sonnets by the nawab nizamat jung bahadur "_love is not discoverable by the eye, but only by the soul. its elements are indeed innate in our mortal constitution, and we give it the names of joy and aphrodite; but in its highest nature no mortal hath fully comprehended it_." empedocles. "_every one choose the object of his affections according to his character.... the divine is beauty, wisdom, goodness, and by these the wings of the soul are nourished_." plato. contents foreword, by r.c. fraser note on the history of the sonnet in english literature prologue i. rebirth ii. the crown of life iii. before the throne iv. worship v. unity vi. love's silence vii. the sublime hope viii. the heart of love ix. "'twixt star and star" x. the higher knighthood xi. in beauty's bloom xii. eternal joy xiii. constancy xiv. calm after storm xv. the star of love xvi. imprisoned music xvii. love's message xviii. ecstasy xix. the dream xx. ethereal beauty xxi. a crown of thorns xxii. two hearts in one xxiii. yearning xxiv. love's gift epilogue foreword by richard charles fraser the following sonnet sequence,--written during rare intervals of leisure in a busy and strenuous life,--was privately printed in madras early in , without any intention of publication on the part of the author. he has, however, now consented to allow it to be given to a wider audience; and we anticipate in many directions a welcome for this small but significant volume by the writer of _india to england_, one of the most popular and often-quoted lyrics evoked by the great war. the nawab nizamat jung bahadur, was born in the state of hyderabad, but educated in england; and there are some--at cambridge and elsewhere--who will remember his keenly discriminating interest in british history and literature, and the comprehensive way he, in a few words, would indicate his impressions of poets and heroes, long dead, but to him ever-living. his appreciation was both ardent and just; he could swiftly recognise the nobler elements in characters which at first glance might seem startlingly dissimilar; and he could pass without apparent effort from study of the lives of men of action to the inward contemplations of abstruse philosophers. to those who have not met him, it may appear paradoxical to say that his tastes were at the same moment acutely fastidious and widely sympathetic; but anyone who has talked with him will recall the blend of high impersonal ideas with a remarkable personality which seldom failed to stimulate other minds--even if those others shared few if any of his intellectual tastes. a famous british general (still living) was once asked, "what is the most essential quality for a great leader of men?" and he replied in one word "sympathy." the general was speaking of leadership in relation to warfare; and by "sympathy" he meant swift insight into the minds of others; and, with this insight, the power to arouse and fan into a flame the spark of chivalry and true nobility in each. the career of the nawab nizamat jung has not been set in the world of action,--he is at present a judge of the high court in hyderabad,--but nevertheless this definition of sympathy is not irrelevant, for the nawab's personal influence has been more subtle and far-reaching than he himself is yet aware. his love of poetry and history, if on the one hand it has intensified his realisation of the sorrows and tragedies of earthly life, on the other hand has equipped him with a power to awake in others a vivid consciousness of the moral value of literature,--through which (for the mere asking) we any of us can find our way into a kingdom of great ideas. this kingdom is also the kingdom of eternal realities--or so at least it should be; and those who in the early nineties in england talked with nizamoudhin (as he then was) could scarcely fail to notice that he valued the genius of an author, or the exploits of a character in history, chiefly in proportion to the permanent and vital nature of the truths this character had laboured to express--whether in words or action. but truth, has many faces; and scarcely any poet (except perhaps shakespeare) has come within measurable distance of expressing every aspect of the human character. the nawab could take pleasure in reading poets as temperamentally dissimilar as shelley and scott, spenser and byron,--to name only a few. shelley, who was a spirit utterly unable to understand this world or ordinary homespun human nature; and scott, who not only comprehended both without an effort, but who combined the practical and the romantic elements successfully in his own life, a devotion to spenser, "the poet's poet," the poet of a dreamy yet very real and living chivalry,--spenser who used to forget himself in his creations,--did not prevent the nawab from understanding byron, who never could forget himself at all; and who, with all his vivid impulses of generous sympathy for the oppressed, is nevertheless generally classed to-day as a colossal egoist. (unjustly so, for no mere egoist would have toiled as he toiled for greek emancipation, in the nerve-racking campaign which cost him his life.) in _india to england_--most characteristic of the war poems of nizamat jung--we see traces of the influence of more than one of the english poets he has read so lovingly. but the poem is none the less poignantly personal. the same may be said of the sonnets here prefaced; for although they are related to the sonnets of earlier poets whose work must be familiar to the writer, yet they are in no sense imitations, nor are they echoes. "_poetry is the natural language of strong emotion_," the nawab said many years ago;--and if it may be asked why, holding this view, he has chosen such an elaborate (and, some people might add, artificial) form as the sonnet, we can only answer that when an emotion or conviction is deep-seated and permanent, it becomes clarified, concentrated, and intensified under the stern discipline of compression within the arbitrary yet expressive limitations of a sonnet.[a] one of the main reasons why the nawab's friends have urged the publication of his sonnets, is that despite occasional imperfections (of which he himself is conscious), they form a consistent whole, and in their spirit and sentiment they are akin to some of the most noble utterances of the great minds and hearts whose words have been like torches to show what heights a strong aspiring soul can climb. "_the will is the master. imagination the tool, and the body the plastic material_," said a famous physician, who was also a practical man of the world;--and the poet who identifies his will and imagination with the eternal truths, who looks up to the stars instead of down into the mud, may always, even in his weariest hours, cheer himself by mental companionship with the other resolute souls whose pens have been used as swords in the service of divine beauty. of all the most famous writers of sonnets, it is michelangelo whose words come back most vividly to memory as we read the nawab's expressions of faith. "_love wakes the soul and gives it wings to fly_." "_all beauty that to human sight is given is but the shadow, if we rightly see, of him from whom man's spirit issueth_." "_as heat from fire, my love from the ideal is parted never_." "_oh noble spirit, noble semblance taking, we mirrored in thy mortal beauty see what heaven and earth achieve in harmony_." thus wrote michelangelo of vittoria colonna (marchioness of pescara), "being enamoured of her divine spirit";[b] and though in the sonnets of the nawab, who uses what is for him a foreign tongue, the ideal is sometimes greater than the expression of it, yet the spirit shines out with a light which none can mistake. and whether the average man accepts or rejects the standards therein embodied, lovers of poetry will recognise that the nawab, in his championship of a high and noble ideal, fights in the same army as dante and michelangelo,--neither of them cloistered dreamers, neither of them arm-chair theorists, but men who lived and loved and suffered amidst the turmoil of a world they viewed with wide-open eyes and unflinching minds. the chivalrous ideal of an exalted and inspiring love can be rejected if we please;--but let none claim to be manly because this ideal seems too ethereal. for it is by the most vigorous, most strenuous, and most commanding souls and minds that this faith in the eternal beauty has been cherished and upheld most ardently and resolutely. _september , _. footnotes: [a] see "note on the history of the sonnet in english literature," below. [b] ascanio condivi's "life of michelangelo buonarroti." note on the history of the sonnet in english literature now that italy holds such a brilliant place among our allies during this the greatest war in the world's history--the war of chivalry (which is to say moral and spiritual right) against the arrogant might of the prussian octopus,--it is well to remember that it was from italy the sonnet first came into england. the word _sonnet_ in fact, is from the italian _sonetto_ (literally "a little sound"), and the _sonetto_ was originally a short poem recited or sung to the accompaniment of music, probably the lute or mandolin. whether its birth should be attributed to italy or sicily,--or to provence, the cradle of troubadour poetry,--is a subject on which the learned may still indulge in pleasant controversies. but in italy, towards the end of the thirteenth century, it had already become a favourite mode of expression; and some forty years later, in a manuscript treatise on the _poetica volgare_ (written in by a judge in padua), sixteen different forms of sonnet were enumerated as then in current use. but despite the continued vogue of the sonnet, and its association with the names of such masters as dante, petrarch, tasso and michelangelo in italy; ronsard in france; camoens in portugal; shakespeare, milton, wordsworth and rossetti in england--to say nothing of a host of minor poets, who, though one star differeth from another in glory, yet constitute a brilliant galaxy--it is remarkable that even now the average non-literary reader when asked "what is a sonnet?" seldom gives any more explicit reply than to say it is "a short poem limited to fourteen lines." the rules for the structure of those fourteen lines, and the labour and patience entailed in producing a poem under these limitations, are not always realised even by those who enjoy the results of the poet's concentrated efforts. the more successful a sonnet, the more the reader is apt to accept its beauty as if it had grown by a natural process like a flower. this, perhaps, is the best compliment we could pay the poet; but if the poet is one who boldly essays a most difficult and complex form, in a language which for him is foreign, then we should pause a moment to consider what it is that he has set out to accomplish. taking the structure first (though for the poet the spirit and impetus of the central idea must of course come first)--a sonnet on the italian (petrarchan) model must consist of fourteen lines of ten syllables each, and must be composed of a major and minor system, i.e. an octave and a sestet. in the octave (the first eight lines) the first, fourth, fifth and eighth lines must rhyme on the same sound, and the second, third, sixth and seventh, must rhyme on another sound. in the sestet (the last six lines) more liberty of rhyme and arrangement is permitted, but a rhymed couplet at the end is not usual except when the sonnet departs from the italian model and is on the english or, as we say, "shakespearian" pattern. each sonnet must be complete; and, even if one of a sequence, it should contain within itself everything necessary to the understanding of it. it must be the expression of _one_ emotion, _one_ fact, _one_ idea, and "the continuity of the thought, idea, or emotion must be unbroken throughout." "dignity and repose," "expression ample yet reticent," are qualities which one of our ablest modern critics emphasises as essential, and the end must always be more impressive than the beginning,--the reader must be carried onwards and upwards, and left with a definite feeling that in what has been said there is neither superfluity nor omission, but rather a completeness which precludes all wish or need for a longer poem. how difficult this is for the poet can only be realised by trying to achieve it. the earliest writers of english sonnets were two very romantic and gallant men of action, sir thomas wyatt, and henry howard, earl of surrey,--both destined to brief brilliant lives and tragic deaths. they were followed by spenser, sir philip sidney and a host of elizabethan poets, courtly and otherwise. but it is shakespeare whose sonnets (though not conforming to the petrarchan model) show the most force and fire of any in our language until those of milton. to analyse the variations of the shakesperian, spenserian and miltonian forms is, however, unnecessary to our present purpose, as the sonnet sequence we are now prefacing is based on the petrarchan model. strictly speaking, the petrarchan sestet (the last six lines) should have three separate rhymed sounds; the first and fourth lines, the second and fifth, and the third and sixth should form the three rhymes. but this rule is by no means invariably followed; even wordsworth and rossetti often rhymed the first with the third, and the second with the fourth lines; and sometimes used only two sounds,--the first, third, and fifth lines making one rhyme and the second, fourth, and sixth the other. as already said, these liberties are permitted, for the sestet is not under such arbitrary regulations as the octave. there are writers who keep all the rules, and yet leave their readers cold; and others who are technically less correct, but in whom the vigour and intensity of emotion is swiftly felt and silences adverse criticism. the ideal is to combine deep and exalted feeling with perfect expression, and produce a whole which goes to the heart like a beautiful piece of music, and satisfies the mind--like one of those ancient greek gems which, in a small space, presents engraved images symbolic of sublime ideas vast as the universe. the nawab nizamat jung has written in english several sonnets which we should admire even if english were his native language. but if any of us would like to form some estimate of the difficulties he has surmounted, let us sit down and try to express in a sonnet in _any_ foreign language our own thoughts and beliefs. we shall then the better appreciate what he has achieved. as, however, while the great war lasts, few of us have leisure for literary experiments, it will perhaps be best to read these sonnets primarily for their soul and spirit. in melody and expression they are of varying degrees of merit and completeness, but in the inspiring ideal they consistently embody they rise to heights which have been scaled only by the noblest. in tone and temper--as already said--they are akin to the sonnets to vittoria colonna by michelangelo,--of whom it was written by one who knew him well, "_though i have held such long intercourse with him i have never heard from his mouth a word, that was not most honourable.... in him there are no base thoughts.... he loves not only human beauty, but everything that is beautiful and exquisite in its own kind,--marvelling at it with a wonderful admiration_." here we see defined the temperament of the heroic poet, that inner nobility and exaltation without which mere technical skill can avail little in moving and holding the hearts of men. this note on the structure of the sonnet would fail in its purpose if it distracted the reader from the spirit behind the form;--for the spirit is the life,--and few who read these sonnets will deny that the spirit of nizamat jung is that of the true poet, ever striving to look beyond ephemeral sorrows up to the eternal beauty--now hidden behind a veil, but some day to be revealed in all its splendour and completeness. r.c.f. _october , _. sonnets prologue as one who wanders lone and wearily through desert tracts of silence and of night, pining for lovers keen utterance and for light, and chasing shadowy forms that mock and flee, my soul was wandering through eternity, seeking, within the depth and on the height of being, one with whom it might unite in life and love and immortality; when lo! she stood before me, whom i'd sought, with dying hope, through life's decaying years-- a form, a spirit, human yet divine. love gave her eyes the light of heav'n, and taught her lips the mystic music of the spheres. our beings met,--i felt her soul in mine; i rebirth to me no mortal but a spirit blest, a light-girt messenger of love art thou-- the radiant star of hope upon thy brow. the thrice-pure fire of love within thy breast! thou comest to me as a heavenly guest, as god's fulfilment of the purest vow love's heart e'er made--thou com'st to show e'en _now_ the infinite, th' eternal and the best! i clasp thy feet,--o fold me in thy wings, and place thy pure white hands upon my head, and breathe, o breathe, thy love-breath o'er mine eyes till, like the flame that from dark ashes springs, my chastened spirit, from a self that's dead, upon the wings of love shall heav'nward rise. ii the crown of life i know not what love is,--a memory of heav'n once known,--a yearning for some goal that shines afar,--a dream that doth control the spirit, shadowing forth what is to be. but this i know, my heart hath found in thee the crown of life, the glory of the soul, the healing of all strife, the making whole of my imperfect being,--yea, of me! for to mine eyes thine eyes, through love, reveal the smile of god; to me god's healing breath comes through thy hallowed lips whose pray'r is love. thy touch gives life! and oh, let me but feel thy hovering hand my closing eyes above,-- then, then, my soul will triumph over death. iii before the throne when on thy brow i gaze and in thine eyes-- eyes heavy-laden with the soul's desire, not passion-lit, but lit with heav'n's own fire-- i have a vision of love's paradise. gazing, my trancèd spirit straightway flies beyond the zone to which the stars aspire; i hear the blent notes of the white-wing'd quire around immortal love triumphant rise. and there i kneel before th' eternal throne of love, whose light conceals him,--there i see, veiled in his sacred light, a face well known to me on earth, now, yearning, bend o'er me. heaven's mystic veil, inwove of light and tone, conceals thee not, belovèd,--i know thee! iv worship how poor is all my love, how great thy claim! how weak the breath, the voice which would reveal all that thy soul hath taught my soul to feel-- longings profound,--deep thoughts without a name. if god's self might be worshipped, without blame, in his best works, then would i silent kneel watching thine eyes,--until my soul should steal back, unperceived, to regions whence it came! if my whole life were but one thought of thee, that thought the purest worship of my heart and my soul's yearning blent; if at thy feet i offered such a life, there still would be something to wish for,--something to complete the measure of my love and thy desert. v unity when i approach thee, love, i lay aside all that is mortal in me; with a heart absolved and pure, and cleansed in every part of every thought that i might wish to hide from god, i come,--fit spirit to abide with such a soaring spirit as thou art, whose eye transfixes with a fiery dart presumptuous passion and ignoble pride. yea, thus i come to thee, and thus i dare to gaze into thine eyes; i take thy hand, and its soft touch upon my lips and eyes thrills thy pure being, while it lingers there, into my heart and soul;--and then we stand like the first two that loved in paradise! vi love's silence when through thine eyes the light of heav'n doth shine upon my being, and thy whisper brings, as the soft rustling of an angel's wings, joy to my soul and peace and grace divine; when thus thy body and thy soul combine to weave the mystic web thy beauty flings around my heart, whose thrilling silence rings with hope's unuttered songs that make thee mine,-- ah, then, o love! what need of words have we, who speak in feeling to each other's heart? words are too weak love's message to impart, too frail to live through love's eternity. silence, the voice of god, alone must be love's voice for thee, beloved as them art. vii the sublime hope what need to tell thee o'er and o'er again what eyes to eyes have spoken silently and heart to heart hath uttered? love must be for us a hushed delight, a voiceless pain serenely borne! our lips must ne'er profane our inmost feelings,--lest the sanctity of love be lessened in our hearts and we nought higher than the common path attain! the common path were death to us, whose love, o'erruled by fate, from earthly hopes debarred, must look to heav'n for sublimer joys than those which earth can give, which earth destroys. our path is steep, but there is light above, and faith can make the roughest way less hard. viii the heart of love look in mine eyes, belovèd,--for my tongue must never utter what my heart doth claim,-- and read love there, for love's forbidden name dies on my trembling lips unvoiced, unsung. nor sighs, nor tears--the bitter tribute wrung from hearts of woe--must e'er that love proclaim for which the world's unpitying heart would blame thy pity--though from purest fountains sprung. fate and the world, they bid wide oceans roll between our yearning hearts and their desire; yea, lips they silence, but can ne'er control the heart of love, nor quench its sacred fire. i must not speak; o look into my soul-- there read the message which thou dost require! ix "twixt star and star" not here,--not here, where weak conventions mar life's hopes and joys, love's beauty, truth and grace, must i come near thee, greet thee face to face, pour in thine ear the songs and sighs that are my heart's best offerings. but in regions far, where love's ethereal pinions may embrace beauty divine--in the clear interspace of twilight silence betwixt star and star, and in the smiles of cloudless skies serene, in dawn's first blush and sunset's lingering glow, and in the glamour of the moon's chaste beams-- my soul meets thine, and there thine image seen, more real than life, doth to my lone heart show such charms as live in memory's haunting dreams! x the higher knighthood a time there was, when for thy beauty's prize-- hadst thou but deemed my love that prize deserved-- what hope, what faith my daring heart had nerved for proud achievement and for high emprize! no knight, that owned the spell of beauty's eyes and wore her sleeve upon his helm, had served his vows with faith like mine; i ne'er had swerved one jot from mine for all beneath the skies. that time is dead, alas! and yet this heart is thine, still thine, with love's high chivalry and faith that cannot die; but now its part must be a higher knighthood,--patiently to brook life's ills, and, pierced with many a dart, by sacrifice of self to merit thee. xi in beauty's bloom as when the moon, emerging from a cloud, sheds on the dreary earth her gracious light, a smile comes o'er the frowning brow of night, who hastens to withdraw her sable shroud; and then the lurking shadows' dark-robed crowd, pursued with glitt'ring shafts, is put to flight; and, robed in silv'ry raiment, soft and bright the humblest flower as a queen seems proud; so when thou com'st to me in beauty's bloom, and on thy face soft pity's graces shine, thou can'st dispel the heavy shades of gloom from my sad heart, which ceases then to pine; and hope and joy their quenched beams relume and gild the universe with light divine. xii eternal joy truth is but as the eye of god doth see; and love is truth, and love hath made thee mine. what though on earth our lives may not combine, love makes us one for all eternity! god gives us to each other, bids us be each other's soul's fulfilment, makes love shine upon our souls as his own light divine. an effluence of his own deity. why ask for more? our union is above all earthly unions, ours those heights serene where love alone is heav'n and heav'n is love-- where never comes the world's harsh breath between hope's fruits and flow'rs. ah, why then earthward move, where pure and perfect bliss hath never been? xiii constancy ah, love, i know that to my love thou art, and must be, in this life, a dream,--a name! but be it joy or grief, or praise or blame, i give thee all the worship of my heart. 