Chapter VII

But I am digressing--
I was going to say,
That just as Kleinfelter
Got in good way,
The Baron, hearing Kleinfelter’s song,
Thought he was piling it on rather strong,
So taking along a burly old vassal,
He quickly sneaked up to the top of his castle
He lay down on his stomach
And stuck his head over,
And there was Miss Hinda
And below was her lover.
He gritted his teeth and he held his breath,
And he inly vowed Kleinfelter’s death.
So jumping up and wheeling about,
He picked up a barrel of sour kraut,
And frantic with rage he hurled it over,
Plump on the head of the wretched lover.
Of course it ended Kleinfelter’s strains,
For it mashed his skull and scattered his brains,
And knocked the musician _out of time_
Into Eternity--horrible crime!
So ended Kleinfelter, and so ends my rhyme.

DR. JOHN A. BROADDUS.

Modest, firm, bold, and sage as Socrates,
Two Johns in one, the Harbinger and Seer,
He stood a High Priest by the holy Ark,
Aspiring as the upward-soaring eagle
Quitting the sluggish vapors of the dark,
To drink in heavenward flight the morning breeze,
Clear dews, and golden sunshine of the dawn,
And moist from fountains fresh and salted seas.

He preached with reason lucid as the light
Which flashed o’er chaos at Creation’s birth,
When Eden threw its splendor o’er the night
And the Divine Word said, “Let there be light!”
Chasing foul phantoms from the infant earth;
Strange was the power of that pathetic voice
Whose sympathy made aching hearts rejoice.
The mellow winding of the shepherd’s pipe
Seemed from the fruitful Mount of Olives borne
To ears of gentle women and strong men.

It shamed and hushed the scoffers’ ribald scorn,
It charmed the city’s lucre-loving throng,
And melted all with Calvary’s lofty song.
No painted web of rhetoric he wove;
His speech was all sincerity and love,
But sharp and pointed as a surgeon’s lance.
Tender his touch, and searching his quick glance;
A living faith to every work he brought,
And lived the simple doctrines that he taught.
The Man of Sorrows ever was his theme,
Who taught by Galilee and Jordan’s stream;
So in the Temple Jewish rabbis heard
The wondrous Christ-Child speak his Father’s word.

The admiring world oft tempted him in vain,
And offered greater guerdon than his chair,
In posts of honor and in golden gain,
To him gay bubbles floating on the air.
Far up the Mount he heard the warning cry--
“Excelsior!” the watchword of the sky,
The solemn mandate of Eternity.

After long life of toil he sighed for rest,
Like homing-dove returning to her nest
Crooning her “La Paloma” in her flight--
Duty his pole-star guiding him aright;
He leaned his faint head on his Master’s breast,
And his great soul was happy with the Blessed.

TO LEONORA.

“One fatal remembrance--one sorrow that throws
Its bleak shade alike o’er our joys and our woes.”

--_Moore._

The troubled spell is o’er,
The wild delirious dream of bliss is broke;
A spirit whispered to me as I woke,
“No more--oh sleep no more,
For love has died upon a dart whose sting
Sped on a feather plucked from his own wing.”

Oh, bright divinity,
Bold and unfettered as the eagle’s wing,
Oh soul of noblest impulses, the spring,
And chainless as the sea,
Why didst thou lend my sky thy glorious light
Only to quench it in a blacker night!

Oh, I have loved to bow
Before thy shrine and burn rich incense there,
Immaculate spirit of the upper air,
Nor rose sincerer vow
Nor sweeter wreaths in Dian’s temples hung,
When on the Paphian myrtles Sappho sung.

Thine is a magic power,
A power the sternest hearts to tame and quell
Thine own to mortal arts invincible,
And glorious is thy dower--
Love’s fire, ambition’s struggle, pity’s tear,
Religion’s hope, and all--save woman’s fear.

Thine is that fearful spell,
In which the Orient poppy gardens steep
The passer’s senses in luxurious sleep,
While dreaming all is well,
Nor knows he that the flower’s delicious breath
Is the lethargic atmosphere of death.

Too late--alas! too late!
My heart once fresh with morning dews of youth,
Dreaming that all the beautiful was truth,
Is seared and desolate;
Love’s star is shrouded in its last eclipse
And its fair fruit is ashes on my lips.

With bitter grief we parted,
On thy dear lips I breathed a last adieu
To peace, to hope, to sweet repose, and you,
And left thee--broken-hearted:
And every star in heaven was wrapped in gloom,
And earth itself became a living tomb.

And like a mourner’s wail
Now piercing shrill, now smothered and half hushed,
Convulsive tears and sobs all madly gushed--
And gushed without avail;
For our fond bosoms bore one stricken heart
Forever wounded by a fatal dart.

The night wind’s plaintive moan
Sighed through the pendant branches of the trees,
Whose leaf-harp’s sweet vibrations filled the breeze,
And the far distant tone
Of the blue waters of La Belle Riviere
Stole in Æolian murmurs on my ear.

The bosom’s quivering throes,
The shuddering frame, the anguish of the heart
Writhing with Love’s immedicable dart;
The unutterable woes
Of those whom destiny has doomed to feel
The agony they never can reveal--

All these were ours--and when
The dying night-winds ceased a while to wake
Leaf in the wood or ripple on the lake
A murmur rose of pain,
Doleful and bitter as the passing cry
Of a lost spirit in its agony.

Mine is the agony
To perish where Elysian apples grow,
To parch with thirst where Eden’s waters flow
To pine--to droop--to die,
Without one hope to ease my bosom’s pain,
To know _I love, am loved, and all in vain_!

One more fond parting word,
While all my frame with agony is shaken,
And my torn heart of every hope forsaken,
To its far depths is stirred.
A word will haunt me like a funeral knell,
God bless thee, dear Leonora--and farewell!

AT HIS POST.

IN MEMORIAM.

[Midshipman Goldthwaite, Hopkinsville, Ky., who perished with
eleven companions in the battleship Georgia, July 15, 1907.]

Call up, Recording Angel,
The roster of the dead;
Who sleep in vaults or village graves,
Or in the ocean bed.
Call all alike--the wealthy,
The humble or the great;
Tell me how died they, Angel?
How met their various fate?

The Angel called out Marathon,
And Bunker Hill sublime,
Whose glory shall outlast
The temples of old time.
Myriads of true and loyal men
In many a mighty host,
All perished, said the Angel,
Faithfully at their post.

Some to fair science martyrs;
Some to religion’s call;
To truth and duty witnesses,
In faith they perished, all;
And bright, celestial splendor
Shone all around each ghost:
“I died,” proclaimed each pallid shade,
“Faithfully at my post.”

Oh, not in vain you perished,
Goldthwaite, when fate’s sad blow
Struck down the flower of chivalry
And laid its promise low;
Still, with true joy, salute we
Your shade, oh, knightly ghost,
And hail thee, loyal hero,
Who perished at his post.

Thy virtues high in heaven
As stars forever burn;
Long, long shall love bedew with tears
Thy consecrated urn;
In life’s young morn you perished--
Perished, but not in vain;
Your deathless, bright example
Shall cheer young hearts again.

The trumpet voice inspiring sounds
Along the ocean shore;
“Fear God and His commands obey”--
Angels can do no more;
From the ill-fated Georgia’s deck
There booms a solemn roar;
With strength renewed at the sad sound
The country’s eagles soar.

RECONCILIATION.

[Carriers’ Address, written for the Nashville, Tenn., _Press and
Times_, December 25, 1865.]

The days have dropped, like withered leaves,
From the dead cypress of the year,
And Time, who neither joys nor grieves,
Nor spares, nor pities, nor reprieves,
Has bound the months, twelve ripened sheaves,
Round his completed sphere.

Dread Reaper of the centuries,
The red strokes of whose sickle blade
Clashed oft and harshly on the breeze,
While in long swathes our dead were laid,
And measured out with every blow
That dark Olympiad of woe;
Here, where thy dreadful bugles rang,
With cannon’s roar and saber’s clang,
And answering hell in chorus sang,
Bidding the harvesters of Death
Cut wider still their slippery path.
Withhold thy fatal hand,
And let thy crescent sickle shine
The harvest moon of peace divine,
And to full orb expand;
For blood enough of kindred slain
Has poured in streams of purple rain
And soaked the thirsty sand
To quench each living coal of hate,
Assuage the fury of the State
And reconcile the land.

