Chapter VI: Part FIVE (2)

He left so many out that they
Who shared his roof from day to day,
Went hungering in their souls the while
For just a pleasant word or smile.
It was as if he’d gone and made
A covenant with God to aid
His fellowman—so far as he
Could help that man materially;
But as for giving from his store
Those gifts the heart keeps longing for—
And lacking which goes beggaring—
Well that was quite another thing.

Somehow I think that such an one
Leaves half his task in life undone.

THE MAN WHO POISONS DOGS

The whelp who did the trick, I think he knows—
I think he feels it everywhere he goes.
A dog knows he’s a dog—there’s no pretend,
He starts out dog and he’s dog to the end.
At that, he’s got a dog’s sense of what’s right
And lives dog-loyalty according to his light.
And when a man less than a dog, he knows—
Though he may look like man and wear man’s clothes,
He knows the scut he is beneath it all.
The dog knew too—that’s why he tried to crawl
Back home—up to his kennel by the shed—
Dragged all the way—just like a lump of lead,
Because no self-respecting, decent hound
Would want to die upon his poisoner’s ground
If he could get away. Just what the use
Was, doing it—or what kind of excuse
He had, is more than I can figure out.
We raised that yellow hound—he’s gone about
For five years now and he was decent stuff,
And there’s no reason I know good enough
For what he got. A poisoner’s not the kind
To say—“That yellow cur of yours—you’ll find
Him here—I murdered him!” Or else—“That hound
You’ve got up there—I poisoned him, I found
Him running round my stable-yard today.”
When he’s through with his job, he doesn’t say
Those things, because it’s not a poisoner’s way—
His secret’s kept between himself and God
And that dumb brute that rots beneath the sod.

A AND THE

A shingled shack beneath a hill,
A clump of alders—dangling still
Their russet leaves and just below,
A creek half-filled with ice and snow;
A chicken-coop and little pens—
Against the snow some rust-red hens;
A cow, a child with ragged coat—
And by the fence a billy-goat.

These were the things that caught my eye
From a car-window passing by.
To me it was a hill, a brook,
A house caught in a passing look;
But to the child with ragged coat
It was the house, the hill, the goat.
To me and to each other eye
That saw as we went swiftly by,
It was one rill of many rills,
One hill among a thousand hills,
One little man-made blotch upon
A changing ’scape that’s come and gone—
Oh what a difference there can be
’Twixt little things like A and The.

MELTED CANDLES

Evergreen, holly and mistletoe,
Heigho and a Christmas night!
Wind in the pines and drifting snow,
Stars and a world of white.

Oh, the joyful Christmas music!
There’s a carol—do you hear?
Have you caught the thrill of gladness
On this night of all the year?
Golden bells and shining baubles,
Spangled angels—do you see?
Silvered globes and painted soldiers,
Gay and gallant, gaudy soldiers,
Dangling from the Christmas tree.

There are candles, gleaming candles,
Down and ’round and overhead,
Twinkling, blinking ’twixt the branches,
Candles pink and blue and red.
Christmas candles, waxen candles,
Once so hard but soft’ning now,
Candles that the flames are melting,
Tiny Yuletide flames are melting,
Melting on the greenwood bough.

There is love and grace abounding
In the vibrant Christmas air.
Has it touched you? Has it thrilled you?
Have you felt it pulsing there?
Where the hearthstone of your heart is?
Or have all the wintry years
Only left beneath their drifting,
’Neath their cold and cheerless drifting,
Cherished wrongs and bitter tears?

Is there nothing in the spirit
Of the garlands and the wreathes?
Is there nothing in the message
That the fragrant balsam breathes?
Is there nothing in the legend
Of the Christ-child that can move
The lifeless souls of mortals,
The bleak, gray souls of mortals
To forgiveness, grace and love?

Oh, the hearts that beat resentment
While the Yuletides come and go,
Hearts that crave one little token,
Hearts too proud to have it so.

Christmas magic, may it move them,
Wheresoever rankle be,
Melt them as the flaming beacons,
As the radiant Yuletide beacons
Melt the candles on the tree.

Evergreen, holly and mistletoe,
Heigho and a Christmas night!
Wind in the pines and drifting snow,
Stars and a world of white.

HOLLY

There’s holly on our lawn—all year
It grows, and when the Yuletide’s here
And others from the market bring,
We take from our tree’s burgeoning
And with each gleaming emerald spray
Our house is glad on Christmas day.
Throughout the year our holly tree
Tells of a Christmas that’s to be
And like its own rich evergreen
Keeps fresh the Yuletides that have been—
One—long ago near Galilee—
I’m glad we have a holly tree.

MORE RHYME THAN REASON

MONDAY

Lickety-klang! Lickety-klang!
Boom-a-lang! Boom-a-lang! Boom!
Swishity-swish! Kettle and dish!
Out of the kitchen and room!
Room! Room!

Steam up the water hotter and hotter,
Tin an’ enamel-ware, linen an’ camel-hair
Into the boiler and tubs, tubs, tubs!
Erin’s fair daughter, prime for the slaughter,
Tumbled and tawny-like, hefty and brawny-like,
Promptly at seven and rubs, rubs, rubs!

Mouth like a grotto! No hippopotto
Rushes his ration so, shuns mastication so—
No hippopotto would dare, dare, dare!
Coffee and tater—into the crater,
Front of stalactites, molars for back-bites
Crunching away with a tear, tear, tear!

Blazes are dwindling, shove in the kindling,
All the pajamas on—see how the Amazon
Mixes the pudding of duds, duds, duds!
Skirts and chemises, shirts, B. V. D-ses,
Stir them around again—unwound and wound again,
Swirled in a vortex of suds, suds, suds!