'tis not for love to bid life's cares depart; love wings the soul for heaven whence it came. such love from petrarch's soul did laura claim, and beatrice to dante did impart. to thee i turn,--be thou or near or far, and whether on my love thou frown or smile,-- as, in mid-ocean, to some fairy isle palm-crowned; as, in the heav'ns, to eve's bright star whose pure white fire allures the vision, while myriads of paler lights unnoticed are! xiv calm after storm thou hast but seen what but mine eyes have shown-- mine eyes that gazing on thee picture heaven; thou hast but heard what but my voice hath given-- my voice that takes from thine a calmer tone. ah! couldst thou know all that my heart hath known, while with despair's dark phantoms it hath striven-- from faith to doubt, from joy to sorrow driven, till rescued and redeemed by love alone,-- thou wouldst not marvel were my cloudless brow o'er-clouded, were my aspect less serene! love smiles on death, unveils his mystery of joy and grief, and love bids me avow this truth, with chastened heart and tranquil mien,-- 'less pure love's bliss if less love's agony.' xv the star of love time's cycle rolls--once more i hail the day on which propitious heaven sent to earth, disguised in thy fair form, in mortal birth, the star of love, whose pure celestial ray glides through the spirit's gloom and lights the way to bliss! i hail thy coming 'midst the dearth of the soul's aspirations, when the worth of hearts like thine had ceased men's hearts to sway. i greet thee, love, and with thee scale the height, that cloudless height where winged spirits rest: where the deep yearnings of the mortal breast, from mortal bin set free, reveal to sight that living presence, that eternal light in which enwrapt the eager soul is blest. xvi imprisoned music oh, had i but the poet's voice to sing, then would the music prisoned in my heart (panting in vain its message to impart) hover around thee, love, on trembling wing, to tell thee of the soft-eyed hopes that cling to love's white feet, the doubts and fears that start and pierce his bosom with a poisoned dart,-- the smiles that soothe, the cold hard looks that sting! but 'tis not mine, the soaring joy of song: i strive to voice my soul, but strive in vain. though passion thrills, and eager fancies throng, deckt in the varying hues of joy and pain, yet the weak voice--as weak as love is strong-- dies murm'ring on love's throbbing heart again. xvii love's message we will not take love's name; that little word, by lips too oft profaned, we will not use. from nature's best and loveliest we will choose fit symbols for love's message; like a bird,-- whose warbled love-notes by its mate are heard in greenwood glade,--shalt thou in strains profuse the prisoned music of thy heart unloose, while my heart's love is by sweet flow'rs averred. then take, o take these fresh-awakened flowers, the symbols of my love, and keep them near, where they may feel thy breath and touch thy hand; then sing thy songs to me,--in silver showers pour forth, thine eager soul, and i shall hear; ah, thus will love love's message understand! xviii ecstasy the nightingale upon the rose's breast warbling her tale of life-long sorrow lies, till in love's trancèd ecstasy her eyes close and her throbbing heart is set at rest; for, to the yielding flow'r her bosom prest, death steals upon her in the sweet disguise of crownèd love and brings what life denies,-- mingling of the souls,--love's eager quest! thus let my heart against thy heart repose, sigh forth its life in one delicious sigh, then drink new life from out thy balmy breath; thus in love's languor let our eyelids close, and let our blended souls enchanted lie, and dream of joy beyond the gates of death. xix the dream was it a dream, when, through the spirit's gloom, i saw the yearning face of beauty shine-- soft in its human aspect, though divine, pleading for human love, though armed with doom? and was it but a dream, that faint perfume, blent of loose tress and soft lips joined to mine, those fair white arms that did my neck entwine, that neck's sweet warmth, that smooth cheek's floral bloom? ah! was it true, or was it but a dream of bliss that scarce to mortal hearts is given? ah! was it thou, belovèd, or some bright phantom of thee that made thy presence seem, rich with the warmth of life, the light of heaven, to hover o'er the realms where both unite? xx ethereal beauty nay, it was thou, when the fair evening star leaned on the purple bosom of the west; 'twas thou, when o'er the far hills' frowning crest fell the soft beams of cynthia's silv'ry car: thyself--than stars and moonbeams fairer far-- a vision in ethereal beauty drest! but, when thy head drooped flow'r-like on my breast, then did no word our souls' communion mar: love spake to love without a sign or glance, and heart to heart its inmost depth revealed in the deep thrilling silence of that trance, till earth, and earthly being ceased to be, and our blent souls at that high altar kneeled whence love doth gaze upon eternity! xxi a crown of thorns there was a crown of thorns upon the head of love, when he across my threshold came. i knew the sign and did not ask his name, but took him to my heart, although he said, 'the soul's dumb agonies, the tears unshed that sear the heart, th' injustice and the blame of the harsh world,--god wills that i should claim through these immortal life when hope is dead.' i took him to my heart and clasped him close. e'en though his thorns did make my bosom bleed. then from the very core of pain arose a joy that seemed to be the utmost need of my worn soul! love whispered, '_this_ the meed of hearts that keep their faith amidst love's woes.' xxii two hearts in one two hearts made one by love that cannot die whatever life may bring, shall never part; in life they're one, and e'en in death one heart! are we not such, belovèd, thou and i? ah, then, why mourn that 'neath another sky, far from these longing arms and eyes thou art? i clasp thee still, and lo! thy lips impart new life to me as in the days gone by. i feel thy heart in mine,--our hopes and fears, like music's wedded notes, together flow; our sighs the same, the same our smiles and tears,-- the selfsame bliss is ours, the selfsame woe. for love no weary leagues, no ling'ring years-- two hearts in one nor time nor distance know. xxiii yearning the night is sweet: thy breath is in the air, i feel it on my face; thy tender eyes look love upon me from yon starry skies! they bring to me, those glancing moonbeams fair, the shine and ripple of thy silken hair. and in the silent whispers and the sighs that from the throbbing heart of nature rise, i hear thee, feel thee,--own thy presence there. ah, fond deceit!--too soon the heart, unblest, unsated, turns from these illusive charms back to the haunting dream of heav'n once known: it pines for those soft eyes, that throbbing breast, those sweet life-giving lips, those circling arms-- the breath, the touch, the warmth of beauty flown. xxiv love's gift i'm far from thee, yet oft our spirits meet: we share the longings of each other's breast, and all our joys and sorrows are confest as though our lips did love's fond tale repeat. ah! then thine eyes send forth, mine eyes to greet, glances in which thy whole soul is exprest, then, like some song-bird flutt'ring in its nest, i hear thy heart in pulsing cadence beat. i know its music and i know its thought; my heart to it th' unuttered words supplies; i listen to the thrilling melody until my soul its subtle tone hath caught. and then i take it as love's gift,--it lies imprisoned in my own weak poesy! epilogue from out the golden dawn of vanished years she glides into my dreams, a form divine of light and love, to soothe the thoughts that pine for what has been, to stem the tide of tears that inward flows upon the heart and sears its inmost core. her countenance benign, where love and pity's chastened graces shine, reflects the hallowed light of other spheres. then to my anguished soul, with care outworn, comes, like a strain on aerial wings upborne, this message from her soul:--'_bid sorrow cease; love dies not;--'tis th' immortal life above. and chastened souls, that win eternal peace through earthly suff'ring, know that heaven is love_!' _the_ lost temples of xantoos by howell calhoun celestial fantasies of deathless night, enraptured colonnades adorned with pearls, resplendent guardians of crimson light, expanse of darkness silently unfurls among colossal ruins on this shore, that once was purled by xantoos' rolling seas; nothing remains upon this barren core of mars, but your palatial memories. your altars and magnificent black gods still flash beneath the sapphire torches' flames, the fragrant ring of sacred flowers nods beneath the monstrous idols' gilded frames. your jeweled gates swing open on their bands of gold; within, a lurid shadow stands. transcriber's note: this etext was produced from weird tales october . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed. _sonnets from the patagonian_ books _by_ donald evans published by #nicholas l. brown#: #discords# #two deaths in the bronx# #nine poems from a valetudinarium# #sonnets from the patagonian# special edition of the last title on etruria (italian hand-made) paper limited to numbered copies, signed by author and publisher. insert--one full sonnet written in the author's hand. $ . . _this edition is limited to copies._ _sonnets from the patagonian_ (_donald evans_) _philadelphia nicholas l. brown _ #copyright, by nicholas l. brown# _advertisement_ _my dear cornwall hollis_: _with the allied cause crumbling away it is high time we thought of aesthetics. as a triste jest i said that to you the other day, and your reply was a plea to let you write a preface for a new edition of my forgotten sonnets from the patagonian. i am at last persuaded, and who but you should do the preface?_ _with mitteleuropa a fact it should be apparent to any honest, thinking man that we are losing the war. perhaps, in a larger sense, we have already lost the war and the dusk of the anglo-saxon is come. then we are at last joined with the héllenes and latins in the descending scale, and it is the teuton now approaching the perihelion, with the slav, yet to conquer, in the far distance. but that is an eye-survey for eternity, and we have merely to do with the finite present. so we may still think of resistance, and not yet abandon hope of postponing defeat._ _it is now the hour for the supreme test of america, and she too must fail, as our allies have failed, before the huns unless somewhere she can find the beauty and the strength of the human soul with which to give battle. for the first time in history it is souls, not guns, that will win the war, and remember, my dear friend, that beauty is more necessary than food that the soul may live._ _we are all but engulfed in error. we say that we do not hate the german people; it is the kaiser we are fighting. a pitiful self-delusion! it must be the german people we hate as an overshadowing race, if our fight is to have even the excuse of the inflamed passion of the survival of the fittest. we must acknowledge the kaiser as the symbol of the best organized form of government, unless we are frankly anarchists; the most efficient, the most powerful, the most nearly approaching a practical socialism. let us, therefore, start afresh. we hate the german people, for they have threatened our complacent supremacy as lords of the world. now we are at least truthful._ _thus far, the allies have failed signally as a military force. the europeans have forgotten how to fight, and we in america have never learned. we have put too much faith in materialism, and betrayed the soul and beauty. there is more to life than living, and more to an army than arms. the moment is here that demands we scrap the military leaders, as such, and seek stronger. why not then turn to the poets to direct the war, for, lo! it was the poets who in seven days won the irish revolution. none knows better than you how i begrudge giving the ever-turbulent west britons any praise, any glory, but there is the simple truth. they vanquished the foe because they first had conquered fear, and then nought could stand against them._ _if we could purge ourselves of our fear of germany we should capture berlin. could i enlist a battalion of irreproachables, whose uniforms should be walking suit, top hat and pumps, and their only weapon an ebony stick, and sail tomorrow, we should march down unter den linden in a month, provided wrapped in our kerchiefs we carried the gospel of beauty, and a nonchalance in the knot of our cravats._ _verily, verily, men are killed solely because they fear death, and turn their backs on beauty, for only ugliness and error can destroy, and ugliness in the end destroys itself._ _there is really no horror in the war. even in the ridiculous way we are now fighting it is all a shabby, stupid sham. that chap griffith gave us a more realistic spectacle in "the birth of a nation." far too few men are actually killed and wounded, and the job is much too large for the materialists. they do not know how to employ effectively the huge forces they have raised into being._ _if somehow we can grope our way back to the springs of beauty all may yet be saved, but it will require the sacrifice of everything we have. for myriads it will mean the offering of their lives, for that is all they possess, and it must be done freely, gladly, with their souls purified, if it is to avail anything. pride, ambition, selfishness, self-will must go, or we perish blind miserables._ _for myself, you know i am willingly in service as a common soldier, although some years beyond conscription age. ungrudgingly i gave up alcohol--almost a lifelong necessity--and for months i, the epicurean, have been dispassionately measuring the supposed hardships of war that i might truly understand what a soldier has to undergo. with beauty in the bloodbeat privation is nothing. what can touch me now except the amusing joy of giving up for the common good? yet who actually loves humankind less than i? but the subordination idea intrigues me, possesses me, satisfies me. how better can i prove my patent of snobbery and my innate right cordially to dislike my fellowmen?_ _the social degradation involved in functioning as an enlisted man was and, of course, is the worst of the annoyances. i am neither young enough nor sufficiently democratic to enjoy day after day a below-stairs status. it is a trial, i confess, but i venture to persuade myself that i do all that is required of me with admirable abasement and detachment. occasionally, indeed, it is capital fun to play the anonymous cipher. i am often urged to obtain a commission. but i cannot quite do that, for would not that be a confession that i hadn't the pluck to stick it out? i must remain as i am. many of my contemporaries are finding the khaki an easy means of increasing their literary reputations. wise brothers, ye have chosen your rôles. i prefer mine._ _before you have seen my book through the press i may be dead. with all my heart i hope i shall not come back, for then impersonally i shall have fallen for a cause in which i have no faith. what more distinguished end for an incurable poseur? have i not been called that? plant, i beg you, mignonette to encircle my arrowroot fields._ _what has all this to do with the sonnets from the patagonian? if you will read my words aright they will give the key to my poems, should you, my beloved hollis, still lack a key. the volume when it first appeared was not liked by divers nice people--it was thought nasty--but none put it down till he had finished it; a terror was on him lest he miss a word. and the terror was the sword of beauty which slayeth all. intrepidity...._ _but you shall interpret the poems yourself._ _donald evans._ _i have broken my engagement to write a preface, but have given you, gentle reader, the poet's letter instead._ _cornwall hollis._ indices #love in patagonia# love in patagonia: p. #portraits of igor vyvyan# in the vices: p. en monocle: p. #portrait of the fan fan# loving kindness: p. #portrait of mme. hyssain# theâtre du nord: p. #portrait: in memoriam# failure at forty: p. #portrait of a gentleman and a lady# aspens at cresheim: p. #portrait of michael peter# birthday piece no. : p. #portraits of mabel dodge# her smile: p. the last dance at dawn: p. #portrait of carl van vechten# in the gentlemanly interest: p. #portraits of louise norton# buveuse d'absinthe: p. extreme unction: p. the jade vase: p. #portraits of the author# epicede: p. in the falklands: p. the noon of night: p. fifth avenue: p. love in patagonia _to carl van vechten_ love in patagonia forgetting her mauve vows the fania fled, taking away her moonlight scarves with her-- there was no joy left in the calendar, and life was but an orchid that was dead. even our pious peacocks went unfed-- i had deserved no treachery like this, for i had bitten sharp kiss after kiss devoutly, till her sleek young body bled. then carlo came; he shone like a new sin-- straightway i knew pearl-powder still was sweet, and that my bleeding heart would not be scarred. i sought a shop where shoes were sold within, and for three hundred francs made brave my feet, and then i danced along the boulevard! portraits of igor vyvyan _to pitts sanborn_ in the vices gay and audacious crime glints in his eyes, and his mad talk, raping the commonplace, gleefully runs a devil-praising race, and none can ever follow where he flies. he streaks himself with vices tenderly; he cradles sin, and with a figleaf fan taps his green cat, watching a bored sun span the wasted minutes to eternity. once i took up his trail along the dark, wishful to track him to the witches' flame, to see the bubbling of the sneer and snare. the way led through a fragrant starlit park, and soon upon a harlot's house i came-- within i found him playing at solitaire! en monocle born with a monocle he stares at life, and sends his soul on pensive promenades; he pays a high price for discarded gods, and then regilds them to renew their strife. his calm moustache points to the ironies, and a fawn-coloured laugh sucks in the night, full of the riant mists that turn to white in brief lost battles with banalities. masters are makeshifts and a path to tread for blue pumps that are ardent for the air; features are fixtures when the face is