O, North! O, South! whose children claim
From heroic sires a common fame
More lustrous than the melted gem
Of Cleopatra’s diadem,
Drunk up one night for Antony
In bacchanalian revelry,
Will you a richer pearl betray,
Whose incommunicable splendor
None but a slave would cast away,
None but a craven would surrender?
Tells not each winged wind some story
Of Revolutionary glory,
Worthy of that immortal theme
Which once inspired The Scian’s dream
By blue Ægean’s tide;
How Hayne, to his dear country given,
Stepped from the scaffold up to heaven,
Laureled and deified;
How Lawrence dared the ocean strife--
Breathing with pale and quivering lip
His death cry, “Don’t give up the ship!”--
Then perished in his pride,
And Warren, in the morn of life,
In front of battle died.

O, Christ, whose Orient Star of Love,
Illumed the primal Christmas morning,
What cloud has spread its veil above,
That we no more behold it burning?
Shall we, despite the prayers and tears,
Poured out for near two thousand years,
In never-ending intercession
For fallen humanity’s transgression,
Shall we pluck from the temple’s shelves
And trample under foot the Bible,
Apostates base pronounce ourselves
And Christianity a libel?

Of what avail, if thus we err,
Our gifts of frankincense and myrrh,
Prayers, mummery, and holy water,
To cleanse the air from smell of slaughter,
And psalms, and organ chants sonorous,
With all our damning guilt before us?
Has sharp remorse no power to move
The stronger agony of love
In breasts whose suffering finds at last
The madness of the conflict past,
Which, having ’scaped the shock of steel
In battle’s fearful expiation,
Beside the slain at last shall feel
The glow of reconciliation,
Over the tombs which now conceal
The flower and glory of the nation?

Come where the slain, all pale and cold,
Sleep ’neath the all-concealing mold,
While evening’s melancholy breeze
With sad voice in the forest lingers,
Thrumming the spray of whispering trees
Like chords beneath a harper’s fingers,
In fitful, sobbing, plaintive tone,
Thrilling the pained air with its moan,
And wailing down the leafless aisles with low and dying groan.

Let pity, warm as Love’s caress,
Strew violets in tenderness
Above our kinsmen dead;
And myrtles clustering o’er their tomb,
Enfold in robes of purple bloom
Their consecrated bed;
And let the fresh-winged morning air
Now waft to heaven the nation’s prayer
To spare the avenging rod,
And weld the golden chain of love
Between all human hearts above
And all beneath the sod.

No more; no more; for overhead
The Christmas star renews its brightness;
Its beams revivify the dead
In garments of celestial whiteness;
By our sad fate, the phantoms say,
By all the griefs that wring the living,
Cast each embittered thought away,
And join the people by forgiving.
Armies of slaughtered men have fed
The Moloch fires of expiation,
Whose blood, like Abel’s madly shed,
Joins in the fervent invocation.

Plead ye for peace? Expect it where
Justice is equal as the air
And vote and count are just and fair,
Nor seek the fruitful olive tree,
On the volcano’s breast of snow,
While the flame-waved Vesuvian sea
Consumes the sapless earth below.

Redeemed from violence and fraud,
All hail the resurrected nation;
The Rights of Man shall be its broad,
Deep and immovable foundation,
And the Philanthropy of God
The corner-stone of Restoration.

OPHELIA

Gaily she struck the sweet guitar,
The maiden fair as a beautiful star;
And her soft voice fell on charmed ears
Like a seraph’s song from the upper spheres
Joyous and blithe is the song she sings,
As the morning lark on his heavenward wings;
Little the list’ners dream that rest
Never again shall dwell in her breast;
Little they dream, while that strain she is waking
That her heart with a secret grief is breaking.

Sweet were the words from her lips that fell,
As the mocking-bird’s song in the hazel dell;
Like the honey of Hybla her words were fraught
With sweets from the choicest flowers sought;
Gloom from her beaming presence fled,
Mirth and joy were around her shed;
Little they know of the poisoned dart
That rankles deep in her bleeding heart;
Little they know that her beaming eye
Tells but a hollow mockery.

Bright were the jewels that flashed on her brow
As the gleam of the stars on the mountain snow,
And the trembling lustre of costly pearls
Beams through the waves of her golden curls,
As with queenly step she passes along,
The loveliest one of that beautiful throng;
But her heart with inward grief is bowed,
And her cheek is as pale as the dead man’s shroud,
And tears will start in her orbs of blue,
Like a rose that weepeth with morning dew.

A gentle heart that she once had known
Had throbbed for her and for her alone.
High and holy in him was her trust--
Alas! it has turned to ashes and dust!
Can she her sacred vows recall,
Can she, can she forget them all?
Never! although with an aching breast
She ever obeys the stern behest,
Yielding with smiles to her bitter lot;
Meekly yielding and murmuring not;
The memory of departed hours
Shall weave her garland of withered flowers,
But the hope that cheered her soul is flown,
And she moves ’mid the throng, alone, alone.
Her lips may smile, but her eye is chill,
And her laugh may ring, but her heart is still;
Her bosom is now the canker’s prey--
She is passing away, passing away.

DEATH OF THE SEASONS.

Last night pealed out the dark Death-angel’s cry--
“Another year is gone!”--and from the sky
A myriad of voices, like a river,
Reëchoed “Gone! forever and forever!”
The deep roll of the night-wind’s muffled drum
Mourned for the dead whose lips are pale and dumb
Within whose pulseless and unconscious breast
Reigns the nepenthe of a dreamless rest.

Scatter sweet flowers on the season’s tomb,
For oh, they perished in their early bloom!
And o’er their dust this requiem be sung--
“Weep not, for Heaven’s best favorites die young”

Oh, Spring was very beautiful and gay
When April mild and rosy-fingered May
Rambled among the many babbling brooks
And gathered wild flowers in their shady nooks,
And waving them in gladness in the air,
Scattered their fragrant dew-drops everywhere
Beneath whose silver spray the delicate bloom
Of Flora filled the air with rich perfume.

Slender and gentle and surpassing fair
Was blue-eyed Summer with her golden hair,
Sweet-voiced as is the murmur of a dove,
Whilst every look was eloquent with love.
Where blooms the wild rose by the mountain spring,
In whose clear waves the robin dips his wing,
Where clustering berries tempt the longing eyes
Like the forbidden fruit of Paradise,
And the sweet mocking-bird, in carol gay,
Enchants the listener with his wondrous lay--
There, in the silence of her shady bowers,
The Summer genius passed the dreamy hours;
Death came and laid his hand upon her brow,
And in eternal night she sleepeth now.

Next Autumn came in robe of gorgeous dyes
And stately step and melancholy eyes--
In mien and look like discrowned Antoinette
A queen--although the Bourbon star had set--
Beholding with a proud, unwavering faith
The scaffold and the officers of death,
Mourning--not her own early doom, for she
Knew well the hollowness of majesty--
But grieving that the beautiful and gay
In her bright train were doomed to pass away.
So Autumn died, but oh, her couch of death
Was balmy with the jasmine’s odorous breath,
And every wind-harp breathed its hollow moan
For the sweet soul that had forever flown.

But lo! whilst mourning for the seasons fled,
A phœnix from the ashes of the dead
Rises in triumph, and the new-born year
Round Time’s vast orb begins his swift career.
The rising sunbeams herald his advance,
And break on every hill a golden lance;
Heaven plants her banners at the Eastern gate,
To greet the monarch as he comes in state,
And the loud harps of ocean and of earth
Resound in strains of revelry and mirth.

Welcome to earth, thou youngest child of Time,
Unwarped by wrong, unspotted by a crime!
Oh, may the blooming vigor of thy youth
Ripen in wisdom, purity and truth.
Spare in thy flight the innocent and gay
And scatter pleasure’s garlands in their way;
Repress the insolence of lawless might,
And make the wrong submissive to the right;
Uphold the patriot and strike down the hand
That waves the traitor’s sword or treason’s brand
And with the hand of charity redress
Each form of human woe and wretchedness,
So that the annals of all coming time
Shall write thee as the Golden Age sublime.

NEW YEAR ODE, 1861.

[CARRIERS’ ADDRESS FOR THE LOUISVILLE JOURNAL.]

