Chapter VI: Section THREE (2)

He watched her go, and smiled,--her white dress blowing,
Softly in dark,--so young, so sweet, so brave!
She was so pure! by God, there was no knowing,--
And he had half a mind, still, to behave....
No, though: far better take what fortune gave,--
Dance to the music that was played for him;
Smiling he mused of her, his eyes grew dim,--

And he could feel her warmness by his side,
And all his body flushed with sweet desire
To take her shining loveliness for bride,
To kiss, to fuse with her in single fire....
O youth, O young heart musical as a lyre!
O covering darkness of mysterious night!
He knew these things; his heart was filled with light....

What was one more? Pah, how he scorned this qualm!
Innocent? Such girls seem--but never are.
No, he was not her first.... And cold and calm
He turned and sought the brightly-lighted bar....
The music rose, through shut doors, faint and far,
Wailful.... Down in her stateroom mirror there
A young girl eyed herself, with frightened stare.

II

She eyed herself with quick breath, frightened stare,
The fingers of one hand caught at her throat,
And half unconsciously she smoothed her hair....
The music called to her, bizarre, remote....
On a vast hurrying tide she seemed afloat,
Hurrying through a darkness downward ever,
Starless, along some subterranean river....

Where was she going? Where was the current taking?
Vaguely she knew that it would lead to pain,
To a dark endless pain her deep heart breaking,
To a grey world forever dulled with rain....
And yet she knew this would not come again,
And all the sweet bliss came imploring, pleading,
Melting her soul, bruising her heart to bleeding....

O God, she did not know!--Yet future sorrow
Seemed somehow paid for by this instant bliss,
A brief to-day was worth a long to-morrow;
O youth, O night,--this joy she dared not miss!
Her whole soul yearned for this young lover’s kiss,
Though it be paid for through eternity.
O, had not God designed this thing to be?

Was not her mouth for this young mouth intended,
Since all her living body told her so?
Was it not preordained that so be ended
A girlhood colder than December snow?
A starlight kiss--she need no further go--:
His warm hands touching hers: O was this sin?
Just this?--She shut her eyes to fires within....

To those fierce central fires she closed her eyes,
Yet dimly of their passion was aware,
And felt their flames like drunkenness arise
Whirling her soul, making life strangely fair....
She eyed herself with held breath, frightened stare....
Alas, was it the alchemy of sin
That made her lovelier far than e’er she’d been?

Plausibly sweet the music came to her,
Through many doors, most plausible and sweet,
Setting some subtle pulse in her astir,
Smoothing in song her heart’s erratic beat.
Dizziness came, unstrung her knees, her feet,
And she sank down a space upon her bed,
Shutting her eyes, mad reelings in her head.

How would this end? And would her whole life change,
Swayed by this mastering sun as sways the moon?
Would all her way of life be new and strange,
Her friends be lost, her kin desert her soon?
Passion surged up in her, and in its swoon
These doubts were swept aside, obscure and fleeting;
Somewhere she heard a beating ... beating ... beating....

Was it her heart, the loud pulse in her ear,
Or music, some recurring undertone?--
The drums perhaps.... She raised her head to hear,
The beating ceased.... Only the tireless drone
Of toiling engines, and the sea’s hushed moan
Soft through the fast-shut port ... and that was all.
Steps passed and re-passed down the muffled hall.

Steps passed and re-passed on the deck above
Ringing like iron.... The curtains by her bed
Quivered forever to the engine’s move,
And from the lamp a quivering light was shed.
These senseless things, when all her life was dead,
Would still go on: steps pass, the curtains quiver,
These things or others,--they would last forever.

Quickly she rose, and in the mirror’s shine
Looked at herself a quiet moment’s space;
It was as if the earth’s autumnal wine
Had touched her soul,--her body had a grace
That passing life has, lovely was her face
With a strange loveliness, and in her eyes
Was the deep glory of October skies.

She was alive! her blood flew warm and young;
No more than this she knew, that she was fair;
And happiness through her deep heart was sung;
Passionate joy as light as flame in air;
O youth! O love, oblivious of all care!
O lithe swift-blooded youth, O rose of earth,
O warm-eyed loveliness of fragrant mirth!--

Giddy, with whirling thoughts, she left her room;
And down the corridor, with fainting feet,
Lightly she went, caught onward to sweet doom,
And only heard her heart’s loud tremulous beat;
Through opening doors, most plausible, most sweet,
The music rose to her; and he stood there,
Smiling, in all that noise and whir and glare....

Over the shining silver, sparkling glass,
The smooth white table-cloth, he leaned and smiled;
The whole world vanished, they were lad and lass,
In love, and face to face, hearts running wild.
Deep in her eyes he looked: O what a child!
Her soft breast rose and fell, her throat’s pure white
Beat with a little pulse of joy and fright.

No need to talk.... For in their eyes they met,
Treading an air so soft, so light, so fine,
That they were speechless, words they could forget;
They only smiled, and shyly sipped their wine,
And smiled again, and felt their full hearts shine,
Talked breathlessly a little, and longed to lean
Nearer, more near,--till no mote lay between,--

Not light or darkness, world or heaven or star,
Not wind, nor warm, nor cold ... but just they two
Meeting at last, two spirits come from far,
Face raised to face, white flowers made sweet with dew,--
Shining and passionate, and young and new,--
Their two warm bodies singing each to each,
Mingling at last in love’s harmonious speech....

The lights, the noise, the tumult passed away;
As in a dream without a sound they passed;
She only knew that it was wildly gay,
And shy, and bliss unbearable.... At last
Under the high dark starward-gliding mast
In grateful night they sat; he brought her coat
And trembling wrapped the scarf around her throat;

Letting his fingers linger there a space,
Longer than there was need, so sweet she smiled,
So close they were to that soft wistful face....
The stars looked down upon them, clear and mild....
Woman and maiden, girl, and little child,--
She was all these.... A moment, he was shaken,--
Lest he do wrong, lest he might prove mistaken....

