Chapter 2

A peacock screamed of his beauty On that broken wall by the trees, Chiding his little mate, Spreading his fans in the breeze ... And you, with eyes of a bride, Knelt on the wall at my side, The deathless song in your mouth ... A million new tigers swept south ... As we laughed at the peacock, and died.

This is my vision in Springfield: Three times as high as the dome, Tiger-striped trees encircle the town, Golden geysers of foam;-- Though giant white parrots sail past, giving voice, Though I walk with Peace-of-the-Heart and rejoice.

The Merciful Hand

Written to Miss Alice L. F. Fitzgerald, Edith Cavell memorial nurse, going to the front.

Your fine white hand is Heaven's gift To cure the wide world, stricken sore, Bleeding at the breast and head, Tearing at its wounds once more.

Your white hand is a prophecy, A living hope that Christ shall come And make the nations merciful, Hating the bayonet and drum.

Each desperate burning brain you soothe, Or ghastly broken frame you bind, Brings one day nearer our bright goal, The love-alliance of mankind.

Wellesley. February, 1916.

Third Section

America at War with Germany, Beginning April, 1917

Our Mother Pocahontas

(Note:--Pocahontas is buried at Gravesend, England.)

"Pocahontas' body, lovely as a poplar, sweet as a red haw in November or a pawpaw in May--did she wonder? does she remember--in the dust--in the cool tombs?"

Carl Sandburg.

I

Powhatan was conqueror, Powhatan was emperor. He was akin to wolf and bee, Brother of the hickory tree. Son of the red lightning stroke And the lightning-shivered oak. His panther-grace bloomed in the maid Who laughed among the winds and played In excellence of savage pride, Wooing the forest, open-eyed, In the springtime, In Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas.

Her skin was rosy copper-red. And high she held her beauteous head. Her step was like a rustling leaf: Her heart a nest, untouched of grief. She dreamed of sons like Powhatan, And through her blood the lightning ran. Love-cries with the birds she sung, Birdlike In the grape-vine swung. The Forest, arching low and wide Gloried in its Indian bride. Rolfe, that dim adventurer Had not come a courtier. John Rolfe is not our ancestor. We rise from out the soul of her Held in native wonderland, While the sun's rays kissed her hand, In the springtime, In Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas.

II

She heard the forest talking, Across the sea came walking, And traced the paths of Daniel Boone, Then westward chased the painted moon. She passed with wild young feet On to Kansas wheat, On to the miners' west, The echoing cañons' guest, Then the Pacific sand, Waking, Thrilling, The midnight land....

On Adams street and Jefferson-- Flames coming up from the ground! On Jackson street and Washington-- Flames coming up from the ground! And why, until the dawning sun Are flames coming up from the ground? Because, through drowsy Springfield sped This red-skin queen, with feathered head, With winds and stars, that pay her court And leaping beasts, that make her sport; Because, gray Europe's rags august She tramples in the dust; Because we are her fields of corn; Because our fires are all reborn From her bosom's deathless embers, Flaming As she remembers The springtime And Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas.

III

We here renounce our Saxon blood. Tomorrow's hopes, an April flood Come roaring in. The newest race Is born of her resilient grace. We here renounce our Teuton pride: Our Norse and Slavic boasts have died: Italian dreams are swept away, And Celtic feuds are lost today....

She sings of lilacs, maples, wheat, Her own soil sings beneath her feet, Of springtime And Virginia, Our Mother, Pocahontas.

Concerning Emperors

I. God Send the Regicide

Would that the lying rulers of the world Were brought to block for tyrannies abhorred. Would that the sword of Cromwell and the Lord, The sword of Joshua and Gideon, Hewed hip and thigh the hosts of Midian. God send that ironside ere tomorrow's sun; Let Gabriel and Michael with him ride. God send the Regicide.

