Chapter V: Part FIVE (1)

_RHYMES OF FRANCE_
FROGS 143
TRANSITION 145
KIDDY OF FRANCE 149
SPRING—1919 150
HOMESICK 152

ILLUSTRATIONS

FACING
PAGE
TEMPLES OF THE NIGHT _Frontispiece_
BY SCARLET TORCH AND BLADE 4
OREGON SNOW 18
THE LONG BET 40
HOBNOBBING WITH THE FIRMAMENT 50
THE WANT-AD OF MY SOUL 64
THE SEQUOIA GIGANTIA 118
THE DOUGLAS FIR 124
THE YELLOW PINE 130
THE GHOST-TREES 138

THE OPEN SPACES

BY SCARLET TORCH AND BLADE

All the land is lying listless and a warm September breeze
Has brushed the green to silver on the rustling orchard trees,
And the near-by hills are curtained with a doleful, yellow cloak,
For the world is swathed and sweltering and blanketed in smoke.
Up the Sacramento Valley from the ’Frisco country south,
To Seattle and Vancouver there’s a thirsty, baking drouth;
From the Rockies to the Coast Range ’neath the heavy-hanging haze
Leagues and leagues of trees are giving up their ghosts in smoke
and blaze;
There are endless acres smouldering, their trunks forever dead—
Oh, is it any wonder that the sun’s a red-hot red!

From the towns they’re rushing fighters—rushing, rushing them
by rail.
They’re meeting them in motors and they’ll tote ’em up the trail
Where the pack-nags are a-packing with a tramp, tramp, tramp—
Packing tools and grub and blankets up the canyon to the camp.
And fire they’ll foil with back-fire—pitting pitch ’gainst
snarling pitch,
They’ll slash the brake and lacerate the earth with upturned ditch;
Their skins will smart with singeing draughts that play along their
tracks,
They’ll sting with wet from reeking sweat of shovel, pick and ax.

She’s headed up for Clear Creek and she’ll make it ’fore she stops,
For she’s a roaring crown-fire with her windswept, blazing tops.
From flaming lance to flaming lance on through the parching day,
Exhaling clouds of rolling black, she surges on her way.
She sucks the flying embers like a burning hurricane,
She flings them miles around her in a sputtering, sparking rain,
She pants and thirsts for living green, she stays not for the snags,
She’s changed the steep embankments and she’s gained the higher
crags;
Her Devil’s dance leads ever up—exultingly she swings
Her wild red arms out toward the heights—she sizzles and she sings;
With dragon-spit she hisses, a maniac in her wrath,
She laughs to scorn the human things that try to block her path.
On yonder crest they’ve made their stand—hark to the timber fall,
Again the winds have veered around—the bosses curse and call
Through driving blasts of pitch-pine heat and pitch-pine smoke and
smell,
“She’s turned again—hang to your tools—and damn you—run like
Hell!”
It takes a canny general whose eye’s a weather-vane,
A mighty canny general with seamed and schemy brain,
To meet the gay manœuvers and the unconventional ways
That a breeze kicks up at noonday in a crown-fire forest blaze.

_Her Devil’s dance leads ever up—
Exultingly she swings
Her wild red arms out toward the heights—
She sizzles and she sings._]

But when the cooling later hours have lulled her hot desire,
She straggles down the blackened trunks in fretful gusts of fire.
The tinder-brush has caught the spark, the temples of the night,
Their purple columns towering high, glow in the amber light.
There’s a maple dancing, dancing with her arabesques of gold,
Till her flaming scarfs have shrivelled, fluttered down and touched
the mould.
From censers gleaming fitfully the dripping pitch-gum falls,
And heavy incense fills those wild and weirdly lighted halls.
Each hollow stump a cauldron is with molten pitch aglow—
Its roots are twisted holes of pitch that pierce the earth below.
Beyond the burning border of the bracken and the vine,
A ruddy edge is eating through the carpet of the pine,
But the fighters, they will meet it with their paths of upturned
soil—
It’s many days those little paths have saved in sweat and toil.
A four-league stretch is burning now—the cavalcade of death
Moves on with scarlet torch and blade and with a scarlet breath,
And over all the smoking ridge, the clouds that hang like lead—
Oh, is it any wonder that the moon’s a red-hot red!

And when the golden ladders of tomorrow’s sickly sun
Slant through the mournful tree-tops and the holocaust is done,
There won’t be much to interest the breathing things around
In the charred and ashen litter of the scarred and ghastly ground.
There’s quite a large community that undertook to change
Its residential section to a more inviting range.
There is a fox—a red, red fox, who took his bouncing luck
And dusted down the pathway of a panic-stricken buck;
There’s a corps of gray-backed diggers and a bunch of cottontails
Who didn’t tarry very long to figure out their trails;
And the suckers and the peckers and the flickers and the wrens,
And the buzzards and the finches and the cocks and pheasant-hens,
And the jays and bees and skeeters and the gnats and dragon-flies
Have saved their skins and feathers for they’re fairly weather-wise.
But woe betide the crawling things and heaven help the mark
For every wriggly worm that rides the earth or bores the bark;
And every caterpillar—and a caterpillar’s hairs
Can get as badly frizzled as a big, brown furry bear’s;
And woe betide the silly squirrels who for a refuge run
Far up the blazing trees because it’s what they’ve always done.
And may the blessed Jesus save all souls of mortal men
Who perish in that fiery maze, walled in their smothering pen,
Like those they found near Jefferson upon the mountain side,
Who strangled there near Jefferson—with fingers clenched they died.

Oh would you know the meaning of that lazy yellow haze,
Why the sun’s a scarlet pinwheel in the late September days,
Why the thirsty earth’s a-drowsing ’neath a lowering panoply
From ’Frisco to Seattle—from the Rockies to the sea?
For the skirmish that they’re having up the Clear Creek canyon there
Is but one of all the flare-ups that are burning everywhere.
And you’ll know them—oh, you’ll know them when a decade’s come and
gone,
And the lifeless bark has fallen from those trunks now pale and wan,
And their ghostly, gray battalions in their long unbroken lines,
Stalk the ridges, rising, falling—ghosts that once were firs and
pines;
You will know them—you will know them when a score of years has
run,
Faintly limned in mist, or gleaming—silver lances in the sun.

