THE LAUGH OF CHRIST AND OTHER 
 ORIGINAL LINNETS ' " ' < ' < 
 
THE LAUGH OF CHRIST 
 
 AND OTHER ORIGINAL 
 
 LINNETS 
 
 BY 
 ST- CLAIRE JONES 
 
 Indianapolis 
 
 THE STUDIO PRESS 
 
 M C M X V I [ 
 
Copyright 1917 by St. Glair Jones 
 
BOOK PLATE 
 
 HT'HE lines of ST. CLAIRE JONES are written here 
 
 JL Upon Life's Page outlined in ebony 
 By one who feels Love's Kiss upon his ear 
 Where Hate 6? Death are passing with a leer 
 
 Mid masked Lascivians and Hetaerae 
 Hailing "THE CHRIST" as "KiNG OF TRAGEDY." 
 
 O Prudery! This Poet slays all fear 
 
 Writing that naked Truth might reappear: 
 His Book Plate printed by E. E. GRABHORN, 
 
 In form no knowing critic laughs to scorn, 
 Seeing "THE LAUGH OF CHRIST" in joy designed, 
 The Virgin produd: of a Master mind 
 
 In Beauty's black ink carefully outlined: 
 
 SIGNED: 1917. 
 
 Lines to MARGUERITE CASANGES 
 
 Linnets are Verses, vital, clear and clean 
 With sighs and kisses flying fast between 
 Pauses and rests timing the lines thirteen. 
 
THE MOON-MAID MOTHER 
 
 A Picture 
 
 T7ULL in the Twilight ere Astarte came 
 JL Diana brought her cradle to the sky, 
 Within man's sight a Mother without shame 
 Bearing Apollo's Infant, blind to blame 
 
 Nude like the gilded blond Boy standing by 
 
 The pretty Page watching his evil eye 
 Follow Salome with its bloody flame 
 As Herod halts behind his fleshy Dame 
 
 To watch tne jeweled Peacock'Butterfly 
 Flutter from black cocoon in green moonlight 
 Flying in nakedness across the Night 
 Towards Luna hanging heavy o'er the height, 
 
 A vision of desire and cold delight. 
 
 Lines to VON STUCK 
 
 Repellant Night grows dark to hide the look 
 Salome casts at Jesus and his book; 
 
 Where Jew stands watching Herod, the pervert, 
 Beyond the Grecian, nut-eyed and alert 
 
 As "Sin" peering from canvas of Von Stuck. 
 
THE MASTER OF MIRTH 
 
 A Picture 
 
 T OVER of laughing boys and singing girls 
 -* ' This Jew in linen, golden girdled rare, 
 His white face framed in long black folds of hair 
 
 Hanging in glossy columns with soft swirls 
 Sweeping his ivory temples in wet curls 
 
 Darker than parted-beard, in fashion's flare 
 
 Away from lips like rose'leaves red 6? bare, 
 Drawn loose around his mouth, 6? mated pearls 
 Beneath blue changing eyes; lazuli, beryls 
 
 Or opals burning in their fiery-flare 
 Glistened in laughter with a tear of glee 
 Lighting the Way for painted Hetaerae, 
 
 MASTER OF MIRTH costumed for Comedy. 
 
 Lines to WILLIAM CHASE 
 
 In New York I have studied like a Jew 
 Determined to find Truth: this much is true 
 
 You showed me how to paint with pigments fresh 
 Still-life and portrait: how to rake the flesh 
 With handle of my paint-brush to renew 
 The life of paint smeared yellow, red and blue. 
 
THE LAUGH OF CHRIST 
 
 An Impression 
 
 THE LAUGH OF CHRIST is like a spreading net 
 Let in a salty sea of sadness filled 
 By streams from melting mountains flowing yet 
 Into Earth's troubled Pool, Genesaret 
 
 Where blood &* tears &P milk together spilled 
 Rankle on babies, boys and girls, new killed 
 By soldiers, in loose seed and semen wet 
 Filling the Seine of Christ with freshened fret 
 Of sailors, adtors, painters, poets, skilled, 
 Killed 6P all washed away as Leaders willed! 
 Yet has the LAUGH OF JESUS not been stilled 
 Trilled from his mouth, a Spring of Living Water 
 In this "UNPRECEDENTED SPRING OF SLAUGHTER!" 
 
 Spring TQT?. 
 
 Lines to ROBERT HENRI 
 
 This Laugher leaps to life when bristle brush 
 Flushes full mouth with breath of beauty lush 
 Painted by Robert Henri: Master, paint 
 Before the Model on the Throne can faint 
 From sight of men again; or let me gush 
 My poetry to paint a fadeless flush. 
 
THE BATH 
 
 A Fountain 
 
 MORE joyous than the bath in marble room, 
 Complete immersion in the running stream 
 Where shying snakes and toying turtles teem; 
 
 Or steady passage thru the swollen flume, 
 Far from the temple door and incense fume. 
 Come, little children, laugh and loudly scream, 
 Dance in the water with your flesh agleam. 
 