Only a moment ... passion rose again,
Quiet he took her hand and held it long,
And all her virgin heart grew big with pain,
And all her new-born body ached with song.
Blindly she prayed to God to make her strong,--
More blindly cried to earth to make her weak;
And looked at him, near tears, and could not speak.

He was a loveliness she could not bear....
Like a fierce furnace seemed his beauty now....
A fire that caught her throat, her lips, her hair,
Her parching eyes, her pained and beating brow.
Only to give herself,--she cared not how.--
Into the flame, body and soul to fling;
To have him hurt her,--ah, divinest thing!...

Four bells were struck: ’twas ten o’clock he said;
And still the sea rushed past, under the night.
The engines toiled and the great steamer sped;
And they could see the bow-wash, dimly white,
Fall into darkness; the mast-head light
Quivered among the stars, and in its fire
A span of fore-stay shone like golden wire....

Little by little they were left alone,
The decks were emptied; only, from the bar,
Came shouts and laughter, and a drunkard’s groan,
The glasses clinking, and a strummed guitar,
The door shut, and the sounds grew faint and far,
And all the deck was dark; only the sea
Lifted its great voice, like infinity.

O youth, O music, O sweet wizardy
Of young love sung like fire through beating veins!
O covering darkness and persuasive sea!
O night of stars, of blisses and of pains!
But most, O youth that but an hour remains,--
Be fierce, be sweet with us, before you go;
For knowing you the best of life we know!

Beneath his kiss her mouth rose soft and warm,
And dewy soft as rose-leaves were her eyes,
Under his hands, shaken as with a storm
He felt her soft breast fall and shudder and rise,
Torn with impassioned breath, unuttered cries,
Quivering, straining breast against his breast,
She clung to him, her mouth on his mouth pressed....

And only knew that this was life at last,
Forgot all else in agony of bliss;
Into this fire of love all earth was cast;
The stars, the sea, were mingled in this kiss.
And through her heart the blood, with sing and hiss,
Poured a red madness, surged a riotous pain,--
Unbearable music cried out in her brain....

“O love,” he said, “O let me come with you!
I love you so! This night,--O let me come!”
Ah, God have pity! she knew not what to do,
But sat all quiet,--frozen, shrinking, dumb;
And only heard the toiling engines hum,
The rush of sea, the swish of dropping spray,
Her clamorous heart; and all that she could say

Was a quick “yes,” and then a broken breath
That quivered like a sob; and then she rose,
Dizzy and weak and pale, like one near death,
And now her heart was fire, and now it froze....
Faint in her room she stood; the door to close,--
She might still turn the key.... She cried a space,--
Long in the glass stared at her pallid face....

And heard a step tramp over the deck above,
Ringing like iron.... The curtains by her bed
Quivered forever to the engine’s move,
And from the lamp a quivering light was shed....
These things would all go on when she was dead....
Trembling, with misty eyes, she loosed the pin
Under her throat ... mad fires whirled up within....

Mad fires whirled up, ungulfing all her soul;
Beyond the sun and stars, across all space,
Power that earth nor heaven could now control,
She heard her lover come, with quickening pace;
Nowhere to hide! Alas, his shining face,
Though she hid under seas would find her there,
Though she hid under mountains lay her bare!

Across the stars, nearer, more near it came,
And now earth shook with it, and now the sea,
And her white body, tremulous with shame,
From its sheer anguish knew that it was he,--
Yearned for this wonder that was soon to be;
And all her heart made music for his feet,
All of the world re-echoed to their beat....

Marriage of youth! And quick a darkness fell,
And time and space went down, consumed in fire;
Through that dark space, only one breath, to tell
That here was youth, and love, and wild desire:
One heart that to itself sang ever higher,
Tremulous, passionate, despite all pain,--
“How wonderful!--how wonderful!”--again.

III

October earth, with scarlet maple-leaf,
With oak-leaves brown, with flaming leaves and pale;
Mysterious autumn, symbol of all grief,
Symbol of lives that die and hopes that fail:
Now on the threshing-floor has fallen the flail,
The hands are elsewhere that have stored the grain;
Now comes the season of snows and bitter rain.

Weeks passed.... And then one day there came a note
To New York for this youth ... he tore and read.
It was that girl he played with on the boat....
Scarcely three shaky lines ... in which she said,
That she was sick with typhoid, nearly dead,--
Wanted to say she loved him; then she cried,
O God, if he would come before she died!--

Loved him!... a blackness fell; and in his eyes,
So long unused, and even now ashamed,
He felt the warm tears quickening to rise....
Loved him!--he had not known.... Could he be blamed?--
Then a great light of sorrow in him flamed,--
And bitterness, his sight swam quickly dim,--
Thinking how little it had meant to him!

Scarce knowing why, he packed his things and went....
He was surprised, on seeing her, to find how lovely she had been,
though pale and spent....
He sat beside her, striving to be kind,
Stroking her forehead.... Yet, she had divined,
And known too bitterly, before she died,
This man had never loved her, but had lied....

And he knew this: he knew that she had known;
In her dark eyes he saw the mastered yearning,
All the unspoken love that died in moan,
Shrunk on itself, through all her body burning....
And many days the memory came returning
Of her last kiss,--quivering, wet with tears,--
Her clinging hands, her brimmed eyes dark with fears....

Until at times a sudden terror came
Lest, through great pity, he should love one dead,--
So burning sweet recurred in him this shame,
So haunted him those eyes, that fallen head;
The lips that pleaded so, the words she said,--
Pathetic words!--these haunted him a space;
Then, in the dark of time he lost her face....

O Autumn! bringing to old adventures death,
Sadness at all things past, things passing still,--
You touched this love with strange and dreadful breath;
Easy as leaf is human love to chill,--
Easy as leaf is human to kill;
Yet beautiful is that death with sudden flame,
Ere it goes down to darkness, whence it came!...