BUILDERS OF HIGHWAYS

Masterful builders! You who’ve planned
Your limitless highways through our land,
Splendid in vision—well have you wrought,
Leaving your trails where trails were not;
Weavers—weaving gigantically
Into a boundless tapestry,
Systems of travel skillfully traced,
Hither and thither—interlaced,
Gathering, linking, chain on chain,
Corn-land and pasture, fields of grain,
Acres of orchard rolling down,
Forest and homestead, nestling town,
Binding our counties, joining our states,
Breaking the locks of our cities’ gates,
Letting humanity’s stream rush through
Into the open, into the blue,
Into the sun or into the shade,
Into the playgrounds you have made,
Treading where never before they’ve trod—
Touching the earth and seeing God!

Long have you wrestled, unconfounded
With problems the grim old earth propounded;
Meeting each taunting challenge while
She watched with cold, sardonic smile,
Flinching at nothing your labor met,
Writing your answer in dirt and sweat.

First with your transit, pounding stakes—
Rotten logs, briars, sticks and snakes;
Trees of the thicket hatchet-scarred,
Blazing tomorrow’s boulevard;
Shaping the New World’s big romance,
Unloosing your swarms of human ants,
Slashing the willows, crowding in
Under the maples and chinkapin;
Tottering timbers—see them crash,
Deafening thud and crunch and gash,
Tearing their rifts where boughs arch high,
Baring blue holes in the gaping sky;
Follows the blasting—dynamite,
Deep in the damp earth tamped in tight,
Sputtering spark
Into the dark,
Travels the fuse to the buried guns,
Vomiting stumps in hurtling tons,
Falling back mangled, shattered, torn,
Into the clay where they were born.

Through pine-pillared aisles the thunderings ring,
Echoing canyons answering;
Enter the horses—lashing reins,
Yelling and curses, jangling chains,
Snorting and straining, steaming brutes,
Grappling hooks shackled to stubborn roots,
Snug in their sockets holding fast—
Steadily pulling, they yield at last!
Shovel of steam—omniverous scoop,
Gouging the way for one more loop;
Rearing a wall that will prevail
Against the push of sliding shale;
Peeling a slope to fill a draw;
Stuffing the crusher’s hungry maw
That crumbles to bits the rock you’ve fed
To blanket a roadway’s winding bed;
These are the digits running through
The problems that Nature’s handed you.

And we of the people—we for whom
These miracles are, behold we come!
Driving our chariots blazoned bright,
Crimson and yellow and pink and white,
Silver and black and gray and green,
Rattletrap Lizzie and limousine,
Bulgy with bedding, grip and can,
Lashed to the back and tucked to the van;
Letting our home-town banners flame,
Advising the world from whence we came,
From everywhere under the dusty sun—
From Mosier, White Salmon, Pendleton,
From Boise, Seattle, Saginaw,
From Buffalo, Little Rock, Waukesha;
Still we are coming, see the train—
From “all points east” to Bangor, Maine;
Up from the Dixies, looming still,
From Charleston, Havana, Jacksonville;
Down from the Old Dominion, see—
From Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary,
We of the people are on our way,
Turning the world to a holiday!

And vast are the hollows from crest to crest
Where stretches the hand of the big Northwest
And out of the winds from her frozen peak
A welcome speaks:
“Come all you people! Come and keep
Tryst in our mountains! Play and sleep,
Wrapped in the silence here that lies
Under our star-jeweled western skies;
Wake if you will and see the sun
Unveiling our canyons one by one,
Slanting his golden fingers till
The shadows have crept from each drowsy hill,
Rousing the giants in their beds—
See how they lift their hoary heads
Up through the purple robe of night
Into the light!
Tahoma—the Mountain that was God!
Jefferson, Adams, St. Helens, Hood!
Hold fast to your visions and your dreams,
Memories born of our laughing streams,
Our cataracts, castles, towering domes—
Oh carry them back to your million homes!
Drink, oh you people! Be satisfied!
Our wells of beauty are never dried.
Search out each Eden that awaits—
Blazed are the trails and wide the gates!”

Come oh you people! Look upon
The bountiful sweep of the Oregon,
Forcing a pass through the blue Cascades,
Lapping the walls of her palisades,
Cradled in sand-dunes gleaming white,
Girdling her islands of malachite!
And high on the hills where a thrush’s song
Tells out its gladness, there winds along
Like a sinuous serpent—twist and bend,
Following on to the river’s trend,
The lordliest highway that ever ran
Through the hills of the world since the dawn of man.
Pride of the West! Sublime event!
Columbia the Magnificent!
Conceived by a poet who believed[1]
Dreams should be dreamed and then achieved.

And he bored him a tunnel—rock and boulder,
Out of a mountain’s granite shoulder,
Chiseled his windows—arching wide,
Glimpsing the sky and the rolling tide;
Throwing his graceful spans across
Dripping ravines of fern and moss;
Charming the serpent up and down
Till it lazily coiled on the lofty crown,
Goal of each traveller who would be
Thrilled with unspeakable ecstacy.

Oh climb in your chariots pink and green,
Rattletrap Lizzie and limousine,
Throbbing triumphantly toward the sky,
(There’s never a grade but you take on high)
Honking and honking, round on round,
Honking again till the cliffs resound,
Looping at last the Crown Point top—
And there you stop!
Where winds from the North, East, West and South
Tumble their clouds in the chasm’s mouth—
Curtains of mist and far-off thunder—
And somehow you look and look and wonder
If he who was wise to the sparrow’s fall
Didn’t have something to do with it all.

Over the broad Willamette go
Into the Coast Range—learn to know
Who are the Vikings—see them rise
Out of the gulches into the skies;
There are plummet-lines dropped through the hearts of these
And they’re girthed like the pillars of Hercules!
Nursed by the centuries, still they stand,
The Viking Spruce of the bottom-land.

