Chapter 1

Anthology of Massachusetts Poets

by WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE

Contents

HOME BOUND—JOSEPH AUSLANDER AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL—KATHERINE LEE BATES YELLOW CLOVER—KATHERINE LEE BATES THE RETURNING—SYLVESTER BAXTER TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL—ERNEST BENSHIMOL A BANQUET—ERNEST BENSHIMOL SONG—GEORGE CABOT LODGE THE WORLDS—MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI THE RIOT—GAMALIEL BRADFORD HUNGER—GAMALIEL BRADFORD EXIT GOD—GAMALIEL BRADFORD ROUSSEAU—GAMALIEL BRADFORD JOHN MASEFIELD—AMY BRIDGMAN 1620-1920—LE BARON RUSSEL BRIGGS THE CROSS-CURRENT—ABBIE FARWELL BROWN CANDLEMAS—ALICE BROWN SUNRISE ON MANSFIELD MOUNTAIN—ALICE BROWN BURNT ARE THE PETALS OF LIFE—ELSIE PUMPELLY CABOT FOUR FOUNTAINS. AFTER RESPIGHI—JESSICA CARR IN THE TROLLEY CAR—RUTH BALDWIN CHENERY IN IRISH RAIN—MARTHA HASKELL CLARK CRETONNE TROPICS—GRACE HAZARD CONKLING TO HILDA OF HER ROSES—GRACE HAZARD CONKLING DANDELION—HILDA CONKLING RED ROOSTER—HILDA CONKLING VELVETS—HILDA CONKLING THE MOODS—FANNY STEARNS DAVIS HILL-FANTASY—FANNY STEARNS DAVIS THE MIRAGE—NATHAN HASKELL DOLE THE ROAD BEYOND THE TOWN—MICHAEL EARLS, S.J. THE LILAC—WALTER PRICHARD EATON GOD, THROUGH HIS OFFSPRING NATURE, GAVE ME LOVE—CHARLES GIBSON TO MUSIC—MAUDE GORDON-ROBY THE VOICE IN THE SONG—MARY GERTRUDE HAMILTON HYMNS AND ANTHEMS SUNG AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE—CAROLINE HAZARD REUBEN ROY—HAROLD CRAWFORD STEARNS COUNTRY ROAD—MARIE LOUISE HERSEY WREATHS—CAROLYN HILLMAN MEMPHIS—GORDON MALHERBE HILLMAN SAINT COLUMBKILLE—E.J.V. HUIGINN MISS DOANE—WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON FALLEN FENCES—WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON CROSS-CURRENTS—WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON THE FAREWELL—WINIFRED VIRGINIA JACKSON SONG—OLIVER JENKINS LOVE AUTUMNAL—OLIVER JENKINS ECHOES—RUTH LAMBERT JONES WAR PICTURES—RUTH LAMBERT JONES AN OLD SONG—ARTHUR KETCHUM ROADSIDE REST—ARTHUR KETCHUM OLD LIZETTE ON SLEEP—AGNES LEE MOTHERHOOD—AGNES LEE ESSEX—GEORGE CABOT LODGE THE SONG OF THE WAVE—GEORGE CABOT LODGE FRIMAIRE—AMY LOWELL PATTERNS—AMY LOWELL A BATHER—AMY LOWELL LEPRECHAUNS AND CLURICAUNS—DENNIS A. MCCARTHY L’ENVOI—DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN TO IMAGINATION—DOROTHEA LAWRENCE MANN DRAGON—JEANETTE MARKS GREEN GOLDEN DOOR—JEANETTE MARKS SLEEPY HOLLOW, CONCORD—JOHN CLAIR MINOT THE SWORD OF ARTHUR—JOHN CLAIR MINOT THE DIVINE FOREST—CHARLES R. MURPHY MAGIC—EDWARD J. O’BRIEN MICHAEL PAT—EDWARD J. O’BRIAN SONG—EDWARD J. O’BRIAN IN MEMORIAM: FRANCIS LEDWIDGE—NORREYS JEPHSON O’CONNOR EVENSONG—NORREYS JEPHSON O’CONNOR THE PROPHET—JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY HARVEST-MOON: 1914—JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY HORSEMAN SPRINGING FROM THE DARK: A DREAM—LILLA CABOT PERRY THREE QUATRAINS—LILLA CABOT PERRY A VALENTINE UNSENT—MARGARET PERRY SHIPBUILDERS—ARTHUR STANWOOD PIER UNFADING PICTURES—LOUELLA C. POOLE WITH WAVES AND WINGS—CHARLOTTE PORTER BLUEBERRIES—FRANK PRENTICE RAND NOCTURNE—WILLIAM ROSCOIE THAYER ENVOI—WILLIAM ROSCOE THAYER THERE WHERE THE SEA—MARIE TUDOR MARRIAGE—MARIE TUDOR PITY—HAROLD VINAL A ROSE TO THE LIVING—NIXON WATERMAN THE STORM—G.O. WARREN WHERE THEY SLEEP—G.O. WARREN BEAUTY—G.O. WARREN COMRADES—GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY THE FLIGHT—GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY

HOME-BOUND

The moon is a wavering rim where one fish slips, The water makes a quietness of sound; Night is an anchoring of many ships Home-bound.

There are strange tunnelers in the dark, and whirs Of wings that die, and hairy spiders spin The silence into nets, and tenanters Move softly in.

I step on shadows riding through the grass, And feel the night lean cool against my face; And challenged by the sentinel of space, I pass.

JOSEPH AUSLANDER

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

O beautiful for spacious skies, For amber waves of grain, For purple mountain majesties Above the fruited plain! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet, Those stern, impassioned stress A thoroughfare for freedom beat Across the wilderness! America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved In liberating strife Who more than self their country loved, And mercy more than life! America! America! May God thy gold refine, Till all success be nobleness, And every gain divine.

O beautiful for patriot dream That sees beyond the years Thine alabaster cities gleam Undimmed by human tears! America! America! God shed His grace on thee And crown thy good with brotherhood From sea to shining sea!

KATHERINE LEE BATES

YELLOW CLOVER

Must I, who walk alone, come on it still, This Puck of plants The wise would do away with, The sunshine slants To play with, Our wee, gold-dusty flower, the yellow clover, Which once in Parting for a time That then seemed long, Ere time for you was over, We sealed our own? Do you remember yet, O Soul beyond the stars, Beyond the uttermost dim bars Of space, Dear Soul, who found earth sweet, Remember by love’s grace, In dreamy hushes of the heavenly song, How suddenly we halted in our climb, Lingering, reluctant, up that farthest hill, Stooped for the blossoms closest to our feet, And gave them as a token Each to Each, In lieu of speech, In lieu of words too grievous to be spoken, Those little, gypsy, wondering blossoms wet With a strange dew of tears?

So it began, This vagabond, unvalued yellow clover, To be our tenderest language. All the years It lent a new zest to the summer hours, As each of us went scheming to surprise The other with our homely, laureate flowers. Sonnets and odes Fringing our daily roads. Can amaranth and asphodel Bring merrier laughter to your eyes? Oh, if the Blest, in their serene abodes, Keep any wistful consciousness of earth, Not grandeurs, but the childish ways of love, Simplicities of mirth, Must follow them above With touches of vague homesickness that pass Like shadows of swift birds across the grass. Beneath some foreign arch of sky, How many a time the rover You or I, For life oft sundered look from look, And voice from voice, the transient dearth Schooling my soul to brook This distance that no messages may span, Would chance Upon our wilding by a lonely well, Or drowsy watermill, Or swaying to the chime of convent bell, Or where the nightingales of old romance With tragical contraltos fill Dim solitudes of infinite desire; And once I joyed to meet Our peasant gadabout A trespasser on trim, seigniorial seat, Twinkling a saucy eye As potentates paced by.

