Chapter XI: How to Read Poetry (5)

“Oho! Cheer up!” I cried,
“We’ve dared the seas before, my mate,
What matter if ill luck betide?—
Why, we were born to laugh at fate!”

He grasped his oar with one long sigh,
Nor spoke he any word to me;
And so together, he and I,
Put out upon the angry sea.

And side by side, with steady stroke;
We fought against the veering flaw;
In flakes of froth the billows broke—
The wildest wolves I ever saw!

Ah, how the cutting north wind blew,
And in our faces dashed the spray!
The sullen twilight round us grew,
The green shore faded into gray.

“Cheer up! Cheer up! A merry row
We’ll have ere dawn of day!” laughed I;
“And what care we how winds may blow?”
The Sea’s voice only made reply.

A silent man he left the shore,
Nor yet a single word had said;
A silent man he dipped his oar
As though it were a thing of lead.

The night came down and still we toiled,
The tumult fiercer grew, and now
The swirling tide-rip foamed and boiled,
And ghostly seas swept o’er the prow.

The air was filled with flying spume,
Cloud-galleons sailed down the sky,
Strange forms groped toward us in the gloom,
Pale phantoms glided swiftly by.

Afar, at times, a lonely loon
Sent quavering laughter through the night,
While from a filmy sheath the moon
Drew forth a sabre, keen and bright.

Oh, it was weird!—the seabird’s screech,
The distant buoy’s warning bell,
The white palms lifting high to reach
A loosened star that downward fell!

Within my breast each moment grew
A fear of more than wind-blown sea;
And lo! that mute man, laughing, threw
Aside his oar and leered at me.

That moonlit face! It haunts me still!
The eyes that spoke the maddened brain!
That moonlit face! it sent a thrill
Of terror through my every vein!

“Aha! You thought me dead, you cur!”—
His breath blew hot against my cheek;
“Aha! You coward, you lied to her!”—
I felt my limbs grow strangely weak.

“Lorenzo! Look! The boat! The boat!”—
But how can mad men understand?
My God! He leaped to clutch my throat,
A wicked dagger in his hand!

That lifted knife! Ah, yet I feel
A horror of the deadly thing!
The long, keen blade of polished steel
Against the white stars quivering.

I upward sprang—I grasped somehow
The hand that held the hilt of bone;
With panther strength he struggled now,
A demon I must fight—alone!

He strove to slay, and I to save
His life and mine if such might be,
And in the trough and on the wave
Like beasts we grappled savagely.

To plead were vain; I could not hear
My voice above the tempest’s breath,
I only knew my feet were near
The awful, icy edge of Death.

We fought until the dark became
A glare of crimson to my eyes,
Until the stars were snakes of flame
That writhed along the lurid skies.

We fought I know not how—to me
All things of that mad night appear
As vague as when in dreams you see
The ghouls that haunt the coast of Fear.

We fought—we fought and then—and then—
A leap—a cry—and he was gone!
And I alone pulled shoreward when
The East had grown the flower of dawn.

...

I knew he was morose that day
Because he did not speak to me,
But now I know he was away
Upon the hills of Italy.

—Copyright by the _Harr Wagner Co._, San Francisco, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

WHY SANTA CLAUS FORGOT

BY HERBERT BASHFORD

A wind from the south swept down the bay,
And pale with anger the waters turned
As the ranchman’s wife looked far away
To where the lights of the city burned.

Like feeble stars on that Christmas eve
Were the pulsing lights beyond the tide;
“Now play with your dolly and do not grieve,”
Said she to the wee one at her side.

“Good Santa Claus will come to you
This very night if you do not cry,”
And she wiped a tear like a drop of dew
From the rosy cheek and the anxious eye.

“No sail! No sail!” and the sad wife pressed
A wan face close to the window-pane,
But naught she saw but the sea’s white breast
And the long gray lash of the hissing rain.

The night fell black and the wild gale played
In the chimney’s throat a shrill, weird tune,
While into a cloud as if afraid
Stole the ghostly form of the groping moon.

Then the steeds of the sea all landward came,
Each panting courser thundered o’er
The rocks of the reef and died in flame
Along the utmost reach of shore.

Ah, heavy the heart of the ranchman’s wife!
And long she listened, yet only heard
The voice of breakers in awful strife
And the plaintive cry of a frightened bird.

So long she waited and prayed for day
As the firelight flickered upon the floor,
While the prowling wind like a beast of prey
Did growl and growl at the cabin door.

The gray dawn crept through the weeping wood,
The clouds set sail and all was still;
With a breast of gold the fair morn stood
Above the firs of the eastern hill.

The waters slept and the raindrops clung
Like shimmering pearls to the maple tree;
The sky was clear and the brown birds flung
Sweet showers of crystal melody.

A splintered mast and a tattered sail
Lay out in the sun on the hard brown sands
And plainer than words they told a tale
To the woman who wept and wrung her hands.

And the little girl with the gold-crowned head
Looked up with her tear-wet eyes of blue;
“Oh, please don’t cry, mamma,” she said,
“Old Santa Claus forgot me, too.”

—Copyright by _Harr Wagner Co._, San Francisco, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

DICKENS IN CAMP

BY BRET HARTE

Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting,
The river sang below;
The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting
Their minarets of snow:

The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted
The ruddy tints of health
On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted
In the fierce race for wealth;

Till one arose, and from his pack’s scant treasure
A hoarded volume drew,
And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure
To hear the tale anew.

And then, while round them shadows gathered faster,
And as the firelight fell,
He read aloud the book wherein the Master
Had writ of “Little Nell.”