fled, and we are left the husks of tarnished hair; but he is one who lusts uncomforted to kiss the naked phrase quite unaware. portrait of the fan fan imitated from "discords" _to donovan blades_ loving kindness _moscow_ her flesh was lyrical and sweet to flog, for the whip blanched her blood, though every vein flooded with hate shot a hot flow of pain, and her screams were muffled by a brackish fog. he loved her, yet his passion could but fret unless he lashed her to an awkward rage-- but when his hand wrote terror on her page he knew exultant joy of feigned regret. theirs was a bond that poured the wine of fear, and he drained her stiffened limbs with cruel art. he taught her that all tenderness had fled till she would beg the hurt to taste the tear, and when she bent to kiss her quivering heart it lit a chinese candle in his head. portrait of mme. hyssain _to john darby_ theÂtre du nord _tashkend_ she was tired to tears, and yet there were no tears, only the dead seas of indifference meeting the languors of a nerveless sense, for she had played the rôles for twenty years. the queen called for her satins, while the drab demanded love, and the wild hunger tore; the woman raged to touch the flame once more, but the worn-out emotions could not stab. there were the thousand parts she had essayed, and the three thousand gowns that she had worn. into the ragbag each frock found its flight, crumpled and ravished of a film-proud shade, and every script is wandering forlorn, gnawed by the mirage of an opening night. portrait: in memoriam _to hugh campbell_ failure at forty he saw there was no choice to left or right-- time that had marked him for the least of sages pointed the hour, and several blotted pages stood witness to the struggle in the night. behind him lay a happiness that might have made him shine a figure through the ages; before him loomed a toiling at mean wages, alternative to sinking out of sight. this much was sure--he never need retrace; the leagues that he had travelled were an ending. there wound no footpath to a sunlit place, where he might nurse his dreams, with peace attending. no promised joy would quicken the day's pace, nor write the past a blunder still worth mending. portrait of a gentleman and a lady _to enid welsh_ aspens at cresheim she had become a stranger suddenly, just as all men were strangers; then he knew why she must be an alien--even she! since there was nought her human love could do to give him the last access to her soul. returning came his years as wholly vain-- repeated payment of inutile toll to reach a shrine he would not seek again. it scarcely left him sad to find how wrong had been his vision of won womanhood-- this yearning ache that he had held so long for a full mingling of their separate blood. freed, solitary now, with unscared eyes he gazed anew at life safe from surprise! portrait of michael peter _to fania marinoff_ birthday piece no. there is what is and what there is is fair, but most is yet to come to what is here; here is the most to come from out a year, for from the year there comes all there is there. song for the minnow and a crystal pool, and all is said of all there was to say, yet all must say the all, since every day a nuptial kiss the wise man gives a fool. an ear of corn from the blind red sunburnt earth blandly lies in the sun divinely green, disowning what the earth and sun have done. kisses and corn and a pool to crown the birth, with once to come what never before has been, and here is there what there is here begun. portraits of mabel dodge _to louis sherwin_ her smile _laggan_ her hidden smile was full of little breasts, and with her too white hands she stroked her fears, the while the serpent peered at her arched ears, and night's grim hours stalked in, unbidden guests. a noise was in her eyes that sang of scorn, and round her voice there gleamed a nameless dread, as though her lips were hungry for the dead, yet knew the food of dawn would be forlorn. the cold hours ebbed, and still she held her throne; across the sky the lightning made mad play, and then the scarlet screams stood forth revealed. she turned her back, and grasped a monotone; it answered all; she lived again that day she triumphed in the tragic turnip field. the last dance at dawn _firenze_ and she was sad since she could not be sad, and every star fled amorous from the sky. her pampered knees fell under her keen eye and it came to her she would not go mad. the gaucheries were turning the last screw, but there was still the island in the sea, the harridan chorus of eternity, that let her smile because he saw she knew. she even dared be impudent again, and bit his ear; the deaths were far away. a black mass sounded from the treasure vaults-- she tried to rouge her heart, yet quite in vain. the crucifix danced in, beribboned, gay, and lisped to her a wish for the next waltz. portrait of carl van vechten _to gertrude stein_ in the gentlemanly interest _piccadilly_ he polished snubs till they were regnant art, curling their shameless toilets round the hour. each lay upon his lips an exquisite flower subtly malign and poisoned for its part. the path of victims was no wanton plan-- he had bowed his head in sorrow at his birth, for he had said long ere he came to earth that it was no place for a gentleman. but always a heart-scald lurked behind the screen, and somehow he missed the ultimate degrees. he saw a beggar at the daylight's fall and then he rose and robbed him for the scene; and when they called him cad he found release-- he felt he had used the finest snub of all. portraits of louise norton _to donald evans_ buveuse d'absinthe _rue d'aphrodite_ her voice was fleet-limbed and immaculate, and like peach blossoms blown across the wind her white words made the hour seem cool and kind, hung with soft dawns that danced a shadow fete. a silken silence crept up from the south, the flutes were hushed that mimed the orange moon, and down the willow stream my sighs were strewn, while i knelt to the corners of her mouth. lead me afar from clamorous dissonance, for i am sick of empty trumpetings, choking the highways with a dusty noise. here i have found her sweet sheer utterance, and now i seek the garden of the wings where i may bathe in sounds that life destroys. extreme unction across the rotting pads in the lily lake her gesture floated toward the iris bed, wrapped in a whispered perfume of the dead, and her gaze followed slowly in its wake. now was the summons come she must obey, for beauty pleaded from the charnel house, for violet nights and violent carouse to free her from the cerements of decay. crapulous hands reach out to strangle thee, and every moment is a winding-sheet, with bats to chant corruption's litany. be thou a torch to flash fanfaronade, and as the earth crumbles beneath thy feet flaunt thou the glitter of a new brocade! the jade vase _pittsburgh_ he had hunted for it to the alley's end, yet when he found the jade vase he was sad, low-pulsed with ennui for the praise he had poured into bowls that merely did not offend. a wall of glass held back his worshipping, and his eyes that drank this miracle of stone acknowledged the discovery not his own-- still the vase was there, and that was everything. he thought back over all the songs he had sung, and all the hours his heart like waving grain had swayed to music. and the joys now dead seemed haunting coins to meagre beauty flung. poignantly he longed to call them back. in vain! but they were the last words that the poet said. portraits of the author _to cornwall hollis_ epicede wistfully shimmering, shamelessly wise and weak, he lives in pawn, pledging a battered name; he loves his failures as one might love fame, and listens for the ghost years as they speak. a fragrance bright and broken clasps his head, and wildwood airs sing a frayed interlude, while cloaked he comes in a new attitude to play gravedigger if the word be said. he swore he would be glad and only glad, and turned to broadway for the peace of god. he found it at the bottom of the glass, for where the dregs lay it was less than sad, and mid the murmur when the dance was trod he heard the echo of a genius pass. in the falklands for his soul when homeless then is at home, and in a paradise where shadows wane he draws droll figures on the windowpane to lure his vagrom fellow souls to rome. there is a potent rancour in the moon, hunting for those who love him still, three gleam back. but with detached anxiety he vows that he will alienate them soon. he said that love had but two words, the last and first, and joy in flying laces lay. he watched each kiss to kill it at stark ease-- his strangler's hands carve prayers for the past-- and chastely he spends an hour every day erecting tombstones to carnalities. the noon of night the fictive tear he holds in reverence, and studies heady griefs that wash the cheek; it is a dim dominion he must seek, to gain some raiment for his impotence. sorrows are numbered, the sighs have their strings, and barren smiles are trained for tragedy; he ties up parcels of mock gaiety, and labels them with many worshippings. grapes in the grass, and every day a waste at scattered sources of lost loveliness, with drunkenness to drain the ruined seats. he knows his gems are turned to glassy paste-- but he thanks god aloof from all distress, for he knows sewers run beneath the city streets. fifth avenue and when discovery marred the best disguise he winced a sigh, bowed to a spoiled deceit, and donned the damask draperies of defeat to woo dishonour as an enterprise. his self-betrayal had its tenderness and reared an outland refuge for his pride, for all were baffled telling how he lied, since more than any guessed he would confess. he died a hero in fifth avenue one yellowed day saving a tattered man. but in the litter of his passing breath a prayer lay lest one should misconstrue. it was an accident--and he began a last profound apology to death. transcriber's note: # symbols surrounding text indicate that the text is in small capitals. the love sonnets of a car conductor by wallace irwin author of the love sonnets of a hoodlum the rubáiyát of omar khayyám, junior etc. with a harmless and instructive introduction by wolfgang copernicus addleburger professor of literary bi-products university of monte carlo paul elder & company san francisco and new york muse of my native land, am i inspir'd? --keats. copyright, by paul elder and company introduction science may conquer the stars, but it does nothing by jumps. as a scientist, as well as a philosopher, i am accustomed to reaching the transcendental by winding paths. it is characteristic of me that i should have consented to preface this remarkable sonnet cycle only after supreme deliberation, and that i should at last have determined to speak in behalf of the car conductor for the following reasons: . as a botanist i am fascinated by the phenomenon of genius flourishing from bud to flower, from flower to seed. . as a psychologist i am anxious to establish once and for all, both by plano-inductive and precoordinate systems of logic, the status of slang. what position does slang occupy in the thought of the world? let us turn to zoology for an answer. no traces of slang may be found among mollusks, crustaceans or the lower invertebrates. slang is not common to vertebrate fishes or to whales, seals, reptiles or anthropoid apes--in a word, slang-speaking is nowhere prevalent among lower animals. it may, then, be definitely and clearly asserted that slang is the natural, logical expression of the human race. if man, then, is the highest of created mammals, is not his natural speech (slang) the highest of created languages? it is generally conceded that literature is the most exalted expression of language. would not the literature, then, which employs the highest of created languages (slang) be the supreme literature of the world? by such logical, irrefutable, inductive steps have i proven not only the status of slang, but the literary importance of these sonnets which it is at once my scientific duty and my esthetic pleasure to introduce. the twenty-six exquisite sonnets which form this cycle were written, probably, during the years and . their author was william henry smith, a car conductor, who penned his passion, from time to time, on the back of transfer-slips which he treasured carefully in his hat ( ). we have it from no less an authority than professor sznuysko that the car conductor usually performed these literary feats in public, writing between fares on the rear platform of a sixth avenue car. smith's devotion to his musa sanctissima was often so hypnotic, i am told, that he neglected to let passengers on and off--nay, it is even held by some critics that he occasionally forgot to collect a fare. but be it said to his undying honor that his employers never suffered from such carelessness, for it was the custom of our poet to demand double fares from the old, the feeble and the mentally deficient. even as the illimitable ichor of star-dust, the mysterious demiurge of the universe, keeps the suns and planets to their orbitary revolutions, so must environment mark the fas and nefas of genius. plato's idea of the archetypal man was due, perhaps, as much to the serene weather conditions of academe as to the marvelous mentality of plato. what had job eaten for breakfast that he should have given utterance to his magnificent lamentation? was he the discoverer of human sorrow or the pioneer of human dyspepsia? it is not altogether radical on my part, then, for me to assert that many of the stylistic peculiarities found in these sonnets are attributable to the locale of their inspiration the rear platform of a sixth avenue car. one can plainly hear the jar and jounce of the elliptical wheels, the cry, "step lively!" the six o'clock stampede, the lament of the strap-hanging multitude in such lines as these: "three days with sad skidoo have came and went, yet pansy cometh nix to ride with me. i rubber vainly at the throng to see her golden locks--gee! such a discontent! perhaps she's beat it with some soapy gent--" where are lines like these to be found in the italian of petrarch? where has tasso uttered an impassioned confession to resemble this: "but when i ogle pansy in the throng my heart turns over twice and rings a gong"? of the human or personal record of william henry smith very little has been discovered. looking over the books of the metropolitan street railway i unearthed the following entry: "nov. , :" "w. h. smith, conductor, discharged." "remarks:--car no. , william smith, conductor, ran into large brewery truck at so. e. cor. sixth ave. it is reported that smith, to the neglect of his duty, was reading poetry from a book called 'sonnets of de heredia' at the time of the accident. three italians were slightly injured by the accident, and ethelbert pangwyn, an actor starring in 'the girl and the idiot,' a musical comedy, was killed." "smith was held for manslaughter, but judge o' rafferty, who had seen 'the girl and the idiot,' discharged the defendant, averring that the killing of pangwyn did not constitute a crime." what, then, has become of this minstrel who sang the minnelieder of the car-barns? like homer, like omar, like sappho, like shakespeare, he is a voice singing out of the mists. he was but a name to his employers; and his friends, if he has friends, remember him not. these sonnets, written neatly on twenty-six violet transfer-slips, were discovered, together with a rejection blank from a leading magazine, in the dead letter office. according to the current folk-lore in harlem and the bronx, smith is now living in california employed as a brakeman on the southern pacific railroad. some aver that pansy fell heiress to a sausage establishment and moved to italy with her poet. still others maintain that pansy, gill the grip and maxy the firebug never existed in real life--were merely the mind-children of a symbolist and a dreamer of dreams. to the latter theory i incline at a scholarly angle. this cycle may be taken, perhaps, not so much as a living record of human experience as a lofty parable sounding the key-note of all human life. gill the grip is the iago, the mefistofele, the symbolism of a malevolent destiny. maxy the firebug may be the poet's interpretation of the social unrest, of doubt, of progressive irresponsibility. would it be going too far, then, to say that pansy stands to us as the symbol of pan-girlism--as an almost anacreontic yearning for the type? or may not these sonnets be taken, in a way, as a modern vita nuova wherein a sixth avenue alighieri calls to his beatrice and mourns within when, "pansy-girl refuses to occur?" so much for the poet and his purpose. should any one of the readers of this cycle doubt the enduring greatness of the lines, let him consider that i, wolfgang copernicus addleburger, have seen fit to introduce them to immortality. ( ) since the salary-books of the metropolitan street railways show, during the year , conductors named smith in their employ, of whom were named william smith and william henry smith, it is easy for the reader to conceive my task in establishing the identity of our poet. w. c. a. the love sonnets of a car conductor prologue did some one ask if i am on the job? i sure am to the pay-roll with my lay, a hot tabasco-poultice which will stay close to the ribs and answer throb-to-throb. here have i chewed my music from the cob and followed passion from the get-away past the big grand stand where the pousse-café christens my muse as jennie-on-the-daub. hark ye, all marks who break the pure fool law, how i, the windy wonder of the age, have fought the tender passion to a draw and got my mug upon the sporting page, since love and i collided at the curve and left me with a dislocated nerve. i am i in bad? upon the tick of nine today the pansy got aboard my ship and sprung the trans-suburban for a trip. say, she's the shapely ticket pretty fine! next to her pattern anna held looks shine and lilly russell doesn't know the grip. but oh! she's got a deep ingrowing tip that she must shy at honks like yours and mine. i says to her, "fare, please!" out loud like that, but she pipes, "fade, bill, fade! you pinched my fare." that get-back tripped your oswald to the mat, and yet i yelled, "cough up here, golden hair!" eh, what? i got the zing from pansy's orb which says, "dry out now, shorty,--please absorb!" ii a true mcglook once handed this to me: when little bright eyes cuts the cake for you count twenty ere you eat the honey-goo which leads to love and matrimony--see? a small-change bunk what's bats on spending free can't four-flush when he's paying rent for two. the pin to flash on cupid is 'skidoo!' the call for sweet sixteen is " ." but say! life looks goshawful on the stretch without a ray of sunshine in my flat, with no one there to call me "handsome wretch," and dust the fuzz and mildew off my hat. if she was waiting at the church tonight you'd find me there with wedding-bells all right! iii pansy got on at sixteenth street last night, and some one flipped a handspring in my heart. she snickered once, "oh look, here's mr. smart!" was i there henry miller? guess you're right! i did the homerun monologue as bright as any scrub that ever learned the art. i plum forgot the signals, "stop" and "start!" and almost wrecked the car once--guess i might! i took one mike six blocks beyond the place he flagged for his. he got as red as ham and yodelled through his apopleptic face, "i think you're dips!" i says, "i know i am--" when pansy starts to send a wireless wave she simply just can't make her eyes behave! iv on every car there's always one fat coot what goes to sleep and dreams he's paid his fare. and when you squeak he gets the roosevelt glare, and hoots, "i won't be dickied with--i'll shoot!" then all the passengers get in and root. loud cheers of, "put him off!" and "make him square!" till mr. holdfast with an injured air pungles his nick and ends the bum dispute. it's ever thus on this here rolling ball-- you've got to pop your coin to ride so far. the yap that kicks and rings a deadhead call must either spend or else get off the car. on life's street railway wealth may cut the cheese, but death rings up and says, "step lively, please!" v "there'll be some fancy steps at car-barn hall," gilly the gripman pipes me off today, "this won't be any gabberfest--for say! nix but the candy goes to this here ball. you've got to flash your union card, that's all, to circulate the maze with tessie may, and all the newport push out harlem way will slip on wax till sunrise,--do you call?" i told him that i pulled the gong for that! if pansy would be there 'twas was me for it. i'd burnish up my buttons, mop my hat, polish my pumps and blow in for a hit. "all to the fritz," says gill, "if you get jolly around the curves--you're apt to slip your trolley!" vi the lemon-wagon rumbled by today and dropped me off a sour one--are you on? i went and gave the boss a cooney con about the car-barn kick--what did he say? "back to your platform, clarence light and gay, jingle the jocund fares, nor think upon the larks of harry lehr or bath house john, for they are it and you are still on pay." so i have been sky-prancing all night long a-dragging car-conductors and their queens clad in their laughing-robes to join the throng that makes the car-barn function all the beans. and say! i had a brainstorm just last trip when i took