;-NRLF THE ENGLISH TONGUE UNIFORM WITH THIS VOLUME LAODICE AND DANAE Play in Verse By Gordon Bottomley IMAGES OLD AND NEW Poems By Richard Aldington THE ENGLISH TONGUE AND OTHER POEMS By Lewis Worthington Smith FIVE MEN AND POMPEY Dramatic Portraits By Stephen Vincent Benet HORIZONS Poems By Robert Alden Sanborn THE TRAGEDY A Fantasy in Verse By Gilbert Moyle THE ENGLISH TONGUE AND OTHER POEMS BY LEWIS WORTHINGTON SMITH BOSTON THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY 1915 Copyright, ipif, by THE FOUR SEAS COMPANY THE FOUR SEAS PRESS BOSTON AND NORWOOD CONTENTS THE ENGLISH TONGUE 9 COUNSELS OF KINGS 12 THE AIRCRAFT 14 THE FEET OF THE YOUNG MEN" 15 SIR FRANCIS DRAKE 18 THE THROES OF NATIONS 19 THE SLAVIC PERIL 21 "S. O. S." 23 AT RHEIMS 25 DUST 27 THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY Do 28 ON A FLAG POLE FOR THE STARS AND STRIPES 31 o i o O 4 O ,3 In reprinting these poems, the author is glad to ac knowledge obligations to The Boston Transcript, The New York Times, The Reader, The Independent, and The New York Evening Post. Art is for life. Oh, poet, do not dream Too long of fairies in the enchanted stream Of things impossible. Strike fire and hold A torch to light the pathways of the bold. THE ENGLISH TONGUE Words that have tumbled and tossed from the Avon and Clyde On to where Indus and Ganges pour down to the tide. Words that have lived, that have felt, that have gather ed and grown. Words ! Is it nothing that no other people have known Speech of such myriad voices, so full and so free, Song by the fireside and crash of the thunders at sea ? Weight of the Teuton upborne by the joy of the Celt, Grace from the halls where the courtiers of Normandy knelt, Easy precision that plays through the laughter of France, Mysteries of dim Irish fairylands thronged in the dance. All of the moods of the world have been caught and been sung, Changed to its substance, the final invincible tongue. Words! They are symbols, perhaps, but the things that we live Keep in their closure; the joys we can take and can give Narrow themselves to our speech, and the life of the race Holds to the scope of the lexicon. Idle is place, [9] Power, and the marching of armies, if those they en thrall Thrill to no word-glow together, no cry and no call. Words ! They are sympathies, flotsam caught up from the waves, Passions and tempests of living that only love saves. Words! They are insights and tremblings of earth made divine, Swift revelations that melt all of mine into thine. Words! They are human outreachings to know and believe, Throbbings of man to his fellows, to give and receive. Speech is the conqueror sureliest holding his reign. English they talk in Manila, forgetful of Spain, English in India, Africa, Van Diemen s Land, English along the St. Lawrence, the Nile, Rio Grande. Out of its fullness come friendliness, peace, and con tent, Loves of the hearth and the council when hatreds are spent. Words ! English words ! They are circling the earth with their power. Kinships spring up where they march. Law is born as their dower. Guns shall be silent before them and war lords give way, [10] Yielding to man in his manhood their blood-purchased sway. Petty, provincial, and barbarous aims shall be flung Far to the deeps in the track of the conquering tongue. COUNSELS OF KINGS They have killed our heir, O brother kings. They might kill you or me, For the death in Sarayevo differs only in degree From the death of kings in Germany or Austria or Rome, And they can not make distinctions till the guns have driven them home. We must hustle them and frighten them and drain their blood once more. We must let them know their masters ; they must hear the cannon roar. When their hate is toward their fellows it will pass our kingships by. We can smile when burning cities pour their offerings to the sky. When they kill our kind, O brother kings, they some how lose respect For the patent of divinity that hedges the elect. Then the task of wisely guiding them and keeping them content Is a thing for which new ways and means we can not well invent. We must harry them and shatter them and humble them once more. We must crowd them in the trenches as our fathers did before. [12] We must give them marching orders till they learn to come and go With the sureness of automatons, a thousand in a row. When they taste our blood, O brother kings, our king ship loses caste. We may seem but common mortals, and our thrones may tumble fast. When a single hand is lifted, thousands rally at the sign, And they scantly heed the dignity that marks our an cient line. We must muster them and fluster them till every mar shalled man Makes our majesty the mightier through all the gathered clan. Then the fear of one another shall be fear of us who rule. They shall kill, not us the masters, but each one his brother fool. THE AIRCRAFT Once it was earth s chief glory that we rose Into the clear blue where the free wind blows. Up, up was man s long cry. We fashioned wings. We caught at wonder as an eagle flings His strength upon the tempest, till they cried Their madness, war, as if its shame were pride. Now, back they draw us from the rapturous suns To lead the furies, signalling the guns. Once, once again ! Our hearts cry for the air. The sky is clear. No bugle s burst and blare Bids us be ravening