Chapter IV

And this was she my fancy held as good—
As fair and lovable—in every wise
As peerless in pure worth of womanhood
As was her wondrous beauty in men’s eyes.—
Yet, all alone, I kiss this empty glove—
The poor husk of the hand I loved—and love.

OUR OWN

They walk here with us, hand-in-hand;
We gossip, knee-by-knee;
They tell us all that they have planned—
Of all their joys to be,—
And, laughing, leave us: And, to-day,
All desolate we cry
Across wide waves of voiceless graves—
Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!

MAKE-BELIEVE AND CHILD-PLAY

_THE FROG_

_Who am I but the Frog—the Frog!_
_My realm is the dark bayou,_
_And my throne is the muddy and moss-grown log_
_That the poison-vine clings to—_
_And the black-snakes slide in the slimy tide_
_Where the ghost of the moon looks blue._

_What am I but a King—a King!—_
_For the royal robes I wear—_
_A sceptre, too, and a signet-ring,_
_As vassals and serfs declare:_
_And a voice, god wot, that is equalled not_
_In the wide world anywhere!_

_I can talk to the Night—the Night!—_
_Under her big black wing_
_She tells me the tale of the world outright,_
_And the secret of everything;_
_For she knows you all, from the time you crawl,_
_To the doom that death will bring._

_The Storm swoops down, and he blows—and blows,—_
_While I drum on his swollen cheek,_
_And croak in his angered eye that glows_
_With the lurid lightning’s streak;_
_While the rushes drown in the watery frown_
_That his bursting passions leak._

_And I can see through the sky—the sky—_
_As clear as a piece of glass;_
_And I can tell you the how and why_
_Of the things that come to pass—_
_And whether the dead are there instead,_
_Or under the graveyard grass._

_To your Sovereign lord all hail—all hail!—_
_To your Prince on his throne so grim!_
_Let the moon swing low, and the high stars trail_
_Their heads in the dust to him;_
_And the wide world sing: Long live the King,_
_And grace to his royal whim!_

“TWIGGS AND TUDENS”

If my old school-chum and room-mate John Skinner is alive to-day—and no doubt he _is_ alive, and quite so, being, when last heard from, the very alert and effective Train Dispatcher at Butler, Indiana,—he will not have forgotten a certain night in early June (the 8th) of 1870, in “Old Number ’Leven” of the Dunbar House, Greenfield, when he and I sat the long night through, getting ready a famous issue of our old school-paper, “The Criterion.” And he will remember, too, the queer old man who occupied, but that one night, the room just opposite our own, Number 13. For reasons wholly aside from any superstitious dread connected with the numerals, 13 was not a desirable room; its locality was alien to all accommodations, and its comforts, like its furnishings, were extremely meagre. In fact, it was the room usually assigned to the tramp-printer, who, in those days, was an institution; or again, it was the local habitation of the oft-recurring transient customer who was too incapacitated to select a room himself when he retired—or rather, when he was personally retired by “the hostler,” as the gentlemanly night-clerk of that era was habitually designated.

As both Skinner and myself—between fitful terms of school—had respectively served as “printer’s devil” in the two rival newspaper offices of the town, it was natural for us to find a ready interest in anything pertaining to the newspaper business; and so it was, perhaps, that we had been selected, by our own approval and that of our fellow-students of The Graded Schools, to fill the rather exalted office of editing “The Criterion.” Certain it is that the rather abrupt rise from the lowly duties of the “roller” to the editorial management of a paper of our own (even if issued in handwriting) we accepted as a natural right; and, vested in our new power of office, we were largely “shaping the whisper of the throne” about our way.

And upon this particular evening it was, as John and I had fairly squared ourselves for the work of the night, that we heard the clatter and shuffle of feet on the side-stairs, and, an instant later, the hostler establishing some poor unfortunate in 13, just across the hall.

“Listen!” said John, as we heard an old man’s voice through the open transom of our door,—“listen at that!”

It was an utterance peculiarly refined, in language as well as intonation. A low, mild, rather apologetic voice, gently assuring the hostler that “everything was very snug and comfortable indeed—so far as the _compartment_ was concerned—but would not the _attendant_ kindly supply a better light, together with pen-and-ink—and just a sheet or two of paper,—if he would be so very good as to find a pardon for so very troublesome a guest.”

“Hain’t no writin’-paper,” said the hostler, briefly,—“and the big lamps is all in use. These fellers here in ’Leven might let you have some paper and—Hain’t _you_ got a lead-pencil?”

“Oh, no matter!” came the impatient yet kindly answer of the old voice—“no matter at all, my good fellow!—Good night—good night!”

We waited till the sullen, clumpy footsteps down the hall and stair had died away.

Then Skinner, with a handful of foolscap, opened our door; and, with an indorsing smile from me, crossed the hall and tapped at 13—was admitted—entered, and very quietly closed the door behind him, evidently that I might not be disturbed.

I wrote on in silence for quite a time. It was, in fact, a full half-hour before John had returned,—and with a face and eye absolutely blazing with delight.

“An old printer,” whispered John, answering my look,—“and we’re in luck:—He’s a _genius_, ’y God! and an Englishman, and knows Dickens _personally_—used to write races with him, and’s got a manuscript of his in his ‘portmanteau,’ as he calls an old oil-cloth knapsack with one lung clean gone. Excuse this extra light.—Old man’s lamp’s like a sore eye, and he’s going to touch up the Dickens sketch for _us_! _Hear?_—_For us_—for ‘The Criterion.’ Says he can’t sleep—he’s in distress—has a presentiment—some dear friend is dying—or dead now—and he must write—_write_!”

