Chapter II: The Epigrapher

His head was like his lore--antique,
His face was thin and sallow-sick,
With god-like accent he could speak
Of Egypt's reeds or Babylon's brick
Or sheep-skin codes in Arabic.

To justify the ways divine,
He had travelled Southern Asia through--
Gezir down in Palestine,
Lagash, Ur and Eridu,
The banks of Nile and Tigris too.

And every occult Hebrew tale
He could expound with learned ease,
From Aaron's rod to Jonah's whale.
He had held the skull of Rameses--
The one who died from boils and fleas.

Could tell how--saving Israel's peace--
The mighty Gabriel of the Lord
Put sand within the axle-grease
Of Pharaoh's chariots; and his horde
O'erwhelmed with water, fire and sword.

And he had tried Behistun Rock,
That Persian peak, and nearly clomb it;
His head had suffered from the shock
Of somersaulting from its summit--
Nor had he quite recovered from it.

From that time onward to the end,
His mind had had a touch of gloom;
His hours with jars and coins he'd spend,
And ashes looted from a tomb,--
Within his spare and narrow room.

His day's work done, with the last rune
Of a Hammurabi fragment read,
He took some water spiced with prune
And soda, which imbibed, he said
A Syrian prayer, and went to bed.

* * * * * * * *

And thus he trod life's narrow way,--
His soul as peaceful as a river--
His understanding heart all day
Kept faithful to a stagnant liver.

L'ENVOI.

When at last his stomach went by default,
His graduate students bore him afar
To the East where the Dead Sea waters are,
And pickled his bones in Eternal Salt.

Ode to December, 1917

Was ever night so wild as this--this bleak December night!
Veiled in the sombre shroud that sepulchred the day;
Why thus bereft of heaven's beams, of moon and starry light,
Are all its ancient charms in sorrow laid away?

The year dies out with drifted leaves, with winds
and floods of rain,
Companions of the tempest with its brood of fears;
And voices far above us echo back the world's great pain,
In tongueless language inarticulate through tears.

Why passed with such inevitable speed
The eager splendor of the awakening spring?
So little did it seem to know or heed
Our outward cries, our hidden murmuring;
It shone upon us shyly for some reason,
Then flew into the summer's briefer season,
And found, amidst its roses fully blown,
A transient radiance fleeter than its own.

How sweet the flowers grew in the woods last May!
The trillium, splashed by sunlight, jauntily
Awoke to match the whiteness of its ray
With white of blood-root and anemone.
Within the stray leaves on the humid ground,
Beside the fallen trunks of trees, were found
Numerous hepaticas whose lilac hue
Seemed woven of heaven's purple and its blue,
And, near at hand, a running streamlet told
Of treasure hidden in the marigold.

A little while they stayed; how short the space!
We watched them as the hours went by,
We looked again, and saw them die--
Thus did they pass away; but in their place,
In meadow and in vale sprang up
The daisy and the buttercup;
Then on the creeping slopes of sunny hills,
By winding dales and tortuous rills,
Blue vervain rose to greet the sun,
Ere half the summer's race was run;
And in the fields and on the plains.
By forest paths, by country lanes,
By wayside and in garden plot,
The bluebell and forget-me-not;
And fair the bottle-gentian grew
Beside the wintergreen and rue.

And everywhere around us from the throats
Of joyous birds pealed forth ecstatic praise--
Glad hymns in which were heard no notes
Of dim unrest and troubled lays.
The heart had never taught them sorrows,
Regretful yesterdays nor morrows;
Each morning brought them its full boon of light,
And in return they gave their gift of song--
Free utterance that had no tale of wrong
Within the horizon of their life to right;
And when the evening drew to twilight close,
Fell the light mantle of their calm repose.

Fled are they all;
The flowers and the birds,
In vain we call,
With cries too dumb for words.
The fragrance and the music gone,
The fire of sunset, flush of dawn,
The waterlily in the lake,
The robin's love-song in the brake;
All these are fled and gone,
And with us now the night,
The wild December night.