monsters out of hell. Ours is the newer freedom and the spell Of speed and distance and the sweep and swing That mount and find the earth s horizon ring. Out of their murk a fiendish message runs ; We are their blazons signalling the guns. Up, up ! The petty and the mean slip by. A blotch of green below, above the sky. We are faith flying where the falcon fails. We are strength driving where the seagull quails. We are love breathing where the swallow wings. We are faith lifting where the skylark sings ; And down they drag us where the thunder stuns, Not men, but demons, signalling the guns. "THE FEET OF THE YOUNG MEN" He must go go go away from here. On the other side the world he s overdue. Send your road is clear before you when the old Spring-fret comes o er you And the Red Gods call for you. RUDYARD KIPLING When the winds are breaking cover and the sky is like a lover, When the flying sails are slipping out to sea, When the rain-wash floods the basins for the breasts of geese and plover, When the sap is bursting leaf on bush and tree, When the young men s feet are eager as a swallow for its mate, When the stars that watch the distance are a goad ; They must wait wait wait, for the armies march in state. They must change their hearts and take another road. They must march march march against the guns. What is beating youth and why should its dreams break leash and fly? What is water when it runs? What are all the stars and suns, When the War God s pennons redden in the sky? [15] When the snow has left the ledges and the quail are in the hedges, When the dragon-flies are spangles in the sun, Then the young men hear the summons that shall hold them to their pledges, For the rumble of the cannon has begun. They shall check their thoughts and follow, they shall ask their own no more, And their feet shall learn obedience to the drum. In the roar roar roar of the rifles, they shall pour All their passion into blood, and perish, dumb. They must march march march against the guns. What is beating youth and why should its dreams break leash and fly? What is water when it runs? What are all the stars and suns, When the War God s pennons redden in the sky? When the foam is on the river and the boats toss in a shiver, When the yellow swirl is maddening for the sea, They shall walk in mud red-oozing where the dead and dying quiver, Where the shrapnel rain has made their passage free. They shall know they can not falter, for the battle flags are up, And the hour is past for asking whence or why. [16] They shall sup sup sup, as the vultures, and the cup They must drain is blood, while hell is thundering by. They must march march march against the guns. What is beating youth and why should its dreams break leash and fly? What is water when it runs? What are all the stars and suns, When the War God s pennons redden in the sky? SIR FRANCIS DRAKE Brother of Shakespeare brothers as men must be Who sail together an uncharted sea, Daring what others would not dare or dream, Fixing your eyes unswerving on the gleam That through the darkness and the storm must lead On to the strange, new world, the fair, fresh deed, "Barbarian" to the critic s bitter pen, "Freebooter" to the thoughts of lesser men Brother of Shakespeare, Shakespeare s England now Might make her less her lovers, but that thou, Lifting her up to wonder in men s eyes, Even so didst make her worth the glad surprise That turns a poet s brain to joy and song, To rapture and enchantment s eager throng Of noble Imogenes, sad Romeos, Fair Rosalinds, and antic Dromios ; That makes the heart a passion and a thrill, A wonder, and a silence sweet and still. Brother of Shakepeare, England s strength and will, As he was England s heart and mind, I fill One brimming beaker to the sword that hung Close at thy side, the ready hands that flung The power of Spain upon the tumbling seas With careless laughter as of kings at ease ; One brimming beaker as the pledge goes round And in our ears the world-wide surges sound. [i8J THE THROES OF NATIONS Out of the throes of nations truth is born, And out of hate love rises to her throne. Ashes and blood weigh down the trampled corn, But at the last the spoiler, flesh and bone, Rots in the furrow, while the exultant hind Leaps from the clod and knows himself a mind. How vain is human strength to push the sun Back in his course ! How idly breaks the sword On gleaming chariots where the fates have spun Their threads of guidance and the wine is poured, Libation on libation, blood and tears, With treasures cherished from the priceless years ! We had achieved so much and paid so much ! What new, stark wonder of the undivined Is held within Time s unrelenting clutch Until our woes have made us mad and blind, And some kind pity bids us turn and gasp, Drunk with our sins and this new joy to clasp? And yet can there be joy with youth and age Tumbled in one red tumult down the slope Where we have dared to wreak our petty rage And take our will for heaven s horoscope? What joy have weeping mothers, though their sons Have pushed earth past the torture of the guns ? How vain are sceptres and the signs of power When "Forward" is the cry and change begins. Bodies she asks, beauty in all her flower No less than foulness loaded with her sins. All things are hers to do with as she wills, The clown that dies, the