Part 14

We are the hard-luck folk, who strove Zealously, but in vain: We lost and lost, while our comrades throve, And still we lost again.

We are the doubles of those whose way Was festal with fruits and flowers; Body and brain we were sound as they, But the prizes were not ours.

A mighty army our full ranks make; We shake the graves as we go; The sudden stroke and the slow heartbreak, They both have brought us low.

And while we are laying life’s sword aside, Spent and dishonored and sad, Our epitaph this, when once we have died, “The weak lie here, and the bad.”

We wonder if this can be really the close, Life’s fever cooled by death’s trance; And we cry, though it seem to our dearest of foes, “God give us another chance!”

The ease of the poem, the crisp Anglo-Saxon which it uses, the forthright stating of the case for the weaker side, and the humanity underlying it, are admirable; and, further, from an artistic standpoint it is a stronger piece of work than it would have been had its philosophy chimed better with modern thinking. The unsuccessful are speaking; their view-point and not necessarily the author’s is presented. To have tacked on a clause additional, with a hint of the inner laws that govern success, might have saved the philosophy from impeachment as to falling back upon Providence; but it would have been a decidedly false note put into the mouth of the unsuccessful. We may say at once that

The men ten-talented who still Strangely missed of the goal,

were the Amiels who suffered paralysis of the will to benumb them, rather than those whom it was the will of the Creator to “harrow in soul;” but it would scarcely be expected of the Amiels themselves to analyze their deficiencies thus openly to the multitude. Impotence of will, however, is not at the root of all failure; who can deny that there is

The clan of those whose kin Were a millstone dragging them down;

that there are

The hard-luck folk who strove Zealously, but in vain;

and

The seeming-able, who all but scored,

who put forth apparently more effort to score than did many of the victors, but who were waylaid by some invidious circumstance, or who failed to “grasp the skirts of happy chance” as the flying goddess passed them?

Mr. Burton’s poem is too broad to discuss in the limits of a brief sketch; it would furnish a text for the sociologist. All the complexities of modern conditions lie back of its plaint, which becomes an arraignment. One feels that if God be not within the shadow, he should at least have given Responsibility and Will surer means of keeping watch above their own. The Omaric figure of the Wheel “busied with despite” rises before one as a symbol of this whirling strife where only the strongest may cling, and where the swift revolving thing, having thrown the weakest off, makes of them a cushion for its turning; or, in Omar’s phrase, “It speeds to grind upon the open wound.”

This is the apparent fact; but within it as axle to the Wheel is the law upon which it rotates, the law of individual choice. Each was given his supreme gift; his word was whispered to him; if he failed to hear it, or heed it, or express it in the predestined way, the flying Wheel casts him to the void, but the law is not impeached thereby. Outside this law, however, as spokes to the Wheel, are the innumerable radiations of human laws and conditions, so that one may scarcely obey the primary command of his nature if he would, and often loses sight of it as the principle upon which his destiny is revolving. Mr. Burton’s poem goes beyond the cold-blooded outlook upon the unsuccessful as merely those who are cast from the Wheel, and presents the truer view that they are by no means always the incompetents or degenerates:

We are the doubles of those whose way Was festal with fruits and flowers; Body and brain we were sound as they, But the prizes were not ours.

Why? Let the sociologist or the psychologist determine; in the mean time we have the quickened sympathy that follows upon the poem.

_Message and Melody_ has a group of songs turning upon some music theme; of these “Second Fiddle” is the most notable. “In A Theatre” discloses a narrative vein and shows that Mr. Burton has a keen sense of the dramatic in daily life. He has for some time been working upon a group of narrative poems with a prologue connecting them, which are soon to be issued, and which, judging from the fugitive examples in his other volumes, will disclose an interesting phase of his talent.

To leave the impression of Mr. Burton’s work that is most characteristic,—the impression of its tenderness, its sympathy, its emphasis upon the essential things,—one can scarcely do better than to summarize it in his own well-known lines, “The Human Touch”:

High thoughts and noble in all lands Help me; my soul is fed by such. But ah, the touch of lips and hands,— The human touch! Warm, vital, close, life’s symbols dear,— These need I most, and now, and here.