Perhaps ’twas boyish fancy—for the reader
Was youngest of them all—
But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar
A silence seemed to fall;

The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows,
Listened in every spray,
While the whole camp, with “Nell” on English meadows
Wandered and lost their way.

And so in mountain solitudes—o’ertaken
As by some spell divine—
Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken
From out the gusty pine.

Lost is that camp and wasted all its fire;
And he who wrought that spell?—
Ah! towering pine and stately Kentish spire,
Ye have one tale to tell!

Lost is that camp, but let its fragrant story
Blend with the breath that thrills
With hop-vines’ incense all the pensive glory
That fills the Kentish hills.

And on that grave where English oak, and holly
And laurel wreaths entwine,
Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly—
This spray of Western pine!

—Copyright by _Houghton, Mifflin & Co._, Boston, Mass., and used by their kind permission.

WHEN THE OLD MAN DREAMED

BY A. J. WATERHOUSE

Sometimes ’long after supper my grandsire used to sit
Where the sunbeams through the window things of beauty liked to knit,
And he’d light his pipe and sit there in a sort of waking dream,
While to bathe his form in glory seemed the sunlight’s pretty scheme;
And then, whatever happened, he didn’t seem to see,
And a smile lit up his features that used to puzzle me,
And I would often wonder what pleasant inner theme
Had caused that strange and tranquil smile when grandpa used to dream.

Sometimes, though, when I’d listen I’d hear the good man sigh,
And once I’m almost sure I saw the moisture in his eye,
But whether he would smile or sigh, he didn’t seem to see
The things that happened ’round him, and that’s what puzzled me.
With the wreaths of smoke ascending as the twilight gathered there,
The shadows crept about him in the old arm chair,
And through the evening darkness I could see the fitful gleam
From the embers in his lighted pipe when grandpa used to dream.

I used to wonder in those days. I wonder now no more,
For now I understand the thing that puzzled me of yore,
And I know that through the twilight and the shadows gathering fast
Came unto my grandsire, dreaming, the visions of the past.
The boys who played with him were there within that little room;
His mother’s smile no doubt lit up the darkness and the gloom;
Again he ran and leaped and played beside an Eastern stream;
The ones he loved were there, I know, when grandpa used to dream.

And so he smiled—and then she stood, his dearest, at his side,
With the glow of youth upon her, red-lipped and laughing eyed,
And he told the old, sweet story, and she listened, nothing loth,
And dreams of hope were written in the happy hearts of both;
And then, by strange transition, he saw her pulseless lie—
And ’twas then I viewed the moisture in the corner of his eye.
Old friends were gathered round him, though they’d crossed death’s
mystic stream,
In that hour of smiles and sighing when my grandsire used to dream.

Oh, glad, sad gift of memory to call our dear ones back
And win them from their narrow homes to Time’s still beaten track!
Yours was the power my grandsire held while twilight turned to night;
Through you his loved returned again and blessed his longing sight;
And I no longer wonder, when his dreaming I recall,
At smiles and sighs succeeding while the shadows hid us all,
For, while my pencil’s trailing and I’ve half forgot my theme,
I, too, am seeing visions, as my grandsire used to dream.

WHEN LITTLE SISTER CAME[14]

BY JOAQUIN MILLER

We dwelt in the woods of the Tippe-canoe,
In a lone lost cabin, with never a view
Of the full day’s sun for a whole year through.
With strange half hints through the russet corn
We children were hurried one night. Next morn
There was frost on the trees, and a sprinkle of snow,
And tracks on the ground. Three boys below
The low eave listened. We burst through the door,
And a girl baby cried,—and then we were four.

We were not sturdy, and we were not wise
In the things of the world, and the ways men dare.
A pale-browed mother with a prophet’s eyes,
A father that dreamed and looked anywhere.

Three brothers—wild blossoms, tall-fashioned as men
And we mingled with none, but we lived as when
The pair first lived ere they knew the fall;
And, loving all things, we believed in all.

Ah! girding yourself and throwing your strength
On the front of the forest that stands in mail,
Sounds gallant, indeed, in a pioneer’s tale,
But, God in heaven! the weariness
Of a sweet soul banished to a life like this!

This reaching of weary-worn arms full length;
This stooping all day to the cold stubborn soil—
This holding the heart! it is more than toil!
What loneness of heart! what wishing to die
In that soul in the earth, that was born for the sky!

We parted wood-curtains, pushed westward and we,
Why, we wandered and wandered a half year through,
We tented with herds as the Arabs do,
And at last lay down by the sundown sea.
Then there in that sun did my soul take fire!
It burned in its fervor, thou Venice, for thee!
My glad heart glowed with the one desire
To stride to the front, to live, to be!
To strow great thoughts through the world as I went,
As God sows stars through the firmament.

_Venice, 1874._

—Copyright by _Harr Wagner Co._, San Francisco, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

WHEN THE OLD MAN SMOKES

BY PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR

In the forenoon’s restful quiet,
When the boys are off at school,
When the window lights are shaded
And the chimney corner cool,
Then the old man seeks his arm-chair,
Lights his pipe and settles back;
Falls a-dreaming as he draws it
Till the smoke wreaths gather black.

And the tear-drops come a-trickling
Down his cheeks, a silver flow—
Smoke or memories you wonder,
But you never ask him, no;
For there’s something almost sacred
To the other family folks
In those moods of silent dreaming
When the old man smokes.

Ah, perhaps he sits there dreaming
Of the love of other days
And how he used to lead her
Through the merry dances maze;
How he called her “little princess.”
And, to please her, used to twine
Tender wreaths to crown her tresses,
From the “matrimony vine.”

