:-NRLF 
 
 B M 1DD 555 
 
 
 
GIFT OF 
 
BY GEORGE STERLING 
 
 The Caged Eagle and Other Poems 
 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth 1.50 
 
 The Testimony of the Suns and Other 
 
 Poems. Crown 8vo. Cloth SI. 2 5 
 
 A Wine of Wizardry and Other Poems 
 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth 1.25 
 
 The House of Orchids and Other Poems 
 
 Crown 8vo. Cloth 1.25 
 
 Beyond the Breakers and Other Poems 
 
 Crou<n 8vo. Cloth 1.25 
 
 Yosemite. Crown 8vo. Full Paper 
 
 Boards, Illustrated .75 
 
 Ode on the Opening of the Panama- 
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 Limited edition on hand-made 
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 Small 4to. Full Hand- Made Paper 
 over Boards 1.75 
 
 The Evanescent City, with Illustrations 
 
 by Francis Bruguiere. 4to. Boards. ,75 
 A. M. ROBERTSON 
 San Francisco 
 
THE CAGED EAGLE 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
THE CAGED EAGLE 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE STERLING 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 "THE TESTIMONY OF THE SUNS" 
 
 "A WINE OF WIZARDRY" 
 
 "THE HOUSE OF ORCHIDS" 
 
 "BEYOND THE BREAKERS" 
 
 "YOSEM1TE" 
 
 A. M. ROBERTSON 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 1916 
 
COPYRIGHT 
 
 1916 
 BY A. M. ROBERTSON 
 
TO 
 
 RAPHAEL WEILL 
 CHEVALIER OF THE LEGION OF HONOR 
 
 339711 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE CAGED EAGLE AND OTHER POEMS: 
 
 THE WITCH 9 
 
 To TWILIGHT 14 
 
 HENRI ... 16 
 
 CONSPIRACY 19 
 
 INDIAN SUMMER 22 
 
 BALLAD OF THE FATAL WORD . 23 
 
 ON THE SALE OF THE LOVE-LETTERS OF A DEAD POET . 27 
 
 MEDIATRIX 28 
 
 A DOG WAITS His DEAD MISTRESS 30 
 
 HUMILITY IN ART 32 
 
 AN AUTUMN THRUSH 34 
 
 THE FALL OF THE YEAR 36 
 
 OCTOBER . . . . 38 
 
 IN AUTUMN 4 
 
 THE CAGED EAGLE 42 
 
 TIME AND TEARS 45 
 
 To AN OLD NURSE 46 
 
 To THE MUMMY OF THE LADY Isis (In the Bohemian Club, 
 
 San Francisco) 49 
 
 THE RAMPARTS AND THE ROSE 5 
 
 ON A PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN 52 
 
 THE TRYST 54 
 
 A YELLOW ROSE 58 
 
 SHAKESPEARE 61 
 
 THE SHADOW OF NIRVANA 65 
 
 THE RETURN 66 
 
 MOLOCH . 6 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE CAGED EAGLE AND OTHER POEMS Continued: 
 
 THREE SONNETS ON SLEEP 7 o 
 
 MAN 73 
 
 ON A CITY STREET . 74 
 
 ILLUSION 75 
 
 ESSENTIAL NIGHT 7 6 
 
 THE GLEANER 77 
 
 CALIFORNIA 7 g 
 
 POEMS ON THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION: 
 
 ODE ON THE OPENING 8 7 
 
 THE BUILDERS 102 
 
 THE EVANESCENT CITY I0 4 
 
 PERSONAL POEMS: 
 
 FRANK UNGER 109 
 
 To XAVIER MARTINEZ, PAINTER no 
 
 THE LIGHT-GIVER m 
 
 To MARGARET ANGLIN II4 
 
 ON THE GREAT WAR: 
 
 THE SONG OF THE VALKYRS n 7 
 
 THE DREAM OF WHILHELM II I2 o 
 
 EARTH S ANTHEM 121 
 
 To GERMANY 122 
 
 BETRAYAL I27 
 
 BELGIUM, AUGUST, 1914 I2 g 
 
 ENGLAND, AUGUST, 1914 I30 
 
 To THE WAR-LORDS I3I 
 
 THE WAR-GOD 134 
 
 THE LITTLE FARM I35 
 
 THE HOUSE OF WAR I3 6 
 
 "As IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING" i 37 
 
 To BELGIUM I3 8 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ON THE GREAT WAR Continued: 
 
 THE Two PRAYERS 139 
 
 AFTERMATH 140 
 
 THE WAR-MACHINE 141 
 
 BOMBARDMENT 142 
 
 GERMANY 143 
 
 THE DEATH-CHORDS 144 
 
 THE FEAST 145 
 
 WAR S Music 146 
 
 THE AEROPLANE 147 
 
 BEFORE DAWN 148 
 
 THE TURK 149 
 
 THE NEW KINGS 150 
 
 To FRANCE 151 
 
 THE NIGHT OF MAN . 152 
 
 To THE ALLIED ARMS 153 
 
 THE BATTLEFIELD AT NIGHT 154 
 
 KINGSHIP 155 
 
 THE DEATH OF RUPERT BROOKE ........ 156 
 
 THE HELOTS 157 
 
 THE CROWN-PRINCE AT VERDUN 158 
 
 BEFORE DAWN IN AMERICA 159 
 
 GUN-PRACTICE 160 
 
 To ENGLAND 161 
 
 CIVILIZATION AT BAY 162 
 
 THE DAY OF DECISION 163 
 
 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, 1916 164 
 
 THE "LUSITANIA" 165 
 
 WAR, THE PAST 166 
 
 WAR, THE PRESENT 167 
 
 WAR, THE FUTURE 168 
 
THE CAGED EAGLE 
 
 AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 THE WITCH 
 
 Erik the prince came back from sea, 
 
 His galley low with spoil- 
 Armor and silks and weeping slaves, 
 
 Silver and wine and oil. 
 
 And there was one that did not weep, 
 
 But laughed in Erik s face, 
 And tween the helmsman and the mast 
 
 Strode with a leopard s grace. 
 
 Her hair was darker than the night 
 
 In which our foemen sink; 
 Her limbs were whiter than the milk 
 
 Of which our maidens drink. 
 
THE WITCH 
 
 Her lips were coral-red; her eyes 
 As shoaling seas were green. 
 
 She wore cupped gold on either breast 
 And one blue gem between. 
 
 And cross her path or say her word 
 
 No man save Erik dared ; 
 But all day long men stood apart, 
 
 And knit their brows, and stared. 
 
 And they have made the harbor strand, 
 And all have seen her charms; 
 
 Erik hath borne her to the shore 
 Uplifted hi his arms. 
 
 Soon hi the council-hall they stood 
 
 Of Gudrod, sire and king, 
 Who bade grey Sigurd, seer and skald, 
 
 The prince s valor sing. 
 
 10 
 
THE WITCH 
 
 Long looked the skald on Erik s face 
 
 And face of her he led; 
 Then snatched the blade from Erik s belt 
 
 And stabbed the captive dead. 
 
 Erik hath sprung at Sigurd s throat, 
 But four lords hold him fast, 
 
 With eyes that glare on nothingness, 
 And straining arms upcast. 
 
 There is hot tumult in the place, 
 With clash of steel and word, 
 
 Until in thunder over all 
 The king s deep voice is heard. 
 
 "Assoil thee, skald! and give good cause 
 
 For this that thou hast done, 
 Or ravens for thy sightless eyes 
 Shall fight ere set of sun!" 
 
 ii 
 
THE WITCH 
 
 The skald stood silent and apart, 
 
 Then smiled upon his deed. 
 
 It is that we bleed not," he said, 
 
 "That she in time does bleed. 
 
 From isles of sin that one was brought, 
 
 Far westward ard to-south; 
 She whispered in a witch s tongue 
 
 And hath a harlot s mouth. 
 
 O Gudrod ! in thy grandsire s time 
 
 Such one across the sill 
 Was led into the royal house 
 
 To love, and plot her will. 
 
 Thou hast heard sung what strong one s death 
 
 Her cunning did devise, 
 With sorcery of philtred glance, 
 
 With promise of her eyes. 
 
 12 
 
THE WITCH 
 
 Thou hast heard sung the woes she wrought 
 
 With swords of jealous men : 
 Know now that in this serpent slain 
 
 That poison came again ! 
 
 I have done well by thee and thine 
 
 Thy daughters, lords and son; 
 And many hearts shall go unpierced, 
 
 For that I pierced this one." 
 
 He made an end, and smiled aloof .... 
 
 The great king bent his head .... 
 Then, gazing long on him that smiled, 
 "Thou hast done well," he said. 
 
 And from the sorceress the blood 
 
 Crept slowly on the stone, 
 And pointed like a scarlet arm 
 
 At Gudrod on his throne. 
 
TO TWILIGHT 
 
 Linger, we pray, 
 Shy mother of the white and earliest star! 
 
 For in thy keeping are 
 
 The Dreams that suffer not the light of day 
 Dim presences, that find us from afar. 
 
 O soundless feet, 
 Between the night and sunset hesitant! 
 
 The cricket s eager chant 
 And voice of some faint bell, remotely sweet, 
 Alone await thee, clear and consonant. 
 
 Sing to thyself 
 A song as pure, as low, as delicate, 
 
 Ere music seem too late, 
 Or yet the moonray seek the hidden elf, 
 Or mute, the night fall uncompassionate. 
 
TO TWILIGHT 
 
 We shall not hear; 
 But in the heart an echo swiftly flown 
 
 Shall touch us from thine own, 
 And voices of the past, forlorn and clear, 
 Shall haunt us from the days that love hath 
 known .... 
 
 So hast thou come, 
 Whose benediction ceases not for night, 
 
 To close the gates of light, 
 And tell, from fields for thee a moment dumb, 
 That age-old pain of Beauty and her flight. 
 
HENRI 
 
 To-night I drifted to the restaurant 
 We scribblers fancy, finding it unchanged, 
 Save that I saw no more my dapper friend, 
 The waiter Henri. When I asked for him, 
 "Gone to the war," another waiter said .... 
 
 "Gone to the war!" That man so mild a part 
 Of peace and its traditions ! Debonnair, 
 Childlike, alert, and none too strong, we d thought. 
 He who had served so deftly, and, secure, 
 Had walked the beaten path and sheltered ways- 
 He now was with the cannon and the kings ! 
 Gentle he was, and ever with a smile: 
 Ah! wears he still a smile? For now his soul 
 Has taken iron, and stood forth austere, 
 Made suddenly acquainted with despair, 
 And pain, and horror, and the timeless things. 
 
 16 
 
HENRI 
 
 I called him once, and he unhurried came; 
 And now he hurries at Another s beck- 
 Ancient, enormous, immemorial War 
 And, by the trampled valley of the Meuse, 
 Finds a red service in the day s vast hall 
 Of thunders, and in night s domain of death 
 Attends, unless he too be of the dead. 
 And I sit here beneath the harmless lights ! 
 
 O simple soul War s hands laid hold upon 
 And led to devastations, and the shock 
 Of legions, and the rumble of huge guns, 
 And crash and lightning of the rended shells 
 Above a region veined and pooled with blood ! 
 You now have part with all intrepid youth 
 That took, in ages past, the battle-line, 
 And in a mighty Cause had faith and love. 
 You are the hero now, and I the sheep ! 
 And quietly beneath the pleasant lamps 
 
HENRI 
 
 I sit, and wonder how you fare to-night. 
 It s midnight now in France. Perhaps you find 
 Uneasy slumber; or perhaps, entrenched, 
 You wait the night-attack across the rain. 
 Perhaps, my friend, they ve made your bed with 
 
 spades ! 
 
 And I sit moody here, remembering, 
 As careless men and women rise and go, 
 I never asked you if you had a wife. 
 
 18 
 
CONSPIRACY 
 
 I had a dream of some great house of stone, 
 Not dark, but open to the northern ray. 
 Beneath a cold and somber sky it lay, 
 
 Soundless and secret, mournful and alone. 
 
 It had no prospect save upon the sky 
 Set in a great and old and windy wood. 
 Profound its essence seemed, but not of good; 
 
 Yet had one asked, none could have answered why. 
 
 A single door it had, that faced the east, 
 Ponderous, brazen and without a lock. 
 I thought, as stubbornly I dared to knock, 
 
 That past the sill a cryptic murmur ceased. 
 
CONSPIRACY 
 
 And none said "Enter! 1 yet I entered there, 
 And saw that house was all one marble room, 
 Austere, and given to the dead, for whom 
 
 The walls held chiseled couches, scant and bare. 
 
 Arctic, immense, no pillar stayed that hall, 
 And from the north the melancholy light 
 Sank through translucent windows, vast and white, 
 
 On alabaster niche and frozen pall. 
 
 Rigid they lay, that session of the dead, 
 From whom the hands of Change seemed held a space, 
 With folded arms and enigmatic face, 
 
 Marmorean, as portion of their bed. 
 
 And half I thought that wafts of presence stole 
 On the urned air significantly still, 
 Upon whose wintry crystal crept a chill 
 
 That fell not on the body but the soul. 
 
