Part 8
Yea! She forgets the arm that was wont to go Around her waist. She wears a buckle whose pin Galleth the crook of her young man’s elbow. I forget not, for I that youth have been! Smith was aforetime the Lothario gay. Yet once, I mind me, Smith was forced to stay Close in his room. Not calm as I was he; But his noise brought no pleasaunce, verily. Small ease he got of playing on the bones Or hammering on the stove-pipe, that I see. Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones! Thou, for whose fear the figurative crow I eat, accursed be thou and all thy kin! Thee I will show up—yea, up I will show Thy too-thick buckwheats and thy tea too thin. Ay! here I dare thee, ready for the fray: Thou dost _not_ “keep a first-class house” I say! It does not with the advertisements agree. Thou lodgest a Briton with a puggaree, And thou hast harbored Jacobses and Cohns, Also a Mulligan. Thus denounce I thee! Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
_Envoy_
Boarders! the worst I have not told to ye: She hath stolen my trousers, that I may not flee Privily by the window. Hence these groans. There is no fleeing in a _robe de nuit_. Behold the deeds that are done of Mrs. Jones!
A PITCHER OF MIGNONETTE [14]
A pitcher of mignonette In a tenement’s highest casement,— Queer sort of flower-pot—yet That pitcher of mignonette Is a garden in heaven set, To the little sick child in the basement— The pitcher of mignonette, In a tenement’s highest casement.
_Lizette Woodworth Reese_
Lizette Woodworth Reese was born January 9, 1856, at Baltimore, Maryland, where she has lived ever since. After an education obtained chiefly in private schools, she taught English in the Western High School at Baltimore.
Her first book, _A Branch of May_ (1887), seems, at first glance, to be merely a continuation of the tradition of English minor verse, pleasant and impersonal. But an undercurrent of emotion, a quiet intensity, makes one go back to these simple lyrics and prepares the reader for the charm of the ensuing volumes.
_A Handful of Lavender_ (1891), _A Quiet Road_ (1896) and _A Wayside Lute_ (1909) embody an artistry which, in spite of its old-fashioned contours, is as true as it is tender. A host of the younger lyricists owe much of their technique to her admirable models, and few modern sonneteers have equaled the blended music and symbolism of “Tears.”
TEARS
When I consider Life and its few years— A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun; A call to battle, and the battle done Ere the last echo dies within our ears; A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears; The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat; The burst of music down an unlistening street,— I wonder at the idleness of tears. Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight, Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep, By every cup of sorrow that you had, Loose me from tears, and make me see aright How each hath back what once he stayed to weep: Homer his sight, David his little lad!
THE DUST
The dust blows up and down Within the lonely town; Vague, hurrying, dumb, aloof, On sill and bough and roof.
What cloudy shapes do fleet Along the parchèd street; Clerks, bishops, kings go by— Tomorrow so shall I.
SPICEWOOD
The spicewood burns along the gray, spent sky, In moist unchimneyed places, in a wind, That whips it all before, and all behind, Into one thick, rude flame, now low, now high. It is the first, the homeliest thing of all— At sight of it, that lad that by it fares, Whistles afresh his foolish, town-caught airs— A thing so honey-colored and so tall!
It is as though the young Year, ere he pass, To the white riot of the cherry tree, Would fain accustom us, or here, or there, To his new sudden ways with bough and grass, So starts with what is humble, plain to see, And all familiar as a cup, a chair.
_Horace Traubel_
Horace Traubel, often referred to as “Whitman’s Boswell,” was born in Camden, New Jersey, December 19, 1858, of mixed Jewish and Christian parentage. His scholastic education was desultory; after leaving school he sold newspapers, worked as an errand boy and helped his father in a stationery store. Later he became a printer’s devil, proof-reader, reporter and editorial writer. In 1873 Walt Whitman came to Camden, little dreaming he would spend the remainder of his life there. He was almost friendless, a sick man, helpless and alone. The Traubel household welcomed him in and an extraordinary friendship sprang up immediately between the aging poet and the young boy. Traubel saw Whitman some part of each day for almost twenty years. “As the years fled,” says David Karsner in his Life of Horace Traubel, “he catered to Whitman’s needs in a hundred different ways. He would bring Old Walt such papers and magazines as he knew would interest him. He ran his errands ... and assumed the details and responsibilities connected with the publishing of the later editions of Whitman’s books.” This intimacy is fully recorded in Traubel’s chief work, a series of volumes, _With Walt Whitman in Camden_, a compilation of extraordinary value which has been called “Whitman’s unconscious autobiography.”