Oh, infant year, whose newborn limbs are swathed
And cradled in convulsion--Oh, dread Heaven,
Unsealing o’er this land of many woes
The Apocalyptic vials--Oh, my torn
And bleeding country, by thy sons deflowered
And stricken of thy God--how shall I sing
A festal anthem on a broken lyre--
To ears made dull by sorrow?

From her dreams,
With music lulled, all-queenly, and perfumed
With odors from the Summer’s lips distilled,
The startled nation woke--awoke to hear
Rebellion’s war-cries in her citadel,
By dark and frenzied sentinels invoked--
Singing her dirge, like the volcanic bass
Of Ætna’s organ chiming with the sea
When groans the Titan in immortal pangs--
The trepidation of conflicting hosts,
Mixed with the wild alarm of clamorous bells
The strife--the shout--the wailing of despair.

Time, by whose hands the mouldering dust of death
Is shovelled in the vaults of coffined realms,
What Nemesis insatiate still inspires
The suicide of Empires? In her breast,
Greece nursed the serpent faction, with her blood,
That stung her to the heart. Rebellion’s steel
Pierced the fair bosom of imperial Rome
By foreign foes unconquered; and the land
Of God’s own people drank the fatal cup
Which dark dissension pressed upon her lips.

As midnight’s bell proclaims with double tongue
One year departed and another born,
Swift throng around me with imperial mien
And godlike brow, and eyes of sad reproach,
As angels look in sorrow, the great dead

Who walked Mount Vernon’s shades and Marshfield’s plains,
And Monticello’s height, and Ashland’s groves
Still vocal with unearthly eloquence,
Statesmen and Chiefs who loved their native land
And led her up to fame. With solemn air
And thrilling voice they point to freedom’s flag
War-rent and laced with sacrificial blood,
By noble martyrs shed; and thus they speak--
“O sons once named Americans, but now
The world-mocked orphans of a nameless land,
Why rush ye to destruction? Happier far
Than ye the tawny tribes your fathers drove
From the primeval forest--the red chiefs
Who bravely perished on their hunting-grounds,
Or passing o’er the mountains of the West,
Went down in gloom, like nature’s final sun,
To rise no more forever. Better thus
Than live the foul dishonor of your sires,
Whose progeny like Lucifer of old
Rebelled against the power that made them Gods,
And perished in their treason. Come, ye winds,
Swift-winged couriers of the tropic sky,
Heralds of death and ruin--come, ye fires
That in volcanic caverns ever burn,
And crush pale cities in your molten jaws--
Come, burning plagues, and ye tempestuous waves,
Who strangle navies in your watery arms--
Earthquakes and lightning-strokes, all earthly ills
Which Heaven inflicts, and trembling men abhor--
Fell bolts in God’s red armory of wrath,
With all your terrors in one stroke combined,
Come; and in mercy blast the land with ruin
Rather than we should see Columbia’s plains
Drenched in a crimson sea of fratricide,
Lust, rapine, malice, treachery, revenge,
The tall and crowning Teneriffe of crime.”

I hear a passing bell--the muffled drum
Rolls its sepulchral echoes on the night
Which spreads across the sky the starless pall
Of desolation. And upon my ear
Falls the wild burden of a dismal song
Like that of mocking fiends in revelry.

THE DISUNION BANNER.

Fiends who in the lurid gloom
Of Hell do ply the fatal loom,
Weave a banner of despair
For Columbia’s tainted air,
Like the boding raven’s wing
All the land o’ershadowing.
In the murky woof embroider
Darkness, death, and Hell’s disorder.

On the fatal standard show
Every form of guilt and woe--
Murder drinking deep of blood,
Rolling round him like a flood,
All the fetid gall that drips
From the land’s infected lips,
In the murky woof embroider
Darkness, death, and Hell’s disorder.

Weave ye in the magic loom
Piles of slain without a tomb,
Cities lit with midnight fires,
Crashing walls and toppling spires,
Famine’s sunken, ghastly cheek,
Outraged woman’s helpless shriek,
Hoary age and infancy
Plunged in one wide misery;
In the murky woof embroider
Darkness, death, and Hell’s disorder.

Let the banner’s fold be bound
With a fiery serpent round;
Eden’s destroyer shall recall
The new temptation, sin, and fall.
We have changed the stripes of flame
To the burning blush of shame,
And the streaks of spotless white
To the pallor of affright,
And the stars which blazoned all
To Wormwood in its endless fall.

The song of treason ceased--the phantoms fled,
And as I mused in the dark bitterness
Of grief to this sad prophecy of woe,
I heard a sound, as when the ocean moves
His moist battalions to the tempest’s march,
To storm the fortress of the rocky isles,
And hosts innumerable thronged around
In panoply of war. From every height
And every valley rolled the martial drum,
And bugles calling to the gory charge
The loyal and the bold, while streamed on high
Gay banners glittering with the hues of heaven.
“We come, oh, bleeding country,” was their cry,
“To beat aside the parricidal steel,
And shield the snowy breast that gave us life.”

New England’s seamen swelled the rallying cry
Along the coasts; the Middle States replied
From thronging marts; the echoes leaped along
The Mississippi Valley, whose vast floods
Throb like the pulses of the Nation’s heart,
And pale Virginia, all besprinkled now
With War’s red baptism, to Kentucky spoke;
Kentucky, tried but faithful unto death,
To sad Missouri called; Missouri passed
The kindling watchword to the vast Northwest,
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
Who louder sang than Niagara’s roar
To the unconquered heights of Tennessee;
Hoarse echoes, like the low sepulchral moan
Of subterranean fires, disturbed the Gulf--
The bleeding Gulf betrayed and overawed--
Then swelling loud as an Archangel’s trump,
Or shrill winds piping o’er the stormy flood,
It thundered back from far Pacific’s coast.

Come to the tombs by mourning millions thronged
Beneath the oak of weeping. Glorious dead,
Fame’s cemetery holds no hero dust
More dearly honored in sublime repose.
Pale ashes, with a nation’s tears bedewed,
And fanned by sighs as numerous as the winds,
The laurels that you nurture shall be green
And bloom forever round the precious urns
Of Baker and Lyon. Fortune smiled
Upon them, casting from her ample lap,
Her lavish stores of fame and wealth and ease,
And wooed them to repose. Though sweet her song,
She sang unheeded. Honor, fortune, life
They offered freely on their country’s shrine,
In the red heat and fury of the fight,
Deeming the dearest jewels of the world
Were nought when weighed against the nation’s life.

DIRGE.

He who led our faltering ranks
Up the ambuscaded banks--
He who poured his heart’s red rain
Over Springfield’s stormy plain,
Heeding not the volleys deadly
Nor the life’s blood running redly,
Cold in death shall lead no more
Where our country’s eagles soar.

Such, oh War, thy fearful pleasure,
Priceless blood and costliest treasure,
Still the victims whom thou smitest
Are the loveliest and the brightest.
But the martyrs shall be glorious
When our flag returns victorious;
Death, who seals such patriot eyes,
Opens them in Paradise.

As wistfully I gazed upon their graves
A vision passed before me. On a mount
That glowed with light ineffable appeared
The New Year, in imperial garments clad,
Erect and tall and God-like in his mien,
With strength immortal in his manly limbs
And hope and courage beaming from his eyes.
And lo, swift breaking from the clouds, he saw
Coming in splendor like the morning sun,
The reunited Empire of the West,
Swelled on the ear the ever-murmuring hu
Of populous cities on unnumbered streams,
And marts of commerce by a hundred lakes.
The teeming fields, with varied harvests, waved,
And tinkling bells on distant hills revived
Sweet memories of Arcadia’s pastoral days.
Fair science led her train by every grove
And hill and stream, and pure religion filled
Her solemn temples with perpetual hymns
And fervent supplication to her God.
And from above the shades of years departed
Sang with a voice that filled the firmament:
“Hail, New Year, hail the noblest child of Time;
The Power which brought the fathers o’er the flood
Has saved the offspring from the sevenfold fire.
A Union healed shall date its life from thee,
Redemption’s golden era. From its shield
No star shall vanish in forlorn eclipse,
Nor exiled Pleiad chant in skies remote
Her solitary song, nor sundered be
The marriage bond of States, by law confirmed
And the eternal oracles of God.”