 Desert your labors on the royal tomb, 
 
 And carol back the psalm that I resume. 
 See how the swimming frogs and fishes gleam 
 In the round public pool where as in dream 
 Our heads are sprinkled with the locust bloom 
 
 And we are swathed in tulip tree perfume. 
 
 Lines to MYRA RICHARDS 
 
 Three Symbols waken in your Fletcher Fountain 
 Meaning in Art more than Sea, Sky or Mountain, 
 Life, Truth and Love from Maeterlinckian Lake 
 Dancing together where their movements make 
 Green Plasterene a shore of cement sand 
 And verdegris bronze move while figures stand 
 With rhythmic lines neither could dance alone 
 Nor sing so joyously from silent stone. 
 
THE WHITE CHRIST 
 
 Marble Carving 
 
 Prophet'Poet is no longer veiled; 
 
 Naked in crystal sight, manly detailed, 
 I carve him here amid his long 'haired sheep, 
 Substantial stone; his herded flock asleep. 
 ( The watching Woman is not nude assailed 
 
 Nor has the lie of ancient time prevailed 
 Upon a man of truth, that he should keep 
 Back weighted words that gambol free, and leap 
 
 Among the ignorant.) The Nazarene 
 
 Bathes in white marbled waters cool and clean. 
 My chisel chips a stone the Hebrews missed. 
 The Maker gave clear eyes, the Greeks insist, 
 To gaze on perfect bodies thus sun 'kissed. 
 
 Lines to ALEXIS MANEY 
 
 Green fire^flies glisten in the golden grass, 
 While mated Lovers through the garden pass 
 
 Alexis, where he stands alone and holds 
 His slender fingers round a silver glass. 
 
THE WATCHING WOMAN 
 
 Iron Fountain 
 
 A watching Woman stands with running sore 
 Painted in crimson stream upon the shore^ 
 Where Christ in iron fishing'boat appears 
 Holding his hands like shells behind his ears, 
 To catch the cry Jehovah heard before 
 This Statue stood gushing its metal gore. 
 The Woman stands painted with crimson smears 
 Streaked over foolish face with drying tears, 
 As The White Christ drifts by without an oar 
 Beyond her where the gushing waters pour 
 In lake around him, while his fancy steers 
 Him past the crimson Nude, healed while she peers 
 From haunted eyes pressed into molten ore. 
 
 Lines to WAYMAN ADAMS 
 
 Adams paints us today that we might live 
 Tomorrow, when our flesh has passed from bones. 
 And bodies fly through star'dust in far sones. 
 
 Brushing us with a bristle brush to give 
 Immortal life to Brown and Smith and Jones. 
 
HERO SALOME 
 
 An Aesthetic Dance 
 
 IN Herod's eyes, as in a crystal glass, 
 Flashes the daughter of Herodias, 
 A virgin in her night embroideries. 
 A milk' white peacock thru black myrtle trees, 
 A priestess kneeling on the garden grass, 
 Watching the prophet and his students pass. 
 
 Religious dancer with oiled barencies, 
 Ashteroth's priestess in transparencies. 
 The Star of Love above Tiberias 
 In the glased eyes of Herod Antipas. 
 Salome is the blended light of these, 
 Casting her various veils voluminous 
 Behind, above, below her, luminous. 
 
 Lines to JOHANN BERTHELSON 
 
 Herod out-Herod's Herod when you play 
 And show in Little Theater your gay 
 Red face above red costume of red King 
 Painted for love of paint; and when you sing 
 The thunder rolls to heaven from your voice, 
 While mortals see the lightening and rejoice, 
 To hear King Herod in his anger when 
 The tone is volumed out by Berthelsen. 
 
THE PEACOCK SKIRT 
 
 . Costume Design 
 
 T} REATHE not of silken slip nor fluted cape ! 
 -U Above a Peacock-skirt of broidered crepe 
 Salome draws a shawl in crescent curve, 
 Full line of beauty with the Grecian swerve 
 Across her breasts where Roman robe agape 
 Reveals beneath its ribbon of tight tape ; 
 ( In axis-band about her like a nerve 
 
 Holding a flood of garments in reserve.) 
 A painted Persian veil draped on the skirt, 
 And webs of lace that deviously divert 
 Sight from the silver cestus in a sheath 
 Of .parrot'plumes, in fainted fold beneath 
 Her golden breasts that like canaries breathe. 
 
 Lines to OSCAR WILDE 
 
 Wilde, Weaver of a loose and lurid loom, 
 Waits me in Art's tapestried Treasure Room 
 When I advance with orchidaceous bloom. 
 