Rinse ’em and ring ’em, twist ’em and sling ’em
Out of the stewing-place into the bluing-place,
Whiter and whiter they grow, grow, grow!
One more ablution—careful, that ruchin’!
Purged all the finery, pinned on the linery,
Swinging away there like snow, snow, snow!

Wash-lady Bridget’s weary old digits—
Would she complain of it? Fume at the strain! of it?
Not if she dropped in the way, way, way!
Now ends the tubbing—home to more grubbing,
Back to that man of hers and that wee clan of hers,
Back at the end of the day, day, day!

Shirts and chemises caught by the breezes,
Fluttering nigh to her, waving good-bye to her,
Gorgeous and gold in the sun, sun, sun!
Aprons of gingham—how she did ring ’em,
Sheets blowing billowy, hose limp and willowy,
Praise be to Bridget—they’re done, done, done!

Lickety-klang! Lickety-klang!
Boom-a-lang! Boom-a-lang! Boom!
Swishity-swish! Kettle and dish!
Out of the kitchen and room!
Room! Room!

GETTIN’ TO IT

When Jim gets to it he’s goin’ to fix
The front door where it always sticks,
And oil the hinges where they squeak
And put new shingles on the leak
That trickled down and ruined all
The paper on the spare-room wall.
He’s goin’ to take a piece of lead
And mend the drain-pipe, so he said,
By solderin’ up that pesky chink
Down underneath the kitchen sink;
And nail the loose boards on the floors
And patch up all the fly-screen doors.

When Jim gets to it he’s goin’ to clean
The wood-shed like you’ve never seen,
And hang the hoes and rakes on racks,
And shake out all the gunny-sacks,
And all the empty cans and truck
And old gum-boots he’s goin’ to chuck,
And leave a place big enough
For all the mops and brooms and stuff.
And oh the wood he’s goin’ to chop!
When Jim gets to it there’ll be a crop
Of kindlin’ that will see you through
At least a dozen years or two.

When Jim gets to it he’s goin’ to take
And fix his teeth so they won’t ache,
Especially some molars there
That’s just got wrecked through wear and tear—
Their nerves had ought to first be killed
And ’bout a dozen others filled.
He’s goin’ to have some X-ray man
Examine him if he can
Find why he’s been so plagued of late
Along his spinal vertebrate.

He’s goin’ to take and drown I guess
’Bout ninety kittens more or less,
That make a point of hangin’ round
The kitchen door and gettin’ wound
Up in your feet so that you squash
A kitten with each step, by Gosh!

There’s lots of things that Jim declares
Each day will want some new repairs;
The barnyard gate is far from straight
And saggin’ pretty low of late;
The buck-saws will need filin’ soon
The new piano’s out of tune,
The wagon-reach is split and may
Capsize a cargo any day.

It seems like quite a lot to do,
But I suppose he’ll see it through
When nothin’ else is crowdin’ him
Nor pressin’ on his mind, and Jim
Is feelin’ fairly fit and prime—
But when it comes to that there time
I guess it’s not too much to say
That Jim will have one busy day.

FLIES

[Sidenote: Wherein the reader is instructed in certain mysteries. He acquainteth himself with the multiple personages of the little drama.]

Our kitchen’s full of flies an’ things,
A billion very near,
And though they’re tantalizin’ things,
At times they’re tantalizin’ things,
They give it atmosphere.
A kitchen is more kitchy when
The flies are everywhere,
And work goes on less hitchy when,
A hundred times less hitchy when
There’s music in the air.
When chilly their stupidity
Is really quite a deal,
They like the mild humidity,
They much prefer humidity,
It helps them uncongeal.

[Sidenote: With the advent of day a new life dawns—there is bustle and activity and all the ether is jubilant with praise.]

It’s then they totter ’round a bit
And gradually relax,
Their wings begin to sound a bit,
To sizz and sing and sound a bit
Abaft their beady backs.
Anon the whole community
Is pulsing through the void,
Each purrs his little tunity
His titillating tunity
With pleasure unalloyed.
Some for the unwashed dishes steer,
They joy to congregate
Where fragmentary fishes smear.
Where frequent flecks of fishes smear
The surface of a plate.

[Sidenote: After bodily comfort and satiety a care-free spirit fireth their souls to further conquest.]

And how they love to wallow in
A bowl of batter, oh
How they do love to swallow in,
To sip and sup and swallow in
Those drippy dabs of dough.
They’re happy and go-lucky and
They’re irresponsible,
They’ve predilections mucky and,
Most mushy-mush and mucky and
They gorge until they’re full.
Betimes they gallivanting go
To forage where they may,
With buzzy minors chanting low,
With chirpy chirrups chanting low,
They drone a roundelay.

[Sidenote: Imbued with an inherent love of cleanliness, their antiseptic endeavors are pursued with almost a religious fervor.]

When one is very fortunate
He summons with his hums,
With thrumming most importunate,
Impatiently importunate,
His gummy little chums.
But when they’ve slaked their appetites
They pause a while because
The stuffed and wheezy happy mites,
The puffed and greasy happy mites
Desire to dry their paws.
They rub their front ones violently,
They rub them to the tips,
They rub them very silently,
They slip and slide them silently
Until they’re dry as chips.

[Sidenote: How love of family together with a wholesome disposition for outdoor sports, tendeth to produce the ideal citizen.]