MONODY

ON THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

[Read at a Memorial Meeting, Nashville, held at the State House, April 16, 1865. Governor Brownlow delivered the address.]

Soft breathe the vernal winds, the sky is fair,
And April’s fragrance scents the dewy air.
Yon Heaven looks down on earth with eyes as mild
As a young mother’s on her sleeping child,
Jealous lest aught should break her infant’s calm,
And lulling its soft slumbers with a psalm.
So soft, so holy, comes the forest hymn,
From yon far hill-tops, misty, blue and dim,
While war’s discordant tumult seems to cease
In the sweet music of returning peace.
Yet where the fount of joy in crystal springs,
Some venomed asp its rankling poison flings,
And where the violets shed their fragrant breath
The nightshade pours the blistering dews of death

What bloody phantom with a brow of wrath
Stalks in the van of our triumphal path,
And o’er our banners flings a funeral veil,
Till Heaven grows black and mortal cheeks grow pale?
’Twas in the halls of mirth, a gala night,
Bright lamps o’er joyful thousands shed their light,
The nation’s Father sat amid the throng,
Relaxed his brow and heard the festal song;
He dreams not of conspiracy, nor sees
Above his head the sword of Damocles;
Wide opes the sepulchre its marble jaws,
All nature seems to make a breathless pause;
The deadly aim is made--the death-shot flies,
And Freedom’s martyr passes to the skies.

Oh, Statesman, Hero, Patriot, Friend, and Sire,
Now the pale tenant of a funeral pyre,
Whose red right hand four years has held the rod,
The minister of Freedom and of God,
Yet with the rod the blooming olive held,
While the dark deluge of rebellion swelled
And thundered round our Ark--an Argosy
More dear than all the jewels of the sea,
And still with outstretched arms essayed to save
The shipwrecked seamen from the yawning wave!
Thy love was strong as woman’s--who like thee
Their interceding angel now shall be?

A genial wit, a homely native sense,
Nearer to truth than studied eloquence,
A quiet courage to defend the right,
And leave to Heaven the issue of the fight;
A will of adamant, which seemed to be
The very flower of maiden modesty,
A conscience, holding truth of greater worth
Than all the crowns and treasures of the earth;
A love, whose strong affections seemed to bind
In one the happiness of all mankind;
These were the jewels whose celestial flame
Shall burn with quenchless glow round Lincoln’s name,
The virtues which shall make his memory dear
While Justice reigns in yon eternal sphere.

And millions shall lament, with honest grief,
The People’s friend and Freedom’s fallen chief;
The huntsman shall forget the eager chase,
And pause to wipe his weatherbeaten face,
The daring sailor, on the distant sea,
Shall shed a teardrop to his memory;
The widow’s tears shall quench her cottage fire,
The soldier’s orphan moan his second sire.
There need no glittering trappings of the tomb,
No martial dirge, nor hearse with nodding plume,
To tell their grief; but words devoid of art
Show how this stroke has pierced the Nation’s heart.

Precious the tears shall be the Nation weeps,
And sacred be the sod where Lincoln sleeps.
His fame shall be the jewel of the West,
Like a rich pearl on Beauty’s throbbing breast.
Mourn, O ye Mountains!--altars of the sky--
Fit monuments of him who cannot die;
Mourn, loud Atlantic! let thy thunder-dirge
Chant the sad requiem with Pacific’s surge.
Mourn, O New England! on thy granite base.
Mourn, Illinois, thy desolate dwelling-place;
Kentucky, mourn! thy second God-like son
Sleeps in the dust, life’s duty nobly done;
Mourn, Tennessee! The Hero of the Age
Sleeps with the Lion of the Hermitage;
Chanted the melancholy song shall be,
By all thy streams which hasten to the sea,
While Nashville’s echoing wall of cedared hills
With mournful cadence all the valley fills.

WASHINGTON’S BIRTHDAY ODE.

[Written for a celebration given by the young ladies of Elder Enos Campbell’s School, Hopkinsville, February 22, 1861.]

Hero, whose ashes sleep
By Vernon’s sacred steep,
Sire of the free!
To-day thy name be blessed
North, South, East and West,
And swell each patriot’s breast
With love to thee.

Through tempests drear and dark
The Union’s holy ark
Thy hand did guide;
The ark which rode the flood
Of Revolution’s blood
For freedom’s mighty God
Was on thy side.

Where’er thy eagles flew
The world our glory knew
In war and peace.
Safe ’neath the fig and vine
Our fathers did recline,
And field and wave and mine
Gave rich increase.

Oh, that to-day might yield
Once more the sword and shield
Of Washington!
Then freedom’s songs sublime
Should peal in thrilling chime
And, ’til remotest time,
The States be one.

TO APRIL.

[DEDICATED TO THE WEATHER BUREAU.]

(Begun April 1.)

Sweet month of blue-eyed violets and fools,
I’m glad to see you, dear. Take off your bonnet,
While to your praise I pen a flowing sonnet.
A thousand misses in the boarding-schools
Now do the same on gilt-edged, scented paper,
And bite their nails and trim the midnight taper.
The clear lake like a polished mirror glows
In the seraphic loveliness of morn;
The speckled trout leap from their crystal pools,
Waking the startled skylark’s mellow horn;
On every hand new beauties still are born,
Till lingering sunset’s amethystine blaze
Illumes the vault of heaven with its far-streaming rays.

(Finished April 10.)

Thus far without impediment I got,
My sleek Pegasus on an easy gallop,
Or ambling steady or on cosy trot
Smooth-scudding o’er the airy fields of thought,
As a Venetian gondola or shallop.
To halt with sudden bump my pencil’s brought.
“I can not tell a lie!” (Spring poems are “rot.”)
Now all my pretty phrases come to naught.
It’s just a shame! But then who would have thought--
Wild polar blizzards, snow and blinding sleet
Beat my Pegasus and benumbed his feet?
And, most unlucky mishap for a poet,
The brute has got the studs and will not go it.
One solid hour of labor have I lost--
I can’t write summer songs in winter’s frost.
O April, sure you did not count the cost
Of your confounded jag! I think you’re drunk!
Well, bluster if you want to show your spunk.
The Weather Bureau’s all turned inside out--
But pray clear up, Miss April, or clear out!

ODE ON THE DEATH OF LEO XIII.

DEDICATED TO MRS. MARY ANDERSON NAVARRO, LONDON.

I see before me the Gladiator lie:
He leans upon his hand--his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony.

--_Childe Harold._

The Eternal City, shrine of many lands,
Slow fades; before his dying gaze expands
The Golden-streeted City, not made with hands;
Hail him with waving palms and loving eyes,
Heaven’s solemn choirs and sweet societies,
While sobs below him the great church he trod--
“To Cæsar, Cæsar’s; God’s we yield to God.”
Life’s duty done, he ends his manly part,
Stop the great throbbings of that true, pure heart;
Amid a sorrowing people’s prayers and tears,
God greets the saint of two-and-ninety years.

Not for the lust of luxury and beauty,
Not for the miser’s or the conqueror’s booty,
But for the still small voice of duty
Bravely did all temptation spurn
The immortal Lion of Lucerne.

The Lion is at rest,
With his awe-inspiring crest,
In full-maned majesty and strength he has laid him down to rest.
Of all earth’s mortal monarchs the bravest, strongest, best,
His bright eye kindled with the love of Jesus and the Cross.
Who gave mankind the Light Divine
To save the world from loss.

His grand life work is o’er,
And nations now deplore
The Lion of the Vatican, the warrior of the cross,
From Italy’s bay-indented shore
To where Columbia’s eagles soar,
Is heard the voice of weeping,
For the Lion softly sleeping,
The Lion of the Vatican,
Who never feared the face of man--
The Lion o’er whose urn
The mounting flames of glory burn;
Who died in duty’s harness--the Lion of Lucerne.

He sleeps, but not forsaken,
For the Judgment trump shall blow,
Its blast of joy or woe.
The nations of the dead shall rise
And the Lion of the Vatican shall waken.
Once in earth’s Gethsemane by all but God forsaken!
With glory crested on his head and splendor in his eyes,
The kingdoms gather round the great white throne
To hear the final sentence
Of all who seek or scorn repentance.

