Part 8

Here in the lonely chapel I will wait, Here will I rest, if any rest may be; So fair the day is, and the hour so late, I shall have few to share the blessed calm with me. Calm and soft light, sweet inarticulate calls! One shallow dish of eerie golden fire By molten chains above the altar swinging, Draws my eyes up from the shadowed stalls To the warm chancel-dome; Crag-like the clustered organs loom, Yet from their thunder-threatening choir Flows but a ghostly singing-- Half-human voices reaching home In infinite, tremulous surge and falls. Light on his stops and keys, And pallor on the player’s face, Who, listening rapt, with finger-skill to seize The pattern of a mood’s elusive grace, Captures his spirit in an airy lace Of fading, fading harmonies. Oh, let your coolness soothe My weariness, frail music, where you keep Tryst with the even-fall; Where tone by tone you find a pathway smooth To yonder gleaming cross, or nearer creep Along the bronzèd wall, Where shade by shade thro’ deeps of brown Comes the still twilight down.

Wilt thou not rest, my thought? Wouldst thou go back to that pain-breeding room Whence only by strong wrenchings thou wert brought? O weary, weary questionings, Will ye pursue me to the altar rail Where my old faith for sanctuary clings, And back again my heart reluctant hale Yonder, where crushed against the cheerless wall Tiptoe I glimpsed the tier on tier Of faces unserene and startled eyes-- Such eyes as on grim surgeon-work are set, On desperate outmaneuverings of doom? Still must I hear The boding voice with cautious rise and fall Tracking relentless to its lair Each fever-bred progenitor of faith, Each fugitive ancestral fear? Still must I follow, as the wraith Of antique awe toward a wreck-making beach Drives derelict? Nay, rest, rest, my thought, Where long-loved sound and shadow teach Quietness to conscience overwrought.

Harken! The choristers, the white-robed priest Move thro’ the chapel dim Sounding of warfare and the victor’s palm, Of valiant marchings, of the feast Spread for the pilgrim in a haven’d calm. How on the first lips of my steadfast race Sounded that battle hymn, Quaint heaven-vauntings, with God’s gauntlet flung, To me bequeathed, from age to age, My challenge and my heritage! “The Lord is in His holy place”-- How in their ears the herald voice has rung! Now will I make bright their sword, Will pilgrim in their ancient path, Will haunt the temple of their Lord; Truth that is neither variable nor hath Shadow of turning, I will find In the wise ploddings of their faithful mind; Of finding not, as in this frustrate hour By question hounded, waylaid by despair, Yet in these uses shall I know His power As the warm flesh by breathing knows the air.

O futile comfort! My faith-hungry heart Still in your sweetness tastes a poisonous sour; Far off, far off I quiver ’neath the smart Of old indignities and obscure scorn Indelibly on man’s proud spirit laid, That now in time’s ironic masquerade Minister healing to the hurt and worn! What are those streams that from the altar pour Where goat and ox and human captive bled To feed the blood-lust of the murderous priest? I cannot see where Christ’s dear love is shed, So deep the insatiate horror washes red Flesh-stains and frenzy-sears and gore. Beneath that Cross, whereon His hands outspread, What forest shades behold what shameful rites Of maidenhood surrendered to the beast In obscene worship on midsummer nights! What imperturbable disguise Enwraps these organs with a chaste restraint To chant innocuous hymns and litanies For sinner and adoring saint, Which yet inherit like an old blood-taint Some naked caperings in the godliest tune,-- Goat-songs and jests strong with the breath of Pan, That charmed the easy cow-girl and her man In uncouth tryst beneath a scandalous moon! Ah, could I hearken with their trust, Or see with their pure-seeing eyes Who of the frame of these dear mysteries Were not too wise! Why cannot I, as in a stronger hour, Outface the horror that defeats me now? Hare I not reaped complacent the rich power That harvest from this praise and bowing low? On this strong music have I mounted up, At yonder rail broke bread, and shared the holy cup, And on that cross have hung, and felt God’s pain Sorrowing, sorrowing, till the world shall end.

