Part 8

From Khartoum’s streets red with his blood Went Gordon’s soul to greet his God; Long had he served his Master well-- What mattered where or how he fell? Thou, Gordon, canst not miss the way-- Go easily to Eden’s day, Death’s trackless passage through the air Goes straight to Heaven from everywhere. Or Hopkinsville or old Khartoum, Glorious alike the good man’s doom. Wide is Christ’s many-mansioned room, And endless Eden’s fadeless bloom, Rescued by Calvary’s mighty cost-- Shall not one precious soul be lost.

* * * * *

Sleep quietly, O pilgrim guest; Let no ill dreams disturb thy rest. Thou hast blessed many, surely thou art blessed; The merciful shall sleep with peaceful breast, So summer twilights slumber in the West.

* * * * *

A kindly voice and tapping at the door Salute him in the early morning; Lovingly spake woman’s urgent warning-- “Refresh thee for thy journey--the time is brief.” Too brief, alas, for us! but on that shore Where time is counted by the clock no more Thou art divine and Death’s sharp shock is o’er-- O the dread silence and its bitter grief! Speak low--thou canst not wake him--knock no more! For him shall many bleeding hearts be sore. He hears not, for his love-illumined eyes, Sealed to Earth’s scenes, open in other skies, High in his Master’s Court in Paradise. Love’s magic lyre is mute, But yesterday his spirit-stirring voice, Distinct and clear and mellow as a flute, Made our enraptured hearts in love rejoice. The accents of his tuneful tongue Sounded like harp by angel strung To melodies of Eden sung, On which his ravished audience hung: Chautauqua’s white and fluttering salute Shall greet him nevermore--that wondrous voice is mute. Far India’s pangs and perils now are o’er; The fordless midnight torrent’s threat’ning roar, Plague, famine, cobra’s fang and tiger’s leap, In sunless jungle or Himalayan steep, Confront the intrepid soul no more Nor vainly menace him with scath As he pursued the Galilean path To help the friendless sick or starving poor, For India’s wretched succor to secure; Blessed Virgin, see another son! Like Him of Calvary his course has run; Greeting of friends and voice of loving wife, The applause of eager listening crowds, Rending the air as tempests rend the clouds, Are naught to him God calls from earthly strife To rapturous peace of Eden’s blissful life.

Two nations in one common grief Lament the Gordons twain; Both perished in the flower of life, Swift-stricken, but not in vain; One in the storm of battle, One in his quiet room-- Clasp hands o’er your untimely slain, Hopkinsville and old Khartoum. Ye both have found eternal fame, Through magic power of a noble name.

Now face to face, and hand in hand, They talk in blest repose, ’Neath skies which know no deadly heat, Nor winter’s bitter snows; In the opulence of Eden, Where Life’s shining river flows, On the verdant banks of the River of Life, Where the tree of Calvary grows, Where Christ Himself is Gardener, Creator, Shepherd, Pardoner, And the sweetest flower in Heaven’s bower Is Duty’s thornless rose.

June 3, 1908.

THE WESTFIELD HOME.

(DEDICATED TO MRS. GROVER CLEVELAND, “WESTFIELD,” PRINCETON, N. J.)

The clamor of the clans is overawed, To mourn the dead made perfect with his God. Yet mourn we not the statesman’s death alone, His hearthstone’s glory far exceeds a throne.

Though crowned with civic honors is his name, Husband and Father have a dearer fame; Glory attends the leader to his rest, But most she mourns the man who knew him best.

Nor swiftest wind, nor farthest ocean’s foam, Visits a spot so dear to man as home; O, you who mourn an upright President, Mourn with a stricken wife in her lament.

Lament a loving husband, nobler name Than King or Czar or Emperor can claim. Love, not oppression, built for her a throne-- The tribute, gladly paid, was love alone.

She needs no hollow pomp of heraldry; God gave the wife the greatest majesty. Pure as Madonna, whose celestial blush Glows in the tints of Raphael’s magic brush, Gems of the heart and jewels of the mind Enriched the wife and all her acts refined, And with a native majesty endued “America’s uncrowned Queen of Womanhood,”[F] For Home is ever woman’s grandest sphere, Whose fruitful virtues make her memory dear, While vice and ruin curse the falling land, Where childhood lacks the mother’s plastic hand.

Through many changing years of good and ill, The name of Westfield shall be honored still. Pure homes compose the country’s best defense, The strongest, promptest, and of least expense, And round its coasts a surer guard will keep Than camps or forts or navies on the deep.

THE HARP IN THE AIR;

OR

A NIGHT WITH GERARDI IN SEELBACH’S ROOF-GARDEN.

