WRICHT KAUFFMAN '^1 w'- Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/ancientquestotheOOkaufrich The Ancient Quest-'-?: v. •:,: And Other Poems In BVbwii ''•'•"' BY REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN Author of "The House of Bondage," "My Heart and Stephanie," "The Mark of the Beast," etc. NEW YORK ROBERT J. SHORES PUBLISHER ?^c/r« Copyrighted, 1917, by ROBERT J. SHORES New York TO GEORGE HORACE LORIMER WHOSE EDITORIAL DISCRIMINATION ACCEPTED SOME OF THESE VERSES AND WHOSE FRIENDSHIP APPROVED STILL MORE 8. w. K. 4422S8 ACKNOWLEDGMENT In collecting these poems, I am gratefully in- debted to the editors and proprietors of Ains- lee's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, The Bellman, The Country Gentleman, The De- lineator, The Forum, Harper's Weekly (now incorporated with The Independent), The Harvard Monthly^ Life, The Masses, The Metropolitan, Munsey's, The Saturday Even- ing Post, The Smart Set and several magazines published in England. R. W. K. CONTENTS PAGE The Call 9 At the Gates 10 Offertory 12 Two Singers 14 My Rose 15 Man and Poet . . .• 16 When the Gods Relent 18 The Secret Garden 19 Nepenthe 20 LiLiTH 21 Unto This Last 23 Love's Eucharist 25 The Roisterer 26 The Summons 27 Her Photograph . 29 The Boss 32 In Blossom Time 34 The End of a Chapter . 36 Yesterdays 38 Light O' Love 40 April In Paris 42 Exiled 44 Maria Peripatetica 46 The Old Boulevardier 49 CONTENTS PAGE Other Poems In Brown 53 The American 55 The Western Goad 56 Abraham Lincoln 58 Heroes of Yesterday 60 Mexico 63 Nocturne . . . / 67 Justice 69 The Law of the Talons 71 The March of the Hungry Men ... 73 My Brother 76 A Child Paralytic 78 The Seeker 80 St. Paul's School 82 The Suburbanite 83 The Gothamite 85 Return 87 War 88 lupercalia 95 Romance 96 Time's Revenges 99 Troia Fuit! 100 The Ninety Millions loi " And There Were Shepherds " . . . . 103 Easter — 1917 105 The Great Adventure 109 The Wastrel iii The Son of Joel 114 THE CALL Love comes laughing up the valleys, Hand in hand with hoyden Spring; All the Flower-people nodding, All the Feathered Folk a-wing. " Higher ! Higher ! " call the thrushes ; " Wider I Freer ! " breathe the trees; And the purple mountains beckon Upward to their mysteries : Always farther leagues to wander, Peak to peak and slope to slope; Lips to sing and feet to follow, Eyes to dream and heart to hope. Tarry? Nay, but who can tarry? All the world is on the wing: Love comes laughing up the valleys. Hand in hand with hoyden Spring I 9 AT THE GATES Turn back the years, dumbfound the roar Of city life on crowded street, And let me dream I see the shore Where two of old were wont to meet. Was love, I wonder, quite so sweet As painted now by memory? Was joy so keen? Was time so fleet? Turn back the years that I may see. Can Sleep, perchance, those days restore. The Gate of Horn those songs repeat? What was it in that youth of yore Changed Pleasure from the arrant cheat Whom now with ever-wearied feet We follow vainly? Can it be 'Tis we have changed? Oh, I entreat, Turn back the years that I may see ! May see in truth: for blind, and more, I live my life in city seat. 10 AT THE GATES Bring back but once the golden lore We learned amid the fields of wheat, And on the hills where white herds bleat, And underneath the island tree Where waves of silver break and beat — Turn back the years that I may see. L'Envoi Somnus, 'mid Winter rain and sleet, I raise this single prayer to thee : Make place for me In thy retreat. Turn back the years that I may see ! II OFFERTORY Give me your eyes so young, so grey; Give me your hands so firm, so small; Give me the trembling lips that say: " But do you love me, after all?" Give me the roses from your cheek, Where firefly blushes dance and dart; Give me the word you fear to speak : Give me your glad girl heart! Take of my little what you will — The books I read, the books I write; The work I do, or good or ill ; My brief provision of delight; Take all my service, all my thought ; Take honour — that I never sold! — And give what never can be bought : Your heart of virgin gold. Nay, I who am so poor in gifts May only for your mercy cry, 12 OFFERTORY As when the priestly suppliant lifts The humblest offering on high: A sacrifice of doubt and dole! — Before the incense-wreaths depart, My Little Lady Pure of Soul, Give me your glad girl heart! 13 TWO SINGERS The bird that mounts the morning sky Beyond the gaze of earth-bound men Sees planets burning by the sun That have no place within our ken; His lyric has a joy above The hope of winning any sphere Save that he left — is lost to them : Only the bird himself can hear. . . . Your eyes are like the burnished stars In that wide Heaven whereto I pray; And, like the burnished stars of Heaven, Are very, very far away ! I may not rise, however I sing. On pinions broken since my birth — Dear, is there nothing that will bring Your Heaven nearer to my earth? 14 MY ROSE Heavy with pink and mignonette, The garden's Incense at your shrine, Throughout the quiet of your room The very twilight Is abloom ; The air is effervescent wine. Drugged with the purple violet. Beyond your window, where are wont To feed the birds that love you best, Afar, amid supernal tides. The new-launched moon. Inviting, rides — A silver shallop come to rest Upon a silent Hellespont. Below us — oh, so close that he Is almost here ! — a nightingale Persuades his pensive, vestal rose I Lean nearer. How the music grows I Love, can such pleading ever fail? My rose what will your answer be? 15 MAN AND POET Break my heart — and make a poet; Give me love — and end my song; That's the truth, and well I know it Who have loved you overlong. Poet dreams and lover lives it: He that loses hymns the theme; He that finds love where he gives it Lives what poets only dream. Break my heart, and I will sing you Crowns of laurel and of bay; Love me, dear, and I shall bring you Only what no songs can say. Though to song I prove a traitor, There is right beyond the wrong, For the smallest man is greater Than the very greatest song. i6 MAN AND POET And the poet's way is lonely, Flint beneath and thorn above O, my love, if you would only — Only give me love ! 17 WHEN THE GODS RELENT Last night I kissed you while you slept, When night, receding, kissed the day; Into your little room I crept. Where, like a weary flower, you lay. I bent above your glorious head And whispered words you may not hear; You did not stir upon your bed, Nor even dream that I was near. You did not dream the miracle: That my dear dreams were coming true ; You never thought that I would kneel Before you there; you did not feel My arms as they enfolded you. And yet I kissed you while the West Shone star-bright and the East grew grey, Lips close to lips and breast to breast — Though I was miles and miles away ! i8 THE SECRET GARDEN C // faut cultiver notre jardin.'