Far, far away upon the seas
The billows tell their agonies;
The ocean in its frenzied roar
Lashes the ramparts of the shore;
The tempest with its shattering thunder
Drives the iron bulwarks under;
The furies, in their path advancing,
Are seen around the breakers dancing;
The sea-mews, blinded by the light
Of mast-head signals, flaring bright,
Are rent by blow of spar and sail
Within the clutches of the gale,
And sailors, drenched by salt and foam,
Yearn for the fireside of their home.

And thus upon the land
Earth's ravage is laid bare;
Slapped by the storm's fierce hand,
The wildcat and the bear
Lie huddled in the sand
That marks their common lair;
The trees in angry lurch
That grew beside each other--
The hemlock and the birch--
Now strive with one another,
In strangely human mood,
Born of unnatural feud.

Around the hoary mountain sides
The storm hurls its impetuous shock,
Is answered by the torrent's tides,
The iron echoes of the rock.
Gone are the woodland notes of spring,
The airs of summer's short-lived breath,
The autumn, too, has taken wing,
The year has rushed into its death.
Gone, like the memory of a dream,
A rainbow hovering o'er a stream;
And we, of nature's joys bereft,
Are with her deepening shadows left,
With grey upon the sea,
And driftwood on the reef,
With winter in the tree,
And death within the leaf.

Far, far away, across the distant deep,
Heaven's lightnings flash from out a darker scroll;
Midnight and darkness in wild chaos keep
A dawnless vigil, as slow thunders roll
Over a world upon whose face the storm
Breaks, and within the terrors of eclipse,
Fall the swift strokes of Death, clothed in the form
Of some dread angel of Apocalypse.
There rides a tempest heedless of the check
Of law, and with no mandate but its will,
Whose function lies alone in power to wreck,
That never hears the fiat, "Peace, be still!"
There, through deep, winding valleys that had known
The quiet haunts of peasants; through the green,
Sweet-tufted verdure that the spring had sown;
Through glens where only roe and fawn were seen
In peace; through plains where once the sunset's brush
Placed its soft crimson on the silent streams;
There, through that land that often loved the hush
Of evening and the tenderness of dreams,
Rolls now the bugle with its alien blast,
The cry of battle on the midnight air,
The fiery summons to earth's legions massed
Mid bayonets gleaming in the rocket's glare;
And streams that to the North Sea once had brought
The dawn's white silver and the sunset's gold,
Now pour such tides as Nature never wrought.
The ruddier treasures of a wealth untold.

O Nature! Thou that lovest life
In herb and brute and feathered kind,
Who leadest from the night's long strife
The morn with rays of promise lined;
Who bringest forth the vital glow
To bathe the trees in glorious light,
And bid the woodland flowers grow,
Clothed spotless in their raiment bright;
Who givest food to hart and hare
Upon the snowy mountain's crest,
And to the ravens everywhere,
The storm-proof covert of their nest;--
Hast thou within thy bounteous plan,
So rich and measureless and mild,
No boon wherewith to succour man,
Thy youngest, feeblest, blindest child?
Prostrate upon a formless field,
Bedewed with unavailing tears,
While the slow hours, faltering, yield
This nameless triad of the years;
What balm shall touch his stricken eyes?
What hand shall drive away his dead?
What tones shall quieten his cries?
What voice shall resurrect his dead?

O Winds; that sweep the surges from the bosom of the sea,
Strong with a strength unmeasured, as the chainless
lightnings--free;
Ye nether rivals of the thunders, as their voice your own,
Yet theirs excelling in your major harmonies of tone;
Ye mighty arbiters of light and shade, of hope and gloom,
Who fashion for the morn its cradle, for the eve its tomb,
Who garrison the towers of God with clouds in dark array,
Marshalling their watch and slumber till their hidden fires play;
All day ye played upon the forest pines a mournful strain,
As if the slowly ebbing year were laboring in its pain;
Upon the land ye tossed the agéd leaves in aimless quest,
And on the deep ye filled the sailor's heart with wild unrest.