II. A Colloquial Reply: To Any Newsboy

If you lay for Iago at the stage door with a brick You have missed the moral of the play. He will have a midnight supper with Othello and his wife. They will chirp together and be gay. But the things Iago stands for must go down into the dust: Lying and suspicion and conspiracy and lust. And I cannot hate the Kaiser (I hope you understand.) Yet I chase the thing he stands for with a brickbat in my hand.

Niagara

I

Within the town of Buffalo Are prosy men with leaden eyes. Like ants they worry to and fro, (Important men, in Buffalo.) But only twenty miles away A deathless glory is at play: Niagara, Niagara.

The women buy their lace and cry:-- "O such a delicate design," And over ostrich feathers sigh, By counters there, in Buffalo. The children haunt the trinket shops, They buy false-faces, bells, and tops, Forgetting great Niagara.

Within the town of Buffalo Are stores with garnets, sapphires, pearls, Rubies, emeralds aglow,-- Opal chains in Buffalo, Cherished symbols of success. They value not your rainbow dress:-- Niagara, Niagara.

The shaggy meaning of her name This Buffalo, this recreant town, Sharps and lawyers prune and tame: Few pioneers in Buffalo; Except young lovers flushed and fleet And winds hallooing down the street: "Niagara, Niagara."

The journalists are sick of ink: Boy prodigals are lost in wine, By night where white and red lights blink, The eyes of Death, in Buffalo. And only twenty miles away Are starlit rocks and healing spray:-- Niagara, Niagara.

Above the town a tiny bird, A shining speck at sleepy dawn, Forgets the ant-hill so absurd, This self-important Buffalo. Descending twenty miles away He bathes his wings at break of day-- Niagara, Niagara.

II

What marching men of Buffalo Flood the streets in rash crusade? Fools-to-free-the-world, they go, Primeval hearts from Buffalo. Red cataracts of France today Awake, three thousand miles away An echo of Niagara, The cataract Niagara.

Mark Twain and Joan of Arc

When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade.

For she is there in armor clad, today, All the young poets of the wide world say.

Which of our freemen did she greet the first, Seeing him come against the fires accurst?

Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest, Leading to war our youngest and our best.

The Yankee to King Arthur's court returns. The sacred flag of Joan above him burns.

For she has called his soul from out the tomb. And where she stands, there he will stand till doom.

. . . . .

But I, I can but mourn, and mourn again At bloodshed caused by angels, saints, and men.

The Bankrupt Peace Maker

I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room. The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom. His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor. He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door. He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair. He looked through my heart to the mud that was there. Like a black-mailer hating his victim he spoke: "When I see all your squirming I laugh till I choke Singing of peace. Railing at battle. Soothing a handful with saccharine prattle. All the millions of earth have voted for fight. You are voting for talk, with hands lily white." He leaped to the floor, then grew seven feet high, Beautiful, terrible, scorn in his eye: The Devil Eternal, Apollo grown old, With beard of bright silver and garments of gold. "What will you do to end war for good? Will you stand by the book-case, be nailed to the wood?" I stretched out my arms. He drove the nails deep, Silently, coolly. The house was asleep, I hung for three years, forbidden to die. I seemed but a shadow the servants passed by. At the end of the time with hot irons he returned. "The Quitter Sublime" on my bosom he burned. As he seared me he hissed: "You are wearing away. The good angels tell me you leave them today. You want to come down from the nails in the door. The victor must hang there three hundred years more. If any prig-saint would outvote all mankind He must use an immortally resolute mind. Think what the saints of Benares endure, Through infinite birthpangs their courage is sure. Self-tortured, self-ruled, they build their powers high, Until they are gods, overmaster the sky." Then he pulled out the nails. He shouted "Come in." To heal me there stepped in a lady of sin. Her hand was in mine. We walked in the sun. She said: "Now forget them, the Saxon and Hun. You are dreary and aged and silly and weak. Let us smell the sweet groves. Let the summertime speak." We walked to the river. We swam there in state. I was a serpent. She was my mate. I forgot in the marsh, as I tumbled about, That trial in my room, where I did not hold out. Since I was a serpent, my mate seemed to me As a mermaiden seems to a fisher at sea, Or a whisky soaked girl to a whisky soaked king. I woke. She had turned to a ravening thing On the table--a buzzard with leperous head. She tore up my rhymes and my drawings. She said: "I am your own cheap bankrupt soul. Will you die for the nations, making them whole? We joy in the swamp and here we are gay. WILL YOU BRING YOUR FINE PEACE TO THE NATIONS TODAY?"