And ever the pageant swings along,
Blossoms and fruit and birds and song—
Sword-ferns high-heaped beneath the firs,
Glistening like emerald scimiters;
Foxglove and fireweed—sunlight flashes
Blotching the banks in purple splashes;
Salmon berries in hordes untold—
Luscious clusters of dangling gold;
Elders above them, bending branches.
Falling in ruby-red avalanches,
Hedging the roadways, climbing back—
Up through the alders and tamarack;
And over the bridges, rumbling, coasting—
Oh God of the Humble—keep us from boasting!
Ranges, ruff-backed with their jagged trees,
Crawling and sprawling down into the seas,
Reaching their ragged, granite hands
Out through the shifting, drifting sands—
Out where the wild, white horses prance,
Tossing their manes—and the cormorants
Strut with the lions and blustering seals,
And the sun-god reels
With a splash of blood
Into the great, Pacific flood!

And this is the welcome waiting you,
Drivers of chariots gold and blue—
You who fare
Under the heavens from everywhere—
This is the crowning of your quest
When you’ve looked in the heart of the great Northwest!

[1] Reference to Samuel Lancaster, Portland, Oregon.

OREGON SNOW

I’m glad I’m not in town today
For townfolk always have a way
Of hating snow—they stamp it off
Their feet and shake their clothes and cough
And fume and curse it every time
It comes. It seems a crime
To say you love it when it snows—
Down in the town. Yet I suppose
They’re not to blame—it always brings
A peck of ills and heartache things
Down in the town. There’s such
A lot of misery—so much
That sleeps along until the touch
Of snow and cold wakes it again
To sudden pain.
You really can’t blame folks a bit
For hating snow and cursing it
The way they do
Down in the town—it’s natural to.

_In great cascades of blinding white
Shot through with light
Of morning suns._]

But here—up here, it’s driving white
Across the gray tree-trunks; all night
It fell and laid one blanket more
Upon the store
We had.
And I am glad,
For here—up here, it’s not a crime
To love the snow in winter-time.

It’s hip-deep in the clover-field
Behind the barn—the woods there shield
The sun. I took a jog
On show-shoes with the dog
Across the ditch that marks the clover’s edge
Into a straggling hedge
Of saplings—only yesterday they were
So cocky and so straight—each baby-fir
A prickly little grenadier; and now—
How vanquished! Every bough
Limp, beaten, crushed, as if
The snow had said—“Oh stiff
And upright little tree
How much of me
Do you suppose your arms will hold?”
To which the tree made answer bold—
“I am a young and husky fir—
All you can give, I’ll hold, Good Sir!”
A rather glib and short
Retort,
At which the snow was somewhat stirred,
He took the sapling at his word!
For so it looked, the way the snow
Had laid them low,
Swamped to their ears,
Those prickly little grenadiers.

That’s what it is to be so small
And near the ground, but when you’re grand and tall
You shake your boughs and let it fall
In great cascades of blinding white,
Shot through with light
Or morning suns—spray after spray.
The gray boles sway
With every windy gust that breaks
To dust and flakes
The tumbling clumps,
Baptizing brush and stumps
And huge-heaped logs—a deluge, white
And dazzling bright.

And still it snows,
And blows
Across the orchards in big drifts;
But for the sunbursts through the rifts
Of cloud today,
It’s never quit. And when it goes away—
This snow up here, it will be free from blame
For it will leave in beauty as it came.
The sun will loosen all the bonds
That bind the baby-sapling’s fronds
Close to the ground,
And they’ll rebound.
The ice-locked creek will show its green
And swirling eddies in between
The marble bridges flung across
Its twisted banks of moss.

Each day will see new colors peep;
Gray bark and green—the deep
Rich sheen of laurels—short, stalky grapes,
Stiff, jagged, red—and twisted shapes
Of leaves turned russet, shrivelled, sere—
Still dangling from the stems of the dead year—
All penciled bold against the bright,
Cold snow, like patterns on a page of spotless white.
And each new day will leave some strange,
Blue arabesque upon the eastern range,
Drag streaks of ochre down the fields, and shade
The purple brush-lands deeper where they fade
Off to the west, and pools of melting snow will hold
The winter evening sun’s last splash of gold.

These are the things God keeps in store
For us up here, when in a few days more,
This snow—that’s driving hard today,
Will melt away.

THE PRUNER

Listen! That bump against the steps—he’s back.
The dog comes floundering on his track,
His shaggy clumps are lumped with ice, he shakes
Vociferously his drippy coat and makes
Straight for the kitchen—he’s a dog, the kind
Who takes no longer than he should to find
What’s in his pan—or isn’t. It’s cold mush
This time. The man has just kicked off the slush
And shuffled up the steps. They’re awkward things—
Those bear-paws, when the rawhide’s caked; he flings
His soggy mittens off and takes his hat
And swishes it across the frozen mat.

He clatters on the porch—then stoops to loose
The knots that hold his boots fast in the noose,
Kicks free his weary feet and stands his hook
Against the logs. He has an all-in look
Tonight—that crook that’s got his shoulder-blade
Is pruner’s luck—a man’s arm isn’t made
To reach and twist all day without some bit
Of ache to take home with him when he’s quit.
That wind-tan and the stubble-growth of beard
That’s cropped out on his chin and gotten smeared
Around his throat, they do a useful turn—
They temper cold and dull the bright snow-burn.

It snowed this morning when he went away
With those big bear-paws on—it snowed all day;
And though his sleeves and neck are soaked a lot
With all the constant reaching up, it’s not
So bad—the snow—for when it’s four feet deep
Or so, a pruner doesn’t have to keep
That raking stretch. Another day and night,
If it keeps up like this, will fix it right.
All yesterday it rained—he didn’t stop,
Just went ahead and pruned—and let it drop.
The day before was sun—a blinding glare
On snow—it’s amber goggles then and they’re
Forever getting fogged. Of course a day
Gets sort of tucked in now and then that may
Not be so bad, although they’re pretty few,
But good or bad there’s little else to do
In winter-time, but prune. And it is plain,
A man who loves his trees won’t stop for rain
Or cold or driving snow or dazzling sun
Until the job he started on is done.

To any man like that a tree is bound
To mean more than a root shoved in the ground,
For they are his, his own, his pets—just like
His kids. They’re part of him and so they strike
Into his heart. He’s cuddled them, he’s stuck
With them through all the ups and downs of luck;
Instead of chicken-pox he’s had to fight
Anthracnos, winter-kill and scab and blight;
He knows his rows—what every tree’s been through,
The one’s who’ve done him proud and strugglers too.
And he remembers how, four years ago—
That day the big freeze came with all the snow,
He found the weighted limbs of some of them
All split and broken from the mother stem.