^) What Is it that my friends declare — " There's winter raging in the air? " Perhaps; I have not noticed, for At dawn I sought the hidden door And entered, by a dead sun's beams, The secret Garden of my Dreams. What does it matter if the rain Beats on my narrow window-pane? If all the throng that come and go Wear the grey panoply of woe? If down below me in the street The pave is black with wind and sleet? I cultivate the plot where grows, Untouched, the myrtle and the rose — The myrtle sweeter than the bay, The pure white Rose of Yesterday. What though the world in sackcloth seems? I keep the Garden of my Dreams! 19 NEPENTHE I drink to red-lipped Circe of the vine, Whose magic mars the memory of care, And in whose fluent smile benignly shine (Changed now to pearls) the tear-drops of despair. I take her hand — and lol the hand is Fame's! She speaks — and wisdom wings her lightest breath; She is the Goddess of the Many Names, And in her arms waits ignorance of death; But best of all, her lips, cajoling mine, Become the lips I have desired in vain, And in the easy kisses of the wine I catch the kisses I could never gain. 20 LILITH Through miles of sea, asunder, Through leagues of land, apart, Who loves you now, I wonder, And bares and breaks his heart? What timid lad, uncertain. Says all I used to say? Whose hand now draws your curtain Against reviving day? O, face that is a flower Turned ever toward the sun ! O, frail hands quick with power. Winning and never won ! O, white limbs lithe and agile ! Where else may man learn of A heart so firm and fragile In bondage to Lord Love ? The little men, contented. Labor and eat and sleep 21 LILITH In houses they have rented, With wives they buy and keep But lovers that have tasted Your lips, your lips pursue; Forever wander wasted; Forever thirst for you. Like Cyprian summer, hither You come, when life is sweet: You flee, and all things wither Beneath basilean feet — Fly on beyond returning Along your primrose way, And leave a memory burning No other loves allay. 22 UNTO THIS LAST It must end, then? Now? Tonight? Well, I have but this to write: High design and dear desire Went to feed your altar-fire — Honour and ambition toss'd In the flame, nor counted lost. Elfin-gold? Ah, false or true, What I had I gave to you — All; and you (how shall I say?) Took it, smiled and glanced away: Quick to love me, yes ; and yet Even quicker to forget! Half a humming-bird and half Woman. I can hear you laugh ; Careless, If the world be kind. Of the wounds you leave behind — Heedless, heartless, beautiful . . . That's my kind of love — to do All these things again for you ; 23 UNTO THIS LAST I would be a goblet wrought For your pleasure; life and thought Crushed for you to drink of; then, With the cups of other men Offered, just to hear you say, " It was sweet " — and toss away I LOVE'S EtJCHARIST As timorous boy who, at calm Eastertide Taking his First Communion, startled, sips The holy blood of Christ between his lips, Fresh-flowing from the newly pierced side ; And as he bows his head and, undenied, Takes his God's body in his teeth, now dips My face to thine, now to my finger-tips Thrill hope, love, reverence, gladdened, glori- fied. This my Communion, Benediction this; And when without the Gate of Heaven I see God, who declares, " Thou knewest me not for sin," Then will I plead: " I knew Thee in her kiss; Better than Thou loved'st her, or I loved Thee Did I love her.*'^ — And God will say: '' Come in." 25 THE ROISTERER Your little hand is like a rose, With white rose-petals half-uncurled; My kiss is like a wind that blows From ail-across the world. It dartles down the garden aisle, It brushes flower and weed away Unheedingly — until, awhile, It halts, as if to pray, And bends above the white, white rose. And gently, where the leaves are wet. Touches their tips; then forward goes Where the gods drive; where, no man knows — Dear, will the rose Forget? 26 THE SUMMONS Oh, Summer's in the land again, and Summer's ll on the sea ; Across the blue horizon-rim, the old gods beckon me; The little ships ride restless at their anchors in the bay; The birds are trooping northward, dear, and I must be away. I see the Savoy mountains white; I hear the sheep-bells ring Below me in the valley where the dancing chil- dren sing; And high above the timber-line, along the gla- cier-track. The ice-fields and the summit-snows, they whis- per me: "Comeback!" It's well I know your tender heart and kindli- ness and grace, And well I know the gentle light that sanctifies your face; 27 I THE SUMMONS But sun and wind are calling me throughout the livelong day From distant lands I used to know — from all the Far- Away. Oh, Summer's on the hills again, and Summer's on the sea, And Summer's In my heart, and you — well, you must set me free I 2S HER PHOTOGRAPH And this was Jenny! This slim girl JVith merry face and truant curl, fVith dancing, daring eyes that fence, And air of roguish innocence, IV hose parted lips turn up and laugh From out this faded photograph! Only five years ago, and she Was one and part of us, and we No better than we ought to be — Tom, Dick and Harry. Of one of us the less that's said The better; Harry's safely dead. And Dick, his wild oats harvested, Intends to marry. Far in some convent's cloistered close There languishes our tall red Rose, And Belle is gone — where no man knows. Or cares a penny. Tomorrow changed to Yesterday; 29 HER PHOTOGRAPH We lost each other, I and they — Tonight a turning of the way, And there was Jenny! Yet not the same. . . . The play was flat. And I could gaze serenely at The curtained box wherein she sat. Begemmed, brocaded . . . (" Oh, that's her husband at her side," My neighbor casually replied.) . . . She yawned. I wonder if she sighed. I'm sure she's faded. And so the girl I used to know About Dick's poor old studio Now's *' the rich Mrs. So-and-So " — The thing's astounding! Yet stranger things have fallen out. And that was Jenny (there's no doubt). Whatever chance has brought about This pass confounding. Well, only Jenny, of the three. Succeeded ! Does her memory E'er turn to all that used to be? In faith, I doubt it! 30 HER PHOTOGRAPH And who is happiest — poor Belle, Poor Jenny, or poor Rose? Ah, well. The answer none of us can tell — We're best without it. So that was Jenny! That tall dame, Who bore a rich man^s sordid name And purse; that woman weary-eyed, Satisfied, yet unsatisfied! How can her young lips seem to laugh From out this faded photograph? 