(A Family Epistle from a Girl full of “Grace” to “Big Sis” in Cherokee Park.)

Dear Sis-- You’re losing fun galore, rusticating just at present, Although fresh eggs and buttermilk and country fare are pleasant. Music and mirth are in the air--not razors keen and sharp-- ’Tis the touch of old Gerardi, a-twanging on his harp.

Love rages in his silver flute; love pines upon his viol; Love pleads his cause with eloquence which lists to no denial; And he or she who will not bow to Cupid’s charming mother, I set him down a dullard--if you praise him, you’re another.

The crowds keep sailing upward upon the elevators, And the boys are very, very small and the girls all sweet potatoes; There are taffetas and mousselines, and laces and illusion, Like all the rainbows since the flood, crushed in one grand confusion.

Gerardi’s high on Seelbach’s Roof, with harp and flute and fiddle; Women divine crowd thickly round, and the devil’s in the middle. Did you ever hear a harpist like the Florentine, pray tell me? Like some sweet mocking-bird he soars, and his notes with rapture swell me.

The moon and stars shine bright aloft; “on such a night as this” Lorenzo fled with Jessica, and kisses rhymed with bliss, “As far as Belmont”--this hanging bower hath treasure Of beauteous girls whose voice and glance are redolent of pleasure.

The waiters hurry, skurry, with ring and clink of glasses, But the sparkling wines flow dimmer than the laughing eyes of lasses, And the myriad golden planets which glitter in yon skies Are eclipsed by eyes which soften at Gerardi’s melodies.

Sore heart of baffled hopes, against consolation proof, Hast thou found life’s gilded web of rotten warp and woof? Drink deep of the nepenthe of woman’s witching tongue, And hear the Florentine repeat the songs which Petrarch sung.

He culls the flowers of Paradise and squeezes their aroma With “Kentucky Home” and “Hearts and Flowers” and heavenly “La Paloma.” The very stars stoop down to kiss this old Italian wizard, While I--I just feel weak and faint and hollow round the gizzard.

I soar aloft among the stars, inhaling the aroma Of the silver songs of Florence and Madrid’s “La Paloma,” And “Love Me and the World is Mine” in melody divine Breathes from Gerardi’s harp-strings like bouquet of Roman wine.

And Weber’s “Invitation”--he pours it like old wine-- “Come right on in, oh stranger! the water’s very fine!” And oh! my willing soul would stay ’mid girls and song like this And dream and sigh itself away in everlasting bliss.

And there, within my vision’s range, I see a bearded “Colonel,” With jingling spurs--he fears no peers--it is the Courier-Journal. He mounts his foam-flecked war-steed, so spirited and gay; He’s going for a whirl to-night, around the “Milky Way.”

He sings the old camp-meeting songs of Democratic Zion And Salvation Army melodies in praise of Billy Bryan. And from New England’s silver springs to the glaciers of Alaska He calls on all to march behind bold Billy of Nebraska.

I guess he’ll skim its richest cream for Democratic butter, While many an unhorsed rival lies cussin’ in the gutter. His paragraphs are golden lamps which flare around a palace, And he pours the wine of genius from an overflowing chalice.

Strong-limbed, sound-winded “Dark Horse”--he’s “bearded like a pard”--(Good-bye, old Pard!) An expert he in “sharps and flats”--the match of old Gerardi; Both artists, those old boys, “by gum!” of copious variety-- Age can not wither, nor custom stale, their infinite--sobriety.

DEDICATION HYMN.

SUNG AT THE REOPENING OF THE METHODIST CHURCH, HOPKINSVILLE, KY., JANUARY 31, 1902.

Jesus, this earthly shrine once more Opes wide in majesty; The temple of our hearts anew We consecrate to thee. Redemption’s gates wide open swing, All hail, thou Galilean King!

Faith laid the eternal corner-stone, Hope built aloft the tower, And Love shall call thy children, Lord, At worship’s solemn hour. Redemption’s glorious song they sing, All hail, Life’s re-awakening Spring!

Here shall the Gospel’s splendor light The Christian’s upward way, From mortal to immortal life Unto the perfect day. The flowers and fruits of love we bring, All hail, Life’s re-awakening Spring!

Bring, Holy Dove, to this pure shrine The olive-branch of peace, The perfect fruits of righteousness, Love, joy, and rich increase. Through Heaven’s blue vault her armies sing, All hail, Life’s re-awakening Spring!

LYING IN STATE AT PRINCETON.