This is, in briefest outline, the curious history of the subjoined sketch, especially curious for the reason that the following morning’s cablegram announced that the great novelist, Charles Dickens, had been stricken suddenly and seriously the night previous. On the day of this announcement—even as “The Criterion” was being read to perfunctorily interested visitors of The Greenfield Graded Schools—came the further announcement of Mr. Dickens’s death. The old printer’s manuscript, here reproduced, is, as originally, captioned—

TWIGGS AND TUDENS

“Now who’d want a more cosier little home than me and Tude’s got here?” asked Mr. Twiggs, as his twinkling eyes swept caressingly around the cheery little room in which he, alone, stood one chill December evening as the great St. Paul’s was drawling six.

“This ain’t no princely hall with all its gorgeous paraphanaly, as the play-bills says; but it’s what I calls a’ ‘interior,’ which for meller comfort and cheerful surroundin’s ain’t to be ekalled by no other ‘flat’ on the boundless, never-endin’ stage of this existence!” And as the exuberant Mr. Twiggs rendered this observation, he felt called upon to smile and bow most graciously to an invisible audience, whose wild approval he in turn interpreted by an enthusiastic clapping of his hands and the cry of “Ongcore!” in a dozen different keys—this strange acclamation being made the more grotesque by a great green parrot perched upon the mantel, which, in a voice less musical than penetrating, chimed in with “Hooray for Twiggs and Tudens!” a very great number of times.

“Tude’s a queer girl,” said Mr. Twiggs, subsiding into a reflective calm, broken only by the puffing of his pipe, and the occasional articulation of a thought, as it loitered through his mind. “Tude’s a queer girl!—a werry queer girl!” repeated Mr. Twiggs, pausing again, with a long whiff at his pipe, and marking the graceful swoop the smoke made as it dipped and disappeared up the wide, black-throated chimney; and then, as though dropping into confidence with the great fat kettle on the coals, that steamed and bubbled with some inner paroxysm, he added, “And queer and nothink short, is the lines for Tude, eh?

“Now s’posin’,” he continued, leaning forward and speaking in a tone whose careful intonation might have suggested a more than ordinary depth of wisdom and sagacity,—“s’posin’ a pore chap like me, as ain’t no property only this-’ere ‘little crooked house,’ as Tude calls it, and some o’ the properties I ’andles at the Drury—as I was a-sayin’,—s’posin’ now a’ old rough chap like me was jest to tell her all about herself, and who she is and all, and not no kith or kin o’ mine, let alone a daughter, as _she_ thinks—What do you reckon now ’ud be the upshot, eh?” And as Mr. Twiggs propounded this mysterious query he jabbed the poker prankishly in the short-ribs of the grate, at which the pot, as though humoring a joke it failed to comprehend wholly, set up a chuckling of such asthmatic violence that its smothered cachinnations tilted its copper lid till Mr. Twiggs was obliged to dash a cup of water in its face.

“And Tude’s a-comin’ of a’ age, too,” continued Mr. Twiggs, “when a more tenderer pertecter than a father, so to speak, wouldn’t be out o’ keepin’ with the nat’ral order o’ things, seein’ as how she’s sorto’ startin’ for herself-like now. And it’s a question in my mind, if it ain’t my bounden duty as her father—or ruther, who has been a father to her all her life—to kindo’ tell her jest how things is, and all—and how _I_ am, and everythink,—and how I feel as though I ort’o stand by her, as I allus have, and allus _have_ had her welfare in view, and kindo’ feel as how I allus—ort’o kindo’—ort’o kindo’”—and here Mr. Twiggs’s voice fell into silence so abruptly that the drowsy parrot started from its trance-like quiet and cried “Ortokindo! Ortokindo!” with such a strength of seeming mockery that it was brushed violently to the floor by the angry hand of Mr. Twiggs and went backing awkwardly beneath the table.

“Blow me,” said Mr. Twiggs, “if the knowin’ impidence of that-’ere bird ain’t astonishin’!” And then, after a serious controversy with the draught of his pipe, he went on with his deliberations.

“Lor! it were jest scrumptious to see Tude in ‘The Iron Chest’ last night! Now, I ain’t no actur myself,—I’ve been on, of course, a thousand times as ‘fillin’,’ ‘sogers’ and ‘peasants’ and the like, where I never had no lines, on’y in the ‘choruses’; but if I don’t know nothin’ but ‘All hail!—All hail!’ I’ve had the experience of bein’ under the baleful hinfluence of the hoppery-glass, and I’m free to say it air a ticklish position and no mistake. But _Tude_! w’y, bless you, she warn’t the first bit flustered, was she? ’Peared-like she jest felt perfectly at home-like—like her mother afore her! And I’m dashed if I didn’t feel the cold chills a-creepin’ and a-crawlin’ when she was a-singin’ ‘Down by the river there grows a green willer and a-weepin’ all night with the bank for her piller’; and when she come to the part about wantin’ to be buried there ’while the winds was a-blowin’ close by the stream where her tears was a-flowin’, and over her corpse to keep the green willers growin’,’ I’m d—d if I didn’t blubber right out!” And as the highly sympathetic Mr. Twiggs delivered this acknowledgment, he stroked the inner corners of his eyes, and rubbed his thumb and finger on his trousers.