pansy's fare from gill the grip. vii at midnight when i got a gasp for lunch i mushed it for the car-barns just to lamp and see the creamy charlies do the vamp and swing their fancy floras in the crunch. i piped my pansy in among the bunch and asked her would she mix it with the champ, wouldn't she like to join me in a stamp? she saw me first and stopped me with a punch. i saw her hook a loop with gill the grip, with pinky smith and handsome hank she heeled; with all the dossy bunks she took a skip each time the german tune-professor spieled. but nix with me the lightsome toe she sprung-- as caesar said to cassius, "ouch! i'm stung!" viii forsooth that was a passing lusty clout that chopped me off with pansy--don't you fret! there's quite a blaze inside my garret yet, and all the dipper corps can't put it out. gilly the grip's a pretty ricky tout-- under the old rag-rug for him, you bet, when i put on my navajo and get one license to unloose my soul and shout. perhaps he thinks i'm old molasses freight sidetracked at pokey pond and filled with prunes waiting for congress to appropriate the nuggets draped around me in festoons. wait till i ticket pansy, then i guess slow freight will switch to honeymoon express! ix today i gave a serenade to gill; i says, "to put it pleasant you're a screech, your smile would shoo the seagulls off the beach, your face would give vesuvius a chill. you're just what mr. shakespeare calls 'a pill trying to keep company with a peach.' now, if you want to answer with a speech, open your trap at once, or else lie still." but when i handed gill the grip this cluster he simply clamped his language-mill down tight, strangled his guff and acted rather fluster although i'm sure i spoke to him polite. i guess that mr. gilly ain't the kind that understands when people talk refined. x three days with sad skidoo have came and went, yet pansy cometh nix to ride with me. i rubber vainly at the throng to see her golden locks--gee! such a discontent! perhaps she's beat it with some soapy gent-- perhaps she's promised gill the grip to be his no. till death tolls " !" while i am outsky in the supplement. now and anon some lizzie flags the train and i, poor dots, cry, "rapture, it is her!" yet guess again--my hope is all in vain and pansy girl refuses to occur. if this keeps up i think i'll finish swell among the jabbers in a padded cell. xi my trolley hikes to harlem p.d.q., and picks up pikers all along the beat. at six o'clock the aisles are full of feet, the straps with fingers, and the entire zoo boils on the platform with a mad huroo reckless as bronx mosquitoes after meat. the widow stands, the fat man gets the seat and satan smiles like foxy m. depew. and as we hikes along i thinks, thinks i, "the human race is like the ocean foam, roaring and discontented, peevish, fly--" say, why in blazes don't they stay to home? this travel-sickness is a danger which keeps hoboes poor and corporations rich. xii today i piped my future ma-in-law. she got aboard my pullman and she scared three babies into fits the way she glared. rattle my baggage if i ever saw a cracker-box to equal mother's jaw, a hardwood-finish face all nailed and squared. she ossified the gripman when she stared-- and me? well, i was overcame with awe. but, being pansy's ma, 't was up to me to hand her something pit-a-pat and swell, and so i says, "hello, queen cherokee! what ho! for pansy? hope she's feeling well." and ma responds, a trifle tart but game, "she minds her bizness--hope you feel the same." xiii i don't think mother chalked me out to win, to be the steady of her darling child. she thinks i am a kick-up, something wild, and no sweet girl should wear my college pin. she thinks i'm some too piffly with my chin and my soft prattle simply gets her riled. i've lost my keys with her, to put it mild, i don't belong, because i am not in. say how, with such an iceberg on the track, can i conduct my car to married bliss? i hoped that i could whistle pansy back, and lo! i got a frostbite off of this! i'd wrastle death for her, i'd fight her pa,-- but stab me if i'll syrup to her ma! xiv e'en as i stood with cobwebs in my tower a candy vision came and flagged the boat-- give forty rah-rah-rahs! o joy, o gloat! 'twas pansy like a fairy in a bower warbling, "hi, stop the car!" with all my power i yanked the bell. my brain was all afloat, my heart cut pin-wheels, stole a base at throat, sang "tammany"--and knighthood was in flower. i helped her on. my shoes were full of feet. i says, "how's ma?" she answers, "going some." i doffed my lid and ventured to repeat the breeze had put the weather on the bum. then she replied, not seeming sore or vexed, "it may not be so punk on sunday next." xv the sinful rich go whizzing by all day in wealthy wagons, looking pert and swell; they get the ride, the commons get the smell and full of thought and microbes wend their way. maxy the firebug says that mammon's sway is stringing virtue to a fare-ye-well, but wait, he says, till labor with a yell soaks mam a crack forninst the vertebray. the rich, says max, are simply dips and yeggs that lift the headlight beads from yaps like us; they pinch your pie, sew up our ham and eggs and leave us minus all that they are plus. the world, says max, belongs to me and bill and mrs. casey--whoa! let's roll a pill! xvi at mrs. casey's hunger-killing shop whither i hie thrice daily for my stew, i dream i'm mr. waldorf as i chew my prunes or lay my boston-baked on top. growley and sinkers, slum and mutton sop, india-rubber jelly known as "glue," a soup-bone goulash with a spud or two, clatter below until i signal "stop!" there may be chefs in france or albany can knock a poem from a wedge of pie; but just give me a check on mrs. c., for rapid-filling ballast, murmurs i. kings may prefer some tasty wads of hash, but they don't feed at fifteen cents per crash! xvii pansy and me for coney sunday noon to see a perfect lady bump the bumps; we rubbered at the lions with the chumps and took the wellman special to the moon. she asks me, "dance?" i answers, "just as soon," and so we clutched and whirled into the gumps, but every time i went to stir my stumps they stuck like gum-drops to a macaroon. "i could die dancing, danny!" murmurs she. (i gambolled on her corns, she hollered, "don't!") "i could die dancing also" (this from me), "but if you'll pass me up, i guess i won't." just then some lemon-sport observed my glide and warbled, "slide, you frozen chicken, slide!" xviii i next sprung pansy for a four-bit feed-- it was a giddy tax, but what care i? we shot the bill-of-fare from soup to pie and lemonade (that cost an extra seed). "you're the cute plunge," says pans', and i agreed that at a spenderfest i wasn't shy,-- that when it came to rolling nickels by, willie the cowboy was a perfect bleed. she said that thomas lawson on a lark would faint away to see the way i blew; she said i'd be the whizz in central park, and ready cash to me seemed very few. i asked her, did she need a valentine? and she responded, "you're the pink for mine!" xix we took the iron-clad wave-tub home at ten, and as we sat conversing on the deck a certain hester-street spaghetti-neck pipes through the darkness, "who's yer ladyfren'?" there might have been a hoe-down there and then (that war-ship never came so near a wreck); the dog-eye boy got just as pale as heck and made a duck behind the trenches, when-- pansy boiled up and clamped me by a flip. "nixie the kindergarten!" murmurs she. "gents," i replied out loud, "get off the ship and walk, or else nail down that repartee. this yard of lace i'm holding, so to speak, is pinned on tight--or will be in a week." xx a-lopping on a car-barn bench i spied gilly the grip, quite recent this p.m., just like a lily on a broken stem or like a salt lake buck without a bride. "chirk, gilly, chirk!" i says in tones of pride, "perhaps this unhinged heart is just pro tem. the world is full of pompadours for them that keep their search-lights peeled from side to side." but gill remarked, "eh, what? say, i'm so slow i couldn't catch the hour-hand on a clock. i'm simply stationary as they grow;. a lamp-post race could beat me round the block. you needn't think you're such an alfred g., to motor by a quarry-cart like me!" xxi next week the wedding-bells won't do a thing, for i'll be there, i guess, to fill the set, and pansy's ma, she won't be late, you bet, to see the reverend mr. pull the string. me for a spike-tailed scabbard and a ring, a shell-back shirt, forsooth a peacherette. i'll be the daintiest bridegroom ever yet; nothing to do but take the count, then--bing! love in a cottage run on union pay-- can teddy roosevelt do a sum like that? two can eat cheap as one, perhaps, but say, you've got to beat a quarter pretty flat to cork three squares, make little two shoes snug and keep the wolf from chewing up the rug. xxii methinks i'm tagged to join the worry club, to chase the fleeting rhino through the gloom, to bag the boodle, trap the wild mazume and scratch for corn when pansy hollers "grub!" they say i'll turn as sickly as a chub when on the first, with dull and deadly boom, the rent comes round and walks into the room, remarking, "peel or else file out, you scrub!" but when your arms are full of girl and fluff you hide your nerve behind a yard of grin; you'd spit into a wild cat's face or bluff a flock of dragons with a safety pin. life's a slow skate, but love's the dopey gum that puts a brewery horse in racing trim. epilogue kind reader, when you 'phone don't ask for me enquiring how a flossie should be won-- there isn't any rule book, are you on? and queenie can't be coaxed by recipee. some girls like hard-luck music, minor key, some like the gas-car gussie act, hot ton, others are simply fierce for jolly john who loves to make a noise like repartee. none but the nerve, say i, deserves the fair, and stony hearts can't stand up long to chin. if willie-on-the-doormat lingers there the chances are he'll be invited in. up against love the candy kid is nix; the porous plaster wins because it sticks the love sonnets of a hoodlum by wallace irwin with an introduction by gelett burgess showing how vanity is still on deck, & humble virtue gets it in the neck! "a leaden heart i wear since she forsook me." the love sonnets of a hoodlum introduction "tell me, ye muses, what hath former ages now left succeeding times to play upon, and what remains unthought on by those sages where a new muse may try her pinion?" so complained phineas fletcher in his purple island as long ago as . three centuries have brought to the development of lyric passion no higher form than that of the sonnet cycle. the sonnet has been likened to an exquisite crystal goblet that holds one sublimely inspired thought so perfectly that not another drop can be added without overflow. cast in the early italian renaissance by dante, petrarch and camoens, it was chased and ornamented during the elizabethan period by shakespere, and filled with its most stimulating draughts of song and love during the victorian era by rossetti, browning and meredith. and now, in this first year of the new century, the historic cup is refilled and tossed off in a radiant toast to erato by wallace irwin. the attribute of modernity is not given to every new age. the cogs in the wheels of time slip back, at times. the classic revival may be permeated with enthusiasm, but it is a second edition of an old work--not a virile essay at expression of living thought. the later renaissance was but half modern in its spirit; the classic period of the eighteenth century in england was half ancient in its mood. but the twentieth century breaks with a new promise of emancipation to english literature, for a new influence has freshened the blood of conventional style that in the decadence of the end of the century had grown dilute. this adjuvant strain is found in the enthusiasm of slang. slowly its rhetorical power has won foothold in the language. it has won many a verb and substantive, it has conquered idiom and diction, and now it is strong enough to assault the very syntax of our anglo-saxon tongue.[*] [*] note, for instance, the potential mood used indicatively in the current colloquial, "wouldn't that jar you!" slang, the illegitimate sister of poetry, makes with her a common cause against the utilitarian economy of prose. they both stand for lavish luxuriance in trope and involution, for floriation and adornment of thought. it is their boast to make two words bloom where one grew before. both garb themselves in metaphor, and the only complaint of the captious can be that whereas poetry follows the accepted style, slang dresses her thought to suit herself in fantastic and bizarre caprices, that her whims are unstable and too often in bad taste. but this odium given to slang by superficial minds is undeserved. in other days, before the language was crystallized into the idiom and verbiage of the doctrinaire, prose, too, was untrammeled. indeed, a cursory glance at the elizabethan poets discloses a kinship with the rebellious fancies of our modern colloquial talk. mr. irwin's sonnets may be taken as an indication of this revolt, and how nearly they approach the incisive phrases of the seventeenth century may easily be shown in a few exemplars. for instance, in sonnet xx, "you're the real tan bark!" we have a close parallel in johnson's volpone, or the fox: "fellows of outside and mere bark!" and this instance is an equally good illustration also of that curious process which, in the english language, has in time created for a single word ("cleave," for instance) two exactly opposite meanings. a line from john webster's appius and virginia might be cited as showing how near his diction approached modern slang: "my most neat and cunning orator, whose tongue is quicksilver;" and, for an analogy similar, though elaborate, compare lines - in sonnet xi. in beaumont and fletcher's philaster, "a pernicious petticoat prince" is as close to "mame's dress-suit belle" of no. vii as modern costume allows, and "no, you scarab!" from ben jonson's alchemist gives a curious clue to the derivation of the popular term "scab" found in no. vi. webster's forcible picture in the white devil-- "fate is a spaniel; we cannot beat it from us!" finds a rival in mr. irwin's strong simile--"o fate, thou art a lobster!" in no. iv. and, to conclude, since such similarities might be quoted without end, note this exclamation from beaumont and fletcher's woman's prize, written before the name of the insect had achieved the infamy now fastened upon it by the british matron: "these are bug's words!" not only does this evidently point out the origin of "jim-jam bugs" in no. ix, and the better known modern synonym for brain, "bug-house," but it indicates the arbitrary tendency of all language to create gradations of caste in parts of speech. it is to this mysterious influence by which some words become "elegant" or "poetic," and others "coarse" or "unrefined," that we owe the contempt in which slang is held by the superficial philistine. in mr. irwin's sonnet cycle, however, we have slang idealized, or as perhaps one might better say, sublimated. evolution in the argot of the streets works by a process of substitution. a phrase of two terms goes through a system of permutation before it is discarded or adopted into authorized metaphor. "to take the cake," for instance, a figure from the cake-walk of the negroes, becomes to "capture" or "corral" the "bun" or "biscuit." nor is this all, for in the higher forms of slang the idea is paraphrased in the most elaborate verbiage, an involution so intricate that, without a knowledge of the intervening steps, the meaning is often almost wholly lost. specimens of this cryptology are found in many of mr. irwin's sonnets, notably in no. v: "my syncopated con-talk no avail." we trace these synonyms through "rag-time," etc., to an almost subliminal thought--an adjective resembling "verisimilitudinarious," perhaps, qualifying the "con" or confidential talk that proved useless to bring mame back to his devotion. in the masterly couplet closing the sestet of no. xviii, mr. irwin's verbal enthusiasm reaches its highest mark in an ultra-meredithian rendition of "i am an easy mark," an expression, by the way, which would itself have to be elaborately translated in any english edition. enough of the glamors of mr. irwin's dulcet vagaries. he will stand, perhaps as the chief apostle of the hyperconcrete. with mr. ade as the head of the school, and insistent upon the didactic value of slang, mr. irwin presents in this cycle no mean claims to eminence in the truly lyric vein. let us turn to a contemplation of his more modest hero. i have attempted in vain to identify him, the "willie" of these sonnets. the police court records of san francisco abound in characters from which mr. irwin's conception of this pyrotechnically garrulous hoodlum might have been drawn, and even his death from cigarette-smoking, prognosticated in no. xxii, does not sufficiently identify him. whoever he was, he was a type of the latter-day lover, instinct with that self-analysis and consciousness of the dramatic value of his emotion that has reached even the lower classes. the sequence of the sonnets clearly indicates the progress of his love affair with mary, a heroine who has, in common with the heroines of previous sonnet cycles, laura, stella and beatricia, only this, that she inspired her lover to an eloquence that might have been better spent orally upon the object of his affections. even the author's scorn does not prevent the reader from indulging in a surreptitious sympathy with the flamboyant coquetry of his "peacherino," his "paris pansy." for she, too, was of the caste of the articulate; did she not "cough up loops of kindergarten chin?" and could we hear mame's side of the quarrel, no doubt our hoodlum would be convicted by every reader. but kid murphy, the pusillanimous rival, was even less worthy of the superb amazon who bore him to the altar. "see how that murphy cake-walks in his pride!" is the cri-du-coeur the gentlest reader must inevitably render. but "the peach crops come and go," as mr. george ade so eloquently observes. we must not take our hero's gloomy threats too seriously. there are other babies on the bunch, and no doubt he is, long ere this, consoled with a "neater, sweeter maiden" to whom his muse will sing again a happier refrain. in this hope we close his dainty introspections and await his next burst of song! gelett burgess. san francisco, nov. , an inside con to refined guys let me down easy, reader, say! don't run the bluff that you are on, or proudly scoff at every toff who rattles off a rag-time con. get next to how the french villon, before jack hangman yanked him high, quilled slangy guff and frenchy stuff and kicked up rough the same as i. and byron, herrick, burns, forby, got gay with erato, much the same as i now do to show to you the way into the hall of fame. prologue wouldn't it jar you, wouldn't it make you sore to see the poet, when the goods play out, crawl off of poor old pegasus and tout his skate to two-step sonnets off galore? then, when the plug, a dead one, can no more shake rag-time than a biscuit, right about the poem-butcher turns with gleeful shout and sends a batch of sonnets to the store. the sonnet is a very easy mark, a james p. dandy as a carry-all for brain-fag wrecks who want to keep it dark just why their crop of thinks is running small. on the low down, dear maine, my looty loo, that's why i've cooked this batch of rhymes for you. i say, will she treat me white, or throw me down, give me the glassy glare, or welcome hand, shovel me dirt, or treat me on the grand, knife me, or make me think i own the town? will she be on the level, do me brown, or will she jolt me lightly on the sand, leaving poor willie froze to beat the band, limp as your grandma's mother hubbard gown? i do not know, nor do i give a whoop, but this i know: if she is so inclined she can come play with me on our back stoop, even in office hours, i do not mind-- in fact i know i'm nice and good and ready to get an option on her as my steady. ii on the dead level i am sore of heart, for nifty mame has frosted me complete, since ten o'clock, g. m., when on the street i saw my lightning finish from the start. o goo-goo eye, how glassy gazed thou art to freeze my spinach solid when we meet, and keep thy willie on the anxious seat like a bum dago on an apple cart! is it because my pants fit much too soon, or that my hand-me-down is out of style, that thou dost turn me under when i spoon, nor hand me hothouse beauties with a smile? if that's the case, next week i'll scorch the line clad in a shell i'll buy of cohenstein. iii as follows is the make-up i shall buy, next week, when from the boss i pull my pay:-- a white and yellow zig-zag cutaway, a sunset-colored vest and purple tie, a shirt for vaudeville and something fly in gunboat shoes and half-hose on the gay. i'll get some green shoe-laces, by the way, and a straw lid to set 'em stepping high. then shall i shine and be the great main squeeze, the warm gazook, the only on the bunch, the oklahoma wonder, the whole cheese, the baby with the honolulu hunch-- that will bring mame to time--i should say yes! ain't my dough good as murphy's? well, i guess! iv o fate, thou art a lobster, but not dead! silently dost thou grab, e'en as the cop nabs the poor hobo, sneaking from a shop with