and brought the cattle from brushy springs,

From heavy dying thickets, leaves wet as snow;

From high places, white-grassed and dry in the wind;

Draws where the quaken-asps were yellow and white,

And the leaves spun and spun like money spinning.

We poured them on to the trail, and rode for town.

Men in the fields leaned forward in the wind,

Stood in the stubble and watched the cattle passing.

The wind bowed all, the stubble shook like a shirt.

We threw the reins by the yellow and black fields, and rode,

And came, riding together, into the town

Which is by the gray bridge, where the alders are,

The white-barked alder trees dropping big leaves

Yellow and black, into the cold black water.

Children, little cold boys, watched after us—

The freezing wind flapped their clothes like windmill paddles.

Down the flat frosty road we crowded the herd:

High stepped the horses for us, proud riders in autumn.