Long ere the dreadful conflagration
Which shall consume each nation,
Along each height or hollow shore,
Loud shall reverberate the roar
Which made the iron Bismarck bow
Before the Lion’s calm, majestic brow;
Which bade the hostile cannon cease
And harmless pave the paths of peace,
Who walked where princely Virgil trod
And then like Enoch walked with God.

Be patient, then, O Zion!
And wait the wakening of the Lion
Be patient still, for soon
Thy God shall grant the boon
Of universal peace;
And War’s red banner shall be furled
Throughout all the world.

Paul Kruger’s diamond bribe[C] was worth
The ransom of a hundred kings;
Yet diamonds and pearls and all
The riches of this world have wings;
The Lion held God’s treasure fast--
Honor and truth and Heaven at last.

CHIABRERA’S EPITAPH.

Chiabrera, an Italian poet, is said to have written the following inscription for his tomb:

“Friend, I while living sought comfort in Parnassus;
Do thou, better counselled, seek it in Calvary.”

The setting sun shone down the Apennines,
Gilding Vesuvius and his purpling vines,
And his dark collonades of whispering pines.

The tinkling bells of the returning flocks
Rang through the lengthening shadows of the rocks
And grateful coolness filled the shepherd’s walks.

The Star of Evening trembled in the West,
Like a rich pearl on Beauty’s throbbing breast,
And Heaven was all aglow with rapture blest.

Upon his death-couch Chiabrera lay,
Life’s waning lights across his features play
Like the last beams of yon declining day.

And as departing day its glory shed
Bright on the group which gathered round his bed,
In faltering words the dying poet said:

“Chill blow the gales across the sea of Death,
Upon my brow I feel their icy breath--
And the bright star of song forsakes my path.

“No more Apollo’s mount shall I behold--
The rainbow mist that round its summit rolled
Fades into clouds all joyless, dark and cold.

“The groves are withered on Parnassus’ side;
The fields are dead--the streams no longer glide,
And every fount by fiery heat is dried.

“All dumb and shattered lies Apollo’s shell,
Broke are the chords my fingers loved so well,
Mourning the hand that wove their fairy spell.

“Dread Calvary! beneath thy sheltering rock
Oh, let the gentle Shepherd of the flock
Shield me in mercy from the tempest’s shock;

“There from the pelting storm and bitter blast,
My weary soul its refuge finds at last.
Behold the Cross! The pang of Death is past.

“Parnassus! up whose steeps I long have striven,
Thy summit, by the thunder-tempest riven,
Stops in the clouds--but Calvary’s rests in Heaven.”

ELEGY

On the death of Captain Bacon, Kentucky Volunteers, U. S. A., slain at Sacraments, Ky., December, 1861.

Oh, sacred mountain of Kentucky’s dead,
Room in thy heart for Bacon’s honored head,
Whose true blood streaming from his manly breast
Shall dye with glories new thy marble crest,
And caught by every sun upon the air
Appeal to Heaven in everlasting prayer--
Prayer for the rescue of our outraged land,
From dark rebellion’s impious sword and brand;
Prayer for the fiery bolt by justice sped
To fall in vengeance for our slaughtered dead;
Prayer which, becoming of the winds a part,
Through all the land shall stir the nation’s heart,
And summon martial millions to the field
A patriot host, the nation’s living shield.

Promethean sun! whose early splendors kiss
These pillars of Death’s grand Acropolis,
Of Boone the daring, Johnson stern and just,
Hardin the true, and Daveiss’ glorious dust,
Much-loved McKee, and gallant Henry Clay,--
Oft as thy torch illumes the morning gray
Touch Bacon’s tomb with thy reviving fire
And it shall answer thee like Memnon’s lyre,
With an inspiring voice whose kindling strain
Shall rouse Kentucky to avenge her slain,
And shed his base assassin’s blood as free
As yonder waves which hasten to the sea.

Oh, much-loved friend, for manly virtues dear,
Untimely up yon hill ascends thy bier.
We knew that _with_ or _on_ thy stainless shield
We would receive thee from the battle-field!
True to Kentucky’s and thy country’s call
Thou wert the first to arm thee--and to fall.
The plaintive dirge, the sob, the smothered groan
Thrill the pained air with melancholy moan,
While the slow river winding far below
Whispers through all its waves the song of woe,
And Frankfort’s echoing wall of cedared hills
With mournful cadence all the valley fills.

TO THE LAW AND ORDER LEAGUE.

AFTER JUDGE BRUCE’S ADDRESS At Hopkinsville.

Take courage, ye people of order and law,
Nor longer let Night Riders hold you in awe;
Though your crops be destroyed, your barns burnt in ashes,
Your women outraged, your backs scourged with lashes,
Take courage! Remember that God reigns on high
Who foredooms your tyrants ’neath His vengeance to die.

When bad men conspire, let all good men unite;
All crime must be conquered by organized Right.
Though Satan conspire to persecute Job,
And muster all demons which travel the globe,
Though disease, war, and whirlwinds on all sides surround
And the wife of his bosom be treacherous found;
Though Judas and High Priest ’gainst Jesus plot,
Though Herod and Pilate His overthrow sought;
Though King George and Lord North and base Arnold swear
That Sam Adams and Hancock shall hang in the air;
Though the flood shall a whole world of wickedness drown,
Noah’s Ark shall land safely on Ararat’s crown.
So virtue shall triumph, ’tis Heaven’s decree,
And God’s law shall rule o’er the land and the sea
Job sees all his losses by Heaven restored,
Quelled Satan retreats at the frown of the Lord--
And Cornwallis at Yorktown surrenders his sword.
And ye citizens banded for order and law
No more let the Night Riders fill you with awe,
Though croaking Glenraven plays the treacherous friend,
And croaks at the crimes which he dares not defend,
Though he reprimands gently his infamous tools,
His _alibi_ G----s and his Paddy McCools.
Remember, good citizens, nor harbor one doubt
That your vengeance is sure and that murder will out--
That the scoundrels who whipped the bare backs of your wives
Shall pay the full penalty down with their lives.
Remember, Night Riders, your infamous wrong
Was the wrong of an hour, but its vengeance is long;
There are crimes so inhuman, ’twere a crime to forgive;
Who scourges a woman ’twere a crime to let live.
Your lash unresisted mangled woman’s tender back,
And till death her avenger shall press on your track.

Then rally, O citizens, from border to border,
One phalanx to fight for Law, Justice, and Order.
Kentucky has no place for the Night Rider’s foot;
What patriot tongue does not scorn to be mute?
Remember all history repeats the same tale,
That the wicked shall fail and the righteous prevail.
Unite! and your deeds shall be crowned with success,
Cheered on like old Scotland by “Bruce’s Address.”
Yes; though Lucifer, “Star of the Morning,” rebel,
His doom shall be closed in the torments of Hell.
“Black Hands,” Mafias, and Night Riders, birds of one feather,
Must go to the prison or scaffold together.

“WITH THY SHIELD, OR UPON IT.”[D]

DEDICATED TO COL. R. M. KELLY, SUPERINTENDENT OF THE NATIONAL CEMETERY, LOUISVILLE.

[The loss of a shield was regarded as peculiarly disgraceful by the Greek soldiers. The dead were borne home upon their shields. “Return with thy shield, my son, or upon it,” was the heroic injunction of a Spartan mother.]

Sound, trumpet sound! The die is cast!
The Rubicon of fate is passed!
The loyal and the rebel hosts,
Kentucky, throng thy leaguered coasts,
And on the issue of the strife
Hang peace and liberty and life;
All that the storied past endears,
And all the hopes of coming years;
The startled world looks on the field.
Thou canst not fly--thou dar’st not yield--
Then strike! and make thy foeman feel
Thy triply consecrated steel,
And with or on thy shining shield
Return, Kentucky, from the field.

Strike! though the battle’s dead be strown
O’er land and wave from zone to zone;
Strike! though the gulf of human blood
Roll o’er thee like the primal flood.
Treason at home--beyond the sea--
Its ally, ancient tyranny,
Democracy’s relentless foe,
Aim at thy heart their deadliest blow;
Freedom’s last hope remains with thee,
Oh, army of democracy;
Then lead thy martial hosts abroad
In the grand panoply of God,
And with or on thy shining shield,
Return, Kentucky, from the field.