"This, My Song, Is Made for Kerensky"

(Being a Chant of the American Soap-Box and the Russian Revolution.)

O market square, O slattern place, Is glory in your slack disgrace? Plump quack doctors sell their pills, Gentle grafters sell brass watches, Silly anarchists yell their ills. Shall we be as weird as these? In the breezes nod and wheeze?

Heaven's mass is sung, Tomorrow's mass is sung In a spirit tongue By wind and dust and birds, The high mass of liberty, While wave the banners red: Sung round the soap-box, A mass for soldiers dead.

When you leave your faction in the once-loved hall, Like a true American tongue-lash them all, Stand then on the corner under starry skies And get you a gang of the worn and the wise. The soldiers of the Lord may be squeaky when they rally, The soldiers of the Lord are a queer little army, But the soldiers of the Lord, before the year is through, Will gather the whole nation, recruit all creation, To smite the hosts abhorred, and all the heavens renew-- Enforcing with the bayonet the thing the ages teach-- Free speech! Free speech!

Down with the Prussians, and all their works. Down with the Turks. Down with every army that fights against the soap-box, The Pericles, Socrates, Diogenes soap-box, The old Elijah, Jeremiah, John-the-Baptist soap-box, The Rousseau, Mirabeau, Danton soap-box, The Karl Marx, Henry George, Woodrow Wilson soap-box. We will make the wide earth safe for the soap-box, The everlasting foe of beastliness and tyranny, Platform of liberty:-- Magna Charta liberty, Andrew Jackson liberty, bleeding Kansas liberty, New-born Russian liberty:-- Battleship of thought, The round world over, Loved by the red-hearted, Loved by the broken-hearted, Fair young Amazon or proud tough rover, Loved by the lion, Loved by the lion, Loved by the lion, Feared by the fox.

The Russian Revolution is the world revolution. Death at the bedstead of every Kaiser knocks. The Hohenzollern army shall be felled like the ox. The fatal hour is striking in all the doomsday clocks. The while, by freedom's alchemy Beauty is born. Ring every sleigh-bell, ring every church bell, Blow the clear trumpet, and listen for the answer:-- The blast from the sky of the Gabriel horn.

Hail the Russian picture around the little box:-- Exiles, Troops in files, Generals in uniform, Mujiks in their smocks, And holy maiden soldiers who have cut away their locks. All the peoples and the nations in processions mad and great, Are rolling through the Russian Soul as through a city gate:-- As though it were a street of stars that paves the shadowy deep. And mighty Tolstoi leads the van along the stairway steep.

But now the people shout: "Hail to Kerensky, He hurled the tyrants out." And this my song is made for Kerensky, Prophet of the world-wide intolerable hope, There on the soap-box, seasoned, dauntless, There amid the Russian celestial kaleidoscope, Flags of liberty, rags and battlesmoke.

Moscow and Chicago! Come let us praise battling Kerensky, Bravo! Bravo! Comrade Kerensky the thunderstorm and rainbow! Comrade Kerensky, Bravo, Bravo!

August, 1917.

Fourth Section Tragedies, Comedies, and Dreams

Our Guardian Angels and Their Children

Where a river roars in rapids And doves in maples fret, Where peace has decked the pastures Our guardian angels met.

Long they had sought each other In God's mysterious name, Had climbed the solemn chaos tides Alone, with hope aflame:

Amid the demon deeps had wound By many a fearful way. As they beheld each other Their shout made glad the day.