“It were a tryin’ thing, though,” he went on, his mellow features settling into a look not at all in keeping with his shiny complexion—“it were a tryin’ thing, and it _air_ a tryin’ thing to see them lovely arms o’ hern a-twinin’ so lovin’-like around that-’ere Stanley’s neck and a-kissin’ of him—as she’s obleeged to do, of course—as the ‘properties’ of the play demands; but I’m blowed if she wouldn’t do it quite so nat’ral-like I’d feel easier. Blow me!” he broke off savagely, starting up and flinging his pipe in the ashes, “I’m about a-comin’ to the conclusion I ain’t got no more courage’n a blasted school-boy! Here I am old enough to be her father—mighty nigh it—and yet I’m actually afeard to speak up and tell her jest how things is, and all, and how I feel like I—like I—ort’o—ort’o—”

“_Ortokindo! Ortokindo!_” shrieked the parrot, clinging in a reversed position to the under-round of a chair.—“_Ortokindo! Ortokindo! Tude’s come home!—Tude’s come home!_” And as though in happy proof of this latter assertion, the gentle Mr. Twiggs found his chubby neck encircled by a pair of rosy arms, and felt upon his cheek the sudden pressure of a pair of lips that thrilled his old heart to the core. And then the noisy bird dropped from its perch and marched pompously from its place of concealment, trailing its rusty wings and shrieking, “Tude’s come home!” at the top of its brazen voice.

“Shet up!” screamed Mr. Twiggs, with a pretended gust of rage, kicking lamely at the feathered oracle; “I’ll ‘Tude’s-come-home’ ye! W’y, a feller can’t hear his _ears_ for your infernal squawkin’!” And then, turning toward the serious eyes that peered rebukingly into his own, his voice fell gentle as a woman’s: “Well, there, Tudens, I beg parding; I do indeed. Don’t look at me thataway. I know I’m a great, rough, good-for—”But a warm, swift kiss cut short the utterance; and as the girl drew back, still holding the bright old face between her tender palms, he said simply, “You’re a queer girl, Tudens; a queer girl.”

“Ha! am I?” said the girl, in quite evident heroics and quotation, starting back with a theatrical flourish and falling into a fantastic attitude.—“‘Troth, I am sorry for it; me poor father’s heart is bursting with gratichude, and he would fain ease it by pouring out his thanks to his benefactor.’”

“Werry good! Werry good, indeed!” said Mr. Twiggs, gazing wistfully upon the graceful figure of the girl. “You’re a-growin’ more wonderful’ clever in your ‘presence’ every day, Tude. You don’t think o’ nothink else but your actin’, do ye, now?” And, as Mr. Twiggs concluded his observations, a something very like a sigh came faltering from his lips.

“Why, listen there! Ah-ha!” laughed Tude, clapping her hands and dancing gayly around his chair.—“Why, you old melancholy Dane, you! are you actually _sighing_?” Then, dropping into a tragic air of deep contrition, she continued: “‘But, believe me, I would not question you, but to console you, Wilford. I would scorn to pry into any one’s grief, much more yours, Wilford, to satisfy a busy curiosity.’”

“Oh, don’t, Tude; don’t _rehearse_ like that at me!—I can’t a-bear it.” And the serious Mr. Twiggs held out his hand as though warding off a blow. At this appeal the girl’s demeanor changed to one of tenderest solicitude.

“Why, Pop’m,” she said, laying her hand on his shoulder, “I did not mean to vex you—forgive me. I was only trying to be happy, as I ought, although my own heart is this very minute heavy—very heavy—very.—No, no; I don’t mean that—but, Father, Father, I have not been dutiful.”

“W’y, yes, you have,” broke in Mr. Twiggs, smothering the heavy exclamation in his handkerchief. “You ain’t been ondutiful, nor nothink else. You’re jest all and everythink that heart could wish. It’s all my own fault, Tudens; it’s all my fault. You see, I git to thinkin’ sometimes like I was a-goin’ to _lose_ you; and now that you are a-comin’ on in years, and gittin’ such a fine start, and all, and position and everythink.—Yes-sir! _position_, ’cause everybody likes you, Tudens. You know that; and I’m that proud of you and all, and that selfish, that it’s onpossible I could ever, ever give you up;—never, never, _ever_ give you up!” And Mr. Twiggs again stifled his voice in his handkerchief and blew his nose with prolonged violence.

It may have been the melancholy ticking of the clock, as it grated on the silence following, it may have been the gathering darkness of the room, or the plaintive sighing of the rising wind without, that caused the girl to shudder as she stooped to kiss the kind old face bent forward in the shadows, and turned with feigned gayety to the simple task of arranging supper. But when, a few minutes later, she announced that Twiggs and Tudens’s tea was waiting, the two smilingly sat down, Mr. Twiggs remarking that if he only knew a blessing, he’d ask it upon that occasion most certainly.

“—For on’y look at these-’ere ’am and eggs,” he said, admiringly: “I’d like to know if the Queen herself could cook ’em to a nicer turn, or serve ’em up more tantaliz’in’er to the palate. And this-’ere soup,—or whatever it is, is rich as gravy; and these boughten rolls ain’t a bad thing either, split in two and toasted as you do ’em, air they, Tude?” And as Mr. Twiggs glanced inquiringly at his companion, he found her staring vacantly at her plate. “I was jest a-sayin’, Tudens—” he went on, pretending to blow his tea and glancing cautiously across his saucer.

“Yes, Pop’m, I heard you;—we really _ought_ to have a blessing, by all means.”

Mr. Twiggs put down his tea without tasting it. “Tudens,” he said, after a long pause, in which he carefully buttered a piece of toast for the second time,—“Tudens, I’m ’most afeard you didn’t grasp that last remark of mine: I was a-sayin’—”

“Well—” said Tudens, attentively.