Not from these forms my questionings come That serving truth are purified, But from the truth itself, the way, the goal, One challenge vast that strikes faith dumb-- If truth be fickle, who shall be our guide? “Truth that is neither variable, nor hath Shadow of turning?” Ah, where turns she not! Where yesterday she stood, Now the horizon empties--lo, her steps Where yonder scholar woos, are hardly cold, Yet shall he find her never, but the thought Mantling within him like her blood Shall from his eloquence fade, and leave his words Flavor’d with vacant quaintness for his son. What crafty patience, scholar, hast thou used, Useless ere it was begun-- What headless waste of wing, Beating vainly round and round! In no one Babel were the tongues confused, But they who handle truth, from sound to sound Master another speech continuously. Deaf to familiar words, our callous ear Will quiver to the edge of utterance strange; When truth to God’s truth-weary sight draws near, Cannot God see her till she suffer change? Must ye then change, my vanished youth, Home customs of my dreams? Change and farewell! Farewell, your lost phantasmic truth That will not constant dwell, But flees the passion of our eyes And leaves no hint behind her Whence she dawns or whither dies, Or if she live at all, or only for a moment seems.

Here tho’ I only dream I find her, Here will I watch the twilight darken. Yonder the scholar’s voice spins on Mesh upon mesh of loveless fate; Here will I rest while truth deserts him still. What hath she left thee, Brother, but thy voice? After her, have thy will, And happy be thy choice! Here rather will I rest, and harken Voices longer dead but longer loved than thine.

Yet still my most of peace is more unrest, As one who plods a summer road Feels the coolness his own motion stirs, But when he stops the dead heat smothers him. Here in this calm my soul is weariest, Each question with malicious goad Pressing the choice that still my soul defers To visioned hours not thus eclipsed and dim, Lest in my haste I deem That truth’s invariable part Is her eluding of man’s heart. Farewell, calm priest who pacest slow After the stalwart-marching choir! Have men thro’ thee taught God their dear desire? Hath God thro’ thee absolvèd sin? What is thy benediction, if I go Sore perplexed and wrought within? Open the chapel doors, and let Boisterous music play us out Toward the flaring molten west Whither the nerve-racked day is set; Let the loud world, flooding back, Gulf us in its hungry rout; Rest? What part have we in rest?

Boy with the happy face and hurrying feet, Who with thy friendly cap’s salute Sendest bright hail across the college street, If thou couldst see my answering lips, how mute, How loth to take thy student courtesy! What truth have I for thee? Rather thy wisdom, lad, impart, Share thy gift of strength with me. Still with the past I wrestle, but the future girds thy heart. Clutter of shriveled yesterdays that clothe us like a shell, Thy spirit sloughs their bondage off, to walk newborn and free. All things the human heart hath learned--God, heaven, earth, and hell-- Thou weighest not for what they were, but what they still may be. Whether the scholar delve and mine for faith-wreck buried deep, Or the priest his rules and holy rites, letter and spirit, keep, Toil or trust in breathless dust, they shall starve at last for truth; Scholar and priest shall live from thee, who art eternal youth. Holier if thou dost tread it, every path the prophets trod; Clearer where thou dost worship, rise the ancient hymns to God; Not by the priest but by thy prayers are altars sanctified; Strong with new love where thou dost kneel, the cross whereon Christ died.

_Yale Review_ _John Erskine_

THE LAGGARD SONG

I had no heart to write to thee in prose, The sadness in me sore demanded song; But the song came not,--laggard as the birds, That will not sing us back the little leaves. O winter of my heart--when comes the spring? I am sore weary of these deathlike days, This shroud unheaving of eternal snow,-- O winter of my heart--when comes the spring?

’Tis time to answer, O nightingale,-- ’Tis thine to sing the winter all away, Release the world from bondage, and bring back The sound of many waters and of trees, And little sleeping lives anumb with cold,-- Yea! all the resurrection of the world. O winter of my heart! O nightingale!