Then before his mental vision
Comes, perhaps, a sadder day,
When they left his little princess
Sleeping with her fellow clay.
How his young heart throbbed, and pained him!
Why the memory of it chokes!
Is it of these things he’s thinking
When the old man smokes?

But some brighter thoughts possess him,
For the tears are dried the while.
And the old worn face is wrinkled
In a reminiscent smile,
From the middle of the forehead
To the feebly trembling lip,
At some ancient prank remembered
Or some unheard of quip.

Then the lips relax their tension
And the pipe begins to slide,
Till in little clouds of ashes,
It falls gently at his side;
And his head bends lower and lower
Till his chin lies on his breast,
And he sits in peaceful slumber
Like a little child at rest.

Dear old man, there’s something sad’ning,
In these dreamy moods of yours,
Since the present proves so fleeting,
All the past for you endures;
Weeping at forgotten sorrows,
Smiling at forgotten jokes;
Life epitomized in minutes,
When the old man smokes.

—Copyright by _Dodd Mead & Co._, New York, and used by arrangement.

DRAMATIC SELECTIONS IN POETRY

EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE

BY W. H. CARRUTH

A fire mist and a planet,
A crystal and a cell,
A jelly-fish and a saurian,
And caves where the cavemen dwell;
Then a sense of law and beauty,
And a face turned from the clod;
Some call it Evolution,
And others call it God.

A haze on the far horizon,
The infinite tender sky;
The ripe, rich tints of the cornfields,
And the wild geese sailing high;
And all over upland and lowland
The charm of the golden-rod;
Some of us call it Autumn,
And others call it God.

Like the tide on the crescent sea beach,
When the moon is new and thin,
In our hearts high yearnings
Come welling and surging in.
Come from the mystic ocean,
Whose rim no foot has trod;
Some of us call it Longing,
And others call it God.

A picket frozen on duty,
A mother starved for her brood;
Socrates drinking the hemlock,
And Jesus on the road;
The millions who, humble and nameless,
The straight, hard pathway trod;
Some call it Consecration,
And others call it God.

—Copyright, and used by kind permission of the author.

THE MAN WITH THE HOE

BY EDWIN MARKHAM

(_Written after seeing Millet’s World-Famous Painting_)

God made man In His own image, in the image of God made He him.—Genesis.

Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground,
The emptiness of ages in his face,
And on his back the burden of the world.
Who made him dead to rapture and despair,
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes,
Stolid and stunned, a brother to the ox?
Who loosened and let down this brutal jaw?
Whose was the hand that slanted back this brow?
Whose breath blew out the light within this brain?
Is this the Thing the Lord God made and gave
To have dominion over sea and land;
To trace the stars and search the heavens for power;
To feel the passion of Eternity?
Is this the Dream He dreamed who shaped the suns
And pillared the blue firmament with light?
Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf
There is no shape more terrible than this—
More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed—
More filled with signs and portents for the soul—
More fraught with menace to the universe.
What gulfs between him and the seraphim!
Slave of the wheel of labor, what to him
Are Plato and the swing of Pleiades?
What the long reaches of the peaks of song,
The rift of dawn, the reddening of the rose?
Through this dread shape the suffering ages look;
Time’s tragedy is in the aching stoop;
Through this dread shape humanity betrayed,
Plundered, profaned and disinherited,
Cries protest to the Judges of the World,
A protest that is also prophecy.

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords and rulers in all lands,
How will the Future reckon with this Man?
How answer his brute questions in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings—
With those who shaped him to the thing he is—
When this dumb Terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries?

—Copyright by _Doubleday, Page & Co._, New York, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

TOMMY

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

I went to a public-’ouse to get a pint o’ beer,
The publican ’e up an’ sez, “We serve no redcoats here.”
The girls be’ind the bar they laughed an’ giggled fit to die,
I out into the street again, an’ to myself sez I:
O it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, go away”;
But it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play,
The band begins to play, my boys, the band begins to play,
O it’s “Thank you, Mister Atkins,” when the band begins to play.

I went into a theater as sober as could be,
They gave a drunk civilian room, but ’adn’t none for me;
They sent me to the gallery or round the music-’alls,
But when it comes to fightin’, Lord! they’ll shove me in the stalls!
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, wait outside”;
But it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide,
The troopship’s on the tide, my boys, the troopship’s on the tide,
O it’s “Special train for Atkins” when the trooper’s on the tide.

Yes, makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you while you sleep
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an’ they’re starvation cheap;
An’ hustlin’ drunken soldiers when they’re goin’ large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin’ in full kit.
Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ’ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll,
The drums begin to roll, my boys, the drums begin to roll,
O it’s “Thin red line of ’eroes” when the drums begin to roll.

We aren’t no thin red ’eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too,
But single men in barracks, most remarkably like you;
An’ if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints,
Why, single men in barracks don’t grow into plaster saints;
While it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, fall be’ind,”
But it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the
wind,
There’s trouble in the wind, my boys, there’s trouble in the wind,
O it’s “Please to walk in front, sir,” when there’s trouble in the
wind.

You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room shops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ’is country” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
An’ Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool—you bet that Tommy sees!

THE CAVALIER’S SONG

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

While the dawn on the mountain was misty and gray,
My true love has mounted his steed, and away
Over hill, over valley, o’er dale, and o’er down—
Heaven shield the brave Gallant that fights for the Crown!

He has doff’d the silk doublet the breastplate to bear,
He has placed the steel cap o’er his long-flowing hair,
From his belt to his stirrup his broadsword hangs down—
Heaven shield the brave Gallant that fights for the Crown!