31 THE BOSS As a boy, I used to know — Oh, but it was long ago ! — An old-fashioned garden, where, In the drowsy country air. Bloomed, through formal row on row. Bleeding-heart and modest phlox. Flanked by crimson hollyhocks; Bluebells, morning-glories blue; Sweet William that each evening heard The vespers of the mocking-bird; Roses and violets — and you ! Now often — when my office door Shuts out the deep street's distant roar, The click, the giggle, drawl and purr Of work and clerk, stenographer And errand-boy and customer — I, in the room marked " Private : No Admittance," let my fancy go, 32 THE BOSS Though I've a hundred things to do, Back to that garden — and to you. Today, with nerves of tempered steel, I put across my biggest deal, The fruit of dreams and toll and tears; I closed the book, I set the seal, I won what I have hoped for years; And then, with air that owns no betters. The haughty girl that " takes my letters " Left on my desk-tobacco-box A single simple sprig of phlox. . . . And I would give the battle won And all the deeds that I have done To find the garden that I knew When I was young and you were — you I 33 IN BLOSSOM-TIME Yuri-San — Yurl-San ! Since Aprilean boughs began Filtering the blue and gold Through their blossoms manifold, I have dreamed of old Japan Once again — and Yuri-San. I have heard the high-shod feet Patter down the crooked street; Looked at lacquered beauties dance, Weaving webs of old romance (Gossamer alight with dew, Binding all my heart to you) ; Flitting feet and flirting fan, Flashing eyes — and Yuri-San. Dreamed — and wakened far away In a flaming Western day, Where the only breath of air Faints across a city square; Where the mill of traffic runs, 34 IN BLOSSOM-TIME Roaring on between the suns, Grinding life and love forspent In a weary Occident: Happier you In old Japan, Dead and dreaming, Yuri-San. 35 THE END OF A CHAPTER I find it is the little things that last, And make the picture when the model's fled : Her throbbing voice; the way she tossed her head, Coquetting. When the memory is past Of line and feature, then mere trifles get Their fingers on the brushes. Henriette Was of that sort; illusive, here-and-there. I knew her quite two winters — loved her one : The moment that the narrative was done, I hardly could have told you if her hair Was black or golden. (There, I often think. Lay half her charm: a man could look and drink Great draughts of all her prettiness, and then Go, and forget, and long to drink again!) Even tonight : five years ago we said Good-bye without a heart-break; were I sent Da Vinci's art to fetch that lineament Most fleeting and intrinsic back to me, 36 THE END OF A CHAPTER And paint on my spick canvas her dim head That all her world might there acclaim it she, Da Vinci's art would fail me utterly; . . . Although I know her still — her laugh, her frown ; And how, at moments, her unwavering eyes That were all innocence, could be all-wise ; A dimple, darting like a butterfly About the flowers in the pink and white Glad garden of her cheek; the leaping light Lost in the wedding of a smile and sigh; The perfume of her hair, and how the rose She wore once at her throat acquired new grace ; And that shy sadness her unconscious face Wore in Its moments of untaught repose. And that is all? It should be all, and yet This last remains : that I recall that I Have wooed so often her fair memory — While she was ever ready to forget! 37 YESTERDAYS Douarnenez in Finistere ! I passed a purple autumn there Where sabots clattered down the street, And lads were lithe and maids were sweet (We little recked that Time was fleet!) And life and love were in the air. In red and grey and the low-roofed town Right to the harbor-mouth ran down; The church, with quaint, decrepit grace, Fronted the ancient market-place Where first I saw her flower-face : Jeanne's face that never learned to frown. Though life to alien cities brings My steps, that picture lives and sings : The girl in medieval dress, Her head erect, through joy and stress All dignity and loveliness: A peasant with the soul of kings. 38 YESTERDAYS How I recall that sailor's son, Pierre, whom all men called '* Le Brun," And how I hated him wjien he Came with the fishers from the sea (For was not Jeanne the world to me?) And ended what was scarce begun! . . . It mattered much; it matters naught: The story stops where stories ought; For always through the world, I trust. Youth turns to youth and gold to rust, And dust returns again to dust — Love wins what money never bought. 39 LIGHT O' LOVE Your lips met mine so lightly In that Algerian May, I said : ** What comes thus brightly Will soonest fade away." Alas, before the morrow I learned it was not true : He said " Come in " to Sorrow Who said " Good-bye " to you I No other lips can ever Mean quite what your lips meant At that farewell, and never Another kiss content. No man but one day learns it And loves the veiled regret; The fire that leaps and burns it, His heart cannot forget. 40 LIGHT O' LOVE Whatever else he misses, Those memories remain; The lighter fall the kisses, The longer lasts the pain. APRIL IN PARIS The scent of spring is in the air Tonight — tonight ; The moon, high above Montparnasse Gleams like a disk of yellow glass; The roofs are white. I lean from this high window, where Two leaned together once, and there Wait for your tread upon the stair Tonight. Nothing is altered: I can see, Tonight — tonight. The cobbled rue St. Jacques below, Down which you used to come and go With footstep light; And everything that memory These ten long years kept fresh for me Remains just as it used to be, Tonight. 42 APRIL IN PARIS Here to the little room I came Tonight — tonight, Where, having lived, we said good-bye ; Whence, having loved, went dry of eye, Untroubled quite. How youth can hope I How hope can cheat ! " A year,'* we said, " and we shall meet." — Ten years ! And where are you, petite, Tonight ? 43 EXILED Springtime again in Paris! Laughter and song and May From Neuilly Gate to Pere La Chaise, Par- nasse to Rue Riquetf Springtime again in Paris — and I am seas away! The conquering sun comes marching beneath the Arc, and there, Sharp to the left, adown the Bois, go trotting pair and pair; The Tuileries Gardens glitter with ribbon-gay nourrices, And even sculptured Fenelon smiles up at St. Sulplce. The very pave is merry with helterskelter feet; The Faubourg and the Quartier rub shoulders on the street, And down the boulevards again the table-chat- ter swings, 44 EXILED For it Is May In Paris, and the pulse of Paris sings. I know the lamps will sparkle soon throughout the capital, Irradiating all Montmartre, but most the Place Pigalle; And, oh, tonight I wonder: Is Pepe Fernan there. And Ceclle and DeBronsky, Xerine and suave Albert? Does Concha Mendez sing tonight? Do DIrce and Clarice And Eulalie and Melanie whirl In the mad mattchkhe? Oh, Leonine and Fanchon, Julie, Celeste, LI- zette. My heart is beating with you; my dreams are with you yet! Springtime again in Paris! Laughter and song and May From Neuilly Gate to Pere La Chaise, Parnasse to Rue Riquet! Springtime again in Paris — and I am years away! 45 MARIA PERIPATETICA Sad, painted flower, cast unwist Into Life's lap; poor face that Fate Has mocked at, drunk to, smitten, kissed Until I read the rune thereof With more in it to love than hate, With more to pity than to love : What nights were thine! What morns had they Whose sleep was incense, vital, rare, Burned Into ashes by the day Before thy desecrated shrine! Thy barren bosom freed their care, Because its milk was bitter wine. Of all who loved and let thee go. Is there not one whose lips Impressed Their stamp upon thy memory so — Or dark or fair, or black or white — His eyes outsparkle all the rest. The casual Antonies of night? 