_Harper’s_ _Richard Le Gallienne_

GROTESQUE

With the first light on the skyline came the rapping of the sickles And the brown arms of the reapers bent to toil another morn; Close beside me in the glimmer, in the golden sweep and shimmer, Knelt a reaper strange among us, crooning thro’ the ragged corn: “Born of sorrow, Gone to-morrow-- Gone to lie in yonder valley where their fathers long have lain; Men who know not ship nor sabre, Each but drudges by his neighbor, And the fields wherein they labor are a heritage of pain!”

Sleep was heavy on our eyelids when a lone star followed sunset, But we missed the pale young stranger, none knew whither he had gone-- Then, from where the dead are lying, with the nightwind’s tender sighing Rose and fell a last low cadence of the voice we heard at dawn: “Weary reapers, Early sleepers-- Brief the glow that drifts across them from the waning August moon: These that rest beyond its gleaming Lie unvexed of drift or dreaming, And the fields with harvest teeming have forgot them all too soon!”

_Boston Transcript_ _Ruth Guthrie Harding_

BALLADE OF A DEAD LADY

All old fair things are in their places, I count them over, and miss but one; The April flowers are running races, The green world stretches its arms to the sun; The nuptial dance of the days is begun-- The same young stars in the same old skies; And all that was lost again is won-- But where have they hidden those great eyes?

All have come back--dogwood and daisies-- All things ripple and riot and run; Swallow and swallow in aery mazes, A fairy frolic of fire and fun; The same old enchanted web is spun, With diamond dews for the same old flies; Yet all is new, spite of Solomon-- But where have they hidden those great eyes?

Lovely as love are the new-born faces-- God knows they are fair to look upon; And my heart goes out to the young embraces, To the flight of the young to the young; But, Time, what is it that thou hast done? For my heart ’mid all the blossom cries: “Roses are many, the Rose is gone-- Ah! where have they hidden those great eyes?”

ENVOI

Prince, I bring you my April praises, But O! on my heart a shadow lies; For a face I see not at all my gaze is-- Ah! where have they hidden those great eyes?

_Puck_ _Richard Le Gallienne_

AN EPITAPH

Perhaps it doesn’t matter that you died, Life is a _bal masqué_ which you saw through. You never told on Life--you had your pride; But Life has told on you.

_The Trend_ _Walter Conrad Arensberg_

WAR

Fools, fools, fools, Your blood is hot to-day. It cools When you are clay. It joins the very clod Wherein you look at God, Wherein at last you see The living God, The loving God, Which was your enemy.

_The Nation_ _Witter Bynner_

FRANCE

Half artist and half anchorite, Part siren and part Socrates, Her face--alluring and yet recondite-- Smiled through her salons and academies.

Lightly she wore her double mask, Till sudden, at war’s kindling spark, Her inmost self, in shining mail and casque, Blazed to the world her single soul-- Jeanne d’Arc!

_The Nation._ _Percy MacKaye_

THE DRUM

There’s a rhythm down the road where the elms overarch Of the drum, of the drum, There’s a glint through the green, there’s a column on the march, Here they come, here they come, To the flat resounding clank they are tramping rank on rank, And the bayonet flashes ripple from the flank to the flank. “I am rhythm, marching rhythm,” says the drum. “No aid am I desiring of the loud brazen choiring, “Of bugle or of trumpet the lilt and the lyring, “I’m the slow dogged rhythm, unending, untiring, “I am rhythm, marching rhythm,” says the drum. “I am rhythm, dogged rhythm, and the plodders feel me with ’em, “I’m the two miles an hour that is empire, that is power, “I’m the slow resistless crawl in the dust-cloud’s choking pall, “I’m the marching days that run from the dawn to set of sun, “I’m the rifle and the kit and the dragging weight of it, “I’m the jaws grimly set and the faces dripping sweat, “I’m the how, why, and when, the Almighty made for men,” Says the rhythm, marching rhythm, of the drum. “Did you call my song ‘barbaric’? Did you mutter, ‘out of date’? “When you hear me with the foemen then your cry will come too late. “Here are hearts a-beating for you, to my pulsing as I come, “To the rhythm, tramping rhythm, “To the rhythm, dogged rhythm, “To the dogged tramping rhythm “Of the drum!”