For the rights of fair England that broadsword he draws;
Her King is his leader, her Church is his cause;
His watchword is honor, his pay is renown—
God strike with the Gallant that strikes for the Crown!

They may boast of their Fairfax, their Waller, and all
The roundheaded rebels of Westminster Hall;
But tell these bold traitors of London’s proud town,
That the spears of the North have encircled the Crown.

There’s Derby and Cavendish, dread of their foes;
There’s Erin’s high Ormond, and Scotland’s Montrose!
Would you match the base Skippon, and Massey, and Brown
With the Barons of England, that fight for the Crown?

Now joy to the crest of the brave Cavalier!
Be his banner unconquer’d, resistless his spear,
Till in peace and in triumph his toils he may drown,
In a pledge to fair England, her Church, and her Crown.

WAR

ANONYMOUS

Ivor never heard of Rudolph,
Rudolph never heard of Ivor,
Yet each of them flies at the other—and dies;
For some one, somewhere, has said “War!”

Twelve million men to be marshaled
And murdered and mangled and maimed;
Twelve million men, by the stroke of the pen,
To be slaughtered—and no one ashamed.

Mountains of wealth to be wasted,
Oceans of tears to be shed,
Valleys of light to be turned into night,
Rivers of blood to run red.

Thousands of wives to be widowed,
Millions of mothers to mourn,
Thousands in sorrow to wait the to-morrow,
Millions of hearts to be torn.

Thousands of fathers to perish,
Millions of children to moan,
Ages of time to prepare for a crime
That eons can never atone.

Thousands of homes to be shattered,
Millions of prayers to be vain.
Thousands of ways to the glory that pays
In poverty, panic and pain.

Twelve million men in God’s image
Sentenced to shoot and be shot,
Kill and be killed, as ruler has willed,
For what—For what—_For what_?

Ivor never heard of Rudolph,
And Rudolph knows naught of Ivor,
Yet each of them flies at the other—and dies,
For some one, somewhere, has said “War!”

LOVE OF COUNTRY

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT

Breathes there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell
High tho’ his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonor’d, and unsung.

SIR GALAHAD

BY ALFRED TENNYSON

My good blade carves the casques of men,
My tough lance thrusteth sure,
My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure.
The shattering trumpet shrilleth high,
The hard brands shiver on the steel,
The splinter’d spear-shafts crack and fly,
The horse and rider reel:
They reel, they roll in clanging lists,
And when the tide of combat stands,
Perfume and flowers fall in showers,
That lightly rain from ladies’ hands.

—From “Sir Galahad.”

OPPORTUNITY

BY EDWARD ROWLAND SILL

This I beheld, or dreamed it in a dream:—
There spread a cloud of dust along a plain;
And underneath the cloud, or in it, raged
A furious battle, and men yelled, and swords
Shocked upon swords and shields. A prince’s banner
Wavered, then staggered backward, hemmed by foes.

A craven hung along the battle’s edge,
And thought, “Had I a sword of keener steel—
That blue blade that the king’s son bears—but this
Blunt thing—!” he snapped and flung it from his hand,
And lowering crept away and left the field.

Then came the king’s son, wounded, sore bestead,
And weaponless, and saw the broken sword,
Hilt buried in the dry and trodden sand,
And ran and snatched it, and with battle-shout
Lifted afresh, he hewed his enemy down,
And saved a great cause that heroic day.

THE FIRING LINE

BY JOAQUIN MILLER

For glory? For good? For fortune or fame?
Why, he for the front when the battle is on!
Leave the rear to the dolt, the lazy, the lame,
Go forward as ever the valiant have gone;
Whether city or field, whether mountain or mine,
Go forward, right on to the Firing Line.

Whether newsboy or plowboy, cowboy or clerk,
Fight forward, be ready, be steady, be first;
Be fairest, be bravest, be best at your work;
Exalt and be glad; dare to hunger, to thirst,
As David, as Alfred—let dogs skulk and whine—
There is room but for men on the Firing Line.
Aye, the place to fight and the place to fall—
As fall we must, all in God’s good time—
It is where the manliest man is the wall,
Where boys are as men in their pride and prime,
Where glory gleams brightest, where brightest eyes shine,
Far out on the roaring red Firing Line.

HOW OSWALD DINED WITH GOD

BY EDWIN MARKHAM

Over Northumbria’s lone, gray lands,
Over the frozen marl,
Went flying the fogs from the fens and sands,
And the wind with a wolfish snarl.

Frosty and stiff by the York wall
Stood the rusty grass and the yarrow:
Gone wings and songs to the southland, all—
Robin and starling and sparrow.

Weary with weaving the battle-woof,
Came the king and his thanes to the Hall:
Feast-fires reddened the beams of the roof,
Torch flames waved from the wall.

Bright was the gold that the table bore,
Where platters and beakers shone:
Whining hounds on the sanded floor
Looked hungrily up for a bone.

Laughing, the king took his seat at the board,
With his gold-haired queen at his right:
War-men sitting around them roared
Like a crash of the shields in fight.

Loud rose laughter and lusty cheer,
And gleemen sang loud in their throats,
Telling of swords and the whistling spear,
Till their red beards shook with the notes.

Varlets were bringing the smoking boar,
Ladies were pouring the ale,
When the watchman called from the great hall door:
“O King, on the wind is a wail.

“Feebly the host of the hungry poor
Lift hands at the gate with a cry:
Grizzled and gaunt they come over the moor,
Blasted by earth and sky.”

“Ho!” cried the king to the thanes, “make speed—
Carry this food to the gates—
Off with the boar and the cask of mead—
Leave but a loaf on the plates.”