 20 
 
CONSPIRACY 
 
 That air unused, it seemed to crave escape 
 From that sad hall, to be a wind again. 
 I felt a terror of those tranquil men, 
 
 And feared the wisdom of each silent shape. 
 
 Whereat I turned, importunate, to win 
 My way to life s complacencies once more; 
 Which done, behind the safety of the door 
 
 Again I heard that muttering begin. 
 
 21 
 
INDIAN SUMMER 
 
 Come with me to some woodland where the chill 
 Of autumn stirs with ecstasy the day, 
 Or where the tranquil edges of a bay 
 
 Shoal to untroubled turquoise, pure and still; 
 
 There let immortal Beauty have her will 
 In that hushed temple of the year s delay, 
 Crowning thy heavens with her holy ray, 
 
 While the heart leaps and eyes unbidden fill. 
 
 Assent thou not unto the year s "Alas!" 
 Tho all that is depart and leave no trace. 
 
 Suffice it, ere the lonely vision pass, 
 That loveliness be given for a space, 
 
 When, set with stars, the souPs deep waters glass 
 The glory and the sorrow of her face. 
 
 22 
 
BALLAD OF THE FATAL WORD 
 
 The boulders lie along the downs; 
 
 The turf is hard between ; 
 The Channel waves are low this dawn. 
 
 And turf and wave are green. 
 
 Now three come down from out the wood, 
 
 And cross the verdant span; 
 And two have swords and one a rose 
 
 A man, a maid, a man. 
 
 Beside the sea the turf is flat, 
 
 With space for one to spring 
 To right or left, and in or out, 
 
 With steel upraised to sting. 
 
BALLAD OF THE FATAL WORD 
 
 "Have at thee, Carew!" cries the one: 
 "Defend thyself! "it came. 
 The blades against the rising sun 
 Make sudden wands of flame. 
 
 Now let the timid curlew fly 
 
 And let the gull veer past, 
 For point is set to truceless point 
 
 And doubt shall end at last. 
 
 And long below a windy sky 
 
 The dancing rapiers blaze 
 The grating edge, the slender death 
 
 That seeks an hundred ways. 
 
 And neither hath the vantage yet, 
 
 Nor do the Fates decide 
 Above those lists where pride and youth 
 
 Encounter youth and pride. 
 
BALLAD OF THE FATAL WORD 
 
 Then sudden on the breast of one 
 
 There lies a scarlet stain. 
 Tis but a touch, yet at the sight 
 
 The maiden cries, "Duane!" 
 
 And in that voice, for all to know, 
 
 Are love and bitter fear; 
 And neither knew, until she cried, 
 
 Which one to her was dear. 
 
 And at that voice the one she named 
 Stands dazed, for instant weal, 
 
 Till in that heart where joy is crowned 
 Slips the dethroning steel. 
 
 He had not struck had he but known 
 How bliss strikes unawares; 
 
 Now she is on her knees at last, 
 With unavailing pray rs. 
 
BALLAD OF THE FATAL WORD 
 
 Upon the breast of him that fell 
 Her red rose. laid she then; 
 
 And unto him whose blade was red 
 She never spoke again. 
 
 26 
 
ON THE SALE OF THE LOVE-LETTERS 
 OF A DEAD POET 
 
 The fond and foolish lines writ for the one 
 
 On those the gaping many have their will. 
 
 About the grave contending voices shrill, 
 In profanation of a trust undone : 
 The dead man sleeps, and protest has he none 
 
 On those that soil his passion s memory still. 
 
 Where geese may crane before the sullied sill, 
 The heart s poor shrine lies open to the sun. 
 
 There is no grace of shadow for this flow r, 
 No balm of silence for this outraged love, 
 
 Laid bare to leering peasants for a doom. 
 The ghouls are out before the midnight hour; 
 The buzzards gather in the skies above; 
 The stained hyena snuffles in the tomb. 
 
 27 
 
MEDIATRIX 
 
 Voiceless, we hear thee plead, 
 O Music, bond unseen 
 That God hath made between 
 
 His silence and our need. 
 
 Tho Heaven have graver speech 
 Than thy communing tongue, 
 Yet save as thou hast sung 
 
 Its angels may not teach. 
 
 What none shall ever say 
 
 With sound of speech, say thou, 
 
 Upon whose holy brow 
 Falls now our lesser day. 
 
 28 
 
MEDIATRIX 
 
 In thy compassion be 
 A refuge from the mirth 
 And babble of mad earth, 
 
 Till all are lost in thee. 
 
 From ways to us unshown, 
 Grant us, the dumb and blind, 
 The word that grief would find, 
 
 The word that love hath known. 
 
 Thy voice of joy and pain 
 All worlds and times allot 
 Which lacking, love stands not, 
 
 Nor Heaven to lose or gain. 
 
 29 
 
A DOG WAITS HIS DEAD MISTRESS 
 
 Lift not thy head at some familiar sound : 
 It is not she, the comrade taken hence. 
 The solitary pathway she has found 
 Gives not upon the sense. 
 
 Be patient, for thou shalt forget at last 
 Forget, and in thy fashion be at peace: 
 Here in my changeless valley of the Past 
 Her voice will never cease. 
 
 happy! that thy brown and mournful eyes 
 
 Look only on the barriers that are ! 
 But mine remember how the solemn skies 
 Shut westward on her star. 
 
A DOG WAITS HIS DEAD MISTRESS 
 
 It is not thine to wonder, faithful friend, 
 
 If Morning close the vigil and the pain, 
 If doubt and loss be given for an end 
 And sorrow to our gain. 
 
 It is not thine to hunger for her light, 
 
 And know, as I, how long the watch must be 
 Till the grey sentry hear upon the night 
 The word that sets him free. 
 
 Nay lift no more thine eager head to greet 
 
 Her presence in the garden or the hall : 
 It is in Paradise the soundless feet 
 Fare, if they fare at all. 
 
HUMILITY IN ART 
 
 What do they know who did not see the Dream? 
 O brother ! tho men praise thee and acclaim, 
 They did not see the vision and the flame, 
 
 Nor saw the wings of Beauty lift and gleam. 
 
 Thou to thyself in silence shalt confess 
 How scant thy tidings of that angel are 
 That blazed upon thee like a holy star, 
 
 Shaking all Heaven with its loveliness. 
 
 But thou has seen and what thy tale to men? 
 The vouchsafed Presence canst thou render whole ?- 
 The iris of her footprints in thy soul? 
 
 The Wind that passed and cometh not again? 
 
HUMILITY IN ART 
 
 Be meek, who saw st the marvel of her face, 
 Nor canst restore her semblance to the throng! 
 Bow down, who knowest how thy sorry song 
 
 Shall never be the witness of her grace ! 
 
 From that high garden where thy feet were led, 
 What evanescent lilies dost thou bring ! 
 Thou who hast heard the seas of Heaven sing, 
 
 Return an echo of their quiring fled! 
 
 Is it for these that thou wouldst take thy throne, 
 Or mail thy spirit with indifference 
 The stammered words, the music dulled by sense, 
 
 The tawdry colors and the mangled stone? 
 
 33 
 
AN AUTUMN THRUSH 
 
 Like some regret that, half-forgot, 
 
 Gropes into memory, 
 Here in a shadow-chosen spot 
 
 Thy music steals to me. 
 
 To/soft for joy, too mild for grief, 
 
 Within the wood it dies- 
 Beauty too wayward and too brief 
 To grace our noonday skies. 
 
 The dusk enfolds me, and the year 
 Stands at the western gate. 
 
 Thy song, the symbol of a tear, 
 Echoes the cry "Too late!" 
 
 34 
 
AN AUTUMN THRUSH 
 
 Too late!" cries back the conscious heart, 
 
 As one that in dismay 
 Had seen the affronted gods depart 
 
 And could not bid them stay; 
 
 Nor could retain from Time s control 
 
 A moment or a flow r, 
 Save when in woodlands of the soul 
 
 Such strains endure an hour. 
 
 35 
 
THE FALL OF THE YEAR 
 
 It is that season when the soul must know 
 The challenge of Transition, she who lays 
 
 On the reluctant days 
 The burden of departure and its woe. 
 
 And all spring sowed in ecstasy and tears 
 Reaps autumn now with sorrow and a smile. 
 
 The world s heart rests awhile, 
 Yet knows the mournful music of the years. 
 
 The myriad wings beat south, the myriad flow rs 
 Have said farewell to sun and rain and wind; 
 
 Here sense and spirit find 
 That change alone has empire of the hours. 
 
THE FALL OF THE YEAR 
 
 Nay, tho the gaze turn backward at the gate, 
 The going-forth is certain. In each breast 
 
 What mutinies attest 
 The ceaseless march of all things to their fate ! 
 
 Unto what Land, on what dim road compelled, 
 Depart, unlingering, the bidden feet? 
 
 What memories repeat 
 That life is exile and a home withheld? 
 
 37 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 No voice hath said the mighty word " Fare well!" 
 What spirit, then, fills with a sweet despair 
 
 And swiftly broken spell 
 The crimson gardens of the mourning air? 
 
 The clouds go forth on seas without a port ; 
 Back unto Earth, its mother, sinks the leaf. 
 
 Lone are the days and short 
 That hold at heart this ecstasy and grief. 
 
 Now Sorrow hath her pure and perfect part, 
 Turning great eyes on Beauty s dear excess, 
 
 Till, desperate, the heart 
 Aches for some wild and unknown happiness. 
 
OCTOBER 
 
 Tho Time have shown us that it is not here 
 The joy that stirs our hunger still we wait. 
 
 Its iris in the tear 
 Gives Hope her haven and our dreams their gate. 
 
 Now find we, tho the guerdon be forgot, 
 A glory set beyond us, and a call 
 
 That cries that we are not 
 As clouds that vanish or as leaves that fall. 
 
 39 
 
IN AUTUMN 
 
 Mine eyes fill, and I know not why at all. 
 
 Lies there a country not of time and space 
 
 Some fair and irrecoverable place 
 I roamed ere birth and cannot now recall? 
 A land where petals fall 
 
 On paths that I shall nevermore retrace? 
 
 Something is lacking from the wistful bow rs, 
 And I have lost that which I never had. 
 The sea cries, and the heavens and sea are sad, 
 
 And Love goes desolate, yet is not ours. 
 Brown Earth alone is glad, 
 
 Robing her breast with fallen leaves and flow rs. 
 
 40 
 
IN AUTUMN 
 
 High memories stir; the spirit s feet are slow, 
 In nameless fields where tears alone are fruit. 
 And voices of the wind alone transmute 
 
 The music that I lost so long ago. 
 I stand irresolute, 
 
 Lonely for some one I shall never know. 
 
THE CAGED EAGLE 
 
 Dost hear the west wind calling thee afar, 
 O thou that hast beheld the night withdrawn, 
 And past the crystal thresholds of the dawn 
 
 Soared on the pathway of the morning star? 
 
 O er what cold forests and what granite hills 
 Were once thy roads, in days remote from this? 
 What torrents knew thee and what valleys miss 
 
 The shadow of thy pinion on their rills? 
 
 Does no mate mourn thee, faithful to thee yet, 
 Deep in the wilderness where men are few, 
 Whose wings, now tireless on the eternal blue, 
 
 Would fold by thine on some snow-parapet? 
 
 42 
 
THE CAGED EAGLE 
 
 Or was it thine the bitter coasts to know, 
 Where the profound Atlantic thunders welled 
 To walls from which thine ageless eyes beheld 
 
 The northern ocean foaming far below? 
 
 Thy mate alone might share thy towering flight, 
 On equal wing in lonely heavens borne, 
 And rest with thee, waiting the distant morn, 
 
 On pinnacles made silent by the night. 
 
 Here is no sea, nor wood of western leaf, 
 Nor mountains where the wind is on the snow: 
 Before thy prisoned gaze thy jailors go, 
 
 Curious, careless, knowing not thy grief. 
 
 The seasons of thy liberty are fled, 
 
 And hours when thou wast comrade of the cloud. 
 
 Now vultures are companions, and the crowd, 
 Long with the vision of thy bondage fed. 
 
 43 
 
THE CAGED EAGLE 
 
 What music here shall mingle with thy dreams, 
 Or grace the years in which thou still must pine? 
 The song of tempest-halting firs was thine, 
 
 And the ascending voice of many streams. 
 
 And men have brought thee unto this at length, 
 Tho "Freedom! freedom!" seemed thy native cry, 
 Lost are the ancient eyries on the sky, 
 
 The azure lanes, the sunlight in its strength. 
 
 Yet look on me, and one thy gaze shall find 
 Freeborn, but doomed awhile thy fate to share 
 Whose wings, as thine, ache for a wider air 
 
 And solitudes august with stars and wind. 
 
 44 
 
TIME AND TEARS 
 
 Ere the bent skies were soft with afternoon, 
 A cloud crept up those arching walls of day 
 And like a pall upon the heavens lay, 
 
 Casting a shadow on the fields of June. 
 
 Then the tyrannic winds arose, and soon, 
 Like eagles harrying a helpless prey, 
 Drove its dark pinions on that azure way 
 
 Foretrodden by the white, belated moon. 
 