In manner quite identical,
They manicure with stress
Each tiny, hinder tentacle,
Each sticky, tickly tentacle
That’s draggled through the mess.
They’re fond of domesticity
And always striving to
Facilitate felicity,
A frolicsome felicity,
As all good flies should do.
Their games are often nautical,
They dearly love to plunge
In milk-bowl depths aquatical,
In quivery depths aquatical
With lacteal lurch and lunge.

[Sidenote: A wanton spirit of recklessness worketh dire mischief.]

But when the cream is thick enough
They dance along the top,
Their dancing must be quick enough,
Alert and spick and quick enough,
Forestalling any stop;
In which eventuality
Their limbs are soon involved
In struggling with mortality,
With miry, moist mortality
Until they’re quite dissolved.
And thus a woeful paucity
Of wits within their pates,
May, with their curiosity,
Their curbless curiosity,
Precipitate dire straits.

[Sidenote: How one who lacketh the art of divination yet abounding in a foolish optimism, may unwarily enter into the very jaws of destruction.]

For instance they’ll go hovering
With lack-wit dawdling drone,
And near without discovering,
Detecting or discovering
A lurking danger zone.
Their kinsmen multifarious
Are strewn upon a sheet
In poses strange and various,
Vituperative, various,
With upturned toes and feet.
They read in big, black typing there
“USE TANGLE-FOOT FOR FLIES,”
They see their comrades griping there,
Grimacing, gripping, griping there,
And yet they don’t get wise.

[Sidenote: With unavailing penitence they rue the day of woe and reckoning. Death and destruction hold the stage—the curtain falls.]

And they that were so cheerupy,
Who flew the air so free,
Now on that surface syrupy,
So sinister and syrupy,
Bemoan their misery.
They kick with motions panicky
Until they’ve quite unlatched
Their divers parts organicky,
Orchestral and organicky,
With feet and legs detached.
Until most penitentially
With slow surcease of toils,
Their souls float out eventually,
Evacuate eventually,
Their mangled mortal coils.

[Sidenote: The reader is admonished to a life of gentleness and charity.]

And so I’ve tried to tune a verse
Or so, to eulogize
Our kitchen’s little universe,
Unique, unnumbered universe
Of busy, buzzy flies.
With measures lilting, lyrical
I’ve striven to describe
In ballad panegyrical—
In part it’s panegyrical,
This much despiséd tribe.
And if I’ve touched the heart of you,
Oh promise me you’ll try
To crush that naughty party of you,
That pugilistic part of you
And NEVER swat a fly.

A DINO’S AURA

Now Cloud Cap’s near to Cooper Spur
Hard by the timber-line,
Above it looms the mountain and
Below it blooms the pine.

It’s reared of logs and sits bang up
Right pert upon a crag,
And through the roof a chimney’s built
Of hacked volcanic slag.

We gathered ’round the fireplace there—
The guide, the guests and me,
The Junior from New Haven and
The man from Tennessee.

We’d had a rousing dinner of
Spaghetti and roast-lamb,
Substantially supported by
A chowder made of clam.

We talked about the morrow and
The perils of the hike,
About the snowy crater there
And what it all was like.

We got along to bergschrunds and
Erosion and seracs,
And that kind of queer explosion when
A nervous serac cracks.

We figured out how long ’twould take
(We all submitted plans)
To parcel-post a glacier’s ice
By shipping it in cans.

We talked of starry nebulæ,
Auroras, comets’ tails,
Toads found alive in sandstone rock
And ice-imprisoned whales;

Suspended animation and
The tribe of Dinosaurs,
(Just here the man from Tennessee
Passed ’round some good cigars);

We stated and we countered in
A wordy-wise delirium
About the reptile Dinosaur
And mammal Dinotherium.

In short we talked of everything
That people talk about
When sparring for a last word more
To help the conflab out.

We sprawled a bit, we yawned and stretched,
We lumberingly arose
And brought a most loquacious night
Abruptly to a close.

A dozen moments afterwards,
A dozen drowsy heads
Had hit a dozen pillows on
A dozen downy beds.

For prostrate with their hikings were
A dozen pair of shanks
As they slept the sleep of Vikings ’neath
The wood-rat riddled planks.

The old Inn shook and trembled with
A rat-a-tat-a-tat,
As all the blustering four winds blew
Like Great Jehoshaphat—

Like Blazes blew and Blitzen, banged
The window-sash till sud-
denly the thing just opened with
One gosh-almighty thud.

Then quickly—as if conscious of
Such ill-timed, boorish riot,
Those shrieking, spiteful, frightful winds
Became most meek and quiet;

And in the lull there rolled a dull,
Strange gurgle in my ear
And through the window-space I saw
A monstrous thing appear—

A snow-white critter, giant-high,
With trunk and pussy’s paws—
In short his make-up seemed exempt
From all of Nature’s laws.

A husky, tusky Titan growth
With squidgy, squinty eyes—
I drew the covers closer up—
The creature said “Arise!”

“Not so, old Scout,” I squiddled out,
“Bed’s good enough for me!”
His trunk moved slowly toward my bunk,
The monster said “We’ll see!”

“Then who are you and what’s your game?”
(I tried to be as calm as
A man can be while shivering
In only silk pajamas.)

“To thus intrude your presence rude,
You big Albino cur!”
“What’s that!” said he, “You don’t know me—
I am a Dino, Sir!”

“A Dinosaur? The heck you are!
From your get-up I’ll swan
You’re what our scientific sharks
Have dubbed a Mastodon!

A rare, old wooly specimen
’Mongst fossil Pachyderms!”
“For what they claim I’m not to blame,
I have no knack at terms;

“I only know I say what’s so,
A Dino’s what I be—
Because your experts get things wrong—
That doesn’t bother me.