There’s a clashing snarling rhythm down the valley broad and ample Of the drum, kettledrum, There’s a low, swelling rumor that is cavalry a-trample, Here they come, here they come, To the brassy crash and wrangle, to the horseman’s clink and jangle, And the restive legs beneath ’em all a-welter and a-tangle. “I am rhythm, dancing rhythm,” says the drum. “White and sorrel, roan and dapple, hocks as shiny as an apple, “Don’t they make a splendid showing, ears a-pricking, tails a-blowing? “Good boys--bless ’em--well they’re knowing all my tricks to set ’em going “To my rhythm, dancing rhythm!” says the drum. “I am rhythm, clashing rhythm, and the horses feel me with ’em. “I’m the foray and the raid, I’m the glancing sabre-blade. “Now I’m here, now I’m there, flashing on the unaware. “How I scout before the ranks, how I cloud along the flanks, “How the highway smokes behind me let the faint stars tell that find me “All night through, all night through, when the bridles drip with dew. “I’m the labor, toil, and pain, I’m the loss that shall be gain,” Says the rhythm, clashing rhythm, of the drum. “Did you speak of ‘useless slaughter’? Did you murmur ‘Christian love’? “Pray that such as these before you when the war-cloud bursts above, “With the bridle on the pommel meet the foemen as they come, “To the rhythm, dashing rhythm, “To the rhythm, crashing rhythm “To the crashing, dashing rhythm “Of the drum!”

There’s an echo shakes the valley o’er the rhythm deep and slow Of the drum, of the drum, ’Tis the guns, the guns a-rolling on the bridges down below, Here they come, here they come, Hark the felloes grind and lumber through the shadows gray and umber, And the triple spans a-panting up the slope the stones encumber, With the rhythm, distant rhythm, of the drum. “’Tis the long Shapes of Fear that the moonlight silvers here, “And the jolting limber’s weighted with the silent cannoneer, “’Tis the Pipes of Peace are passing, O ye people, give an ear!” Says the rhythm, iron rhythm, of the drum. “They are rhythm, thunder rhythm, and they do not need me with ’em, “That can overtone my choir like the bourdon from the spire. “_Avant-garde_ am I to these Lords of dreadful revelries, “Iron Cyclops with an eye to confound the earth and sky. “Love and Fear, Love and Fear, neither one but both revere, “And whatever grace ye deal let it be from courts of steel, “Set the guns’ emplacement then to expound the Law to men,” Says the rhythm, iron rhythm, of the drum. “O ye coiners, sentence-joiners, in a fatted, tradesman’s land, “Here’s evangel Pentecostal that all nations understand, “When they speak before the battle fools and theories are dumb!” God be with ’em, and the rhythm, And the rhythm, iron rhythm, And the rolling thunder rhythm Of the drum!

There’s a rhythm still and toneless with the wind amid the green, Of the drum, muffled drum, And there’s arms reversed, and something ’neath a flag that goes between As they come, as they come. “Just a soldier, nothing more, such as all the ages bore “And as time and tide shall bear them till the sun be sere and hoar,” Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum. “No more am I requiring of the keen brazen lyring “Than ‘taps’ from the bugle--some shots for the firing. “Hats off; stand aside; it is all I’m desiring,” Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum. “I am rhythm, muffled rhythm; long and deep farewell go with him, “Hands that bore their portion through tasks our nature needs must do, “Feet that stepped the ancient rhyme of the battle-march of Time. “Blood or tribute, steel or gold, still _Vae Victis_ as of old, “Stern and curt the message runs taught to sons and sons of sons. “_Chair à canon_, would you call? What else are we, one and all? “Write it thus to close his span: ‘_Here there lies a fighting man_,’” Says the rhythm, muffled rhythm, of the drum. “O ye farms upon the hillside and ye cities by the sea, “With the laughter of young mothers and the babes about the knee, “’Tis a heart that once beat for you that is passing, still and dumb, “To the rhythm, muffled rhythm, “To the rhythm, solemn rhythm, “To the slow and muffled rhythm “Of the drum!”