“I was a-sayin’,” said Mr. Twiggs, averting his face and staring stoically at his toast—“I was a-sayin’ that you was a-gittin’ now to be quite a young woman.”

“Oh, so you were,” said Tudens, with charming naïveté.

“Well,” said Mr. Twiggs, repentantly, but with a humorous twinkle, “if I wasn’t a-sayin’ of it, I was _a-thinkin’_ it.”—And then, running along hurriedly, “And I’ve been a-thinkin’ it for days and days—ever sence you left the ‘balley’ and went in ‘chambermaids,’ and last in leadin’ rôles. Maybe _you_ ain’t noticed it, but I’ve had my eyes on you from the ‘flies’ and the ‘wings’; and jest betwixt us, Tudens, and not for me as ort to know better, and does know better, to go a-flatterin’, at my time o’—or to go a-flatterin’ anybody, as I said, after you’re a-gittin’ to be a young woman—and what’s more, a werry _’andsome_ young woman!”

“_Why, Pop’m!_” exclaimed Tudens, blushing.

“Yes, you are, Tudens, and I mean it, every word of it; and as I was a-goin’ on to say, I’ve been a-watchin’ of you, and a-layin’ off a long time jest to tell you summat that will make your eyes open wider ’an that! What I mean,” said Mr. Twiggs, coughing vehemently and pushing his chair back from the table—“what I mean is, you’ll soon be old enough to be a-settin’ up for yourself-like, and a-marry’—W’y, Tudens, what _ails_ you?” The girl had risen to her feet, and, with a face dead white and lips all tremulous, stood clinging to her chair for support. “What ails you, Tudens?” repeated Mr. Twiggs, rising to his feet and gazing on her with a curious expression of alarm and tenderness.

“Nothing serious, dear Pop’m,” said Tudens, with a flighty little laugh,—“only it just flashed on me all at once that I’d clean forgotten poor ‘Dick’s’ supper.” And as she turned abruptly to the parrot, cooing and clucking to him playfully,—up, up from some hitherto undreamed-of depth within the yearning heart of Mr. Twiggs mutely welled the old utterance, “Tude’s a queer girl!”

“Whatever made you think of such a thing, Father?” called Tudens, gayly; and then, without waiting for an answer, went on cooing to the parrot,—“Hey, old dicky-bird! do _you_ think Tudens is a handsome young woman? and do _you_ think Tudens is old enough to marry, eh?” This query delivered, she broke into a fit of merriment which so wrought upon the susceptibilities of the bird that he was heard repeatedly to declare and affirm, in most positive and unequivocal terms, that Tude had actually come home.

“Yes—_sir_, Tudens!” broke in Mr. Twiggs at last, lighting a fresh churchwarden and settling into his old position at the grate; “have your laugh out over it now, but it’s a werry serious fact, for all that.”

“I know it, Father,” said the girl, recovering her gravity, turning her large eyes lovingly upon him and speaking very tenderly. “I know it—oh, I know it; and many, many times when I have thought of it, and then again of your old kindly faith; all the warm wealth of your love; and our old home here, and all the happiness it ever held for me and you alike—oh, I have tried hard—indeed, indeed I have—to put all other thought away and live for you alone! But, Pop’m! dear old Pop’m—”And even as the great strong breast made shelter for her own, the woman’s heart within her flowed away in mists of gracious tears.

“Couldn’t live without old Pop’m, could her?” half cried and laughed the happy Mr. Twiggs, tangling his clumsy fingers in the long dark hair that fell across his arm, and bending till his glad face touched her own.—“Couldn’t live without old Pop’m?”

“Never! never!” sobbed the girl, lifting her brimming eyes and gazing in the kind old face. “Oh, may I always live with you, Pop’m? Always?—Forever?—”

“—And a day!” said Mr. Twiggs, emphatically.

“Even after I’m—” and she hid her face again.

“Even after—_what_, Tudens?”

“After I’m—after I’m—married?” murmured Tudens, with a longing pressure.

“Nothink short!” said Mr. Twiggs;—“perwidin’,” he added, releasing one hand and smoothing back his scanty hair—“perwidin’, of course, that your man is a’ honest, straitforrerd feller, as ain’t no lordly notions nor nothink o’ that sort.”

“Nor rich?”

“Well, I ain’t so p’ticklar about his bein’ _pore_, adzackly.—Say a feller as works for his livin’, and knows how to ’usband his earnin’s thrifty-like, and allus ’as a hextry crown or two laid up against a rainy day—and a good perwider, of course,” said Mr. Twiggs, with a comfortable glance around the room.—“’Ll blow me if I didn’t see a face there a-peerin’ in the winder!”

“Oh, no, you didn’t,” said the girl, without raising her head. “Go on—‘and a good provider—’”

“—A good perwider,” continued Mr. Twiggs; “and a feller, of course, as has a’ eye out for the substantials of this life, and ain’t afeard o’ work—that’s the idear! that’s the idear!” said Mr. Twiggs, by way of sweeping conclusion.

“And that’s all old Pop’m asks, after all?” queried the girl, with her radiant face wistful as his own.

“W’y, certainly!” said Mr. Twiggs, with heartiness. “Ain’t that all and everythink to make home happy?”—catching her face between his great brown hands and kissing her triumphantly.

“Hooray for Twiggs-and Twiggs-and Twiggs-and—” cootered the drowsy bird, disjointedly.

The girl had risen.—“And you’ll forgive me for marrying such a man?”

“Won’t I?” said Mr. Twiggs, with a rapturous twinkle.