Still came a cry from the hollow night:
“King, this is one day’s feast;
But days are coming with famine-blight;
Wolf winds howl from the east!”

Hot from the king’s heart leaped a deed,
High as his iron crown:
(Noble souls have a deathless need
To stoop to the lowest down.)

“Thanes, I swear by Godde’s Bride
This is a cursèd thing—
Hunger for the folk outside,
Gold inside for the king!”

Whirling his war-ax over his head,
He cleft each plate into four.
“Gather them up, O thanes,” he said,
“For the workfolk at the door.

“Give them this for the morrow’s meat,
Then shall we feast in accord:
Our half of a loaf will then be sweet—
Sweet as the bread of the Lord!”

—From “The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems.” Copyright by _Doubleday, Page & Co._, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

HOW THE GREAT GUEST CAME

BY EDWIN MARKHAM

I

Before the Cathedral in grandeur rose,
At Ingelburg where the Danube goes;
Before its forest of silver spires
Went airily up to the clouds and fires;
Before the oak had ready a beam,
While yet the arch was stone and dream—
There where the altar was later laid,
Conrad the cobbler plied his trade.

II

Doubled all day on his busy bench,
Hard at his cobbling for master and hench,
He pounded away at a brisk rat-tat,
Shearing and shaping with pull and pat,
Hide well hammered and pegs sent home,
Till the shoe was fit for the Prince of Rome.
And he sang as the threads went to and fro:
“Whether ’tis hidden or whether it show,
Let the work be sound, for the Lord will know.”

III

Tall was the cobbler, and gray and thin,
And a full moon shone where the hair had been.
His eyes peered out, intent and afar,
As looking beyond the things that are.
He walked as one who is done with fear,
Knowing at last that God is near.
Only the half of him cobbled the shoes;
The rest was away for the heavenly news.
Indeed, so thin was the mystic screen
That parted the Unseen from the Seen,
You could not tell, from the cobbler’s theme
If his dream were truth or his truth were dream.

IV

It happened one day at the year’s white end,
Two neighbors called on their old-time friend;
And they found the shop, so meager and mean,
Made gay with a hundred boughs of green.
Conrad was stitching with face ashine,
But suddenly stooped as he twitched a twine:
“Old friends, good news! At dawn to-day,
As the cocks were scaring the night away,
The Lord appeared in a dream to me,
And said, ‘I am coming your Guest to be!’
So I’ve been busy with feet astir,
Strewing the floor with branches of fir.
The wall is washed and the shelf is shined,
And over the rafter the holly twined.
He comes to-day, and the table is spread,
With milk and honey and wheaten bread.”

V

His friends went home; and his face grew still
As he watched for the shadow across the sill.
He lived all the moments o’er and o’er,
When the Lord should enter the lowly door—
The knock, the call, the latch pulled up,
The lighted face, the offered cup.
He would wash the feet where the spikes had been;
He would kiss the hands where the nails went in;
And then at the last would sit with Him
And break the bread as the day grew dim.

VI

While the cobbler mused, there passed his pane
A beggar drenched by the driving rain.
He called him in from the stony street
And gave him shoes for his bruisèd feet.
The beggar went and there came a crone,
Her face with wrinkles of sorrow sown.
A bundle of fagots bowed her back,
And she was spent with the wrench and rack.
He gave her his loaf and steadied her load
As she took her way on the weary road.
Then to his door came a little child,
Lost and afraid in the world so wild,
In the big, dark world. Catching it up,
He gave it the milk in the waiting cup,
And led it home to its mother’s arms,
Out of the reach of the world’s alarms.

VII

The day went down in the crimson west
And with it the hope of the blessed Guest,
And Conrad sighed as the world turned gray:
“Why is it, Lord, that your feet delay?
Did You forget that this was the day?”
Then soft in the silence a Voice he heard:
“Lift up your heart, for I kept my word.
Three times I came to your friendly door;
Three times my shadow was on your floor.
I was the beggar with bruisèd feet;
I was the woman you gave to eat;
I was the child on the homeless street!”

—From “The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems.” Copyright by _Doubleday, Page & Co._, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

PICKETT’S CHARGE

BY FRED EMERSON BROOKS

When Pickett charged at Gettysburg,
For three long days, with carnage fraught,
Two hundred thousand men had fought;
And courage could not gain the field,
Where stubborn valor would not yield.
With Meade on Cemetery Hill,
And mighty Lee thundering still
Upon the ridge a mile away;
Four hundred guns in counterplay
Their deadly thunderbolts had hurled—
The cannon duel of the world!
When Pickett charged at Gettysburg.

When Pickett charged at Gettysburg,
Dread war had never known such need
Of some o’ermastering, valiant deed;
And never yet had cause so large
Hung on the fate of one brief charge.
To break the center, but a chance;
With Pickett waiting to advance;
It seemed a crime to bid him go,
And Longstreet said not “Yes” nor “No,”
But silently he bowed his head.
“I shall go forward!” Pickett said.
Then Pickett charged at Gettysburg.

Then Pickett charged at Gettysburg;
Down from the little wooded slope,
A-step with doubt, a-step with hope,
And nothing but the tapping drum
To time their tread, still on they come.
Four hundred cannon hush their thunder,
While cannoneers gaze on in wonder!
Two armies watch, with stifled breath,
Full eighteen thousand march to death,
At elbow-touch, with banners furled,
And courage to defy the world,
In Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.