XIV

CLINTON SCOLLARD

THAT genial and delicate satirist, Miss Agnes Repplier, laments in one of her clever essays that our modern poets incline to dwell upon the sombre side of things, and hence contribute so little to the cheer of life. One cannot but wonder what poetry Miss Repplier has been reading, for our own acquaintance with the song of to-day has been so much the opposite that it is difficult on the spur of the moment to recall any poet of the present group in America whose work is not in the main wholesome and heartening and who is not facing toward the sun. To be sure, there must be the relief of shade, lest the light glare; but they who journey to Castaly are in general cheerful wayfarers, taking gladly the gift of the hours and rendering the Giver a song, and among the blithest of them is Clinton Scollard, to whom life is always smilingly envisaged, and to whom, whether spring or autumn betide, it is still the “sweet o’ the year.”

If Mr. Scollard’s way has ever been “through dolor and dread, over crags and morasses,” he is too much the optimist to let the fact be known, or, better still, to recognize it as such; for we see what our own eyes reflect from within, and it is certain that Mr. Scollard’s outlook upon life is governed by the inherent conviction that her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace. Possibly this conviction would have more value to the less assured nature if the testimony of its winning were set down as a strength-giving force by the way, as we incline in daily life to undervalue the amiability and cheer which are matters of birthright rather than of overcoming; but this is a standard narrow in itself and wide of the issue at stake, which is so much cheer _per se_, whether the fortunate dower of nature, or the alchemic result of experience; nor may one draw too definite a line between the temperamental gift and the spiritual acquisition, especially when the psychology of literature furnishes the only data. It is sufficient to note the result in the work, and its bearing upon the art which shapes it. To Mr. Scollard, then, “Life’s enchanted cup” not only “sparkles at the brim;” but when he lifts it to his lips a rainbow arches in its depths, and he has communicated to his song the flash of sunshine and color sparkling in the clearness of his own draught of life.

Mr. Scollard is almost wholly an objective poet, and by method a painter. His palette is ever ready for the picture furnished him at every turn, and hence his several volumes relating to the Orient, _Lutes of Morn_, _Lyrics of the Dawn_, _Songs of Sunrise Lands_, etc., are perhaps truer standards by which to measure his work than any other, illustrating as they do the pictorial side of his talent. Every object in the Orient is a picture with its individual color and atmosphere, but Mr. Scollard does not merely offer us a sketch in color; the outwardly picturesque is made to interpret a phase of life, and the spiritual contrasts in this land—where one religion or philosophy succeeds another, bringing with it another civilization and leaving desolate the ancient shrines—are indicated with vivid phrase, as in these lines:

A turbaned guard keeps stolid ward by the Zion gate in the sun, And the Paynim bows his shaven brows at the shrine of Solomon; At the chosen altars, long, long quenched is the flame of the sacred fire, And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.

Great Herod’s pride with its columned aisles is grown with the olive bough, And Gath and Dan are but crumbling piles, while Gaza is gateless now; The sea on the sands of Ascalon sets hands to a mournful lyre, And the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.

The closing stanza draws the contrast, or rather makes the spiritual application of the poem by which “the starry fame of one holy name”

Has blazoned Bethlehem for aye the heart of the world’s desire, While the jackal has his haunt in the tomb of Hiram, King of Tyre.

The final line of these stanzas may offer a metrical stumbling-block until one catches the sweep of the rhythm and falls in note with the cæsural pause after the word “tomb.” Mr. Scollard is nothing if not lyrical, and it would be easier for the traditional camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a captious critic to discover a metrical falsity in his tuneful song.

But to return to the Orient, not alone the reverence for the Christian faith speaks in these poems, but the artistic beauty in the Moslem and other faiths has entered into them; one is stirred to sympathetic devotion by these lines,—

From many a marble minaret We heard the rapt muezzin’s call; And to the prayerful cries my guide, During each trembling interval, With reverence serene replied,—

and finds throughout the poems the higher assurance that

The East and West are one in Allah’s grace: Which way so’er ye turn, behold—His face!