 And now far down the royal West it lies, 
 Where its bright sisters in the sunset float, 
 
 While the first voices of the twilight call. 
 A dweller for a little in our skies, 
 How still it seems, how tender and remote, 
 Like some old grief that time has rendered small ! 
 
 45 
 
TO AN OLD NURSE 
 
 Ever the thrush, on days like these of June, 
 Sings to the dead, as leafy shadows veer, 
 Swung by the slow decline of afternoon : 
 The dead folk do not hear. 
 
 There go the unmeaning ages as the hours; 
 
 Absolved of Time, they reckon not his flight, 
 Compassionately starred by lowly flow rs, 
 Lies an unlifting night. 
 
 They are made silent in a silent place, 
 
 Abiding past our gratitude and tears ; 
 Nor shall our music touch with choral grace 
 Their sleep s unnoted years. 
 
 46 
 
TO AN OLD NURSE 
 
 Better, perhaps, no voice importunate 
 Deliver at the bourn of their repose 
 The certain and immutable "Too late!" 
 No living heart but knows. 
 
 Yet there, of those who lie so dreamless now, 
 
 Is one whose love I knew in seasons past : 
 O warden of my youngest dreams ! O thou 
 I reckon with at last! 
 
 How should a child be conscious of such care? 
 
 A heedless boy have gratitude? Ah, yes! 
 Yet still the heart of memory wakes aware, 
 Sad for old thanklessness. 
 
 And now, to have thee know the full regret 
 
 For thanks unfelt, undreamt-of and unsaid ! 
 Elder and lessoned, now the eyes are wet 
 Above the gentle dead. 
 
 47 
 
TO AN OLD NURSE 
 
 There is no mound to tell where thou dost sleep 
 
 O watcher by the bed, lone sentinel 
 Of long-gone midnights desolate and deep, 
 I know thou sleepest well! 
 
 48 
 
TO THE MUMMY OF THE LADY ISIS 
 
 IN THE BOHEMIAN CLUB, SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 No bird shall tell thee of the seasons flight: 
 
 Sealed are thine ears that now no longer list. 
 
 The little veins of temple and of wrist 
 Are food no more for sleepless love s delight, 
 And crumbling in the sessions of thy night, 
 
 Pylon and sphinx shall be as fleeting mist. 
 
 Bitter with natron are the lips that kissed, 
 And shorn of dreams the spirit and the sight. 
 
 Ah! dust misused! better to feed the flow r, 
 Than grace the revels of an alien hour, 
 When babe or lord wake never to caress 
 The bosom where unerring Death hath struck 
 And milkless breasts that give the ages suck 
 Stilled in the slumber that is nothingness. 
 
 49 
 
THE RAMPARTS AND THE ROSE 
 
 The king came back from war with slaves and spoil, 
 And said, "A vaster palace must there be 
 Than where my fathers dwelt." So purposed he, 
 
 And set a captive nation to the toil. 
 
 And arch on arch and wall by nightless wall 
 The royal eyries towered to the sun . . . 
 The years were long before the task was done 
 
 And captains feasted in the banquet hall. 
 
 Then to his youngest poet said the king, 
 " Behold the magnitude of mine estate! 
 The courts, the lions graven at the gate, 
 
 The armies vassal to my ramparts! Sing! 
 
THE RAMPARTS AND THE ROSE 
 
 "Sing the strong towers basaltic and sublime! 
 
 Sing the high walls whose strength shall make 
 my fame 
 
 A star of legend and immortal flame, 
 And house my princes to the snows of Time!" 
 
 And the red lords kept silence for the lay; 
 
 The sceptred king smiled proudly on the queen; 
 
 But the mad poet, willful and serene, 
 Sang of a rose whose life was for a day .... 
 
 Of all the pomp abides nor gate nor tow r; 
 But o er the ruins bloom the roses still, 
 And desert folk, when the long nights are chill, 
 
 Sing yet the song he fashioned for the flow r. 
 
ON A PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN 
 
 This is the patient face to which was given 
 A touch of the eternal. Here is housed 
 Pain that is question, question that is pain, 
 And on those shoulders, for our sake, was set 
 The Government. For he was of that line 
 Whose Age lays mighty hands upon its son 
 And leads him to its morning. From those eyes, 
 Steady with high solemnities of grief, 
 Weary, undisillusioned and august, 
 Gazed hope, and charity, and faith in man. 
 No fugitive from bleak reality, 
 He faced his task, and made the honest light 
 Sufficient to his need, and that withdrawn, 
 He on the deepest midnight found a star. 
 Calm, tender, undismayed, out of such stuff 
 Was framed a nation s guide on wastes of war, 
 And on that brow, furrowed, invincible, 
 
ON A PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN 
 
 Were laid the old simplicities of strength. 
 Not twice, in many years, shall Time so grant 
 An Elder Brother such as he, who now, 
 In this presentment of a perished day, 
 Looks forth from deep and covenanting eyes, 
 As one that meets across the faithless years 
 The same world-sorrow in the gaze of Christ. 
 
 53 
 
THE TRYST 
 
 Three are the headstones where I paused to-day 
 And read the letters that the lichen blurred. 
 The afternoon was still. The fallen leaves 
 Gave each its little whisper, trodden on, 
 And overhead, in maple, beech and oak, 
 The autumnal courts were very beautiful. 
 
 In that old graveyard, half a mile from sea, 
 I wandered pensive, scanning here and there 
 The crumbling, marble archives of the dead 
 They that had built the fortunes of the port 
 And read how good and great most men had been, 
 And how resigned or so the tablets claimed 
 Their wives had been to sleep the final sleep; 
 And some had had two wives, and one man four. 
 
 54 
 
THE TRYST 
 
 Then, as the sun was low, and smouldering clouds 
 
 Made an effulgent transept of the west, 
 
 I came to those three headstones. "John Devore, 
 
 Died August second, eighteen eighty-six," 
 
 The first one read. The second: "Ruth Devore, 
 
 The wife of John Devore. Died April ninth, 
 
 In eighteen thirty-five." The third stone said: 
 
 "Allan Devore, the son of John Devore 
 
 And Ruth, his wife. Died June the twenty-first, 
 
 In eighteen thirty-seven, aged five." 
 
 And on the last two stones the moss was old. 
 
 I stood awhile and thought: "Ah! John Devore! 
 
 How long they must have seemed, those fifty years ! 
 
 I do not know what rest or toil was yours, 
 
 What smiles or tears, for that half-century; 
 
 But surely on your silences they came, 
 
 And on your quiet hour, and in your dreams 
 
 The wife and little son. So often thus 
 
 55 
 
THE TRYST 
 
 They must have stood, mute haunters of your life ! 
 Oh! came they hand in hand, and did you weep? 
 And as the years crept onward, did they wait 
 Beside you at your tasks, and when the fire 
 Was on the hearth, were they not near at hand, 
 Drawing your gaze from sordid circumstance? 
 The holy dead, august and beautiful! 
 
 "And days were years, and years were weariness, 
 And you grew old, and they were ever young, 
 Reminding you from many lovely things, 
 From rose and bird and cloud and pathless snow, 
 Of all the loveliness that once was theirs 
 Ah ! changeless still, and you so changed at last ! 
 And the green earth swung on beneath the sun, 
 Noisy with life, and men fulfilled their ends, 
 As monarchs died, and fleets and thrones were lost, 
 And great wars shook the world. But peace was 
 theirs, 
 
THE TRYST 
 
 Still warbled over by the mating thrush 
 O refuge unprofaned ! O quiet dust! 
 
 "Did hunger for another home and love 
 
 Gnaw at your heart? If so, you bore the pain. 
 
 Habit s erasure, and the secret moth 
 
 In memory s dim arras, all that fight 
 
 Against the silent tenure of our dead, 
 
 They wrought in vain. So now you slumber too 
 
 And are yourself a mystery. The year, 
 
 The month, the day, the hour, the minute came. 
 
 Ah! John Devore! was there a meeting then?" 
 
 57 
 
A YELLOW ROSE 
 
 Sad Autumn is the miser of thy gold; 
 But dead and meek 
 Thy petals speak 
 More than thy beauty told. 
 
 Now art thou sister of the wind and dew- 
 All fleeting things 
 Whose rainbow wings 
 Depart to come anew. 
 
 They make a fountain of the funeral urn- 
 Fragrance and tint 
 That, passing, hint 
 They pass but to return. 
 
A YELLOW ROSE 
 
 We find a myriad glimmerings of Truth; 
 Her perfect face 
 Withholds its grace, 
 Granting the heart its youth. 
 
 The deathless lyric ever on her tongue 
 Bestows a word; 
 The rest, unheard, 
 To alien skies is sung. 
 
 And so by touch and shadow, glimpse and gleam, 
 We know what path 
 Her passion hath 
 On heavens and hearts that dream. 
 
 And know that change is best, despite its pain: 
 On custom s rust 
 And Beauty s dust 
 Falls the renewing rain. 
 
 59 
 
A YELLOW ROSE 
 
 Wherefore his wings, except the swallow flew? 
 Joy s thrall is brief, 
 But that of grief 
 Is made as transient too. 
 
 Either were not, were either evermore. 
 The flower soon dies, 
 But soon the sighs 
 End, that we sighed therefor. 
 
 60 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Weigh you the worth and honor of a king 
 
 So great as our dread father in a scale 
 
 Of common ounces? Will you with counters sum 
 
 The past proportion of his infinite? 
 
 TROILUS AND CRESSIDA 
 
 There burst a mighty morning on the world, 
 After a night so long it seemed an age. 
 An age it was. Then, romping in the sun, 
 Came youthful giants down the Singing Way, 
 And one, the tallest, leapt aside and set 
 A magic trumpet to his lips, and blew, 
 And we who listen hear the clarion yet. 
 
 Then, at the sweet compulsion of that sound, 
 
 The land was thronged with visions. Years that were 
 
 Gave back their paladins and queens who wept. 
 
 61 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Kings cried to kings, extending shadowy swords 
 O er phantom armies. Heroes, councillors, 
 Mingled with drabs and ruffians, as the Past 
 A gleaming pageant, swirled in rainbow-mist 
 Before the Present, soon to be the same. 
 What an array was there ! What shifting forms, 
 Children of genius and a little ink! 
 
 The Trumpeter is dust, but they remain 
 
 Part of mankind forever. As the sun 
 
 He touched all things with equal ray, and set. 
 
 Like one sent as a spy from other worlds, 
 
 To tell our best and worst, he came. Judge you 
 
 How well he saw, who seems a Titan boy 
 
 Pelting the world with jewels and with filth, 
 
 Or as a seraph wandering in the stews, 
 
 And half at home there. This was he so swift 
 
 To flatter kings, then jeer the sceptred blood 
 
 With its mortality. And this was he 
 
 62 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Who loved the common man enough, perhaps, 
 But failed not to remind him of his stink. 
 He knew the human heart as misers know 
 Their gold, and told its currents for all Time 
 The unswerving tides of Nature and her plan. 
 He was an empire, with its plains and peaks. 
 He was an ocean, and the sky above. 
 
 Some are who say: "He was content to carve 
 
 His marbles from the quarry of the Past, 
 
 Nor told us of his time nor times to be, 
 
 Concerned to please the rabble and the court 
 
 For all his wisdom missing, as we know 
 
 The fiery vision of democracy." 
 
 But this our King of Song was never come 
 
 To set the wandering thunders of the world 
 
 To music and to meaning. Not for him 
 
 The tribune s sword, the fasces of reform: 
 
 Leave those to men with hands our god had wings. 
 
SHAKESPEARE 
 
 Nor think him lapped in self, who all his days 
 Flouted the harlot Fame. His faults were there, 
 But at their worst as spots upon the sun. 
 He was the race a cosmos in himself, 
 Full of small errors and large excellence. 
 Be proud, O men! that you are of his blood, 
 Who well might be this earth s ambassador 
 To haughty worlds and stars of whitest fire. 
 
THE SHADOW OF NIRVANA 
 
 Hast ever wakened when the dark was deep, 
 
 Nor known thyself, nor where thou wast, nor why? 
 Unquestioned then the drowsy soul may lie, 
 
 Somewhere between reality and sleep, 
 
 Nor feel the tides of Time and matter sweep- 
 Held for a little from the clamorous "I", 
 Pure being, freed of memory and its sigh, 
 
 Too far in utter peace to smile or weep. 
 
 Tis but a moment s freedom : soon the mind 
 
 Hears the recalling bugle, and the brow 
 Harbors the old illusion; soon the Wind 
 
 Is on the dust delivered unto dream, 
 And I am I again, and Thou art Thou, 
 Who then were one in a diviner Scheme. 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 The wholesome flowers of autumn blow 
 And squirrels chatter as in joy, 
 In woods I rambled when a boy, 
 
 Careless, and many years ago. 
 
 Old scents and sounds .... I find no change, 
 
 Revisiting, a wanderer; 
 
 The trees and roads are as they were, 
 Untouched, and I alone am strange- 
 Strange even to myself! And they, 
 
 The lads who roamed the wood with me, 
 
 Are changed from what they used to be, 
 And some are gone, and all are grey. 
 