lust-mad king that kills. Peace in the car of Time puts back the past. The lords of earth must lose their little while. The far eternities are crowding fast, Great thoughts that shame the petty and the vile, Great loves that reach from Europe to Japan, Great conquests for the larger life of man. And this mad price of blood and death and loss, It must be for the centuries, not the hour. Not always and forever is the cross ; Not always evil shows the front of power. Over the trenches where the fallen lie Still broods the eternal wonder of the sky. THE SLAVIC PERIL (GERMANY, 1914) They shall be quicker of hand, when they waken, and higher of heart, Gifted to see, understand, and to tremble and burn with their smart. Tolstoi, Turgenev, the bringers of tales where the prophet-fire gleams, Pushkin and Gogol, the singers of songs and the dreamers of dreams. They shall be searchers of deeps that we never have sounded or known, Pain where the weary serf sleeps and the dangers that beat at the throne. Andreyev, Gorki, the lashers of wrongs that have, shrunk from the eye, Dmitriev, Tchekov, the flashers of truth to the pitying- sky. Out of the sweep of the years they are swinging to births of desire. Out of the rain of their tears they are singing, and song is a fire. Out of their dearth and their blight they are longing for hopes we have won. Out of their pain and their night they are thronging, to laugh in the sun. [21] Moskowski is theirs, Paderewski, who tumble their hearts on the strings, Conrad, Lehvine, Dostoievski, a rumble of storm-beat ing wings. Slow are we Teutons of speech. We are muddy and maudlin, a bit. How shall we climb to the reach of their ruddy and opulent wit ? Toil is our portion forever. We win by no leap of the soul. Hard are our hands, and we never have thrilled with the thought of the goal. Sluggish our fancies, perhaps : we must give them the help of the guns, Tearing our treaties to scraps and outpouring the blood of our sons. Swift must we be or they come, the quickened, the throbbing, the vast. Is it their hearts or the drums beating the war march at last? What is the light in their eyes? An inscrutable flash of command? Each finds the terror he flies in the thing he can not understand. [22] "S. O. S." [THE LUSITANIA CALLS] American men and American guns and American ships once more ! Give over the making of gardens and garlands, cease putting your profits in store. Afar on the deep all the monsters of ravin are crashing their murderous glee, And out of the lightning that darts down the tempest there comes the great cry of the sea, "Suspend Other Service." Give over your dinners, your music and laughter, give over your tennis at dawn. Put coal in the bunkers and batten the hatches and say your good-byes and be gone. When wolves have rushed in from the wilds of the forest and torn the young lambs in the fold, Not then is the time to be kissing your children or tak ing the count of your gold. "Suspend Other Service." Give over your hatred of war when the warlike are worthy the axe and the rope. Put guns on the larboard and guns on the starboard and batter their last periscope. When evil is done and the judgment is rendered, you peril the world, if you sway [23] To tender forgiveness of wrong whose redressing is not for the hour or the day. "Suspend Other Service." Give over your dances, your paintings and sonnets, give over your work with the loom. Once more the old warfare with anarchic Chaos before your new fancies can bloom. Put powder for sugar and cannon for cotton and cop per for wheat in the hold. Your traffic is war that the war may be warless, secure from the mad and the bold. "Suspend Other Service." "Suspend Other Service." Some moments are fateful, too big with the things that shall be, For dallying questions of loving or losing or toss of the white-caps at sea. Take patience for ballast and wisdom for helmsman, but pour in the coal for the screw. Mad folly may dare till she clutches at air and the white keel of peace pushes through. "Suspend Other Service." [24] AT RHEIMS According to newspaper reports, some of the wounded Germans being cared for in the cathedral of Rheims during its bombardment by their countrymen urged their French nurses to hang out a larger Red Cross flag. Cry out, cry out ! We have no will to die. Have we not hurts enough as here we lie Past every hate? Quick, while the cannons lag; Hang on the walls a larger Red Cross flag. Cry out, cry out ! What profit can there come From limbs that writhe and lips forever dumb ? The gunners hearts are heavy, their feet drag. Hang on the walls a larger Red Cross flag. Cry out, cry out ! Is not man s life too brief? The stalk, the flower, the sere and yellow leaf. Even at the height of joy the furies nag. Hang on the walls a larger Red Cross flag. Cry out, cry out ! Man builds but for decay. No less we hunger for our little day. Sweet were the homeward road with staff and bag. Hang on the walls a larger Red Cross flag. Cry out, cry out ! Some farther-sweeping eye Will pierce the smoke, some higher heart descry A nobler end for strength than smouldering slag. Hang on the walls a larger Red Cross flag. [25] Cry out, cry out ! It can not be in vain. Earth was not meant for war and fear and pain. Sweet Pity, signal forest, plain and crag. Hang on the walls a larger Red Cross