Chapter 16

Wise men there are--wise in the eyes of men-- Who cram their hollow heads with ancient wit Cackled in Carthage, babbled in Babylon, Gabbled in Greece and riddled in old Rome, And never coin a farthing of their own. Wise men there are--for owls are counted wise-- Who love to leave the lamp-lit paths behind, And chase the shapeless shadow of a doubt. Too wise to learn, too wise to see the truth, E'en though it glow and sparkle like a gem On God's outstretched forefinger for all time. These have one argument, and only one, For good or evil, earth or jeweled heaven-- The olden, owlish argument of doubt. Ah, he alone is wise who ever stands Armed _cap-a-pié_ with God's eternal truth. Where _Grex_ is _Rex_ God help the hapless land. The yelping curs that bay the rising moon Are not more clamorous, and the fitful winds Not more inconstant. List the croaking frogs That raise their heads in fen or stagnant pool, Shouting at eve their wisdom from the mud. Beside the braying, bleating, bellowing mob, Their jarring discords are sweet harmony. The headless herd are but a noise of wind; Sometimes, alas, the wild tornado's roar. As full of freaks as curs are full of fleas, Like gnats they swarm, like flies they buzz and breed. Thought works in silence: Wisdom stops to think. No ass so obstinate as ignorance. Oft as they seize the ship of state, behold-- Overboard goes all ballast and they crowd To blast or breeze or hurricane full sail, Each dunce a pilot and a captain too. How often cross-eyed Justice hits amiss! Doomed by Athenian mobs to banishment, See Aristides leave the land he saved: Wisdom his fault and justice his offense. See Caesar crowned a god and Tully slain; See Paris red with riot and noble blood, A king beheaded and a monster throned,-- King Drone, flat fool that weather-cocked all winds, Gulped gall and vinegar and smacked it wine, Wig-wagged his way from gilded _Oeil de Boeuf_ Through mob and maelstrom to the guillotine. Chateaus up-blazing torch the doom of France, While human wolves howl ruin round their walls. Contention hisses from a million mouths, And from ten thousand muttering craters smokes The smell of sulphur. Gaul becomes a ghoul; While _Parlez-Tous_ in hot palaver holds Hubbub _ad_ Bedlam--Pandemonium thriced. There, voices drowning voice with frantic cries, Discord demented flaps her ruffled wings And shrieks delirium to her screeching brood. Sneer-lipped, hawk-eyed, wolf-tongued oraculars-- Wise-wigs, Girondins, frothing Jacobins-- Reason to madness run, tongues venom-tanged-- Howl chaos all with one united throat. Maelstrom of madness, lazar-howled, hag-shrilled! Quack quackles quack; all doctors disagree, While Doctor Guillotine's huge scalpel heads Hell-dogs beheading helpless innocents. The very babes bark rabies. Journalism, Moon-mad, green-eyed, hound-scented, _lupus_-tongued On howls the pack and smells her bread in blood.

_O Tempus ferax insanorum, Heu!_ Physicked with metaphysics, pamphleteered Into paroxysms, bruited into brutes. And metamorphosed into murder, lo Men lapse to savagery and turn to beasts. Hell-broth hag-boiled: a mad Theroigne is queen-- Mounts to the brazen throne of Harlotdom, Queen of the cursed, and flares her cannon-torch. Watch-wolves, lean-jawed, fore-smelling feast of blood, In packs on Paris howl from farthest France. Discord demented bursts the bounds of _Dis_; Mad Murder raves and Horror holds her hell. Hades up-heaves her whelps. In human forms Up-flare the Furies, serpent-haired and grin Horrid with bloody jaws. Scaled reptiles crawl From slum and sewer, slimy, coil on coil-- Danton, dark beast, that builded for himself A monument of quicksand limed with blood; Horse-leech Marat, blear-eyed, vile vulture born; Fair Charlotte's dagger robbed the guillotine! Black-biled, green-visaged, traitorous Robespierre, That buzzard-beaked, hawk-taloned octopus Who played with pale poltroonery of men, And drank the cup of flattery till he reeled; Hell's pope uncrowned, immortal for a day. Tinville, relentless dog of murder-plot-- Doom-judge whose trembling victims were foredoomed; Maillard who sucked his milk from Murder's dugs, Twin-whelp to Theroigne, captain of the hags; Jourdan, red-grizzled mule-son blotched with blood, Headsman forever "famous-infamous;" Keen, hag-whelped journalist Camille Desmoulins, Who with a hundred other of his ilk Hissed on the hounds and smeared his bread with blood; Lebon, man-fiend, that vampire-ghoul who drank Hot blood of headless victims, and compelled Mothers to view the murder of their babes; At whose red guillotine, in Arras raised, The pipe and fiddle played at every fall Of ghastly head the ribald "_Ca Ira_;" And fiends unnamed and nameless brutes untaled.

