At War45-06-0599My Country-A Poem Of America

Words at war. The National Broadcasting Company, in cooperation with the Council on Books and War Time, presents on words at war, Russell Davenport's My Country, a poem of America, as adapted for radio by the author himself.

America is not a land of ease. We have not paused from action to be get heroic simile in song and freeze. We have no empire of the mind as yet, nor have we shed our light within the grave.

But as the sons of Enterprise and Sweat honor the quick, the strong, the free, the brave, the mind whose thoughts are cradled in the hand, the fierce emancipators of the slave, exacting destiny of virgin land.

We are the builders of dynamic things, successors to the spires of Samarkand, boilers and bars, propellers, wheels and wings to run and fly and dive at our behest, through which the mighty wind of freedom sings.

America is not a land of rest. We are the men of motion and desire, spirits that seek, engender and collide like atoms of regenerating fire. The Western men, who must forever be consumed in deans, to which their souls aspire.

The bright, creative fuel of destiny that burns in action as in ecstasy. My country loves the lovers of her land. They, who in spring behind the heavy ploughs, rip up the sterile project winter planned.

When brooks are like extended veins and sloughs of soap the feet of every shivering hill. And in the April sunlight, winter's cows crop the intoxicating chlorophyll. They who endure the agony of will to load the land with hay and golden grain and vines, and heavy corn and carbs and peas, in light as hot as liquor in the brain, in August, when