That’s why there’s something human enters in
To pruning trees—it almost seems a sin
Sometimes to lop off here and lop off there
The wood you’ve coaxed with such a heap of care;
Like punishment it seems, and though it’s wise,
Those fruit-spurred boughs are hard to sacrifice.
And when he takes a tree and prunes the wood
The way it should be done for that tree’s good,
He does not see the severed sticks that show
Black-twisted there upon the trampled snow—
To him, each one’s a green-leafed bough that’s gone,
With all its scented crimson apples on.

His blouse is steaming now—hung on a chair
Before the kitchen-stove—she put it there.
She’s humming cheerful-like, tonight it’s toast
And coffee and potatoes and pot-roast;
He will forget his shoulder after while,
And when he’s filled and dry—he’ll smile.

SNOOTS

Say—have you ever given thought
To snoots—just snoots? Most likely not!
There’s so much else to think about
That snoots get crowded out.
An uncouth thing
And yet most interesting
Somehow, and so of snoots I sing
And of that strange, instinctive sense—
Mute marvel of God’s providence!

Now take a snoot that’s prowled around
Like old Pete’s there—along the ground
And through the brush from log to log—
The plain snoot of a common dog.
How often, knocking through the wood,
Deep in the maples I have stood
Stock still—and watched that canny brute.
Tense to the trail, by rock and root,
Zigzagging now, then onward straight!
Not once there would he hesitate.
Eyes to the earth, alert and quick,
By briar, branch and broken stick,
Till pausing short, with one glad bound
And switching tail—his quarry found,
He sprang to meet
His master, crouching at his feet,
At last content.
And this strange thing—you call it _scent_

The leaves are trodden by a boot,
A little later comes a snoot,
And quick as thought it sniffs the air,
The soil, and sifts the odors there.
A hundred kinds of smells we’ll say,
The mould, the moss, the worms, the clay
The drying leaves, the twigs and stones,
The fallen needles and the cones,
The little flowers, the growing plants.
The bugs, the chipmunks and the ants;
And yet that sniffing snoot could tell
Among all these, the one faint smell
That lingered vaguely in the wake
That two swift-striding boots might make.

You marvel at his skill when he,
The master of a symphony,
Detects one jarring note that comes
Up through the beat of many drums,
And tambourines and banging things,
And blaring brass and whining strings;
You cite some instance of the kind
To eulogize the human mind—
To show attainment absolute!
I point you to my Peter’s snoot—
Upon my lap he comes to lay
Its cold, damp tip, still smeared with clay.

Oh, all you hordes of furry brutes,
Be glad you’re blessed with telltale snoots,
So nicely tuned that with a sniff
Of earth or air, you catch the whiff
Of danger there. You mountain sheep,
Superb upon your rocky steep;
You splendid elk, far domiciled
In mountain fastness, coursing wild;
You bonny deer and monster moose,
Brandless, unfenced, will-free and loose;
You wolves couched in your rock-ribbed lairs;
You blubber-padded, big-pawed bears;
You foxes tunneled deep in roots,
Wise was the God Who gave you snoots!

LITTLE BLACK BULL

Born in bobbing clover hay,
July sun at close of day—
Black and gleaming little bull
Appetite all masterful.
Scarcely dried—his glossy silk,
When he started in to milk,
Tongue a-smack and bulging tum,
Filled at last—his vacuum.
Soft blue hoofs and knobby pegs
Soon were prancing just like legs;
Got him weaned till bran he took
Like a codfish bolts a hook,
Till he danced in sheer delight,
Till he waxed in youthful might.
Dawn of day and forth he went
For adventure—jubilant;
Innocent and wondering eyes,
All the world a glad surprise,
Then they drove him down the hill
In a crate—and wondering still;
Wondering as the world went by,
Green of trees and blue of sky,
What adventure—joyous, new,
Little bull was going to.

MOUNTAIN TOPS

Old crater-tops! Cloud-bumped! Snow-white!
Our mountains these—all day and night
They show above the ridges. What?
You’ve never climbed? You’ve missed a lot!

When you have known the grunts and chills,
The cold, the sweat, the gasps, the thrills;
And winced at dazzling snow reared high
Against a dye of cobalt sky;
And faced the blast that strives its best
To hurl you headlong off the crest;
Seen countless ranges fade into
The whole vast earth-encircling blue
That holds the rim of the sky’s bowl;
And sniffed the clouds and watched them roll
Close-packed beneath you in the sun and ride
Like foaming billows at flood-tide;
When you have done these things, you’ll speak
With reverence of a mountain-peak.

Such friendships last—they’re not
Remembered lightly nor forgot.

THE RIVER

Once I gurgled with a hiss
In the glacier’s cold abyss.
Dull and muffled was my song
As I felt my way along
Through the mystic caves of glass
Far below the great crevasse.
Now I greet the blessed light,
Out of night and bursting white—
Baby-giant—keen to forge,
Loudly laughing, through the gorge;
Straddling rocks and riding bumps,
Brushing branches, hurdling stumps,
Peevish, boiling, sluggish, slack,
Lunging forward, swirling back;
Leaping from a bouldered dale,
Snaking through a clay-banked swale,
Draining streams from every draw
Down into my hungry maw,
Swelling with the tribute paid—
This is how a river’s made.

THE JUGGLER

You’ve seen him balanced with his staff,
Far up—and giving death the laugh?
The Juggler—confident and proud
Above the gaping, breathless crowd!
So in the gathering storm, he swayed—
The Forest Juggler—unafraid!
Schooled by the blasts of centuries,
Proudly he looked on lesser trees,
Rearing his mighty head on high
Against the red-streaked western sky.
Then broke the gale—the clouds unlocked,
And such a wind as never rocked
His stalwart trunk, now made him dance.
He swayed in ancient confidence
Till once he reached—too far! Then all
His shaft went toppling to the fall,
With grinding boughs and crunch and thud.
Upripped those gorgon-roots, the mud—
Wide-flung, left but a crater-hole
Where it had towered—that giant bole!
The wind has gone upon his way,
A patch of sky shows where he lay—
Who juggled long and fearlessly
Until a greater came than he.