No need of purse delayed them, No hand of friend or kin-- Nor menace of the bell and book, Nor fear of mortal sin.

You did not speak, my girl, At this, our parting hour. Long we held each other And watched their deeds of power.

They made a curious Eden. We saw that it was good. We thought with them in unison. We proudly understood

Their amaranth eternal, Their roses strange and fair, The asphodels they scattered Upon the living air.

They built a house of clouds With skilled immortal hands. They entered through the silver doors. Their wings were wedded brands.

I labored up the valley To granite mountains free. You hurried down the river To Zidon by the sea.

But at their place of meeting They keep a home and shrine. Your angel twists a purple flax, Then weaves a mantle fine.

My angel, her defender Upstanding, spreads the light On painted clouds of fancy And mists that touch the height.

Their sturdy babes speak kindly And fly and run with joy, Shepherding the helpless lambs-- A Grecian girl and boy.

These children visit Heaven Each year and make of worth All we planned and wrought in youth And all our tears on earth.

From books our God has written They sing of high desire. They turn the leaves in gentleness. Their wings are folded fire.

Epitaphs for Two Players

I. Edwin Booth

An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California. There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.

The youth played in the blear hotel. The rafters gleamed with glories strange. And winds of mourning Elsinore Howling at chance and fate and change; Voices of old Europe's dead Disturbed the new-built cattle-shed, The street, the high and solemn range.

The while the coyote barked afar All shadowy was the battlement. The ranch-boys huddled and grew pale, Youths who had come on riot bent. Forgot were pranks well-planned to sting. Behold there rose a ghostly king, And veils of smoking Hell were rent.

When Edwin Booth played Hamlet, then The camp-drab's tears could not but flow. Then Romance lived and breathed and burned. She felt the frail queen-mother's woe, Thrilled for Ophelia, fond and blind, And Hamlet, cruel, yet so kind, And moaned, his proud words hurt her so.

A haunted place, though new and harsh! The Indian and the Chinaman And Mexican were fain to learn What had subdued the Saxon clan. Why did they mumble, brood, and stare When the court-players curtsied fair And the Gonzago scene began?

And ah, the duel scene at last! They cheered their prince with stamping feet. A death-fight in a palace! Yea, With velvet hangings incomplete, A pasteboard throne, a pasteboard crown, And yet a monarch tumbled down, A brave lad fought in splendor meet.

Was it a palace or a barn? Immortal as the gods he flamed. There in his last great hour of rage His foil avenged a mother shamed. In duty stern, in purpose deep He drove that king to his black sleep And died, all godlike and untamed.

. . . . .

I was not born in that far day. I hear the tale from heads grown white. And then I walk that earlier street, The mining camp at candle-light. I meet him wrapped in musings fine Upon some whispering silvery line He yet resolves to speak aright.

II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian

In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick, the king's jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.

Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlorn Beneath the battlements of Elsinore. Where are those oddities and capers now That used to "set the table on a roar"?

And do his bauble-bells beyond the clouds Ring out, and shake with mirth the planets bright? No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer, But silence broods on Elsinore tonight.

That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old, Upon her battered doll's staunch bosom weeps. ("O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.") With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps.

Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help, Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled. For every game they started out to play Yorick invented, in the days of old.

The times are out of joint! O cursed spite! The noble jester Yorick comes no more. And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish pride By some lone turret-stair of Elsinore.

Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress

In "Man's Genesis", "The Wild Girl of the Sierras", "The Wharf Rat", "A Girl of the Paris Streets", etc.

I

The arts are old, old as the stones From which man carved the sphinx austere. Deep are the days the old arts bring: Ten thousand years of yesteryear.

II

She is madonna in an art As wild and young as her sweet eyes: A frail dew flower from this hot lamp That is today's divine surprise.

Despite raw lights and gloating mobs She is not seared: a picture still: Rare silk the fine director's hand May weave for magic if he will.