_The Poetry Journal_ _Conrad Aiken_

“IF YOU SHOULD CEASE TO LOVE ME”

If you should cease to love me, tell me so!
I could not bear to feel your ardent hand
That waked the chords of life to understand,
Hold mine less closely; no, belovèd, no;
If you should cease to love me, tell me so!

If you should cease to love me, do not dare
To meet me with a masque of tenderness;
I could not stoop to suffer one caress
That any other had the right to share,--
If you should cease to love me, do not dare!

If you should cease to love me, do not fear--
I would not have you think I made one claim.
If your great love should pass, there is no blame;
For love grown cold, I would not shed a tear;--
If you should cease to love me, do not fear!

If you should cease to love me, let us part,
As friends who part for all eternity;
Let us make grave the reverent obsequy
For what was once our very soul and heart--
If you should cease to love me, let us part!

But while you love me, keep our hearts’ deep faith
As some High Priest would guard the holy place;
Let me not see the shame upon your face
Of one unworthy of Love’s vital breath,
So while you love me, keep our hearts’ high faith!

Thus, if you cease to love me, save my soul
By having kept our love so pure and high
That if the time must come when it shall die,
I may retain my treasure fair and whole,--
If you should cease to love me,--save my soul!

_Scribner’s_ _Corinne Roosevelt Robinson_

VAIN EXCUSE

Be patient, Life, when Love is at the gate,
And when he enters let him be at home.
Think of the roads that he has had to roam,
Think of the years that he has had to wait.

But if I let Love in I shall be late.
Another has come first, there is no room;
And I am busy at the thoughtful loom;
Let Love be patient, the importunate.

O Life, be idle, and let Love come in,
And give thy dreamy hair that Love may spin.

But Love himself is idle with his song.
Let Love come last, and then may Love last long.

Be patient, Life, for Love is not the last;
Be patient now with Death, for Love has passed.

_The Trend_ _Walter Conrad Arensberg_

SONNET XXX

You mean, my friend, you do not greatly care
For these harsh portraits I have lately done?
You like my old style better,--like the rare
Enamelled softness of that princess-one?
True, this old woman, with the sunken throat
Painted like cordage, is not sweet to view.
Perhaps the blear whites of her eyes connote
No element of loveliness to you.
Ah yes, we all must love the sapphire lake,
The rainbow, and the rose,--but these alone?
Or is there some slight wonder where pines shake
On bare-ribbed mountain-peaks of shattered stone?
So these disturb? I fear this is the end
Of days when I shall please your taste, my friend.

_The Forum_ _Arthur Davison Ficke_

LOST TREASURE

You know deep in your heart, it could not last--
And, when a wind, newborn on some hillside--
(Some fair tall hill the other side of Crete)
Came laden with the dear and odorous past--
(Laden with scents of gardens that have died,
Buried in dust, not any longer sweet.)

Then, realized, all the unlovely years
Lay on your heart, like those old gardens’ dust;
You had forgotten how your life was fair,
For all the memories were dulled with tears
Since shed, and unsuspected moth and rust
Ate deep, and naught remembered was but care.

So is your treasure lost, vanished away--
Nothing but wind and half-shut eyes and grass--
Nothing of now but strivings after then.
And naught heard in the clear air of to-day
But dusty wings that crumble as they pass--
You have not strength to make them live again.

_The Masses_ _Lydia Gibson_

OLD FAIRINGDOWN

Soft as a treader on mosses
I go through the village that sleeps;
The village too early abed,
For the night still shuffles, a gypsy,
In the woods of the east,
And the west remembers the sun.

Not all are asleep; there are faces
That lean from the walls of the gardens.
Look sharply, or you will not see them,
Or think them another stone in the wall.
I spoke to a stone, and it answered
Like an agèd rock that crumbles;
Each falling piece was a word.
“Five have I buried,” it said,
“And seven are over the sea.”

Here is a hut that I pass,
So lowly it has no brow,
And dwarfs sit within at a table.
A boy waits apart by the hearth;
On his face is the patience of firelight,
But his eyes seek the door and a far-world
It is not the call to the table he waits,
But the call of the sea-rimmed forests,
And cities that stir in a dream.
I haste by the low-browed door,
Lest my arms go in and betray me,
A mother jealously passing.
He will go, the pale dwarf, and walk tall among giants;
The child with his eyes on the far land,
And fame like a young curled leaf in his heart.

The stream that darts from the hanging hill
Like a silver wing that must sing as it flies,
Is folded and still on the breast
Of the village that sleeps.
Each mute old house is more old than the other,
And each wears its vines like ragged hair
Round the half-blind windows.
If a child should laugh, if a girl should sing,
Would the houses rub the vines from their eyes,
And listen and live?
A voice comes now from a cottage,
A voice that is young and must sing,
A honeyed stab on the air,
And the houses do not wake.

I look through the leaf-blowsed window,
And start as a gazer who, passing a death-vault,
Sees Life sitting hopeful within.
She is young, but a woman, round-breasted,
Waiting the peril of Eve;
And she makes the shadows about her sweet
As the glooms that play in a pine-wood.
She sits at a harpsichord (old as the walls are),
And longing flows in the trickling, fairy notes
Like a hidden brook in a forest
Seeking and seeking the sun.

I have watched a young tree on the edge of a wood
When the mist is weaving and drifting;
Slowly the boughs disappear, and the leaves reach out
Like the drowning hands of children,
Till a grey blur quivers cold
Where the green grace drank of the sun.
So now, as I gaze, the morrows
Creep weaving and winding their mist
Round the beauty of her who sings.
They hide the soft rings of her hair,
Dear as a child’s curling fingers;
They shut out the trembling sun of eyes
That are deep as a bending mother’s;
And her bridal body is scarfed with their chill.

For old, and old, is the story;
Over and over I hear it,
Over and over I listen to murmurs
That are always the same in these towns that sleep;
Where, grey and unwed, a woman passes,
Her cramped, drab gown the bounds of a world
She holds with grief and silence;
And a gossip whose tongue alone is unwithered
Mumbles the tale by her affable gate;
How the lad must go, and the girl must stay,
Singing alone to the years and a dream;
Then a letter, a rumor, a word,
From the land that reaches for lovers
And gives them not back;
And the maiden looks up with a face that is old;
Her smile, as her body, is evermore barren;
Her cheek like the bark of the beech-tree
Where climbs the grey winter.