As he spoke, she flung her arms about his neck and pressed her lips close, close against his cheek, her own glad face now fronting the little window.... She heard the clicking of the latch, the opening of the door, and the step of the intruder ere she loosed her hold.

“God bless you, Pop’m, and forgive me!—This is my husband.”

The newcomer, Mr. Stanley, reached and grasped the hand of Mr. Twiggs, eagerly, fervidly, albeit the face he looked on then will haunt him to the hour of his death.—Yet haply, some day, when the Master takes the selfsame hand within his own and whispers, “Tude’s come home,” the old smile will return.

DOLORES

Lithe-armed, and with satin-soft shoulders
As white as the cream-crested wave;
With a gaze dazing every beholder’s,
She holds every gazer a slave:
Her hair, a fair haze, is outfloated
And flared in the air like a flame;
Bare-breasted, bare-browed and bare-throated—
Too smooth for the soothliest name.

She wiles you with wine, and wrings for you
Ripe juices of citron and grape;
She lifts up her lute and sings for you
Till the soul of you seeks no escape;
And you revel and reel with mad laughter,
And fall at her feet, at her beck,
And the scar of her sandal thereafter
You wear like a gyve round your neck.

WHEN I DO MOCK

When I do mock the blackness of the night
With my despair—outweep the very dews
And wash my wan cheeks stark of all delight,
Denying every counsel of dear use
In mine embittered state; with infinite
Perversity, mine eyes drink in no sight
Of pleasance that nor moon nor stars refuse
In silver largess and gold twinklings bright;—
I question me what mannered brain is mine
That it doth trick me of the very food
It panteth for—the very meat and wine
That yet should plump my starved soul with good
And comfortable plethora of ease,
That I might drowse away such rhymes as these.

MY MARY

My Mary, O my Mary!
The simmer skies are blue:
The dawnin’ brings the dazzle,
An’ the gloamin’ brings the dew,—
The mirk o’ nicht the glory
O’ the moon, an’ kindles, too,
The stars that shift aboon the lift.—
But naething brings me you!

Where is it, O my Mary,
Ye are biding a’ the while?
I ha’ wended by your window—
I ha’ waited by the stile,
An’ up an’ down the river
I ha’ won for mony a mile,
Yet never found, adrift or drown’d,
Your lang-belated smile.

Is it forgot, my Mary,
How glad we used to be?—
The simmer-time when bonny bloomed
The auld trysting-tree,—
How there I carved the name for you,
An’ you the name for me;
An’ the gloamin’ kenned it only
When we kissed sae tenderly.

Speek ance to me, my Mary!—
But whisper in my ear
As light as ony sleeper’s breath,
An’ a’ my soul will hear;
My heart shall stap its beating,
An’ the soughing atmosphere
Be hushed the while I leaning smile
An’ listen to you, dear!

My Mary, O my Mary!
The blossoms bring the bees;
The sunshine brings the blossoms,
An’ the leaves on a’ the trees;
The simmer brings the sunshine
An’ the fragrance o’ the breeze,—
But O wi’out you, Mary,
I care naething for these!

We were sae happy, Mary!
O think how ance we said—
Wad ane o’ us gae fickle,
Or are o’ us lie dead,—
To feel anither’s kisses
We wad feign the auld instead,
An’ ken the ither’s footsteps
In the green grass owerhead.

My Mary, O my Mary!
Are ye dochter o’ the air,
That ye vanish aye before me
As I follow everywhere?—
Or is it ye are only
But a mortal, wan wi’ care,
Sin’ I search through a’ the kirkyird
An’ I dinna find ye there?

_EROS_

_The storm of love has burst at last_
_Full on me: All the world, before,_
_Was like an alien, unknown shore_
_Along whose verge I laughing passed.—_
_But now—I laugh not any more,—_
_Bowed with a silence vast in weight_
_As that which falls on one who stands_
_For the first time on ocean sands,_
_Seeing and feeling all the great_
_Awe of the waves as they wash the lands_
_And billow and wallow and undulate._

ORLIE WILDE

A goddess, with a siren’s grace,—
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.

Wrought was she of a painter’s dream,—
Wise only as are artists wise,
My artist-friend, Rolf Herschkelhiem,
With deep sad eyes of oversize,
And face of melancholy guise.

I pressed him that he tell to me
This masterpiece’s history.
He turned—_re_turned—and thus beguiled
Me with the tale of Orlie Wilde:—

“We artists live ideally:
We breed our firmest facts of air;
We make our own reality—
We dream a thing and it is so.
The fairest scenes we ever see
Are mirages of memory;
The sweetest thoughts we ever know
We plagiarize from Long Ago:
And as the girl on canvas there
Is marvellously rare and fair,
’Tis only inasmuch as she
Is dumb and may not speak to me!”
He tapped me with his mahlstick—then
The picture,—and went on again:

“Orlie Wilde, the fisher’s child—
I see her yet, as fair and mild
As ever nursling summer day
Dreamed on the bosom of the bay:
For I was twenty then, and went
Alone and long-haired—all content
With promises of sounding name
And fantasies of future fame,
And thoughts that now my mind discards
As editor a fledgling bard’s.