NATURE’S TOTEMS

With tools rough-wrought the untaught scribe
Carved deep the glory of his tribe—
Amazing monsters—grotesque, stiff,
With curious, quaint hieroglyph.
Brave in barbaric dyes, his scroll—
So left the scribe his totem-pole.

Though rotted, broken, scattered far
These totems of the savage are,
Proud totems—vastly mightier,
The lineaments of Nature bear.

The mountain’s twisted ribs of rock
Laid bare, proclaim the earthquake shock,
And how it was through turmoil great
Exalted to its high estate;
An upturned fossil on the plain
Reverts to Dinosaurian reign,
Another shows his prowess gone—
The advent of the Mastodon;
The lopside fir is eloquent
Of battling winters nobly spent;
The shell upon the mountain side
Betrays an ancient ocean’s tide;
These are the totems, cryptic, terse,
We find in Nature’s universe.

MINSTRELS OF THE NIGHT

Woodland voices I have heard—
Laughing waters, beast and bird;
Red-squirrels jabb’ring while they eat,
Cones a-dropping at your feet;
Pecker diving for a worm,
Ringing echoes with each squirm;
Squawking jays and the palaver
Of a pheasant breaking cover;
But the strangest sound to me
Comes when winds blow fitfully,
In the darkness, like a moan—
Chilling to the marrow-bone,
Dying now upon the gale
Like a far-off cougar’s wail.
Now it rises—peevish, wild,
Like the fretting of a child;
With an easing wind the thing
Squeaks like monkeys jibbering.
Thus a leaning, scraping tree
Sounds its spookish minstrelsy,
When the night-wind, teasing so,
Starts it rocking to and fro.

THE LONG BET

The mountain road will lead you past
The shack. It’s easily told, the last
Old tumbledown this side the ridge
Of snags; a little bridge
Is there that hasn’t yet dropped through.
I don’t know how it is with you,
But every time I see that shack
It gets me somehow—calls me back
And tries to speak. The caved-in shed
Where some poor nag was fed
His mighty little, and the rakes
Upstanding still—and scattered shakes,
Tell how they labored to deceive
The man with hope. In make-believe
They played a barn—and over there
The several-acre clearing where
A few anæmic blades of grain
Still volunteer; but oh
That Potter’s Field where grow
In broken rows of twos and threes
The little, weazened apple-trees.

Mere stalks are some, that died
Beside the stakes where they were tied,
While others held tenaciously
Their stunted semblance to a tree—
Their dangling leaves are sparse
And bloodless—so the farce
Goes on. I know he stood that day
He planted them and looked away
Across his claim—beyond that draw
Where all the ghost-trees are, and saw
Them fade away and in their stead
A smiling orchard with its red
Fruit-laden boughs. At any rate
He likely staked with fate
What all he had—all he could get,
And made his one long bet.

He staked the woman too—
That calico of faded blue
Still waving by the kitchen door,
The shreds of curtains on the four
Wee windows on the front, proclaim
There was a woman in the game.
Lord, how he must have strung
Her on—to drag her up among
Those snags! And what it must have been
In winter! Think of living in
That tumbly hut—eight feet of snow
Outside—and ten below.
Suppose the woman took her bed,
Caved in, just like the shed
Is now—upon her back laid flat,
(The work alone would tend to that).

_The mountain road will lead you past
The shack. It’s easily told, the last
Old tumbledown this side the ridge
Of snags._]

Of course they had a kid.
The broken go-cart shows they did,
It’s shy a wheel and tongue—
You’ll find it there among
The weeds just by the front door stoop.
It’s ten to one he’d have the croup
And scarcely likely he’d get off
Without the whooping-cough.
Good God! It’s fiendish anywhere,
But think of whooping-cough up there
In winter! All that gloom—
A little room
With stuffy stove and candle-light,
And whooping, whooping through the night.

And when the man gave in
At last and found he couldn’t win,
Found apples couldn’t keep alive
Or thrive
Or come to any good
One bit more than a human could
Up there, and when the day
Came that they went away—
Packed up their leavings in a load
And joggled down the mountain road,
I’ll bet they both looked back
And cursed that shack.
And it is hard to think
That even that rose-pink
Of early sunrise on the top
Of that old mountain had one drop
Of beauty left for them. It might
Be that the white
Ghost-trees bespoke their mood
Of helplessness and solitude
That day. It’s easily told,
The old
Ramshackle place this side the ridge
Of snags—the little bridge
That hasn’t yet dropped through,
Will point it out to you.

THE CAVES OF JOSEPHINE

I’m sure if one could probe
But deep enough, he’d find this globe
Just tunneled through with catacombs
And resonant with hollow domes
And yawning gulfs, abysmal spaces
And divers dark, unfathomed places
Where echoes die through mere excess
Of nothingness.

There’s mystery in holes—a solid thing
Is never half so interesting;
It’s fun to poke around in them—to draw the screen
Away from things long hidden and unseen,
Like those in Josephine.
Ten miles of thickest Douglas green
The little trail winds through,
That leads you to
Old Gray Back with his half-closed,
Crooked eye. How long he’s dosed
That way—without a blink,
Who knows? Until Elijah found the chink
That day he shot the bear—
Just crippled her enough to tear
Down through the rocks—a bloody track
Into the big, black crack;
And that was back
Along there in the seventies.
Dick Rawly tells the story—he’s
The guide,
And how he beams with pride
To see outsiders rave
About the marvels of his cave,
As proud of every chamber, niche and shelf
As if he’d chiseled it himself.

And Lord! The more you snoop
Around down there, and scrape and stoop
To see the things you see,
The more you think he has a right to be.
Dick’s different too—he says his say
As if he’d learned it yesterday
Instead of when he did.
With all the ardor of a kid
He rambles on—it’s always new
To him, just as it is to you.

He tells you how the place was formed
In glacial days, when waters stormed
And roared and cut their channels through
The very spot where you
Stand marveling. Then comes the change.
The glaciers pass, along the range
They ride no more, the streams are dried,
The conflict stops. On every side
Lime-laden drops begin
To percolate and filter in—
The long, cold sweat appears.
For several hundred thousand years,
Away from light, away from time,
Those little drops have oozed their lime.