“I am a Dino—or to be
A little more exact,
I am a Dino’s aura, Sir!
A Dino’s ghost in fact!

“I overheard your talk tonight
About our ancient clan—
I grew absorbed, I got a hunch,
Thinks I ‘At last—my man!’

“You spoke of ice-imprisoned whales—
Oh little did you know
The way that touched my heart that pulsed
A million years ago—

“My other heart that lies so still
Within my frozen fur—
My other heart upon the hill
Deep in yon glacier.

“Oh could I break that crystal mold
Where I’ve been doomed to freeze
Down in that gloom and bitter cold
For untold centuries,

“I’m sure my heart would pulse again,
Those haunches limber grow,
And I could roam as once I did—
Once in the Long-ago!

“There is an ice-cave known to none,
Leads to that Mausoleum,
And he that was that other me
Rests there where you shall see him.

“So come and look—perhaps you could
Evolve some keen device
To extricate my stiffened shanks
From out that flux of ice,

“And I will bear you back, I swear,
As I’m a Dino’s spirit,
To this here shack before the crack
Of daylight—never fear it!”

“But Brother—” here you will observe
How friendly we’d become,
“For me to go up there tonight
With You—is going Some!

“And such a task! What could I do?
’Twould weigh so mighty on
My mortal shoulders—and besides
I’ve but my nightie on!”

“Why don’t you see” replied the wraith,
“What faith I’ve got in you—
Who’d parcel-post a glacier’s ice
In cans—what can’t you do?

“Some high explosive you could get
Like dynamite and blow
Me out from all my frigid plight—
It could be done, I know.”

“It could be done,” I said, “but then
The risk you run is heightened—
The dyna-MITE blow bones and all—
And then again it mightn’t!”

I looked to see—perhaps the pun
Had punched his ponderous thinker—
His countenance was passive quite,
He never winked a blinker.

But then his wraithy nut, I ween,
Was shadow-celled—not solid,
Hence this hiatus in his bean,
His manner grave and stolid.

“This dynamiting Dinos is
Quite risky in the main—
Although you haven’t much to lose
And quite a bit to gain!”

“I’ll chance it—come!” the Dino said,
“There’s little time to lose—
We ghosts you know, can only romp
While other people snooze.”

His trunk galumpled toward my bunk,
It snoodled till it found me,
Then with a firm but gentle squeeze
It wrapped itself around me;

It lifted me into the air
Out toward the window-sash—
The lamp upon the table there
Fell with a telltale crash,

Which roused my next-door neighbor up,
The man from Tennessee,
Who with his light came rushing in
To learn what it could be.

Of course no wraith can stand the light—
It must have made him sore
To have his trunk dissolve in night
While I sprawled on the floor.

As for the man from Tennessee
And what had just occurred—
With me in my pajamas there,
I told him not a word.

I told him nothing for I knew
He’d never understand—
I asked him just to get a rag
And wrap my bruiséd hand.

JUST CAT

We have a cat of common gray—
In fact a plain and everyday
Old Tab—to be exact I’d say
She’s common in most every way.

She’s common in her manners quite,
She’s never known the word “polite,”
When dining with her neighbors, _might_
To her cat mind is always _right_.

She’s common in her diet too—
Cheese, liver, milk, or cold beef-stew—
And when at last she finds she’s through,
She licks her chops as most cats do.

She’s common for the reason that
No chipmunk, gopher, mouse or rat
Is sure she won’t cave in his slat
To decorate our kitchen-mat.

She’s common in the way she’ll toy
With life—decoy and then annoy
And torture with cool, fiendish joy
The thing she would at last destroy.

She’s common in the motherly
Devotion with which she can see
Her kits lick up the blood—to be
Eventually as cruel as she.

She’s common in the attitude
Which she’s persistently pursued
Toward rearing up a meowing brood—
Twice every year the stunt’s renewed.

She’s common in the view she’d share
With all those poor folks who declare
That the community should care
For all the young they choose to bear.

Indeed so common is she here,
That should we count each little dear
That’s littered every fiscal year,
(Her seventh winter’s drawing near),

Allowing six to every score,
(At times it’s less but mostly more),
The tally would not figure lower
Than somewhere say—near eighty-four.

But as four out of every six
Are ferried ’cross the River Styx
And swiftly rendered good for nix
Before they register their kicks,

And whereas those that still remain
In order to relieve the strain
And thus assuage a mother’s pain
Until her grief is on the wane,

Are likewise held beneath the spout,
Or soon or later parcelled out
To someone who beyond a doubt
Enjoys the feel of cats about,

It will be fitting to observe
That we have done our best to serve
This purring matron through each curve
Of her plain, boundless, common nerve.

We’ve done our best—as one may see,
To quell each base antipathy,
That she—our Tab might still be free
To rear her endless progeny.

DANGER!

Look out! Don’t touch me, man, I’m sore!
I’m ulcerous—I’m more,
I boil, I fume, I sizzle, I’m
Cantankerous to the core.

A blister that is being shaved,
A wild cat up a tree.
A chestnut-bur with every spur
An exposed nerve—that’s me!

I am the heat that turns to flame
When in Fate’s glass is caught
The world’s choice store of toughest luck
And focused on one spot.

What’s wrong? Why, eighty dozen things,
Each one of which would stall
An ORDINARY man—it’s just
My rotten day, that’s all!

What’s that? Cheer up? Say that again!
No, don’t—just—go away!
I’ve never killed a man before—
I mustn’t start today.