’Tis Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg:
None but tried veterans can know
How fearful ’tis to charge the foe;
But these are soldiers will not quail,
Though Death and Hell stand in their trail!
Flower of the South and Longstreet’s pride,
There’s valor in their very stride!
Virginian blood runs in their veins,
And each his ardor scarce restrains;
Proud of the part they’re chosen for:
The mighty cyclone of the war,
In Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.

’Tis Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg:
How mortals their opinions prize
When armies march to sacrifice,
And souls by thousands in the fight
On Battle’s smoky wing take flight.
Firm-paced they come, in solid form
The dreadful calm before the storm.
Those silent batteries seem to say:
“We’re waiting for you, men in gray!”
Each anxious gunner knows full well
Why every shot of his must tell
On Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.

’Tis Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg:
What grander tableau can there be
Than rhythmic swing of infantry
At shouldered arms, with flashing steel?
As Pickett swings to left, half-wheel,
Those monsters instantly outpour
Their flame and smoke of death! and roar
Their fury on the silent air—
Starting a scene of wild despair:
Lee’s batteries roaring: “Room! Make room!!”
With Meade’s replying: “Doom! ’Tis doom
To Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg!”

’Tis Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg:
Now Hancock’s riflemen begin
To pour their deadly missiles in.
Can standing grain defy the hail?
Will Pickett stop? Will Pickett fail?
His left is all uncovered through
That fateful halt of Pettigrew!
And Wilcox from the right is cleft
By Pickett’s half-wheel to the left!
Brave Stannard rushes ’tween the walls,
No more disastrous thing befalls
Brave Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.

’Tis Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg:
How terrible it is to see
Great armies making history:
Long lines of muskets belching flame!
No need of gunners taking aim
When from that thunder-cloud of smoke
The lightning kills at every stroke!
If there’s a place resembling hell,
’Tis where, ’mid shot and bursting shell,
Stalks Carnage, arm in arm with Death,
A furnace blast in every breath,
On Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg.

’Tis Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg:
Brave leaders fall on every hand!
Unheard, unheeded all command!
Battered in front and torn in flank;
A frenzied mob in broken rank!
They come like demons with a yell,
And fight like demons all pell-mell!
The wounded stop not till they fall;
The living never stop at all—
Their blood-bespattered faces say:
“’Tis death alone stops men in gray,
With Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg!”

Stopped Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg
Where his last officer fell dead,
The dauntless, peerless, Armistead!
Where ebbed the tide and left the slain
Like wreckage from the hurricane—
That awful spot which soldiers call
“The bloody angle of the wall,”
There Pickett stopped, turned back again
Alone, with just a thousand men!
And not another shot was fired—
So much is bravery admired!
Pickett had charged at Gettysburg.

Brave Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg!
The charge of England’s Light Brigade
Was nothing to what Pickett made
To capture Cemetery Hill—
To-day a cemetery still,
With flowers in the rifle-pit,
But no one cares to capture it.
The field belongs to those who fell;
They hold it without shot or shell!
While cattle yonder in the vale
Are grazing on the very trail
Where Pickett charged at Gettysburg.

Where Pickett charged at Gettysburg,
In after-years survivors came
To tramp once more that field of fame;
And Mrs. Pickett led the Gray,
Just where her husband did that day.
The Blue were waiting at the wall,
The Gray leaped over, heart and all!
Where man had failed with sword and gun,
A woman’s tender smile had won:
The Gray had captured now the Blue,
What mortal valor could not do
When Pickett charged at Gettysburg.

—Copyright by _Forbes & Co._, Chicago, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

“INASMUCH....”

BY EDWIN MARKHAM

Wild tempest swirled on Moscow’s castled height;
Wild sleet shot slanting down the wind of night;
Quick snarling mouths from out of the darkness sprang
To strike you in the face with tooth and fang.
Javelins of ice hung on the roofs of all;
The very stones were aching in the wall,
Where Ivan stood a watchman on his hour,
Guarding the Kremlin by the northern tower,
When, lo! a half-bare beggar tottered past,
Shrunk up and stiffened in the bitter blast.
A heap of misery he drifted by,
And from the heap came out a broken cry.

At this the watchman straightened with a start;
A tender grief was tugging at his heart,
The thought of his dead father, bent and old
And lying lonesome in the ground so cold.
Then cried the watchman starting from his post:
“Little father, this is yours; you need it most!”
And tearing off his hairy coat, he ran
And wrapt it warm around the beggar man.

That night the piling snows began to fall,
And the good watchman died beside the wall.
But waking in the Better Land that lies
Beyond the reaches of these cooping skies,
Behold, the Lord came out to greet him home,
Wearing the hairy heavy coat he gave
By Moscow’s tower before he felt the grave!

And Ivan, by the old Earth-memory stirred,
Cried softly with a wonder in his word:
“And where, dear Lord, found you this coat of mine,
A thing unfit for glory such as Thine?”
Then the Lord answered with a look of light:
“This coat, My son, you gave to Me last night.”

—Copyright by _Doubleday, Page & Co._, New York, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

THE MAN UNDER THE STONE

BY EDWIN MARKHAM

When I see a workingman with mouths to feed,
Up, day after day, in the dark before the dawn,
And coming home, night after night, through the dusk,
Swinging forward like some fierce silent animal,
I see a man doomed to roll a huge stone up an endless steep.
He strains it onward inch by stubborn inch,
Crouched always in the shadow of the rock....
See where he crouches, twisted, cramped, misshapen:
He lifts for their life;
The veins knot and darken—
Blood surges into his face....
Now he loses—now he wins—
Now he loses—loses—(God of my soul!)
He digs his feet into some earth—
There’s a moment of terrified effort....
Will the huge stone break his hold,
And crush him as it plunges to the gulf?
The silent struggle goes on and on,
Like two contending in a dream.