Relentless patience must have played
Its part when all this underworld was made,
And infinite variety took hand
When it was planned—
Or was it planned? Was it intent—
Or some sublimely perfect accident
That caused to be
That marble-fluted canopy
Above the many-pillowed throne
That’s shown
In brilliant, bold relief against our light
In this Lost Paradise of night.
And see—
Upflocking toward the canopy,
A-scurrying,
Those baffling forms that cling
And swarms of pudgy shapes that ride
In half-lights, side by side.
And was it chance that made
The Coral Garden’s gray arcade
And pillared it and set in place
Each tiny statuette and grotesque face;
And petrified the water-falls;
And hung the walls
And roofs of all the halls
With rows of frescoes—pendant, bright,
And gleaming like a starry night;
And made the sweetest chimes to ring—
We heard their clear notes echoing.
If it was chance, I didn’t find
It so. To me it seemed a master-mind
Was lurking there—some spirit born of endless night,
Transfusing each slow-dropping mite
Into a wonder-thing
By deft, fantastic fashioning.

Dick said
The place was uninhabited,
Except for a few bats
At times and some pack-rats
That nested near the mouth—but how could he
Tell what _had_ been? To me
The place was just _deserted_—that was all!
Because we heard no laughter fall,
Nor voices ring,
Proved not a thing.

And when
The first intrusion came of mortal men,
There must have been a merry muss
And universal exodus
Down through those dark recesses there
And on to undiscovered regions where
No man may hope to go.
I would have witnessed such a show!
Those trooping little refugees
Of divers personalities
In babbling groups, by twos and threes,
With all their household goods—they must have moved
Them all—the fact is proved
Conclusively, as there’s no trace
Of such effects in any place.

Perhaps the Pix went first—
They’re fearsome, so I’ve heard, and cursed
With nerves. And then the Nixie crew,
The Pix’s shapely cousins who
Are beautiful—as Nixies go,
And no less slow
To move when trouble stirs the air.
Now comes a flare
Of lurid light—the rhythmic tramps
Of Gwelfs who bear their swinging lamps
Of cocobol;
A roll
Of music like bassoons—
The beating wings of Dragleloons,
Their patterned pinions show their sheen
And glow with iridescent green—
Out trails the light—a glint of scales
Gives hint of flashing, rainbow tails.

Now Master Goblin falls in line,
The chills are jumping in his spine,
His eyeballs bulge with speechless fear,
His mouth’s a slit from ear to ear.
He goes galumping in his boots;
Behind him thump the Dormizoots,
And then the Elves.
From all the crannies, nooks and shelves
The Wiffles come, and scrambling Wools,
And Blurbs and jibbering Gabools—
They stumble, tumble—now they run,
Each fumbles for the other one,
Mate calls for mate—
A seething flux conglomerate
Of cave-born entities.
They pant and grunt and squeak and wheeze,
They stampede, yell,
And chase pell-mell.
Through tortuous tunnels walled with light
The pigmy pageant makes its flight,
The last far turn is made,
The swinging flicker-flashes fade,
The clamor and the cries
Are dimmed—the babbling tumult dies.

The palace rooms are dark, the halls of state,
The Coral Gardens—all are desolate.
No music falls—
The conclaves and the carnivals,
The mystic rites,
The colors bathed in mellow lights,
The throbbing life and mirth
Of all this chambered, nether-earth
Are gone. Nor will one Elf return
To ring the crystal chimes or burn
Strange incense at the pillowed throne,
Because no Elf was ever known
To tread again where mortal man
Has been—nor any of the hybrid clan
Who must have scampered out of there
That day Elijah shot the bear.

HOBNOBBING WITH THE FIRMAMENT

When I was just a barefoot tike
I used to wonder what ’twas like
Up there—oh way, way up—as high
As all those screaming gulls could fly—
So white against the blue;
And where at evening too
The whippoorwills croaked, darted, swirled,
So far above my boyhood world.

Why, every youngster with two eyes
Has had his dreams about the skies—
My dreams have never quit
Although I’m getting on a bit,
So one day when it came, this chance,
I took it—over there in France.

Upholstered in
A furry skin—
I think ’twas sheep, the coat,
Or maybe cow or goat
And buckled snug round the throat,
With helmet, goggles—all the frills,
A bird-man to the very quills;

_The hills are flat, the roads are streaks,
The rivers dwindle into creeks—
A crazy-quilt of gay brocades
And all the patches fields and glades._]

And thus I stood—they laughed,
While I was photographed.
And out before the hangar there
Our gleaming Lizzie of the air—
A dragon-fly—just poised to stay
A moment here and then away.
A little nick dug in her side
Where one might stick a toe, then slide
Across the top and drop
Kerflop
With one more roll
Into the cockpit cubby-hole—
From here the young Observer chap
Snaps photographs and makes his map;
Since you have filled his place, you are
Lord High Observer of your car!

The first thing you observe is not
To let your feet or legs get caught
In all those shifts and sliding gears
And lifts with which the Pilot steers,
Yanks at the cranks and cable-things
That work the rudders and the wings;
And next, that life-belt should be placed
Just sort of loosely ’round the waist—
Superfluous no doubt,
But handy when you’re falling out.

The noisy motor spits and tugs
In little fits of chuggy-chugs,
With chuggy-chug—chug-chug—chug-chick,
Now chug and chick come double quick—
The stench of petrol it exhales
With reeking breath. The old prop’s flails,
Like some titanic tabby’s purr,
Churn ’round into a deafening whir.
Goliath! That’s the breed of her—
You’ll think so when you catch the stir
She kicks behind her in her wake
That moment when she starts to make
Her lovely take-off—once they’ve wheeled
Her into line upon the field!

The Pilot, turning, cries “All set?”
You grab like cripes and yell “You bet!”
The grinning ground-men wave good-bye,
And gathering speed, the dragon-fly
Moves on. The turf’s a blur—so swift
It flashes by. You feel no lift
And yet you rise—you only know
You float by seeing there below
The earth receding, while the air
Would gladly tear
The helmet from your goggled head.
You glimpse a house, a barn, a shed—
You only know them by their tops—
The profile way of seeing stops.
The hills are flat, the roads are streaks,
The rivers dwindle into creeks—
A crazy-quilt of gay brocades
And all the patches fields and glades.
And all around, the quilt is spanned
By vanishing horizon-land,
Where fading contours disappear
In wreaths of violet atmosphere
That gradually evolve into
That great inverted bowl of blue.