Our golden cord! our soft, pursuing flame From friendship’s altar fire! How proudly we would pluck and tame The dimpling clusters, mutinously gay! How swiftly they were sent Far, far away On journeys wide, By sea and continent, Green miles and blue leagues over, From each of us to each, That so our hearts might reach, And touch within the yellow clover, Love’s letter to be glad about Like sunshine when it came!

My sorrow asks no healing; it is love; Let love then make me brave To bear the keen hurts of This careless summertide, Ay, of our own poor flower, Changed with our fatal hour, For all its sunshine vanished when you died; Only white clover blossoms on your grave.

KATHERINE LEE BATES

THE RETURNING

We long for her, we yearn for her— Yes, ardently we yearn For her return. Recalling those beloved days (Days intimate with ways Of friends so near to us And life so dear to us), We yearn unspeakably for her return.

And come she must… Yet while we trust We soon may see the passing of this agony Which makes intrusive years still seem A fearsome dream, We know that when she comes She really comes not back again.

She’ll come in other guise And under fairer skies— And yet to bitter pain!

That day she went away Our homes with laughing youth were filled. Where then was happiness Is now distress, The laughter stilled; For when she left Youth followed her— We stay bereft.

So all our golden joy For what she brings Must carry gray alloy: The sorrow that she can not lay, The mysery that she can not stay— While all the gladsome songs she sings Must bear for undertones Old sighs and echoed moans.

As they who go away In flush of youth May come quite worn and gray And bringing naught but ruth— So, when the strife shall cease, And when she comes at last, When all the armies vast Shall at her feet Kneel down to greet Thrice welcome Peace, This world will be so changed (So many dear ones dead, So many friends estranged, So many blessings fled, So many wonted ways forever barred, So many coming days forever marred) That then She truly comes not back again— She, the Peace we knew.

Yet how we long for her! How ardently we yearn For her return!

SYLVESTER BAXTER

TWO MOODS FROM THE HILL

I.

YOUTH

I love to watch the world from here, for all The numberless living portraits that are drawn Upon the mind. Far over is the sea, Fronting the sand, a few great yellow dunes, A salt marsh stumbling after, rank and green, With brackish gullies wandering in between, All this from the hill. And more: a clump of dwarfed and twisted cedars, Sentinels over the marsh, and bright with the sun A field of daises wandering in the wind As though a hidden serpent glided through, A broken wall, a new-plowed field, and then The dusty road and the abodes of men Surrounding the hill. How small the enclosure is wherein there lives Each phase and passion of life, the distant sail Dips in the limpid bosom of the sea, From that far place to where in state the turf Raises a throne for me upon the hill, Each little love and lust of a living thing Can thus be compassed in a rainbow ring And seen from the hill.

II.

AGE

Why did I build my cottage on a hill Facing the sea? Why did I plan each terraced lawn to slope Down to the deep blue billowy breast of hope, Surging and sweeping, laughing and leaping, Tumbling its garments of foam upon the shore, Rustling the sands that know my step no more, I should have found a valley, deep and still, To shelter me.

There flows the river, and it seems asleep So far away, Yet I remember whip of wave and roar Of wind that rose and smote against the oar, Smote and retreated, Proud but defeated, While I rejoiced and rowed into the brine, Drawing on wet and heavy-straining line The great cod quivering from the deep As counterplay.

What is the solace of these hills and vales That rise and fall? What is there glorious in the greenwood glen, Or twittering thrush or wing of darting wren? Give me the gusty, Raucous and rusty Call of the sea gull in the echoing sky, The wild shriek of the winds that cannot die, Give me the life that follows the bending sails, Or none at all!

ERNEST BENSHIMOL

A BANQUET ONE MEMORY FROM SOCRATES

After the song the love, and after the love the play, Flute girl and pretty boy blowing Bubbles of sparkling Wine into darkling Beards of a former austerity, stern even now, but fast growing Foolish, with less of a stately Reserve that held them sedately. Oh Zeus, what a sight! With the wine dripping off it, The grin of an ass on a bald-pated prophet.