It is difficult to choose from the several volumes portraying Oriental life, such poems as shall best represent it, since in any direction we shall find a picture full of color and of strange new charm: the white mosques and minarets; the gardens of citron and pomegranate; the bazaars, with their rare fabrics and curios; the pilgrims, dozing in the shade of the temples; the Bedouins, riding in from the desert; the women carrying from the springs their water-jars. We shall hear the sunrise cry of the muezzin from the minarets; the zither and lute in the gardens at evening; the jargon of tongues in booth and market-place; the philosopher expounding the Koran; the lover singing the songs of Araby. The dramatic life of that impulsive, passionate people will be seen in such poems as the “Dancing of Suleima,” “At the Tomb of Abel,” and “Yousef and Melhem,” and the philosophical side in many a poem translating the precepts of the Koran into action; but it is, after all, for the picture in which all this is set that one comes with chief pleasure to these songs. Not only the human element of that strangely fascinating life is incorporated in them, but all the phenomena of nature in its swift-changing moods pass in review before one’s eyes, particularly of the swift transitions of the desert sun, stayed by no detaining cloud, and followed by the immediate gloom of night. The graphic lines—

When on the desert’s rim, In sudden, awful splendor, stood the sun—

are excelled in terse, pictorial force by the record of its setting,—

Then sudden dipped the sun.—

Nor easily forgotten are those pictures of lying in the open when the cooling dark had fallen upon the yearning land, or upon the hills when

The night hung over Hebron all her stars, Miraculous processional of flame,

and below from out the “purple blur” rose the minarets of the mosque where

Sepulchred for centuries untold, The bones of Isaac and of Joseph lay; And broidered cloths of silver and of gold Were heaped and draped o’er Abraham’s crumbled clay.

In _The Lutes of Morn_ there are two sonnets—though lyrics in effect, so does the song prevail with Mr. Scollard—that serve hastily to sketch a moving scene and in their touch bring to mind Paul the chronicler. The first is “Passing Rhodes,” and contains these lines with a biblical tang,

At day’s dim marge, hard on the shut of eve, We rocked abreast the rugged Rhodian isle,

which tang appears in stronger flavor in the racy opening of the following:

Cleaving the seadrift through the starlit night, We left the barren Patmian isle behind, And scudding northward with a favoring wind, Lay anigh Chios at the dawn of light. The shore, the tree-set slopes, the rugged height, Clear in the morning’s roseate air outlined,— This was his birthplace who, albeit blind, Saw tall Troy’s fall, and sang the tragic sight. Resting within the roadstead, while the day Grew into gradual glory, on the ear Continuous broke the surge-song of the brine; And as we marked it rise, or die away To rise again, it seemed that we could hear The swell and sweep of Homer’s mighty line.

Mr. Scollard’s musical and finely descriptive poem, “As I Came Down From Lebanon,” has become a favorite with the readers of his verse; but while it has great charm, it is not as strong a piece of work as are many other of the Oriental poems, contained in his later volumes, _The Lutes of Morn_ and _Lyrics of the Dawn_, nor as that realistic poem, “Khamsin,” which appeared in the same collection. Here indeed is the breath of the sirocco:

Oh, the wind from the desert blew in! Khamsin, The wind from the desert blew in! It blew from the heart of the fiery south, From the fervid sand and the hills of drouth, And it kissed the land with its scorching mouth; The wind from the desert blew in!

It blasted the buds on the almond bough, And shrivelled the fruit on the orange-tree; The wizened dervish breathed no vow, So weary and parched was he. The lean muezzin could not cry; The dogs ran mad, and bayed the sky; The hot sun shone like a copper disk, And prone in the shade of an obelisk The water-carrier sank with a sigh, For limp and dry was his water-skin; And the wind from the desert blew in.