Wave, banners, wave, and let the sky
Glow with your flashing wings on high;
There’s music in each rustling fold
Sweeter than minstrel ever told;
Oh, who that ever heard the story
Of all our dead who fell in glory,
Still pressing where the starry light
Streamed like a meteor o’er the fight,
Till their expiring bosoms poured
The red libation of the sword,
Would leave Kentucky now, or thrust
Her beaming forehead in the dust,
Where treason’s reptiles writhe and hiss
Like fiends shut out from Eden’s bliss?
Better the freeman’s lowliest grave
Than golden fetters of a slave;
Then with or on thy shining shield,
Return, Kentucky, from the field.

If bribed by lust of power or gold
Thy country’s welfare thou hast sold,
Iscariot-like thy name shall be
In Freedom’s dark Gethsemane;
Disgrace and fell remorse shall plow
Eternal furrows o’er thy brow;
By angels, men, and fiends abhorred,
Like Judas who betrayed his Lord.
Outcast at home--across the sea
Shunned like a leper thou shalt be,
No spring shall slake thy burning thirst,
The fire shall shun thee as accursed
Day shall be cheerless--no repose
At night thy swollen eye shall close--
Lift to indignant Heaven thine eye,
Curse God in black despair, and die!
Kentucky, hast thou son so base,
Thy fame unsullied would disgrace?
Attaint his blood, disown his race,
His line, his very name efface.
Then charge! thy grand battalions free
From all attaint of treachery--
Charge on thy foes! make all the air
Vocal with freedom’s holiest prayer,
And with or on thy shining shield,
Return, Kentucky, from the field!

State of the “Dark and Bloody Ground,”
The trumpet peals its final sound
Down every mountain height arrayed
Comes thundering on the long brigade;
By every valley, pass, and river,
Sabres and bayonets flash and quiver;
Shame to the faithless son who falters
When impious hands assail their altars,
And fill each fount of happiness
With waves of woe and bitterness;
The dead their august shades present
By Frankfort’s Battle Monument;
Not now their souls can be at rest,
Though in the Islands of the Blest--
“Remember us,” their voices cry,
“When comes the hour of conflict nigh,”
And with or on thy shining shield,
Return, Kentucky, from the field.

CONFIRMATION AT ST. ANDREW’S.

[TO AGNES, LOUISVILLE.]

I send this morning, Agnes dear,
A white and fragrant flower,
Emblem of maiden Hope and Love,
In Confirmation’s hour.
O, may the blessings which descend
This moment on thy head
On thy pure virgin heart and soul
Like precious fragrance shed.

I in life’s evening gloaming walk,
Thou in the morning bright,
Night’s blossoms I unfolding see,
Thou the Auroral light--
Yet all my heart in sympathy
Attends thy morning dreams,
For well I know the bitterness
Of life’s delusive streams.

A morning calm, a storm at eve,
At morn we joy, ere night we grieve:
So when the falling April showers,
Bringing the joy of birds and flowers,
’Neath the quick brush of golden sun
Catch rainbow colors one by one,
The liquid gems quick fade away
In dismal vapors cold and gray.

Lo, Juliet’s girlish bridal bed
With funeral flowers is quickly spread
Ere the brief marriage vows are said.
Sleeping in Capulet’s vault below
Her wedding night with Romeo.
Not “True Love’s Course” alone, but Man’s,
Never ran smooth since Time began,
Even ’mid the thunder shouts of friends
McKinley’s breast the bullet rends.

Wisdom, Wealth, Pleasure, Glory, Power,
Made Judah’s king rejoice:
Song, dance, and wine flowed free,--“Now comes
God’s judgment!” spoke a voice,
For earth is vain and life is frail
Since first the world began;
To fear and serve the living God
Is the whole lot of man.
Drink then, sweet Agnes, from the Fount
Of Christ’s Eternal Truth,
Till He shall bear thee o’er Death’s stream
To everlasting Youth.

THE CHRISTMAS FLOWER.

ON A FLORAL CARD.

Far sweeter than the rose
Which all the year round blows
On Cashmere’s fragrant bosom,
Is the fair flower which grows
Amid December snows;--
’Tis friendship’s Christmas blossom.

Its loving arms expanding,
The Christmas cross is standing,
The guide-post of the ages,
To point to realms of glory
And charm with simple story
The children and the sages.

Red rose and pallid lily,
Pansy and daffodilly,
Chrysanthemum and myrtle,
Around the cross are clinging
With wooing and sweet singing
Of nightingale and turtle.

The frozen Arctic splinter
Shot from the bow of winter
Will lose its power to harm us,
While dreams of childhood’s Christmas,
’Twixt heaven and earth an isthmus,
In nightly visions charm us.

The angry gale may shatter
Sweet Cashmere’s rose and scatter
Its leaves o’er vale and river;
The Christmas flower shall thrive
As long as Love shall live,
Forever and forever!

TO THE SOLDIERS OF GENERAL DUMONT’S COMMAND.[E]

NASHVILLE, TENN., 1862.

Ye soldiers of the Union
With holiest valor fired,
To shield the land whose sacred cause
Your father’s souls inspired--
Strike at yon black rebellion,
Like a thunderbolt of dread,
For the safety of the living
And the memory of the dead!

Bright Banner of the Union!
By beauty’s fingers wrought,
Around the world thy lesson
Of glory has been taught.
It tells of deathless battle-fields,
To fame and freedom dear,
And speaks of peace and happiness
To man’s enraptured ear.

Bright altar of the Union!
Around thy spotless shrine,
We swear disunion ne’er shall touch
Thy offering divine!
For our dead would sleep dishonored
And the living have no hope,
If in rebellion’s starless night
Our land were doomed to grope.

Charge, soldiers of the Union,
In truth’s eternal might,
Ye strike not for the lust of power,
But liberty and right.
The present and the Future plead--
The past full well ye know--
Strike home as your forefathers struck
And Heaven will guide the blow!

THE TWO GORDONS.

Dedicated to Mrs. Anna M. D. Gordon, Medical Missionary at Mungeli, India.

“Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,
Nor the furious winter’s rages;
Thou thy worldly task has done,
Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.
Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”

--General Gordon’s epitaph, from “Imogen’s Dirge,” in
Cymbeline.

General George Gordon, Khartoum, Egypt, January 26, 1885.
Reverend E. M. Gordon, Hopkinsville, Ky., June 2, 1908.

In the mystic land of Egypt,
In the streets of old Khartoum,
O’er the grave of martyred Gordon
Does the rose of England bloom;
By Mahdi, the false prophet,
Borne down in hopeless strife,
The Christian hero Gordon
Laid down his priceless life.

Thou Circean Cleopatra,
Of legendary Nile,
Luring to death the Roman Prince
By thy pernicious smile
A wine-inflamed and sensuous girl,
Frenzied by passion’s giddy whirl,
Thou once dissolved and drank a pearl
Inflamed by bacchanal applause,
Unworthy of a sovereign’s cause.
Hadst thou the pearl which Gordon found--
The pearl of boundless price--
The healing drink had cleansed thy soul
Like Magdalen’s sacrifice.
Egypt redeemed had hailed the morn
To a new life forever born,

His wife, Anna M. D. Gordon, Missionaries at Mungeli, India, and daughter]

And in thy glittering diadem
Had shone the Cross--the hallowed gem
Worn by the Babe of Bethlehem,
Nor Africa had sent her fettered slaves
To fatal fields and mines and Middle Passage graves.

From the mystic land of India,
In the flower of stalwart manhood,
Another Gordon came--
Counsellor, preacher, teacher--
The foster son of Hopkinsville,
Fearless and without blame;
No gem in India’s richest mines
Shot forth a purer flame.

India’s best civic honors
He calmly put aside--
“I serve the Man of Galilee,
Who upon Calvary died.
Nor wealth, nor fame, nor earthly prize
From Him shall me divide,
For I am bidden a chosen guest
To the Lamb’s holy marriage feast
To stand by Heaven’s own bride,
And I wear the rose of Sharon,
As I stand by my Saviour’s side.”--
O Hopkinsville! Thy foster son,
Priest, teacher, the poor leper’s friend,
Is thy eternal pride!