O Winds! that stir the ashes of our altars while our cries
From hearthstone and from chancel in our agony arise,
That drive us in our frantic hours to prayer upon our knees,
While those we love drift shelterless upon the homeless seas;
O lift us once again to God! this time on kindlier wings--
So weary are we of the strife and fear the tempest brings;
Give us the vision of His gardens under skies of blue,
We have lived so long in shadow of the cypress and the yew;
Sing through the swell that crowns the ocean
when its rage has passed,
Resign the terrors of the gale, the furies of the blast;
Then through the vibrant music of the lyre of sea and land
Which our storm-sated world first heard when
from the Creator's hand
It rose at the Great Dawn, breathe soon that
sweet, untroubled peace,
That vista of life's cravings reared on hopes that never cease;
Blow out upon the raven plumes of this December night,
The world's unresting miseries, her shadow and her blight;
The story of her passions, and her dark, unfathomed sin,
The outward blow that slaughters, and the guilt
that slays within;
And deep from out the storm's last throes, peal
forth in life re-born,
The blazon of the future with the heralds of the morn;
The anthem of a world re-strung to human love and grace,
The full-toned orchestration of the heart-throbs of the race.

Newfoundland

Here the tides flow,
And here they ebb;
Not with that dull, unsinewed tread of waters
Held under bonds to move
Around unpeopled shores--
Moon-driven through a timeless circuit
Of invasion and retreat;
But with a lusty stroke of life
Pounding at stubborn gates,
That they might run
Within the sluices of men's hearts,
Leap under throb of pulse and nerve,
And teach the sea's strong voice
To learn the harmonies of new floods,
The peal of cataract,
And the soft wash of currents
Against resilient banks,
Or the broken rhythms from old chords
Along dark passages
That once were pathways of authentic fires
And swept by the wings of dream.

_Red is the sea-kelp on the beach,
Red as the heart's blood,
Nor is there power in tide or sun
To bleach its stain.
It lies there piled thick
Above the gulch-line._

_It is rooted in the joints of rocks,
It is tangled around a spar,
It covers a broken rudder,
It is red as the heart's blood,
And salt as tears._

Here the winds blow,
And here they die,
Not with that wild, exotic rage
That vainly sweeps untrodden shores,
But with familiar breath
Holding a partnership with life,
Resonant with the hopes of spring,
Pungent with the airs of harvest.
They call with the silver fifes of the sea,
They breathe with the lungs of men,
They are one with the tides of the sea,
They are one with the tides of the heart,
They blow with the rising octaves of dawn.
They die with the largo of dusk,
Their hands are full to the overflow,
In their right is the bread of life,
In their left are the waters of death.

_Scattered on boom
And rudder and weed
Are tangles of shells;
Some with backs of crusted bronze,
And faces of porcelain blue,
Some crushed by the beach stones
To chips of jade;
And some are spiral-cleft
Spreading their tracery on the sand
In the rich veining of an agate's heart;
And others remain unscarred,
To babble of the passing of the winds._

Here the crags
Meet with winds and tides--
Not with that blind interchange
Of blow for blow
That spills the thunder of insentient seas;
But with the mind that reads assault
In crouch and leap and the quick stealth,
Stiffening the muscles of the waves.
Here they flank the harbors,
Keeping watch
On thresholds, altars and the fires of home,
Or, like mastiffs,
Over-zealous,
Guard too well.

_Tide and wind and crag,
Sea-weed and sea-shell
And broken rudder--
And the story is told
Of human veins and pulses,
Of eternal pathways of fire,
Of dreams that survive the night,
Of doors held ajar in storms._

Flashlights and Echoes

From the Years of 1914 and 1915