 66 
 
THE RETURN 
 
 And now awhile I watch the bird 
 That haunts the hollow past the hill, 
 And dream I hear the echo still 
 
 Of voices I have never heard. 
 
 I well recall the path and pond 
 I who have journeyed since so far, 
 Nor found by light of sun or star 
 
 That Land forevermore beyond. 
 
MOLOCH 
 
 I said, "The dark has come too soon." 
 I gazed across the marshy waste 
 To where, by vapors half-effaced, 
 
 Sank the southwestern, slender moon. 
 
 The vapors brooded on the land, 
 Too big to sink, too foul to float, 
 Upcast like poison from the throat 
 
 Of one great chimney near at hand. 
 
 The factory about its base 
 Droned to the darkness, hour on hour- 
 Squat dungeons, huddled at its tow r, 
 
 As fearful of the night s dim face. 
 
 68 
 
MOLOCH 
 
 As fearful of the outraged night, 
 It glowered with unblinking eyes 
 On marshy waste, on tainted skies 
 
 Shamed by the desecrating light. 
 
 I said, " Within those roaring walls, 
 What engines gleam, what toils await? 
 There strength and power serve their fate, 
 
 And there a Titan s hammer falls. 
 
 "And surely there the fire reveals 
 
 What giants at their service bend, 
 What thewed endurances attend 
 The sleepless shuttles and the wheels . . . . " 
 
 In meadow-dews an irised flame 
 Stirred as the lucid morning broke, 
 And from those portals, black with smoke, 
 
 A thousand weary children came ! 
 
THREE SONNETS ON SLEEP 
 
 I 
 
 Upon the skies of slumber dreams have flight, 
 And one from gentlest dreams may wake to weep. 
 The dark has moons to sway its utmost deep, 
 
 And stars that touch the sleeper from their height. 
 
 Ere long, tho mute and liberative Night 
 Thy soul and sorrow in her poppy steep, 
 Her flowers the sickle of the dawn shall reap, 
 
 In melancholy meadows of the light. 
 
 In vain are Lethe s dews upon the brow, 
 Except one find them on its farther shore; 
 
 And he alone has enviable rest 
 Who sought for peace through many tears, and now 
 Whose answered heart a rose is richer for, 
 In some old graveyard where the robins nest. 
 
 70 
 
THREE SONNETS OF SLEEP 
 
 II 
 
 Life holds a different pact with every man, 
 
 Tho to one sea her many streams descend. 
 
 To some she stands a foe, to some a friend, 
 Devising each her benison or ban; 
 And one is saint, and one is courtesan; 
 
 One labors, one is idle to the end. 
 
 Of all her children none shall comprehend 
 Whether she strive in madness or with plan. 
 
 But Death has one condition for us all, 
 
 And he that in the pyramid s deep core 
 Lies with the graven adamant for pall, 
 
 In no profounder pit of silence sleeps 
 Than he who has his grave by some low shore 
 To which the thunder-bosomed ocean sweeps. 
 
THREE SONNETS OF SLEEP 
 
 III 
 
 Death has the final answer to our cry, 
 And past our portals of unrest awaits 
 Responsive to our question of the Fates; 
 
 And he who would attain that deep reply 
 
 Must seal his ears to other sounds, and die. 
 What wonder, if before the midnight gates 
 The searcher of the riddle hesitates, 
 
 Uncertain what those ashen lips deny? 
 
 What if the hearer with the pleader cease, 
 
 And thus the timeless answer come unheard? 
 So he that sought for truth should find it peace, 
 
 In those long silences where none could hark 
 The mighty, indecipherable Word 
 That fell unfathomed on the eternal dark. 
 
 72 
 
MAN 
 
 This is that brute which travailed, uncontent 
 To bask with fellow creatures in the sun, 
 To filch from earth his sustenance, which done, 
 
 He could have ease in some cave s tenement. 
 
 Not wholly thus his urgent will was spent, 
 For peace within its borders had he none, 
 Foresensing on a journey unbegun 
 
 The airs of that inscrutable ascent. 
 
 With earth who bore him has he made his feud, 
 
 And dreamt of other stars, and sought him wings, 
 Decreed to an august ingratitude; 
 
 And for his tears the Verities vouchsafe 
 That he stand first among created things 
 A seeker of abysses, and their waif! 
 
 73 
 
ON A CITY STREET 
 
 And what the end of these, the toil and care 
 That earn but access of to-morrow s pain? 
 They labor that the morning rise again 
 
 On the same dregs of pleasure and despair; 
 
 That night but summon to the candle s flare 
 The giddy moth, and slumber held in vain 
 Refashioned hopes for the deluded brain, 
 
 And set fresh lures in life s betraying snare. 
 
 Or do such shadows of belief but seem? 
 Could we see all the Plan, we might behold 
 The dust flame into seraphim whose call 
 Were Time s requital for the shames of old. 
 Alas ! we cannot know ! Yet must we dream 
 Love is somehow the answer of it all. 
 
 74 
 
ILLUSION 
 
 I am alone in this grey shadowland, 
 This world of phantoms I can never know, 
 This throng of seekers wandering to and fro, 
 
 Moved by a hidden god s unheard command; 
 
 And tho we knew the clasp of eye and hand, 
 We watchers of the planet s passing show, 
 Yet soon the "now" Shall be the "long ago," 
 
 And soon the prow shall grate on Lethe s strand. 
 
 Bring on the lights, the music and the wine, 
 Ere the long silence give our feast to scorn ! 
 
 Let us forget all that we dread we are, 
 And let the mind s unknown horizon shine, 
 As the heart graces with mirage of morn 
 The night about its lost and lonely star. 
 
 75 
 
ESSENTIAL NIGHT 
 
 Outreach and touch ! But lo ! thou hast not found ! 
 
 Look forth ! But what the tidings of thine eyes? 
 
 Taste! But His apple hath not made thee wise, 
 Nor hast thou heard His music out of sound. 
 As light by darkness is my spirit bound, 
 
 And on the soul are question and surmise: 
 
 The vision that I take not from the skies, 
 Shall that await in the awaiting ground? 
 
 Why brood the heavens in large indifference? 
 
 And what is all, and this my spirit what? 
 And what these apparitions of the sense 
 
 That pass through veils unto us blindfold ones, 
 In horror of deep darkness lifting not 
 
 For stars nor moon nor the concealing suns? 
 
THE GLEANER 
 
 Of all we love or long for, what can last? 
 
 The brief arbutus shines where shone the snow; 
 
 The panic winds o er dying flowers blow; 
 Far in the quiet woodland dies the blast. 
 Soft on the forehead of the hill are cast 
 
 The fleeting splendors of the afterglow; 
 
 Where sang the brook the desert lichens grow. 
 Who runs, shall find the feet of Change are fast. 
 
 Yet in the solitude of all that died 
 
 A Shadow roams the somber fields, long known, 
 Where ashen gardens house the pilgrim sands, 
 And mournful stars behold at eventide 
 How wanders peaceless Memory alone, 
 
 Seeking in dust the vanished lips and hands. 
 
 77 
 
CALIFORNIA 
 
 What little child but knows 
 Its mother s face the fairest? Is there one? 
 
 Tho long ago the rose 
 Have faded from her cheek, for labor done, 
 
 Vigils, and anxious tears, 
 Her child sees not the loss, nor counts her years. 
 
 So has each land her brood 
 That cherish her in fond solicitude, 
 And sing her beauty to the stranger s ears. 
 
 O mother of our hearts ! 
 O California, still fair and young! 
 
 The beautiful departs, 
 And all too soon the sweetest song is sung. 
 
CALIFORNIA 
 
 Thou hast not sorrowed yet; 
 Seldom for grief thy laughing face is wet. 
 
 May tears be very far, 
 For on thy forehead is a happy star, 
 A light of joy that elder lands regret. 
 
 Though gracious youth be thine 
 
 And virginal reluctancies of heart, 
 Yet hi thy gardens shine 
 
 The marbles and the poppy- flame of Art; 
 And ah ! thy maiden blood ! 
 
 But ecstasies are hidden in its flood- 
 Red lips that sing unseen 
 
 The secret fires to be thine own, O Queen ! 
 
 And all the scarlet buried in the bud. 
 
 Let not thine envy rise 
 For eastern kingdoms mournful with romance 
 
 Below thy tranquil skies, 
 To lutes as sweet maidens as fair shall dance. 
 
 79 
 
CALIFORNIA 
 
 Bower and bird and tune 
 Await the lovers and their mystic moon. 
 
 O raptures yet to be! 
 
 O sweet adventure that the years shall see, 
 Ambered in legend s everlasting June! 
 
 Thy laughing loveliness 
 
 Compels to vision, and our fancies roam, 
 Led by a fragrant tress, 
 
 To groves as sweet and fields of meadow-foam, 
 Or timeless thrones of snow, 
 
 Or azure inlets that the naiads know- 
 By some enchantment drawn 
 
 Whose light is not in the refusing dawn, 
 
 Whose voice is not where any rivers flow. 
 
 What is it we have lost, 
 And in thine evening shadow fain would find? 
 
 Pearls of a deep uncrossed? 
 Tidings entrusted only to the wind? 
 
 80 
 
CALIFORNIA 
 
 Between thy snows and main, 
 Somewhere thou hast the answer to our pain- 
 
 A secret to impart 
 
 Ere the last bird hide music in her heart, 
 Or star and sunset meet beyond the rain. 
 
 Dream as we will, thy face 
 Is fairer than the vision that we found. 
 
 The wild, reluctant grace 
 That fancy gives a dryad newly crowned 
 
 Is portion of thy lure; 
 So lives a forest flower that dares endure 
 
 In some unknown recess 
 Where only shadows touch its loveliness, 
 And new-born waters chant to winds as pure. 
 
 O beautiful and glad! 
 The gifts in thy bestowal seem too fair; 
 
 If any heart be sad, 
 Thou waitest with the balsam for its care; 
 
 81 
 
CALIFORNIA 
 
 And if one question thee 
 Thy love shall speak, tho low the answer be 
 
 As dip of distant oar, 
 
 Or conchs blown faintly on a haunted shore 
 Heard when the fog s white dusk is on the sea. 
 
 But dream and memory meet, 
 Wistful to know thy future way through Time. 
 
 We see thy fearless feet, 
 But not the hostile mountains thou shalt climb. 
 
 Untried thy heart that must 
 Be battle-tested ere the cannon rust; 
 
 And peace is yet thy dow r, 
 O thou regardless of the patient Pow r 
 Within whose hour-glass falls the nations 7 dust! 
 
 So, crown thy careless head, 
 And bid the sun make roses for thy breast ! 
 
 Be thine eyes richly fed 
 And thy swift limbs too passionate to rest! 
 
 82 
 
CALIFORNIA 
 
 Far eastward lies the night, 
 And thou art beautiful in all men s sight, 
 
 And all men laud thy ways, 
 Who givest to the mercenary days 
 A time and place for laughter and delight, 
 
POEMS ON THE PANAMA-PACIFIC 
 INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION 
 
Voices are crying from the dust of Tyre, 
 From Karnak and the stones of Babylon 
 We raised our pillars upon Seif-Desire, 
 And perished from the large gaze of the sun. 
 
 EDWiN MARKHAM 
 
 ODE ON THE OPENING OF THE PANAMA- 
 PACIFIC INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION 
 
 I 
 
 Be ye lift up, O gates of sea and land, 
 
 Before the host that comes, 
 Not, as of old, with roar of hurrying drums, 
 And blaze of steel, and voice of war s command ! 
 Legions of peace are at thy borders now, 
 O California, and ranks whose eyes 
 Behold the deathless star upon thy brow 
 
 And know it leads to love. 
 
ODE ON THE OPENING OF 
 
 Wherefore, give thou thy banner to the skies, 
 And let the clarions of thy conquest sound ! 
 
 For thine is holy ground, 
 
 And from thy heavens above 
 Falls tenderly a rain of life, not death. 
 
 Thy sons have found 
 Again the rivers of that Paradise 
 And valleys where the fig and olive grow, 
 
 Wherefrom, one saith, 
 Man journeyed forth in tears, and long ago. 
 
 Be ye lift up, O gates of many halls, 
 
 That house, sublime, 
 
 The trophies and the nobler spoils of Time ! 
 From where the Orient in friendship calls 
 
 Across her ocean-roads, 
 
 From Africa s abodes, 
 From seas whose purple bore the keels of Tyre,- 
 
 From islands west and north, 
 
 88 
 
THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 
 
 From lands that see the white Andean walls, 
 From those frontiers of thunder and of fire 
 That compass Europe now, hath man sent forth 
 The fruitage of his labor and his art. 
 Behold the greatness of his mind and heart 
 Who so can strive 
 
 And, tho the earthquake rive, 
 And War, with mailed hands at the race s throat, 
 Confirm the terrors that the prophets wrote 
 And all the stars have seen since Christ was born, 
 Can so bear witness to the soul within ! 
 Yea ! from Earth s mire of ignorance and sin 
 
 He marches with the morn, 
 And lays a new commandment on the sea, 
 Bidding it set the continents apart, 
 And of the trackless heavens is he free. 
 Yet those are but the lesser of his dreams, 
 When the white vision of the Future gleams, 
 
 And Music in his heart 
 
ODE ON THE OPENING OF 
 
 Makes for a while the seraph he shall be; 
 For he would sway the sun s effulgent beams, 
 Vassal to that diviner sun, his brain, 
 And set afar the years of Death, 
 
 And with exultant breath 
 Cry victory on matter and on pain. 
 Lo ! in what sorrow and mysterious mirth 
 Do we draw up against the Night our plan ! 
 O toil of ants, beholding the great Earth! 
 O Titans work, seeing how small is man ! 
 