46 MARIA PERIPATETICA Of all the mouths thy mouth hath drained, Of all the bodies thine hath sought And clung to, mad, desired, disdained, In that long catalogue of dole. Is there not one that something taught, His soul embracing thy lost soul? That fair first lover on whose head Thy maiden shame and passion place — Living and loving, or purged and dead — So rich a crown of memory That to thine Inner heart his face A sinning saint's seems: is it he? Or is it some poor drunken fool. Wiser than thou — God save the mark! — In that salacious, brutal school Where beasts, as thou and I are, sweat Over the Lessons of the Dark, Whom thou recall'st with dear regret? Perhaps some country lad, who came Fresh from his home to town and thee. Is closest — his the charmed name — Whp with the parting tears fresh shed 47 MARIA PERIPATETICA And all his sweet virginity Thy sacramental table spread? My canker-eaten rose, what then? My scape-goat of an out-worn code, '' All things," said Paul, " unto all men " — So thou, who with the setting sun Farest nightly on the endless road. To all men mistress, wife to none 1 But mine tonight, though not to kiss I I lay my head upon that breast Whose scar our sisters' safety is. And, from our darkest misery, To beg thy mercy is my quest. Lest that we perish utterly. Forgive our women's scornful glance. Our poor, pale, pure maidens decorous. Virgins by purse and circumstance; Forgive the tiger tusk and claw; Forgive the law that made thee thus ; — Forgive the God that made the lawl 48 THE OLD BOULEVARDIER All the women I've been friends with (for a night or for a decade — For a soul or for a body — for a tress of black or gold!) — How I managed to forget them in my youth when they pursued me ; How their memory pursues me now they shun me once I'm old! At this boulevard-table seated with my opal glass before me, Of the living faces passing none to love or know me seems; Yet about them and above them (How they know me! How I love them!) They, the dead girls, jostle, thronging With an eloquence of longing Through a mist of tears and laughter down the the pavement of my dreams. 49 THE OLD BOULEVARDIER Claudine, Gabrielle and Clara (for a brown eye, for a blue eye, For a hand to clasp) or Frangoise (for a bosom bold and strong) : They were Second Empire spirits when the court of Little Louis Taught the mode of little passions that were neither light nor long! Delie, Daughter of the People, Communarde (old Thiers shot her With a hundred of her sisters by the wall of Pere La Chaise) . . . Jeanne is dead and Julie married. Laure, who fled, and Paule, who tar- ried: All that kissed and cursed, forgetting, I remember unregretting — To the painted bought-and-paid-for Phrynes of the later days. What a brave life, that! I knew them, dark and fair and all conditions, ' For a kiss or for a louis, for a drive along the Bois, For their lingerie of laces. For a blush-box for their faces, 50 THE OLD BOULEVARDIER For a supper after Patti — " Norma " at the Opera. Now ? Well, even yet, I wager — Gargon, bring again the bottle. If it please you — There's a chic one! — Did she mean that smile for me? If this absinthe were not by me, I would show you 1 — She's like Fanchon, That grisette I loved and buried in Mont- martre in 'Eighty-three. Yet so odd a thing is fancy, Such a riddled necromancy. That the clearest face of all to me is one both pure and cold — One: an unkissed child of Heaven, Whom I loved when scarce eleven. . . . How I managed to forget them in my youth when they pursued me ; How their memory pursues me now they shun me — and I'm old ! 51 OTHER POEMS IN BROWN THE AMERICAN He takes the creeds of every land, Creeds that both false and futile seemed, And by the work of his own hand He animates the thing they dreamed; Today he keeps their fast or feast As they, the dead men, kept it then; But in the West, and not the East, He looks for Christ to come again. 55 THE WESTERN GOAD " And the Mount of Olives shall cleave in the midst thereof toward the east and toward the westJ^ — Zech. xiv, 4. " Westward ! " the Aryan chieftain cried, when daylight smouldered from the West, And thence, across the Ural peaks, began man- kind's eternal quest. Westward the swart Phoenicians toiled through bays unknown and seas unwon; And westward fought from burning Troy, to build a world, Anchises' son. The Goths that cursed in templed Rome; the Vandal riders raiding Spain; The blond Norse conquerors that slew the Prankish lord, the Saxon thane; Columbus in his cockleshell ; De Soto grim, who saw and died; Magellan; Drake, the buccaneer — the ancient spur was in their side; 56 THE WESTERN GOAD It splashed the blood of all that blazed, beyond the earlier-comers* ken, The wilderness; it stabbed the flanks of hun- ger-hardened prairie-men; It urged the bandaged feet across the Rockies, won Sierra gold. Till now it pauses at the shore past which the New becomes the Old; For but a breathing-space! In man, who neither may retreat nor stay, Though wet with sweat and dripping red, the primal impulse has its way: Careless of life and eager-eyed, the race pursues the recreant sun. Till Orient is Occident, till all the East and West are one. 57 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Man's saviours are men's martyrs — even thus It hath been written, and must ever be ; Souls born for sacrifice vicarious, They bring us life and we repay with death, Whether the vision that their sad eyes see, Portentous with the ultimate agony. Appear in Illinois or Nazareth. So also Lincoln, steadfast, gentle, strong. Both human and divine, to whom God yet Gave the glad triumph, and withheld the long Ordeal of the aftermath. — Because Of that no man can think with terror or regret Upon the end : serene at last, he met Death in the first swift moment of ap- plause. He is not ours to weep, nor ours to praise — Not the great North that put upon his brow Its laurels ; not the South that, in the days 58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN Of conflict, faced the grim-determined odds Destined to conquer, impotent to cow ; Not all America may claim him now : Forevermore he is Mankind's and God's I 59 HEROES OF YESTERDAY Grant Is asleep in his great white tomb, where the Hudson tides are deep; And Sheridan and Sherman lie on marble beds asleep ; And all the men that led our men on the bloody fields we won Lie 'neath the marble meet for them that he- roes' work have done; But what of the men the heroes led — of Smith and Robinson? It was good to die on the firing-line if you died to set men free; It was good to die when the cannon screamed in the days of Sixty-three ; And we, of a younger, softer race — we look with a brief regret At the modest mounds where the unknown dead are modest and silent yet : Smith and Robinson lie so still — and we for- get — forget I 60 HEROES OF YESTERDAY And other Smiths and Robinsons — you count them on your hand — Today go hobbling up the street, behind the village band, To where encamped their comrade-dead in sunken bivouac lie; Fresh lilies in their withered hands, the old, old men go by — The Robinsons and Smiths, you know, that hadn't the luck to die. Oh, can't you see, and won't you see, and won't you hold it true. That these old men had ties as dear to them as yours to you? And won't you quit your secret sneer and open, empty praise — The Inward smile at the selfsame while you wreath the formal bays — To pay the simple debt you owe these men of other days ? The things they loved they left, and died — or those who still endure A moment longer stumble on, decrepit, smiled at, poor I 6i HEROES OF YESTERDAY Is this the lot that you decree To them who risked, to set men free, All that was theirs to do or be? Sheridan, Sherman, Grant — is this the end of all they won? Is this their country's payment to Smith and Robinson? 