It is inevitable that Traubel’s own poetry should betray the strong influence of his great friend and hero. And yet in several poems in _Optimos_ (1910) and _Chants Communal_ (1914) Traubel achieves a personal idiom; beneath the wearying length and repetitive phrases, he communicates the fire of the social revolutionist, the insurgent who wrote, “I build no fires to burn anybody up. I only build fires to light up the way.”
Traubel died at Bon Echo, Ontario, Canada, where he had gone for his health, September 8, 1919.
HOW ARE YOU, DEAR WORLD, THIS MORNING?
_How are you, dear world, this morning? Clean from my bath of sleep, Warm from the bosom of my mother star, Recharged with the energy of my father self, Restored from all derelict hours to the lawful service of time, I come without gift or doctrine or tethering humor To entertain your fateful will._
How are you, dear world, this morning? I went to bed last night in the twist and snarl of a problem. Have you awakened me to a revelation? Has some change come upon the face of the earth and the heart of man? Was life still busy while my life slept? Was something done with the dreams of my sorrow and joy to transfigure in man the drag of his daily task? Have all the prophets who died unfulfilled and all the plain men and women and children who burned or starved from injustice come back to earth to partake of a deferred feast? What is it, dear world, I bring with empty hands to your morning? What is it, dear world, you bring with hands as empty to my bedside?
Do the things that were stolen remain stolen? Do the lives that were destroyed remain dead? Do the stragglers who failed still fail? Does the sleeper who slept the sleep of the merchant awake only to the merchant? Does the law that was yesterday at my throat awake only to the law? Does the singer awake only to sing, the artist to paint, and the orator to talk? Or does the merchant awake to the man? Or does the law of the state awake to the law of the heart? Or do stolen things shift back into right relations? Or is the singer silent, or does the artist put aside his paints, or has the orator stopt talking, because something greater than song or art or eloquence has appeared in the face of the multitude?
How are you, dear world, this morning? We have had confidences other days but somehow the confidences of this day are sweetest of all, They find me where I am remote, they seek me out where I am reluctant, they confirm me where I am weak, They melt me down from flaw and angle into purity and circle, They interpret me to last night’s strangers and they introduce me to the real meanings of my vagrant past, They remove me from my quarrels and they deliver me to truce and peace. For now I see that when of old I thought of justice and believed I was dreaming that only then was I awake, For now I see that the wrongdoer is the first to withdraw wrong and is the only one who can withdraw it, For now I see that all the effort I spent trying to discover why lives were beautiful or ugly has shown me that all ugliness and all beauty finally must lapse in one transfiguration, For now in the confidences of this morning, in the rapture of this awakening, I find my illimitable roots trailed backward and forward and round into all time and all men, Pledging my love to countless surrenders and repeals.
O MY DEAD COMRADE
(_for W. W._)
O my dead comrade—my great dead! I sat by your bedside—it was the close of day— I heard the drip of the rain on the roof of the house: The light shadowed—departing, departing— You also departing, departing— You and the light, companions in life, now, too, companions in death, Retiring to the shadow, carrying elsewhere the benediction of your sunbeams. I sat by your bedside. I held your hand: Once you opened your eyes: O look of recognition! O look of bestowal! From you to me then passed the commission of the future, From you to me that minute, from your veins to mine, Out of the flood of passage, as you slipped away with the tide, From your hand that touched mine, from your soul that touched mine, near, O so near— Filling the heavens with stars— Entered, shone upon me and out of me, the power of the spring, the seed of the rose and the wheat, As of father to son, as of brother to brother, as of god to god!
O my great dead! You had not gone, you had stayed—in my heart, in my veins, Reaching through me, through others through me, through all at last, our brothers, A hand to the future.
_Frank Dempster Sherman_
Frank Dempster Sherman was born at Peekskill, New York, May 6, 1860. He entered Columbia University in 1879, where, after graduation and a subsequent instructorship, he was made adjunct professor in 1891 and Professor of Graphics in 1904. He held the latter position until his death, which occurred September 19, 1916.
Besides being a writer of airy lyrics and epigrammatic quatrains, Sherman was an enthusiastic genealogist and a designer (especially of book-plates) of no little skill. As a poet, his gift was essentially that of a writer of light verse—fragrant, fragile, yet seldom too sentimental or brittle. Pleasant is the name for it, a pleasantness perfumed with a pungent wit.