“At evening once I chanced to go,
With pencil and portfolio,
Adown the street of silver sand
That winds beneath this craggy land,
To make a sketch of some old scurf
Of driftage, nosing through the surf
A splintered mast, with knarl and strand
Of rigging-rope and tattered threads
Of flag and streamer and of sail
That fluttered idly in the gale
Or whipped themselves to sadder shreds.
The while I wrought, half listlessly,
On my dismantled subject, came
A sea-bird, settling on the same
With plaintive moan, as though that he
Had lost his mate upon the sea;
And—with my melancholy trend—
It brought dim dreams half understood—
It wrought upon my morbid mood,—
I thought of my own voyagings
That had no end—that have no end.—
And, like the sea-bird, I made moan
That I was loveless and alone.
And when at last with weary wings
It went upon its wanderings,
With upturned face I watched its flight
Until this picture met my sight:
A goddess, with a siren’s grace,—
A sun-haired girl on a craggy place
Above a bay where fish-boats lay
Drifting about like birds of prey.

“In airy poise she, gazing, stood
A matchless form of womanhood,
That brought a thought that if for me
Such eyes had sought across the sea,
I could have swum the widest tide
That ever mariner defied,
And, at the shore, could on have gone
To that high crag she stood upon,
To there entreat and say, ‘My Sweet,
Behold thy servant at thy feet.’
And to my soul I said: ‘Above,
There stands the idol of thy love!’

“In this rapt, awed, ecstatic state
I gazed—till lo! I was aware
A fisherman had joined her there—
A weary man, with halting gait,
Who toiled beneath a basket’s weight:
Her father, as I guessed, for she
Had run to meet him gleefully
And ta’en his burden to herself,
That perched upon her shoulder’s shelf
So lightly that she, tripping, neared
A jutting crag and disappeared;
But left the echo of a song
That thrills me yet, and will as long
As I have being!...

... “Evenings came
And went,—but each the same—the same:
She watched above, and even so
I stood there watching from below;
Till, grown so bold at last, I sung,—
(What matter now the theme thereof!)—
It brought an answer from her tongue—
Faint as the murmur of a dove,
Yet all the more the song of love....

“I turned and looked upon the bay,
With palm to forehead—eyes a-blur
In the sea’s smile—meant but for her!—
I saw the fish-boats far away
In misty distance, lightly drawn
In chalk-dots on the horizon—
Looked back at her, long, wistfully,—
And, pushing off an empty skiff,
I beckoned her to quit the cliff
And yield me her rare company
Upon a little pleasure-cruise.—
She stood, as loathful to refuse,
To muse for full a moment’s time,—
Then answered back in pantomime
‘She feared some danger from the sea
Were she discovered thus with me.’
I motioned then to ask her if
I might not join her on the cliff;
And back again, with graceful wave
Of lifted arm, she answer gave
‘She feared some danger from the sea.’

“Impatient, piqued, impetuous, I
Sprang in the boat, and flung ‘Good-bye’
From pouted mouth with angry hand,
And madly pulled away from land
With lusty stroke, despite that she
Held out her hands entreatingly:
And when far out, with covert eye
I shoreward glanced, I saw her fly
In reckless haste adown the crag,
Her hair a-flutter like a flag
Of gold that danced across the strand
In little mists of silver sand.
All curious I, pausing, tried
To fancy what it all implied,—
When suddenly I found my feet
Were wet; and, underneath the seat
On which I sat, I heard the sound
Of gurgling waters, and I found
The boat aleak alarmingly....
I turned and looked upon the sea,
Whose every wave seemed mocking me;
I saw the fishers’ sails once more—
In dimmer distance than before;
I saw the sea-bird wheeling by,
With foolish wish that _I_ could fly:
I thought of firm earth, home and friends—
I thought of everything that tends
To drive a man to frenzy and
To wholly lose his own command;
I thought of all my waywardness—
Thought of a mother’s deep distress;
Of youthful follies yet unpurged—
Sins, as the seas, about me surged—
Thought of the printer’s ready pen
To-morrow drowning me again;—
A million things without a name—
I thought of everything but—Fame....

“A memory yet is in my mind,
So keenly clear and sharp-defined,
I picture every phase and line
Of life and death, and neither mine,—
While some fair seraph, golden-haired,
Bends over me,—with white arms bared,
That strongly plait themselves about
My drowning weight and lift me out—
With joy too great for words to state
Or tongue to dare articulate!

“And this seraphic ocean-child
And heroine was Orlie Wilde:
And thus it was I came to hear
Her voice’s music in my ear—
Ay, thus it was Fate paved the way
That I walk desolate to-day!” ...

The artist paused and bowed his face
Within his palms a little space,
While reverently on his form
I bent my gaze and marked a storm
That shook his frame as wrathfully
As some typhoon of agony,
And fraught with sobs—the more profound
For that peculiar laughing sound
We hear when strong men weep.... I leant
With warmest sympathy—I bent
To stroke with soothing hand his brow,
He murmuring—“’Tis over now!—
And shall I tie the silken thread
Of my frail romance?” “Yes,” I said.—
He faintly smiled; and then, with brow
In kneading palm, as one in dread—
His tasselled cap pushed from his head;—
“‘Her voice’s music,’ I repeat,”
He said,—“’twas sweet—O passing sweet!—
Though she herself, in uttering
Its melody, proved not the thing
Of loveliness my dreams made meet
For me—there, yearning, at her feet—
Prone at her feet—a worshipper,—
For lo! she spake a tongue,” moaned he,
“Unknown to me;—unknown to me
As mine to her—as mine to her.”

LEONAINIE

Leonainie—Angels named her;
And they took the light
Of the laughing stars and framed her
In a smile of white;
And they made her hair of gloomy
Midnight, and her eyes of bloomy
Moonshine, and they brought her to me
In the solemn night.—

In a solemn night of summer,
When my heart of gloom
Blossomed up to greet the comer
Like a rose in bloom;
All forebodings that distressed me
I forgot as Joy caressed me—
(_Lying_ Joy! that caught and pressed me
In the arms of doom!)