—Copyright by _Doubleday, Page & Co._, New York, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

TO GERMANY

BY GEORGE STERLING

I

Beat back thy forfeit plow-shares into swords:
It is not yet, the far, seraphic dream
Of peace made beautiful and love supreme.
Now let the strong, unweariable chords
Of battle shake to thunder, and the hordes
Advance, where now the famished vultures scream.
The standards gather and the trumpets gleam;
Down the long hill-side stare the mounted lords.

Now far beyond the tumult and the hate,
The white-clad nurses and the surgeons wait
The backward currents of tormented life,
When on the waiting silences shall come
The screams of men, and, ere those lips are dumb,
The searching probe, the ligature and knife.

II

Was it for such, the brutehood and the pain,
Civilization gave her holy fire
Unto thy wardship, and the snowy spire
Of her august and most exalted fane?
Are these the harvests of her ancient rain
Men reap at evening in the scarlet mire,
Or where the mountain smokes, a dreadful pyre,
Or where the warship drags a bloody stain?

Are these thy votive lilies and their dews,
That now the outraged stars look down to see?
Behold them, where the cold prophetic damps
Congeal on youthful brows so soon to lose
Their dream of sacrifice to thee—to thee,
Harlot to Murder in a thousand camps!

III

Was it for this that loving men and true
Have labored in the darkness and the light
To rear the solemn temple of the Right,
On Reason’s deep foundations, bared anew
Long after the Cæsarian eagles flew
And Rome’s last thunder died upon the Night?
Cuirassed, the cannon menace from the height;
Armored, the new-born eagles take the blue.

Wait not thy lords the avenging, certain knell—
One with the captains and abhorrent fames
The echoes of whose conquests died in Hell?—
They that have loosened the ensanguined flood,
And whose malign and execrable names
The Seraph of the Record writes in blood.

IV

From gravid trench and sullen parapet,
Profane the wounded lands with mine or shell!
Turn thou upon the world thy cannons’ Hell,
Till many million women’s eyes are wet!
Ravage and slay! Pile up the eternal debt!
But when the fanes of France and Belgium fell
Another ruin was on earth as well,
And ashes that the race shall not forget.

Not by the devastation of the guns,
Nor tempest-shock, nor steel’s subverting edge,
Nor yet the slow erasure of the suns
Thy downfall came, betrayer of thy trust!
But at the dissolution of a pledge
The temple of thine honor sank to dust.

V

Make not thy prayer to Heaven, lest perchance,
O troubler of the world, the heavens hear!
But trust in Uhlan and in cannoneer,
And, ere the Russian hough thee, set thy lance
Against the dear and blameless breast of France!
Put on thy mail tremendous and austere,
And let the squadrons of thy wrath appear,
And bid the standards and the guns advance!

Those as an evil mist shall pass away,
As once the Assyrian before the Lord:
Thou standest between mortals and the day,
Ere God, grown weary of thine armored reign,
Lift from the world the shadow of thy sword
And bid the stars of morning sing again.

—Copyright by _A. M. Robertson_, publisher, San Francisco, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

TO THE WAR-LORDS

BY GEORGE STERLING

I

Be yours the doom Isaiah’s voice foretold,
Lifted on Babylon, O ye whose hands
Cast the sword’s shadow upon weaker lands,
And for whose pride a million hearths grow cold!
Ye reap but with the cannon, and do hold
Your plowing to the murder-god’s commands;
And at your altars Desolation stands,
And in your hearts is conquest, as of old.

The legions perish and the warships drown;
The fish and vulture batten on the slain;
And it is ye whose word hath shaken down
The dykes that hold the chartless sea of pain.
Your prayers deceive not men, nor shall a crown
Hide on the brow the murder-mark of Cain.

II

Now glut yourselves with conflict, nor refrain,
But let your famished provinces be fed
From bursting granaries of steel and lead!
Decree the sowing of that deadly grain
Where the great war-horse, maddened with his pain,
Stamps on the mangled living and the dead,
And from the entreated heavens overhead
Falls from a brother’s hand a fiery rain.

Lift not your voices to the gentle Christ:
Your god is of the shambles! Let the moan
Of nations be your psalter, and their youth
To Moloch and to Bel be sacrificed!
A world to which ye proffered lies alone
Learns now from Death the horror of your truth.

III

How have you fed your people upon lies,
And cried “Peace! peace!” and knew it would not be!
For now the iron dragons take the sea,
And in the new-found fortress of the skies,
Alert and fierce a deadly eagle flies.
Ten thousand cannon echo your decree,
To whose profound refrain ye bend the knee.
And lift into the Lord of Love your eyes.

This is Hell’s work: why raise your hands to Him,
And those hands mailed, and holding up the sword?
There stands another altar, stained with red,
At whose basalt the infernal seraphim
Uplift to Satan, your conspirant lord,
The blood of nations, at your mandate shed.

—Copyright by _A. M. Robertson_, publisher, San Francisco, and used by kind permission of author and publisher.

PAULINE PAVLOVNA

BY T. B. ALDRICH

(_Scene: Petrograd. Period: The present time. A ballroom in the winter palace of the prince. The ladies in character costumes and masks. The gentlemen in official dress and unmasked, with the exception of six tall figures in scarlet kaftans, who are treated with marked distinction as they move here and there among the promenaders._

_Quadrille music throughout the dialogue. Count Sergius Pavlovich Panshine, who has just arrived, is standing anxiously in the doorway of an antechamber with his eyes fixed upon a lady in the costume of a maid of honor in the time of Catherine II. The lady presently disengages herself from the crowd, and passes near Count Panshine, who impulsively takes her by the hand and leads her across the threshold of the inner apartment, which is unoccupied._)

_He._ Pauline!