some rich geezer's tile upon his head. by thy fake propositions are we led to get quite chesty, when it's buff! kerflop!! we take a tumble and the cog-wheels stop, leaving the patient seeing stars in bed. so was i swatted, for i could not draw my last week's pay. i got the dinky dink. no more i see the husk in dreams i saw, and mame is mine some more, i do not think. i know my rival, and it makes me sore-- 'tis murphy, night clerk in mccann's drug store. v last night--ah, yesternight--i flagged my queen steering for grunsky's ice-cream joint full sail! i up and braced her, breezy as a gale, and she was the all-rightest ever seen. just then brick murphy butted in between, rushing my funny song-and-dance to jail, my syncopated con-talk no avail, for murphy was the only nectarine. this is a sample of the hand i get when i am playing more than solitaire, showing how i become the slowest yet when it's a case of razors in the air, and competition knocks me off creation like a gin-fountain smashed by carrie nation. vi see how that murphy cake-walks in his pride, that brick-topped murphy, fourteen-dollar jay; you'd think he'd leased the sidewalk by the way he takes up half a yard on either side! i'm wise his diamond ring's a cut-glass snide, his overcoat is rented by the day, but still no kick is coming yet from mae when murphy cuts the cake so very wide. rubber, thou scab! don't throw on so much spaniel! say, are there any more at home like you? you're not the only lion after daniel, you're not the only oyster in the stew. get next, you pawn-shop sport! come oft the fence before i make you look like thirty cents! vii mayhap you think i cinched my little job when i made meat of mamie's dress-suit belle. if that's your hunch you don't know how the swell can put it on the plain, unfinished slob who lacks the kiss-me war paint of the snob and can't make good inside a giddy shell; wherefore the reason i am fain to tell the slump that caused me this melodious sob. for when i pushed brick murphy to the rope mame manned the ambulance and dragged him in, massaged his lamps with fragrant drug store dope and coughed up loops of kindergarten chin; she sprang a come back, piped for the patrol, then threw a glance that tommyhawked my soul. viii i sometimes think that i am not so good, that there are foxier, warmer babes than i, that fate has given me the calm go-by and my long suit is sawing mother's wood. then would i duck from under if i could, catch the hog special on the jump, and fly to some goat island planned by destiny for dubs and has-beens and that solemn brood. but spite of bug-wheels in my cocoa tree, the trade in lager beer is still a-humming, a schooner can be purchased for a v or even grafted if you're fierce at bumming. my finish then less clearly do i see, for lo! i have another think a-coming. ix last night i tumbled off the water cart-- it was a peacherino of a drunk; i put the cocktail market on the punk and tore up all the sidewalks from the start. the package that i carried was a tart that beat vesuvius out for sizz and spunk, and when they put me in my little bunk you couldn't tell my jag and me apart. oh! would i were the ice man for a space, then might i cool this red-hot cocoanut, corral the jim-jam bugs that madly race around the eaves that from my forehead jut-- or will a carpenter please come instead and build a picket fence around my head? x as one who with his landlord stands deuce high and blocks his board bill off with i o u's, touching the barkeep lightly for his booze, sidestepping when a creditor goes by, soaking his mother's watch-chain on the sly, haply his ticker, too, haply his shoes, till mr. johnson comes to turn him loose and lift the mortgage from that poor cheap guy; so am i now small change in mamie's scorn, a microbe's egg, or two-bits in a fog, a first cornet that cannot toot a horn, a waterbury watch that's slipped a cog; for when her make-up's twisted to a frown, what can i but go 'way back and sit down? xi o scaly mame to give me such a deal, to hand me such a bunch when i was true! you played me double and you knew it, too, nor cared a wad of gum how i would feel. can you not see that murphy's handy spiel is cheap balloon juice of a blarney brew, a phonograph where all he has to do is give the crank a twist and let 'er reel? nay, love has put your optics on the bum, to you are murphy's gold bricks all o. k.; his talks go down however rank they come, for he has got you going, fairy fay. ah, well! in that i'm in the box with you, for love has got poor willie groggy, too. xii life is a combination hard to buck, a proposition difficult to beat, e'en though you get there zaza with both feet, in forty flickers, it's the same hard luck, and you are up against it nip and tuck, shanghaied without a steady place to eat, guyed by the very copper on your beat who lays to jug you when you run amuck. o life! you give yours truly quite a pain. on the t square i do not like your style; for you are playing favorites again and you have got me handicapped a mile. avaunt, false life, with all your pride and pelf: go take a running jump and chase yourself! xiii if i were smooth as eels and slick as soap, a baked-wind expert, jolly with my clack, gally enough to ask my money back before the steerer feeds me knock-out dope, still might i throw a duck-fit in my hope that i possessed a headpiece like a tack to get my mamie in my private sack ere she could flag some handsome hank and slope. what ho! she bumps! my wish avails me not, my work is coarse and mame is onto me; so am i never johnny-on-the-spot when any wooden siwash ought to be. thus i get busy working up a grouch whenever heartless mame harpoons me--ouch! xiv o mommer! wasn't mame a looty toot last night when at the rainbow social club she did the bunny hug with every scrub from hogan's alley to the dutchman's boot, while little willie, like a plug-eared mute, papered the wall and helped absorb the grub, played nest-egg with the benches like a dub when hot society was easy fruit! am i a turnip? on the strict q. t., when do my trilbys get so ossified? why am i minus when it's up to me to brace my paris pansy for a glide? once more my hoodoo's thrown the game and scored a flock of zeros on my tally-board. xv nixie! i'm not canned chicken till i'm cooked, and hope still rooms in this pneumatic chest, while something's doing underneath my vest that makes me think i'm squiffier than i looked. mayhap love knew my class when i was booked as one shade speedier than second best to knock the previous records galley west, while short-end suckers on my bait were hooked. mayhap--i give it up--but this i know: when i saw mamie on the line today she turned her happy searchlights on me so, and grinned so like a living picture--say, if a real lady threw you such a chunk, could n't she pack her raglan in your trunk? xvi oh, for a fist to push a fancy quill! a lover's handy letter writer, too, to help me polish off this billy doo so it can jolly mame and make a kill, coax her to think that i'm no gilded pill, but rather the unadulterated goo. below i give a sample of the brew i've manufactured in my thinking mill: "gum drop:--your tanglefoot has got my game, i'm stuck so tight you cannot shake your catch; it's cruelty to insects--honest, mame,-- so won't you join me in a tie-up match? if you'll talk business i'm your lemon pie. please answer and relieve an anxious guy." xvii woman, you are indeed a false alarm; you offer trips to heaven at tourist's rates and publish fairy tales about the dates you're going to keep (not meaning any harm), then get some poor old rube fresh from the farm, as graceful as a kangaroo on skates, trying to transfer at the pearly gates-- for instance, note this jolt that smashed the charm:-- "p.s.--you are all right, but you won't do. you may be up a hundred in the shade, but there are cripples livelier than you, and my man murphy's strictly union-made. you are a bargain, but it seems a shame that you should drink so much. yours truly, mame." xviii last night i dreamed a passing dotty dream-- i thought the cards were coming all my way, that i could shut and open things all day while mame and i were getting thick as cream, and starred as an amalgamated team in a cigar-box flat across the bay-- just then the alarm clock blew to pieces. say, wouldn't that jam you? i should rather scream. sleep, like a bunco artist, rubbed it in, sold me his ten-cent oil stocks, though he knew it was a kosher trick to take the tin when i was such an easy thing to do; for any centenarian can see to ring a bull's-eye when he shoots at me. xix a pardon if too much i chew the rag, but say, it's getting rubbed in good and deep, and i have reached the limit where i weep as easy as a sentimental jag. my soul is quite a worn and frazzled rag, my life is damaged goods, my price is cheap, and i am such a snap i dare not peep lest some should read the price-mark on my tag. the more my sourballed murmur, since i've seen a sunday picnic car on market street, full of assorted sports, each with his queen-- and chewing pepsin on the forninst seat were mame and murphy, diked to suit the part, and clinching fins in public, heart-to-heart. xx forget it? well, just watch me try to shake the memory of that four-bit scheutzen park, where sunday picnics boil from dawn till dark and you tie down the flossie you can take, if you don't mind man-handling and can make a prize rough house to jolly up the lark, to show the ladies you're the whole tan-bark, and leave a blaze of fireworks in your wake. 'twas there before the rainbow club that mame bawled herself out as murphy's finansay and all the chronic glad hand-claspers came to copper invites for the wedding day; and when the jocund day threw up the sponge murphy was billed to take the fatal plunge. xxi at noon today murphy and mame were tied. a gospel huckster did the referee, and all the drug clerks union loped to see the queen of minnie street become a bride, and that bad actor, murphy, by her side, standing where yours despondent ought to be. i went to hang a smile in front of me, but weeps were in my glimmers when i tried. the pastor murmured, "two and two make one," and slipped a sixteen k on mamie's grab; and when the game was tied and all was done the guests shied footwear at the bridal cab, and murphy's little gilt-roofed brother jim snickered, "she's left her happy home for him." xxii still joy is rubbernecking on the street, still hikes the mags' parade at five o'clock, still does the masher march around the block pining in vain some hothouse plant to meet; still does the rounder pull your leg to treat, where flows the whisky sour or russet bock, and the store clothing dummies in a flock keep good and busy following their feet. rats! cut this out; for i'm a last year's champ; into the old bone orchard am i blowing, so with the late lamented let me camp, my walkers to the graveyard daisies toeing, and shaking this too upish generation, pass checks through cigarette asphyxiation. epilogue to just one girl i've tuned my sad bazoo, stringing my pipe-dream off as it occurred, and as i've tipped the straight talk every word, if you don't like it you know what to do. perhaps you think i've handed out to you an idle jest, a touch-me-not, absurd as any sky-blue-pink canary bird, billed for a record season at the zoo. if that's your guess you'll have to guess again, for thus i fizzled in a burst of glory, and this rhythmatic side-show doth contain the sum and substance of my hard-luck story, showing how vanity is still on deck and humble virtue gets it in the neck. sonnets and other verse by w. m. mackeracher author of "canada, my land" toronto william briggs copyright, canada, , by w. m. mackeracher. contents. the old and the new how many a man! the saddest thought the house-hunter on moving into a new house literature a library on charles lamb's sonnet, "work." work the joy of creation adam a shallow stream a faithful preacher a wish rebuked the sabbath milton the three hundredth anniversary of milton's birth burns a late spring autumn an autumn walk november november sunshine short days the beginning of winter the winter and the wilderness the immigrants wolfe montcalm the coming of champlain the montagnais at tadoussac champlain's first winter and spring in quebec idleness success the exclusion of asiatics the people's response to heroism an aristocrat in warehouse and office h.m.s. "dreadnought" the revolution in russia tea's apologia a wish alone with nature the works of man and the works of nature a day redeemed outremont the new old story recreation paestum rondeau: an april day autumn my two boys my old classical master the gold-miners of british columbia war-ships in port on finding a copy of burns's poems in the house of an ontario farmer the ideal preacher the wheel of misfortune tim o'gallagher sonnets and other verse. the old and the new. scorn not the old; 'twas sacred in its day, a truth overpowering error with its might, a light dispelling darkness with its ray, a victory won, an intermediate height, which seers untrammel'd by their creeds of yore, heroes and saints, triumphantly attained with hard assail and tribulation sore, that we might use the vantage-ground they gain'd. scorn not the old; but hail and seize the new with thrill'd intelligences, hearts that burn, and such truth-seeking spirits that it, too, may soon be superseded in its turn, and men may ever, as the ages roll, march onward toward the still receding goal. how many a man! how many a man of those i see around has cherished fair ideals in his youth, and heard the spirit's call, and stood spellbound before the shrine of beauty or of truth, and lived to see his fair ideals fade, and feel a numbness creep upon his soul, and sadly know himself no longer swayed by rigorous truth or beauty's sweet control! for some, alas! life's thread is almost spun; few, few and poor, the fibres that remain; but yet, while life lasts, something may be done to make the heavenly vision not in vain; yet, even yet, some triumph may be won, yea, loss itself be turned to precious gain. the saddest thought. sad is the wane of beauty to the fair, sad is the flux of fortune to the proud, sad is the look dejected lovers wear, and sad is worth beneath detraction's cloud. sad is our youth's inexorable end, sad is the bankruptcy of fancy's wealth, sad is the last departure of a friend, and sadder than most things is loss of health. and yet more sad than these to think upon is this--the saddest thought beneath the sun-- life, flowing like a river, almost gone into eternity, and nothing done. let me be spared that bootless last regret: let me work now; i may do something yet. the house-hunter. as one who finds his house no longer fit, too narrow for his needs, in nothing right, wanting in every homelike requisite, devoid of beauty, barren of delight, goes forth from door to door and street to street, with eager-eyed expectancy to find a new abode for his convenience meet, spacious, commodious, fair, and to his mind; so living souls recurrently outgrow their mental tenements; their tastes appear too sordid, and their aims too cramped and low. and they keep moving onward year by year, each dwelling in its turn prepared to leave for one more like the mansion they conceive. on moving into a new house. heaven bless this new abode; defend its doors against the entry of malignant sprites-- gaunt poverty, pale sickness, care that blights; and o'er its thresholds, like the enchanted shores of faery isles, serene amid the roars of baffled seas, let in all fair delights (such as make happy days and restful nights) to tread familiarly its charmèd floors. within its walls let moderate plenty reign, and gracious industry, and cheerful health: plenish its chambers with contentment's wealth, nor let high joy its humble roof disdain; here let us make renewal of love's lease, and dwell with piety, who dwells with peace. literature. here is a banquet-table of delights, a sumptuous feast of true ambrosial food; here is a journey among goodly sights, in choice society or solitude; here is a treasury of gems and gold-- of purest gold and gems of brightest sheen; here is a landscape gloriously unroll'd, of heights sublime and pleasant vales between. here is the realm of thought, diverse and wide, to genius and her sovereign sons assign'd; the universal church, o'er which preside the heaven-anointed hierarchy of mind and spirit; the imperishable pride and testament and promise of mankind. a library. as one, who, from an antechamber dim, is ushered suddenly to his surprise before a gathering of the great and wise, feels for the moment all his senses swim, then looks around him like a veteran grim when peerless armies pass before his eyes, or michael when he marshals in the skies the embattled legions of the cherubim; so shall the scholar pause within this door with startled reverence, and proudly stand, and feel that though the ages' flags are furled by time's rude breath, their spoils are here in store, the riches of the race are at his hand, and well-nigh all the glory of the world. on charles lamb's sonnet, "work." "who first invented work?" asks elia, he whose life to an ungenial task was wed, and answers, "satan"; but it could not be-- on idleness his foul ambition fed; by idleness the heavenly domiciles were lost to him and all his idle crew; in idleness he hatches all his wiles, and mischief finds for idle hands to do. his business ever was to scamp and shirk, and scout the task that too ignoble seemed, and in snug corners serpentlike to lurk where no one of his presence ever dreamed; he never knew the zest of honest work, nor ever shall, or he would be redeemed. work. not to the arch-idler be the honor given of first inventing work, but to his lord, who made the light, the firmament of heaven, and sun and moon and planets in accord, the land and cattle on it, and the sea and fish therein, and flying fowl in air, and grass and herb and fair fruit-yielding tree, and man, his own similitude to wear; whose works are old and yet for ever new, who all sustains with providential sway, whose son, "my father worketh hitherto and i work," said, and ere he went away, "finished the work thou gavest me to do," and unto us, "work ye while it is day." the joy of creation. how must have thrilled the great creator's mind with radiant, glad and satisfying joy, ever new self-expressive forms to find in those six days of rapturous employ! how must he have delighted when he made the stars, and meted ocean with his span, and formed the insect and the tender blade, and fashioned, after his own image, man! and unto man such joy in his degree he hath appointed, work of mind and hand, to mould in forms of useful symmetry words, hues, wood, iron, stone, at his command to toil upon the navigable sea and ply his industry upon the land. adam. god made him, like the angels, innocent, and made a garden marvellously fair, with arbors green, sun-kissed and dew-besprent, and fruits and flowers whose fragrance filled the air; where rivers four meandered with delight, and in the soil were gleaming treasures laid, good gold and bdellium and the onyx bright; and set therein the man whom he had made; and proved to him by sad experience that not in bowers of indolence, supine on beds of ease, could ev'n omnipotence work out in man his last and best design; and in great love and wisdom drove him thence, and cursed him with a blessing most benign. a shallow stream. there is a stream to northward, thinly spread over a shelving, many-fissured shale, that brawls and blusters in its shallow bed, and ends its course inglorious in a swale. its babble stirs the laughter of the hills; the rooted mountains mock its fume and fret; and all the summer long the idle mills wait wearily with water-wheel unwet. let us not waste our lives in froth and foam and unavailing vanity of noise; "still waters deepest run"--the ancient gnome pricks well our sham, conceited bubble-toys; who serve best here in god's great halidome have volume, depth, serenity and poise. a faithful preacher. let no one say of christ's church, "ichabod," or deem her strength partaker of decay, or think her trumpet voices fail. to-day i saw a man who was a man of god, his feet with gospel preparation shod, the spirit's quick and mighty weapon sway; i heard him faithfully point out the way, to him familiar, which the master trod. intrepid, patient follower of the lord, while such as thou, obedient to his call, living epistles, known and read of all, proclaim the wonders of his sacred word, no sound of lamentation should be heard, no shade of apprehension should appal. a wish rebuked. if one could have a hundred years to live, after the settlement of youth's unrest, a hundred years of vigorous life to give to the pursuit of what he counted best, a hundred summers, autumns, winters, springs, to train and use the forces of his mind, he might fulfil his fond imaginings, and lift himself and benefit his kind. o faint of heart, to whom this life appears too short for thy ambitious projects, he who plied his task in weakness and in tears along the countrysides of galilee, and blest the world for these two thousand years, did his incomparable work in three. the sabbath. who, careless, would behold a goodly tree or noble palace stricken to decay? who would drop precious jewels in the sea or cast rare heirlooms on the trodden way? who, but a prodigal in wantonness, would waste his patrimony for swine's food? who would his birthright sell for pottage-mess but a dull, sensual esau, blind to good? our tree o'ershadowing the sons of care, our palace welcoming the weary guest, our precious jewel and our heirloom rare, our birthright and our patrimony blest, art thou, to guard and keep for ever fair, sweet christian sabbath-day of joy and rest. milton. say not that england ever kingless was: 'twixt charles and charles two royal men appear,-- cromwell, to give her health with arms and laws, and milton, thou, to speak out loud and clear for freedom of man's conscience and the state, for england and her deeds before the world, and for the victims of religious hate from alpine summits pitilessly hurl'd. thou wast a champion of liberty: in fair italian cities thou had'st heard her voice upon the north wind summon thee, and, like another moses, had'st preferr'd affliction with thy brethren to the lure of beauty, art and cultur'd ease secure. the three hundredth anniversary of milton's birth. (december th, .) "there was a man sent from god, whose name was john." three hundred years have left their telltale rings upon the tree of time since he appeared-- milton (to be remembered and revered); whose spirit mounted on seraphic wings; who saw, though blind, extraordinary things; who wrought in obloquy, and persevered, and, orpheus-like, with his great music reared a monument surpassing those of kings. three hundred years, courageous, lofty soul, hast thou by precept and example taught thy lesson. have we learned it as we ought? have we moved upward, nearer to the goal? yea, somewhat have we learned; be with us still, and teach us man's high function to fulfil. burns. we read his life of poverty and bane, from weakness, folly, error, not exempt, and turn aside with a depressing pain-- compassion tinged with something like contempt. we read his work, and see his human heart, his manly mind, his true, if thwarted, will, and all that's noblest in us takes his part, and shames our former verdict, will or nill. his was a fiery spirit that unbound men's fetters, sometimes leading him astray; he was a seed that fell into the ground and brought forth fruit; he cast himself away like bread upon the waters, and was found to nourish worth in many an after day. a late spring. twelve weeks had passed--how slowly!