After the feast the night, and after the night the day, Fool and philosopher stirring With the day dawning, Stretching and yawning, While in each wine-throbbing, desolate brain is the wheeling and whirring Of thousands of bats, that the slaking Of throats will not hinder from aching, No wine for the brow that is beating to bursting, But water at morning is quench for the thirsting!

ERNEST BENSHIMOL

SONG

Out of one heart the birds and I together, Earth hushed in twilight, Low through the live-oaks hung heavy with silver, Gemmed with the sky-light, Under the great wet star Shaking with light, we jar Lute-voiced the silence with intervaled music.

While under the margined world the slow sun lingers, Flaming earth’s portal, Over the lilac dusk spreads his great fingers— Earth is immortal! While the frail beauty dies. Dream in the dreamer’s eyes, All the good gladness turns praise for the singers.

Hark, ’tis the breath of life! Hush! and I need it; Northern, gigantic,— Questing the silences, herding the sudden foam Down the Atlantic; Leaves from the autumn’s store Shrill at my desert door, They and I out of one heart that is grieving.

GEORGE CABOT LODGE

THE WORLDS

I saw an idler on a summer day Piping with Iris by a dancing brook; And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay, And languid Follies smiled from every nook.

I saw an artist in a world of dreams, His rainbow rising from his radiant task, To throw its magic prism beams O’er Fancy’s changeful masque and counter-masque.

I saw Toil—stooping underneath a world Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread, His skyward pinions ever closer furled Before the grim necessity of bread!

I saw a sinner working hard to be Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time; I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea Was hearth and hope and love and wedding-chime.

I saw a mother living in her child— I saw a saint among his fellow men— Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled And solemn-hearted scholars—Sudden then

I cried: “The stars are no less neighborly In their ethereal remoteness swung, Than these near human orbits wherein we Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue!

“Love seek through all—less there be one Least soul unlit within the night— And over all, the selfsame sun Give each creation light!”

MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI

THE RIOT

You may think my life is quiet. I find it full of change, An ever-varied diet, As piquant as ’tis strange.

Wild thoughts are always flying, Like sparks across my brain, Now flashing out, now dying, To kindle soon again.

Fine fancies set me thrilling, And subtle monsters creep Before my sight unwilling: They even haunt my sleep.

One broad, perpetual riot Enfolds me night and day. You think my life is quiet? You don’t know what you say.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

HUNGER

I’ve been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a saint, Their bend of weary knees and their contortions long and faint, And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred thousand pins, A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins.

I love to wander widely, but I understand a cell, Where you tell and tell your beads because you’ve nothing else to tell, Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild fantastic tricks, Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix.

I cannot speak for others, but my inmost soul is torn With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn. There are moments when I would untread the paths that I have trod. I’m a haunter of the devil, but I hunger after God.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

EXIT GOD

Of old our father’s God was real, Something they almost saw, Which kept them to a stern ideal And scourged them into awe.

They walked the narrow path of right Most vigilantly well, Because they feared eternal night And boiling depths of Hell.

Now Hell has wholly boiled away And God become a shade. There is no place for him to stay In all the world He made.

The followers of William James Still let the Lord exist, And call Him by imposing names, A venerable list.

But nerve and muscle only count, Gray matter of the brain, And an astonishing amount Of inconvenient pain.

I sometimes wish that God were back In this dark world and wide; For though some virtues He might lack, He had his pleasant side.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

ROUSSEAU

That odd, fantastic ass, Rousseau, Declared himself unique. How men persist in doing so, Puzzles me more than Greek.

The sins that tarnish whore and thief Beset me every day. My most ethereal belief Inhabits common clay.