A PAGEANT OF THE TREES

When the Man of Galilee spoke of “The Tree of
Life” the metaphor was used advisedly. Is not a tree
the very essence of life unfolding hour by hour and
day by day—the harbinger of beauty on mountain
and plain, the salvation of the waste-places, the
antithesis of all monotony? The tender green of young
trees in the sunlight, the golden laughter of autumn
boughs, the loneliness of leafless trees against the
sunset sky, the mystery of solemn contours drenched
in moonlight, the cold, white loveliness of trees in
winter—what would earth be without these things? And
could the mind of man conceive a treeless heaven?

When the Great Love has stirred your soul and
you are one with the Tribe of Trees through the
blood-brotherhood of common understanding, you will
see a deal of this humanity of ours mirrored in the
multifarious tree-life of our western hills. Gird
yourself with an open mind, take Fancy with you
and go forth—learn of the old men, chat with the
gossips, question the seers, ponder the heraldry of
their ancient totems—do these things and you will
return with Wisdom, and Joy will dance in the heart
of you.

THE FOREST

We are the hosts innumerable who ride
Upon the hills—who stride
The plains and surge upon the mountainside.
We are the onward-sweeping tide
Of ceaseless growth, the countless entities
Of all the rolling, emerald seas
Of timber-land—we are the Trees!

The dam who suckles us is Earth,
She gives us birth
And when
Our night is come, she claims her own again.
We live to grow and to this end
Recurring seasons lend
Their favor; Winter comes, our labors cease,
It is a time of cold, white peace;
When Spring walks jubilantly through the land
We know the hour of increase is at hand;
Then stirs our forest-heart and sap runs free—
The sap which is the life-blood of a tree.
Our skin is bark, and fiber is our flesh
And through the pores of every fresh
Green leaf, we breathe. Our good?
Is to make wood;
To hold in check the floods that devastate;
To mediate
Between the Heavens and the Earth,
That there shall be no dearth
Of water nor excess—yet still enough
Stored in our forest floor of matted duff
To save the land from barrenness,
And when we tender less
Than this, or stop
From making wood, we’re dead! In time, we drop,
And when we drop, we rot.
Such is our lot; our lives are fraught
With much vicissitude, not always free
To shape our destiny—
A tale where each slow-born event
Is moulded by environment.

And there is stuff
Enough of drama if the rough,
Rude story were all told—a stage
Where age-
Old patriarchs make way
For jostling, upstart youth and gay,
Bepainted courtezans and those who weep
With trailing tears; and anchorites who keep
Their solitary trysts; and those who sing;
And gossips bent in whispering;
Defiant wretches of the sod,
Hurling invective at their God;
Or those whose arms in priestly-wise
Turn supplicating to the skies,
Or stoop to bless
With benediction and caress;
And gnarled hags
And misshaped monsters of the crags;
And moon-white hosts
Of beckoning ghosts.

With wild, spendthrift magnificence
The stage is set—immense
And primal. Flash
And flood and thunder-crash,
Devouring flame and scattered dead
And silences that hang like lead.
Stuff
Enough for drama if the rough
Rude story were all told;
A tale as old
As dusk, as new as dawn—
The play is always going on—
The curtain’s never drawn.

THE SEQUOIA GIGANTIA

I am the oldest and the biggest thing
That lives—a link forever lengthening,
That binds the vanished THEN fast to
The fleeting NOW. I grew—
Each ’circling ring bespoke a year,
Recording there
My prospering—or marked perchance
Some hindering of circumstance.
This towering shaft in armored front
Of thickest bark, has borne the brunt
Of frost and flame; it has endured
Through countless plagues and is inured
To all the ravagings
Of crawling things.

My grizzled head has glimpsed the wax
And wane of comets and the tracks
Of trailing meteors; and I
Have watched across the sky
Of time,
Young nations rise and reach their prime
And then grow dim again.
I was a sturdy sapling when
Gray Egypt reared the slave-hewn stones
That hearsed the bones
Of Rameses; and full two thousand folds and more
Had sealed my red heart’s inmost core
When He drew breath—
The Christ of little Nazareth.

_I am the oldest and the biggest thing
That lives—a link forever lengthening,
That binds the vanished THEN fast to
The fleeting NOW._]

I’ve kept my long-established place
And I am solid—crown to base;
My heart is sound, my bole is straight,
My limbs hang with an even weight,
I do not sag and there is no
Near gully where the freshets flow
To undermine my roots. God planned
It so, and by his grace I’ll stand
Against the centuries still.
So will I fill
My destiny—
To be
A messenger—to carry on, to give
Tomorrow’s children who shall live
When this fair present’s passed away,
The legend of my yesterday.

A SPRUCE’S ROOT

I am the grisly claws
Of this crestfallen spruce that was.
Almighty tall he grew and straight—
I bore his Lordship’s weight
For some odd centuries, and great
It was to see a tree so fine
In bulk and splendid in design.
His portly tons increased with age
While I sprawled in the cellarage,
And when winds tossed his noble head
I knew how shallow was my bed,
For in my youth I led
A rambling life, quite free from toil;
I sucked the soggy surface-soil,
I did not deem it worth
The while to pierce the deeper earth
To make my base a solid thing
Against the days of reckoning.
My tangled talons forked far out,
They squirmed and twisted round about,
They radiated from my crown—
They went _along_ but never _down_.