Only spake the little lisper
In the Angel-tongue;
Yet I, listening, heard her whisper,—
“Songs are only sung
Here below that they may grieve you—
Tales but told you to deceive you,—
So must Leonainie leave you
While her love is young.”

Then God smiled and it was morning.
Matchless and supreme
Heaven’s glory seemed adorning
Earth with its esteem:
Every heart but mine seemed gifted
With the voice of prayer, and lifted
Where my Leonainie drifted
From me like a dream.

TO A JILTED SWAIN

Get thee back neglected friends;
And repay, as each one lends,
Tithes of shallow-sounding glee
Or keen-ringing raillery:
Get thee from lone vigils; be
But in jocund company,
Where is laughter and acclaim
Boisterous above the name.—
Get where sulking husbands sip
Ale-house cheer, with pipe at lip;
And where Mol the barmaid saith
Curst is she that marrieth.

THE VOICES

Down in the night I hear them:
The Voices—unknown—unguessed,—
That whisper, and lisp, and murmur,
And will not let me rest.—

Voices that seem to question,
In unknown words, of me,
Of fabulous ventures, and hopes and dreams
Of this and the World to be.

Voices of mirth and music,
As in sumptuous homes; and sounds
Of mourning, as of gathering friends
In country burial-grounds.

Cadence of maiden voices—
Their lovers’ blent with these;
And of little children singing,
As under orchard trees.

And often, up from the chaos
Of my deepest dreams, I hear
Sounds of their phantom laughter
Filling the atmosphere:

They call to me from the darkness;
They cry to me from the gloom,
Till I start sometimes from my pillow
And peer through the haunted room;

When the face of the moon at the window
Wears a pallor like my own,
And seems to be listening with me
To the low, mysterious tone,—

The low, mysterious clamor
Of voices that seem to be
Striving in vain to whisper
Of secret things to me;—

Of a something dread to be warned of;
Of a rapture yet withheld;
Or hints of the marvellous beauty
Of songs unsyllabled.

But ever and ever the meaning
Falters and fails and dies,
And only the silence quavers
With the sorrow of my sighs.

And I answer:—O Voices, ye may not
Make me to understand
Till my own voice, mingling with you,
Laughs in the Shadow-land.

_A BAREFOOT BOY_

_A barefoot boy! I mark him at his play—_
_For May is here once more, and so is he,—_
_His dusty trousers, rolled half to the knee,_
_And his bare ankles grimy, too, as they:_
_Cross-hatchings of the nettle, in array_
_Of feverish stripes, hint vividly to me_
_Of woody pathways winding endlessly_
_Along the creek, where even yesterday_
_He plunged his shrinking body—gasped and shook—_
_Yet called the water “warm,” with never lack_
_Of joy. And so, half enviously I look_
_Upon this graceless barefoot and his track,—_
_His toe stubbed—ay, his big toe-nail knocked back_
_Like unto the clasp of an old pocket-book._

THE YOUTHFUL PATRIOT

O what did the little boy do
’At nobody wanted him to?
Didn’t do nothin’ but romp an’ run,
An’ whoop an’ holler an’ bang his gun
An’ bu’st fire-crackers, an’ ist have fun—
An’ _’at’s_ all the little boy done!

PONCHUS PILUT

Ponchus Pilut _ust_ to be
Ist a _Slave_, an’ now he’s _free_.
Slaves wuz on’y ist before
The War wuz—an’ _ain’t_ no more.

He works on our place fer us,—
An’ comes here—_sometimes_ he does.
He shocks corn an’ shucks it.—An’
He makes hominy “by han’!”—

Wunst he bringed us some, one trip,
Tied up in a piller-slip:
Pa says, when Ma cooked it, “MY!
This-here’s gooder’n you _buy_!”

Ponchus _pats_ fer me an’ sings;
An’ he says _funny_ things!
Ponchus calls a dish a “_deesh_”—
Yes, an’ _he_ calls fishes “_feesh_”!

When Ma want him eat wiv us
He says, “’Skuse me—’deed you mus’!—
Ponchus know’ good manners, Miss.—
He ain’ eat wher’ White-folks is!”

’Lindy takes _his_ dinner out
Wher’ he’s workin’—roun’ about.—
Wunst he et his dinner spread
In our ole wheelborry-bed.

_Ponchus Pilut_ says “_’at’s_ not
His _right_ name,—an’ done fergot
What his _sho’-’nuff_ name is now—
An’ don’ matter none _no_how!”

Yes, an’ Ponchus he’ps Pa, too,
When our _butcherin’s_ to do,
An’ scalds hogs—an’ says, “Take care
’Bout it, er you’ll _set the hair_!”

Yes, an’ out in our back-yard
He he’ps ’Lindy rendur lard;
An’, wite in the fire there, he
Roast’ a pigtail wunst fer me.—

An’ ist nen th’ole tavurn-bell
Rung, down-town, an’ he says, “Well!—
Hear dat! _Lan’ o’ Caanan_, Son,
Ain’t dat bell say ‘_Pigtail done!_’

—‘_Pigtail done!_
_Go call Son!—_
_Tell dat_
_Chile dat_
_Pigtail done!_’”

A TWINTORETTE

Ho! my little maiden
With the glossy tresses,
Come thou and dance with me
A measure all divine;
Let my breast be laden
With but thy caresses—
Come thou and glancingly
Mate thy face with mine.

