Print #54: Hair Storm

The richness of the hair’s texture in this image creates a storm-like feeling, curling like the waves of the ocean. Streaks of light appear from above, and in the background a wall with small windows reflects the country landscape.

Inspirational Poems

To a Lock of Hair

THY hue, dear pledge, is pure and bright
As in that well-remembered night
When first thy mystic braid was wove,
And first my Agnes whispered love.

Since then how often hast thou prest
The torrid zone of this wild breast,
Whose wrath and hate have sworn to dwell
With the first sin that peopled hell;
A breast whose blood's a troubled ocean,
Each throb the earthquake's wild commotion!
Oh if such clime thou canst endure
Yet keep thy hue unstained and pure,
What conquest o'er each erring thought
Of that fierce realm had Agnes wrought!
I had not wandered far and wide
With such an angel for my guide;
Nor heaven nor earth could then reprove me
If she had lived, and lived to love me.

Not then this world's wild joys had been
To me one savage hunting scene,
My sole delight the headlong race
And frantic hurry of the chase;
To start, pursue, and bring to bay,
Rush in, drag down, and rend my prey,
Then—from the carcass turn away!
Mine ireful mood had sweetness tamed,
And soothed each wound which pride inflamed:—
Yes, God and man might now approve me
If thou had lived, and lived to love me!

By Sir W. Scott, Francis T. Palgrave, ed. (1824–1897). The Golden Treasury. 1875.

The Moods

The moods have laid their hands across my hair:
The Moods have drawn their fingers through my heart;
My hair shall never more lie smooth and bright,
But stir like tide-worn sea-weed, and my heart
Shall never more be glad of small sweet things,—
A wild rose, or a crescent moon,—a book
Of little verses, or a dancing child.
My heart turns crying from the rose and book,
My heart turns crying from the thin bright moon,
And weeps with useless sorrow for the child.
The Moods have loosed a wind to vex my hair,
And made my heart too wise, that was a child.

Now I shall blow like smitten candle-flame:
I shall desire all things that may not be:
The years, the stars, the souls of ancient men,
All tears that must, and smiles that may not be,—
Yes, glimmering lights across a windy ford,
And vagrant voices on a darkened plain,
And holy things, and outcast things, and things,
Far too remote, frail-bodied to be plain.
My pity and my joy are grown alike.
I cannot sweep the strangeness from my heart.
The Moods have laid swift hands across my hair:
The Moods have drawn swift fingers through my heart.

By Fannie Stearns Davis, William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Massachusetts Poets. 1922.

Women Washing Their Hair

THEY have painted and sung
the women washing their hair,
and the plaits and strands in the sun,
and the golden combs
and the combs of elephant tusks
and the combs of buffalo horn and hoof.

The sun has been good to women,
drying their heads of hair
as they stooped and shook their shoulders
and framed their faces with copper
and framed their eyes with dusk or chestnut.

The rain has been good to women.
If the rain should forget,
if the rain left off for a year—
the heads of women would wither,
the copper, the dusk and chestnuts, go.

They have painted and sung
the women washing their hair—
reckon the sun and rain in, too.

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967). Smoke and Steel. 1922.