Once now and then some minstrel breezes strolled
Our way—they bowled
Old-timers down. The ground
Was strewn with windfalls all around;
A rendezvous
For every breeze that blew
For miles—a test
I’ll warrant for the best
Of trees and doom for all the rest.
Great strapping fellows—hale and well
To look upon, but how they fell!
A crack! A bump!
A splintered, jagged stump!
And how the pride of some did smart
To have a rotted heart
Torn open thus—relentlessly exposed!
Meanwhile his Lordship posed—
The peer without a flaw!
And he was held in very proper awe—
He saw his rivals snapped like straws,
And still he stood—while I dug in my claws.

I knew that it would come—some gust would blow
To spill him low.
His great bole swayed
And trembled like a barley-blade,
His lifelong balance-line he tottered past—
The die was cast,
For there was no rebound.
The ground
Ripped as he rocked
And with the crash my roots unlocked.

In such a wise—upturned by fate,
I was exalted from my low estate.
I am a monstrous thing to see,
A flat, misshapen prodigy
Of towsie tentacles and mud and stones
And twisted bones—
A ghastly secret raised to smear
This forest nobleman’s career.

THE DOUGLAS FIR

By crowding upward toward the light
Day and night,
We lift (the lifting never stops)
Our panoply of towering tops.
We are all height and gloom;
We have no room,
No place
For our own brothers in the race
For light; if they can not keep pace
With us, nor reach as high,
They die!

Our lancet-stems are clean like stalks of grain,
Thus we maintain
Our creed, which is to rise
In unspoiled beauty toward the skies—
We make no compromise!
Across the fire-swept areas our seeds
Are blown, to drop among the weeds.
A little while they lie
And germinate, and by and by
WE spring—a sapling here—and there—
And everywhere,
Elbowing in
Through chinkapin
And rhododendrons and the crush
Of maple brush;
Before we know,
We’ve grown into a forest, while below
We glimpse the copse
And see the tops
Of things
That have become our underlings.

There are no thicker stands
Than ours, in all the Northwest lands—
By grace of rivalry we grow so straight,
And thrive and dominate.

_Our lancet-stems are clean like stalks of grain,
Thus we maintain
Our creed, which is to rise
In unspoiled beauty toward the skies._]

THE TAMARACK

Among the evergreens I grow
All summer long—they do not know—
I look so much as if I were
An honest upright kind of fir.
I even think they envy me,
My fronds show such a filigree
Of needlework, all interlaced—
They do not know I’m double-faced.
I am as straight as any lance
And so I win their confidence;
I know their inmost secret things,
I hear their softest murmurings,
I listen and maintain my mien—
They think I am an evergreen!

But when the summer goes,
October knows! October knows!
For then my needles turn to gold,
I stand a traitor to the fold,
I am the turncoat of the pack—
The yellow-flaming tamarack!
I hoist my shining staff,
I give them all the laugh,
Until my golden needles drop
And sober up. I’ve had my fling—
Next spring
When I am seen
Again, I’ll be an evergreen!

THE MONTEREY CYPRESS

The rocks and sands of Monterey—
They
Nourished me
Beside the sea.
My age? It matters not—
It was enough to batter me a bit; I’ve got
My own credentials of what’s what.
The way my flattened trunk is worn
Shows well enough I was not born
Into this planet yesterday; whoever will
Can count my rings the day I fall—until
That time, the secret I have kept
Shall sleep as it has slept.

Had fate dealt otherwise, I might have been
Bestowed in safety with my kin
To landward there, a half-mile in—
Most orthodox and prim
In trunk and limb.
For such an orthodoxy, bah, who’d give
Two grains of sand—they do not live!
They’ve nothing to _combat_. I get
The first-hand give-and-take; the wet,
Flung spray, the savage shoulder-drive
Of unspent blasts—on these I thrive.

And then I watch—for me
The sweep of sea,
Unbroken, beautiful. I get the first
Of everything. I see the burst
Of evening clouds unrolled
Upon a palpitating field of gold.
Shot through with fiery javelins that dart
Up from the sun’s red heart.
So passes out my day. My night
Is moon and mist and light
Of stars—I keep
The sweep
Of sky and sea—
Which somehow seems all made for me.

THE MADRONA

When my skin is newly green,
When it’s turned a copper sheen,
When it’s flushed to ruddiness like rich, old wine,
Seek me in the wilderness,
Seek me in my gleaming dress,
Seek me in the shadows of the covering pine.

Lace of leafy malachite
Letting in the splashing light,
Dappling all my full, round limbs with leopard gold;
Lovely as a mottled snake,
Grace in every curve I make,
Amorously beautiful my arms unfold.

Never was a gypsy maid
More audaciously arrayed,
Never half so ravishing or so fair—
Topaz clusters, look at them,
Set in Autumn’s diadem,
Dazzling in the darkness of my thick, green hair.

THE YELLOW PINE

I do not like the cloistered wood
And little good
I find in forest gloom,
I much prefer the elbow-room
Of well-spaced groves, earth kempt and free
Of undergrowth; to be
Respectfully removed, with green
And pleasant interludes between,
And in the middle distance see
My fellows grouped fraternally
Against a haze of blue; beyond, a maze
Of trunks receding till they all
Seem drawn together in a wall
Where every tree
Is lost in dark uncertainty.

_A strange
Unearthly beauty I have known
When like a hyacinth full-blown
I’ve stood
Upon a winter morning in the wood._]

Or better still
The isolated grandeur of a hill,
Just as the day is done,
To watch the sun
Hit full my western side
And splash my alligator’s hide
Of burnished copper scales with golden light;
To see me so, against the purple night
Banked high upon some eastern range,
Is well—but there is yet a strange
Unearthly beauty I have known,
When like a hyacinth full-blown,
I’ve stood
Upon a winter morning in the wood
Transfigured in the snow,
Until the wind would blow
And then
I’d find myself a tree again.

