Chapter 4

Let us have rest in Thy garden, Lord of the Rock and the Green, When there is nothing to pardon, When we are whitened and clean. Purge us of skulking and treason, Help us to put them away. We shall have rest in Thy season; Till then the heat of the fray.

Let us have peace in Thy pleasure, Lord of the Cloud and the Sun; Grant to us æons of leisure When the long battle is done. Now we have only begun it; Stead us!--we ask nothing more. Peace--rest--but not till we've won it-- Never an hour before.

MY LADY NEW YORK

O siren of tresses peroxide, And heart that is hard as a flint, Blue orbs of complacency ox-eyed, That light at the mark of the mint, Ears only for jingle of joybells, A conscience as light as a cork-- You are wedded to follies and foibles, My Lady New York.

True, you have (not enough, tho', to hurt you) Your moods and your manners austere; You have visions and vapors of virtue, And "reform" for a time has your ear; But of chaste Puritanic embraces You soon have enough and to spare, And then you kick over the traces, And virtue forswear.

So go it, milady! Foot fleetly The paths that are primrose and gay; Abandon your fancy completely To follies and fads of the day. "Reform" is a something that throttles The joys of the pace that's intense-- Smash hearts, reputations, and bottles, And ding the expense!

BALLADE OF THE PIPESMOKE CARRY

The Ancient Wood is white and still, Over the pines the bleak wind blows, Voiceless the brook and mute the rill, Silence too where the river flows. Still I catch the scent of the rose And hear the white-throat's roundelay, Footing the trail that Memory knows, Over the hills and far away.

I have only a pipe to fill: Weaving, wreathing rings disclose A trail that flings straight up the hill, Straight as an arrow's flight. For those Who fare by night the pole star glows Above the mountain top. By day A blasted pine the pathway shows Over the hills and far away.

The Ancient Wood is white and chill, But what know I of wintry woes? The Pipesmoke Trail is mine at will-- Naught may hinder and none oppose. Such the power the pipe bestows, When the wilderness calls I may Tramping go, as I smoke and doze, Over the hills and far away.

_L'Envoi_

Deep in the canyons lie the snows: They shall vanish if I but say-- If my fancy a-roving goes Over the hills and far away.

POST-VACATIONAL

You have heard that mildewed story, That tradition horned and hoary, That it wearies one to roam, Past a doubt; That one vainly on vacation Tries to find recuperation, Till he hunts his happy home Tuckered out.

That abroad there is no comfort, That a man must journey home for 't-- You have heard that whiskered wheeze, Have you not? 'Tis a commonplace to cavil At the "luxuries of travel," For in travel lack of ease Is your lot.

You have heard that gag historic; It was often sprung by Yorick; It's as old as Noah's ark And its crew. It's the commonest (at basis) Of all common commonplaces;-- So I merely would remark That--it's true.

THE BARDS WE QUOTE

Whene'er I quote I seldom take From bards whom angel hosts environ; But usually some damned rake Like Byron.

Of Whittier I think a lot, My fancy to him often turns; But when I quote 'tis some such sot As Burns.

I'm very fond of Bryant, too, He brings to me the woodland smelly; Why should I quote that "village roo," P. Shelley?

I think Felicia Hemans great, I dote upon Jean Ingelow; Yet quote from such a reprobate As Poe.

To quote from drunkard or from rake Is not a proper thing to do. I find the habit hard to break, Don't you?

THE PERSISTENT POET

"I remember, I remember"-- Something special? Not a bit. But, you see, this is November, And Remember rimes with it.

HENCE THESE RIMES

Tho' my verse is exact, Tho' it flawlessly flows, As a matter of fact I would rather write prose.

While my harp is in tune, And I sing like the birds, I would really as soon Write in straightaway words.

Tho' my songs are as sweet As Apollo e'er piped, And my lines are as neat As have ever been typed,

I would rather write prose-- I prefer it to rime; It's less hard to compose, And it takes me less time.

"Well, if that be the case," You are moved to inquire, "Why appropriate space For extolling your lyre?"

I can only reply That this form I elect 'Cause it pleases the eye, And I like the effect.

THE OLD ROLLER TOWEL

How dear to this heart is the old roller towel Which fond recollection presents to my view. It hung like a pall on the wall of the washroom, And gathered the grime of the linotype crew. The sink and the soap and the lye that stood by it Remain; but the towel is gone past recall. O tempora! Also, O mores! Sic transit The time-honored towel that creaked on the wall. The grimy old towel, the slimy old towel, The tacky old towel that hung on the wall.

Now hangs in the washroom a huge roll of paper-- The old printer's towel we'll never see more. The new (see directions) is "used like a blotter," And crumpled and scattered in wads on the floor. And often, when drying my hands in this fashion, The tears of remembrance will gather and fall, And I sigh (though I'm not what you'd call sentimental) For the classic old towel that propped up the wall. The sainted old towel, the tainted old towel, The gooey old towel that hung on the wall.