Thou shalt trill a rondel,
While my lips are purling
Some dainty twitterings
Sweeter than the birds’;
And, with arms that fondle
Each as we go twirling,
We will kiss, with titterings,
Lisps and loving words.

SLUMBER-SONG

Sleep, little one! The Twilight folds her gloom
Full tenderly about the drowsy Day,
And all his tinselled hours of light and bloom
Like toys are laid away.

Sleep! sleep! The noon-sky’s airy cloud of white
Has deepened wide o’er all the azure plain;
And, trailing through the leaves, the skirts of Night
Are wet with dews as rain.

But rest thou sweetly, smiling in thy dreams,
With round fists tossed like roses o’er thy head,
And thy tranc’d lips and eyelids kissed with gleams
Of rapture perfected.

THE CIRCUS PARADE

The Circus!—The Circus!—The throb of the drums,
And the blare of the horns, as the Band-wagon comes;
The clash and the clang of the cymbals that beat,
As the glittering pageant winds down the long street!

In the Circus parade there is glory clean down
From the first spangled horse to the mule of the Clown,
With the gleam and the glint and the glamour and glare
Of the days of enchantment all glimmering there!

And there are the banners of silvery fold
Caressing the winds with their fringes of gold,
And their high-lifted standards, with spear-tips aglow,
And the helmeted knights that go riding below.

There’s the Chariot, wrought of some marvellous shell
The Sea gave to Neptune, first washing it well
With its fabulous waters of gold, till it gleams
Like the galleon rare of an Argonaut’s dreams.

And the Elephant, too, (with his undulant stride
That rocks the high throne of a king in his pride,)
That in jungles of India shook from his flanks
The tigers that leapt from the Jujubee-banks.

Here’s the long, ever-changing, mysterious line
Of the Cages, with hints of their glories divine
From the barred little windows, cut high in the rear,
Where the close-hidden animals’ noses appear.

Here’s the Pyramid-car, with its splendor and flash,
And the Goddess on high, in a hot-scarlet sash
And a pen-wiper skirt!—O the rarest of sights
Is this “Queen of the Air” in cerulean tights!

Then the far-away clash of the cymbals, and then
The swoon of the tune ere it wakens again
With the capering tones of the gallant cornet
That go dancing away in a mad minuet.

The Circus!—The Circus!—The throb of the drums,
And the blare of the horns, as the Band-wagon comes;
The clash and the clang of the cymbals that beat,
As the glittering pageant winds down the long street.

FOLKS AT LONESOMEVILLE

Pore-folks lives at Lonesomeville—
Lawzy! but they’re pore!
Houses with no winders in,
And hardly any door:
Chimbly all tore down, and no
Smoke in that at all—
Ist a stovepipe through a hole
In the kitchen-wall!

Pump ’at’s got no handle on;
And no woodshed—And, _wooh!_—
Mighty cold there, choppin’ wood,
Like pore-folks has to do!—
Winter-time, and snow and sleet
Ist fairly fit to kill!—
Hope to goodness _Santy Claus_
Goes to Lonesomeville!

THE THREE JOLLY HUNTERS

O there were three jolly hunters;
And a-hunting they did go,
With a spaniel-dog, and a pointer-dog,
And a setter-dog also.
Looky there!

And they hunted and they hal-looed;
And the first thing they did find
Was a dingling-dangling hornet’s-nest
A-swinging in the wind.
Looky there!

And the first one said—“What is it?”
Said the next, “We’ll punch and see”:
And the next one said, a mile from there,
“I wish we’d let it be!”
Looky there!

And they hunted and they hal-looed;
And the next thing they did raise
Was a bobbin’ bunny cottontail
That vanished from their gaze.
Looky there!

One said it was a hot base-ball,
Zipped through the brambly thatch,
But the others said ’twas a note by post,
Or a telegraph-dispatch.
Looky there!

So they hunted and they hal-looed;
And the next thing they did sight
Was a great big bulldog chasing them,
And a farmer, hollerin’ “Skite!”
Looky there!

And the first one said, “Hi-jinktum!”
And the next, “Hi-jinktum-jee!”
And the last one said, “Them very words
Had just occurred to me!”
Looky there!

THE LITTLE DOG-WOGGY

A Little Dog-Woggy
Once walked round the World:
So he shut up his house; and, forgetting
His two puppy-children
Locked in there, he curled
Up his tail in pink bombazine netting,
And set out
To walk round
The World.

He walked to Chicago,
And heard of the Fair—
Walked on to New York, where he _never_,—
In fact, he discovered
That many folks there
Thought less of Chicago than ever,
As he musing-
Ly walked round
The World.

He walked on to Boston,
And round Bunker Hill,
Bow-wowed, but no citizen heerd him—
Till he ordered his baggage
And called for his bill,
And then, bless their souls! how they cheered him,
As he gladly
Walked on round
The World.

He walked and walked on
For a year and a day—
Dropped down at his own door and panted,
Till a teamster came driving
Along the highway
And told him that house there was ha’nted
By the two starve-
Dest pups in
The World.

CHARMS

I

FOR CORNS AND THINGS

Prune your corn in the gray of the morn
With a blade that’s shaved the dead,
And barefoot go and hide it so
The rain will rust it red:
Dip your foot in the dew and put
A print of it on the floor,
And stew the fat of a brindle cat,
And say this o’er and o’er:—
Corny! morny! blady! dead!
Gory! sory! rusty! red!
Footsy! putsy! floory! stew!
Fatsy! catsy!
Mew!
Mew!
Come grease my corn
In the gray of the morn!
Mew! Mew! Mew!