Sherman never wearied of the little lyric; even the titles of his volumes are instances of his penchant for the brief melody, for the sudden snatch of song: _Madrigals and Catches_ (1887), _Lyrics for a Lute_ (1890), _Little-Folk Lyrics_ (1892), _Lyrics of Joy_ (1904). A sumptuous collected edition of his poems was published, with an Introduction by Clinton Scollard, in 1917.
AT MIDNIGHT
See, yonder, the belfry tower That gleams in the moon’s pale light— Or is it a ghostly flower That dreams in the silent night?
I listen and hear the chime Go quavering over the town, And out of this flower of Time Twelve petals are wafted down.
BACCHUS
Listen to the tawny thief, Hid beneath the waxen leaf, Growling at his fairy host, Bidding her with angry boast Fill his cup with wine distilled From the dew the dawn has spilled: Stored away in golden casks Is the precious draught he asks.
Who,—who makes this mimic din In this mimic meadow inn, Sings in such a drowsy note, Wears a golden-belted coat; Loiters in the dainty room Of this tavern of perfume; Dares to linger at the cup Till the yellow sun is up?
Bacchus ’tis, come back again To the busy haunts of men; Garlanded and gaily dressed, Bands of gold about his breast; Straying from his paradise, Having pinions angel-wise,— ’Tis the honey-bee, who goes Reveling within a rose!
TWO QUATRAINS
IVY
Upon the walls the graceful Ivy climbs And wraps with green the ancient ruin gray: Romance it is, and these her leafy rhymes Writ on the granite page of yesterday.
DAWN
Out of the scabbard of the night By God’s hand drawn, Flashes his shining sword of light, And lo—the dawn!
_Charlotte P. S. Gilman_
Charlotte Perkins Stetson Gilman was born at Hartford, Connecticut, July 3, 1860. She began public work in 1890, lecturing on ethics, economics and sociology; identifying herself with the labor question and the advance of women.
She has written about a dozen books, her best works being _Woman and Economics_ (1898) and _Human Work_ (1904). Her volume of verse, _In This Our World_ (1898), hurls many a shaft of ironic wit. Beneath the whimsical humor of “A Conservative” and the better known “Similar Cases” (unfortunately too long to quote) there is a sub-acid satire not easily forgotten.
A CONSERVATIVE
The garden beds I wandered by One bright and cheerful morn, When I found a new-fledged butterfly, A-sitting on a thorn, A black and crimson butterfly All doleful and forlorn.
I thought that life could have no sting To infant butterflies, So I gazed on this unhappy thing With wonder and surprise. While sadly with his waving wing He wiped his weeping eyes.
Said I, “What can the matter be? Why weepest thou so sore? With garden fair and sunlight free And flowers in goodly store,”— But he only turned away from me And burst into a roar.
Cried he, “My legs are thin and few Where once I had a swarm! Soft fuzzy fur—a joy to view— Once kept my body warm, Before these flapping wing-things grew, To hamper and deform!”
At that outrageous bug I shot The fury of mine eye; Said I, in scorn all burning hot, In rage and anger high, “You ignominious idiot! Those wings are made to fly!”
“I do not want to fly,” said he, “I only want to squirm!” And he drooped his wings dejectedly, But still his voice was firm: “I do not want to be a fly! I want to be a worm!”
O yesterday of unknown lack, To-day of unknown bliss! I left my fool in red and black; The last I saw was this,— The creature madly climbing back Into his chrysalis.
_Louise Imogen Guiney_
Louise Imogen Guiney was born at Boston, Massachusetts, in 1861. Although she attended Elmhurst Academy in Providence, most of her studying was with private tutors. In 1901 she went to England, where she lived until her death.
Traditional in form and feeling, Miss Guiney’s work has a distinctly personal vigor; even her earliest collection, _The White Sail and Other Poems_ (1887), is not without individuality. Her two most characteristic volumes are _A Roadside Harp_ (1893) and _Patrins_ (1897). A more recent publication, _Happy Ending_, appeared in 1909.
Miss Guiney died at Chirping-Camden, England, November 3, 1920.
THE WILD RIDE
_I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing._
Let cowards and laggards fall back! But alert to the saddle Weatherworn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion, With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.