62 MEXICO {Pershing Punitive Column, igi6.) Fifty miles to Carrizal; sage-brush, sand and flies; If a fellow falls behind — well, a fellow dies. Nothing much in front of us but the baking sun; Less'n nothing back behind: I mean Washing- ton — Out in front Carranza's men, hardly safe by night. Back' behind a government still too proud to fight. Yesterday our *' allies " stood grinning to the last While the village cut-ups here stoned us when we passed; Day before a scout was "lost*' — and found without his toes; 63 MEXICO To-morrow — 'bout to-morrow the good Lord only knows. Had a dream the other night — and, say, it was a peach: All the sand was presidents, and every grain a speech ; Every grain was graceful words, and every word hot stuff; But a wind from 'cross the sage-brush called the scintillating bluff. That is all about myself ('cept I'm seeing red, Watchful-waiting for a shot to get me in the head: Guns are not for use, I know — that's the '' Higher Law "— Down here saying " Thank you " when they punch me in the jaw! ) But to-day we got some news — got it by the grace Of a " Mexican " lieutenant (Jena sword-scars on his face!) — Got the news from Carrizal; and we thank God to-night 64 MEXICO For Boyd, Adair and fifty coons not too proud to fight. Take their murdered bodies up, calk 'em from the sun — We let 'em die, but now, oh, my: a plot in Arlington ! Dead-march! Cart 'em 'cross the Bridge, a flag atop of each. And ship one to the White House, so a man may make a speech. Will he see it when it goes past him in its pall ? Will he have the nerve to say anything at all? Bet your life! The brook of words babbles day and night — Here's your dead. Your Excellency Still-Too- Proud-To-Fight ! Fifty miles from Carrizal: half-past time to die — We don't mind the dying, but we'd like to know the why. If we weren't sent here to shoot (and we weren't, it's clear), Tell us, Mr. President, why in Hell we're here. 65 MEXICO What's the use of bluffing when the Greaser's got us right? He's no kind of talker, but he's not too proud to fight I 66 NOCTURNE Little crescent moon, Swaying at tiptoe on the top of yonder bare hill, Yellow moon With ragged inward edge, Weary moon. Staggering over the hilltop, Drunken moon: I think you have had to regard The nights of the world too long; The things you have had to look at Frightened you and sickened you; For in the beginning You saw your Earth beautiful, And then you had to watch what men did to it And to mankind. 67 NOCTURNE No wonder, Through the shadows of your day, You have plunged Into some drugged pool Among the waste Between the flying stars; No wonder you have gulped down death, Little crescent moon, Swaying at tiptoe On the top of yonder hill. 68 JUSTICE My friend the Judge is pink and fat; A ruby gleams from his cravat; And when a street-girl pale and thin Tells in his court her life of sin, He vindicates morality — That phrase is his, and well may be! By listening to her sordid tale And sending her straightway to jail: He shakes his venerable head. Then shakes the prison-keys. {She sells her body for her bread: He sells his soul for ease.) My landlord leads a righteous life, Providing for his child and wife By buying cheap from who must sell And selling dear to who must buy; He would not steal ; he would not tell. Even to save himself, a lie; But an embezzling clerk, his niece, 69 JUSTICE He handed to the town police : " A cheat," he said, with solemn nod. (Yet he was given the gift of life And squandered it for child and wife: Has he not cheated God?) Because twelve men convicted her, They hanged a girl in Lancaster Today at rise of sun, Who killed her false love's love-child. (/. Who in my soul have slain at birth So many selves of promised worth, — What murders I have done I) 70 THE LAW OF THE TALONS That soap-box orator uptown Kicks 'cause the apples all fall down: I don't care what such people say, Apples were made to fall that way. Our Boss, he builds his mill foursquare With money made I can't say where ; He offers me '' The Right to Work "— And wages? Well, he pays me just Enough, If I don't sicken or shirk. To keep my body from the dust. He gives me leave to live, and I Give him the work he lives on, which Seems right enough; for I don't die. And he keeps on a-getting rich. " Small wage ! " say you, and " Why so? "■ Well, Upon my word I cannot tell. 71 THE LAW OF THE TALONS Perhaps the Boss, like any man, Pays a small wage because he can; His money is his own, you bet! And mine? Why, mine's what I can get I 72 THE MARCH OF THE HUNGRY MEN In the dreams of your downy couches, through the shades of your pampered sleep, Give ear : you can hear it coming, the tide that is steady and deep — Give ear, for the sound is growing, from desert and dungeon and den: The tramp of the marching millions, the March of the Hungry Men. As once the lean-limbed Spartans at Locris' last ascent. As William's Norman legions through Sussex meadows went, As Wolfe assailed the mountain, as Sherman led the way From Fulton to Savannah — as they, and more than they. 73 THE MARCH OF HUNGRY MEN There comes another army your wit cannot compute : The men-at-arms self-fashioned, the man you made the brute, From farm and sweatshop gathered, from fac- tory, mine and mill. With lever and shears and auger, dibble and drift and drill. They bear nor sword nor rifle, yet their ladders are on your walls. Though the hauberk is turned to a jumper, the jambeaux to overalls; They come from the locomotive, the cab and the cobbler's bench; They are armed with the pick and the jack- plane, the sledge and the axe and the wrench. And some come empty-handed with fingers gnarled and strong, And some come dumb with sorrow, and some . sway drunk with song; But all that you thought were buried are stir- ring and lithe and quick — 74 THE MARCH OF HUNGRY MEN And they carry a brass-bound scepter : the brass composing-stick. Through the depths of the Devirs Darkness, with the distant stars for light, They are coming the while you slumber, and they come with the might of Right; On a morrow — perhaps tomorrow — you will waken and see, and then You will hand the keys of your cities to the ranks of the Hungry Men. 75 MY BROTHER '' And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge, or a divider over you? '' — St. Luke, xii, 14. I cannot see what many see \ A Heaven distant from the clod; For I behold, not two or three, But all our persons in One God. For most, the Birth 'mid portents wild, The cryptic Youth half-sorcerer; For me the unnoted, mangered child, The manly, sweating carpenter; — No great detective in the skies; No crafty hand that builds a snare, And then, all powerfully wise, Kills me because I venture there; But Him of Sorrows, who forgave The woman taken in her sin, Who had the human heart to save The sorry-painted Magdalen. J76 MY BROTHER Jesus, they reverence your name — Before your altar bowing low — But would their tongues have been aflame, These nineteen hundred years ago? Are you their Lord, your servants those That for your garments would have diced? Who wills may dread the Master's blows — / am your weaker brother, Christ! 