--day by day, since formal, dull sir calendar had bowed old winter from the scene, and cried, "make way! the spring, the spring!" and still a sullen cloud obscured the sky, and the north wind blew chill; when lo, one morn the miracle began; a presence brooded over vale and hill, and through all life a quickening impulse ran. long-hushed, forgotten melodies awoke within my soul; the rapture of the boy refilled me; o'er my arid being broke a brimming tide of elemental joy from primal deeps; and all my happy springs came back to me--i was the peer of kings! autumn. from shy expectancy to burgeoning, from burgeoning to ripeness and decline, the seasons run their various course and bring again at last the sober days benign. and spring's pied garland, worn for beauty's sake, and summer's crown of pride, less fair appear than the subdued, enchanted tints that make the aureole of the senescent year. so grows the good man old--meek, glad, sublime; more lovely than in all his youthful bloom, grander than in the vigor of his prime, he lights with radiance life's autumnal gloom, and through the fading avenue of time walks in triumphal glory to his tomb. an autumn walk. adown the track that skirts the shallow stream i wandered with blank mind; a bypath drew my aimless steps aside, and, ere i knew, the forest closed around me like a dream. the gold-strewn sward, the horizontal gleam of the low sun, pouring its splendors through the far-withdrawing vistas, filled the view, and everlasting beauty was supreme. i knew not past or future; 'twas a mood transcending time and taking in the whole. i was both young and old; my lost childhood, years yet unlived, were gathered round one goal; and death was there familiar. long i stood, and in eternity renewed my soul. november. sombre november, least belov'd of all the months that make the pleasurable year, too late for the resplendence of the fall, too soon for christmas-bringing winter's cheer; ignoble interregnum following the golden cycle of a good queen's reign, before her heir, proclaimed already king, has come of age to rule in her domain; we do not praise you; many a dreary day impatiently we chide your laggard pace; backward we look, and forward, and we say: the queen was kind and fair of form and face; the king is stern, but clad in brave array: god save his majesty and send him grace. november sunshine. o affluent sun, unwilling to abate thy bounteous hospitality benign, whenas we deemed the banquet o'er, thy great gold flagon brims again with amber wine; whenas we thought t' have seen on plain and hill thy euthanasia in october's haze, the blessing of thy light, unstinted still, irradiates the drear november days. naught can discourage thee, o thurifer of gladness to the else benighted face of the misfeatured earth; fit minister of him whose love illumines every place, who pours his mercy forth without demur over the sins and sorrows of our race. short days. now is the sun, erst spendthrift of his rays and lavish of his largesses of light, become a miser in his latter days, an avaricious dotard, alter'd quite. is he the same that all the summer long strew'd with ungrudging hand his gleaming gold? can such ill grace to high estate belong? can bright be dim? can warm so soon be cold? ay, but he goes his parsimonious way, and hoards his shining treasures from the view, and garners up his riches 'gainst the day when earth, the prodigal, shall beg anew; then to her need he'll give no niggard dole, but wealth incalculable, heart and soul. the beginning of winter. now are the trees all ruefully bereft of their brave liveries of green and gold, no shred of all their pleasant raiment left to shield them from the wind and nipping cold. now is the grass all withered up and dead, and shrouded in its cerement of the snow; now the enfeebled sun goes soon to bed, and rises late and carries his head low. now is the night magnificent to view when the queen moon appears with cloudless brow; now are our spirits cleans'd and born anew in the clear, quickening atmosphere; and now we re-make home, and find our hearts' desire in common talk before the cheerful fire. the winter and the wilderness. when we who dwell within this province old, cloven in twain by the great river's tide, gird at inhospitable winter's cold, and rue the downfall of fair summer's pride; or turn our eyes from gazing on the vales of lavish verdure and abundant fruit, to those rough wastes where nature ever fails, and tillage spurns a profitless pursuit; let us recall that sentence from the hand of history's father, laying down his pen,-- those words of cyrus, which he made to stand to all his work as moral and amen; 'tis not the richest and most fertile land that always bears the noblest breed of men.[ ] [ ] "although the work seems unfinished, it concludes with a sentence which cannot have been placed casually at the end, viz., that, as the great cyrus was supposed to have said, 'it is not always the richest and most fertile country which produces the most valiant men.'"--_commentary on the work of herodotus_. the immigrants. from lands where old abuses sit entrenched and stern restriction thwarts aspiring merit, and by gaunt men a meagre dole is wrenched from the unkind conditions they inherit; from teeming cities where the ceaseless moan of want is burthen to the traffic's hum, from shrouded mills, and fields they ne'er might own, from servitude and blank despair, they come. and every ship that sails across the foam, and every train that rushes from the sea, and every sun that brightens heaven's dome, and every breeze that stirs the leafing tree, sings to the pilgrims a glad song of home, with freedom, joy and opportunity. wolfe. "i would rather have written those lines than take quebec to-morrow."--_wolfe, on hearing gray's "elegy" read the night before the capture of quebec_. thou need'st no marble monuments to keep thy fame immortal and thy memory an inspiration to make pulses leap and resolution spring to mastery. thou need'st no gilded tablets on the walls of cities, no imposing sepulchre, imperishable wolfe, whose name recalls the flower of kings, who bore excalibur. the ultimate dispensers of renown, the poets, shall accord thee honor fit, and add fresh laurels ever to thy crown, high-minded hero, who hadst rather writ those lines of one to every poet dear than take the fortress of a hemisphere. montcalm. "ce n'est rien, ce n'est rien; ne vous affligez pas pour moi, mes bonnes amies." montcalm, calm mount, thou didst not faint nor fail at that fierce volley from thy foemen near, nor at the charge's deafening prelude quail,-- the highland slogan and the saxon cheer. but thou, even thou, couldst not withstand the shock that broke and bore precipitately on tried regiments, la sarre and languedoc, béarn, guienne and royal roussillon. thou couldst but fight as heroes e'er have fought, with that high self-devotion which transcends vain-glorious victory: "'tis naught, 'tis naught; fret not yourselves on my account, good friends," yet 'twas thy mortal wound. such words express true chivalry and christlike nobleness. the coming of champlain. (from the prose of parkman.) up the st. lawrence with well-weather'd sails a lonely vessel clove its foaming track. none hail'd its coming; the white floundering whales disported in the bay of tadoussac; the wild duck div'd before its figured prow; the painted savage spied it from the shore, and dream'd not that his reign was ended now,-- that that strange ship a new aeneas bore, whose pale-fac'd inconsiderable band were pioneers of an aggressive host of thousands, millions, filling all the land, and 'stablishing therein from coast to coast this civil state, with cities, temples, marts, schools, laws and peaceful industries and arts. the montagnais at tadoussac. (from the prose of parkman.) the lodges of the montagnais were there, who reaped the harvest of the woods and rocks-- skins of the moose and cariboo and bear, fur of the beaver, marten, otter, fox. from where the shivering nomad lurks among the stunted forests south of hudson's bay they piloted their frail canoes along by many a tributary's devious way; then between mountains stern as teneriffe their confluent flotillas glided down the saguenay, and pass'd beneath the cliff whose shaggy brows athwart the zenith frown, and reach'd the bay of trinity, dark, lone, and silent as the tide of acheron. champlain's first winter and spring in quebec. (from the prose of parkman.) i. the winter. september bade the sail of pontgravé godspeed, and smil'd upon the infant nation; october deckt the shores and hills with "gay prognostics of approaching desolation." ere long the forest, steep'd in golden gloom, dropt rustling down its shrivel'd festal dress, and chill november, sombre as the tomb, sank on the vast primeval wilderness. inexorable winter's iron vice gript hard the land, funereal with snow; the stream was fill'd with grinding drifts of ice; a fell disease laid twenty frenchmen low in death, and left the dauntless leader eight with whom to hold the new world's fortress gate. ii. the spring. the purgatory pass'd--the stalactites that fring'd the cliffs fell crashing to the earth; with clamor shrill the wild geese skimm'd the heights, in airy navies sailing to the north; the bluebirds chirrup'd in the naked woods, the water-willows donn'd their downy blooms, the trim swamp-maple blush'd with ruddy buds, the forest-ash hung out its sable plumes. the shad-bush gleam'd a wreath of purest snow, the white stars of the bloodroot peep'd from folds of rotting leaves, and in the meadows low shone saffron spots, the gay marsh-marigolds. may made all green, and on the fifth of june a sail appeared, with succor none too soon. idleness. the street was brisk, an animated scene, and every man was on some business bent, absorbed in some employment or intent, pre-occupied, intelligent and keen. true, some were dwarf'd and some were pale and lean. but to the sorriest visage labor lent a light, transfiguring with her sacrament the abject countenance and slavish mien. but one--he shambled aimlessly along asham'd, and shrunk from the abstracted ken of passers-by with conscience-struck recoil, a pariah, a leper in the throng, an alien from the commonwealth of men, a stranger to the covenant of toil. success. what is success? in mad soul-suicide the world's vain spoils rapaciously to seize, to pamper the base appetite of pride, and live a lord in luxury and ease? is this success, whereof so many prate?-- to have the midas-touch that turns to gold earth's common blessings? to accumulate, and in accumulation to grow old? nay, but to see and undertake with zest the good most in agreement with our powers, to strive, if need be, for the second best, but still to strive, and glean the golden hours, with eyes for nature, and a mind for truth, and the brave, loving, joyous heart of youth. the exclusion of asiatics. is our renown'd dominion then so small as not to hold this new inhabitant? or are her means so pitiably scant as not to yield a livelihood to all? or are we lesser men, foredoom'd to thrall? or so much better than the immigrant that we should make our hearts as adamant and guard against defilement with a wall? nay, but our land is large and rich enough for us and ours and millions more--her need is working men; she cries to let them in. nor can we fear; our race is not the stuff servants are made of, but a royal seed, and christian, owning all mankind as kin. the people's response to heroism. our hearts are set on pleasure and on gain. fine clothes, fair houses, more and daintier bread; we have no strivings, and no hunger-pain for spiritual food; our souls are dead. so judged i till the day when news was rife of fire besieging scholars and their dames, and bravely one gave up her own fair life in saving the most helpless from the flames. then when i heard the instantaneous cheer that broke with sobbing undertones from all the multitude, and watched them drawing near, stricken and mute, around her funeral pall in grief and exultation, i confest my judgment erred,--we know and love the best. an aristocrat. her fair companions she outshone, as this or that transcendent star makes all its sister orbs look wan and dim and lustreless and far. her charm impressed the fleeting glance, but chiefly the reflective mind; a century's inheritance, by carefull'st nurture still refined. devotions, manners, hopes that were, ideals high, traditions fine, were felt to culminate in her, the efflorescence of her line. what time and cost conspired to trace her lineaments of perfect grace! in warehouse and office. how can the man whose uneventful days, each like the other, are obscurely spent amid the mill's dead products, keep his gaze upon a lofty goal serenely bent? or he who sedulously tells and groups their minted shadows with deft finger-tips? or who above the shadow's shadow stoops, and dips his pen and writes, and writes and dips? how can he? yet some such have been and are, prophets and seers in deed, if not in word, and poets of a faery land afar, by incommunicable music stirred; feasting the soul apart with what it craves, their occupation's masters, not its slaves. h. m. s. "dreadnought." titanic craft of many thousand tons, a smaller britain free to come and go, relying on thy ten terrific guns to daunt afar the most presumptuous foe; thick-panoplied with plates of hardened steel, equipped with all the engin'ry of death, unrivalled swiftness in thy massive keel, annihilation latent in thy breath. "dreadnought" thy name. and yet, for all thy size and strength, the ocean might engulf thy prow, or the swift red torpedo of the skies, the lightning, blast thy boast-emblazoned brow; thou hast thy use, but britain's sons were wise to put their trust in better things than thou. the revolution in russia. from lapland to the land of tamerlane, kamchatka to the confines of the turk, the spirit tyrants never can restrain when once awake is mightily at work. liberty, frantic with a fearful hope, out of long darkness suddenly arisen, maddens the dull half-human herds who grope and rend the bars of their ancestral prison. over the wan lone steppe her couriers speed, the secret forest echoes her command, she smites the sword that made her children bleed, and death and havoc hold the famished land. but god overrules, and oft man's greatest good is won through nights of dread and days of blood. tea's apologia. loved by a host from noah's days till now, extolled by bards in many a glowing line, my purple rival of the mantling brow may laugh to scorn this swarthy face of mine. i care not: many a weary pain i cure; cold, heat and thirst i harmlessly abate; i bless the weak, the aged and the poor; and i have known the favor of the great. i've cheered the minds of mighty poets gone; philosophers have owned my solace true; shy cowper was my sweet anacreon; keen hazlitt craved "whole goblets" of my brew; de quincey praised my stimulating draught; what cups of me old doctor johnson quaffed! a wish. when my time comes to quit this pleasing scene, and drop from out the busy life of men; when i shall cease to be where i have been so willingly, and ne'er may be again; when my abandoned tabernacle's dust with dust is laid, and i am counted dead; ere i am quite forgotten, as i must be in a little while, let this be said: he loved this good god's world, the night and day, men, women, children (these he loved the best); pictures and books he loved, and work and play, music and silence, soberness and jest; his mind was open, and his heart was gay; green be his grave, and peaceful be his rest! alone with nature. the rain came suddenly, and to the shore i paddled, and took refuge in the wood, and, leaning on my paddle, there i stood in mild contentment watching the downpour, feeling as oft i have felt heretofore, rooted in nature, that supremest mood when all the strength, the peace, of solitude, sink into and pervade the being's core. and i have thought, if man could but abate his need of human fellowship, and find himself through nature, healing with her balm the world's sharp wounds, and growing in her state, what might and greatness, majesty of mind, sublimity of soul and godlike calm! the works of man and of nature. man's works grow stale to man: the years destroy the charm they once possessed; the city tires; the terraces, the domes, the dazzling spires are in the main but an attractive toy-- they please the man not as they pleased the boy; and he returns to nature, and requires to warm his soul at her old altar fires, to drink from her perpetual fount of joy. it is that man and all the works of man prepare to pass away; he may depend on naught but what he found her stores among; but she, she changes not, nor ever can; he knows she will be faithful to the end, for ever beautiful, for ever young. a day redeemed. i rose, and idly sauntered to the pane, and on the march-bleak mountain bent my look; and standing there a sad review i took of what the day had brought me. what the gain to wisdom's store? what holds had knowledge ta'en? i mused upon the lightly-handled book, the erring thought, and felt a stern rebuke: "alas, alas! the day hath been in vain!" but as i gazed upon the upper blue, with many a twining jasper ridge up-ploughed, sudden, up-soaring, swung upon my view a molten, rolling, sunset-laden cloud: my spirit stood, and caught its glorious hue-- "not lost the day!" it, leaping, cried aloud. outremont. far stretched the landscape, fair, without a flaw, down to one silver sheet, some stream or cloud, through glamorous mists. midway, an engine ploughed across the scene. in meditative awe i stood and gazed, absorbed in what i saw, till sweet-breathed evening came, the pensive-browed, and creeping from the city, spread her shroud over the sunlit slopes of outremont. soon the mild indian summer will be past, november's mists soon flee december's snows; the trees may perish, and the winter's blast wreck the tall windmills; these weak eyes may close; but ever will that scene continue fast fixed in my soul, where richer still it grows. the new old story. hard by an ancient mansion stood an oak; for centuries, 'twas said, it had been there: the old towers crumbled 'neath decay's slow stroke, while, hall by hall, upgrew a palace fair; lives and momentous eras waxed and waned, old barons died, and barons young and gay ruled in their stead, and still the oak remained, and each new spring seemed older not a day. the vesture of the spirit of mankind,-- forms and beliefs, like meteors, rise and set; the spirit too doth change; but o'er the mind this old evangel holds young lordship yet; and here among canadian snows we bring each christmastide our tribute to the king. recreation. give me a cottage embower'd in trees, far from the press and the din of the town; there let me loiter and live at my ease, happier far than the king with his crown. there let the music that's sweeter than words waken my soul's inarticulate song, murmur of zephyrs and warbling of birds, babble of waters that hurry along. under the shade of the maple and beech let me in tranquil contentment recline, learning what