When ancient films have crumbled like Papyrus rolls of Egypt's day, Let the dust speak: "Her pride was high, All but the artist hid away:

"Kin to the myriad artist clan Since time began, whose work is dear." The deep new ages come with her, Tomorrow's years of yesteryear.

Two Old Crows

Two old crows sat on a fence rail, Two old crows sat on a fence rail, Thinking of effect and cause, Of weeds and flowers, And nature's laws. One of them muttered, one of them stuttered, One of them stuttered, one of them muttered. Each of them thought far more than he uttered. One crow asked the other crow a riddle. One crow asked the other crow a riddle: The muttering crow Asked the stuttering crow, "Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle? Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?" "Bee-cause," said the other crow, "Bee-cause, B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause."

Just then a bee flew close to their rail:-- "Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ." And those two black crows Turned pale, And away those crows did sail. Why? B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause. B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause. "Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZ."

The Drunkard's Funeral

"Yes," said the sister with the little pinched face, The busy little sister with the funny little tract:-- "This is the climax, the grand fifth act. There rides the proud, at the finish of his race. There goes the hearse, the mourners cry, The respectable hearse goes slowly by. The wife of the dead has money in her purse, The children are in health, so it might have been worse. That fellow in the coffin led a life most foul. A fierce defender of the red bar-tender, At the church he would rail, At the preacher he would howl. He planted every deviltry to see it grow. He wasted half his income on the lewd and the low. He would trade engender for the red bar-tender, He would homage render to the red bar-tender, And in ultimate surrender to the red bar-tender, He died of the tremens, as crazy as a loon, And his friends were glad, when the end came soon. There goes the hearse, the mourners cry, The respectable hearse goes slowly by. And now, good friends, since you see how it ends, Let each nation-mender flay the red bar-tender,-- Abhor The transgression Of the red bar-tender,-- Ruin The profession Of the red bar-tender: Force him into business where his work does good. Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood, Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood.

"The moral, The conclusion, The verdict now you know:-- 'The saloon must go, The saloon must go, The saloon, The saloon, The saloon, Must go.'"

"You are right, little sister," I said to myself, "You are right, good sister," I said. "Though you wear a mussy bonnet On your little gray head, You are right, little sister," I said.

The Raft

The whole world on a raft! A King is here, The record of his grandeur but a smear. Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate That makes the band upon his whims to wait? Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled. Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild Until they shower their pennies like spring rain That he may preach upon the Spanish main. What landlord, lawyer, voodoo-man has yet A better native right to make men sweat?

The whole world on a raft! A Duke is here At sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer. Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes, In life's skullduggery he takes the prize-- Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams. Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams. The sandbar sings in moonlit veils of foam. A candle shines from one lone cabin home. The waves reflect it like a drunken star. A banjo and a hymn are heard afar. No solace on the lazy shore excels The Duke's blue castle with its steamer-bells. The floor is running water, and the roof The stars' brocade with cloudy warp and woof.

And on past sorghum fields the current swings. To Christian Jim the Mississippi sings. This prankish wave-swept barque has won its place, A ship of jesting for the human race. But do you laugh when Jim bows down forlorn His babe, his deaf Elizabeth to mourn? And do you laugh, when Jim, from Huck apart Gropes through the rain and night with breaking heart?

But now that imp is here and we can smile, Jim's child and guardian this long-drawn while. With knife and heavy gun, a hunter keen, He stops for squirrel-meat in islands green. The eternal gamin, sleeping half the day, Then stripped and sleek, a river-fish at play. And then well-dressed, ashore, he sees life spilt. The river-bank is one bright crazy-quilt Of patch-work dream, of wrath more red than lust, Where long-haired feudist Hotspurs bite the dust ... This Huckleberry Finn is but the race, America, still lovely in disgrace, New childhood of the world, that blunders on And wonders at the darkness and the dawn, The poor damned human race, still unimpressed With its damnation, all its gamin breast Chorteling at dukes and kings with nigger Jim, Then plotting for their fall, with jestings grim.