 II 
 
 Audacious age of the affirming word, 
 The useful doubt, the kindly sceptic gaze, 
 
 Greeting ! for man too long has heard 
 The moans of war, too long beheld the blaze 
 
 Of cities on the skies 
 
 Or mirrored in the flood, 
 And Horror brooding with her moonlike eyes 
 
 90 
 
TEE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 
 
 O er nations at debaucheries of blood. 
 
 Let now the veil be drawn 
 That hides from man thine inner loveliness, 
 While the young eagles of thy sciences 
 Soar from their pinnacles against the dawn ! 
 For thou hast shown him how the years transmute 
 The dim surmisings of the larval brute, 
 
 And hast in mercy laid 
 A burden on his weakness and his wings 
 This moth for whom the ranging stars were made, 
 
 This groping lord of things, 
 Come forth from night unknown to ends unseen, 
 With hint of what the constellations mean. 
 
 O man and his Adventure! From the slime 
 Of old abysses and the hateful hiss 
 Of dragons, hath he journeyed forth to this, 
 Whose soul strikes light through Time. 
 What seed of what Design was in that soul 
 
 9 1 
 
ODE ON THE OPENING OF 
 
 And what its destined goal, 
 
 That he, once halt and blind, 
 Hath won the peaks above the brutish years, 
 And in the astounding crucibles of mind 
 Seeketh the mighty answer to his tears? 
 O patient toiler in the silent Night ! 
 Thy triumphs stand about us, balm and book, 
 Complexities of steel and engines bright, 
 
 The wings that serve our speed, 
 
 And, whatso way one look, 
 A myriad of shapes of human joy or need. 
 Here, too, the wonders of thy harvest shine, 
 
 The corn, the fruit, the wine 
 
 The bounties great and fair 
 
 That thou, with loving care, 
 Hast fostered on a thousand hills and plains, 
 
 Trapping the distant rains, 
 
 And on the wilderness 
 Leading new rills to compensate and bless. 
 
 92 
 
THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 
 
 And here the silent seraphim of Art 
 
 Gaze out august above the human streams. 
 
 O beauty making lonelier the heart, 
 
 And sending forth the soul on deathless dreams ! 
 
 Ill 
 
 So^have we striven and wrought, that one time were 
 
 The bestial folk of midden and of cave 
 
 And now with lens and alchemy do test 
 
 The wandering heavens and Earth their wanderer. 
 
 With toil of tireless hands, 
 How high we build, this side the awaiting grave, 
 Scorning awhile its answer and its rest! 
 Yet, can it be we build upon the sands? 
 Man s eye turns manward from the mote and star, 
 And sees past greatness given to the tomb, 
 
 Nor knows what destined doom 
 Waits, vigilant, where the Destructions are. 
 Lo ! as a mist that melts before the day 
 
 93 
 
ODE ON THE OPENING OF 
 
 The columns and the courts have passed away. 
 
 Advancing Time, look back 
 To where in mist the broken pillars fade, 
 The ghostly milestones of thy barren track! 
 Who took the blade have perished by the blade, 
 For thine the years when the old empires passed, 
 With wail of trumpets from a gulf of blood, 
 
 The annihilating flood 
 Wherein the countenance of Doom was glassed. 
 
 So rose they, realm by realm, 
 Whose walls the legion ed grasses overwhelm. 
 
 So sank they, one by one, 
 Who had gone forth in mail beneath the sun, 
 
 And, in their greed or lust, 
 Dragged lesser nations at the chariot wheels. 
 And now the old betrayal of the dust 
 Hath found them, striking from the anointed brow 
 The crown, and sinking all the intrepid keels. 
 The desert holds the oppressor and oppressed; 
 
 94 
 
THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 
 
 The winds alone are great in Carthage now; 
 The lizard and the lichen have the rest. . . . 
 
 What flaw in their foundations, and what ill 
 
 Upon their armored lords, 
 
 That ever down the years 
 The Worm that feeds on nations had its fill? 
 Not all the sentried ramparts and the spears, 
 Nor yet the trident and the walling swords 
 
 Could stem its might. 
 The thousand high-built Babylons of light 
 May mock the stars no longer, nor their kings 
 Be more than ashes where the desert finds 
 Echoes of doom and conquest on its winds, 
 
 But their names nevermore. 
 What flaw in their foundations, and what ill 
 
 Upon the hearts they bore, 
 That now the jackal litters on the hill 
 
 That once was Pharaoh s throne? 
 
 95 
 
ODE ON THE OPENING OF 
 
 The question holds one answer and but one, 
 Between the rising and the setting sun : 
 They are the realms that built on self alone ! 
 
 And we till now have built as even they ! 
 
 And dimly and in few the vision stands 
 
 Of that new City built not on the sands ; 
 
 And distant still the sunlight of that Day. 
 
 For walked the Babylonian again 
 
 Within our streets, once more should he behold 
 
 The immeasurable Care, 
 That ancient curse of poverty and gold, 
 The selfsame twins of luxury and pain, 
 The olden madness of division where 
 The poor beg work, and beg for it in vain, 
 And children slave, and stones are given for bread, 
 While Mammon lolls on cushions of his fat, 
 Whose glut not all the toil of men can sate. 
 
 Amid the tumult and the hate, 
 
THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 
 
 None hears the distant menace of the tread 
 
 Of One whose hands hold darkness and the dust,- 
 
 Whose reign is soon or late, 
 Whose hunger with the monarch s pomp is fed, 
 Who giveth kingdoms to the moth and rust, 
 Till o er the glory, fleeting as a breath, 
 "Lo! I am come!" the Desolation saith. 
 
 IV 
 
 Behold ! except Love build the House of Man 
 In vain we labor and in vain we guard 1 
 
 In vain shall Learning scan 
 That heaven where the hostile suns contend 
 Or inward skies of atoms many-starred, 
 If love of man for man be not the end. 
 
 And idly Reason strives, 
 
 If nevermore we find 
 The graver glory that escapes our lives. 
 Oh ! for that hour when all see clear at last, 
 
 97 
 
ODE ON THE OPENING OF 
 
 Who now go blind, 
 
 The horror and the brutehood of the Past! 
 Oh ! for some high-noon of the spirit, when 
 The Radiance be given unto men 
 That was the star of heroes and the Grail 
 For which the fearless saints of science died ! 
 Oh! for the Light to see in every face 
 A mother s love, or father s tender care, 
 Or brother s faithfulness, or sister s grace! 
 
 What night of self and pride 
 Is on us, that we see not in each one 
 
 The lover long-denied, 
 The dearest to us each beneath the sun? 
 
 The selfsame need is there 
 For hope and trust, for love and happiness; 
 
 But still amid the press, 
 
 Blinded, we pass beside 
 The stranger, and he fares a stranger still, 
 Nor see we there the brother or the sire; 
 
THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 
 
 And poor men hunger on the wasteful street, 
 
 And children toil and tire, 
 And girls go downward to the Social 111, 
 And life s design of madness lies complete, 
 That Greed and Luxury may have their fill! 
 
 O dark and cruel State, 
 Whose towers are altars unto self alone, 
 
 Whose streets with tears are wet, 
 And half thy councils given unto hate! 
 Shall Time not hurl thy temples stone from stone, 
 
 And o er the ruin set 
 A fairer city than the years have known? 
 Out of thy darkness do we find us dreams, 
 
 And on the future gleams 
 The vision of thy ramparts built anew. 
 Mammon and War sit now a double throne, 
 Yet what we dream, a wiser Age shall do. 
 
 99 
 
ODE ON THE OPENING OF 
 
 V 
 
 Be ye lift up, O everlasting gates 
 
 Of that far City men shall build for Man 1 
 
 O fairer Day that waits, 
 The splendor of whose dawn we shall not see, 
 When selfish bonds of family and clan 
 Melt in the higher love that yet shall be ! 
 O State without a master or a slave, 
 
 Whose law of light we crave 
 Ere morning widen on a world set free ! 
 
 Alas! how distant are, 
 
 To watchers of the Past, 
 Thy palms of peace, thy mercy and thy truth! 
 Yet Faith s great eyes look upward to her star, 
 
 Strong in immortal youth: 
 We know the reign of Night shall end at last, 
 And all the ancient evil lie undone. 
 
 armies of the sun, 
 Your war is on the darkness and its tears! 
 
 100 
 
THE PANAMA-PACIFIC EXPOSITION 
 
 Across the gulf of years 
 
 We hear your song and see your banners shine. 
 Know that we too would share your toils divine, 
 On self and madness hastening their end. 
 
 Lo ! from our Age we send 
 A music brief and broken and august 
 
 To mingle with your own, 
 
 A strain from silence flown, 
 Saying we too have hungered to the sky, 
 And built from many tears and humble dust 
 A Dream that shall not altogether die 
 
 The vision of that day 
 
 When human strength shall serve the common good, 
 And man, forever loyal to the race, 
 Find, far beyond our seasons of dismay, 
 
 The guerdon of its grace: 
 
 One hope, one home, one song, one brotherhood, 
 And in each face the best-beloved s face. 
 
 101 
 
THE BUILDERS 
 
 The year grows old, but Progress has no age : 
 Her flags go forward to increasing light ; 
 Behind her lies the night; 
 It is a ceaseless war her soldiers wage, 
 And on her great and ever- widening sky, 
 "Onward!" is still the truceless battle cry. 
 
 The future is our kingdom, and, altho 
 
 Our hands unbuild the city they have built, 
 Yet here no blood is spilt 
 
 Nor swords uplifted for a nation s woe. 
 
 And, tho the columns and the temples pass, 
 
 Let none regret; let no man cry "Alas!" 
 
 We do but cross a threshold into day. 
 
 Beauty we leave behind, 
 
 A deeper beauty on our path to find 
 And higher glories to illume the way. 
 
 102 
 
THE BUILDERS 
 
 The door we close behind us is the Past: 
 Our sons shall find a fairer door at last. 
 
 A world reborn awaits us. Years to come 
 
 Shall know its grace and good, 
 
 When wars shall end in endless brotherhood, 
 And birds shall build in cannon long since dumb. 
 Men shall have peace, though then no man may know 
 Who built this sunset city long ago. 
 
 Wherefore, be glad ! Sublimer walls shall rise, 
 
 Which these do but foretell. 
 
 Be glad, indeed! For we have builded well 
 And set a star upon our western skies 
 Whose fire shall gr eaten on a land made free, 
 Till all that land be bright from sea to sea! 
 
 10; 
 
THE EVANESCENT CITY 
 
 Great on the west, ere darkness crush her domes, 
 Wine-red the city of the sunset lies. 
 
 Below her courts the mournful ocean foams ; 
 Above, no foam of cloud is on the skies. 
 
 Awhile I stand, a dreamer by the deep, 
 And watch the winds of evening sap her walls, 
 
 Till ashen armies to the ramparts sweep 
 And seas of shadow storm the gleaming halls. 
 
 So dies that far magnificence of light, 
 A conquered splendor on a crumbling pyre, 
 
 Mid fall of crimson temples from their height 
 And ruined altars yielding up their fire. 
 
 104 
 
THE EVANESCENT CITY 
 
 So fades that city, one with all that finds 
 
 The nameless road that Beauty takes at last- 
 One with her dust upon the twilight winds 
 And all her music mingling with the Past. 
 
 " Farewell!" I whisper low then thrill to see, 
 Unseen till now, eternal and afar, 
 
 Soul of dead day and pledge of peace to be, 
 The tranquil silver of the evening star. 
 
 And even thus our city of a year 
 
 Must pass like those the shafted sunsets build, 
 Fleeting as all fair things and, fleeting, dear 
 
 A rainbow fallen and an anthem stilled. 
 
 105 
 
THE EVANESCENT CITY 
 
 A rainbow fallen but within the soul 
 
 Its deep, indubitable iris burns; 
 And anthem stilled yet for its ghostly goal 
 
 The incommunicable music yearns. 
 
 Only for Beauty s passing shall we trace 
 The heavenly pathway that her feet have trod; 
 
 Only at her departure seek her face 
 We that shall find it not this side of God. 
 
 106 
 
PERSONAL POEMS 
 
FRANK UNGER 
 
 Thou sleepest well! On all our troubled earth, 
 Weary of war, what gentler heart could cease? 
 
 O Savior! at the season of Thy birth 
 
 Thou hast remembered that Thy gift is peace ! 
 
 A voice is mute that had no word of hate, 
 
 And one gone forth who shall not come again 
 
 A comrade true, a friend compassionate; 
 Tender and brave, a soul without a stain. 
 
