Chapter II: AGE

Why did I build my cottage on a hill Facing the sea? Why did I plan each terraced lawn to slope Down to the deep blue billowy breast of hope, Surging and sweeping, laughing and leaping, Tumbling its garments of foam upon the shore, Rustling the sands that know my step no more, I should have found a valley, deep and still, To shelter me.

There flows the river, and it seems asleep So far away, Yet I remember whip of wave and roar Of wind that rose and smote against the oar, Smote and retreated, Proud but defeated, While I rejoiced and rowed into the brine, Drawing on wet and heavy-straining line The great cod quivering from the deep As counterplay.

What is the solace of these hills and vales That rise and fall? What is there glorious in the greenwood glen, Or twittering thrush or wing of darting wren? Give me the gusty, Raucous and rusty Call of the sea gull in the echoing sky, The wild shriek of the winds that cannot die, Give me the life that follows the bending sails, Or none at all!

ERNEST BENSHIMOL

A BANQUET ONE MEMORY FROM SOCRATES

After the song the love, and after the love the play, Flute girl and pretty boy blowing Bubbles of sparkling Wine into darkling Beards of a former austerity, stern even now, but fast growing Foolish, with less of a stately Reserve that held them sedately. Oh Zeus, what a sight! With the wine dripping off it, The grin of an ass on a bald-pated prophet.

After the feast the night, and after the night the day, Fool and philosopher stirring With the day dawning, Stretching and yawning, While in each wine-throbbing, desolate brain is the wheeling and whirring Of thousands of bats, that the slaking Of throats will not hinder from aching, No wine for the brow that is beating to bursting, But water at morning is quench for the thirsting!

ERNEST BENSHIMOL

SONG

Out of one heart the birds and I together, Earth hushed in twilight, Low through the live-oaks hung heavy with silver, Gemmed with the sky-light, Under the great wet star Shaking with light, we jar Lute-voiced the silence with intervaled music.

While under the margined world the slow sun lingers, Flaming earth’s portal, Over the lilac dusk spreads his great fingers— Earth is immortal! While the frail beauty dies. Dream in the dreamer’s eyes, All the good gladness turns praise for the singers.

Hark, ’tis the breath of life! Hush! and I need it; Northern, gigantic,— Questing the silences, herding the sudden foam Down the Atlantic; Leaves from the autumn’s store Shrill at my desert door, They and I out of one heart that is grieving.

GEORGE CABOT LODGE

THE WORLDS

I saw an idler on a summer day Piping with Iris by a dancing brook; And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay, And languid Follies smiled from every nook.

I saw an artist in a world of dreams, His rainbow rising from his radiant task, To throw its magic prism beams O’er Fancy’s changeful masque and counter-masque.

I saw Toil—stooping underneath a world Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread, His skyward pinions ever closer furled Before the grim necessity of bread!

I saw a sinner working hard to be Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time; I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea Was hearth and hope and love and wedding-chime.

I saw a mother living in her child— I saw a saint among his fellow men— Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled And solemn-hearted scholars—Sudden then

I cried: “The stars are no less neighborly In their ethereal remoteness swung, Than these near human orbits wherein we Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue!

“Love seek through all—less there be one Least soul unlit within the night— And over all, the selfsame sun Give each creation light!”

MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI

THE RIOT

You may think my life is quiet. I find it full of change, An ever-varied diet, As piquant as ’tis strange.

Wild thoughts are always flying, Like sparks across my brain, Now flashing out, now dying, To kindle soon again.

Fine fancies set me thrilling, And subtle monsters creep Before my sight unwilling: They even haunt my sleep.

One broad, perpetual riot Enfolds me night and day. You think my life is quiet? You don’t know what you say.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

HUNGER

I’ve been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a saint, Their bend of weary knees and their contortions long and faint, And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred thousand pins, A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins.

I love to wander widely, but I understand a cell, Where you tell and tell your beads because you’ve nothing else to tell, Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild fantastic tricks, Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix.

I cannot speak for others, but my inmost soul is torn With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn. There are moments when I would untread the paths that I have trod. I’m a haunter of the devil, but I hunger after God.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

EXIT GOD

Of old our father’s God was real, Something they almost saw, Which kept them to a stern ideal And scourged them into awe.

They walked the narrow path of right Most vigilantly well, Because they feared eternal night And boiling depths of Hell.

Now Hell has wholly boiled away And God become a shade. There is no place for him to stay In all the world He made.

The followers of William James Still let the Lord exist, And call Him by imposing names, A venerable list.

But nerve and muscle only count, Gray matter of the brain, And an astonishing amount Of inconvenient pain.

I sometimes wish that God were back In this dark world and wide; For though some virtues He might lack, He had his pleasant side.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

ROUSSEAU

That odd, fantastic ass, Rousseau, Declared himself unique. How men persist in doing so, Puzzles me more than Greek.

The sins that tarnish whore and thief Beset me every day. My most ethereal belief Inhabits common clay.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

JOHN MASEFIELD

I

MASEFIELD (HIMSELF)

God said, and frowned, as He looked on Shropshire clay: “Alone, ’twont do; composite, would I make This man-child rare; ’twere well, methinks, to take A handful from the Stratford tomb, and weigh A few of Shelley’s ashes; Bunyan may Contribute, too, and, for my sweet Son’s sake, I’ll visit Avalon; then, let me slake The whole with Wyclif-water from the Bay.

A sailor, he! Too godly, though, I fear; Offset it with tobacco! Next, I’ll find Hedge-roses, star-dust, and a vagrant’s mind; His mother’s heart now let me breathe upon; When west winds blow, I’ll whisper in her ear: “Apocalypse awaits him; call him John!”

II

HIS PORTRAIT

A Man of Sorrows! with such haunted eyes, I trow, the Master looked across the lake,— Looked from the Judas-heart, so soon to make Of Him the world’s historic sacrifice; Moreover, as I gaze, do more arise; Great souls, great pallid ghosts of pain, who wake And wander yet; all, weary men who brake

Their hearts; all hemlock-drunk, with growing wise: Hudson adrift; Defoe; the Wandering Jew; Tannhauser; Faust; Andrea; phantoms, all, In Masefield’s eyes you lodge; and to the wall I turn you,—hand a-tremble,—lest you make Of mine own stricken eyes a mirror, too. Wherein the sad world’s sadder for your sake.

III

HIS “DAUBER”

O Masefield’s “Dauber!” You, who being dead, Yet speak: heroic, dauntless, flaming soul, Too suddenly snuffed out! Here take fresh toll Of cognizance, and, in your ocean bed, Serenely rest, assured that who has read What you would fain have pictured of the Pole Would gladly match your part against the whole Of many a modern artist, Paris-bred.

And more than this: if you, indeed, are his, Then, by a dual truth, he, too, is yours; For, marked and credited by what endures, Were it the only thing, which bears his name, (O deathless Soul, I speak you true in this!) “The Dauber” has brought Masefield to his fame.

IV

HIS “GALLIPOLI”

“Small wonder,” speaks my pensive self, “that he Whose passion ’tis to sing of men who fail,— (Belabored, broken by The Unseen Flail) Small wonder that be makes Gallipoli

His fervent text, for could there be A costlier failure in Earth’s shuddering tale? Think of heroic Sulva’s bloody swale; Of Anzac’s tortured thirst and agony!” But as I read, protesting voices cry: “Not we, Not we, who fell among the daffodils, Who conquered Death among those blistered hills, And found our glory after mortal pain; Not we, who failed and lost Gallipoli; The sad, strange failure theirs who mourn in vain!”