_She._ You knew me?

_He._ How could I have failed? A mask may hide your features, not your soul. There’s an air about you like the air that folds a star. A blind man knows the night, and feels the constellations. No coarse sense of eye or ear had made you plain to me. Through these I had not found you; for your eyes, as blue as violets of our Novgorod, look black behind your mask there, and your voice—I had not known that either. My heart said, “Pauline Pavlovna.”

_She._ Ah, your heart said that? You trust your heart then! ’Tis a serious risk! How is it you and others wear no mask?

_He._ The Emperor’s orders.

_She._ Is the Emperor here? I have not seen him.

_He._ He is one of the six in scarlet kaftans and all masked alike.
Watch—you will note how every one bows down
Before those figures; thinking each by chance
May be the Tsar; yet none know which is he.
Even his counterparts are left in doubt.
Unhappy Russia! No serf ever wore such chains
As gall our Emperor these sad days.
He dare trust no man.

_She._ All men are so false.

_He._ Spare one, Pauline Pavlovna.

_She._ No! all, all!
I think there is no truth left in the world,
In man or woman.
Once were noble souls.—
Count Sergius, is Nastasia here to-night?

_He._ Ah! then you know! I thought to tell you first.
Not here, beneath these hundred curious eyes,
In all this glare of light; but in some place
Where I could throw me at your feet and weep.
In what shape came the story to your ears?
Decked in the teller’s colors, I’ll be sworn;
The truth, but in the livery of a lie,
And so must wrong me. Only this is true:—
The Tsar, because I risked my wretched life
To shield a life as wretched as my own,
Bestows upon me, as supreme reward—
O irony!—the hand of this poor girl.
Says, “Here I have the pearl of pearls for you,
Such as was never plucked from out the deep
By Indian diver, for a Sultan’s crown.
Your joy’s decreed,” and stabs me with a smile.

_She._ And she—she loves you.

_He._ I know not, indeed. Likes me perhaps.
What matters it?—her love?
Sidor Yurievich, the guardian, consents, and she consents.
No love in it at all, a mere caprice,
A young girl’s spring-tide dream.
Sick of her ear-rings, weary of her mare,
She’ll have a lover—something ready made,
Or improvised between two cups of tea—
A lover by imperial ukase!
Fate said the word—I chanced to be the man!
If that grenade the crazy student threw
Had not spared me, as well as spared the Tsar,
All this would not have happened. I’d have been a hero,
But quite safe from her romance.
She takes me for a hero—think of that!
Now by our holy Lady of Kazan,
When I have finished pitying myself, I’ll pity her.

_She._ Oh, no;—begin with her; she needs it most.

_He._ At her door lies the blame, whatever falls.
She, with a single word, with half a tear,
Had stopt it at the first,
This cruel juggling with poor human hearts.

_She._ The Tsar commanded it—you said the Tsar.

_He._ The Tsar does what she wills—God fathoms why.
Were she his mistress, now! but there’s no snow
Whiter within the bosom of a cloud,
No colder either. She is very haughty,
For all her fragile air of gentleness;
With something vital in her, like those flowers
That on our desolate steppes outlast the year.
Resembles you in some things. It was that
First made us friends. I do her justice, see!
For we were friends in that smooth surface way
We Russians have imported out of France.
Alas! from what a blue and tranquil heaven
This bolt fell on me! After these two years,
My suit with Ossip Leminoff at end,
The old wrong righted, the estates restored,
And my promotion, with the ink not dry!
For those fairies which neglected me at birth
Seemed now to lavish all good gifts on me—
Gold roubles, office, sudden dearest friends.
The whole world smiled; then, as I stooped to taste
The sweetest cup, freak dashed it from my lips.
This very night—just think, this very night—
I planned to come and beg of you the alms
I dared not ask for in my poverty.
I thought me poor then. How stript am I now!
There’s not a ragged mendicant one meets
Along the Nevski Prospekt but has leave to tell his love,
And I have not that right!
Pauline Pavlovna, why do you stand there
Stark as a statue, with no word to say?

_She._ Because this thing has frozen up my heart.
I think that there is something killed in me,
A dream that would have mocked all other bliss.
What shall I say? What would you have me say?

_He._ If it be possible, the word of words!

_She_ (_very slowly_). Well, then—I love you. I may tell you so
This once, ... and then forever hold my peace.
We cannot stay here longer unobserved.
No—do not touch me! but stand further off, and
Seem to laugh, as if we jested—eyes,
Eyes, everywhere! Now turn your face away....
I love you.

_He._ With such music in my ears I would death found me.
It were sweet to die listening! you love me—prove it.

_She._ Prove it—how? I prove it saying it. How else?

_He._ Pauline, I have three things to choose from; you shall choose.
This marriage, or Siberia, or France.
The first means hell; the second, purgatory;
The third—with you—were nothing less than heaven!

_She_ (_starting_). How dared you even dream it!

_He._ I was mad. This business has touched me in the brain.
Have patience! the calamity’s so new.
(_Pauses._) There is a fourth way, but the gate is shut
To brave men who hold life a thing of God.

_She._ Yourself spake there; the rest was not of you.

_He._ Oh, lift me to your level! So I’m safe.
What’s to be done?

_She._ There must be some path out. Perhaps the Emperor—

_He._ Not a ray of hope! His mind is set on this with that insistence
Which seems to seize on all match-making folk—
The fancy bites them, and they straight go mad.