And are you dizzy? How absurd!
You’re not of earth—you are a bird.
You do not have that toppling feel
When all beneath you seemed to reel
That day you peeped in timid fright
From some cathedral’s pigmy height;
You are afloat on gleaming wings,
Not propped up with terrestrial things.

But look! Hold fast! With wicked tilt
She’s swinging round. That crazy-quilt,
The spreading earth, has dropped from view—
Or so it seems somehow to you
Until your tangled vision sees
Fields and rivers, roads and trees,
Barns and houses—little town,
Smiling at you, looking down.
Another twist and there you view
The sprawling world out under you,
All right-side-up and in its place—
The play-ground of the human race—
Those insects whom you left to creep
And work and laugh and eat and sleep.
Perspectives do get twisted quite
In making one’s initial flight!

But swift! Low bridge! She mounts the loop!
You meet the onslaught with a stoop,
And with her upward-moving course,
You’re shoved against her with such force,
That little seat you’re sticking to
Seems fairly crushing into you.
Then just as quickly, all has ceased,
The sudden impact is released,
You clutch to keep from dropping now,
You clutch and wonder—marvel how
She slowly crawls across the top,
She almost stalls—you think she’ll stop!
You wonder just how long ’twould take
To make that trip should something break
Or slip,
Or should you loose your grip—
And if you’d strike a church or what—
Or just some pleasant garden spot;

Perhaps you hope a kindly fate
Would cause you to evaporate
Into an atmospheric state—
A sort of cosmic spirit-thing,
And thus take wing, just fluttering,
Up toward those pearly portals there,
So nonchalant and debonair—
Without all that formality
Of tumbling first into a tree!

But see! She’s found an even keel
At last. What joy to feel
That level glide—to know you’re still
On board—until,
Oh Lord! Another stunt!
You grab, you grunt,
But breathe you can’t,
Her nose has struck a fiendish slant!
That chuggy-chug—has it gone dead?
Or has the Pilot lost his head?
He does not swerve, his aim’s exact,
He’s Hell-bent for that timber-tract!
Oh were there ever, ever trees
With such a prickly look as these?
They’re coming closer up—and see,
They’re getting sharper—every tree!

Now look! She zooms! Agile she springs
Aloft with taut and straining wings.
In one great climb she squanders all
The power she gathered in her fall;
She leaves the woodlands in her wake,
She cuts across a marshy lake,
And dipping gently, circles round
Above the aviation ground,
Where field-mechanics stand about
To lend a hand and help you out—
To ask you how you liked to drop
Five thousand feet without a stop,
And if the loop was all you thought
A loop would likely be or not?

You thank them—tell them all how glad
You were to have the ride you had,
And then, a trifle limp and white,
With some slight loss of appetite,
And with two rather wobbly pegs
As proxies for your former legs,
You kick the turf up with your heel
To reassure yourself it’s real—
A little woozy still you feel,
A little dizzy—
And then you take one long, last look—at Lizzie!
Thus ends my tale—You’ve got it straight,
The way we teased and tempted fate,
Shook off this earthly dust and went
Hobnobbing with the firmament.

PEOPLE AND THINGS

HEARTH-GLOW

Now a man’s true heart is his home, I think,
And the hearth with the crackling pine,
With the leaping flames and the glowing stones,
Is somehow its inmost shrine.

And the stones must come from the river’s bed—
Softly colorful must they be,
Like the long-dulled rose and the faded green
Of an old-time tapestry.

And the light must fall with a fitful flare
On the logs in the lichened wall—
(Oh they must be trees where the squirrel’s shrill note
Once echoed the bluejay’s call.)

And the light will leap in the man’s dark eyes
From the flash of each burning brand,
And the man will know from its quickening touch,
The where of a woman’s hand.

And the fears that weighed till he grew afraid
Will be turned into nothingness
With the strength that comes from a tender word
And the warmth of a soft caress.

And the long-dreamed dreams of the un-lived days
Out over the rainbow’s rim—
They will be more real than the stuff of dreams
Through her wonderful faith in him.

And it’s this and that which the hearth gives back
In the glow of the crackling pine,
That endears the place to a man’s own soul
Till it’s somehow his inmost shrine.

THE WANT-AD OF MY SOUL

My need, which is my creed, I write upon this scroll—
Be pleased, oh gracious Lord, to heed the want-ad of my soul.
A cheer that does not lean upon digestion or the sun—
Supports itself and never asks a boost of any one.
To laugh whole-heartedly—or should ill-fortune crowd me in,
Cause me to smile—give me, oh Lord, at least the gift to grin.
Not quite too proud, oh Lord, to fight, but if the thing’s to do,
Then tutor me to battle clean—until the round is through.
If I have good to speak of men, then may that good be said—
Let me not hold like miser’s gold my say until they’re dead.
And Lord, I would be schooled to do with neither pomp nor fuss,
Some decent thing and yet not feel so thundering virtuous.

Should gossip drop around to claim my hospitality,
May I not send him forth again but bid him stop with me.
And if I have to fore-flush, Lord, to keep up with the brood
Of Fortune’s darlings, then give me the eagle’s solitude.
Make this almighty me to know that as I trudge along,
Perhaps once in ten thousand times I’m likely to be wrong;
And that by some miraculous, unprecedented flight
Of lucky stars that shelter him, my neighbor may be right.
Forbid it that my soul grow stale—let me not be defiled
Nor cloyed with surfeit—let me keep the ardor of a child.
Give me imagination, Lord, to see the unseen things—
To know the yonder, far-off feel that comes when some bird sings.
Help me to square with all the best traditions of my clan—
Make me, oh Lord, a regular, real, bang-up, manly man.

_Give me imagination, Lord,
To see the unseen things—
To know the yonder, far-off feel
That comes when some bird sings._]

THE BELL

I am a cat and I am cruel!
But beautiful! My fur
Is soft. I have deep amber eyes
And a most pleasing purr.
I am a plaything for a child
To pinch or squeeze or pull
Or to adore with soft caress,
For I am beautiful.