nature and solitude teach, charming philosophy, human, divine; finding how trivial the myriad things life is concern'd with, to seek or to shun; seeing the sources whence blessedness springs, gathering strength for the work to be done. paestum. paestum, your temples and your streets have been restored to view; your fadeless grecian beauty greets the eyes of men anew. but where are all your roses now-- those wonderful delights that made such garlands for the brow of your fair sybarites? they in your time were more renown'd, and dearer to your heart, than these fine works which mark the bound and highest reach of art. we'd see you as you look'd of old; though column, arch and wall were worth a kingdom to behold, one rose would shame them all. rondeau: an april day. an april day, when skies are blue, and earth rejoices to renew her vernal youth by lawn and lea, and sap mounts upward in the tree, and ruddy buds come bursting through; when violets of tender hue and trilliums keep the morning dew through all the sweet forenoon--give me an april day; when surly winter's roystering crew have said the last of their adieux, and left the fettered river free, and buoyant hope and ecstasy of life awake, my wants are few-- an april day. autumn. the year, an aged holy priest, in gorgeous vestments clad, now celebrates the solemn feast of autumn, sweet and sad. the sun, a contrite thurifer after his garish days, through lessening arch, a wavy blur, his burnish'd censer sways. the earth,--an altar all afire her hecatombs to claim, shoots upward many a golden spire and crimson tongue of flame. like jethro's shepherd, when he turn'd in midian's land to view the bush that unconsuming burn'd, i pause--and worship, too. my two boys. to some the heavenly father good has given raiment rich and fine, and tables spread with dainty food, and jewels rare that brightly shine. to some he's given gold that buys immunity from petty care, freedom and leisure and the prize of pleasing books and pictures fair. to some he's given wide domains and high estate and tranquil ease, and homes where all refinement reigns and everything combines to please. to some he's given minds to know the what and how, the where and when; to some, a genius that can throw a light upon the hearts of men. to some he's given fortunes free from sorrows and replete with joys; to some, a thousand friends; to me he's given my two little boys. my old classical master. ever hail'd with delight when my memory strays o'er the various scenes of my juvenile days, do you mind if i sing a poor song in your praise, my jolly old classical master? you were kind--over-lenient, 'twas rumor'd, to rule-- and so learn'd, though the blithest of all in the school, 'twas your pupil's own fault if he left you a fool, my jolly old classical master. "polumetis odusseus" you brought back to life, "xanthos menelaos" recalled to the strife: you knew more about homer than homer's own wife, my jolly old classical master. you could sever each classical gordian knot, each "crux criticorum" explain on the spot; we preferr'd your opinion to liddell and scott, my jolly old classical master. to you "arma virumque," "all gaul" and the rest were a snap of the fingers, a plaything, a jest, even horace mere english--you lik'd horace best, my jolly old classical master. we esteemed you a marvel in latin and greek, an erasmus, a bentley, a person, a freak; and for all sorts of knowledge we held you unique, my jolly old classical master. you brought forth from your treasury things new and old, philosophical gems, oratorical gold; and how many a capital story you told, my jolly old classical master! your devotion to learning, whole-hearted and pure, your fine critical relish of literature, and your gay disposition, had charms to allure, my jolly old classical master. here's a health to you, sir, from a thousand old boys, who once plagu'd you with nonsense and tried you with noise, but who learn'd from you, lov'd you, and wish you all joys, my jolly old classical master. may your mien be still jovial, your mind be still bright, may your wit be still sprightly, your heart be still light, and long, long may it be ere your spirit takes flight, my jolly old classical master. the gold-miners of british columbia. they come not from the sunny, sunny south, nor from the arctic region, nor from the east, the busy, busy east, the where man's name is legion; but they come from the west, the rugged, rugged west, from the world's remotest edges; and their pockets they are filled with the yellow, yellow gold that they mined in the mountain ledges. chorus-- then, hey, lads, hey, for the mining man so bold, who comes from the world's far edges! and hey for the gold, the yellow, yellow gold, that is stored in the mountain ledges! they basked not, they, in balmy tropic shade, 'neath orange tree and banyan; but braved the bush, the torrent and the steep, by gorge and gulch and canyon. they would not be held back in cities over desks, or among the homestead hedges; so their pockets now are filled with the yellow, yellow gold that they mined in the mountain ledges. they left their homes, their loved ones all behind, forsook kind friend and neighbor, and went to seek the thing of greatest worth, for gold, rare gold, to labor. oh! they bled the old earth--they opened up her veins with their picks and drills and sledges; and their pockets now are filled with the yellow, yellow gold that they mined in the mountain ledges. war-ships in port. the tread of armèd mariners is in our streets to-day, an empire's pulse is beating in the march of this array. from western woods, and celtic hills, and homely saxon shires, they sailed beneath the "meteor flag," the emblem of our sires; and for the glory that has been, the pride that yet may be, we hail them in the sacred names of home and liberty, and know that not on sea or land more dauntless hearts there are than the hearts of these bold seamen from the english men-of-war. trafalgar's fame-crowned hero stands, encarved in storied stone, and from his place of honor looks in silence and alone: but no, to-day his spirit lives, and walks the crowded way; for us drake, hawkins, frobisher and howard live to-day; for us from many a page of eld, 'mid war and tempest blast, a thousand thousand valiant forms come trooping from the past, and say, "forget not us to-day, we have a part with these, the 'sea-dogs' of old england, the 'mistress of the seas.'" no, no, ye gruff old heroes, ye can never be forgot; the memory of your prowess will outlive the storm, the shot destruction pours impartially on common and sublime, and scorn the volleying years that mount the battery of time; for far above this tide of war your worth is written clear on fame's bright rock of adamant, imperishable here; your names may be recorded not, your graves be 'neath the keel, but many a million english hearts some love for you shall feel. five grim old ocean-buffeters, stern ploughshares of the deep, have come to visit us of those whose duty 'tis to keep, with the old lion's courage and the young eagle's ken, their sleepless watch upon the sea that skirts this world of men: and if again in stately pride their lordly forms they bear upon the ample bosom of our noble stream, whene'er from massive prow impregnable their peaceful anchor falls, we'll hail old england's hearts of steel who man her iron walls. on finding a copy of burns's poems in the house of an ontario farmer. large book, with heavy covers worn and old, bearing clear proof of usage and of years, thine edges yellow with their faded gold, thy leaves with fingers stained--perchance with tears; how oft thy venerable page has felt the hardened hands of honorable toil! how oft thy simple song had power to melt the hearts of the rude tillers of the soil! how oft has fancy borne them back to see the scottish peasant at his work, and thou hast made them feel the grandeur of the free and independent follower of the plough! what careth he that his proud name hath peal'd from shore to shore since his new race began, in humble cot and "histie stibble field" who doth "preserve the dignity of man"? with reverent hands i lay aside the tome, and to my longing heart content returns, and in the stranger's house i am at home, for thou dost make us brothers, robert burns. and thou, old book, go down from sire to son; repeat the pathos of the poet's life; sing the sweet song of him who fought and won the outward struggle and the inward strife. go down, grand book, from hoary sire to son; keep by the book of books thy wonted place; tell what a son of man hath felt and done, and make of us and ours a noble race,-- a race to scorn the sordid greed of gold, to spurn the spurious and contemn the base, despise the shams that may be bought and sold,-- a race of brothers and of men,--a race to usher in the long-expected time good men have sought and prophets have foretold, when this bright world shall be the happy clime of brotherhood and peace, when men shall mould their lives like his who walked in palestine; the truly human manhood thou dost show, leading them upward to the pure divine nature of god made manifest below. the ideal preacher. it was back in renfrew county, near the opeongo line, where the land's all hills and hollows and the hills are clothed with pine, and in the wooded valleys little lakes shine here and there like jewels in the masses of a lovely woman's hair; where the york branch, by a channel ripped through rugged rocks and sand, sweeps to join the madawaska, speeding downward to the grand; where the landscape glows with beauty, like a halo shed abroad, and the face of nature mirrors back the unseen face of god. i was weary with my journey, and with difficulty strove to keep myself awake at first, as, sitting by the stove in old william rankin's shanty, i attended as i might to the pioneer backwoodsman's tales far on into the night; but william talked until the need of sleep one quite forgot, not stopping but to stir the fire, which kept the stove red-hot; for the wind was raw and cold without, although the month of may: up north the winter struggles hard before it yields its sway; and the snow is in the forests, and the ice is in the lakes, and the frost is in the seedland oft when sunny june awakes. he talked of camps in winter time, of river drives in spring, of discords in the settlement,--in fact, of everything; he told of one good elder who'd been eaten by a bear, and wondered that a beast of prey should eat a man of pray'r; of beast, from wolf to porcupine, killed with gun, axe and fork, and, finally, of college men who did not pine for pork. "but yet among them students," said the bushman, "there wuz one as hit me an' the settlement as fair as any gun. "o' course, he wa'nt no buster, hed no shinin' gifts o' speech; but jis' as reg'lar he could give some pointers how to preach. he talked straight on like tellin' yarns--more heart, i'd say, 'an head; but somehow people felt he meant 'bout every word he said. he wa'n't chuck full o' larnin' from the peelin' to the core;-- leastwise, he wa'n't the kind they call a college batch-o'-lore; he'd no degree, the schoolma'am said,--though soon he let 'em see that o' certain sterlin' qualities he had a great degree,-- leastwise he hed no letters till the hind end o' his name,-- but, preacher, say, you don't set much importance by them same?-- y' may hev titles o' y'r own, an' think i'm speakin' bold; but there's that bob-tailed nag o' mine, the chestnut three-year-old; it's true she can't make such a swish, to scare away the flies, but if y'd see her cover ground, y'd scarce believe y'r eyes. "o' course, he hed his enemies,--you preachers alluz hez,-- but 'twa'n't no use their tellin' us he wa'n't the stuff, i gez; an' after while they closed right up an' looked like,--it wuz fun,-- when they seed the way he 'sisted out ol' game-leg templeton. o' course, y' knows ol' templeton,--twuz him as druv y' in; y' noticed, maybe, how he limped, and sort o' saved his shin. he's run the mail through fair and foul 'tween this and cumbermere, and faithful served her majesty fur nigh on twenty year. "the preacher stayed with templeton, the same's you're stay'n' with me, on a new clearance back o' this, which, course, y' didn't see. an' one day on a visit tour the chap wuz startin' out in the way o' little carlow,--twuz good twelve mile round about,-- an' in the bush he'd lose hisself, as everybody knowed: 'i'll take the axe,' says templeton, 'an' go an' blaze a road. it's only three mile through the bush.' an' so they started in, quite happy like,--men never knows when troubles will begin. 'bout noon,--the folks was in the house a eatin' o' their snack,-- the chap comes home with templeton a-hangin' on his back. "the call wuz close fur templeton, who'd somehow missed his stroke; he alluz swung a heavy blow, an' the bone wuz well-nigh broke; an' wust of all, 'twuz two whole days afore the doctor came; he was up the long lake section, seein'--what's that fellow's name?-- well, never mind.--an' when he did examine of the wound, he said 'twould take all summer fur the man to git around. "well, what y' think thet preacher done, but turn right out an' mow the meadow down an' put it in, and th' harvest, too, although the ol' man worried and complained as how he'd orter stop; an' there wa'nt no binders in them days, and work wuz work, sure pop. "well, when the people heerd about the way that preacher done, all on 'em growed religious straight, sir, every mother's son; the meetin'-house wuz crowded from the pulpit to the door-- some on 'em hadn't showed face there fur twenty year or more; an' them as sot out on the fence an' gossiped all the while, jis' brought the fence planks in and sot down on 'em in the aisle, an' listened,--sir, no orator as ever spoke aloud worked on his audience the way as that chap on our crowd. we aint no shakes o' people; we aint up to nothin' new; but we knows a man what's shammin' and we knows a man what's true. an' when we heerd that preacher talk 'bout christian sacrifice and bearin' burdens for the weak, we valued his advice; an' we showed it--there wuz nothin' as we thought too good for him; we poured our cup o' gratitude an' filled it to the brim. "he aint been near so fort'nate 'n the city where he's went; some folks as didn't like him set them sticklers on his scent; an' the presbytery giv him fits fur trimmin' of his lamp the way it shined the brightest, an' he jined another camp. but most men,--leastwise such as him,--i take it, fur my part, aint got much devil in their brains when god is in their heart; an' i'll allow it yet, although they puts me in the stocks, that religion what is practical's sufficient orthodox. "well, thet's the finest preacher as hez struck back here to spout, an' there never wuz another we cared very much about. i've heerd o' beecher's meetings an' such men as john b. gough; but fourteen waggon loads druv down to see that preacher off. we sent him back to college with a fresh supply o' socks,-- nigh everything a student needs wuz jammed intill that box; an', preacher, spite of what yourself with all your parts may feel, fur me an' game-leg templeton that man is our ideel." the wheel of misfortune. o m'sieu, doan you hask me ma story, doan hask me how dis was happenn; dat's one beeg black hole on ma life, w'ere i doan want to look on some more.... well, he's coom joos' so well for to tole you, all tak' beet tabac firs' and den a'll tole you what cep' to de pries' a have nevare tole no one before. bien, m'sieu; he's come pass joos like dis way; a go out wit' de boys to make lark; dare was armand and joseph and louiee, an' we drink on de deefront saloon. an' we feenish in plac' wit' de music, like one of dose garden or park, w'ere he's play dose curse wheel for de monee--in hingleesh dat's wheel of fortune. he was saturday night on de week, m'sieu, an' a have ma week's pay on my bourse, wit'out w'at we pay for de whiskey--'bout one dollar feefty or less; an' a'm t'ink a can win me lots monee, and eef a doan win some, of coorse, a can stop 'fore a lose much, a tell me, but a've pooty beeg hope for success. well, louiee, he's be careful, risk notting, he's laugh w'en a'm buy some paddell, armand he's buy some for obligement, he's not half so careful's louiee. an' we play dare teel half pas' eleven, an' de meantime she's go pooty well, teel armand he's lose all she's monee, an' shortly 's de same ting wit' me. but louiee he's got plaintee of monee, an' he's got plaintee fr'en' on de plac', an' a'm hask heem for lend me ten dollar, a'm pay wit' good interes', be sure; he'll tol me he's got more as feefty an' he's give me plusieurs jours de grace, for louiee he was know a was hones' for all a was poor of de poor. well, i not was require all dat monee teel de wheel she was tak' few more whirl, for a keep on to lose pooty steady, and armand he say, "doan play some more," but louiee he say, "win yet posseeble," and joseph he was off wit' his girl, an' de croupier say, "bettre luck nex' time, dare is good luck an' bad luck in store." and de wheel she was turn on de peevot and shine in de light electrique, she seem like beeg star to be turning, an' sing tune like she doan care notting; but she turn like de pool on de river dat's tak' everyt'ing down pooty queek, an' she shine like de snake w'en he's body is roll' up--de snake wit' de sting. an' a'm play teel a lose all dat monee, an' de wicked roulette she go roun', an' a'm play also feefty more dollar, an' ma head she commence for to reel; an' oh, m'sieu, de hard time dat was follow teel a lay ma good wife in de groun', an' hoffen a hask me forgiveness, as dare by dat grave a go kneel. tim o'gallagher. my name is tim o'gallagher,--there's oirish in that same; my parients from the imerald oisle beyant the ocean came; my father came from donegal, my mother came from clare; but oi was born in pontiac, besoide the belle rivière. oi spint my choildhood tamin' bears, and fellin' timber trays, and catchin' salmon tin fate long--and doin' what oi plaze. oi got my iddication from the riverind father blake; he taught me latin grammar, and he after taught me grake, till oi could rade the classics in a distint sort of way-- 'twas the sadetoime of the harvist that oi'm rapin' ivery day. my parients thought me monsthrous shmart--of thim 'twas awful koind, and where oi'd go to college now was what perplixed their moind; so they axed the riverind father blake what varsity was bist to make a docthor, bachelor and lawyer and the rist. said father blake, "if oi must make decision, faith! oi will: sure, sind the boy to munthreal, there's none loike ould mcgill." so oi came to munthreal and found mcgill one afternoon, and saw a great excoited crowd all shoutin' out of tune; and in the cintre thorty min was foightin' jist loike mad, and two big fellows on the top of one poor little lad. oi turned indignant to the crowd, and tould them to their face: "ye pack of coward savages, onciviloized and base, to stand and see two stalwart min abusin' one that way! oi loike a gladiatorial show, but loike to see fair play." so oi jumped at those two bullies and oi caught thim by the shirt, and oi knocked their hids together and consoigned thim to the dirt. oi was removed and they were carried home, but all the same, though ould mcgill was two min short, she won that football game. they thought oi was a tough gussoon, and whin they played agin, they put me in the scrimmage--we got thorty-foive to tin. oi thin wint up to college whin the lictures would begin; oi attinded ivery licture--when oi happened to be in; got my work up, kipt my note-books in the illigantist shape; oi took notes of ivery licture--barrin' whin oi was ashlape. but, och! oi try to do my bist, for sure it's father blake as says the foinist faculty is arts, and no mistake; for there they tache philosophy and english literature, the mathematics also, and the classic authors, sure. oi larned the gracian poethry, oi larned the latin prose; oi know as much about thim both as my profissor knows: how troy, that had for noine long years defoied the graycian force, was "hors de combat" put at last by jist a wooden horse; how xerxes wipt because his army soon would pass away, and alexander wipt because there were no more to shlay; how cato from his toga plucked the carthaginian fruit; how brutus murdered saysar, and how saysar called him "brute." oi'd the honor of a mornin' with an influential med, and he took me to the room in which they mutilate the dead. oi don't objict to crack a skull or spoil a purty face, but to hack a man who's dead is what oi called extramely base. but all pursonal convictions, he explained, should be resoigned for the binifit of scoience and the good of humankoind; and though oi don't at all admoire their ways o' goin' on, oi'll take a course in medicine, oi will, before oi'm gone. oi saw the scoience workshops, too, and thought whin oi was made, these little hands were niver mint to larn the blacksmith trade; and for that illictricity, the thing what gives the shock, they collared old promaytheus and chained him to a rock for a-playin' with the loightnin' and a-raychin to the skoies, and the vultures gnawed his vittles, and the crows picked out his oyes. but toimes has changed, and larnin' gives us power--don't you see?