GAMALIEL BRADFORD

JOHN MASEFIELD

I

MASEFIELD (HIMSELF)

God said, and frowned, as He looked on Shropshire clay: “Alone, ’twont do; composite, would I make This man-child rare; ’twere well, methinks, to take A handful from the Stratford tomb, and weigh A few of Shelley’s ashes; Bunyan may Contribute, too, and, for my sweet Son’s sake, I’ll visit Avalon; then, let me slake The whole with Wyclif-water from the Bay.

A sailor, he! Too godly, though, I fear; Offset it with tobacco! Next, I’ll find Hedge-roses, star-dust, and a vagrant’s mind; His mother’s heart now let me breathe upon; When west winds blow, I’ll whisper in her ear: “Apocalypse awaits him; call him John!”

II

HIS PORTRAIT

A Man of Sorrows! with such haunted eyes, I trow, the Master looked across the lake,— Looked from the Judas-heart, so soon to make Of Him the world’s historic sacrifice; Moreover, as I gaze, do more arise; Great souls, great pallid ghosts of pain, who wake And wander yet; all, weary men who brake

Their hearts; all hemlock-drunk, with growing wise: Hudson adrift; Defoe; the Wandering Jew; Tannhauser; Faust; Andrea; phantoms, all, In Masefield’s eyes you lodge; and to the wall I turn you,—hand a-tremble,—lest you make Of mine own stricken eyes a mirror, too. Wherein the sad world’s sadder for your sake.

III

HIS “DAUBER”

O Masefield’s “Dauber!” You, who being dead, Yet speak: heroic, dauntless, flaming soul, Too suddenly snuffed out! Here take fresh toll Of cognizance, and, in your ocean bed, Serenely rest, assured that who has read What you would fain have pictured of the Pole Would gladly match your part against the whole Of many a modern artist, Paris-bred.

And more than this: if you, indeed, are his, Then, by a dual truth, he, too, is yours; For, marked and credited by what endures, Were it the only thing, which bears his name, (O deathless Soul, I speak you true in this!) “The Dauber” has brought Masefield to his fame.

IV

HIS “GALLIPOLI”

“Small wonder,” speaks my pensive self, “that he Whose passion ’tis to sing of men who fail,— (Belabored, broken by The Unseen Flail) Small wonder that be makes Gallipoli

His fervent text, for could there be A costlier failure in Earth’s shuddering tale? Think of heroic Sulva’s bloody swale; Of Anzac’s tortured thirst and agony!” But as I read, protesting voices cry: “Not we, Not we, who fell among the daffodils, Who conquered Death among those blistered hills, And found our glory after mortal pain; Not we, who failed and lost Gallipoli; The sad, strange failure theirs who mourn in vain!”

V

HIS MEAD

So, Masefield, have your royal words once more Called forth the praise of men, where praise is due; Your great elegiac, tragically true, Must leave all Britain prouder than before; And, in spite of all that breaking hearts deplore, And all that anguished consciences must rue, One arrowed gladness surely pierces through From London’s centre to Canadian shore:

When England, sobbing, mourns Gallipoli, When warm tears flow for Rupert Brooke And all the splendid Youth her error took As hostage from the fields of daffodils, Let this a present, living solace be: You are not sleeping in those cruel hills!

AMY BRIDGEMAN

1620-1920

Before him rolls the dark, relentless ocean; Behind him stretch the cold and barren sands; Wrapt in the mantle of his deep devotion The Pilgrim kneels, and clasps his lifted hands;

“God of our fathers, who hast safely brought us Through seas and sorrows, famine, fire, and sword; Who, in Thy mercies manifold hast taught us To trust in Thee, our leader and our Lord;

“God, who hast send Thy truth to shine before us, A fiery pillar, beaconing on the sea; God, who hast spread thy wings of mercy o’er us; God, who hast set our children’s children free,

“Freedom Thy new-born nation here shall cherish; Grant us Thy covenant, changing, sure: Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish; Freedom and Truth, immortal shall endure.”