THE VEILS WITHDRAWN 
 
 A Religious Dance 
 
 r T l HE dancer lifts a veil of dull-night hue 
 -* Revealing Psyche in transparent blue, 
 Weeping for Cupid hidden stiff and dead, 
 Her face behind a net of silver thread 
 With flakes of pearl and amethyst streaked thru 
 Like powdered tears or melting morning dew, 
 Falling with wilted poppies from her head, 
 Ash'gold beneath the parting veil of red. 
 Nude ruler of the Roman and the Jew, 
 She is a leaping infant born anew, 
 A sunlit flying fish, a fanning moth, 
 A sleeping serpent, an awakened sloth, 
 Her seven veils withdrawn for Ashteroth. 
 
 Lines to AUBREY BEARDSLEY 
 
 The slender Beardsley stands against black curtain 
 Outlined in white Sure Draftsman, with a certain 
 Air of refinement drawn out of reserve 
 By Vision of French Model full of verve. 
 
THE TOILETTE 
 
 Interior Decoration 
 
 O WOMAN, I behold more than your face; 
 Off with the rose, let lily rise instead. 
 
 Let sun' white purity pink puff replace, 
 Removing tulip flush, unnatural red. 
 The pearl of price and beauty poets chase 
 
 The loss of one immortal line they dread. 
 
 Fold veil and silken gown into a case 
 
 Beneath the cream of warm ceraceous lace. 
 
 Take the puffed dress from hot &P wearied head 
 
 Bowed low by colored tresses from the dead. 
 All shutters opened on the darkened place 
 I see you in a natural naked grace, 
 Against the ivory panel of your bed. 
 
 Lines to TASSULA 
 
 Through hyacinths and bleeding hearts 
 My Grecian Wife at dawning darts 
 From Athens to the fruited plains, 
 On thru the vineyards and the grains, 
 Unto Janina where I see 
 Tassula turn and run to me. 
 
THE KISS 
 
 An Interrogation 
 
 XT THAT is that strange affinity which Art 
 W Magnetically employs to draw the soul 
 Prom men and women striving for Life's Goal? 
 Their kiss unites the severed Head and Heart 
 
 Cut by the Priest of Ology apart. 
 Quaff of the overflowing marriage bowl, 
 While mated male and female voice the whole 
 
 Of Love's integral Law ere they depart. 
 The Soul and Body of all Truth is this: 
 No man so dead, but wakens at a kiss. 
 
 Ovum Ideal in metamorphosis 
 Each woman waits above a black abyss 
 
 Pupa Pythoness in ecdysis. 
 
 Lines to RODIN 
 
 Rodin, Detailist of Females and Males 
 From Youth to Age Destroyer of details, 
 Holding the Bodies of Women and Men 
 In marble and in bronze alive again 
 
LE ROI DES SATURNALIAS 
 
 A Reprint 
 
 NO garment hides the Jew Promethian 
 Nailed naked to a knotted Roman Cross, 
 His perfect body staged Cyclopean 
 Above a Grecian chorus where men toss 
 In Saturnalia lewd jests across. 
 Silenus rampant and Lascivian 
 Hailing a King in song Bacchantian. 
 An officer enfolds the heaving groins, 
 And on his knees a soldier tosses coins, 
 To spear the heart or break the leaping loins. 
 An eunuch lifts a sponge perfumed and spiced, 
 While Hetaerae behold joy sacrificed, 
 Kneeling to kiss the stiff feet of the Christ. 
 
 Latin Lines to HORTENSE FLEXNER 
 
 Indulge lacrymis; tibi, Hortense, iusta dolendi 
 Causa: tuae primum gentis decus occidit, ingens 
 Pace, ingens bello, frater tuus, ardua cuius 
 Gloria Caesaribus par reque et nomine magnis. 
 
ASCENSION 
 
 An Icon 
 
 WHEN lilies rise from earth 6# lilacs bloom 
 Beside the window of my studio; 
 When locust'clusters break and petals blow 
 Round bleeding'hearts, I see the nude bridegroom 
 
 Rise from the icon centered in my room 
 And kiss the bride, rising from golden-glow 
 O'er violets, purple and white, which grow 
 
 Together wet from Nature's opened Womb. 
 When roses lift themselves with pure perfume 
 
 Above the open door of this Glass-House 
 
 I understand both husbandman and spouse, 
 Leaving the Earth which is a blossomed Tomb 
 Where Science stands while howit2rs boom ! 
 
 Easttr Sunday, 1917 
 
 Lines to You 
 
 A little Greek explains my lines to you 
 Who think my linnets Latin or Hebrew. 
 American, my language, will distinguish 
 Me from the Irish, Indians and English. 
 
ONE HUNDRED COPIES 
 
 IMPRINTED BY THE STUDIO PRESS THIS 
 
 SIXTEENTH DAY OF APRIL 
 
 MCMXVII 
 
 PILE S S 
 
 COPY No. 
 
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