-- and whin oi'm done with arts oi'll take that shplindid faculty; for, sure, it's from their workshops that the solar system's run; besoides, they make the wither, too, and rigilate the sun. oi troied exams at christmas, and oi didn't pass at all; but oi can have another whack at thim nixt spring and fall. in toime oi'll pass in iverything, and masther all they taiche; oi'll go through ivery faculty, and come out hid in aiche. and whin oi've conquered all, loike alexander oi will soigh there is no more to conquer, and oi'll lay me down and doie. they'll birry me with honors, and erict in my behalf a monimint which shall disphlay the followin' epitaph: "here loies shwate tim o'gallagher,--sure he had wits to shpare,-- his father came from donegal, his mother came from clare. he was a shplindid scholar, for he studied at mcgill; he drank the well of larnin' dhroy (and, faith! he got his fill). was niver mortal craythur larned to such a great degree,-- b.a.m.a.m.d.c.m.b.sc.ll.d." love sonnets of an office boy [illustration] love sonnets of an office boy by samuel ellsworth kiser illustrated by john t. mccutcheon forbes & company boston and chicago _copyright, _ by samuel ellsworth kiser published by arrangement with the chicago record-herald colonial press: electrotyped and printed by c. h. simonds & co., boston, u.s.a. love sonnets of an office boy i. oh, if you only knowed how much i like to stand here, when the "old man" ain't around, and watch your soft, white fingers while you pound away at them there keys! each time you strike it almost seems to me as though you'd found some way, while writin' letters, how to play sweet music on that thing, because the sound is something i could listen to all day. you're twenty-five or six and i'm fourteen, and you don't hardly ever notice me-- but when you do, you call me willie! gee, i wisht i'd bundles of the old long green and could be twenty-eight or nine or so, and something happened to your other beau. ii. i heard the old man scoldin' yesterday because your spellin' didn't suit him quite; he said you'd better go to school at night, and you was rattled when he turned away; you had to tear the letter up and write it all again, and when nobody seen i went and dented in his hat for spite: that's what he got for treatin' you so mean. i wish that you typewrote for me and we was far off on an island, all alone; i'd fix a place up under some nice tree, and every time your fingers struck a key i'd grab your hands and hold them in my own, and any way you spelt would do for me. [illustration] iii. i wish a fire'd start up here, some day, and all the rest would run away from you-- the boss and that long-legged bookkeeper, too, that you keep smilin' at--and after they was all down-stairs you'd holler out and say: "won't no one come and save me? must i choke and die alone here in the heat and smoke? oh, cowards that they was to run away!" and then i'd come and grab you up and go out through the hall and down the stairs, and when i got you saved the crowd would cheer, and then they'd take me to the hospital, and so you'd come and stay beside me there and cry and say you'd hate to live if i would die. [illustration] iv. yesterday i stood behind your chair when you was kind of bendin' down to write, and i could see your neck, so soft and white, and notice where the poker singed your hair, and then you looked around and seen me there, and kind of smiled, and i could seem to feel a sudden empty, sinkish feelin' where i'm all filled up when i've just e't a meal. dear frankie, where your soft, sweet finger tips hit on the keys i often touch my lips, and wunst i kissed your little overshoe, and i have got a hairpin that you wore-- one day i found it on the office floor-- i'd throw my job up if they fired you. v. she's got a dimple in her chin, and, oh, how soft and smooth it looks; her eyes are blue; the red seems always tryin' to peep through the middle of her cheeks. i'd like to go and lay my face up next to hers and throw my arms around her neck, with just us two alone together, but not carin' who might scold if they should see us actin' so. if i would know that some poor girl loved me as much as i do her, sometimes i'd take her in my arms a little while and make her happy just for kindness, and to see the pleased look that acrost her face'd break, and hear the sighs that showed how glad she'd be. vi. when you're typewritin' and that long-legged clerk tips back there on his chair and smiles at you, and you look up and get to smilin', too, i'd like to go and give his chair a jerk and send him flyin' till his head went through the door that goes out to the hall, and when they picked him up he'd be all black and blue and you'd be nearly busted laughin' then. but if i done it, maybe you would run and hold his head and smooth his hair and say it made you sad that he got dumped that way, and i'd get h'isted out for what i done-- i wish that he'd get fired and you'd stay and suddenly i'd be a man some day. [illustration] vii. if i was grown to be a man, and you and all the others that are workin' here was always under me, and i could clear the place to-morrow if i wanted to, i'd buy an easy chair all nice and new and get a bird to sing above your head, and let you set and rest all day, instead of hammerin' them keys the way you do. i'd bounce that long-legged clerk and then i'd raise your wages and move up my desk beside where you'd be settin,' restin' there, and i'd not care about the weather--all the days would make me glad, and in the evenings then i'd wish't was time to start to work again. [illustration] viii. this morning when that homely, long-legged clerk come in he had a rose he got somewhere; he went and kind of leaned against her chair, instead of goin' on about his work, and stood around and talked to her awhile, because the boss was out,--and both took care to watch the door; and when he left her there he dropped the flower with a sickish smile. i snuck it from the glass of water she had stuck it in, and tore it up and put it on the floor and smashed it with my foot, when neither him nor her was watchin' me-- i'd like to rub the stem acrost his nose, and i wish they'd never be another rose. ix. yesterday i watched you when you set there with your little lunch-box in your lap; i seen you nibble at a ginger snap, and wished that where your lips had made it wet i'd have a chance to take a bite and let my mouth be right where yours was before; and after you had got your apple e't, and wasn't lookin', i picked up the core. i pressed my mouth against it then, and so it seemed almost the same as kissin' you, your teeth had touched it, and your red lips, too, and it was good and tasted sweet, and, oh, i wished you'd bring an apple every day and i could have the cores you'd throw away. x. i wish, when you was through your work some night and goin' home alone, and had your pay stuck in your stockin'--what you drew that day-- a robber'd come along with all his might and you'd be nearly scared to death, and right there in the street you'd almost faint and say: "good robber, please don't hurt me--go away!" and as he grabbed you then i'd come in sight. i wish i'd be as strong as two or three big giants then, and when i handed one out to him he'd be through, all in, and done, and then you'd look and see that it was me, and, thinkin' of the great escape you had, you'd snuggle in my arms and just be glad. [illustration] xi. her brother come this morning with a note what said that she was home and sick in bed; she's got an awful bad cold in her head-- they think it might run into the sore throat, and oh, what if she'd not come back again, and they would get some other girl instead of her to typewrite here, and she'd be dead? i wouldn't care no more for nothin' then. i wish i was the doctor that they'd get, and when i'd take her pulse i'd hold her hand and say "poor little girl!" to her, and set beside the bed awhile and kind of let my arm go 'round her, slow and careful, and say, "now put out your tongue a little, pet." xii. she's back to work again; i'm awful glad; when she was sick it seemed to me as though the clocks all got to goin' kind of slow, and every key she pounds looked kind of sad. it's tough to have to hear her coughin' so-- i wish that i could take her cold and she would know i took it, and not have to blow her nose no more, and be as well as me. she takes some kind of cough stuff in a spoon, i seen her lickin' it this morning when she took a dose and put it down again, and when the rest went out awhile at noon i got her spoon and licked it, and it seemed as though it all was something nice i dreamed. xiii. last night i dreamed about her in my sleep; i thought that her and me had went away out on some hill where birds sung 'round all day, and i had got a job of herdin' sheep. i thought that she had went along to keep me comp'ny, and we'd set around for hours just lovin', and i'd go and gather flowers and pile them at her feet, all in a heap. it seemed to me like heaven, bein' there with only her besides the sheep and birds, and us not sayin' anything but words about the way we loved. i wouldn't care to ever wake again if i could still dream we was there forever on the hill. [illustration] xiv. this morning when we come to work i got jammed in the elevator back of you, and there they made you stick your elbow in me where the mince pie lands; the lunch that i had brought was all smashed flat, but still i didn't care; you leaned against me, for you couldn't stand because the ones in front were crowdin', and my nose was pressed deep into your back hair. i wish we'd had to go ten times as high, or else that we'd be shootin' upward yet, and never stop no more until we'd get away above the clouds and in the sky, and you'd lean back forevermore and let your hairpins always jab me in the eye. xv. when her and me were here alone, at noon, and she had bit a pickle square in two, i set and watched and listened to her chew, and thought how sweet she was, and pretty soon she happened to look down at me and say: "you seem so sad, poor boy; what's wrong with you?" and then i got to shiverin' all through and wished that i was forty miles away. i tried to think of some excuse to make, but something seemed all whirly in my head, and so the first blame thing i knew i said: "it's nothin' only just the stummick ache." sometimes i almost wisht that i was dead for settin' there and makin' such a break. xvi. last night i heard jones astin' you to go to see the opery next thursday night, and you said yes--and he'll be settin' right beside you there all through the whole blamed show, and you'll be touchin' him with your elbow, and mebby he'll say things that tickle you and buy a box of chock'luts for you, too, and i'll not be around nor never know. i wish i'd be the hero on the stage, and you was the fair maiden that got stoled, and he would be the villain that would hold you frettin' like a song-bird in its cage-- and then i'd come along and smash him one, and you'd say: "take me, dear, for what you done." [illustration] xvii. when i was dustin' off her desk one day, and she was standin' there, i took the pad she writes on when she gets dictates and had a notion to tear off a leaf and lay it up against my heart at night, when they was something made her come to where i stood and say, "poor boy," as softly as she could-- it almost seemed to take my breath away. that night i couldn't sleep at all becuz the thoughts about them words that she had said kep' all the time a-goin' through my head with thoughts about how beautiful she wuz, and then i knowed she loved me, too, or she would not of cared how hard i worked, you see. xviii. i'd like to have a lock of her brown hair, for that would be a part of her, you know; and if she'd tie it with a little bow of ribbon, then i'd fasten it somewhere clear down inside, next to my heart, to wear, and fix it over every week or so, when i changed undershirts, or maw she'd go and raise a fuss because she found it there. one day when bizness wasn't on the boom she trimmed her finger-nails, and one piece flew to where i was, almost acrost the room; i watched the spot where it went tumblin' to, and now a piece of her is mine; it come right from the end of her dear little thumb. xix. i wish, some day, when she's typewritin' and i've took a note out for the boss somewhere, they'd be some outlaws sneak in here and scare that long-legged clerk to death and then the band would steal her, and nobody else would dare to try to save her, and they'd run away to where they had their cave, and keep her there, and ast more for her than her folks could pay. then i would get a gun and bowie-knife and take the name of buckskin bob or joe, and track them to their den, and then i'd go a-galley whoopin' in, and save her life, and she would say: "my hero's came at last!" and we'd stand there and hold each other fast. [illustration] xx. last night, when she'd got on her coat and hat and felt her dress behind and then her hair, to see if everything was all right there, she stopped and said: "well, now just look at that!" and then put out one foot a little bit, and says: "ain't that provokin'? i declare, the string's untied!" she put it on a chair, a-motionin' for me to fasten it. so then that long-legged clerk he pushed me back and grabbed the shoe-strings that were hangin' down-- i wish i was the strongest man in town-- oh, wouldn't i of let him have a whack! and i'd of kicked him so blamed hard i'll bet he'd wonder what he might come down on yet. xxi. my darling, often when you set and think of things that seem to kind of bother you, you put your pencil in your mouth and chew around the wood, and let your sweet teeth sink down in it till it's all marked up and split, and yesterday i seen you when you threw a stub away that you'd bit up; it flew behind the bookcase, where i gobbled it. i put it in my mouth, the way you'd done, and i could feel the little holes you made-- the places where your teeth sunk in--i laid my tongue tight up against them, every one, and shut my eyes, and then you seemed to be there with your lips on mine and kissin' me. xxii. when i was tellin' ma, two days ago, about our beautiful typewriter girl she dropped the dough and give a sudden whirl and said: "she's twic't as old as you, you know-- she must be twenty-five or six or so. don't think about her any more, my dear, and you and me'll be always happy here-- besides, she's nothing but an old scarecrow." it made me sad to hear her talk that way; my darling's just a little girl almost-- i can't see why ma give her such a roast, and i could hardly eat my lunch next day, for every time i took a bite of bread i almost hated ma for what she said. [illustration] xxiii. the other day a rusty pen got stuck away deep in her finger, and she held her poor, dear little hand up then and yelled for me to hurry over there and suck the poison out, and when i went i struck my toe against the old man's cuspidor and rolled about eight feet along the floor before i knew what happened, blame the luck! when i set up and looked around, at last that long-legged, homely clerk was there, and so he had her finger in his mouth, and, oh, i'll bet you i'd 'a' kicked him if i dast! i never seen the beat the way things go when there's a chance for me to stand a show. xxiv. that homely clerk took her out for a ride last sunday in a buggy, and they rode around all through the parks; i wisht i'd knowed about it, and the horse would kind of shied, and then got scared and run and kicked, and i'd of been a piece ahead and saw him jump and leave her hangin' on alone, the chump, and she'd of been so 'fraid she'd nearly died. then i'd of give a spring and caught the bit, and landed on the horse's back, where all the people there could see me doin' it, and when i got her saved the crowd would call three cheers for me, and then she'd come and fall against my buzzum, and he'd have a fit. xxv. i don't care if she's twic't as old as me, for i've been figgerin' and figgers shows that i'll grow older faster than she grows, and when i'm twenty-one or so, why, she won't be near twic't as old as me no more, and then almost the first thing that she knows i might ketch up to her some day, i s'pose, and both of us be gladder than before. when i get whiskers i can let them grow all up and down my cheeks and on my chin, and in a little while they might begin to make me look as old as her, and so she'd snuggle up to me and call me "paw." and then i'd call her "pet" instead of "maw." [illustration] xxvi. one morning when the boss was out somewhere and when the clerk was at the bank and me and her was here alone together, she let out a screech and jumped up in the air and grabbed her skirts and yelled: "a mouse!" and there one come a-runnin' right at her, and, gee! they wasn't a blame thing that i could see to whack it with, except an office chair. i grabbed one up and made a smash and hit her desk and broke a leg clear off somehow, and when the boss came back and looked at it he said that i would have to pay, and now, when ma finds out i know just what i'll git-- next pay-day there will be an awful row. xxvii. it's over now; the blow has fell at last; it seems as though the sun can't shine no more, and nothing looks the way it did before; the glad thoughts that i used to think are past. her desk's shut up to-day, the lid's locked fast; the keys where she typewrote are still; her chair looks sad and lonesome standin' empty there-- i'd like to let the tears come if i dast. this morning when the boss come in he found a letter that he'd got from her, and so he read it over twice and turned around and said: "the little fool's got married!" oh, it seemed as if i'd sink down through the ground, and never peep no more--i didn't, though. xxviii. the chap's a beau we didn't know she had he come from out of town somewhere, they say; i hope he's awful homely, and that they will fight like cats and dogs and both be sad. but still there's one thing makes me kind of glad: the long-legged clerk must stay and work away, and, though he keeps pretendin' to be gay, it's plain enough to see he's feelin' bad. i wish when i'm a man and rich and proud, she'd see me, tall and handsome then, and be blamed sorry that she didn't wait for me, and that she'd hear the people cheerin' loud when i went past, and down there in the crowd i'd see her lookin' at me sorrowf'ly. [illustration] _now in press_ ballads of the busy days by s. e. kiser price, $ . forbes & company, publishers boston and chicago a charming romance buell hampton by willis george emerson a tale of love, of surprises, of a mystery "'buell hampton' is a strong and original story."--_philadelphia north american._ "it is a good story in every particular. nothing better has been done in its line."--_the mirror_ (_st. louis_). "one of the leading books of the year. every page breathes; is alive with people who do things and say bright and witty things."--_chicago journal._ "as a distinctly american novel, 'buell hampton' has, for abundance of thrilling incident and pure interestingness, no superior."--_albany times-union._ "many a year has passed since so strong, so bright, and so clever a novel as 'buell hampton' has made its appearance. there are no dull patches in it. every page is filled with dewy freshness."--_opie read._ _printing choice and binding handsome. price, $ . _ forbes & company, publishers boston and chicago _now in twentieth thousand_ ben king's verse if i should die to-night if i should die to-night and you should come to my cold corpse and say, weeping and heartsick o'er my lifeless clay-- if i should die to-night and you should come in deepest grief and woe and say, "here's that ten dollars that i owe"-- i might arise in my large white cravat and say, "what's that?" if i should die to-night and you should come to my cold corpse and kneel, clasping my bier to show the grief you feel-- i say, if i should die to-night and you should come to me, and there and then just even hint 'bout payin' me that ten, i might arise the while; but i'd drop dead again. (_from "ben king's verse."_) "'ben king's verse' will be appreciated by all who enjoy good things."--_john kendrick bangs._ "ben king's verses may be recommended to those suffering from melancholy."--_the chicago daily news._ "lovers of real poetry and of quaint, whimsical humor will treasure 'ben king's verse' as a volume which can be read and re-read with pleasure, a companion for all moods and times."--_the journalist_ (_new york_). _beautifully made. pages. price, $ . _ forbes & company, publishers boston and chicago popular humorous verse by nixon waterman in merry mood,--a book of cheerful rhymes a book of verses "nixon waterman needs no introduction to the american public. one of our most natural and musical singers, his verses have been quoted in every newspaper in the land, and have gone straight to the heart of the great army of 'just common folks.' he is always an optimist. the world is better--both happier and better--for such verses as these of nixon waterman."--_chicago record-herald._ _price, each, $ . _ by fred emerson brooks pickett's charge and other poems old ace and other poems "fred emerson brooks is a great poet and a genius of great ability. humor and pathos abound throughout his poems, and many partake of the inspiration of the war-drum, but he is thoroughly at home in whatever strain of melody he chooses to adopt."--_atlanta constitution._ _price, each, $ . _ forbes & company p. o. box boston, mass. p. o. box chicago, ill. transcriber's notes: text in italics is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.