Petticoat-patriots _sans bas_, and _Sans-culottes_, Rampant in rags and hunger-toothed uproar Paris the proud. With Jacobin clubs they club The head of France till all her brains are out. Hired murder hunts in packs. Men murder-mad Slay for the love of murder. Gloomy night, Hiding her stars lest they in pity fall, Beholds a thousand guiltless, trembling souls-- Men, women, children--forth from prisons flung In flare of torch and glare of demon eyes, Among the howling wolves and lazar-hags, Crying for mercy where no mercy is, Hewed down in heaps by bloody ax and pike. From their grim battlements the imps of hell Indignant hissed and damped their fires with tears; And Manhood from the watch-towers of the world Cried in the name of Human Nature--"Hold!" As well the drifting snail might strive to still The volcan-heaved, storm-struck, moon-maddened sea. Blood-frenzied beasts demand their feast of blood. _"Liberty--Equality--Fraternity!"_--the cry Of blood-hounds baying on the track of babes. Queen innocent beheaded--mother-queen! And queenly Roland--Nature's queenly queen! Aye, at the foot of bloody guillotine She stood a heroine: before her loomed The Goddess of Liberty--in statue-stone. Queen Roland saw, and spake the words that ring Along the centuries--_"O Liberty! What crimes are committed in thy name!"_--and died. And when the headsman raised her severed head To hell-dogs shouting _"Vive la Liberté,"_ Godlike disdain still sparkled in her eyes. Grim Hell herself in pity stood aghast, Clanged shut her doors and stopped her ears with pitch.

See the wise ruler--father of Brazil, Who struck the shackles from a million slaves, Whose reign was peace and love and gentleness, Despoiled and driven from the land he loves. See jealous Labor strike the hand that feeds, And burn the mills that grind his daily bread; Yea, in blind rage denounce the very laws That shield his home from Europe's pauperdom. See the grieved farmer raise his horny hand And splutter garlic. Hear the demagogues Fist-maul the wind and weather-cock the crowd, With brazen foreheads full of empty noise Out-bellowing the bulls of Bashan; and behold Shrill, wrinkled Amazons in high harangue Stamp their flat feet and gnash their toothless gums, And flaunt their petticoat-flag of "Liberty." Hear the old bandogs of the Daily Press, Chained to their party posts, or fetter-free And running amuck against old party creeds, On-howl their packs and glory in the fight. See mangy curs, whose editorial ears Prick to all winds to catch the popular breeze, Slang-whanging yelp, and froth and snap and snarl, And sniff the gutters for their daily food. And these--are they our prophets and our priests? Hurra!--Hurra!--Hurra!--for "Liberty!" Flaunt the red flag and flutter the petticoat; Ran-tan the drums and let the bugles bray, The eagle scream and sixty million throats Sing Yankee-doodle--Yankee-doodle-doo.

The state is sick and every fool a quack Running with pills and plasters and sure-cures, And every pill and package labelled _Ism_. See Liberty run mad, and Anarchy, Bearing the torch, the dagger and the bomb Red-mouthed run riot in her sacred name Hear mobs of idlers cry--_"Equality! Let all men share alike: divide, divide!"_ Butting their heads against the granite rocks Of Nature and the eternal laws of God. Pull down the toiler, lift the idler up! Despoil the frugal, crown the negligent! Offer rewards to idleness and crime! And pay a premium for improvidence! Fools, can your wolfish cries repeal the laws Of God engraven on the granite hills, Written in every Wrinkle of the earth, On every plain, on every mountain-top,-- Nay, blazened o'er all the boundless Universe On every jewel that sparkles on God's throne? And can ye rectify God's mighty plan? O pygmies, can ye measure God himself? Aye, would ye measure God's almighty power, Go--crack Earth's bones and heave the granite hills; Measure the ocean in a drinking-cup; Measure Eternity by the town-clock; Nay, with a yard-stick measure the Universe: Measure for measure. Measure God by man! "Fools to the midmost marrow of your bones!" O buzzing flies and gnats! Ye cannot strike One little atom from God's Universe, Or warp the laws of Nature by a hair!