Now have I seen her young,
The lone girl singing,
With the full, round breast and the berry lip,
And heart that runs to a dawn-rise
On new-world mountains.
The weeping ash in the dooryard
Gathers the song in its boughs,
And the gown of dawn she will never wear.

I can listen no more; good-by, little town, old Fairingdown.
I climb the long, dark hillside,
But the ache I have found here I cannot outclimb.
O Heart, if we had not heard, if we did not know
There is that in the village that never will sleep!

Hampshire, England.

_Scribner’s_ _Olive Tilford Dargan_

IN THE ROMAN FORUM

Nothing but beauty, now.
No longer at the point of goading fear
The sullen, tributary world comes near
Before all-subjugating Rome to bow.
No more the pavement of the Forum rings
To breathless Victory’s exultant tread
Before the heavy march of captive kings.
Here stood the royal dead
In sculptured immortality; their gaze
Remote above the turmoil of the street
Hoarse with its living struggle at their feet.
Here spoke the law--that voice of bronze was heard
By all the world, and stirred
The latent mind of nations in the bud.
Bright with the laurels, bitter with the blood
Of heroes upon heroes was this place
Where the strong heart of an imperial race
Beat with the essence of a man’s life.
Princes and people evermore at strife--
Incense and worship--clash of armored rage--
Ambition soaring up the sky like flame--
Interminable war that mortals wage
From century to century the same.
Still Fortune holds the crown for those who dare;
Mankind in many a distant otherwhere
Leaps panting toward the promise of her face--
But here, no more of coveting nor care.
No longer here the weltering human tide
Sluices the market-place and scatters wide
The weak as foam, to perish where they list.
Now by the Sovereign Silence purified,
Spring showers all with fragrant amethyst.
Were once these pulses violent and swift
As those that shake the cities of to-day?
How indolently sweet the petals drift
From yonder nodding spray!
Warming their broidered raiment in the sun,
The little-bright-eyed lizards bask and run
O’er fallen temples gracious in decay.
Man’s arrogance with calculated art
Boasted in marble--now the quiet heart
Of the Great Mother dreams eternal things
In brief, bright roses and ethereal green,
Or more exuberant, sings
In poppies poured profusely to the air
From secret hoards of scarlet. Nothing seen
But swoons with beauty--beauty everywhere--
Nothing but beauty ... now.
Here is the immortality of Rome.
Not where the city rises, dome on dome,
Seek we the living soul of ancient might,
But in this temple of green silence--here
Flame purer than the vestal is alight.
The world again draws near
In reverence, but now it comes to pay
The tribute of a nobler coin than fear.
In wondering worship, not in fierce dismay,
Men bow the knee to what of Rome remains.
Time’s long lustration has effaced her stains,
All that is perishable now is past
And earth her portion tenderly transmutes
To evanescent beauty of her own--
Jubilant flowers and nectar-breathing fruits--
Living in deathless glory at the last
Divinity alone.

_The Bellman_ _Amelia Josephine Burr_

ASH WEDNESDAY

(_After hearing a lecture on the origins of religion_)

Here in the lonely chapel I will wait,
Here will I rest, if any rest may be;
So fair the day is, and the hour so late,
I shall have few to share the blessed calm with me.
Calm and soft light, sweet inarticulate calls!
One shallow dish of eerie golden fire
By molten chains above the altar swinging,
Draws my eyes up from the shadowed stalls
To the warm chancel-dome;
Crag-like the clustered organs loom,
Yet from their thunder-threatening choir
Flows but a ghostly singing--
Half-human voices reaching home
In infinite, tremulous surge and falls.
Light on his stops and keys,
And pallor on the player’s face,
Who, listening rapt, with finger-skill to seize
The pattern of a mood’s elusive grace,
Captures his spirit in an airy lace
Of fading, fading harmonies.
Oh, let your coolness soothe
My weariness, frail music, where you keep
Tryst with the even-fall;
Where tone by tone you find a pathway smooth
To yonder gleaming cross, or nearer creep
Along the bronzèd wall,
Where shade by shade thro’ deeps of brown
Comes the still twilight down.

Wilt thou not rest, my thought?
Wouldst thou go back to that pain-breeding room
Whence only by strong wrenchings thou wert brought?
O weary, weary questionings,
Will ye pursue me to the altar rail
Where my old faith for sanctuary clings,
And back again my heart reluctant hale
Yonder, where crushed against the cheerless wall
Tiptoe I glimpsed the tier on tier
Of faces unserene and startled eyes--
Such eyes as on grim surgeon-work are set,
On desperate outmaneuverings of doom?
Still must I hear
The boding voice with cautious rise and fall
Tracking relentless to its lair
Each fever-bred progenitor of faith,
Each fugitive ancestral fear?
Still must I follow, as the wraith
Of antique awe toward a wreck-making beach
Drives derelict?
Nay, rest, rest, my thought,
Where long-loved sound and shadow teach
Quietness to conscience overwrought.

Harken! The choristers, the white-robed priest
Move thro’ the chapel dim
Sounding of warfare and the victor’s palm,
Of valiant marchings, of the feast
Spread for the pilgrim in a haven’d calm.
How on the first lips of my steadfast race
Sounded that battle hymn,
Quaint heaven-vauntings, with God’s gauntlet flung,
To me bequeathed, from age to age,
My challenge and my heritage!
“The Lord is in His holy place”--
How in their ears the herald voice has rung!
Now will I make bright their sword,
Will pilgrim in their ancient path,
Will haunt the temple of their Lord;
Truth that is neither variable nor hath
Shadow of turning, I will find
In the wise ploddings of their faithful mind;
Of finding not, as in this frustrate hour
By question hounded, waylaid by despair,
Yet in these uses shall I know His power
As the warm flesh by breathing knows the air.