A yawning gulf once sundered
Rome’s Forum--’twas Jove’s will;
Quoth the high priest, “Rome’s dearest gift
Only the gulf can fill!”
Leap, Curtius, on thy frantic steed,
In panoply and plume,
Down the dark gulf--it closes up,
And thou hast met thy doom;
High in Olympic halls great Jove
For the martyred youth makes room.

Immortal sacrifice! thy fame
Shall fly o’er every sea;
The loud seas shout to every land:
“Great souls are more precious than golden sand,
Or all the pearls on the ocean strand,
And they sparkle as gems on God’s right hand;
Death swallowed Curtius, but death itself
Is swallowed in victory.”
And Curtius and the Gordons twain,
And all who in duty’s strife are slain,
Shall live immortally,
And the harps of love shall sound their praise
In the choir above
In sweetest melody.

Immortal is the sacred prize
Of him who for his fellow dies.
Leap--not to death--a leap for life
Was thine--far, far above the strife
And stress of Earth’s uncertain life--
Ungrateful oft to truest worth,
Too oft the rabble’s hate or scorn or mirth.

Curtius! thou bearest not the sword or shield
Of bloody war, but to the psalms
Of poets’ harps thou wavest the palms
Which demi-gods in glory bear,
Walking the green Elysian fields
Forever free from toil or care,
Chanting a soul-inspiring song,
While pilgrims to thy shrine the Eternal City throng.

Listen, O missionary brothers,
The mighty Christian brotherhood
Who toil in surplice, gown, or hood,
The rulers of each English-speaking nation
Proclaim the watchword of Salvation;
Monarchs become Evangel-nursing mothers;
The doves that perch
Within the belfry of the Church
Turn carrier-doves; their rustling wings
Fan every breeze with song; soft sings
Victoria’s low and gentle voice,
In tones which make mankind rejoice;
Of India’s Empress, England’s Queen,
Unsullied Sovereign she of brow serene,
Proclaims the law of Christ, her realm’s foundation.
Gladstone repeats the lofty proclamation:
England’s star-bannered colony,
Home of the upright, brave and free,
The States so wisely ruled by Washington--
Like England lit by never-setting sun--
Send from Columbia’s far-winding shore
The peaceful words to Hague of Theodore;
The Rose of Sharon’s fragrant hedge
Shall guard our borders, surest pledge
Of universal lasting peace,
And love shall reign and bloody wars shall cease.

From Khartoum’s streets red with his blood
Went Gordon’s soul to greet his God;
Long had he served his Master well--
What mattered where or how he fell?
Thou, Gordon, canst not miss the way--
Go easily to Eden’s day,
Death’s trackless passage through the air
Goes straight to Heaven from everywhere.
Or Hopkinsville or old Khartoum,
Glorious alike the good man’s doom.
Wide is Christ’s many-mansioned room,
And endless Eden’s fadeless bloom,
Rescued by Calvary’s mighty cost--
Shall not one precious soul be lost.

* * * * *

Sleep quietly, O pilgrim guest;
Let no ill dreams disturb thy rest.
Thou hast blessed many, surely thou art blessed;
The merciful shall sleep with peaceful breast,
So summer twilights slumber in the West.

* * * * *

A kindly voice and tapping at the door
Salute him in the early morning;
Lovingly spake woman’s urgent warning--
“Refresh thee for thy journey--the time is brief.”
Too brief, alas, for us! but on that shore
Where time is counted by the clock no more
Thou art divine and Death’s sharp shock is o’er--
O the dread silence and its bitter grief!
Speak low--thou canst not wake him--knock no more!
For him shall many bleeding hearts be sore.
He hears not, for his love-illumined eyes,
Sealed to Earth’s scenes, open in other skies,
High in his Master’s Court in Paradise.
Love’s magic lyre is mute,
But yesterday his spirit-stirring voice,
Distinct and clear and mellow as a flute,
Made our enraptured hearts in love rejoice.
The accents of his tuneful tongue
Sounded like harp by angel strung
To melodies of Eden sung,
On which his ravished audience hung:
Chautauqua’s white and fluttering salute
Shall greet him nevermore--that wondrous voice is mute.
Far India’s pangs and perils now are o’er;
The fordless midnight torrent’s threat’ning roar,
Plague, famine, cobra’s fang and tiger’s leap,
In sunless jungle or Himalayan steep,
Confront the intrepid soul no more
Nor vainly menace him with scath
As he pursued the Galilean path
To help the friendless sick or starving poor,
For India’s wretched succor to secure;
Blessed Virgin, see another son!
Like Him of Calvary his course has run;
Greeting of friends and voice of loving wife,
The applause of eager listening crowds,
Rending the air as tempests rend the clouds,
Are naught to him God calls from earthly strife
To rapturous peace of Eden’s blissful life.

Two nations in one common grief
Lament the Gordons twain;
Both perished in the flower of life,
Swift-stricken, but not in vain;
One in the storm of battle,
One in his quiet room--
Clasp hands o’er your untimely slain,
Hopkinsville and old Khartoum.
Ye both have found eternal fame,
Through magic power of a noble name.

Now face to face, and hand in hand,
They talk in blest repose,
’Neath skies which know no deadly heat,
Nor winter’s bitter snows;
In the opulence of Eden,
Where Life’s shining river flows,
On the verdant banks of the River of Life,
Where the tree of Calvary grows,
Where Christ Himself is Gardener,
Creator, Shepherd, Pardoner,
And the sweetest flower in Heaven’s bower
Is Duty’s thornless rose.

June 3, 1908.

THE WESTFIELD HOME.

(DEDICATED TO MRS. GROVER CLEVELAND, “WESTFIELD,” PRINCETON, N. J.)

The clamor of the clans is overawed,
To mourn the dead made perfect with his God.
Yet mourn we not the statesman’s death alone,
His hearthstone’s glory far exceeds a throne.

Though crowned with civic honors is his name,
Husband and Father have a dearer fame;
Glory attends the leader to his rest,
But most she mourns the man who knew him best.

Nor swiftest wind, nor farthest ocean’s foam,
Visits a spot so dear to man as home;
O, you who mourn an upright President,
Mourn with a stricken wife in her lament.

Lament a loving husband, nobler name
Than King or Czar or Emperor can claim.
Love, not oppression, built for her a throne--
The tribute, gladly paid, was love alone.

She needs no hollow pomp of heraldry;
God gave the wife the greatest majesty.
Pure as Madonna, whose celestial blush
Glows in the tints of Raphael’s magic brush,
Gems of the heart and jewels of the mind
Enriched the wife and all her acts refined,
And with a native majesty endued
“America’s uncrowned Queen of Womanhood,”[F]
For Home is ever woman’s grandest sphere,
Whose fruitful virtues make her memory dear,
While vice and ruin curse the falling land,
Where childhood lacks the mother’s plastic hand.

Through many changing years of good and ill,
The name of Westfield shall be honored still.
Pure homes compose the country’s best defense,
The strongest, promptest, and of least expense,
And round its coasts a surer guard will keep
Than camps or forts or navies on the deep.

THE HARP IN THE AIR;

OR

A NIGHT WITH GERARDI IN SEELBACH’S ROOF-GARDEN.

(A Family Epistle from a Girl full of “Grace” to “Big Sis” in Cherokee Park.)

Dear Sis--
You’re losing fun galore, rusticating just at present,
Although fresh eggs and buttermilk and country fare are pleasant.
Music and mirth are in the air--not razors keen and sharp--
’Tis the touch of old Gerardi, a-twanging on his harp.

Love rages in his silver flute; love pines upon his viol;
Love pleads his cause with eloquence which lists to no denial;
And he or she who will not bow to Cupid’s charming mother,
I set him down a dullard--if you praise him, you’re another.

The crowds keep sailing upward upon the elevators,
And the boys are very, very small and the girls all sweet potatoes;
There are taffetas and mousselines, and laces and illusion,
Like all the rainbows since the flood, crushed in one grand confusion.

Gerardi’s high on Seelbach’s Roof, with harp and flute and fiddle;
Women divine crowd thickly round, and the devil’s in the middle.
Did you ever hear a harpist like the Florentine, pray tell me?
Like some sweet mocking-bird he soars, and his notes with
rapture swell me.

The moon and stars shine bright aloft; “on such a night as this”
Lorenzo fled with Jessica, and kisses rhymed with bliss,
“As far as Belmont”--this hanging bower hath treasure
Of beauteous girls whose voice and glance are redolent of pleasure.