His loving eye sees through all evil good. Man's life is but a breath; but lo with Him To-day, to-morrow, yesterday, are one One in the cycle of eternal time That hath beginning none, nor any end. The Earth revolving round her sire, the Sun, Measures the flying year of mortal man, But who shall measure God's eternal year? The unbegotten, everlasting God; Unmade, eternal, all-pervading power; Center and source of all things, high and low, Maker and master of the Universe-- Ah, nay, the mighty Universe itself! All things in nature bear God's signature So plainly writ that he who runs may read. We know not what life is; how may we know Death--what it is, or what may lie beyond? Whoso forgets his God forgets himself.

Let me not blindly judge my brother man: There is but one just judge; there is but one Who knows the hearts of men. Him let us praise-- Not with blind prayer, or idle, sounding psalms-- But let us daily in our daily works, Praise God by righteous deeds and brother-love. Go forth into the forest and observe-- For men believe their eyes and doubt their ears-- The creeping vine, the shrub, the lowly bush, The dwarfed and stunted trees, the bent and bowed, And here and there a lordly oak or elm, And o'er them all a tall and princely pine. All struggle upward, but the many fail; The low dwarfed by the shadows of the great, The stronger basking in the genial sun. Observe the myriad fishes of the seas-- The mammoths and the minnows of the deep. Behold the eagle and the little wren, The condor on his cliff, the pigeon-hawk, The teal, the coot, the broad-winged albatross. Turn to the beasts in forest and in field-- The lion, the lynx, the mammoth and the mouse, The sheep, the goat, the bullock and the horse, The fierce gorillas and the chattering apes-- Progenitors and prototypes of man. Not only differences in genera find, But grades in every kind and every class.

I would not doom to serfdom or to toil One race, one caste, one class, or any man: Give every honest man an honest chance; Protect alike the rich man and the poor; Let not the toiler live upon a crust While Croesus' bread is buttered on both sides.

O people's king and shepherd, thronèd Law, Strike down the monsters of Monopoly. Lift up thy club, O mighty Hercules! Behold thy "Labors" yet unfinished are: Tear off thy Nessus shirt and bare thine arms. The Numean lion fattens on our flocks; The Lernean Hydra coils around our farms, Our towns, our mills, our mines, our factories; The triple monster Geryon lives again, Grown quadruple, and over all our plains And thousand hills his fattening oxen feed. Stymphalean buzzards ravage round our fields; The Augean stables reeking stench the land; The hundred-headed monster Cerberus, That throttled Greece and ravaged hapless France, Hath broke from hell and howls for human blood. Lift up thy knotted club, O Hercules! Strike swift and sure: crush down the Hydra's heads; Throttle the Numean lion: strike! nor spare The monster Geryon or the buzzard-beaks. Clean the Augean stables if thou can'st; But hurl the hundred-headed monster down Headlong to Hades: chain him; make thee sure He shall not burst the bonds of hell again.

To you, O chosen makers of the laws, The nation looks--and shall it look in vain? Will ye sit idle, or in idle wind Blow out your zeal, and crack your party whips, Or drivel dotage, while the crisis cries-- While all around the dark horizon loom Clouds thunder-capped that bode a hurricane? Sleep ye as slept the "Notables" of France, While under them an hundred Ætnas hissed And spluttered sulphur, gathering for the shock? Be ye our Hercules--and Lynceus-eyed: Still ye the storm or ere the storm begin-- Ere "Liberty" take Justice by the throat, And run moon-mad a Malay murder-muck, Throttle the "Trusts", and crush the coils combined That crack our bones and fatten on our fields. Strike down the hissing heads of Anarchy: Strike swift and hard, nor parley with the fiend Mothered of hell and father of all fiends-- Fell monster with an hundred bloody mouths, And every mouth an hundred hissing tongues, And every tongue drips venom from his fangs.

Protect the toiling millions by just laws; Let honest labor find its sure reward; Let willing hands find work and honest bread. So frame the laws that every honest man May find his home protected and his craft. Let Liberty and Order walk hand in hand With Justice: happy Trio! let them rule. Put up the bars: bar out the pauper swarms Alike from Asia's huts and Europe's hives. Let charity begin at home. In vain Will we bar out the swarms from Europe's hives And Asia's countless lepers, if our ports Are free to all the products of their hands. Put up the bars: bar out the pauper hordes; Bar out their products that compete with ours: Give honest toil at home an honest chance: Build up our own and keep our coin at home. In vain our mines pour forth their wealth of gold And silver, if by every ship it sail For London, Paris, Birmingham or Berlin.