O futile comfort! My faith-hungry heart
Still in your sweetness tastes a poisonous sour;
Far off, far off I quiver ’neath the smart
Of old indignities and obscure scorn
Indelibly on man’s proud spirit laid,
That now in time’s ironic masquerade
Minister healing to the hurt and worn!
What are those streams that from the altar pour
Where goat and ox and human captive bled
To feed the blood-lust of the murderous priest?
I cannot see where Christ’s dear love is shed,
So deep the insatiate horror washes red
Flesh-stains and frenzy-sears and gore.
Beneath that Cross, whereon His hands outspread,
What forest shades behold what shameful rites
Of maidenhood surrendered to the beast
In obscene worship on midsummer nights!
What imperturbable disguise
Enwraps these organs with a chaste restraint
To chant innocuous hymns and litanies
For sinner and adoring saint,
Which yet inherit like an old blood-taint
Some naked caperings in the godliest tune,--
Goat-songs and jests strong with the breath of Pan,
That charmed the easy cow-girl and her man
In uncouth tryst beneath a scandalous moon!
Ah, could I hearken with their trust,
Or see with their pure-seeing eyes
Who of the frame of these dear mysteries
Were not too wise!
Why cannot I, as in a stronger hour,
Outface the horror that defeats me now?
Hare I not reaped complacent the rich power
That harvest from this praise and bowing low?
On this strong music have I mounted up,
At yonder rail broke bread, and shared the holy cup,
And on that cross have hung, and felt God’s pain
Sorrowing, sorrowing, till the world shall end.

Not from these forms my questionings come
That serving truth are purified,
But from the truth itself, the way, the goal,
One challenge vast that strikes faith dumb--
If truth be fickle, who shall be our guide?
“Truth that is neither variable, nor hath
Shadow of turning?” Ah, where turns she not!
Where yesterday she stood,
Now the horizon empties--lo, her steps
Where yonder scholar woos, are hardly cold,
Yet shall he find her never, but the thought
Mantling within him like her blood
Shall from his eloquence fade, and leave his words
Flavor’d with vacant quaintness for his son.
What crafty patience, scholar, hast thou used,
Useless ere it was begun--
What headless waste of wing,
Beating vainly round and round!
In no one Babel were the tongues confused,
But they who handle truth, from sound to sound
Master another speech continuously.
Deaf to familiar words, our callous ear
Will quiver to the edge of utterance strange;
When truth to God’s truth-weary sight draws near,
Cannot God see her till she suffer change?
Must ye then change, my vanished youth,
Home customs of my dreams?
Change and farewell!
Farewell, your lost phantasmic truth
That will not constant dwell,
But flees the passion of our eyes
And leaves no hint behind her
Whence she dawns or whither dies,
Or if she live at all, or only for a moment seems.

Here tho’ I only dream I find her,
Here will I watch the twilight darken.
Yonder the scholar’s voice spins on
Mesh upon mesh of loveless fate;
Here will I rest while truth deserts him still.
What hath she left thee, Brother, but thy voice?
After her, have thy will,
And happy be thy choice!
Here rather will I rest, and harken
Voices longer dead but longer loved than thine.

Yet still my most of peace is more unrest,
As one who plods a summer road
Feels the coolness his own motion stirs,
But when he stops the dead heat smothers him.
Here in this calm my soul is weariest,
Each question with malicious goad
Pressing the choice that still my soul defers
To visioned hours not thus eclipsed and dim,
Lest in my haste I deem
That truth’s invariable part
Is her eluding of man’s heart.
Farewell, calm priest who pacest slow
After the stalwart-marching choir!
Have men thro’ thee taught God their dear desire?
Hath God thro’ thee absolvèd sin?
What is thy benediction, if I go
Sore perplexed and wrought within?
Open the chapel doors, and let
Boisterous music play us out
Toward the flaring molten west
Whither the nerve-racked day is set;
Let the loud world, flooding back,
Gulf us in its hungry rout;
Rest? What part have we in rest?

Boy with the happy face and hurrying feet,
Who with thy friendly cap’s salute
Sendest bright hail across the college street,
If thou couldst see my answering lips, how mute,
How loth to take thy student courtesy!
What truth have I for thee?
Rather thy wisdom, lad, impart,
Share thy gift of strength with me.
Still with the past I wrestle, but the future girds thy heart.
Clutter of shriveled yesterdays that clothe us like a shell,
Thy spirit sloughs their bondage off, to walk newborn and free.
All things the human heart hath learned--God, heaven, earth, and hell--
Thou weighest not for what they were, but what they still may be.
Whether the scholar delve and mine for faith-wreck buried deep,
Or the priest his rules and holy rites, letter and spirit, keep,
Toil or trust in breathless dust, they shall starve at last for truth;
Scholar and priest shall live from thee, who art eternal youth.
Holier if thou dost tread it, every path the prophets trod;
Clearer where thou dost worship, rise the ancient hymns to God;
Not by the priest but by thy prayers are altars sanctified;
Strong with new love where thou dost kneel, the cross whereon Christ died.

_Yale Review_ _John Erskine_

THE LAGGARD SONG

I had no heart to write to thee in prose,
The sadness in me sore demanded song;
But the song came not,--laggard as the birds,
That will not sing us back the little leaves.
O winter of my heart--when comes the spring?
I am sore weary of these deathlike days,
This shroud unheaving of eternal snow,--
O winter of my heart--when comes the spring?

’Tis time to answer, O nightingale,--
’Tis thine to sing the winter all away,
Release the world from bondage, and bring back
The sound of many waters and of trees,
And little sleeping lives anumb with cold,--
Yea! all the resurrection of the world.
O winter of my heart! O nightingale!