What means this sudden hush of grief, O, brother Americans? This solemn silence, deep though brief, ’Twixt the mustering of the clans-- Twixt Denver and Chicago-- The shouting of the captains And the thunder of the bands? Some for Taft are shouting And some for Bryan cheer; Both pause to weep for the mighty dead At Princeton on his bier. The solemn shadow of a pall Darkens each great convention hall, While patriots, and spoilsmen, too, The great quadrennial fight renew. All bring their wreathes of laurel leaf With tears of deep and honest grief; Roosevelt and Bryan both in reverence stand Beside that coffined form, once mighty in the land.

Shout, patriots and partisans, Each for your favorite son, But the people mourn with unfeigned grief For the chief whose race is run; No message has he for the Senate, No office to give away, But seldom the living wield the power Of him who is lifeless clay-- It is as if the sun went down In the splendor of the day.

Mourn, O, Venezuela, With long and loud lament, Lay in the dust thy beaming brow And weep with vesture rent; Remember how he stood for thee, Prepared to strike the blow, Teaching to South America The wisdom of Monroe: “Europe’s houses of royal blood Who claim a throne divine Shall forge no chains for freemen Upon Columbia’s shrine.”

Champion of all the sons of toil, He crushed the Anarch’s serpent coil, Made dark sedition quake with awe And taught it reverence for law. In cottage, court, or Senate hall, He held one rule--Be just to all. But still his heart-felt, chief desire Centered around his household fire, Where loving children, honored wife, Dear idols of domestic life, Diffused a cheering fragrance round And made of Westland hallowed ground.

“Four years more of Grover!” Was once a campaign song, The battle-hymn of millions In cadence loud and strong; Sang you, O minstrel, “Four years more”? Would you build a cage for the eagle to soar? “Four years more of Grover!” History shall proudly tell He won and wore his laurels well; “Four years more”--is all then over? Is all this anxious toil and strife But the short span of an infant’s life? Upon its nurse’s lap an hour to dandle And then--alas, the pity! Out, brief candle!

O friend, you do your manhood wrong, You do the noble dead one wrong, This just man’s, this wise statesman’s life Is nobler than the mimic strife. Of jesters in a Carnival, The painted clowns in mimic brawl, With wooden swords and buffoon song, With grinning madness rife, Driving the hopeless suicide To poison or the knife. I dare not look upon this form, From which the breath has fled, And say no life again shall warm The dust of Cleveland dead.

But the high recording Angel Sublimely calls above, In eloquent words of love, “A longer and a nobler date Is the man’s who at Westland lies in state, For Fame proclaims him truly great, Far, far above all earthly fate-- The tumult and dust of mortal fate. The verdict of posterity, Written on a people’s heart, shall be: “No brief Olympiad can measure His fame who is a nation’s treasure, And Cleveland’s years in Heaven shall be A blissful immortality.”

And from the far heights of the starry sky, Higher than Roman eagles fly, Comes the sweet echo, “Immortality!” And golden comets blazing through the spheres Of Heaven’s illimitable years Repeat the echo--“Immortality!” And in my ears still ringing seem The dulcet measures of a dream-- “Virtue shall never die.” In the pure gleam of God’s own eye It slakes its thirst from the clear stream Of Immortality.

IN THE MORNING.

[ANNIE MCREA, PADUCAH, 1902.]

I looked at the hills in the morning, Sweet valleys lay smiling between. Then I lifted my soul to the Blessed, Whose love in His mercies are seen. The sun brought a flush as of roses To the green earth, and Heaven so blue, But a cloud hid the beautiful sunlight, And the sparkle died out of the dew.

I prayed in my heart to the Savior That His love might illumine my way, That the sunshine and joy of His presence Would brighten each wearisome day; That strength for each duty be given, And each action be prompted by love, Till at last by the brightness of Heaven I should dwell with the angels above.

The joy that to me has been given In language can never be told, And my dream of the glory of Heaven Is of Christ in the gateway of gold; And I pray that no cloud may o’ershadow The faith that my heart holds as true, Like the darkening clouds in the morning, When the sparkle died out of the dew.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] McCool was shot the same night by Major Bassett’s men. He was a ruffian of the lowest type, and had terrorized his neighborhood for years.

[B] The fourteen lines following are of course a later interpolation.

[C] Paul Kruger, the unfortunate President of the Transvaal or South African Republic, offered $4,000,000 in diamonds to Leo XIII for his influence in the war with the British Government which overthrew his reign. The proffer was refused.

[D]

“This eloquent appeal stirs the soul like the soaring notes of the bugle.” --PRENTICE.

[E] On a flag presentation by citizens of Nashville to the troops.

[F] Honorable James A. McKenzie, late eloquent Congressman from the second Kentucky district, thus beautifully characterized Mrs. Cleveland.