We have been prodigal. The days are past When virgin acres wanted willing hands, When fertile empires lay in wilderness Waiting the teeming millions of the world. Lo where the Indian and the bison roamed--Lords of the prairies boundless as the sea--But twenty years ago, behold the change! Homesteads and hamlets, flocks and lowing herds, Railways and cities, miles of rustling corn, And leagues on leagues of waving fields of gold.

Let wise men teach and honest men proclaim The mutual dependence of the rich and poor; For if the wealthy profit by the poor, The poor man profits ever by the rich. Wealth builds our churches and our colleges; Wealth builds the mills that grind the million's bread; Wealth builds the factories that clothe the poor; Wealth builds the railways and the million ride. God hath so willed the toiling millions reap The golden harvest that the rich have sown. Six feet of earth make all men even; lo The toilers are the rich man's heirs at last. But there be men would grumble at their lot, Even if it were a corner-lot on Broadway. We stand upon the shoulders of the past. Who knoweth not the past how may he know The folly or the wisdom of to-day? For by comparison we weigh the good, And by comparison all evil weigh. "What can we reason, but from what we know?" Let honest men look back an hundred years-- Nay, fifty, and behold the wondrous change. Where wooden tubs like sluggards sailed the sea, Steam-ships of steel like greyhounds course the main; Where lumbering coach and wain and wagon toiled Through mud and mire and rut and rugged way, The cushioned train a mile a minute flies. Then by slow coach the message went and came, But now by lightning bridled to man's use We flash our silent thoughts from sea to sea; Nay, under ocean's depths from shore to shore; And talk by telephone to distant ears. The dreams of yesterday are deeds to-day. Our frugal mothers spun with tedious toil, And wove the homespun cloth for all their fold; Their needles plied by weary fingers sewed. Behold, the humming factory spins and weaves, The singing "Singer" sews with lightning speed. Our fathers sowed their little fields by hand, And reaped with bended sickles and bent backs; By hand they bound the sheaves of wheat and rye; With flails they threshed and winnowed in the wind. Now by machines we sow and reap and bind; By steam we thresh and sack the bounteous grain. These are but few of all the million ways Whereby man's toil is lightened and he hath gained Tenfold in comfort, luxury and ease. For these and more the millions that enjoy May thank the wise and wealthy few who gave. If the rich are richer the poor are richer too. A narrow demagogue I count the man Who cries to-day--_"Progress and Poverty"_; As if a thousand added comforts made The poor man poorer and his lot the worse. 'Tis but a new toot on the same old horn That brayed in ancient Greece and Babylon, And now amid the ruined walls of Rome Lies buried fathoms deep in dead men's dust.

_"Progress and Poverty!"_ Man, hast thou traced The blood that throbs commingled in thy veins? Over thy shoulder hast thou cast a glance On thine old Celtic-Saxon-Norman sires-- Huddled in squalid huts on beds of straw? Barefooted churls swine-herding in the fens, Bare-legged cowherds in their cow-skin coats, Wearing the collars of their Thane or Eorl, His serfs, his slaves, even as thy dog is thine; Harried by hunger, pillaged, ravaged, slain, By Viking robbers and the warring Jarls; Oft glad like hunted swine to fill their maws With herbs and acorns. _"Progress and Poverty!"_ The humblest laborer in our mills or mines Is royal Thane beside those slavish churls; The frugal farmer in our land to-day Lives better than their kings--himself a king.

Lo every age refutes old errors still, And still begets new errors for the next; But all the creeds of politics or priests Can't make one error truth, one truth a lie. There is no religion higher than the truth; Men make the creeds, but God ordains the law.

Above all cant, all arguments of men, Above all superstitions, old or new, Above all creeds of every age and clime, Stands the eternal truth--the creed of creeds.

Sweet is the lute to him who hath not heard The prattle of his children at his knees: Ah, he is rich indeed whose humble home Contains a frugal wife and sweet content.

HELOISE

I saw a light on yester-night-- A low light on the misty lea; The stars were dim and silence grim Sat brooding on the sullen sea.

From out the silence came a voice-- A voice that thrilled me through and through, And said, "Alas, is this your choice? For he is false and I was true."

And in my ears the passing years Will sadly whisper words of rue: Forget--and yet--can I forget That one was false and one was true?