The waiters hurry, skurry, with ring and clink of glasses,
But the sparkling wines flow dimmer than the laughing eyes of lasses,
And the myriad golden planets which glitter in yon skies
Are eclipsed by eyes which soften at Gerardi’s melodies.

Sore heart of baffled hopes, against consolation proof,
Hast thou found life’s gilded web of rotten warp and woof?
Drink deep of the nepenthe of woman’s witching tongue,
And hear the Florentine repeat the songs which Petrarch sung.

He culls the flowers of Paradise and squeezes their aroma
With “Kentucky Home” and “Hearts and Flowers” and heavenly “La Paloma.”
The very stars stoop down to kiss this old Italian wizard,
While I--I just feel weak and faint and hollow round the gizzard.

I soar aloft among the stars, inhaling the aroma
Of the silver songs of Florence and Madrid’s “La Paloma,”
And “Love Me and the World is Mine” in melody divine
Breathes from Gerardi’s harp-strings like bouquet of Roman wine.

And Weber’s “Invitation”--he pours it like old wine--
“Come right on in, oh stranger! the water’s very fine!”
And oh! my willing soul would stay ’mid girls and song like this
And dream and sigh itself away in everlasting bliss.

And there, within my vision’s range, I see a bearded “Colonel,”
With jingling spurs--he fears no peers--it is the Courier-Journal.
He mounts his foam-flecked war-steed, so spirited and gay;
He’s going for a whirl to-night, around the “Milky Way.”

He sings the old camp-meeting songs of Democratic Zion
And Salvation Army melodies in praise of Billy Bryan.
And from New England’s silver springs to the glaciers of Alaska
He calls on all to march behind bold Billy of Nebraska.

I guess he’ll skim its richest cream for Democratic butter,
While many an unhorsed rival lies cussin’ in the gutter.
His paragraphs are golden lamps which flare around a palace,
And he pours the wine of genius from an overflowing chalice.

Strong-limbed, sound-winded “Dark Horse”--he’s “bearded
like a pard”--(Good-bye, old Pard!)
An expert he in “sharps and flats”--the match of old Gerardi;
Both artists, those old boys, “by gum!” of copious variety--
Age can not wither, nor custom stale, their infinite--sobriety.

DEDICATION HYMN.

SUNG AT THE REOPENING OF THE METHODIST CHURCH, HOPKINSVILLE, KY., JANUARY 31, 1902.

Jesus, this earthly shrine once more
Opes wide in majesty;
The temple of our hearts anew
We consecrate to thee.
Redemption’s gates wide open swing,
All hail, thou Galilean King!

Faith laid the eternal corner-stone,
Hope built aloft the tower,
And Love shall call thy children, Lord,
At worship’s solemn hour.
Redemption’s glorious song they sing,
All hail, Life’s re-awakening Spring!

Here shall the Gospel’s splendor light
The Christian’s upward way,
From mortal to immortal life
Unto the perfect day.
The flowers and fruits of love we bring,
All hail, Life’s re-awakening Spring!

Bring, Holy Dove, to this pure shrine
The olive-branch of peace,
The perfect fruits of righteousness,
Love, joy, and rich increase.
Through Heaven’s blue vault her armies sing,
All hail, Life’s re-awakening Spring!

LYING IN STATE AT PRINCETON.

What means this sudden hush of grief,
O, brother Americans?
This solemn silence, deep though brief,
’Twixt the mustering of the clans--
Twixt Denver and Chicago--
The shouting of the captains
And the thunder of the bands?
Some for Taft are shouting
And some for Bryan cheer;
Both pause to weep for the mighty dead
At Princeton on his bier.
The solemn shadow of a pall
Darkens each great convention hall,
While patriots, and spoilsmen, too,
The great quadrennial fight renew.
All bring their wreathes of laurel leaf
With tears of deep and honest grief;
Roosevelt and Bryan both in reverence stand
Beside that coffined form, once mighty in the land.

Shout, patriots and partisans,
Each for your favorite son,
But the people mourn with unfeigned grief
For the chief whose race is run;
No message has he for the Senate,
No office to give away,
But seldom the living wield the power
Of him who is lifeless clay--
It is as if the sun went down
In the splendor of the day.

Mourn, O, Venezuela,
With long and loud lament,
Lay in the dust thy beaming brow
And weep with vesture rent;
Remember how he stood for thee,
Prepared to strike the blow,
Teaching to South America
The wisdom of Monroe:
“Europe’s houses of royal blood
Who claim a throne divine
Shall forge no chains for freemen
Upon Columbia’s shrine.”

Champion of all the sons of toil,
He crushed the Anarch’s serpent coil,
Made dark sedition quake with awe
And taught it reverence for law.
In cottage, court, or Senate hall,
He held one rule--Be just to all.
But still his heart-felt, chief desire
Centered around his household fire,
Where loving children, honored wife,
Dear idols of domestic life,
Diffused a cheering fragrance round
And made of Westland hallowed ground.

“Four years more of Grover!”
Was once a campaign song,
The battle-hymn of millions
In cadence loud and strong;
Sang you, O minstrel, “Four years more”?
Would you build a cage for the eagle to soar?
“Four years more of Grover!”
History shall proudly tell
He won and wore his laurels well;
“Four years more”--is all then over?
Is all this anxious toil and strife
But the short span of an infant’s life?
Upon its nurse’s lap an hour to dandle
And then--alas, the pity! Out, brief candle!

O friend, you do your manhood wrong,
You do the noble dead one wrong,
This just man’s, this wise statesman’s life
Is nobler than the mimic strife.
Of jesters in a Carnival,
The painted clowns in mimic brawl,
With wooden swords and buffoon song,
With grinning madness rife,
Driving the hopeless suicide
To poison or the knife.
I dare not look upon this form,
From which the breath has fled,
And say no life again shall warm
The dust of Cleveland dead.

But the high recording Angel
Sublimely calls above,
In eloquent words of love,
“A longer and a nobler date
Is the man’s who at Westland lies in state,
For Fame proclaims him truly great,
Far, far above all earthly fate--
The tumult and dust of mortal fate.
The verdict of posterity,
Written on a people’s heart, shall be:
“No brief Olympiad can measure
His fame who is a nation’s treasure,
And Cleveland’s years in Heaven shall be
A blissful immortality.”

And from the far heights of the starry sky,
Higher than Roman eagles fly,
Comes the sweet echo, “Immortality!”
And golden comets blazing through the spheres
Of Heaven’s illimitable years
Repeat the echo--“Immortality!”
And in my ears still ringing seem
The dulcet measures of a dream--
“Virtue shall never die.”
In the pure gleam of God’s own eye
It slakes its thirst from the clear stream
Of Immortality.

IN THE MORNING.

[ANNIE MCREA, PADUCAH, 1902.]

I looked at the hills in the morning,
Sweet valleys lay smiling between.
Then I lifted my soul to the Blessed,
Whose love in His mercies are seen.
The sun brought a flush as of roses
To the green earth, and Heaven so blue,
But a cloud hid the beautiful sunlight,
And the sparkle died out of the dew.

I prayed in my heart to the Savior
That His love might illumine my way,
That the sunshine and joy of His presence
Would brighten each wearisome day;
That strength for each duty be given,
And each action be prompted by love,
Till at last by the brightness of Heaven
I should dwell with the angels above.

The joy that to me has been given
In language can never be told,
And my dream of the glory of Heaven
Is of Christ in the gateway of gold;
And I pray that no cloud may o’ershadow
The faith that my heart holds as true,
Like the darkening clouds in the morning,
When the sparkle died out of the dew.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] McCool was shot the same night by Major Bassett’s men. He was a ruffian of the lowest type, and had terrorized his neighborhood for years.

[B] The fourteen lines following are of course a later interpolation.

[C] Paul Kruger, the unfortunate President of the Transvaal or South African Republic, offered $4,000,000 in diamonds to Leo XIII for his influence in the war with the British Government which overthrew his reign. The proffer was refused.

[D]

“This eloquent appeal stirs the soul like the soaring notes
of the bugle.”
--PRENTICE.

[E] On a flag presentation by citizens of Nashville to the troops.

[F] Honorable James A. McKenzie, late eloquent Congressman from the second Kentucky district, thus beautifully characterized Mrs. Cleveland.