_Harper’s_ _Richard Le Gallienne_

GROTESQUE

With the first light on the skyline came the rapping of the sickles
And the brown arms of the reapers bent to toil another morn;
Close beside me in the glimmer, in the golden sweep and shimmer,
Knelt a reaper strange among us, crooning thro’ the ragged corn:
“Born of sorrow,
Gone to-morrow--
Gone to lie in yonder valley where their fathers long have lain;
Men who know not ship nor sabre,
Each but drudges by his neighbor,
And the fields wherein they labor are a heritage of pain!”

Sleep was heavy on our eyelids when a lone star followed sunset,
But we missed the pale young stranger, none knew whither he had gone--
Then, from where the dead are lying, with the nightwind’s tender sighing
Rose and fell a last low cadence of the voice we heard at dawn:
“Weary reapers,
Early sleepers--
Brief the glow that drifts across them from the waning August moon:
These that rest beyond its gleaming
Lie unvexed of drift or dreaming,
And the fields with harvest teeming have forgot them all too soon!”

_Boston Transcript_ _Ruth Guthrie Harding_

BALLADE OF A DEAD LADY

All old fair things are in their places,
I count them over, and miss but one;
The April flowers are running races,
The green world stretches its arms to the sun;
The nuptial dance of the days is begun--
The same young stars in the same old skies;
And all that was lost again is won--
But where have they hidden those great eyes?

All have come back--dogwood and daisies--
All things ripple and riot and run;
Swallow and swallow in aery mazes,
A fairy frolic of fire and fun;
The same old enchanted web is spun,
With diamond dews for the same old flies;
Yet all is new, spite of Solomon--
But where have they hidden those great eyes?

Lovely as love are the new-born faces--
God knows they are fair to look upon;
And my heart goes out to the young embraces,
To the flight of the young to the young;
But, Time, what is it that thou hast done?
For my heart ’mid all the blossom cries:
“Roses are many, the Rose is gone--
Ah! where have they hidden those great eyes?”

ENVOI

Prince, I bring you my April praises,
But O! on my heart a shadow lies;
For a face I see not at all my gaze is--
Ah! where have they hidden those great eyes?

_Puck_ _Richard Le Gallienne_

AN EPITAPH

Perhaps it doesn’t matter that you died,
Life is a _bal masqué_ which you saw through.
You never told on Life--you had your pride;
But Life has told on you.

_The Trend_ _Walter Conrad Arensberg_

WAR

Fools, fools, fools,
Your blood is hot to-day.
It cools
When you are clay.
It joins the very clod
Wherein you look at God,
Wherein at last you see
The living God,
The loving God,
Which was your enemy.

_The Nation_ _Witter Bynner_

FRANCE

Half artist and half anchorite,
Part siren and part Socrates,
Her face--alluring and yet recondite--
Smiled through her salons and academies.

Lightly she wore her double mask,
Till sudden, at war’s kindling spark,
Her inmost self, in shining mail and casque,
Blazed to the world her single soul--
Jeanne d’Arc!

_The Nation._ _Percy MacKaye_

THE DRUM

There’s a rhythm down the road where the elms overarch
Of the drum, of the drum,
There’s a glint through the green, there’s a column on the march,
Here they come, here they come,
To the flat resounding clank they are tramping rank on rank,
And the bayonet flashes ripple from the flank to the flank.
“I am rhythm, marching rhythm,” says the drum.
“No aid am I desiring of the loud brazen choiring,
“Of bugle or of trumpet the lilt and the lyring,
“I’m the slow dogged rhythm, unending, untiring,
“I am rhythm, marching rhythm,” says the drum.
“I am rhythm, dogged rhythm, and the plodders feel me with ’em,
“I’m the two miles an hour that is empire, that is power,
“I’m the slow resistless crawl in the dust-cloud’s choking pall,
“I’m the marching days that run from the dawn to set of sun,
“I’m the rifle and the kit and the dragging weight of it,
“I’m the jaws grimly set and the faces dripping sweat,
“I’m the how, why, and when, the Almighty made for men,”
Says the rhythm, marching rhythm, of the drum.
“Did you call my song ‘barbaric’? Did you mutter, ‘out of date’?
“When you hear me with the foemen then your cry will come too late.
“Here are hearts a-beating for you, to my pulsing as I come,
“To the rhythm, tramping rhythm,
“To the rhythm, dogged rhythm,
“To the dogged tramping rhythm
“Of the drum!”

There’s a clashing snarling rhythm down the valley broad and ample
Of the drum, kettledrum,
There’s a low, swelling rumor that is cavalry a-trample,
Here they come, here they come,
To the brassy crash and wrangle, to the horseman’s clink and jangle,
And the restive legs beneath ’em all a-welter and a-tangle.
“I am rhythm, dancing rhythm,” says the drum.
“White and sorrel, roan and dapple, hocks as shiny as an apple,
“Don’t they make a splendid showing, ears a-pricking, tails a-blowing?
“Good boys--bless ’em--well they’re knowing all my tricks to set ’em going
“To my rhythm, dancing rhythm!” says the drum.
“I am rhythm, clashing rhythm, and the horses feel me with ’em.
“I’m the foray and the raid, I’m the glancing sabre-blade.
“Now I’m here, now I’m there, flashing on the unaware.
“How I scout before the ranks, how I cloud along the flanks,
“How the highway smokes behind me let the faint stars tell that find me
“All night through, all night through, when the bridles drip with dew.
“I’m the labor, toil, and pain, I’m the loss that shall be gain,”
Says the rhythm, clashing rhythm, of the drum.
“Did you speak of ‘useless slaughter’? Did you murmur ‘Christian love’?
“Pray that such as these before you when the war-cloud bursts above,
“With the bridle on the pommel meet the foemen as they come,
“To the rhythm, dashing rhythm,
“To the rhythm, crashing rhythm
“To the crashing, dashing rhythm
“Of the drum!”