CHANGE

Change is the order of the universe. Worlds wax and wane; suns die and stars are born. Two atoms of cosmic dust unite, cohere-- And lo the building of a world begun. On all things--high or low, or great or small-- Earth, ocean, mountain, mammoth, midge and man, On mind and matter--lo perpetual change-- God's fiat--stamped! The very bones of man Change as he grows from infancy to age. His loves, his hates, his tastes, his fancies, change. His blood and brawn demand a change of food; His mind as well: the sweetest harp of heaven Were hateful if it played the selfsame tune Forever, and the fairest flower that gems The garden, if it bloomed throughout the year, Would blush unsought. The most delicious fruits Pall on our palate if we taste too oft, And Hyblan honey turns to bitter gall. Perpetual winter is a reign of gloom; Perpetual summer hardly pleases more. Behold the Esquimau--the Hottentot: This doomed to regions of perpetual ice, And that to constant summer's heat and glow: Inferior both, both gloomy and unblessed. The home of happiness and plenty lies Where autumn follows summer and the breath Of spring melts into rills the winter's snows. How gladly, after summer's blazing suns, We hail the autumn frosts and autumn fruits: How blithesome seems the fall of feathery snow When winter comes with merry clang of bells: And after winter's reign of ice and storm How glad we hail the robins of the spring. For God hath planted in the hearts of men The love of change, and sown the seeds of change In earth and air and sea and shoreless space. Day follows night and night the dying day, And every day--and every hour--is change; From when on dewy hills the rising dawn Sprinkles her mists of silver in the east, Till in the west the golden dust up-wheels Behind the chariot of the setting sun; From when above the hills the evening star Sparkles a diamond 'mong the grains of gold, Until her last faint flicker on the sea. The voices of the hoar and hurrying years Cry from the silence--"Change!--perpetual Change!" Man's heart responding throbs--"Perpetual Change," And grinds like a mill-stone: wanting grists of change It grinds and grinds upon its troubled self.

Behold the flowers that spring and bloom and fade. Behold the blooming maid: the song of larks Is in her warbling throat; the blue of heaven Is in her eyes; her loosened tresses fall A shower of gold on shoulders tinged with rose; Her form a seraph's and her gladsome face A benediction. Lo beneath her feet The loving crocus bursts in sudden bloom. Fawn-eyed and full of gentleness she moves-- A sunbeam on the lawn. The hearts of men Follow her footsteps. He whose sinewy arms Might burst through bars of steel like bands of straw, Caught in the net of her unloosened hair, A helpless prisoner lies and loves his chains. Blow, ye soft winds, from sandal-shaded isle, And bring the _mogra's_ breath and orange-bloom.

Fly, fleet-winged doves, to Ponce de Leon's spring, And in your bills bring her the pearls of youth; For lo the fingers of relentless Time Weave threads of silver in among the gold, And seam her face with pain and carking care, Till, bent and bowed, the shriveled hands of Death Reach from the welcome grave and draw her in.

FIDO

Hark, the storm is raging high; Beat the breakers on the coast, And the wintry waters cry Like the wailing of a ghost.

On the rugged coast of Maine Stands the frugal farmer's cot: What if drive the sleet and rain? John and Hannah heed it not.

On the hills the mad winds roar, And the tall pines toss and groan; Round the headland--down the shore-- Stormy spirits shriek and moan.

Inky darkness wraps the sky; Not a glimpse of moon or star; And the stormy-petrels cry Out along the harbor-bar.

Seated by their blazing hearth-- John and Hannah--snug and warm-- What if darkness wrap the earth? Drive the sleet and howl the storm!

Let the stormy-petrels fly! Let the moaning breakers beat! Hark! I hear an infant cry And the patter of baby-feet:

And Hannah listened as she spoke, But only heard the driving rain, As on the cottage-roof it broke And pattered on the window-pane.

And she sat knitting by the fire While pussy frolicked at her feet; And ever roared the tempest higher, And ever harder the hailstones beat.

"Hark! the cry--it comes again!" "Nay, it is the winds that wail, And the patter on the pane Of the driving sleet and hail"

Replied the farmer as he piled The crackling hemlock on the coals, And lit his corn-cob pipe and smiled The smile of sweet contented souls.

Aye, let the storm rave o'er the earth; Their kine are snug in barn and byre; The apples sputter on the hearth, The cider simmers on the fire.

But once again at midnight high, She heard in dreams, through wind and sleet, An infant moan, an infant cry, And the patter of baby-feet.

Half-waking from her dreams she turned And heard the driving wind and rain; Still on the hearth the fagots burned, And hail beat on the window-pane.

John rose as wont, at dawn of day; The earth was white with frozen sleet; And lo his faithful Fido lay Dead on the door-stone at his feet.

THE REIGN OF REASON