 Jesus, whose word it was that save as we 
 Become as little children, meek and mild, 
 
 We shall not enter, turn Thy face and see : 
 One waiteth at the door, a little child! 
 
 109 
 
PERSONAL POEMS 
 
 TO XAVIER MARTINEZ, PAINTER 
 
 Poet, whose song leaves nothing more to say 
 Except the mystery beyond all song, 
 To thee that light and sight of Art belong 
 
 Which, searching Nature with a crystal ray, 
 
 Reveal in iris the rejected clay. 
 
 Visions august have made thy heart too strong 
 To need the fleeting plaudits of the throng, 
 
 And thou hast seen the choral stars by day 
 
 Thy touch can turn all things to loveliness 
 
 A solemn beauty, delicate and strange, 
 A secret that we love too well to guess. 
 
 The goddess lingers long above thy dreams, 
 Hearing beyond this world of death and change, 
 The lyres that glimmer by immortal streams. 
 
 no 
 
PERSONAL POEMS 
 
 THE LIGHT-GIVER 
 
 "Let there be light!" said One. 
 And from the ancient gulf of darkness strode. 
 Harnessed and swift for their immortal road, 
 The horses of the sun. 
 
 And you are child of Him, 
 Great Edison, for whose creative hands 
 The night is less on all the seas and lands, 
 
 And day itself less dim. 
 
 At evening from this hill 
 Gaze forth, and see the stars that you have lit- 
 The human constellations that transmit 
 
 The message of man s will. 
 
 in 
 
PERSONAL POEMS 
 
 Not Babylon nor Tyre 
 Might mock the lights of Heaven with lamps like 
 
 these, 
 Above whose radiance the Pleiades 
 
 Float with unheeded fire. 
 
 Over the earth s vast verge 
 On London now a double darkness lies; 
 But here below unapprehended skies 
 
 What tides of splendor surge! 
 
 Your war is on the night: 
 Shadow by shadow we escape its reign, 
 As from the holy seed within your brain 
 
 The world is sown with light. 
 
 Let not your battle cease ! 
 Another Night remains, nor till its sway 
 Ends in the morning of a vaster Day 
 
 Shall men have perfect peace. 
 
 112 
 
PERSONAL POEMS 
 
 Star after new-born star 
 Dispels that gloom of ignorance and crime; 
 Their glory greatens on the brows of Time; 
 
 The dawn is not so far. 
 
 The huge frontiers of night 
 Dissolve around a liberated land 
 Pierced by the deathless ray within your hand, 
 
 O Captain of the Light! 
 
PERSONAL POEMS 
 TO MARGARET ANGLIN 
 
 IN THE GREEK TRAGEDIES 
 
 She has heard mighty music from the Past, 
 And deathless trumpets from oblivion, 
 And she has seen the blood of heroes run 
 
 To stain the morning of a day forecast. 
 
 How high, O Art, the ministry thou hast! 
 Behold! the magic of thy chosen one 
 Has called their shades from Lethe to the sun, 
 
 And ghosts of gods from heavens that could not last. 
 
 Black on the arras of the years that were, 
 What shadows of immortal armies stir! 
 
 The stars conspire, and groping by their light, 
 Man seeks for joy and peace, nor knows what 
 
 loom, 
 
 Tireless by dusk or noon or deep of night, 
 Runs scarlet with the fabric of his doom. 
 
 114 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
THE SONG OF THE VALKYRS 
 
 Horizons of the world, what hide ye from our sight? 
 What Fates sing now from darkness their ancient 
 
 battle-song? 
 Are those the armored Valkvr men hear across the 
 
 night? 
 
 What god hath set the trumpet to lips austere and 
 strong? 
 
 The deeps and heights are shaken. The walls of the 
 
 Dark 
 
 Tremble with all their stars, and all stars reel. 
 Shadows from outer night draw closer now to hark 
 The echo of what thunders, the music of whose 
 steel? 
 
 117 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 Whose is the war? Who first hath drawn the sword? 
 "A king!" cry the Valkyrs, "whose rule is on the 
 
 race! 
 
 Woe to the many, who hold one man their lord ! 
 For one hath loosed the tempest, and hid the 
 heavens face! 
 
 " War s gate is down, and Thor! Thor is forth! 
 
 He hath thrown off old harness, to forge him 
 
 weapons new. 
 The gaunt guns toll, sounding from south to north, 
 
 To call young men to doom, till young men are few. 
 
 "The old men shall call, and the young men shall 
 
 hear, 
 
 Hear and set out, who never shall come back 
 They that might have sown in the spring of the year, 
 They that now shall reap the bitter grain and 
 black. 
 
 118 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 "The tides of doom s sea are mounted unto flood; 
 The long dykes are down, sundered at one man s 
 
 breath. 
 
 All the youth of Europe shall render of their blood. 
 All the youth of Europe shall sit at dice with 
 Death. 
 
 "Ravens, appear! and come, ye birds of prey 
 
 From high and lonely places, for now is food for all. 
 
 Wolves of the night, be early on your way ! 
 The fold is left open; they guard another wall. 
 
 "Thor! Thor is forth! Hark to his ocean- voice! 
 
 The blood of the world makes scarlet his hands. 
 Thor is forth upon the dark! Sisters, rejoice! 
 
 A king hath loosed the god whose sword is on the 
 lands!" 
 
 119 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE DREAM OF WILHELM II 
 
 He, a colossus towering toward the spheres, 
 With tyrant shadow casting triple night 
 On Europe, saw with dominating sight 
 
 The great world-caldron seethe with futile tears, 
 
 And heard as with a god s commending ears 
 The tread of armies whose resistless might 
 Should stay mankind s advancement to the light, 
 
 But throne his dynasty a thousand years. 
 
 Then rose he from the conquered globe on wings 
 Such as in vision serve the will of kings, 
 Till gazing from the violated skies 
 
 He saw, below his battles smoky bars, 
 With flaming France and Russia for its eyes, 
 Earth like a skull that glared upon the stars. 
 
 120 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 EARTH S ANTHEM 
 
 The mighty tempest of the world- war breaks 
 That Armageddon that our sires foretold. 
 This is the lash the lords of Europe hold 
 
 To scourge their peoples, and the battle takes 
 
 Frontiers of flame and thunder, and Earth makes 
 A melancholy music, bleakly rolled 
 On fateful heavens menacing and cold, 
 
 Where Shadows gather and the Red Star shakes. 
 
 The vulture s beak is whetted for the dove. 
 In vain we build our temples, and in vain 
 We tend the lamps of Science and of Love, 
 When on the flame and consecrated oil 
 War, in a vast and headlong hurricane, 
 
 Launches the Night in which no man shall toil. 
 
 121 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 TO GERMANY 
 
 I 
 
 Beat back thy forfeit plow-shares into swords: 
 
 It is not yet, the far, seraphic dream 
 
 Of peace made beautiful and love supreme. 
 Now let the strong, unweariable chords 
 Of battle shake to thunder, and the hordes 
 
 Advance, where now the famished vultures scream. 
 
 The standards gather and the trumpets gleam; 
 Down the long hill-side stare the mounted lords. 
 
 Now far beyond the tumult and the hate 
 The white-clad nurses and the surgeons wait 
 The backward currents of tormented life, 
 When on the waiting silences shall come 
 The screams of men, and, ere those lips are dumb, 
 The searching probe, the ligature and knife. 
 
 122 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 "..> 
 
 II 
 
 Was it for such, the brutehood and the pain, 
 Civilization gave her holy fire 
 Unto thy wardship, and the snowy spire 
 
 Of her august and most exalted fane? 
 
 Are these the harvests of her ancient rain 
 Men reap at evening in the scarlet mire, 
 Or where the mountain smokes, a dreadful pyre, 
 
 Or where the warship drags a bloody stain? 
 
 Are these thy votive lilies and their dews, 
 That now the outraged stars look down to see? 
 
 Behold them, where the cold, prophetic damps 
 Congeal on youthful brows so soon to lose 
 Their dream of sacrifice to thee to thee, 
 Harlot to Murder in a thousand camps! 
 
 123 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 III 
 
 Was it for this that loving men and true 
 Have labored in the darkness and the light 
 To rear the solemn temple of the Right, 
 
 On Reason s deep foundations, bared anew 
 
 Long after the Caesarian eagles flew 
 
 And Rome s last thunder died upon the Night? 
 Cuirassed, the cannon menace from the height; 
 
 Armored, the new-born eagles take the blue. 
 
 Wait not thy lords the avenging, certain knell- 
 One with the captains and abhorrent fames 
 The echoes of whose conquests died in Hell? 
 
 They that have loosened the ensanguined flood, 
 And whose malign and execrable names 
 The Seraph of the Record writes in blood. 
 
 124 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 IV 
 
 From gravid trench and sullen parapet, 
 
 Profane the wounded lands with mine or shell! 
 
 Turn thou upon the world thy cannons Hell, 
 Till many million women s eyes are wet! 
 Ravage and slay ! Pile up the eternal debt ! 
 
 But when the fanes of France and Belgium fell 
 
 Another ruin was on earth as well, 
 And ashes that the race shall not forget. 
 
 Not by the devastation of the guns, 
 
 Nor tempest-shock, nor steel s subverting edge. 
 Nor yet the slow erasure of the suns 
 
 The downfall came, betrayer of thy trust! 
 But at the dissolution of a pledge 
 
 The temple of thine honor sank to dust. 
 
 125 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 V 
 
 Make not thy prayer to Heaven, lest perchance, 
 O troubler of the world, the heavens hear! 
 But trust in Uhlan and in cannoneer, 
 
 And, ere the Russian hough thee, set thy lance 
 
 Against the dear and blameless breast of France ! 
 Put on thy mail tremendous and austere, 
 And let the squadrons of thy wrath appear, 
 
 And bid the standards and the guns advance ! 
 
 Those as an evil mist shall pass away, 
 
 As once the Assyrian before the Lord: 
 Thou standest between mortals and the day, 
 
 Ere God, grown weary of thine armored reign, 
 Lift from the world the shadow of thy sword 
 And bid the stars of morning sing again. 
 
 126 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 BETRAYAL 
 
 I 
 
 Strange, that the race relinquish to the hands, 
 Mailed and relentless, of the haughty few 
 Its destinies ! The pomps Assyria knew 
 
 Moan to the twilight of the bitter sands 
 
 With lips of stone, and in the desert stands 
 No record of the millions that she slew. 
 There gleams no throne in Time s august review 
 
 But sent a sword upon the patient lands. 
 
 On Europe now, as once on Babylon, 
 The vulture bands go forth beneath the sun, 
 And ravens hover at the flanks of war 
 With clamor echoless and desolate, 
 As tho each bird cried hoarsely to its mate, 
 "The kings are at their bloody work once more!" 
 
 127 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 II 
 
 Why will ye suffer it, and give to kings 
 
 The reins of government, O brothers blind? 
 
 Upon their roads of empire ye shall find 
 Despair and agony and shattered things. 
 Their suns conspire; the throne s deep shadow 
 swings 
 
 Its midnight on the race s heart and mind; 
 
 Your homes they open to the rain and wind, 
 Your portals to the bat s familiar wings. 
 
 Their feet take hold on Hell, and on their path 
 Lie Beauty violate and Love profaned; 
 
 Their armies trample and their chariots ride 
 On harvests and the hearth-stone, and your wrath 
 Wakes not, nor hath your purblind strength 
 
 arraigned 
 Their idiot "honor" and insensate pride! 
 
 128 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 BELGIUM, AUGUST, 1914 
 
 O Earth! O star of sorrow! at thy breast 
 What vampires have had sustenance of thee ! 
 From thy dark womb what furies have gone free 
 
 And in thy shadowy lap what dragons nest ! 
 
 O beautiful as thou art all unblest ! 
 
 From thee so fair shall births so monstrous be, 
 And in thy smile must man forever see 
 
 A hidden hatred, endless and suj pressed? 
 
 How harmless are thy serpents, matched with man ! 
 
 How gentle are the wars of fen or wave, 
 Beside this other that thy children plan! 
 
 Across the dykes of mercy sweeps the flood; 
 Butcher and beast, the hordes of Odin rave, 
 Whom War hath blinded with the dust of blood ! 
 
 129 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 ENGLAND, AUGUST, 1914 
 
 Southward again on ancient roads of war, 
 Beyond the Narrow Seas thy legions flow, 
 Where wait the battle-fields of long-ago, 
 
 Ramparts thy lion-flag hath known before, 
 
 And cities where they crowned thee conqueror. 
 Depart the youthful ranks that cannot know 
 As yet the power and malice of the foe, 
 
 But know what vow those perjured lips forswore. 
 
 Thy war is for the sanctity of pledge 
 Whether the word of man to man endure, 
 
 Or that his bond be as a rope of sand. 
 Forth ! till the world be cleansed of sacrilege, 
 And those antique foundations rest secure 
 On which the pillars of the Temple stand ! 
 
 130 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 TO THE WAR-LORDS 
 
 I 
 
 Be yours the doom Isaiah s voice foretold, 
 Lifted on Babylon, O ye whose hands 
 Cast the sword s shadow upon weaker lands, 
 
 And for whose pride a million hearths grow cold ! 
 