UP CULTURE'S HILL

(_The confession of a club lady._)

The path up Culture's Hill is steep, And weary is the way, With very little time for sleep And none at all for play.

She that this toilsome task essays Must never bat an eye, But keep her firm, unwavering gaze Forever fixed on high.

For should she ever careless grow, And let her glances stray Down to the shallow vale below, Where Pleasure's Court holds sway--

Lured by the thrice forbidden fruit, She'd lose her equipoise, And like a wayward Pleiad shoot Down to forbidden joys.

I've been but short time on the road, My courage still is strong; Yet often have I felt the goad That hurries me along.

I've fallen over Maeterlinck, And bumped myself to tears, Burne-Jones's pictures made me blink, And Wagner hurts my ears.

I've stumbled over Ibsen humps And over Rembrandt rocks, I've got some fierce Debussy bumps, Some awful Nietsche knocks.

I'm wearied by the ceaseless quest, I'm wayworn and footsore. I've Culture till I cannot rest-- Yet still I climb for more.

But oh, when all is done and said, Upon some manly breast I'd like to lay my tired head And take a good long rest.

THE PASSIONAL NOTE

"_The erotic motive is almost entirely absent from American poetry. Even our younger American poets are more profoundly interested in the why and wherefore of things than in the girdle of Helen or the gleaming limbs of 'the white implacable Aphrodite.'_" --MR. SYLVESTER VIERECK.

In the years of my season erotic, When Eros was lord of my days, And I loved, with a love idiotic, The Mabels and Madges and Mays; When a purple and passionate lyric Would sing all the night in my head,-- I yearned, like the young Mr. Viereck, For everything red.

I doted on poems of passion, And put my own pantings in rime, To celebrate, after a fashion, The damsels who took up my time. I fed upon Swinburne, believe me, I feasted on Byron and Burns, And couplets from Sappho would give me Most exquisite turns.

How apparent it was that our songbirds-- Our Emerson, Lowell, and Payne, And Bryant and Drake--were the wrong birds To pipe to the passional strain. There was, in a word, nothing doing In all of the rimes that they wrote; They seemed to be always pursuing The ethical note.

What truth, I inquired, was so mighty, What ethical thing was so rare, As the limbs of the white Aphrodite Or a strand of her heaven-kissed hair! The girdle of red-headed Helen Outweighed all the wherefores and whys, And Wisdom elected to dwell in A pair of blue eyes.

_Now_ lyrical sizzlers and scorchers Fail somehow to set me ablaze; No longer are exquisite tortures Provoked by these passionate lays. I've tinned--and I can't say I've missed 'em-- The poems of passion and sin. _Some_ things one gets out of one's system, And other things _in_.

_L'ENVOI._

"_Go, little book," as Poet Southey said;_ _You might be better and you might be worse._ _With just one word of warning you are sped:_ _Remember, you're not Poetry--you're Verse._

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Index

Always 82 Autumn Revery 104 Ballad of Misfits 63 Ballade of a Bore 97 Ballade of the Cannery 86 Ballade of Cap and Bells 76 Ballade of Death and Time 28 Ballade of Irresolution 68 Ballade of the Pipesmoke Carry 110 Ballade of Spring's Unrest 22 Ballade of Wool-Gathering 48 Bards We Quote, The 113 Bread Puddynge 42 Breakfast Food Family, The 19 Coronation, The 107 Day of the Comet, The 66 Dinosaur, The 75 Dornröschen 34 "Farewell" 36 Gentle Doctor Brown 78 Hence These Rimes 115 Horace: A Note from Mr. Flaccus 54 I. To Aristius Fuscus 56 II. Duetto 57 III. To Pyrrha 59 IV. To Aristius Fuscus 60 V. To Sylvia 62 How They Might Have Brought the Good News 73 In the Gallery 80 In the Lamplight 17 Kaiser's Farewell, The 30 Land of Rainbow's-End, The 95 Laundry of Life, The 93 Lay of St. Ambrose 9 Miss Legion 27 Modern Mariner, The 84 Morning After, The 67 Musca Domestica 45 My Lady New York 109 Old Roller Towel, The 116 Oriental Apology, An 65 Pandean Pipedreams 88 Passional Note, The 119 Passionate Professor, The 47 Persistent Poet, The 114 Pole, The 99 Post-Vacational 112 Recoil, The 105 Reform in Our Town 38 Rime of the Clark Street Cable 25 Sh-h-h-h! 101 Simple, Heartfelt Lay, The 53 Sons of Battle 108 To a Tall Spruce 14 To Lillian Russell 32 To the Sun 50 To What Base Uses 70 "Treasure Island" 21 Up Culture's Hill 117 Vanished Fay, The 102 When It Is Hot 51 When the Sirup's on the Flapjack 41 Why? 24 Wisdom in a Capsule 94

End of Project Gutenberg's A line-o'-verse or two, by Bert Leston Taylor