There’s an echo shakes the valley o’er the rhythm deep and slow
Of the drum, of the drum,
’Tis the guns, the guns a-rolling on the bridges down below,
Here they come, here they come,
Hark the felloes grind and lumber through the shadows gray and umber,
And the triple spans a-panting up the slope the stones encumber,
With the rhythm, distant rhythm, of the drum.
“’Tis the long Shapes of Fear that the moonlight silvers here,
“And the jolting limber’s weighted with the silent cannoneer,
“’Tis the Pipes of Peace are passing, O ye people, give an ear!”
Says the rhythm, iron rhythm, of the drum.
“They are rhythm, thunder rhythm, and they do not need me with ’em,
“That can overtone my choir like the bourdon from the spire.
“_Avant-garde_ am I to these Lords of dreadful revelries,
“Iron Cyclops with an eye to confound the earth and sky.
“Love and Fear, Love and Fear, neither one but both revere,
“And whatever grace ye deal let it be from courts of steel,
“Set the guns’ emplacement then to expound the Law to men,”
Says the rhythm, iron rhythm, of the drum.
“O ye coiners, sentence-joiners, in a fatted, tradesman’s land,
“Here’s evangel Pentecostal that all nations understand,
“When they speak before the battle fools and theories are dumb!”
God be with ’em, and the rhythm,
And the rhythm, iron rhythm,
And the rolling thunder rhythm
Of the drum!

There’s a rhythm still and toneless with the wind amid the green,
Of the drum, muffled drum,
And there’s arms reversed, and something ’neath a flag that goes between
As they come, as they come.
“Just a soldier, nothing more, such as all the ages bore
“And as time and tide shall bear them till the sun be sere and hoar,”
Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum.
“No more am I requiring of the keen brazen lyring
“Than ‘taps’ from the bugle--some shots for the firing.
“Hats off; stand aside; it is all I’m desiring,”
Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum.
“I am rhythm, muffled rhythm; long and deep farewell go with him,
“Hands that bore their portion through tasks our nature needs must do,
“Feet that stepped the ancient rhyme of the battle-march of Time.
“Blood or tribute, steel or gold, still _Vae Victis_ as of old,
“Stern and curt the message runs taught to sons and sons of sons.
“_Chair à canon_, would you call? What else are we, one and all?
“Write it thus to close his span: ‘_Here there lies a fighting man_,’”
Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum.
“O ye farms upon the hillside and ye cities by the sea,
“With the laughter of young mothers and the babes about the knee,
“’Tis a heart that once beat for you that is passing, still and dumb,
“To the rhythm, muffled rhythm,
“To the rhythm, solemn rhythm,
“To the slow and muffled rhythm
“Of the drum!”

_Scribner’s Magazine_ _E. Sutton_

IF!

Suppose ’twere done!
The lanyard pulled on every shotted gun;
Into the wheeling death-clutch sent
Each millioned armament,
To grapple there
On land, on sea and under, and in air!
Suppose at last ’twere come--
Now, while each bourse and shop and mill is dumb
And arsenals and dockyards hum,--
Now all complete, supreme,
That vast, Satanic dream!--

Each field were trampled, soaked,
Each stream dyed, choked,
Each leaguered city and blockaded port
Made famine’s sport;
The empty wave
Made reeling dreadnought’s grave;
Cathedral, castle, gallery, smoking fell
’Neath bomb and shell;
In deathlike trance
Lay industry, finance;
Two thousand years’
Bequest, achievement, saving disappears,
In blood and tears,
In widowed woe
That slum and palace equal know,
In civilization’s suicide,--
What served thereby, what satisfied?
For justice, freedom, right, what wrought?
NAUGHT!--

Save, after the great cataclysm, perhap
On the world’s shaken map
New lines, more near or far,
Binding to King or Czar
In fostering hate
Some newly vassaled state;
And passion, lust and pride made satiate;
And just a trace
Of lingering smile on Satan’s face!

_Boston New Bureau_ _Bartholomew F. Griffin_

PRELUDE

Embracing the woman I love, I stood by the stream that circles the
town I love in the peace of the
Summer night,
And I loved the joyous and cruel leash of life at my throat,
And I loved the peace in the soul of the woman I love, and I knew tha
t the net of her beauty was cast in a sea of peace.
I loved the silver-blue flood of the moon that flowed over the quiet town
And the trees that shaded the stream and the town I love;
(For Nature is personal always to me and is never untrue and intrusive.)
The garrulous, intimate talk of the trees, I loved;
And the birds asleep in their nests in the trees,
And the rosy wet-mouthed babes that never have minted speech, asleep
in the quiet town and kissed by the warm and mothering night--
The merry uncertain tentative falling leaves that fell on the rocks
and the path and were carried
laughing away by the musical stream, I loved,
And the sentient gaiety of the flowers I felt were near and
knew my affection, I loved;
And the neighborly boisterous wind that trampled in play across
the yellowing wheat;
And the cattle that lay in the meadow;
And the moonlight that hid in the silver sheen of the birch by
the gate, I loved;
And the moonlight that lay like frost that had over-slept on
the Summer grass;
And I loved the peaceful, close-breathing, embracing night that
breathed the scent of unseen flowers and the fragrance of
the woman I love.

Ancient and cruel songs passed deathward into the night,
And symbols of ancient wrongs went mournfully by and away,
And the peace that is finally done with old desires and with conquering
Caressingly laid her cheek, with illimitable quietude, between my cheek
and the cheek of the woman
I love,
And the three of us were one as we stood by the stream in the
peace of the Summer night.

The silence gathered and rolled above us fold upon exquisite fold,
Till tenderness made me eager to shout and to sing aloud in
the positive light of Day,
And to see the early marching sun brushing the fields and the town
I love with his gold-shod feet,
And wrapping the flowers and the intimate personal trees in the
sudden flame of his breath.

Christ; Christ; Christ;--
That this day dawned;
Peace; Peace; Peace--
Raped and mangled and dead,
And none to lay a healing hand for easement on her head.

War; War; War--
Came with withering day.
Ancient cruel songs
From red throats hurled
And none to sing a healing song of peace in all the world.

The sunlight is a wound to me and Jesus Christ has rotted overnight,
And peace is now a corpse whose naked body lies half cold upon a shield.
The morning wind has grown a hawk’s strong claws,
And nothing brings my heart so near to breaking as sunlight
surging over the long grass.

_The Masses_ _Edmond McKenna_

THE OTHER ARMY

O’er ruined road past draggled field,
O’er twisted stones of shaken street,
Marches an army terrible,
The army of the bleeding feet,--

Of skirted feet that now first leave
Immaculate field and kitchen floor,--
Old feet that slept beside the hearth,
Wee feet that twinkled by the door.

To strange world past the parish line
(More strange with sound and sight to-day),
Recruited fast at every hedge,
The gathering army takes its way.

Commanders? Aye, they trudge ahead,--
Not badge but babe on every breast.
The troops? They straggle at her skirt,
From tot to crone, in ranks ill-drest.

And uniformed--in rusty best
From cedarn chests and linen bags;
Ah, rough the roads and chill the winds
To sabots split and sudden rags!

Equipment? Aye, ’tis furnished well,
This army of the old and young,--
On shoulder bent a bundle small,
A doll from little fingers swung!

Almost complete--it only lacks
The battle oath and cheer and song;
Save infant fret and agèd sigh,
Now dumbly marches it along.

Past gaping window, roof and sill
It fares to red horizon’s edge,
Past blackened furrow, hearth and fane,--
And fast it grows at every hedge!

_Boston News Bureau._ _Bartholomew F. Griffin_

THE BUGLE

Oh calling, and calling, at the rising of the sun,
Hark the bugle clearly singing with the swallows widely winging
In the morning just begun.
“You are going to the flowing of the traffic-roaring street,
“To the toiling and turmoiling, and though toil for man be meet,
“Is it all, is it all, thus to plod and feed and crawl,
“Is there not a thought to stray from your task from day to day?
“Ah, December follows May; leaves will fall!
“For the glory gone before you,
“For the mother-breast bent o’er you,
“The good earth that bore you,
“I call, I call!”

Oh calling, and calling, as the morning mists unfold,
Hark the bugle’s keen upbraiding that true hearts are more than trading
And that steel is more than gold.
“Is there seeming in your dreaming of an endless golden day?
“Ne’er were powers, ne’er were towers, but uncherished would decay.
“Follow through, follow through, foaming wake and throbbing screw,
“All your fair and broad dominions with the seagull’s waving pinions,
“What but swords that did them win once, holds them all?
“For the thousand years behind you,
“For the slothful cords that bind you,
“The future that may find you,
“I call, I call!”

Oh calling, and calling, when the twilight stars are born,
Hark the bugle’s fierce complaining--“Labor--labor--still sustaining,
“Unrequited, laughed to scorn!
“Wheels are humming, you are coming to your fire-lit warmth and ease,
“Ask the teachers, ask the preachers who declaim of ‘love’ and ‘peace,’
“What to do, what to do, if no more my signal blew
“By the Northern ocean-strands, on the scorching desert sands,
“Or beneath the tropic lands’ steamy pall?
“For your plenteous bin and board, now
“For ‘all things in order stored,’ now,
“For Right, for the Lord, now,
“I call, I call!”

Oh calling, and calling, when the dark is closing down,
Hark the bugle clearly crying of the fame beyond all dying,
And the laurel, and the crown.
“Heroes sworded--splendors hoarded by enshrining centuries,
“Life or living--theirs the giving--greater love had none than these!
“Can it be, can it be, sons of steel on land and sea,
“Song and story weft of war-woof, blood and breed from sires of war-proof,
“That ye stand to such a lore proof, one and all?
“For the glory gone before you,
“For the mother-breast bent o’er you,
“The good earth that bore you,
“I call, I call!”

_Infantry Journal_ _E. Sutton_

HE WENT FOR A SOLDIER

He marched away with a blithe young score of him
With the first volunteers,
Clear-eyed and clean and sound to the core of him,
Blushing under the cheers.
They were fine, new flags that swung a-flying there,
Oh, the pretty girls he glimpsed a-crying there,
Pelting him with pinks and with roses--
Billy, the Soldier Boy!

Not very clear in the kind young heart of him
What the fuss was about,
But the flowers and the flags seemed part of him--
The music drowned his doubt.
It’s a fine, brave sight they were a-coming there
To the gay, bold tune they kept a-drumming there,
While the boasting fifes shrilled jauntily--
Billy, the Soldier Boy!

Soon he is one with the blinding smoke of it--
Volley and curse and groan:
Then he has done with the knightly joke of it--
It’s rending flesh and bone.
There are pain-crazed animals a-shrieking there
And a warm blood stench that is a-reeking there;
He fights like a rat in a corner--
Billy, the Soldier Boy!

There he lies now, like a ghoulish score of him,
Left on the field for dead:
The ground all round is smeared with the gore of him--
Even the leaves are red.
The Thing that was Billy lies a-dying there,
Writhing and a-twisting and a-crying there;
A sickening sun grins down on him--
Billy, the Soldier Boy!

Still not quite clear in the poor, wrung heart of him
What the fuss was about,
See where he lies--or a ghastly part of him--
While life is oozing out:
There are loathsome things he sees a-crawling there;
There are hoarse-voiced crows he hears a-calling there,
Eager for the foul feast spread for them--
Billy, the Soldier Boy!

_How much longer, O lord, shall we bear it all?
How many more red years?
Story it and glory it and share it all,
In seas of blood and tears?
They are braggart attitudes we’ve worn so long;
They are tinsel platitudes we’ve sworn so long--
We who have turned the Devil’s Grindstone,
Borne with the hell called War!_

_Smart Set_ _Ruth Comfort Mitchell_

SIX SONNETS

(August, 1914)

I

TO WILLIAM WATSON IN ENGLAND

Singer of England’s ire across the sea,
Your austere voice, electric from the deep,
Speaks our own yearning, and our spirits sweep
To Europe’s allied honor.--Painfully,
Bowed with a planet’s lonely burden, we
Held our hot hearts in leash, but now they leap
Their ban, like young hounds belling from their keep,
To bait the Teuton wolf of tyranny.