The trail is through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses; There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us: What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding.
Thought’s self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb, And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sunbeam: Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.
A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle, A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty; We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.
_I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses, All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing._
We spur to a land of no name, outracing the storm-wind; We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil. Thou leadest, O God! All’s well with Thy troopers that follow.
_Bliss Carman_
(William) Bliss Carman was born at Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, April 15, 1861, of a long line of United Empire Loyalists who withdrew from Connecticut at the time of the Revolutionary War. Carman was educated at the University of New Brunswick (1879–81), at Edinburgh (1882–3) and Harvard (1886–8). He took up his residence in the United States about 1889 and, with the exception of short sojourns in the Maritime Provinces, has lived there ever since.
In 1893, Carman issued his first book, _Low Tide on Grand Pré: A Book of Lyrics_. It was immediately successful, running quickly into a second edition. From the outset, it was evident that Carman possessed the true lyrical power: the ability to fuse thought in emotion, to interpret the external world through a personal intensity. Simple and direct in his choice of themes, his passion made them universal. A vivid buoyancy, new to American literature, made his worship of Nature frankly pagan as contrasted to the moralizing tributes of most of his predecessors. This freshness and irresponsible whimsy made Carman the natural collaborator for Richard Hovey, and when their first joint _Songs from Vagabondia_ appeared in 1894 Carman’s fame was established. (See Preface.)
Although the three _Vagabondia_ collections contain Carman’s best known poems, several of his other volumes (he has published almost twenty of them) vibrate with the same glowing pulse. An almost physical radiance rises from _Ballads of Lost Haven_ (1897), _From the Book of Myths_ (1902) and _Songs of the Sea Children_ (1904).
Carman has also written several volumes of essays and, in conjunction with Mary Perry King, has devised several poem-dances (_Daughters of Dawn_, 1913) suggesting Vachel Lindsay’s later poem-games. In his collection _April Airs_ (1916), although the strength is diluted and the music somewhat thinned, the old magic persists; the spell may be overfamiliar but it is not powerless.
A VAGABOND SONG
There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood— Touch of manner, hint of mood; And my heart is like a rhyme, With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry Of bugles going by. And my lonely spirit thrills To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.
There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir; We must rise and follow her, When from every hill of flame She calls and calls each vagabond by name.
THE GRAVEDIGGER
Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old, And well his work is done. With an equal grave for lord and knave, He buries them every one.
Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip, He makes for the nearest shore; And God, who sent him a thousand ship, Will send him a thousand more;
But some he’ll save for a bleaching grave, And shoulder them in to shore,— Shoulder them in, shoulder them in, Shoulder them in to shore.
Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships of Tyre Went out, and where are they? In the port they made, they are delayed With the ships of yesterday.
He followed the ships of England far, As the ships of long ago; And the ships of France they led him a dance, But he laid them all arow.
Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him Is the sexton of the town; For sure and swift, with a guiding lift, He shovels the dead men down.
But though he delves so fierce and grim, His honest graves are wide, As well they know who sleep below The dredge of the deepest tide.
Oh, he works with a rollicking stave at lip, And loud is the chorus skirled; With the burly rote of his rumbling throat He batters it down the world.
He learned it once in his father’s house, Where the ballads of eld were sung; And merry enough is the burden rough, But no man knows the tongue.
Oh, fair, they say, was his bride to see, And wilful she must have been, That she could bide at his gruesome side When the first red dawn came in.
And sweet, they say, is her kiss to those She greets to his border home; And softer than sleep her hand’s first sweep That beckons, and they come.
Oh, crooked is he, but strong enough To handle the tallest mast; From the royal barque to the slaver dark, He buries them all at last.
_Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip, He makes for the nearest shore; And God, who sent him a thousand ship, Will send him a thousand more; But some he’ll save for a bleaching grave, And shoulder them in to shore,— Shoulder them in, shoulder them in, Shoulder them in to shore._
HEM AND HAW
Hem and Haw were the sons of sin, Created to shally and shirk; Hem lay ’round and Haw looked on While God did all the work.
Hem was a fogy, and Haw was a prig, For both had the dull, dull mind; And whenever they found a thing to do, They yammered and went it blind.
Hem was the father of bigots and bores; As the sands of the sea were they. And Haw was the father of all the tribe Who criticize to-day.
But God was an artist from the first, And knew what he was about; While over his shoulder sneered these two, And advised him to rub it out.