_Scribner’s Magazine_ _E. Sutton_

IF!

Suppose ’twere done! The lanyard pulled on every shotted gun; Into the wheeling death-clutch sent Each millioned armament, To grapple there On land, on sea and under, and in air! Suppose at last ’twere come-- Now, while each bourse and shop and mill is dumb And arsenals and dockyards hum,-- Now all complete, supreme, That vast, Satanic dream!--

Each field were trampled, soaked, Each stream dyed, choked, Each leaguered city and blockaded port Made famine’s sport; The empty wave Made reeling dreadnought’s grave; Cathedral, castle, gallery, smoking fell ’Neath bomb and shell; In deathlike trance Lay industry, finance; Two thousand years’ Bequest, achievement, saving disappears, In blood and tears, In widowed woe That slum and palace equal know, In civilization’s suicide,-- What served thereby, what satisfied? For justice, freedom, right, what wrought? NAUGHT!--

Save, after the great cataclysm, perhap On the world’s shaken map New lines, more near or far, Binding to King or Czar In fostering hate Some newly vassaled state; And passion, lust and pride made satiate; And just a trace Of lingering smile on Satan’s face!

_Boston New Bureau_ _Bartholomew F. Griffin_

PRELUDE

Embracing the woman I love, I stood by the stream that circles the town I love in the peace of the Summer night, And I loved the joyous and cruel leash of life at my throat, And I loved the peace in the soul of the woman I love, and I knew tha t the net of her beauty was cast in a sea of peace. I loved the silver-blue flood of the moon that flowed over the quiet town And the trees that shaded the stream and the town I love; (For Nature is personal always to me and is never untrue and intrusive.) The garrulous, intimate talk of the trees, I loved; And the birds asleep in their nests in the trees, And the rosy wet-mouthed babes that never have minted speech, asleep in the quiet town and kissed by the warm and mothering night-- The merry uncertain tentative falling leaves that fell on the rocks and the path and were carried laughing away by the musical stream, I loved, And the sentient gaiety of the flowers I felt were near and knew my affection, I loved; And the neighborly boisterous wind that trampled in play across the yellowing wheat; And the cattle that lay in the meadow; And the moonlight that hid in the silver sheen of the birch by the gate, I loved; And the moonlight that lay like frost that had over-slept on the Summer grass; And I loved the peaceful, close-breathing, embracing night that breathed the scent of unseen flowers and the fragrance of the woman I love.

Ancient and cruel songs passed deathward into the night, And symbols of ancient wrongs went mournfully by and away, And the peace that is finally done with old desires and with conquering Caressingly laid her cheek, with illimitable quietude, between my cheek and the cheek of the woman I love, And the three of us were one as we stood by the stream in the peace of the Summer night.

The silence gathered and rolled above us fold upon exquisite fold, Till tenderness made me eager to shout and to sing aloud in the positive light of Day, And to see the early marching sun brushing the fields and the town I love with his gold-shod feet, And wrapping the flowers and the intimate personal trees in the sudden flame of his breath.

Christ; Christ; Christ;-- That this day dawned; Peace; Peace; Peace-- Raped and mangled and dead, And none to lay a healing hand for easement on her head.

War; War; War-- Came with withering day. Ancient cruel songs From red throats hurled And none to sing a healing song of peace in all the world.

The sunlight is a wound to me and Jesus Christ has rotted overnight, And peace is now a corpse whose naked body lies half cold upon a shield. The morning wind has grown a hawk’s strong claws, And nothing brings my heart so near to breaking as sunlight surging over the long grass.

_The Masses_ _Edmond McKenna_

THE OTHER ARMY

O’er ruined road past draggled field, O’er twisted stones of shaken street, Marches an army terrible, The army of the bleeding feet,--

Of skirted feet that now first leave Immaculate field and kitchen floor,-- Old feet that slept beside the hearth, Wee feet that twinkled by the door.