Face to the Indian arrows. Face to the Prussian guns, From then till now the Pilgrim’s vow Has held the Pilgrim’s sons.

He braved the red man’s ambush, He loosed the black man’s chain; His spirit broke King George’s yoke And the battleships of Spain.

He crossed the seething ocean; He dared the death-strewn track; He charged in the hell of Saint Mihiel And hurled the tyrant back.

For the voice of the lonely Pilgrim Who knelt upon the strand A people hears three hundred years In the conscience of the land.

Daughter of Truth and mother of Courage, Conscience, all hail! Heart of New England, strength of the Pilgrims, Thou shalt prevail. Look how the empires rise and fall! Athens robed in her learning and beauty, Rome in her royal lust for power— Each has flourished for her little hour, Risen and fallen and ceased to be. What of her by the Western Sea, Born and bred as the child of Duty, Sternest of them all? She it is and she alone Who built on faith as her corner stone; Of all the nations none but she Knew that the truth shall make us free. Daughter of Courage, mother of heros, Freedom divine. Light of New England, Star of the Pilgrim, Still shalt thou shine.

Yet even as we in our pride rejoice, Hark to the prophet’s warning voice: “The Pilgrim’s thrift is vanished And the Pilgrim’s faith is dead, And the Pilgrim’s God is banished, And Mammon reigns in his stead; And work is damned as an evil, And men and women cry, In their restless haste, ‘Let us spend and waste, And live; for to-morrow we die.’

“And law is trampled under; And the nations stand aghast, As they hear the distant thunder Of the storm that marches fast; And we,—whose ocean borders Shut off the sound and the sight, We will wait for marching orders; The world has seen us fight; We have earned our days of revel; ‘On with the dance’! we cry. It is pain to think; we will eat and drink! And live; for to-morrow we die.”

“We have laughed in the eyes of danger; We have given our bravest and best; We have succored the starving stranger; Others shall heed the rest.’ And the revel never ceases; And the nations hold their breath; And our laughter peals, and the mad world reels, To a carnival of death.

“Slaves of sloth and the senses, Clippers of Freedom’s wings, Come back to the Pilgrim’s Army And fight for the King of Kings; Come back to the Pilgrim’s conscience; Be born in the nation’s birth; And strive again as simple men For the freedom of the earth. Freedom a free-born nation still shall cherish, Be this our covenant, unchanging, sure: Earth shall decay; the firmament shall perish; Freedom and Truth immortal shall endure.”

Land of our fathers, when the tempest rages, When the wide earth is racked with war and crime, Founded forever on the Rock of Ages, Beaten in vain by surging seas of time,

Even as the shallop on the breakers riding, Even as the Pilgrim kneeling on the shore, Firm in thy faith and fortitude abiding, Hold thou thy children free forever more.

And when we sail as Pilgrims’ sons and daughters The spirit’s Mayflower into seas unknown, Driving across the waste of wintry waters The voyage every soul shall make alone,

The Pilgrim’s faith, the Pilgrim’s courage grant us; Still shines the truth that for the Pilgrim shone. We are his seed; nor life nor death shall daunt us. The port is Freedom! Pilgrim heart, sail on!

LE BARON RUSSELL BRIGGS

THE CROSS-CURRENT

Through twelve stout generations New England blood I boast; The stubborn pastures bred them, The grim, uncordial coast,

Sedate and proud old cities,— Loved well enough by me, Then how should I be yearning To scour the earth and sea.

Each of my Yankee forbears Wed a New England mate: They dwelt and did and died here, Nor glimpsed a rosier fate.

My clan endured their kindred; But foreigners they loathed, And wandering folk, and minstrels, And gypsies motley-clothed.

Then why do patches please me, Fantastic, wild array? Why have I vagrant fancies For lads from far away.

My folk were godly Churchmen,— Or paced in Elders’ weeds; But all were grave and pious And hated heathen creeds.

Then why are Thor and Wotan To dread forces still? Why does my heart go questing For Pan beyond the hill?