 Ye reap but with the cannon, and do hold 
 Your plowing to the murder-god s commands; 
 And at your altars Desolation stands, 
 
 And in your hearts is conquest, as of old. 
 
 The legions perish and the warships drown ; 
 
 The fish and vulture batten on the slain ; 
 And it is ye whose word hath shaken down 
 
 The dykes that hold the chartless sea of pain. 
 Your prayers deceive not men, nor shall a crown 
 
 Hide on the brow the murder-mark of Cain. 
 
 131 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 II 
 
 Now glut yourselves with conflict, nor refrain, 
 But let your famished provinces be. fed 
 From bursting granaries of steel and lead ! 
 
 Decree the sowing of that deadly grain 
 
 Where the great war-horse, maddened with his pain, 
 Stamps on the mangled living and the dead, 
 And from the entreated heavens overhead 
 
 Falls from a brother s hand a fiery rain. 
 
 Lift not your voices to the gentle Christ: 
 Your god is of the shambles! Let the moan 
 Of nations be your psalter, and their youth 
 To Moloch and to Bel be sacrificed! 
 A world to which ye proffered lies alone 
 Learns now from Death the horror of your 
 truth. 
 
 132 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 III 
 
 How have you fed your people upon lies, 
 
 And cried "Peace! peace!" and knew it would 
 
 not be ! 
 For now the iron dragons take the sea, 
 
 And in the new-found fortress of the skies, 
 
 Alert and fierce a deadly eagle flies. 
 Ten thousand cannon echo your decree, 
 To whose profound refrain ye bend the knee 
 
 And lift into the Lord of Love your eyes. 
 
 This is Hell s work: why raise your hands to Him, 
 And those hands mailed, and holding up the 
 
 sword? 
 
 There stands another altar, stained with red, 
 At whose basalt the infernal seraphim 
 Uplift to Satan, your conspirant lord, 
 
 The blood of nations, at your mandate shed. 
 
 133 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE WAR-GOD 
 
 Behold the pandar of Oblivion 
 This idiot monster, holding hate his law! 
 It is for him that Life must stand in awe, 
 
 For him that Art hath cringed and Science done 
 
 Whoredom among the tribes, refusing none. 
 In his red day our scruples are as straw: 
 The nations gather at his word, and draw 
 
 His chariot, refulgent as the sun. 
 
 The stars of many masterdoms have set, 
 But that star sets not ever, and the light 
 
 That fell on Troy is cast on Europe now; 
 And as of old the mothers eyes are wet, 
 And the brute god, girded with steel and night, 
 Above Time s charnel scowls with armored 
 brow. 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE LITTLE FARM 
 
 Along the vague horizon, vapor-bound, 
 A monstrous muttering forever broke, 
 As tho the Titans at their council spoke, 
 
 Far off, or in some cavern underground; 
 
 But at the little farm there was no sound, 
 Save when a low and idiot laughter woke. 
 Ashes, till then a home, sent up their smoke: 
 
 A raven dozed upon an eyeless hound. 
 
 One laughed whom men had fettered to a tree. 
 Above his head a broken-hilted knife 
 
 Pinned a small hand that clasped a bit of string. 
 And still he laughed, nor turned his gaze to see 
 The stripped and ravished body of his wife. 
 A weathered sign announced : No Trespassing. 
 
 135 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE HOUSE OF WAR 
 
 Whose heart is fed on vision, and whose mind 
 
 With portent of a Golden Age to be? 
 
 Let him look forth on Europe and the sea, 
 As eagles of destruction ride the wind; 
 But higher must his soul ascend to find 
 
 What star of peace the future may decree : 
 
 Her ray is deep in night s infinity, 
 And men deny her, and the heavens are blind. 
 
 Seek not her pathway where the airship flies 
 And Death hath station on the nearer skies, 
 Smiling on empires that his feet have trod, 
 Where shone the sword and now the cannon 
 
 shines, 
 
 As the slow Fates, from gulfs without a God, 
 Swing up the sun of murder on the Signs. 
 
 136 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 "AS IT WAS IN THE BEGINNING" 
 
 The royal word goes forth, and armies do 
 The work of devils. Agony and waste 
 Are on the world, and the grim legions haste 
 
 On the old war-roads that the Caesars knew. 
 
 Still gleams the dreadful stain of Waterloo, 
 On Time s accusing record unerased; 
 Gone are the ramparts that the Romans faced, 
 
 But these the heavens where their eagles flew. 
 
 Below the bleak and slowly shifting stars, 
 Man turns him in his madness, to reveal 
 His ancient folly and his ancient crime, 
 And on the tragic breast austere with scars 
 Re-girds the mail, and draws the hilted steel, 
 Cold from the twilight battlefields of Time. 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 TO BELGIUM 
 
 As Rome beat down the kingdoms, one by one, 
 With sword invincible, until her sway 
 Held from the rise to set of Europe s day, 
 
 So to his war-adventure leapt the Hun, 
 
 And as the Roman wrought, so had he done, 
 Were not thy sons as lions on his way. 
 Granite he found thee, who had thought thee clay, 
 
 O nation clothed as with the noonday sun ! 
 
 O barrier to the tempest ! Faithful wall 
 That held the armored avalanche a space ! 
 
 O little dyke against so great a flood! 
 Thou sentry, whom no midnight could appall! 
 Thou Christ of nations, giving to the race 
 That respite purchased with thy holy blood ! 
 
 138 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE TWO PRAYERS 
 
 "O Christ of peace, grant that he live!" she cried 
 The widow-mother kneeling ere the day. 
 "Oh! give thine angels charge upon his way, 
 
 Mine only son, my beautiful, my pride! 
 
 And grant him life, who for our sake hast died!" 
 So through the lonely hours she knelt to pray, 
 Where the poor candle cast its friendly ray 
 
 And overhead the dark lay dumb and wide. 
 
 Not so the midnight stood with him for whom 
 Her voice arose: there shrank the harried gloom 
 From searchlights and the cannon s flaming breath, 
 As he, slow writhing in the crimson slime 
 Through the mad torment of delaying time, 
 Prayed with insatiable lips for death. 
 
 139 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 AFTERMATH 
 
 Slowly among the wounded and the slain 
 The gleaners take the harvest of the kings, 
 But harvest-song no joyous maiden sings, 
 
 And crimson fingers lift a crimson grain. 
 
 Where darkness and the powers of darkness reign, 
 They bend above unutterable things, 
 As far away the restless searchlight swings 
 
 Its ghastly ray along the burdened plain. 
 
 Well seems it that they wear a cross of red, 
 But better seems it that this earth should bear 
 
 That blazon in the concourse of the stars, 
 (Ere the Night conquer and the sun fall dead) 
 And mid dark Signs and warring heavens glare, 
 Disastrous, with the bloody light of Mars. 
 
 140 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE WAR-MACHINE 
 
 Behold the monster that their hands have made ! 
 
 Behold the mindless god of steel and lead 
 
 To whom the unhappy sons of man are fed! 
 His priests in gold and scarlet stand arrayed; 
 His altar reeks; the lamp within the shade 
 
 Glows with a quenchless and malignant red. 
 
 O poisoned wine and pestilential bread ! 
 O faith discomfited and hope betrayed! 
 
 His music is a weeping in the dark, 
 And hiss of knotted serpents, and the moan 
 Of men that bleed upon his altar-stone, 
 
 Where the blind seraphim of Pain and Death 
 Stand in the shadow right and left, nor mark 
 The incense coiling like a dragon s breath. 
 
 141 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 BOMBARDMENT 
 
 The womb of steel, with thunder and a moan, 
 Released its burden, and the screaming shell 
 Swung up in flame above the heavens Hell. 
 
 Remote, on sounding skies till then unknown, 
 
 Where once the vulture circled, high and lone, 
 Or Alpine eagles had their citadel, 
 That iron offspring took the dark, then fell 
 
 As falls, unheralded, the meteor-stone. 
 
 In that domain of majesty and night 
 There stood no haven for its evil flight: 
 Its goal was horror, and the goal afar. 
 Ere long, where huddling babes and women 
 
 wept, 
 And wounded men were couched, and no man 
 
 slept, 
 Deep in the midnight city sank that star. 
 
 142 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 GERMANY 
 
 As he who shod the horses of the sun, 
 She made her desecrated forges peal 
 To monstrous births of cannon and of keel, 
 
 Where fires deliver and the hammers stun; 
 
 And when the daylight and the toil were done, 
 Upon the breast of Peace she set her heel, 
 Loosing the headlong avalanche of steel, 
 
 With lance on lance and gun on cruel gun. 
 
 As Sampson in his blindness hath she snapt 
 The pillars of the temple of the light, 
 
 Drawn down in ruin upon Europe s head. 
 To heavens in the smoke of conquest wrapt 
 There cry unheeded voices in the night, 
 From new-made ramparts builded of the dead. 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE DEATH-CHORDS 
 
 What antiphon is this, with Earth to Hell 
 Rendering moan for moan? Alas the cries 
 That from red mouths of many wounds arise 
 
 Above the bass of cannon and the knell 
 
 Of tolling mortal and infernal shell ! 
 Far upon Europe s overshadowed skies 
 The deep vibration of that anthem dies, 
 
 When falls the night with Death for sentinel. 
 
 This is the music of thy traitor kings, 
 O world betrayed, and this the cruel song 
 
 Thou singest in the heavens of love and light 1 
 Fold, fold across the lands thy mighty wings 
 Of dawn and sunset: thou hast sung too long! 
 Draw round thy breast the everlasting Night ! 
 
 144 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE FEAST 
 
 Never, O Death, was such a wine as this 
 
 Given thine everlasting thirst to drain, 
 
 Never a vintage of so royal stain, 
 Crushed from the youth of Europe for thy bliss. 
 At these thine orgies Hate and Madness kiss, 
 
 And Horror crowns the frantic brows of Pain ; 
 
 Garlands of serpents are thy flowery chain 
 And, for thy music, their infernal hiss. 
 
 Drink deep : such banquet shall not be again. 
 Drink till the lees are cloudy in the cup, 
 
 And in thy veins a scarlet venom sings! 
 Then, drunken with the doom of myriad men, 
 Kneel, and at ruined altars offer up 
 Thy deep thanksgiving to the power of kings ! 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 WAR S MUSIC 
 
 As harp-strings now the swept horizons roar. 
 The bleak, tremendous music of the guns 
 Seems as the challenge of contending suns 
 When past Orion s sword the heavens war. 
 The sound is of a sea whose waves outpour 
 Destruction, and whose wind of ruin runs 
 With thunder, where a voice whose onset stuns 
 Groans a red surf upon a crimson shore. 
 
 Are these the tidings of the race s doom 
 The throats of cannon utter to the world? 
 
 The mortar tolls like Death s prophetic bell, 
 And tongues of terror cry across the gloom, 
 Where the great shells descend like chariots hurled 
 From midnight, on some battlefield of Hell. 
 
 146 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE AEROPLANE 
 
 Afar and high, on wings that feared no wind, 
 The intrepid dragon of espial flew, 
 Unseen at last within the housing blue, 
 
 Arid o er dim provinces at last inclined, 
 
 Stared from the pinnacles of noon to find 
 The plan and purpose of the war s review 
 What counsels launched, what jeopardies with 
 drew. 
 
 The groping armies, ominous and blind. 
 
 Then honied the watcher to its armored nest, 
 Down the cold dome immense and desolate, 
 
 Where clouds beleaguer and the sunlight chills- 
 Death s herald, bearing to the anxious west 
 The secret of the captains, and the fate 
 Of legions hidden in the deadly hills. 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 BEFORE DAWN 
 
 "Tell us, O Watchman, tell us of the Night! 
 What tidings from the world s high parapet?" 
 "There is no pausing nor cessation yet 
 
 Where the lords gather and the legions fight. 
 
 Mars in his House of Blood hath sovran light 
 Above the ashes of a Day long set, 
 And with his scarlet dew the land is wet, 
 
 And the red stars gaze with despotic sight." 
 
 So rang the message that they bent to hark, 
 As from his height the western Sentinel 
 
 Beheld the Signs malignant in their place, 
 And heard beyond the horizon of the dark 
 The solemn sound of cannon, as tho Hell 
 Tolled forth the doom and burial of the race. 
 
 148 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE TURK 
 
 Behold him! the abominable! the beast! 
 The butcher of the race, malignly red 
 With blood of helpless ones from heel to head ! 
 
 Behold this infamy by Fate released 
 
 On gentler nations given as a feast 
 Where vultures batten after he has fed, 
 And trampled bosoms of the tortured dead 
 
 Pave his dominion of the ravished East. 
 
 Over the rondure of the world a cry 
 
 Goes forth against him, as Armenia s breast 
 
 Implores a hundredth time for God to save 
 A bleak and dreadful voice upon the sky 
 To North and South, and in the avenging West 
 An echo of the moan that Belgium gave. 
 
 149 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE NEW KINGS 
 
 Not gold, but steel, O Bethlehem! they bring- 
 Not myrrh, but powder; nor may shepherds find 
 Wafture of frankincense upon the wind: 
 
 The breath of cannon has a sharper sting! 
 
 Far in the south awakes a muttering 
 
 That tells a worship of a grimmer kind, 
 And soon an older god shall be enshrined 
 
 Where once the Magi found an infant King. 
 
 What the repulsed Crusader could not hold, 
 
 Take thou, O Russia! in a nobler cause! 
 And on the pathway of the kings of old 
 
 Advance, with guns that sound the Moslem knell 
 And northern steel and ranks that never pause, 
 Led to Christ s manger by the Star of Hell! 
 
 150 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 TO FRANCE 
 
 daughter of the morning! on thy brow 
 Immortal be the lilies thou hast won ! 
 Eternal be thy station in the sun, 
 
 That shines not on a splendor such as thou! 
 
 A strength is thine beyond the armored prow, 
 And past dominion of the lance and gun, 
 Tho now thou stand, as battle- thunders stun, 
 
 Heroic, on the fields that cannon plow. 
 
 Triumph be thine, O beautiful and dear! 
 
 Whose cause is one with Freedom and her name. 
 
 The armies of the night devise thee wrong, 
 But on thy helm the star of Truth is clear, 
 And Truth shall conquer, tho thy cities flame, 
 And morning break, tho now the night is 
 strong ! 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE NIGHT OF MAN 
 
 Europe, how have kings dealt with thee, and sown 
 Thine every acre from a human breast ! 
 Red was the seed and red the harrow pressed 
 
 To bitter fields whose harvest was a moan ; 
 
 And the long years pass on to the unknown, 
 And cannon utter now thy lords unrest, 
 Where still their armies gather for the test, 
 
 And heavy darkness holds about the throne. 
 
 And shall they sow forever hi this wise, 
 To reap that corn whose roots take hold on Hell? 
 
 Better a desert and the sunlight there, 
 In which the lions gaze with stony eyes 
 
 From nameless ruins where the lizards dwell, 
 And the small hawk floats lonely on the air. 
 
 152 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 TO THE ALLIED ARMS 
 
 Where children slept, gun answers unto gun; 
 
 Where peace was on the orchards, armies fight; 
 
 Now burst, on vale and devastated height, 
 The tides that raven and the seas that stun. 
 Yet wage ye now the battles of the sun 
 
 And with a holy ray your flags are bright, 
 
 Tho deep on Europe lies the two-fold night 
 Of pain s despair and death s oblivion. 
 
 More clear, more terrible, the days reveal 
 What foe is yours, and how malignly vast 
 
 The horror and betrayal of its plan- 
 That tyranny which rears its crest of steel 
 To blot the Future s blue, a shadow cast 
 By Hell s red star on Liberty and Man. 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE BATTLEFIELD AT NIGHT 
 
 When on war s wounded falls the final sleep, 
 How beautiful shall silence be to those 
 On whom till then the sounds of carnage close 
 
 And tramping billows of the conflict sweep ! 
 
 A camp unsentineled that host shall keep, 
 Nor countersign reveal its friends and foes; 
 And in that zone of death shall be repose 
 
 More kind than love, and than the dark more deep. 
 
 But now unceasing thunders tread the night, 
 Mid flamings and cessations of the light, 
 And the faint sense delays ere death to hark 
 The bellowing of guns against the sky, 
 And, as the decimating cannon cry, 
 The mangled horses screaming in the dark. 
 
 154 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 KINGSHIP 
 
 Mercy and peace how many warring years 
 The sons of men have sought, and sought in vain I 
 Ever was one who found the spur and rein 
 
 The monarch, girt around with servile spears. 
 
 Caesars and sultans, princes and emirs 
 Have made an earth demoniac with pain. 
 The throne is like an island in the main, 
 
 And that deep sea the sea of human tears. 
 
 O Spirit of the world, is this thy truth, 
 And this thine answer to our questionings? 
 
 Shalt thou be god or devil in our sight, 
 Beholding mighty nations and their youth 
 Betrayed into the feeble hands of kings? 
 Feeble, but ah! the flame of war they light! 
 
 155 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE DEATH OF RUPERT BROOKE 
 
 Poets of England, where are you to-day? 
 
 If I, removed by nigh three hundred years 
 
 From English soil, share thus your hopes and 
 
 fears, 
 
 And, young no longer, plan to join the fray, 
 What swords are at your gates, that you delay 
 
 Your passage to the thundering frontiers? 
 
 The heart of Bruce was hurled beyond the spears, 
 And one as great hath shown you now the way. 
 
 Say not, "Why place a weapon in his hand?" 
 
 Say not, "He could have written many a book, 
 To render better service to his land." 
 
 There comes a time when sterner things must be, 
 And all the words of Byron and of Brooke 
 Match not the stand they took for liberty. 
 
 156 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE HELOTS 
 
 Now the grim lords of Europe have their will, 
 And war is on the world, and war s despair. 
 The monster that they nurtured with such care 
 
 At battle s crimson river drinks its fill, 
 
 And the rent veins of men cease not to spill, 
 And the red fangs cease not to pierce and tear, 
 And the mad ranks press ever on, and bare 
 
 Their bosoms, that its food be given still. 
 
 Such is the price, O brothers, that ye pay 
 
 For tyrant, prince and war-lord; thus your fate 
 
 To madman and to despot is consigned. 
 In peace, ye toil that folly have its way; 
 In war, ye bleed in misery and hate; 
 In war or peace, ye labor deaf and blind. 
 
 157 
 
THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE CROWN-PRINCE AT VERDUN 
 
 By Mars his hilt! this is a royal sport, 
 And fit amusement for a king- to-be ! 
 Surely the revels now permitted thee 
 
 Excel the poor diversions of a court ! 
 
 Against the tireless thunder of the fort 
 Thy ranks go forth as waves upon a sea- 
 Puppets and pawns that move at thy decree. 
 
 A merry game, but mayst thou find it short! 
 
 Or is it as a painter that thy skill 
 
 Favors the world? daubing with red the snow, 
 As on the mighty canvas of a hill 
 
 Thy cannon spread the pigments, till the whole 
 Stands perfect, and applauding armies know 
 The vision of the Hell that waits thy soul. 
 
 158 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 BEFORE DAWN IN AMERICA 
 
 Slowly the hours beyond the midnight crawl. 
 
 Far on the frozen night a train goes by. 
 
 I know there is no starlight in the sky, 
 But that concealing fog is over all, 
 Alike for stars and men a somber pall. 
 
 Remoter now, a cold, mechanic cry 
 
 Is signal, and the poplars stir and sigh, 
 As ranks that wait in vain the trumpet s call. 
 
 Now breaks the day on Belgium and France. 
 Over the shoulder of the world, I know 
 What rubrics gleam on the recording snow 
 
 (That page of Heaven s book that lay so pure!) 
 As, votive to the race s huge mischance, 
 Men die, O Liberty! that thou endure. 
 
 159 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 GUN-PRACTICE 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 Dull, on the somber headlands of the Gate, 
 Where morning winds of the Pacific go, 
 The giant mortars toll, pulsed blow on blow 
 
 As of a mace that in the grasp of Fate 
 
 Swings, and the thundering coasts reverberate. 
 To silence now the vast vibrations flow, 
 Where burns the sun on seas without a foe 
 
 And the far cliffs rise cold and desolate. 
 
 But in this heart aware of good and ill, 
 The grave and mighty echoes persevere, 
 
 Till now the vision that is mine transmutes 
 The speech of cannon, and a whisper chill 
 Sinks as the hiss of serpents in mine ear : 
 "Sons of destruction, ye are yet as brutes!" 
 
 1 60 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 TO ENGLAND 
 
 O mighty Mother of our heart and mind! 
 We, sons of thine in vision and in deed, 
 Gaze eastward, where our brothers toil and bleed, 
 
 And hear thy battle-music on the wind. 
 
 Behold! we gaze, who are to thee as blind, 
 And listen, seeming deaf to all thy need, 
 But in our hearts what ancient Voices plead! 
 
 What clarions echo, calling kind to kind! 
 
 We are a folk of many hearths and hates, 
 Fretted with alien counsels, and unsure; 
 
 Yet some there be who know our war is one, 
 And strain upon the barrier of our Fates, 
 And scorn the coward twilight that endures 
 Between our darkness and thy noonday sun. 
 
 161 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 CIVILIZATION AT BAY 
 
 Can there be one whose blood from England finds 
 Nurture and s^ource, who sees her war to-day 
 And yearns not for the liberative fray? 
 
 If such a one there be, what darkness blinds. 
 
 His vision, or what craft of cunning minds 
 Have made that vision their corrupted prey? 
 Now is the season of the world s dismay, 
 
 And now a cry goes forth on all the winds. 
 
 Now calls the Lioness, and one by one 
 
 Her whelps make answer, east and south and west; 
 
 But thou, the greatest of that royal line, 
 America! dost slumber in the sun, 
 
 Nor loose the allegiant thunder in thy breast, 
 Nor dream what world-derision shall be thine. 
 
 162 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE DAY OF DECISION 
 
 Now is that tiger loosened on mankind 
 
 Whose fangs, if here undrawn, all men shall feel, 
 Till wounds be given that ages cannot heal. 
 
 And thou, America! thou standest blind! 
 
 What ! wilt thou wait till Hell has undermined 
 The fane of Freedom, and her columns reel? 
 Wait till annunciating throats of steel 
 
 Declare thy doom upon the poisoned wind? 
 
 Or if thou waitest till the Beast is bound, 
 As lesser peoples wage thy war for thee, 
 In what appraisement shall thy name be found? 
 
 Shall not they cry : "We fought to save a world, 
 Thou guarding past the desecrated sea 
 
 Thy calloused patience and thy colors furled!" 
 
 63 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 BROADWAY, NEW YORK, 1916 
 
 Indifferent to a world in agony, 
 
 The drunken wasters crowd the cabaret, 
 Whose midnight orgies end but with the day. 
 
 O Liberty, are these the fruits of thee 
 
 This swarm of vampires that the dark sets free, 
 To batten upon murder, and decay? 
 Are these our masters and the race their prey, 
 
 And hast thou long to live when such things be? 
 
 So in the wake of war do jackals come 
 
 To feast on those that perish in thy name, 
 And when the wounded breasts at last are dumb, 
 
 To howl exultant to the setting moon, 
 Till, frightened by the sun s returning flame, 
 They scamper to their holes and sleep by noon. 
 
 164 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 
 THE "LUSITANIA" 
 
 Above her grave the dipping sea-gulls cry 
 
 To swift companion or to tireless mate; 
 
 The impassive sea lies blue and desolate, 
 Whose vacant shires reflect the vacant sky; 
 And ocean- winds pass on without a sigh, 
 
 Fugitive, aimless, uncompassionate. 
 
 Below, for witnesses of bestial hate, 
 The bones and memories of our murdered lie. 
 
 For do we still remember? Now the year 
 Brings back the date of their unhappy day, 
 
 And still the butcher and his lords go free- 
 Go free, nor trouble to conceal the sneer 
 For us whose irresponsive hearts betray 
 The vast indifference of heaven and sea. 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 WAR 
 
 THE PAST 
 
 In that abyss what monsters greet the sight ! 
 Then were the fertile leisures of the sage, 
 And stony Art saw then her Golden Age ; 
 
 But nation upon nation in that night, 
 
 With flame to blast and savage steel to smite, 
 Fell fiendlike, drunken with the battle-rage, 
 And Time s red arm upholds a bloody page 
 
 Before the revelation of the light. 
 
 The dreadful heritage is on us yet : 
 
 Rapine and tears and torment and despair 
 The murder-stains wherewith our hands are wet. 
 Still round us rise the dungeons of the Past, 
 The crypt abominable whence we fare 
 Slowly, ah! slowly to the light at last. 
 
 1 66 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 WAR 
 
 THE PRESENT 
 
 They will not pause for counsel. Deadly wings 
 Take now the skies, and the horizons slay 
 With hands invisible, and warships sway 
 
 To billows broken by their thunderings. 
 
 So wrought the lands where now the desert flings 
 A pall of sand on columns that decay; 
 And whose the realm none knows unto this day, 
 
 Nor knows the Wrath that smote its cruel kings. 
 
 Is this the wholesome blue, the heavens of night 
 
 Whose eastern star the wise men had for guide? 
 Found they the Prince of Peace below its light? 
 
 That orb hath set. Swift from its holy place 
 With level wings the pampered vultures slide, 
 As morning glimmers on a dead man s face. 
 
ON THE GREAT WAR 
 WAR 
 
 THE PUTURE 
 
 Be beautiful, O morning s feet of gold, 
 
 Upon the mountains of that time to be! 
 
 Be swift, O day spring that shall set us free 
 From all the blinding tyrannies of old! 
 Thine are the years by seer and bard foretold, 
 
 And thine the judgment driven as a sea 
 
 On man s high-treason to humanity. 
 Thine is the sun their armies shall behold. 
 
 O ranks that serve the future and the Right, 
 
 How fair your conquests and how high your wars, 
 When, bathed in that deliverance of light, 
 
 Your swords are lifted against pain and wrong, 
 And, ere man s House be builded toward the stars, 
 Ye lay its deep foundations with a song! 
 
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