Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE DYCKMAN HOUSE, by ARTHUR GUITERMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DYCKMAN HOUSE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Plain as the brass of an old sword-hilt
Last Line: "shall look the world in the face again."
Subject(s): Faith; Freedom; New York City - Revolutionary Period; Belief; Creed; Liberty


PLAIN as the brass of an old sword-hilt
Is the tale of the house that the Dyckmans built.

In Charles the Second's jovial reign,
Jan, the first of the Dyckman strain,
Fair-haired, ruddy, strong, and shrewd,
Cleared the soil, and his hardy brood
Killed the wolves in their rocky lairs,
Turned the loam with iron shares.

Full a hundred years had fled;
Well the Dyckman race had sped;
Sweet their orchards, broad their farms
When Freedom called true men to arms.
They nursed no doubts of the need of force;
They did their part as a thing of course.
Forth they sallied, boy and man.
William, head of the Dyckman clan,
Took the field, and his three good sons
Marched along with their flintlock guns --
Abraham bold and Michael keen
And blithe young William, aged thirteen.

Through the war with its changing tides
The Dyckmans fought in the gallant Guides.
Their chronicles may still be found
In the blood-stained roll of the Neutral Ground,
And yellowed, time-worn records tell
How sturdy Abraham Dyckman fell,
Raiding the camp of De Lancey's corps,
And how young William paid that score.

Peace at last! -- In full retreat
Sounded the tramp of alien feet
Quitting the isle we love; -- and then
The Dyckmans came to their own again.
But the camping foe had left their land
Bare as the back of a baby's hand.
Waste were the fields and the orchards, too;
Burned was the home in which they grew.

The Dyckman breed were men of force;
They took their task as a thing of course.
Again they plowed their wasted leas,
Again they set their orchard trees;
With toughened timbers, marked by fire,
From tumbled barn and ruined byre,
They raised the framework, strongly planned,
Of this old house. Long may it stand
A monument for coming years
Of the last of the flower of the pioneers.

For in this brave old house survives
The lesson blazed by its builders' lives:

"Be true; and keep, whate'er befall,
The faith that each man owes to all.
Be strong; for strength shall purge you clear
Of all mean hatreds born of Fear.
Then, should the years that hither press
Bring other days of storm and stress,
A race of clean-limbed, clear-eyed men
Shall look the world in the face again."





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