* * * * *

Into the cool of the mosque it crept, Where the poor sought rest at the prophet’s shrine; Its breath was fire to the jasmine vine; It fevered the brow of the maid who slept, And men grew haggard with revel of wine. The tiny fledglings died in the nest; The sick babe gasped at the mother’s breast. Then a rumor rose and swelled and spread From a tremulous whisper, faint and vague, Till it burst in a terrible cry of dread, _The plague! the plague! the plague!_— Oh the wind, Khamsin, The scourge from the desert blew in!

Of the lighter notes, upon love and kindred themes, Mr. Scollard has many in his poems of the Orient; “The Song of the Nargileh” is of especial charm, but unfortunately too long to quote. Very graceful, too, is the “Twilight Song” with one of Mr. Scollard’s graphic beginnings, but one quaint bit from _The Lutes of Morn_ is so characteristic as showing Oriental felicity of speech that while merely a jotting in song, and less important in an artistic sense than many others touching upon the theme of love, I cannot refrain from citing it instead: it is called “Greetings—Cairo.”

Upon El Muski did I meet Hassan, Beneath arched brows his deep eyes twinkling bright, Good dragoman (and eke good Mussulman) And cried unto him, “May your day be white!”

“And yours, howadji!” came his swift reply, A smile illumining the words thereof, (All men are poets ’neath that kindling sky), “As white as are the thoughts of her you love!”

The Oriental poems cover not only a varied range of subject, but pass in review nearly every important city and shrine in the length and breadth of that storied land, making poetical footnotes to one’s history and filling his memory with pictures.

The second source of Mr. Scollard’s inspiration, doubtless the first in point of time, is his delight in nature. Here, too, the objective side predominates. He is footfaring, with every sense alert to see, to hear, and to enjoy; he slips the world of men as a leash and becomes the fetterless comrade of the vagrant things of earth. He stops to do no philosophizing by the way,—the analogies, the laws, the evolving purposes of nature, are rarely touched upon in his verse; nor is he one of the poet-naturalists, intent to observe and record with infinite fidelity the fact, with its mystic spirit of beauty. He finds in the obvious side of nature such glamour and magic as suffice for inspiration and delight; and it is this side which enthralls him almost wholly. In other words, his nature vision is rather outlook than insight, though always sympathetic in fancy and delicate in touch. He seems to see only the gladness in the season’s phases, and greets white-shrouded winter with all the ardor that he would bestow upon flower-decked June.

He has one volume entitled _Footfarings_, written partly in prose and partly in verse,—a book abrim with morning joy, and bringing with it the aroma of wood-flowers and the minstrelsy of birds. The prose predominates, and is worthy the pen of a poet: its imaginative grace, its enthusiasm, and its quaint and delicate fancy impart to it all the flavor of poetry while adhering to a crisp and racy style. Each chapter is prefaced by a keynote of verse, such as that which conducts one to the haunt of the trillium, where

These nun-like flowers with spotless urns, That shine with such a snowy gloss, Will seem, amid the suppliant ferns, To bow above the cloistral moss.

Then Hope, her starry eyes upraised, Will suddenly surprise you there, And you will feel that you have gazed On the white sanctity of prayer!

Were it within the province of this study, I should like to quote some of Mr. Scollard’s prose from a “Woodland Walk,” “A Search for the Lady’s Slipper,” or many another picturesque chapter. One loses thought of print, and is for the nonce following his errant fancy through meadow and coppice to the heart of the spicy fir-woods, picking his way over the forest brooks, from stone to stone; following the alluring skid-roads, latticed by new growths on either side and arched above by interlacing green; penetrating into the tamarack thickets at the lure of the hermit-thrush, that spirit-voice of song; resting on a springy bed of moss and fern,—becoming, in short, wayfellow of desire, and thrall but to his will. Mr. Scollard has also published within the past year a book of nature verse called _The Lyric Bough_, which contains some of his best work in this way; one of its livelier fancies is that of “The Wind”:

O the wind is a faun in the spring-time When the ways are green for the tread of the May; List! hark his lay! Whist! mark his play! T-r-r-r-l! Hear how gay!