flag. DUST Great swirls of dust behind the rolling wheels, Insensate, dulling all the wayside flowers. Great tumbling clouds from which the thunder peals, Aud dust is stalk and leaf and petal-showers. Deep-hearted asters and chrysanthemums, Born of the earth and summer s sun-warmed rain. Low leaden vapors where the north wind comes, And petals crisp to dust, glow sinks to stain. Dust of the roadside where the armies bled, Dust of the fields where what they were is tombed. Here men with joy shall reap their children s bread And pass again to dust with all the doomed. Dust that was thought and mind, that grays the hand, That lived and felt, that yet may live again. Mere grittiness a child can understand. Dust and a something else. Who knows ? What then? [27] THEY KNOW NOT WHAT THEY DO How dull, how mad, how senseless man can be, Standing in truth s high presence unashamed ! Not boldly like hell s harlotries that scorn Virtue and loveliness, but cold of eye, Thinking the demon hate more fair than she. To be among the first whose names adorn The halls where science searches earth and sky, To hold some shrines where martyr-faiths have flamed And turned back error to her dingy cave, To flood the world with music, yet be dumb When all the maddening senses mouth and rave, To stand where knowledge comes while wisdom waits ; This is the utter pity. Fools will strum Their tinklings to the moon, and never know That dawn must sweep their dreams to overthrow, That while their pride is highest, sterner fates March with a roll of thunder to the gates. This is the utter pity, once again. They who would sing their country over all Should truly have a country, not a place For losing self in bondage. Sacrifice Is noble in the end, not in the deed, In gaining something for the lives of men, And not in shutting self within a pall. How pitiful their self -illumined eyes Shining with ardor for their home and race ! How wastrel-sad the crowding of the graves With bodies spent upon a fancied need, Dying to make their children s children slaves, Thinking a nation not a bond of peace Knitting men s hopes in toils of fellowship, But epaulets and words of high command And prompt attention and the bended knee. How simple seem some truths the world has won, Until we read their faces, stolid, blank, Untaught of all the ages, rank on rank Trusting their leaders blindly. The increase Of earth s sad lessoning falters on the lip, No more a paean, but a thing to be When some far day the threshing wheels have fanned The last chaff for the burning, now a dun Tumble of dust above the pouring grain, Choking the workers where they tug and strain. Pity and pity still is all their due, Not hate, but grieving wonder, where they file On to the trenches, conquerors of Louvain And countless peopled slopes that black the blue With smoke of wanton ruin, self-deceived, Thinking their lagging steps lead on the van Of human progress, all life s little while Flinging away to keep a Kaiser strong Over tomorrow s destinies, bereaved Of all that makes youth tremble into song. How full of fond conceits, how vain is man ! Beethoven gave their lives a pulse and flow, [29] And Humbolt taught them, Hseckel, Goethe, Kant. Out of that fellowship, how great the fall To this dull trade of death that others plan ! What creatures of delusion are we all ! Even the wisest of us can not know What best will satisfy our simplest want, And they who hear their emperor s battle cry : "This is your country s mission. Come and die," How should their human weakness strive with God ? Theirs is the path that all their fathers trod. Their sons must learn it, and their sons sons sons, And walk it proudly till they meet the guns. This is their love of country, to lay down All human good for jewels in a crown. Poor outcasts from the visions born of time, They yet shall see there are new heights to climb. England and England s child across the sea Have learned the gracious worth of souls set free, And France can help them, with her clearer eye. These suns shall break across their murky sky. Earth is a fount of pity for their woes. It is not only death Carpathian snows Have given them taste of, but the outer world Of larger issues and new flags unfurled To strange adventures, if they dare to go. Sad victims of devotions none may know Who are not partly noble, earth at gaze Is Niobe through all her roused amaze. [30] ON A FLAG POLE FOR THE STARS AND STRIPES A flag is but a symbol, zephyr-stirred, Flying its loyalty against the blue. It is "I serve," no more than that old word, Pledged to a fresher hope, a larger view. And there are flags and flags. What faith is yours ? To what devotions have you given your heart ? Pushing your country on to what endures. Giving her youth a clear road for the start. One brick that shapes the strength of college walls, One place within the ranks where armies swept; These are your answer when the trumpet calls And each must cry out how his faith was kept. A flag is but a symbol. Here we fly Man s hope for love and truth and spreading peace. The war-clouds blacken all the eastern sky, But here man s fairer nurtures still increase. So to have fought that fighting shall be vain ! So to have lived that life is more and more! Unfurl the flag whose red is not a stain. Break out her blue from shore to sounding shore. [31]