I am a cat and I am cruel!
The upper Nile knew me,
Roaming and wild. Then hunters came,
I was no longer free.
For Egypt had great granaries,
So came a plague of rats,
They held us sacred like their gods
For Egypt needed cats.

I am a cat. Since Pharaoh’s day
I am what men call tame,
But deep in me the lust for gore
Is lurking just the same.
Stroke me, I purr—my claws relax,
I drowse—but for all that
The murderer in me sleeps not,
Sleeps not, for I’m a cat.

My mistress too is beautiful,
Blue-veined with snowy skin,
She smooths my fur and cuddles me
Close to her dainty chin.
An amorous perfume clings to
Her soft gown’s silken mesh—
I only want to smell her blood
And eat her pretty flesh!

I love to watch the agony
Of some affrighted thing,
Life ebbing scarlet, bit by bit,
Through my slow torturing.
I am a cat—this is my life,
To be a pet until
The age-long urge bestirs my soul
And I go forth to kill.

Through velvet black the paws of me
Touch oh so soft and noiselessly.
The burning amber of my eyes
Pierces the night; the rose-moon dies.
I hear a twitter in the vine,
My throat is parched—it craves red wine.
I lift a foot—and all is well
Until—until—I shake my bell!
For she has tied a bell on me,
A bell—a bell—a bell on me,
A tinkly bell to tell on me,
To tell—to tell—to tell on me;
The bell that foils each move I make,
The bell that tells my prey awake,
The single dingle jingle-bell
The little tittle-tattle bell,
The bell that holds my stroke in check,
The cursed bell around my neck.

GOSSIP

You’ve never heard Bill Sunday speak?
No more had I until last week.
Yes, every mother’s son
Was there—bar none,
And women folks—the kids all came
Just like it was a baseball game!
Up to the grove on Dobson’s Hill,
And there was Bill—
Thumpin’, jumpin’, hell-fire Bill
Right from his ranch to spill
Religion till we’d drunk our fill.

Well say,
Since Bill let loose that day
There’s not a kid ’round here for miles
But what can juggle more new styles
Of double-jointed, back-talk stuff
And compound cursin’ guff
Than they’d have picked up with their ears
In twenty years
From other folks. But to resume,
Bill started on the temperance boom!
Statistics? Gosh! Blood-curdlin’ tales—
He had ’em stacked ’round there in bales,
With starvin’ children, murdered wives,
And drunken males with guns and knives.

The way Bill talked you would have thought
Our Valley here had gone to pot
And ruin from the curse of drink.
But what I think
Is mostly wrong with this here place
Is just a simple case
Of scandal!
Why, drinkin’ doesn’t hold a candle
To all the dirty mess that’s stirred
With every slanderous word
That’s rolled along—and every time
It’s shoved a bit, it gathers slime.
When certain people get together
It ain’t the weather
Worries them! Not much! It’s who the heck
Deserves it hardest in the neck!

I’ve read somewhere how they could hear
A little whisper ringin’ clear
Across the dome
Of old St. Peter’s there in Rome.
Well, I have heard a whisper go
From Hillman’s ranch down there below
The base-line road, to Eric Lane’s
Then shoot across and hit MacGrain’s,
From where it kept on bouncin’ till
It struck the Hendricks on the hill,
Then glanced and hit our house kerzip,
Two days exactly on the trip!
Though whisperin’s good down there in Rome,
We’ve some acoustics here at home.

Accordin’ to Amanda Higgins,
Jim Gillan’s wild on Mrs. Wiggins;
That’s why Jim’s wife goes ’round so white
And frets her heart out day and night.
Accordin’ to Matilda Blink
“That teacher last year used to drink—
She roamed at will with Ruf MacGrore,
Who was immoral to the core;
That car Zeb Brinker bought for Blanche
Meant one more mortgage on their ranch,
While Hiram Tyler, he sets back
And drives the same old squeaky hack
And makes his wife and daughters face
Shame and disgrace—
Old Hiram who has laid away
Enough to pay
For twenty cars—
My stars!”
So runs the gospel link by link
Accordin’ to Matilda Blink.

Of course you can’t gainsay the claim
That some small flame
Of truth might be
Where gossip’s smoke blows ’round so free,
But oh the misery that’s begun
When each poor family skeleton
Is wakened from its peaceful trance
And made to dance
A shandigee
For all the blame community.

What’s wanted most around this place
Is supernatural grace.
If we could find
Some heavenly-antiseptic kind
Of moral mouth-wash that would take
A slanderous tongue and make
It CLEAN—and God knows there
Would have to be enough to spare
For all of us—both wives and men,
To take a gargle now and then—
If we could ever hope
To find that kind of dope,
Our little parson on the hill
As well as Bill,
Could save a precious pile
Of energy and rest a while.

LOVE’S LABOR LOST

John had the “con,” the Doctor said.
He stayed around the house and read
Most of the time or worked at such
Chores as would not exert him much
And slept on the veranda where
The Doctor thought was better air.

Each little thing the family knew
Would make him happier, they’d do.
“He won’t be with us long,” they’d say,
Then scrap and wrangle on, the way
That families do when rounding curves,
Each getting on the other’s nerves
With back-bite, spit-fire—loading full
The fleeting hours per usual.

At times of utmost unction, Bill
Would be the goat—on him they’d spill
The general peeve and blame. Bill stood
The gaff to help the common good.
One day Bill up and got the flu
And did what flu-folks sometimes do—

He died. Three days was all he took.
He lay there in a curtained nook;
It hit them sort of by surprise
To see him there with calm, closed eyes
And flowers all ’round and all so still.
They stood there looking down on Bill
And sobbed as families do when caught
So sudden like—they looked and thought
Of all the times they’d given him Hell;
And John—oh yes, poor John got well.

THE HALF UNDONE

He chose to do his stint by deed—
Not words but action was his creed;
When at his door some need would knock,
He gave—and wasted little talk.

He never had too big a load
To ease the traveller on the road;
His hearth was warm—so was his bed
And no one left his house unfed.
He did not gossip—if he talked
’Twas well advised—he never knocked;
He never knocked nor did he raise
At any time his voice in praise;
The little gracious things folks say,
He left them out—it was his way.