THE BRUSH

On every fire-swept blotch we stick,
We are the thick
Impenetrable brush—
The nondescripts who rush
To claim the open. We’re the mass—
We have no cliques, we have no class;
We crowd and push,
Tree and bush;
Who keeps our frenzied pace
Is welcome to the race.

The affable spiræa likes
To bob her ivory spikes,
Hobnobbing free
With such a tolerable company.
The dogwoods do not hold
Aloof from mingling with our fold;
The snowdrop crowd
Seem very proud
To dangle in the dancing light
Their pretty balls of white;
And if the willows do not care
To share
Our comradeship, they’ve kept their secret well.
So with the snarling chaparral
And manzanita with her thin,
Red, scaling arms—and burry chinkapin.
We do not ban
That painted courtezan,
Vine-maple, she whose fingers clutch
Each place they touch.
We do not fuss—
Like other crowds, she’s part of us;
As is the tremulous
And quaking aspen; each little troop
Of goldenrods; each whispering group
Of girlish alders and the countless breeds
Of weeds.

After our kind, we live;
Week after week we give
Our dower
Of fruit and flower
In little or largess
Accordingly as we possess.
In Autumn we hold carnival
And over all
The hills, our many-patterned carpet lies
Bright with a thousand dyes;
Rich-tufted plush
Of brush,
Deep-grained and thick; this covering
Each year we bring—
A dress
Of wildest loveliness
To merge in beauty more and more
The ancient forest floor.

THE TIMBER-LINE

We were not meant for forest life—
Not we! we chose the strife
Of high adventure—took our luck
Here on the rocks and here we’ve stuck
We are the pigmies of the spurs—
The little warriors!

Perched on these crags, we hurled
Our challenge to the world.
The wind heard our defy
And blew till all the sky
Grew purply-black and thundery.
Uncommon wroth was he,
When like a rumbling blunderbuss
He tried to topple us,
But wallowed flat—we were too short
To fall! And it was merry sport
Upon our jagged floor
To see him wrestling there; a score
Of holds he tried and thought each bout
Would tire us out.

Oh Lord,
The way he stormed and roared!
Then desperate he tried to tear
Us limb from limb—to wear
Us down upon his rack,
A-bending back
Our arms, so we would cry “enough!”
We were too _tough_
To crack! Then came the snow—so light
At first, but soon its white
Dead weight in silence crept
Upon our shoulders and we slept
The sleep that no spring wakes,
But only summer breaks,
When with her melting hand she takes
Our blankets off and shakes
The dripping fleece into the flow
Of rushing torrents far below.

Thus we are stooped by weight of snows
And twisted by each wind that blows;
Our arms are gouged and shot
By sharp-edged sands the winds have caught
And driven home; our trunks are gashed
And riven where the lightning flashed,
And little increase may we show,
So brief a season do we grow.
Though Time’s attrition has been spent
In our grotesque disfigurement.
Still we can lift our flattened heads
In pride, for we are thoroughbreds.
We have not flinched and we can show
At what far heights a tree can grow.
We are the pigmies of the spurs—
The little warriors
Who left the haunts of fir and pine
To mark the topmost timber-line.

THE GHOST-TREES

We are the stricken—those who died
But did not fall. Once, side by side,
We burned and bled—
We are the countless standing dead.
Not like the Capuchins, cowl-topped,
Dried in their cerements, stiff-propped
And postured in the charnel gloom
Of some deep-caverned chapel-room,
But in the full, white light of day
We stand—gaunt, naked, gray—
Close-locked in death,
Yet ever with the breath
Of life around us. We can see
The quickened green of each young tree,
Their bobbing heads
Upcrowding at our feet; and beds
Of paint-brush and the blue
Of lupine. Years renew
Their seasons—dust and rain and snow.
For us dawns glow,
And setting suns transfuse our cold
And ashen palor into gold;
Moons rise, and then
We all are turned to ghosts again.

_We are the stricken—those who died
But did not fall. Once, side by side,
We burned and bled—
We are the countless standing dead._]

We look upon some mighty fir,
Remembering ourselves that were;
It was a lightning flash that came,
And flame
Encircled us. All night
The sky was crimson with our light.
Day dawned upon the hills—the sun rose red,
It saw the dying and the dead,
The vast, uncounted dead—and over all,
A smoky pall
That wavered in the wind. We did not fall—
We did not fall, like some—magnificent in strength
Who measured out their length,
Still smouldering, upon the ash-heaped mat
Of earth—we were not burned enough for that.

Years passed
Our dried bark cracked—at last
It flaked and fell. In high distress
We were—gaunt in our nakedness.
So have we stood—
The gray ghost-brotherhood,
We who have burned and bled
But did not fall—the standing dead.

RHYMES OF FRANCE

FROGS

We’ve called you “Frogs” my hearties,
With your regimental blue,
And perhaps ’twas not through lovin’
That we wished the name on you.
But now that you have got it
And it’s likely it will cling,
There’s a chance that maybe somehow
There’s a meanin’ to the thing.

Through four long fearful winters
In your muggy Flanders bogs,
You squatted—eating, sleeping,
In your mud-holes, just like frogs.
Like frogs whose spots are mingled
With each grass and stone and stick,
You camouflaged your hiding—
You were first to pull that trick.

Like frogs you sat and squinted
’Cross at Fritzie day by day,
But you were ‘_tout ’suite beaucoup_’
When you leaped into the fray.