77 A CHILD PARALYTIC Daily her wistful face looks out Above the sordid street, Through all December's driven snows, Through all the August heat — A little captive of the slums, Unenvious and sweet. The other children run below, On play or errand bent; She looks at them from dawn to dark With great brown eyes intent. Breaking all shackles of the flesh In that high tenement. Yet he who passes day by day, And they who minister Beside her to the few cheap wants, Like an awed worshipper Wonder, before that placid brow; " What use Is life to her? " 78 A CHILD PARALYTIC What use ? The great and only use ! The chance to meet her fate With folded hands and cheerful heart And stalwart soul elate, To crush the world 'neath stricken heel, To suffer and to wait. O, brave, sad smile that put to shame My anguish of a day, I owe you more than I can tell And more than I can pay: A lesson for the hour's need, And courage for alwayl 79 THE SEEKER " I, too, was born in Arcady " ; Yet all your wise-men's wit Can never lead me back, and I — Try as I dp, and try and try — Must work and wait and live and die. Remembering and regretting itl I see the whole world sick to be One moment like my Arcady — My native, loved, lost Arcady — In these last days of Time; And, oh, before your dull sun drops Behind your prisoning mountaintops, I want to shout : " Come out! Come out! One step beyond those peaks will he The flowered fields of Arcady ; Take heart, he hrave, and climhf " Just there, across the eternal snows, Eternal Summer huds and blows; 80 THE SEEKER Could we a little farther see, Could we but hear — hut, oh, we can! — There are the nymphs upon the lea; There — hark! — there sound the Pipes of Pan! One brief ascent, and even we, The slaves of Time, Shall hear and see. Be glad and free — Oh, climb!'' And then — and then I know in vain I plead with you, for even I Can nevermore return again : I work and wait and live and die An exile out of Arcady, With nothing left but memory Beneath your peaks of snow: " I, too, was born in Arcady " — But that was long ago. 8t ST. PAUL'S SCHOOL (Concord, N. H.) '^ Ea discamus in terris quorum scientia perseveret in coelis.'^ Mother of men! The grave New Hampshire hills That gird thee round are not more staunch than thou ; The token that Is bound upon thy brow Proclaims the motive that thy life fulfills. Molder of thousand many-molding wills, Well keepestthou the purport of thy vow: On earth to inculcate what shall endow Our hearts in Heaven past all carnal Ills. Far, far behind me on the glowing track At manhood's dawn thy battlements I see, Glowing to gold within the purple rack Of Life's red morning, beautiful and free: Through all the empty years my heart goes back, My Mother, O my Mother, back to thee I 82 THE SUBURBANITE The 5:19 pulls darkly out The train-shed, and the city-folk Throng down the avenue above From daily grind to nightly yoke; They do not stop to think how I, After the murk of working-hours, In this dull train am going home To rest and flowers. Dingy and draughty coaches, yours, Grim 5 :i9, once young and bold; We both, who have been friends so long, At last, I fean are growing old; But should they " take you off " ere I Am taken off and reach my end, I'd miss you, crusty, tardy, true. As I should miss a valued friend. Oh, when that other train shall bear My outworn vesture from the shed 83 THE SUBURBANITE Of work and play, from town and home When I, who was alive, am dead — May I, thus darkly passing forth. Go unregarded and unseen To find, as now, my rest and flowers, Old 5:191 84 THE GOTHAMITE The Spring skips lightly up Broadway In all its old-time tinsel dight, With lures of country fields by day And rural lovers' lanes at night; It whispers of the evening star Aglow ere yet the sun goes down, Of lyric scents and birds that are Impossible in town. I like the country well enough, But not enough to venture there ; New York has lanes to spare for love, And grass is green in Union Square. Against the glowing evening star No criticism have I heard — But then the lights are brighter far From Thirty-fifth to Fifty-third. While human nightingales are free In spotlight and Parisian gown, 85 THE GOTHAMITE Not all the feathered birds that be Can tempt my taxi out of town. I love the scented April rains In field and fen aflush for May; But Spring, though sweet in wooded lanes, Is sweeter on Broadway. 86 RETURN " The city for the winter! " Back from play, Fagged by the evanescent gilt-and-white Of your false summer-town in tinsel dight That mimics freedom in a landlocked bay: '' The city for the winter — crowded way Where Progress builds his walls to Babel' height." Defiant day stares at auriferous night, And night, the profligate, deflowers day! No town for me I Give me the untrodden shore Of rending seas — give me the winter-wood — Nature in arctic anger — she whose lust Of torture thwarts your toil forevermore, Who set a desert where Tyre's towers stood And shall endure when all your towns are dust. 87 WAR ** Encore une fois, je n^aime point la guerre; mais quand on est oblige de la faire, il ne faut pas se battre mollementJ' — VoLTAiRE : Cor- respondance, Generale, igi6 Fm walking down a street I know, A pretty nurse to steer me — At least they say she's pretty — and Just hear the people cheer me; I've a medal on my uniform: It seems so good I'd doubt it, If I couldn't feel it dangling there And hear the people shout it: " Why^ you*re blind — blind — blind! JVonU you come and tell your story? Ifs for us you suffered blindness — Here's the People's grateful kindness: This beribboned decoration Shouts the thanks of all the nation. You gave more than life to save us 88 WAR From the foes that would enslave us! Do you think we can forget it? No, you never will regret it! This is honor; this is glory! '' — So they shout it down the wind — ** Won^t you come and tell your story? Tell us how you won the glory That so many fail to find: How Our Hero won the glory Of The Blind? '' So I tell them of our icy nights And days in dead-heaped trenches; I tell them of our woundeds' shrieks, Our filthy bodies* stenches; I tell them of the bursting shells That deafened half who heard them; Of men made mad by horrors that — I haven't words to word them I I tell them how my only friend Before our trench was potted, And how I had to sit for days And watch him while he rotted; Of gas that strangled hundreds here, Flung-flames that there shamed thunder; Of spikes that dropped from flying-craft 89 WAR And tore men's heads asunder; Of how the worst was sitting still With every