O the wind is a dove in the summer When the ways are bright with the wash of the moon; List! hark him tune! Whist! mark him swoon! C-o-o-o-o! Hear him croon!

O the wind is a gnome in the autumn When the ways are brown with the leaf and burr; Hist! mark him stir! List! hark him whir! S-s-s-s-t! Hear him chirr!

O the wind is a wolf in the winter When the ways are white for the hornèd owl; Hist! mark him prowl! List! hark him howl! G-r-r-r-l! Hear him growl!

One of the earlier books, _The Hills of Song_, contained a brief, merry-toned lyric, with a cavalier note, that sung itself into the _American Anthology_, and is perhaps as characteristic and charming a leave-taking of this phase of Mr. Scollard’s work as one may cite:

Be ye in love with April-tide? I’ faith, in love am I! For now ’tis sun, and now ’tis shower, And now ’tis frost, and now ’tis flower, And now ’tis Laura laughing-eyed, And now ’tis Laura shy.

Ye doubtful days, O slower glide! Still smile and frown, O sky! Some beauty unforeseen I trace In every change of Laura’s face;— Be ye in love with April-tide? I’ faith, in love am I!

Balladry furnishes the third source of Mr. Scollard’s singing impulse. The Oriental poems have somewhat of this phase of his work, though more especially inclining to the narrative style; and the epic poem “Skenandoa,” while written in a story-lyric, shows the ballad-making qualities, which in their true note had been heard earlier in “Taillefer the Trouvère,” and have been heard more definitely in _Ballads of Valor and Victory_, recently written in collaboration with Mr. Wallace Rice, and reciting the heroisms and adventures of soldier, sailor, and explorer from Drake to Dewey.

Ballad-writing is an art calling for distinct gifts. The dramatic element must predominate. The story first—and if this be colorless, there is no true ballad; the verse next—and if this be flaccid, or if it swing to the other extreme and become too strained and tense, there is no true ballad; for the essence of ballad-writing is in the freedom of the movement, the swing and verve with which one recounts a picturesque story. Mr. Scollard’s contributions to the volume are sung with spontaneity and with a virile note, and in the matter of characterization, fixing the personality of the hero before the mind, the work is especially strong; witness “Riding With Kilpatrick;” “Wayne at Stony Point;” “Montgomery at Quebec;” the picture of Thomas Macdonough at the Battle of Plattsburg Bay, or in more recent times of “Private Blair of the Regulars,” the modern Sidney, who, dying, gave the last draught of his canteen to his wounded fellows.

“The White November” and “The Eve of Bunker Hill” are among the best of the ballads. The former brings with it a well-known note, but one newly bedight with brave phrase; indeed, all the celebrated ballad measures appear in these song stories, but well individualized in diction and dramatic mood. They differ of course in the degree of these qualities; some have too slight an incident to chronicle; some might with better effect have been omitted, particularly “War in April,” by Mr. Rice; but for this he atones by “The Minute-Men of Northboro” and other vigorous contributions to the collection. The ballads have the merit of structural compactness. While the necessary portrayal of the incident renders many of the best of them too long to quote, there are, in Mr. Scollard’s contribution to the book, few superfluous stanzas; each plays its essential part in the development of the story. They may not, then, be quoted without their full complement of strophes, which debars us from citing the “White November,” “Wayne at Stony Point,” and others mentioned as most representative; but here is the tale of “Riding With Kilpatrick,” not more valiant than many of the others, but celebrating a picturesque figure. There are certain reminiscent notes of “How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix” in this galloping anapestic measure; and its graphic opening line calls to mind that instantaneous picture, “At Aershot, up leaped of a sudden the sun.”

Dawn peered through the pines as we dashed at the ford; Afar the grim guns of the infantry roared; There were miles yet of dangerous pathway to pass, And Moseby might menace, and Stuart might mass; But we mocked every doubt, laughing danger to scorn, As we quaffed with a shout from the wine of the morn Those who rode with Kilpatrick to valor were born!