You left a heap of frogs’ legs
In the marshes where you soaked—
Where tens and tens of thousands
Of your punctured Poilus croaked.

We’ve called you “Frogs” my hearties,
With your spattered rags of blue,
With your stumps and scars and crutches
Which you’ll carry till you’re through,
But well you’ve shown your fitness
For the rank you got by chance,
And so—once more—here’s to you,
Oh you dauntless Frogs of France!

LA FERTE, FRANCE,
January, 1919.

TRANSITION

It rained like cats and dogs that night—
The kid—he rambled on;
We sat, we two, by candle-light
In a tavern in Ballon.
“The first I killed—that hand-made dirk,
Well that’s a souvenir!
I got it cheap—though that poor Turk,
It cost him pretty dear.

“He’d jumped our trench—the fog was thick—
Thinks I—‘one of our men’
Still I yelled ‘Halt!’—he beat it quick,
And then I yelled again.
And on he went—I watched him till
He scrambled to the top—
Says I—‘Not if I know it, Bill!’
And then I saw him drop.

“Our First Lieutenant heard me blaze
And soon he came along,
I stood there in a kind of daze
And then he said ‘What’s wrong?’

I told him and he said ‘Good work,
Suppose we have a look’—
He yanked a button from the Turk,
I showed you what I took.

“That night I tried and tried to pray,
But something, it began
To pound away inside and say
‘Hey boy—you’ve killed a man!’
I just could see his clotted head
In mud—the blood it ran—
Oh God—all night! while something said
‘Hey boy—you’ve killed a man!’

“You’ll go to Hell—that’s where you’ll go”—
For once the kid was still—
“It’s funny how it gets you so,
The first man that you kill.
And yet—it’s just as funny too,
How killin’ seems all right
When hate gets jazzin’ ’round in you,
Once when you’re in the fight.

“That’s how it was the day our squad
Got blowed to Kingdom Come
When Fritzie’s steel plowed up the sod
Down there along the Somme.

My first machine-gun man stood there,
As near as me to you—
It tore his head off clean and bare
And ripped his chest all through.

“You don’t stop much for scruples when
You’ve seen a sight like that,
The rest of us advanced again,
Their pills came pit-a-pat.
Another fell—I grabbed his gun
And left him my canteen,
And then I started in to run
Up toward a Boche machine.

“I ducked around—for two more men
That Jerry there had picked,
Got in behind—and leveled when
The damned thing only clicked!
Down went his hand, I saw his game,
He grabbed his Luger, but
I swung my stock and down it came
Upon his bloomin’ nut.

“That there’s the souvenir I copped,
Some pretty watch—eh what!
From that there time she’s never stopped—
She’s Fritzie on the spot!

You can’t have scruples when you’ve seen
Your poor old pal go West,
With blood a-tricklin’ in the mud
And oozin’ from his chest.

“You carry on, you just don’t care,
For somethin’ seems to tell
He’s callin’ to you from somewhere—
‘Go on—and give ’em Hell!’”

LE MANS, FRANCE,
January, 1919.

KIDDY OF FRANCE

Kiddy of France in your raggedy clothes
Toddling along in your wooden sabots—
Daddy’s old cap on his little Poilu—
Now it’s all faded but once it was new—
Kiddy of France with that laugh in your eyes,
Tell me the secret that under it lies—
_Comment allez-vous_ today?

Kiddy—_mon chérie, Je vous demande_
Why do you press so with that little hand?
Why are you jogging along at my side?
Measure for measure you stretch to my stride.
Kiddy—_mon chérie_, now out with it, come,
“_Avez-vous, avez-vous_—some chewing gum?
_Avez-vous_ candy?”—I thought so, go on,
“_Avez-vous chocolat_”—yes, yes—and “_bon-bon_?”
There now _mon chérie_, my little Poilu,
_Voilà_: Your gum! And now then—_que dites-vous?_
“_Merci Monsieur_”—ah you’re welcome, I’m sure
A hundred times welcome, _mon chérie_: _Bonjour!_

BALLON, FRANCE,
February, 1919.

SPRING—1919

What is this France of today, you ask?
It’s a madhouse of homesick men,
Chafing, each one, to renew his task
In the land of his dreams again.
France! It is khaki and France is blue
And France is a green-capped Hun—
Badge of the bondage he’s destined to
Till the days of his debt are done.

France is an emerald rolling plain,
Ribboned with winding ways,
Quivering white through the fields of grain
And lost in the purple haze.
France is a village of dung and ducks
Where the muck-brown urchins play,
Rumbling all day with the motor-trucks
As they roll down the old highway.

France is a hill with an ancient church—
Gray towers through the poplar trees,
Gargoyles a-grin from each crumbling perch
At the saints on their balconies.
France is a window of mellow light
Where the day’s last gold has died—
France is a woman with brow of white
At the feet of the Crucified.

France is a cap and an empty coat
And a space where the embers glow—
France is a grave by a shell-torn moat
Where the weeds and the poppies grow.
France is the ashes of yesterday
And France is tomorrow’s dawn—
France is a bough with a blossom spray
On the ruins of Montfaucon.

VERDUN, FRANCE,
April, 1919.

HOMESICK

In the winter when the snow fell
And this France was bleak and white,
And the days turned—oh so quickly
To the cold and cheerless night,
I was homesick.

When the rains came, ceasing never,
And the earth was all a mire,
And we tried to crowd the gloom out
With our puny fagot fire,
I was homesick.

Now it’s summer and the poppies
Are a-flaming on the hill—
It is France in all her glory
And the larks are singing, still
I am homesick.

ALLEREY, FRANCE,
May, 1919.