second's fraction An hour long, till veterans screamed In terror from inaction; Of death — and how we longed for death To ease that bloody slavery; But how our hearts were brave because Our Country needed bravery; And how at last — at that long last — Before I'd had two tries To use my gun, a belch of flame Burst — and burnt out my eyes. ... They've crowded 'round and crowded close And sworn and shoved to hear me, And, now I've done, You'd think I'd won The war, the way they cheer me : " Hero blind — hlind — blind; All the land shall learn your story! Nor your wife nor child shall per* ish — Them we^ll care for, you we'll cher* ish. 90 WAR Though you see not, yet our praise You shall hear through all your days/ On our memories we^ll burn it; Every childish lip shall learn itJ* — " Bless my baby for me, Mister? " (So Fve bent and felt and kissed her.) — " Let me cut that button yellow? " — " Let me shake your hand, brave fel- low! "— ** Do you think we can forget it? No, you never will regret it! You have earned our best oblation: You, who've helped to save the na- tionf' This Is honor; this glory More than I had hoped to find: This reward for my poor story. And the price I paid for glory, For the kindness of my kind, It is small : this care and glory Cheaply bought by being blind I 91 WAR 1936 Yes, here's the accustomed place at last — My dog's pause tells me that — This Is the trench that I must guard For coppers in my hat. {Pity the Blind! Be kind! Be kind!) My wife? Fm almost glad she's dead! {Was that approaching feet?) And now, Instead of me, It Is My child that walks the street: {Be kind — he kind! Pity the blind!) A beggar's daughter hasn't much To keep her clean and sweet. ^ I ask them If they please won't stop {Pity the blind! Be kind; be kind!) And hear the things Fve seen, And how I came to this by fire, A soldier In '16 — And then I hear them turn and go. And, from a muttered curse or so, I know these are their thoughts — I know. " Beggar blind — blind — blind! 9Z WAR Who has time to hear your story? It is old, and we have heard it Till we know it word for word, it Is but one of legions, massing With each hurried year that's pass- ing. Money? Press the softer pedal! Why not go and pawn your medal? (Though, of course, there's such a plenty, *Twouldn't bring much, after twenty Years of soldiers dead or poorer Every year — there's nothing surer.) Wounded, were you, for the Nation? Well, it gave that decoration. Pensions? What, for deeds long dead? ' The Public has to look ahead! " So they shout it down the wind! This is honor; this is glory; This is how I end my story: On a curb-stone in the muck — They that died had all the luck. Scarcely what I hoped to find I If the chance returned, why, then — No, Fd do it all again! 93 WAR Just repeat the same life-story, Minus pension, minus glory, And the kindness of my kind. Being that sort, who wants a story? Being a soldier, who wants glory That so many fail to find ? No, I never looked for glory! — -. {Pity the Blind!) 94 LUPERCALIA Roisterers, vagabonds forever free, Mendicants, blacksheep, hybrids — what you please — We makers of the merry melodies, Great Pan, we make our only prayer to thee. For thee alone our canticles will be — To thee, for thine Arcadian heartsease, We sing thy nymphs beneath Lycaean trees Till all their pulses thrill in harmony. Wanderers all, to thee we wander far, And vow our hymns the Syrinx of thy nod, Holding thine ill-begotten features fair, Because thou only, knowing what we are. Beneath the brute wilt find the hidden god. Beneath the sneer wilt read the great despair. 95 ROMANCE Oh, she's just around the corner, and she's just beyond this street. And she's just across that hilltop over there I Can't you see the last glad glimmer of her ever- flying feet. Can't you smell the luring perfume of her hair? She is always just beyond you, always singing down the wind With a breath that's raped from roses and a voice that's like a spell: Singing, singing — can't you hear her? — Singing: ** Come a little nearer! Follow^ oh, so little faster; I am losing; come and find! I am all the dreams you never dared to tell! '' / am youth and I am gladness; Fm adventure and Fm love; 96 ROMANCE / am flowers in the forest when the planets are atune; I am all those golden chances daily work was heedless of; I am final; I am fatal; I am June! '^ When the grinding tasks are dullest, and the world is grey routine, You can see her if you'll only raise your head; When the ledgers will not balance, or the firm- est stocks careen, She is calling from the latest breeze that sped: *^ Come and find me, come and hind me, come and loose and fare with me; All I ask is that you cast all else away with- out regret; Though you sacrifice to capture, I am roses, I am rapture; I will take you dancing — dancing — through the farthest fairy sea; I will teach you all the visions you forget! " 97 ROMANCE Follow, follow 'round the corner ; hurry on be- yond the street; Run to dimb that highest hilltop over there : Though she slays you when you find her, there Is nothing half so sweet As to strangle in the meshes of her hair! 98 TIME'S REVENGES The portraits hung together there Beside the old door's architrave: A little, girl with yellow hair, A beldam tottering to her grave. "Grandmother and grandchild?" I said. Without a change of glance or tone, My cicerone shook his head: " The child was mother to the crone." 99 TROIA FUITI The world was wide when I was young My schoolday hills and dales among; But, oh, it needs no Puck to put, With whipping wing and flying foot, A girdle round the narrow sphere In which I labor now and here ! Life's face was fair when careless I First loved beneath an April sky. And wept those fine-imagined woes That Youth at nineteen thinks it knows; Now love and woe both run so deep I have not any time to weep. " Ah, well ! Although at last we see That what was could not always be, It binds our loins and steels our hands In duller days and smaller lands To recollect the country where The world was wide and life was fair. lOO THE NINETY MILLIONS {A Song of Thanksgiving) This day for thanks to God on high, borne up- ward through the chilly air! Here, underneath the scudding sky, the Ninety Millions kneel in prayer. For all we lose, for all we gain, for all we flout and all we prize. Accept, O God, our humble, vain, but not un- worthy, sacrifice! The olden order still endures: the strong are strong, the feeble spent, As if the enabling-act were Yours, Wrong sits enthroned, omnipotent; One sins and many must atone; the thief is in his high estate; Who begs for bread receives a stone, and love has learned the words of hate. And yet we thank You, Lord, becguse of that immutable decree 101 THE NINETY MILLIONS Which wrote the universal laws and whispered to man's mind: " Be Free! " Because You granted him the will to fight until his final breath, To suffer and to bear, until Hope's smile en- wreathes the lips of Death. For the ideals that wing our feet throughout the chaos and the night. For the high heart that in defeat throbs only to renew the fight, For the new chance to try again, the onward flag, the unbroken ranks. Accept, O God, our humble, vain, but not un- worthy, meed of thanks. lOZ "AND THERE WERE SHEPHERDS " The night was calm, the night was clear, The unexpectant night was cold; The earth was ruled by hate and fear, The earth was sad and mad and old; And Herod in his palace pent, Augustus at his apogee: The song? They knew not what it meant! A promise-star? They could not see! But far upon Judean farms The farmfolk watched their herds by night, Beyond Herodian alarms, Beyond Augustan thirst for might. And heard and saw, with quick release Of angels down the purple way. The song that sang the Prince of Peace, The star that pointed where He lay. Not to an emperor in Rome Or king in brown Jerusalem, 103 " AND THERE WERE SHEPHERDS " Did any word of It come home; Not to the lordllngs — not to them : The night-wind bore no anodyne For ears too dull, for eyes too dim; Only the wise-men saw the sign, Only the farmfolk heard the hymn. Tonight the air is calm and clear, The unexpectant earth Is sad With hate and war; with blood and fear The emperors and kings are mad : — The farmfolk and the wise-men are The wise-men; ere the midnight cease They hail aright, aglow, afar, The Herald Angels and the star That point the open path to Peace. 104 EASTER— 1917 " He Descended Into Hell " Hope there was none; it had fled at the word of the witnessing eye ; The man they had thought God was dead : from afar they had watched him die. God ? They had seen him scourged, with the eyes of the flesh they had seen; Even she he forgave and purged knew it, the Magdalene ; And even his mother, the first to feel faith's flame astir. Knew that the lips she had nursed were sealed in a sepulchre: The God-that-was-man that night had gone where a dead man goes — And then, with the morning light, the Man That Was God arose! Thus is the story told the weary ages through. For no man's faith is cold whose need keep§ the legend new, XP3 EASTER— 19 17 And the world that is growing old needs it and makes it true. Each weaves his plans alone — and they part like a sand-made rope, And this is all that we own at the last: this single hope. " Is the fair fruit rotten at core? Does God but tease us and lie? " Is the love that is life no more than death that is death and must die ? The glacier still deceives to the mouth of the black crevasse, But if each in his heart believes, then all at the end shall pass; Doubt that forever hates kills and is done with you : Faith, which is life, creates and will make what it knows come true I But sadder today than sad are the great of the world and the least : Just as we thought we had risen above the beast. Comes — from where what matter? — and Strikes, like another Thor jo6 EASTER— I9I7 With his hammer strong to shatter, the blood- red devil, War. The thousands in battles are slain, the millions suffer and wait. The world In an iron rain is a ruin of madness and hate. A thief unrepentant In pride, for whose gar- ments his lusts have diced. Himself has man crucified, and with him re- crucified Christ. He shall be sea^led in the tomb (room there is always there!) Of malice and (still there is room) descend to the Hell of Despair. Hope there is none; It has fled from the sound of the cannons' cry; What was godlike In man, is dead; it is dead. We have seen It die; There is no hope at all, no token of life astir; Cover Its face with the pall, fasten the sepulchre. ... 107 EASTER— 1917 No ! For Faith Is alive, even here for a world made new, For man's rebirth to strive, to hope till the hope comes true ! " Is the fair fruit rotten at core — does God but cheat us and lie? " Is Faith that Is Life no more than Death that is Death and must die? Doubt that forever hates has killed, and its worst Is said; Faith, which Is life, creates, and is ready to raise the dead. The godlike in man : was it vain — has it gone where a dead weed goes? Though that and Christ be slain. Faith knows that Christ arose ! There Is the story told the weary ages through, And the world that has grown so old, needing It, makes It true : At the depth of the Night a pause, a glory that blinds our eyes — Christ shall rerise because Man, still divine, shall arise/ 108 THE GREAT ADVENTURE How I have loved all life ! The sky where our first hope lingers, Woodland and field and river, cafion and mountain-peak; The clamoring, crowded city, the tide of the clutching fingers. The War of the World, the triumph of vigor, the cry of the weak I Life was recurring wonder: the wine-glass full of adventure. Love was at every turning, labor a red ro- mance ; All of it beautiful, potent beyond our poor praise or blind censure; And never a half-step backward, but ever a stride in advance. What if the faithless taunt me? I shall reply: No matter; It is enough to have lived here even a breath- ing-space I 109 THE GREAT ADVENTURE "Death is the last forgetting?'' — Bah! I am sick of your chatter; Only to love life wholly: that is to see God's face ! no THE WASTREL Once, when I was little, as the summer night was falling. Along the purple upland fields I lost my bare- foot way; The road to home had disappeared, and fright- ful shadows, crawling Along the sky-line, swallowed up the linger- ing light of day; And then I seemed to hear you In the twilight, and be near you; Seemed to hear your dear voice calling — Through the meadows, calling, calling — And I followed, and I found you, Flung my tired arms around you, And rested on the mother-breast, returned, tired out from play. Down the days from that day, though I trod strange paths unheeding. Though I chased the jack-o'-lanterns of so many maddened years, III THE WASTREL Though I never looked behind me, where the home-lights were receding, Though I never looked ahead enough to ken the Inn of Fears; Still I knew your heart was near me, That your ear was strained to hear me, That your love would ask no pleading For forgiveness, but was pleading Of itself that, in disaster, I should run to you the faster And be sure that I was dearer for your sacri- fice of tears. Now on life's last Summertime the long last dusk is falling. And I, who trod one way so long, can tread no other way Until at death's dim crossroads I watch, hesi- tant, the crawling Night-passages that maze me with the ulti- mate dismay. Then, when Death and Doubt shall bind me — Even then — I know you'll find me : I shall hear you, Mother, calling — Hear you calling — calling — calling: 112 THE WASTREL I shall fight and follow — find you, Though the grave-clothes swathe and bind you, And I know your love will answer: " Here's my laddie home from play ! " "3 THE SON OF JOEL The poet is a beggar blind, Who sings beside the city gate, The while the busy people wind Their daily way less fortunate. The many pass with arrant speed; The few remember this or that; Some hear and jeer, some stop and heed, And some drop pennies in his hat. ... O, you that pause and understand. Though I may never know your face. Across the years I touch your hand; I kiss you through the leagues of space ! THE END 114 <:^cf O UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY