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There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022036697 Cornell University Library PS 2362.G2 1920 Gates of Paradise and other poemsihe to 3 1924 022 036 697 GATES OF PARADISE AND OTHER POEMS BOOKS BY EDWIN MARKHAM 'The Man With the Hoe, and Other Poems" FniUistita, MilUl' 3 famous Paintmt o/tli Hoe-man "The Man With the Hoe, and Other Poems" Wiib illustrations by Howard Pyle "Lincoln, and Other Poems" Frontispiece, portrait of Lincoln 'The Shoes of Happiness, and Other Poems" "Gates of Paradise, and Other Poems" (,Ntw) Frontispiece, portrait of the Auihor "California the Wonderful" (Prose: procurable from the author) Profusely illustrated "Plain Talks on Poetry" (In preparation) "New Light on the Old Riddle" (In preparation) fl.50 $2.50 I1.50 I1.50 |i-75 f3.oo EDWIN MARKHAM GATES OF PARADISE AND OTHER POEMS THE FOURTH VOLUME OF VERSE BY EDWIN MARKHAM DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY GARDEN CITY NEW YORK LONDON 1920 n6 COFyXIGBT, 1920, BY EDWIN MARKHAM ALL SIGHTS KESESVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOKEIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 7c 73 I VENTURE —WITH EQUAL ADMIRATION AND AFFECTION— TO DEDICATE THIS MY LATEST VOLUME OF VERSE TO THAT LOVER OF JUSTICE AND BROTHERHOOD WHO HAS HAD THE COURAGE TO TAKE UNPROFITABLE RISKS— TO THAT WRITER WHO WEARS THE GREATEST HONOUR AND BEARS THE GREATEST NAME IN OUR CONTEMPORARY LETTERS— TO WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Some of these poems have appeared in "The Cen- tury," "McClure's," "The Cosmopolitan," "The Nautilus," "The Christian Herald," "The New York American," "The Los Angeles Examiner," "The Ladies^ Home Journal," and magazines of The McClure's Syndicate; and the author thanks these publications for the use of these poems in this volume. We must not forget the nation-wide pride in Edwin Markham, the nation-wide love of him — the poet who maintains the best tradition of the classic school, to- gether with the modern challenge of social revolt, which makes him a veritable prophet in Israel . . . I regard Edwin Markham as our greatest contempo- rary poet; and I offer him as an all-sufficient answer to the assertion that the days of American poesy have passed. — From Editorials in Unity, Chicago, 1919. CONTENTS I VAN-COURIERS PAGE TO ALL FRIENDS I PEEPAREDNESS 2 THE DIVINE STRATEGY 3 'DBTY 4 POESY 5 INFINIIE DEEPS 6 ' THE PRAISE OP POVERTY 7 I II AT MY LADY'S WINDOW GATES OP PARADISE II THE IMPERISHABLE 12 HOW TO GO AND FORGET I3 YOUR TEARS I4 WHEN IS III WINGS FOR THE SPIRIT A MOMENT IMMORTAL .... IQ MAN-MAKING 20 APRIL'S COMING 21 THE DARING ONE 22 THE NEVER-OLD 23 A TRUCE WITH TIME 34 A HUSHING SONG '. . . . . 2$ SING A WHILE LONGEK . . . , 26 xi xil CONTENTS IV DEEPER CHORDS PAGE LADIES, LADIES, HEAR THE TRUTH 29 YOUR GREAT HOUR . . . 3I THE PANTHER ... 32 4THE GIFT OF WORK 33 I A CLEAR ROAD FOR THE SOUL 34 A JUDGMENT HOUR ... 36 - THE DARING OF GOD ... 38 IMAGINATION . 39 AN EPITAPH 40 FINGER-POSTS FOR THE HIGHWAY THE JUDGMENT BOOK 43 TAKE YOUR CHOICE 44 RULES POR THE ROAD 45 THE DAY AND THE WORK . . 46 THE NEEDLESS SOLAR SYSTEM 48 THE RETORT OF PERICLES 49 THE GREAT COLLEGE SO LABOUR AND CULTURE S^ OPPORTUNITY S3 LUCRETIA 54 HELP FOR COURTS OF HERESY S^ THE STONE REJECTED $7 THE CHRIST OF THE ANDES 59 SLAVES OF THE DRUG 62 CONTENTS xiii VI ECHOES FROM THE WORLD WAR FAOX RUSSIA, akise! 68 GHOSTS IN PLIGHT . 70 FRANCE IN BATTLE-FLAME -72 A SONG IN THE CHAOS 75 THE FATE OF FRANCE 77 A SHOT-TORN ROAD IN FRANCE 79 A SONG FOR HEROES , . . . 8I OUR DEAD OVERSEAS 84 PEACE OVER EARTH AGAIN 86 A CHRISTMAS CAROL AFTER WAR 88 THE RED CROSS 90 A SONG OF VICTORY 92 A CAROL FOR THE NEW YEAR 98 OUR FLEET IN THE WEST lOI VII MEMORABLE MEN FATHER MCGLYNN . . IO7 TO WILLIAM WINTER . . IO9 VOICES ACROSS THE VOID ... II3 THE WORLD CHARLES DICKENS MADE II 7 VIII SONGS TO THE SUPERNAL WOMAN A SONG TO THE DIVINE MOTHER . 12$ THE MOTHER OF THE MANY NAMES I30 THE WOMAN OF DREAMS ... I35 A CHORUS OF CRITICAL OPINIONS I39 VAN-COURIERS TO ALL FRIENDS Here are my songs, child, sage: Come, bring your heart and let me win it. You'll find my heart on every page: The book is yours, with the heart that's in it! PREPAREDNESS For all your days prepare, And meet them ever alike: When you are the anvil, bear — When you are the hammer, strike. THE DIVINE STRATEGY No soul can be forever banned, Eternally bereft: Whoever falls from God's right hand Is caught into his left. DUTY When Duty comes a-knocking at your gate, Welcome him in; for if you bid him wait, He will depart only to come once more And bring seven other duties to your door. POESY She comes like the husht beauty of the night, And sees too deep for laughter: Her touch is a vibration and a light From worlds before and after. INFINITE DEEPS The little pool, in street or field apart, Glasses the vast heaven and the rush- ing storm; And into the silent deep of every heart. The Eternal throws its awful shadow- form. THE PRAISE OF POVERTY Not Wealth for me: she does us double wrong: She flits herself and takes our friends along. But Poverty ever shows a nobler heart: She sticks to us when all our friends de- part! AT MY LADY'S WINDOW GATES OF PARADISE Ah, the way was hard and the wind was cold, And the fire in the heart was growing old: Then you shone on the sky like a throb- bing star. And I saw the gates of the dawn unbar. You came to me here in this battle of men. And the horns of Arcady blew again! Whenever I hear your spirit sing, I feel the touch of a mystic wing. At the sudden glance of your tender eye, I am up and under another sky. I have climbed from the dust, I have paid the price, I am treading the paths of my paradise! THE IMPERISHABLE You tell me that your name will fade, Will vanish from me as a shade — That you, in worlds to come, will pass As vapour from a shining glass — That in my spirit you will be A raindrop melted in the sea. No, Love, I might forget your brow, Dream-lighted and immortal now; I might forget your shining hair That is my wonder and despair; I might forget your shoulder's curve, That cryptic smile, that old reserve. Yes, even your soul so toucht with sun Might sink into oblivion; Yet something beautiful would stay To gladden my immortal way. One thing to stir the eternal years — Your eyes that are so close to tears! 12 HOW TO GO AND FORGET I know how to hold As the lovers of old — How to cling to you, sing to you, Let all the world know the song that I bring to you. But I do not know yet How to go and forget! I know how to call To the God over all — How to sigh for you, cry for you. Fight down the terrible dark till I die for you. But I do not know yet How to go and forget! 13 YOUR TEARS I dare not ask your very all : I only ask a part. Bring me — ^when dancers leave the hall- Your aching heart. Give other friends your lighted face. The laughter of the years: I come to crave a greater grace — Bring me your tears! 14 WHEN When I wait for your face In some garden apart. Little songs of your grace Carol into my heart. When I hear the loved sound Of your feet that delay, I am lifted and crowned On the peaks of the day. IS WINGS FOR THE SPIRIT A MOMENT IMMORTAL In the falling twilight, soft and still, A ploughman trudges over the hill; While down the glory in the west A crane swings swiftly to her nest. The trees upon the fading hight Are listening for the coming night: Two lovers are straying down the walk, Their heads bent close in tender talk. This is the picture: it will stay As long as there is night and day. 19 MAN-MAKING We all are blind until we see That in the human plan Nothing is worth the making if It does not make the man. Why build these cities glorious If man unbuilded goes? In vain we build the world, unless The builder also grows. APRIL'S COMING! Bleak was earth for many a day; Snows of tempest whirled and whirled; Now the flowers are on the way: April's coming down the world! Joy went by with broken wing, All the leaves were dead and curled: Now the dreams begin to sing: April's coming down the world! And when golden days depart, And the earth is winter-furled. Still if love is in the heart, April's coming down the world! THE DARING ONE I would my soul were like the bird That dares the vastness undeterred. Look, where the bluebird on the bough Breaks into rapture even now! He sings, tip-top, the tossing elm As tho he would a world o'erwhelm. Indifferent to the void he rides Upon the wind's eternal tides. He tosses gladly on the gale. For well he knows he can not fail — Knows if the bough breaks, still his wings Will bear him upward while he sings! 23 THE NEVER- OLD They who can smile when others hate. Nor bind the heart with frosts of fate. Their feet will go with laughter bold The green roads of the Never-Old. They who can let the spirit shine And keep the heart a lighted shrine, Their feet will glide with fire-of-gold The green roads of the Never-Old. They who can put the self aside And in Love's saddle leap and ride. Their eyes will see the gates unfold To green roads of the Never-Old. S3 A TRUCE WITH TIME Time and I have a happy truce: He found at last it was no use To blunt his swinging scythe on me: So he agrees to let me be. I am to speak no ill of Time, But wreathe his brow with frequent rhyme, Proclaiming all the wondrous things He has in store for clowns and kings. And he, to keep his word of grace, Will pass me with averted face — Will leave me on the green, forsooth. Dancing with Love and Starry Youth. 84 A HUSHING SONG Be still, be still, soul, As the peaks from pole to pole. All shores are silent as the moon to-night; All birds are resting from their ocean flight. Be still, beloved friend: Let all sad memories end. The old wild days of sorrow are no more, And Love with beautiful joy is at the door. Your soul is still, so still, Husht in the Holy Will. Rest, rest, friend, for all is well with thee. Folded and cradled in the mother-sea. 2S SING A WHILE LONGER Has the bright sun set. Has the gale grown stronger? Still we'll not grieve yet : We will sing a while longer! Has our youth been met By Time the wronger? Let us not grieve yet, Let us sing a while longer! Is the world beset. Do the sorrows throng her? Let us not grieve yet: Let us sing a while longer! . s6 DEEPER CHORDS LADIES, LADIES. HEAR THE TRUTH Ladies, ladies, have a care: You have caused a world of sighs: There is witchcraft in your hair, There is danger in your eyes. Hark you ladies at the glass: Paint and powder by the tons. Still your beauty all will pass Like the light of setting suns. Though the blossom in your hair Were the rose that Eros gave. Still the beauty that you wear Cannot save you from the grave. Ladies, there are things above: Be more reverent of the years: Leave a little time for love, Leave a little room for tears. 29 GATES OF PARADISE Ladies, ladies, have a care: You have slain so many men — Raised them to immortal air — Turned them back to dust again. Do not waste your laughters so: Be more saving of your words: Let them shyly come and go Like the softly stepping birds. You are drifting in the crowds. Dancing lightly on the crust: Soon you will be husht with shrouds. Soon be little heaps of dust. Ladies, ladies, hear the truth: You have beauty for a term. You have laughter, you have youth- Then the pageant of the Worm! 30 YOUR GREAT HOUR Eternities went by in flight And yet you rose not into light. The first stars showered upon the Void And young heavens rose and were de- stroyed; And still you did not rise to be. Your bubble did not break the sea. But now that you have heard the Voice And risen to the world of choice, Now that the stars look down on you. What is the work that you will do — What lofty life, what valiant deed Ashine with splendour and with speed? Do something, brother, to befit An offspring of the Infinite! 31 THE PANTHER The moon shears up on Tahoe now : A panther leaps to a tamarack bough. She crouches, hugging the crooked limb: She hears the nearing steps of him Who sent the little puff of smoke That stretched her mate beneath the oak. Her eyes burn beryl, two yellow balls, As Fate counts out his last footfalls. A sudden spring, a demon cry, Carnivorous laughter to the sky. Her teeth are fastened in his throat (The moon rides in her silver boat.) And now one scream of long delight Across the caverns of the night! 32 THE GIFT OF WORK When I have touched the end of days And bid farewell to earthly ways, I have one thing to ask of Him Who sings above the Seraphim — The gift of work — more work to do To let God's glory glimmer through. For well I know that in the Lord More work will be our work's reward. Perhaps the Master's lips will say: "He touched one heart upon the way, So give some further work to him ; But he must draw the lines less dim — This time must not so bungle there. But give his sketch a nobler air. He must put action in that curve; Give to this feature more reserve. His early colours were too thin: He now must dash the beauty in With bolder stroke. — This is the plan: More work; by work we build the man!" 33 A CLEAR ROAD FOR THE SOUL Mad woman, answer me! Where do you go, Why do you wander the long roads so With jug of water and torch aflame? What is the purpose no years can tame? Over the roads, in dust, in mire. You carry the water, you carry the fire- Why do you go with never a wait At a cottage door or a palace gate? "Brother, I travel the world's huge span To daring deeds for the help of man. If I fail — how awful the mortal cost: Millions of souls are forever lost! I carry this water to quench the hells And break man's fear of their ghastly spells; And I carry this fire to burn to air The heavens that lure with the beauty they wear. 34 GATES OF PARADISE For none should do good from the fear of pain, And none from the lure of a heaven to gain. So I shut all hells and heavens from sight. And leave all clear for the soul's great fight." $s A JUDGMENT HOUR In 1780, the famous Dark Day descended upon New England, terrifying the people with a sense of coming judgment. It was May-day noon and the world grew still, For night rushed down on shore and hill. Noon turned to midnight : the sun was dead, A blot in the blackness overhead. The birds flew scared to their nesting boughs: There was neigh of horses and bellow of cows: The house dogs howled in a cringe of fear: Men felt the Doomsday drawing near. The bats came flittering out of their holes. And the wicked suddenly thought of their souls! The Senate there in the Hall of State Sat husht before descending fate. Then voices cried in the Hall, "Behold, This is the judgment hour foretold. Out, Senators, out — away, away — Out to the meeting-house to pray!" 36 GATES OF PARADISE Then with a grave and quiet face. Uprose a senator in his place. . . . Muse of History, bring your crown For Davenport of Stamford town! "Hold," cried this son of Pilgrim sires! "There's only one thing that Heaven requires — That we be found in our serving-place When God reveals his awful face — That each shall stand at his given post, Whether a man or whether a ghost. . . Bring in the candles : let us work Even in the Judgment's gathering mirk. Bring in the lights : let us be found Doing our duty's common round. Bring in the candles: keep to the task: What more can Judgment Angels ask?" 37 THE DARING OF GOD Back in the morning of the wistful years, God dreamed a wonder-dream and then He spake: "Lo, out of the dust a mystery I will make; Make man and dower him with the gift of tears, With dreams and valours and the shadow- fears. With love and longing and a heart to break — A free soul poised for mastery or mis- take. . . Then leave him alone before the great careers. "I know the risk, the terror of My deed; Yet I must make him free to be the seed Of Seraphim who guard the cosmic gates : Behold in his hand the glory and the curse As he goes forth to build eternal fates: Now there is danger in the universe!" 38 IMAGINATION Blithe Fancy lightly builds with airy hands Or on the edges of the darkness peers, Breathless and frightened at the Voice she hears. Imagination (lo, the sky expands!) Travels the blue arch and Cimmerian sands — Homeless on earth, the pilgrim of the spheres. The rush of light before the hurrying years, The Voice that cries in unfamiliar lands. Men track the path of Saturn as he swings Around the sun, circled with moons and rings; But who shall follow on the awful flight Of huge Orion through the dreadful deep? Far on the dark abyss he seems to sleep. Yet wanders the shoreless, old, inscrut- able night. 39 AN EPITAPH Let us not think of our departed dead As caught and cumbered in these graves of earth; But think of death as of another birth, As a new freedom for the wings outspread, A new adventure waiting on ahead. As a new joy of more ethereal mirth, As a new world with friends of nobler worth. Where all may taste a more immortal bread. So, comrades, if you pass my grave some- time, Pause long enough to breathe this little rhyme: "Here now the dust of Edwin Markham lies, But lo, he is not here: he is afar On life's great errands under mightier skies. And pressing on toward some melodious star." 40 FINGER-POSTS FOR THE HIGHWAY THE JUDGMENT BOOK Vain as vain dust the evil done By mortals under moon and sun; For instantaneous as light After the evil comes the blight. And though the thunder fall unheard. We cannot hope to hide the word, For the great judgment angels trace God's whispered fiat on the face: Unknown to us the Judgment Book Is open for the world to look. 43 TAKE YOUR CHOICE On the bough of the rose is the prickling briar; The delicate lily must live in the mire; The hues of the butterfly go at a breath; At the end of the road is the house of death. Nay, nay: on the briar is the delicate rose; In the mire of the river the lily blows; The moth is as fair as a flower of the sod; At the end of the road is a door to God! 44 (D O) CO CL (Ji CQ Tl (Q CD (D O) CO CL (Ji CQ Tl (Q CD THE RETORT OF PERICLES One stormy night, after the Parthenon Rose on the cliff of the AcropoUs, An angry rival for a fancied wrong Followed the patient steps of Pericles Home from the Agora, and for raucous hours Hurled his hot rages on the noble Greek. Then when the bellower wearied and grew still, Wise Pericles sent out a torch to light The tongue-worn fellow homeward through the night. 49 THE GREAT COLLEGE They said to Hassan of the happy look: "You know all pages in the wisdom-book: In what great college were you taught, and who Your high instructors in the good and true?" "The world's my college," Hassan made reply, "And I am taught by every passer-by. For even life's darker pages all are writ With many a message from the Infinite, Yes, even her blotted record is a scroll Shouting her fateful warning to the soul. "Who were the teachers set my manners right? The only ones we need — the impolite. Who taught me to love justice, the august? so GATES OF PARADISE The only teachers needed — ^the unjust. What teachers showed me virtue's para- dise? The ones with loudest tongue — the slaves of vice!" SI LABOUR AND CULTURE On seeing a poet making a war-garden Poet, client of the Muses, Life to you no good refuses; In high peace your soul reposes While you build your road of roses In the miracle of toil. Poet, once I saw you hoeing While a song was in you growing. And again I saw you burrow Down your field a long bright furrow: 'Twas Apollo at the Plough. Come, all thinkers, do bread-labour And relieve the work-worn neighbour. This way runs the path of duty. This way fly the feet of Beauty, This way lies our Paradise! 52 OPPORTUNITY In an old city by the storied shores Where the bright summit of Ol3mipus soars, A cryptic statue mounted toward the light— Heel-winged, tip-toed, and poised for in- stant flight. "0 statue, tell your name," a traveller cried, And solemnly the marble lips replied: "Men call me Opportunity: I lift My winged feet from earth to show how swift My flight, how short my stay — How Fate is ever waiting on the way." "But why that tossing ringlet on your brow?" "That men may seize me any moment: Now, NOW is iny other name: to-day my date: traveller, to-morrow is too late!" 53 LUCRETIA A poet was penning a lofty praise Of that noble matron of old days; Whereat a scholar, hot-foot, came To cool the poet's lyric flame: "Blot out the praises of her life. Her honour and victorious strife. If true, the tale were worth a rhyme; But 'tis a fable of old time. Lucretia never lived and died : The Romans feigned her in their pride To let Rome's high ideal shine. That men might say it was divine — To let the eyes of the future see How great Rome's woman-diream could be. Lucretia is only a flash of foam, Air-blown, to feed the boast of Rome." 'Go to," the poet cried, all flame: 'Your words take nothing from her name. S4 GATES OF PARADISE If Rome could build so fair a dream, Lucretia is a lyric theme. Rome had the greatness to conceive: I have the daring to believe!" 55 HELP FOR COURTS OF HERESY A little child shall lead them. — ^The Bible. Come, leave your candle, book, and bell: Is the man cursed? His face will tell. All records since the world began Are written on the face of man. His lack of love, his lack of awe. Speak his defiance of the Law. These heresies are all there are In any heaven, in any star. Judges, when the doubts begin — "Should he be out? Should he be in? " Call on some little child to pick With hasty glance the heretic. For all that have the gift of grace Will have it printed on the face. Only dark thoughts that darken fate Have power to excommunicate. Yet there is danger in my plan Of finding who is under ban. For what if — ^looking round about — The child should pick the Judges out I S6 THE STONE REJECTED For years it had been trampled in the street Of Florence by the drift of heedless feet — The stone that star-toucht Michael Angelo Turned to that marble loveliness we know. You mind the tale — how he was passing by When the rude marble caught his Jovian eye. That stone men had dishonoured and had thrust Out to the insult of the wayside dust. He stooped to lift it from its mean estate, And bore it on his shoulder to the gate. Where all day long a hundred hammers rang. And soon his chisels round the marble sang, 57 GATES OF PARADISE Till suddenly the hidden angel shone: It had been waiting prisoned in the stone. Thus came the cherub with the laughing face That long has lighted up an altar-place. S8 THE CHRIST OF THE ANDES Chile and Argentina, after quarrelling for generations over their boundary line, submitted the question to arbitration and settled it in good feeling. As an emblem of their peace and as a pledge of its permanence, the two republics united in the erection of an heroic statue of Christ on the highest Andean peak of the borderline. Over dead craters, hushed with snows, Up where the wide-winged condor goes, Great Aconcagua, hushed and high, Sends down the ancient peace of the sky. So, poised in clean Andean air. Where bleak with cliffs the grim peaks stare, Christ, reaching out his sacred hands, Sheds his brave peace upon the lands. There once of old wild battles roared And brother-blood was on the sword; Now all the fields are rich with grain And only roses redden the plain. 59 GATES OF PARADISE Torn were the peoples with feuds and hates — Fear on the mountain-walls, death at the gates; Then through the clamour of arms was heard A whisper of the Master's word. "Fling down your swords: be friends again: Ye are not wolf -packs: ye are men. Let brother-counsel be the Law: Not serpent fang, not tiger claw." And then the war-torn nations heard, And great hopes in their spirits stirred: The red swords from their clenched fists fell, And heaven shone out where once was hell! They hurled their cannons into flame And out of the forge the strong Christ came. 'Twas thus they moulded in happy fire The tall Christ of their heart's desire. . . . 60 GATES OF PARADISE Christ of Olivet, you hushed the wars Under the far Andean stars: Lift now your strong nail-wounded hands Over all peoples, over all lands: Stretch out those comrade hands to be A shelter over land and seal 61 SLAVES OF THE DRUG Who are those haggard hosts Groping the roads of earth — ^unburied ghosts — Pale youth and tottering age, a spectral throng By some invisible Master lured along? Behold their eyes in burnt-out sockets glare With glazed and frenzied stare. Their bones are torture and their blood is fire, Their will all withered to a fierce desire — The hunger for a flame that feeds a flame. And hurls red conflagration through the frame. They grope in every land, Driven ever onward by some dread com- mand; 62 GATES OF PARADISE And in their shadow, ever at their side, The wraiths of all their hopes and dreams that died — Phantoms that fling wild laughters and wild tears Into the crater of the wasted years. And evermore behind them as they grope. Three crosses loom upon life's barren slope — Three crosses, side by side. Where Honour and Love and Truth are crucified. Ever they grope, and ever the Demon cries Into their ear the music of his lies. He whispers, "I am rapture, rest from pain; I brace the body and I light the brain." And so he builds illusion into his slaves. Hiding from them his skeletons and graves. He lulls one grief, a thousand wake from sleep ; He stills one ache, a thousand palsies creep. 63 GATES OF PARADISE What is this Thing that scatters blight and ban, This stealthy Demon that unmakes a man? What gives to dust of poppy and coca leaf The power to build unreckonable grief? What curse is on this dust? What terrible "Thou must"? What spirit builds this inframundane spell, This fleeting heaven in the heart of hell? Behold his bargainings: for life's bright bloom, He gives the bitter ashes of the tomb; For strength, he gives a crumbling rope of sand; For honour, gives dishonour's scarlet brand. He whispers peace, but gives eternal thirst; He builds bright visions filled with fangs accursed. He comes with feasting and a king's salute. But leaves black tables of the Dead Sea fruit. 64 GATES OF PARADISE He offers realms, but gives a prison cell; He pledges heaven, but brings the tooth of hell. For Beauty's gesture and her look of light. For starry reason and for manly might, He gives the skulking step, the furtive eye. The curse, the groan, the death that can- not die. O brothers of the sorrows, brothers of the terrible to-morrows, captives blasted by the charnel breath. Your names are written in the Book of Death. Yet brothers of the gray battalions wait . . . Resolve: you still are greater than your fate. You can win back the dear lost dream of old, Regain your soul's lost hold. Strong are your shackles — strong — ^yet stronger still Is the grim grapple of the awakened Will. 6s GATES OF PARADISE brothers, in that might Slumbers a power to shatter death and night, brothers, in your Will a god awaits, A god with power to bend eternal Fates ! 66 ECHOES FROM THE WORLD WAR An Explanatory Note: I am a man of peace: war, in general, is one of the huge madnesses of men, and it can be cured only by the divine forces of love and jus- tice. Nevertheless, in a world ruled by self-interest, it is necessary sometimes — in hours of supreme crisis^or a nation to rise full-armed in defence of her exist- ence and the existence of human rights. A nation not willing to defend her exist- ence deserves to perish. Still we must work for world peace. Sometime war will be seen to be antiquated and barbaric. It will cease like duelling and other ancient follies. If war does pass away under the light of political wisdom, it will pass away under the sense of humour, the sense of the absurd. Meanwhile, let us all labour for the organization of the World State, the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the Peoples. E. M. 67 RUSSIA. ARISE! (First printed in 1905) Rise, Russia, to the great hour rise: The dead are looking from the skies. And God's hand, terrible with light, Upreaching from the Arctic night. Writes on the North with torch of fire — Writes in one word the worid's desire — Writes awfully the word of man Across the vast auroral span — Writes "Freedom" that shall topple kings And shake to dust their treasonings. Because the gibbet and the chain Scatter thy blood a sacred rain; Because thou hast a soul all fire, Under the hoof-marks and the mire; Because thou hast a dream burned white By many sorrows of the night; Because thy grief has paid the price, Paid it in tears and paid it thrice — Therefore all great souls surge to thee. The blown white billows of one sea — 68 GATES OF PARADISE Therefore thy spirit shall prevail, For in thy failure God shall fail! This is the hour; awake, arise! A whisper on the Volga flies; A wild hope on the Baltic leaps; A rapture over the Neva sweeps; A joy is on the trail that goes Reddening the white Siberian snows; The cliffs of Caucasus are stirred With the glad wonder of a word; The white wave of the Caspian speaks, And Ural answers from her peaks. The Kremlin bells in all their towers Wait trembling for the hour of hours, When they shall cry the People's will — Cry Marathon and Bunker Hill! 60 GHOSTS IN FLIGHT A Plea for Peace before America entered the World War. Who are the ghosts in flight Where siege guns spit their rage upon the night? What shapes are those that shiver in the moon About the towers and banners of Verdun? And what those cries at night on hill and tarn Down the long ruined Valley of the Marne? They are the ghosts that cannot rest, that cry Because there was no need to die. And on the north still runs a line of fire Where armies struggle in the battle-mire. And yonder, see the crimson battle-rain Upon the hights of Aisne; And farther still upon the cliffs of Oise The streaming banners and the loud huz- zahs; 70 GATES OF PARADISE While far upon the east the marching masses Are pouring through the wild Carpathian passes, And the bright quiet flood Of Vistula is red with brothers' blood. Peace, peace, men, for you are brothers all— You in the trench and on the shattered wall. Do you not know you came Out of one Love and wear one" sacred name? 7» FRANCE IN BATTLE-FLAME France, rose-hearted France, You seemed of old the spirit of winged dance — Light as a leaf that circles in the sky, Light as a bubble when the billows fly. We had forgot that in you burned the spark That lit with dawn the spirit of Jeanne d' Arc : We had forgot that in you burned the flame With which Corday and Roland wreathed your name. Then suddenly from the summer sky were hurled War's mad incredible thunders on the world; And at the sound we saw your soul up- start To fold your stricken people to your heart. Erect, imperious, you stood and smiled. Your eyes divinely wild — 72 GATES OF PARADISE A sudden light upon your lifted face, A splendour fallen from a starry place. Debonair, delicate France, Spirit of light, spirit of young romance. Now we behold you dim in the battle- dust. Roused, reticent, invincible, august. We see you, a mother of sorrows where you stand. The sword of Heaven alive within your hand. The lilies in your hair Blood-spattered from the crown of thorns you wear. Too high you stand for fears — Too still and terrible for mortal tears. France of the world's desire, France new-lighted by supernal fire. Wrapt in your battle-flame. All nations take a splendour from your name: GATES OF PARADISE All souls are touched to greatness by your soul. In you we are reborn to noble dreams — In you we see again the sacred gleams From man's immortal goal. The faith that rises from you as a star "Will light the ages coming from afar. When men shall band in one confederate fate To build the beauty of the Comrade State. U9U.) 74 A SONG IN THE CHAOS I know the grief of battles long ago, The thunders of their hammers, blow on blow — I know the cry out of the crumbling years. The children's sob, the mother's hopeless tears. I see the kingdoms touched with mortal blight, Shrivel to ashes in the ancient night. Yet spite of all the ruin and the wrong. Deep in my heart I hear a little song. Now far away the nations crash and curse, Marring the music of the universe. Ah, God, the homely hearths of Belgium Are shattered and her singing groves are dumb. And in the south the crater guns advance, And all hearts tremble for the fate of France. 75 GATES OF PARADISE And yet the ramparts of my soul are strong. And in my heart sounds on the eternal song. (1915.) 76 THE FATE OF FRANCE As dawn's last dreams are vanishing from me. The thrush comes singing in the orchard tree. Then as I startle from the slumber road, The earth sweeps on me with her sorrow load — Over me crashes the sense of her vast mis- chance : All hopes are hanging on the fate of France! I rouse my soul: I plunge into the day: Bargain and barter in the usual way — Rip open letters pouring from the mail — Smile where I triumph, ponder where I fail. Yet all goes by me like a misty trance: All hopes are hanging on the fate of France! 77 GATES OF PARADISE When all floors murmur with departing feet, I lock the door and take the throbbing street. The great crowds thunder round me and depart; But over it all I hear a cry in my heart That bodes the ruin of all the world's romance : All hopes are hanging on the fate of France! And in the evening hush of home, I hear Beyond the Marne the marching heroes cheer: I see brave lines that waver and gain breath To hurl their valours into the front of death. Their glad cry thrills me like a lifted lance: The whole world's future is the fate of France! (June, 1918.) 78 A SHOT-TORN ROAD IN FRANCE Here ran a road for lovers once. With maples in the moon; And under a bridge a water went Weaving a dreamy rune. And high upon the sycamore, The nightingales all night Besieged the dark with melody, Disturbed the boughs with flight. And here in coverts of tall grass Looked up a friendly spring. Glad to behold a face bent down, Or feel a fleeting wing. But now the lovers come no more; The road is rutted and marred By wheels and shrieking shells: the trees Are shattered, chopped, and charred. 79 GATES OF PARADISE New graves are billowing now: the field Like windy water heaves: The nightingales are gone: the spring Is choked with bloody leaves. And here at noon a vulture swoops On obscene errands bound; And here at night remembering ghosts Go by without a sound. 80 A SONG FOR HEROES I A song for the heroes who saw the sign And took their place in the battle-Une. They were walls of granite and gates of brass. These heroes that cried, "They shall not pass." And they hurled them back in a storm of cheers, And the sound will echo on over the years. And a song for the end, for the glorious end, And the soldiers marching up over the bend Of the broken roads in gallant France — The homing heroes who took the chance. Who looked on life, and with even breath Faced the winds from the gulfs of death. Their hearts are running on over the graves — Over the battle-wrecks — over the waves — 8i GATES OF PARADISE Over the scarred fields — over the foam — On to America — on to home. II And a song for the others, the heroes slain In Argonne Forest — in Saint-Gobain — In the flowery meadows of Picardy — In Belgium — in Italy — From brave Montello to the sea. A song for the heroes gone on ahead To join the hosts of the marching dead — A song for the souls that could lightly fling Sweet life away as a little thing For the sake of the mighty need of earth, The need of the ages coming to birth. All praise for the daring God who gave Heroic souls that could dare the grave — Praise for the power He laid on youth To challenge disaster and die for truth. What greater gift can the High God give. Than the power to die that the truth may live? 82 GATES OF PARADISE Glory to the Lord, the Hero of Heaven, He whose wounds in his side are seven — Glory that He gathers the heroes home, Out of the red fields, out of the foam — Gathers them out of the Everywhere, Into the Camp that is Over There! 83 OUR DEAD, OVERSEAS In Italy, in Belgium, in France, They sleep ensphered in glorious circum- stance. With high heroic heart They did their valiant part. They gave the flower-like glory of their youth To lie in heaps abhorrent and uncouth. For us they gave their life to its last breath — For us they plunged on into the gulf of death. They turned from these bright skies To lie with dust and silence on their eyes. Yet they have wages that we know not of — Wages of honour and immortal love. For they went down only to live again In the eternal memory of men — 84 GATES OF PARADISE To be warm pulse-beats in the greatening soul That drives the blind world onward to her goal. They are not dead: life's flag is never furled: They passed from world to world. Their bodies sleep; but in some nobler land Their spirits march under a new com- mand: New joys await them there In hero heavens wrapt in immortal air. Rejoice for them, rejoice: They made the nobler choice. How shall we honour their deed — How speak our praise of this immortal breed? Only by living nobly, as they died — Toiling for Truth denied, Loyal to something bigger than we are — Something that swings the spirit to a star. 8s PEACE OVER EARTH AGAIN Rejoice, world of troubled men; For peace is coming back again — Peace to the fields where hatred raves. Peace to the trodden battle-graves, Peace to the trenches running red. Peace to the hosts of the fleeing dead. 'Twill be the peace the Master left To hush the world of peace bereft — The peace proclaimed in lyric cries That night the angels broke the skies. Again the shell-torn hills will be All green with barley to the knee; And little children sport and run In love once more with earth and sun. Again in rent and ruined trees Young leaves will sound like silver seas; And birds now stunned by the red uproar Will build in happy boughs once more; And to the bleak uncounted graves The grass will run in silken waves; 86 GATES OF PARADISE And a great hush will softly fall On tortured plain and mountain wall. Now wild with cries of battling hosts And curses of the fleeing ghosts. And men will wonder over it — This red upflaming of the Pit; And they will gather as friends and say, "Come, let us try the Master's way. Ages we tried the way of swords, And earth is weary of hostile hordes. Comrades, read out His words again: They are the only hope for men! Love and not hate must come to birth; Christ and not Cain must rule the earth." 87 A CHRISTMAS CAROL AFTER WAR He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down princes from their thrones, and hath exalted those of low degree. The hungry he hath filled with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away. — From Mary's Song: Luke I. sons of time, lift happy hands And shout hozannas in all lands! Shout in this jubilant hour of earth. The victory hour of solemn mirth, This gladdest hour the world has known Since — on high errand from the Throne — The angels wheeled in squadron flight Across the star-stilled Syrian night. Their new song showering shore and hill: "Peace to the men of friendly will." sons of time, lift happy hands. And shout hozannas in all lands! For while earth quivered with alarm. The Lord reached out his warrior arm. And impious rulers proud with swords. Leading — in hate — ^their trampling hordes Have fallen from their seats, and He Hath lifted those of low degree. 88 GATES OF PARADISE The hungry He hath filled with cheer, The rich with emptiness and fear. sons of time, lift happy hands And shout hozannas in all lands! After the tread of tragic years. Drenched with man's blood and woman's tears. The kingdoms builded on the night Have fallen; and the rising light Breaks on the hilltops of the world. Where the flag of the People is unfurled. Praise God who through the battle-wrath Still leads the nations on the Path. sons of time, lift happy hands And shout hozannas in all lands! Sing with the rapture of the lark That hails the dawn above the dark — Sing as my green Sierras sing When forests shake and canyons ring — Sing with the thunder of the tides Crashing on granite mountain sides — Sing as the morning stars in flight Sang at the word, "Let there be light!" 89 THE RED CROSS League of Kindness, woven in all lands. You bring Love's tender mercies in your hands ; You come wherever misery appears To heal the wounds and wipe away the tears. League of Kindness, easing grief and pain. Working with God beyond the thought of gain, Above all flags you lift the conquering sign, And hold invincible Love's battle-line. League of Kindness, in your far-flung bands, You weave a chain that reaches to God's hands; And where blind guns are plotting for the grave. Yours are the lips that cheer, the arms that save. go GATES OF PARADISE League of Kindness, in your flag we see A foregleam of the brotherhood to be In ages when the agonies are done. When all will love and all will lift as one. 91 A SONG OF VICTORY A carol at the end of the world war I bugles, ripple and shine. Calling the heroes home from the battle- line. Praise praise, praise. For the last of the desperate days! Shake out the Ijrrical notes From the silvery deep of your throats. Burst into joy-mad carols: tell again The story and glory of heroic men. Glad are the love-birds in the leafy tree, But none so glad as we. High leap the rock-flung billows to the sky. But none leaps up so gladly and wildly high As leap our jubilant hearts. The Fear that crouched upon the world departs, 92 GATES OF PARADISE And Joy comes back pavilioned by the sun. Let all the mountains clap their hands and run: Let all the oceans from their throats of thunder Shout to the streams and storms and stars the wonder! II bugles, circle on from sky to sky, Travel the roads of the world with joyous cry. Blow, bugles, turn dead air to thrilling breath: Cry, cry eternal victory over death — Cry into the ear of time the shining word — Cry solemnly yet elate — That man is ever greater than his fate. That — at some touch of God — his soul is stirred By swift translunar gleams Which give him power to perish for his dreams. 93 GATES OF PARADISE Praise, praise, praise, For the new beginning of days! Praise for the living, honour for the dead — Praise for the wreathed and the wreath- less head. Praise and victorious peace On hearts that beat and on the hearts that cease — Peace on the mortal and the immortal way — Peace on the heroes vanished from our day. Called onward from these bounds of fleet- ing breath To join the old democracy of death. Ill Sing and be glad, nations, in these hours: Blow clarions from all towers! Let bright horns revel and the joy-bells rave; Yet there are lips whose smile is ever vain And wild wet eyes behind the window pane. For whom the whole world dwindles to one grave, 94 GATES OF PARADISE A lone grave at the mercy of the rain. The victor's laurel wears a wintry leaf: Sing softly, then, as though the mouth of Grief, Remembering all the agony and wrong, Should stir with mighty song. Not all the glad averment of the guns. Not all our odes, nor all our orisons, Can sweeten these intolerable tears. These silences that fall between the cheers. And yet our hearts must sing, Carol and clamour like the tides of Spring. For the great work is ended, and again The world is safe for men; The world is safe for high heroic themes; The world is safe for dreams. IV But now above the thunder of the drums — Where, brightening on, the face of Victory comes — Hark to a mighty sound, A cry out of the ground : 95 GATES OF PARADISE Let there be no more battles: field and flood Are weary of battle blood. Even the patient stones Are weary of shrieking shells and dying groans. Lay the sad swords asleep; They have their fearful memories to keep. And fold the flags: they weary of battle days. Weary of wild flights up the windy ways. Quiet the restless flags. Grown strangely old upon the smoking crags. Look where they startle and leap — Look where they hollow and heap — Now greatening into glory and now thinned. Living and dying momently on the wind. And bugles that have cried on sea and land The silver blazon of their high conunand — Bugles that held long parley with the sky — Bugles that shattered the nights on battle walls. Lay them to rest in dim memorial halls; For they are weary of that curdling cry That tells men how to die. And cannons worn out with their work of hell— The brief abrupt persuasion of the shell — 96 GATES OF PARADISE Let the shrewd spider lock them, one by one, With filmy cables glancing in the sun; And let the bluebird in their iron throats Build his safe nest and spill his rippling notes. Let there be no more battles, men of earth: The new age rises singing into birth I 97 A CAROL FOR THE NEW YEAR After the world war Blow, bugles, blow! The dark days into old oblivion go. Blow gladness from the summits of the world ; The battle-flags are furled — Wild flags that startled up at every breath — Banners that beat against the winds of death. They have their rest at last, Rich with heroic memories of the past. And on old fields, tortured with shot and shell- Where men ran laughing into the battle- hell— There is vast silence, and the cannons sleep ; And birds will come when April grasses leap, 98 GATES OF PARADISE Come out of the glowing South To build their nests in many a cannon's mouth. And they will shower their notes Among the poppies and the blowing oats; And the sad hearts of men Will leap to life and learn to love again. And there in the night's deep noon, When shadow softly falls Over the shot-torn walls, Frail wings will come to wander in the moon — Wander in long delight Through Europe's vast, star-filled, delicious night. II Blow, bugles, blow! The battle years have ended, and we go Onward to meet the future with a song, Knowing our might is greater than all wrong — Knowing we have a key for every gate And that the heart has dare for every fate — 99 GATES OF PARADISE Knowing that God is in the years ahead. As He was with us when the roads were red. Blow, bugles, blow! The shames and tyrannies begin to go. Sing, bugles, sing into the ear of time The end of the ancient crime — Sing with a silver tongue. Let all old faces gladden and grow young. And let the hearts of youth Sing with the glory of the world's New Truth— The high glad brother-hail; For nevermore must Love's great purpose fail- Never again the hopes depart Out of the world's joy-stilled, grief -great- ened heart. OUR FLEET IN THE WEST Swing in, O squadrons, swing in to be The gallant guard of our Western Sea. In each proud ship that furrows the foam We all see America — Liberty — Home. O ships, that rest on the billows' unrest, Swing in as the sea-birds swing to their nest. You come not to startle with battle alarms, But to hold in the peace of a mother's arms. O ships, you were moulded of glowing steel, Moulded in furnace fire down to the keel; But when the cold metal had burned to white rose. Love was the hammerer striking the blows. GATES OF PARADISE Yea, at the mandate of Love you came. Out of the furnace's crater flame. To guard the gates at the world's ex- treme, To leave free way for the people's dream It was Love that summoned the terrible strength That crouches and purrs in your long gray length. So we sing you glad welcome, great ocean guest, As you come to your love-watch here in the West. We see in your banner, now doubled, now thinned. The flag that will float in the world's last wind. Tyrants shall quake at the dare of its flight, Freemen shall rest in the shade of its might. GATES OF PARADISE Wherever you ride, imperious fleet, There the glad hearts of America beat; Wherever your brave ships sheer the sea. You carry the hope of a world made free. The wind in your banners, glad of the sun, Is the breath of a people breathing as one ; And wherever your bright flags ripple and fly, There is the laughter of God in the sky. 103 MEMORABLE MEN FATHER McGLYNN A TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE !n memory of the eightieth birthday of this brave apostle of social justice, this patriot of humanity. I never heard your voice, great priest, Yet felt afar the might of it. I knew your face was toward the East: I felt the morning light of it. Your love of Justice was a flame That lit your world with gleam of her: You fought for justice in the Name, Where laggards only dream of her. To love and lift was all your creed : Child-bold, you went the way of it : You crammed your doctrine into deed, To bring the golden day of it. 107 GATES OF PARADISE Hero, you saw the truth and dared In that immortal hour of you : Because you held no good unshared, The world still feels the power of you. You took the part of trampled men. And so you took the part of God: Your great love served the world, and then Death drew you to the heart of God! io8 TO WILLIAM WINTER A lusty Winter, frosty but kindly. — As You Like It. Hail, comrade, we are gathering to lend Praise to the poet, honour to the friend. 'Tis well that happy thousands cluster here To laud your name in Shakespeare's mighty year; For all his lofty lore and lyric art Have breathed their wonder music on your heart. And he who taught the players how to speak, Would clap you on the shoulder, kiss your cheek; Because our William with a heart of oak Held to high purpose all our player-folk. In the great days departed you were friend Of noble souls who made of Art an end — loo GATES OF PARADISE Forrest, tempestuous, with throat of thun- der, A rush of lightning with the whirlwind under — Our Edwin Booth, pale Hamlet's very double. Whose probing thought found life an empty bubble — Irving, who flung on men the woven spell Of Shylock's hatred hissing out of hell — Salvini, who across the silent years Called to our hearts the Moor's immortal tears — Our Mansfield, whose wild laughter sum- moned back Mad Richard, cynic, king, demoniac — Our Rehan, wandered from the Wood of Arden, A glad girl stepping out of Shakespeare's garden — Blithe Ellen Terry, light and lyric wild, Romance's sister. Fancy's April child — Modjeska, Neilson, Marlowe, lovely trine. Each with her separate glory — all divine! IIP GATES OF PARADISE These and a thousand others — ^women and men — Who made dead days upstart to Hfe again — Whose magic touch let hfe's old mystery rush Over our hearts in a great wonder hush . . . If now we have no more the noble rage And elfin beauty of the elder stage. If we have fallen upon evil days Of hectic drama and of raucous praise. Still is Will Winter with us to remind Of the great art that we have left behind. This is a kind star in our horoscope, For while we can remember we can hope. You marked them all, the sad glad Thes- pian throng; You cheered with laurel or you flayed with thong. One purpose marched beside you from your youth — To honour Art and not dishonour Truth. GATES OF PARADISE You never bowed to fashion, knelt to power. Nor praised the simulacrums of the hour. Knowing the stars abide though vapours fly, You stood your ground and let the crowds goby. And so wherever Time shall speak your fame. Truth will nail high this writ above your name: He kept his soul unspotted of the mire Wherein so many smirch their souls for hire. However fortune wavered, still all men Revered the austere honour of his pen. God made him of unpurchasable stuff: Say this at last and this will be enough I iia VOICES ACROSS THE VOID Lines written in honour of Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone Three wizards called the lightnings to their hands And witched the world with wonder in all lands. Morse with a flower-touch loosed the winged word To ride the wires until the world's end heard. Marconi shakes the ocean of the air. And sends our words into the Everywhere. But Bell flings off the cipher and the sign, And with a cunning nearer the divine, Lets out across the void man's living voice To sorrow or rejoice. Dispels the distances, shrinks up the spaces. Brings back the voices and the vanished faces. Holds men together though the feet may roam. Makes of each land a little friendly home. "3 GATES OF PARADISE The wires are everywhere, The tingling nerves of the air. Benetting cities, speaking for all hearts, From floor to floor their whispered light- ning darts. Looping the prairies, leaping hills and lakes. Over the world their whispered lightning shakes. They stitch the farms and link the battle- line: They thread the Alps and down the Congo twine: They throb among the Pyramids, and speak Where Fujiyama lifts her perfect peak. A fable it will seem in years to come : How Bell gave speech to spaces that were dumb. A fable it will seem: He was one man, the one man with the dream. "4 GATES OF PARADISE When youth was on his brow, He was a conscript burdened with a vow: He was a man constrained To seek a vision that the world disdained, A vision that called laughters to the lips, Laughters more stinging than the whistling whips. "Crumple the spaces, speak across the miles?" How could the wise ones cover up their smiles ! "Send out our syllables like flying birds ?" How could the wise ones frame their scorn in words! Now that the deed is done. And cried before the footsteps of the sun. Honour the man, whose gift from the AU-Good Is shrinking earth into one neighbourhood. And so, great guest, magician of the voice. We come to crown that gray head and rejoice. We gather here to-night To glory a little in your life's long fight. GATES OF PARADISE Take at our hands this humble wreath of praise For all the toil and victory of your days. Take this poor wreath : 'tis all we have to give To those that nobly serve and nobly live. ii6 THE WORLD CHARLES DICKENS MADE ' When I saw those Venetian palaces, I thought that to leave one's hand upon the time with one tender touch for the mass of toiling people — a touch that nothing could obliterate — this would be to lift one's self above the dust of all the Doges in their graves. — Charles Dickens. They came, a thronging and beloved band, Charles Dickens, when you raised your wizard hand. A thousand and a half thousand more. They came to wander on this earthly shore — Your folk called into Time from No Man's Land, Beings not high and lordly and far away But fashioned of the stuff of everyday — A whimsy and motly race, Commingled of the noble and the base, Of seraph and of satyr, like the souls That walk our world to their unreckon- able goals. 117 GATES OF PARADISE You called them into life, a hurrying crowd. Some came with Nature's knack Of joy, tasting of life with pleasant smack — Some with their own wild sinning, bent and bowed, Each with his own hell loaded on his back. And some came bending under the world's wrong. Till men your holy anger had made strong Rose up to smite for God the fatted greed That grows and gorges on a brother's need. And some came young and innocent, to move Unharmed among the dark and vile, to prove How valiant and invulnerable is truth — How silver-armoured in immortal youth. Gently you lit as with the light of day The unpublished virtues of the common way- Showed how the old humanities endure Down in the hard-pressed coverts of the poor. ii8 GATES OF PARADISE You were the friend of the rejected ones, The witness for the humble, for the sons Of misery forgotten in their tears And trampled by the hoof-beats of the years. You raised for human rights a world-heard cry. One that is sounding on from sky to sky. Yet not with sword you came To batter down the walls of sham and shame; But with a wind of laughter, glad and strong. You hurled away the props of ancient wrong. Your mimic world sweeps by upon its way, A pageant on a lighted stage rehearsed, A curious host, now grieving and now gay- Each in his little whirl of dust immersed — Each caught into his ring of circum- stance — Some moved by law and some by whimsy chance. ri9 GATES OF PARADISE Tragic, heroic, wise, absurd, They came and vanished at your sover- eign word; All foolish and fantastical as we Appear, perhaps, to angels as they see Our crooked thought, our gesture, our grimace. As we plunge on into the heated race. Forgetting stars for pebbles of no worth, Forgetting, too, our high immortal birth. Wizard, you sent from your creative hand Strange shapes to walk and peer in life's old land — Shapes kin to those we jostle in the street. Shapes friendly as the forms we daily greet. And of that host to which your word gave breath, Many there are that never shall taste death. They live and move among us as a part Of all that share the memories of the heart. GATES OF PARADISE And something of their sorrow and their mirth Will stay to cheer and chasten the old earth. As long as there are any tears On earth, or any laughters down the years. And so Shakespeare looks back and smiles to see Pickwick and Falstaff in one roistering glee, Immortal now beyond Time's hurt or harm, Going down the world together, arm in arm — Where Little Nell and sweet Miranda go Straying green fields with April flowers ablow — Where Mistress Quickly by the evening lamp Sits nodding and babbling on with Sairy Gamp — Where dwarfed Dan Quilp and crooked Caliban (Warped effigies of man) Wrestle in wolfish hug, Snarling and grinning in a savage tug. GATES OF PARADISE And SO, Charles Dickens, whatsoe'er be- tide, You have the Master's smile : be satisfied. Go gladly on, content wherever you are. Doing your happy work in any star. Shakespeare looks back, and thinks the look worth while : Be satisfied, for you have won his smile. SONGS TO THE SUPERNAL WOMAN A SONG TO, THE DIVINE MOTHER* I Come, Mighty Mother, from the bright abode, Lift the low heavens and hush the Earth again; Come when the moon throws down a shining road Across the sea — come back to weary men. But if the moon throws out across the sea Too dim a light, too wavering a way. Come when the sunrise paves a path for Thee Across the waters brightening into day. *This song should be read in the light of the deep and comfort- ing truth that the Divine Feminine as well as the Divine Masculine Principle is in God — that He is Father-Mother, Two-in-One. It follows from this truth that the dignity of womanhood is grounded in the Divine Nature itself. The fact that the Deity is Man- Woman was known to the ancient poets and sages, and was grafted into the nobler religions of mankind. The idea is implied in the doctrine of the Divine Father, taught by our Lord in the Gospels; and it is declared in the first chapter of Genesis in the words: "God said. Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness. ... So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them." I2S GATES OF PARADISE Dead nations saw Thee dimly in release — In Aphrodite rising from the foam : Some glimmer of thy beauty was on Greece, Some trembling of thy passion was on Rome. For ages Thou hast been the dim desire That warmed the bridal chamber of the mind: Come shining from the heavens with holy fire, And spread divine contagion on man- kind. Descend, Mother, to life's imperilled land, That we may frame our freedom into fate: Descend, and on the throne of nations stand. That we may build thy beauty in the State. 126 GATES OF PARADISE Shine through the frame of nations for a light, Move through the hearts of heroes in a song: It is thy beauty wilder than the night. That husht the heavens and keeps the high gods strong. II I know, Supernal Woman, Thou dost seek No song of man, no worship, and no praise; But Thou wouldst have dead lips begin to speak. And dead feet rise to walk immortal ways. Yet listen. Tender Mother, to the child Who has no voice but song to tell his pain — Nothing but broken numbers, faint and wild. Thin as the music of a woodland rain. 187 GATES OF PARADISE His song is only a little twilight cry, Less than the whisper of a river reed; Yet Thou canst hear in it the souls that die — Feel in its pain the vastness of our need. I would not mar the mouth of song to tell My life's long passion and my heart's long grief. But Thou canst hear the ocean in one shell, And see the whole world's winter in one leaf. So here I stand at the world's weary feet, And cry the sorrow of the tragic years: I cry because I hear the world's heart beat, "Weary of battle and worn by many tears. For ages Thou hast breathed upon man- kind A faint wild tenderness, a vague desire; For ages stilled the whirlwinds of the mind And sent on lyric seers the rush of fire. 128 GATES OF PARADISE Some day our homeless cries will draw Thee down, And the old brightness on the ways of men Will send a hush upon the jangling town, And broken hearts will learn to love again. Come with the face that husht the heavens of old- Come with thy maidens in a mist of light; Haste for the night falls and the shadows fold, And voices cry and wander on the hight. Come, Bride of God, to fill the vacant throne. Touch the dim Earth again with sacred feet; Come build the Holy City of white stone. And let the whole world feel thy bosom beat. 129 THE MOTHER OF THE MANY NAMES I am the Queen of the universe, the giver of all. Although I am one by my powers, yet I appear as manifold. — the rig veda. In a thousand dim pools are reflected the ghosts of the sun : So your shadows on earth have been many, yet you have been one. You inhabit Eternity, mystic, immortal, sublime; Yet shadows of you have appeared in these chambers of time. You husht all the East with your face in the morning of earth. In the flower of your rapture when beauty was breaking to birth. It was back in the youth of the world, the adorable dawn : It was back in the morning of man, ere the Face was withdrawn. 130 GATES OF PARADISE You scattered the fire of your song on the wonderful years, Till men were atremble with joy and mysterious tears. So the bards of the Vedas beheld you in vision go by, Beheld you and cried to the dawn a world- echoing cry. Then you rose on Assyria, rose in the sworded Ishtar As the Goddess that leads on the march of the bright morning star. And you rose in the moon as Astarte on Sidon and Tyre, And sent upon Carthage a silence — the snow of your fire. Where Jehovah projected his shadow and cried his decree On the strange tribes that huddled in fear by the way of the sea, 131 GATES OF PARADISE You were there as ElShaddai, "the Mother with nourishing breast," And wherever were tears, you were there as a mercy and rest. Leaning forth to the wind and whirled on in your lion-drawn car. You travelled the Phrygian peaks as a mystical star. You were Cybele crowned, and the ends of the earth knew your feet : Your beauty was whispered in Sardis, your altars were lighted in Crete. And your glory descended on Cyprus: your name was a word Wherein all the sounds of the sea in one music were heard. You were swift Aphrodite: you rose from the flight of the foam To scatter wild beauty on Hellas, white wonder on Rome, 132 GATES OF PARADISE And you shone through the face of Athene, the sword-brightened one; For you stir the deUght of the heroes, the lords of the sun. In the fire of your passion God's warriors stand guard at all gates, To beat back the rise of the hells, the all- ruining fates. And afar on the North you were Frigga, and your heart went wild When the fire-ship bore out to sea your all-beautiful child. You stood by the Life-Tree Igdrasil: the boughs felt your breath. And the roots knew your grief as they plunged through the kingdoms of death. In Egypt men saw you as Isis, the vail- covered one. The moon-bride of shining Osiris, the Lord of the Sun. 133 GATES OF PARADISE And now we cry out for your glory, for in you we see The Woman who was, and who is, and forever shall be. You are she whom all nations acclaimed in their glorious hours : You are she whom all poets adored on their star-lighted towers. And now at the end of the ages we are calling again : Descend to us, Mother, to brighten the dark roads of men! 134 THE WOMAN OF DREAMS Descend to us, Woman of Wonder, to lift and release: Your face was a rapture on Rome and a glory on Greece: Yet they saw only dimly and followed your brightness afar As a dreamer might follow in dream a mysterious star. You arose ere the planets appeared or the first suns began, And out of your Godhead descended the god that is man. For you are the Mother of Life and the circling spheres. And out of you blossom the worlds and the wonderful years. Lo, you are the Spirit of Beauty that touches with fire The heroes of heavens till they burn with a starry desire. I3S GATES OF PARADISE Your face is a light to all nations, a joy to all grief; And you come with a whisper of April at the fall of the leaf. You bring back the song to the world when the tempests destroy, And the cold winter nests are rekindled to shout a new joy. Till the deeps of the ocean run dust will your days endure: Though the stars of the morning turn ashes, your beauty is sure. For you are the Goddess of God and the secret of Fate, And till you appear in your glory the whole world must wait. In you are the hopes of the heart and the great births of Time: In you is the song of the centuries march- ing in rhyme. 136 GATES OF PARADISE So, Woman of Fire, we will follow the wind of your flight, And will worship your face in the hush of mysterious night. We will build you brave altars and bind them with odorous boughs. And will kneel to your Name as we whisper the lyrical vows. We will sing you glad songs as they sang in the ages gone, When the poets of Arya lifted their arms to the Dawn. We will lift up our hands on the hills by the star-broken streams To worship you, Mother of Eros, Woman of Dreams! THE END 137 A CHORUS OF CRITICAL OPINIONS "Edwin Markham, America's greatest poet."— The New York Globe. "Edwin Markham is our greatest living poet." — Joyce Kilmer. "Edwin Markham, the master-poet of our choir." — George Stirling. "A poem by Markham is a national event." — Robert Underwood Johnson. "Edwin Markham, king among poets!" — Salamon de la Selva. "Edwin Markham is the greatest poet of the century." — Ella Wheeler Wilcox. "Edwin Markham is the Poet Laureate of America." — Michael Monahan. "Edwin Markham, the most talked-of literary man in America." — The Saturday Evening Post. 139 CRITICAL OPINIONS "The heights where stand a Keats, a Markham, a Milton."— Eden Phillpots. " The Markhamic message is greater than the Emersonian one." — Bailey Millard. "Edwin Markham' s poem, 'The Man with the Hoe, ' set the whole world thinking and talking."— The New York Weekly Wit- ness. "Edwin MarkhanCs 'Outwitted' is the greatest quatrain ever written." — Anna Hempstead Branch. "No other poem in the world ever attracted so much attention as Edwin Markham's ' The Man with the Hoe.' "—The San Fran- cisco Chronicle. "Edwin Markham's poetic work main- tains a higher level than the work of any other living American poet." — George Ham- lin Fitch. "Edwin Markham is easily our greatest living poet; he is the dean of the world's poets." — George Stirling. "Excepting always my dear Whitcomb Riley, Edwin Markham is the first of the Americans." -^William Dean Howells. 140 CRITICAL OPINIONS "Edwin Markham's 'The Man with the Hoe' is the whole Yosemite — the thunder, the might, the majesty." — Joaquin Miller. "Markham's 'The Man with the Hoe' will be the battle-cry of the next thousand years."— Jay William Hudson. "Edwin Markham's great poem, 'The Man with theHoe,' is regardedas themightiest expression of the mightiest problem of all time." — Wheeler's Literary Readers. "Edwin Markham is the greatest poet of the Social Passion that has yet appeared in the world." — Alfred Russell Wallace. "Edwin Markham is one of the greatest poets of the age, and the greatest poet of de- mocracy." — Francis Grierson. "Edwin Markham is a great poet, a great man — in fact, an institution whose in- dorsement is a title to Valhalla." — William Griffith. " There is Edwin's Markham's ' The Man with the Hoe' — no other poem ever swung so swiftly into the mouths of men from sea to sea." — The London Critic. HI CRITICAL OPINIONS "Edwin Markham's poem, 'The Man with the Hoe,' is magnificent. It is impres- sive in the highest degree and reeks with humanity and morality." — Professor Wil- liam James. "Edwin Markham's poem, 'The Man with the Hoe,' is worth all the rest of the poetry that has been written in America since the death of the Masters." — Madison Cawein. "In Edwin Markham's poem, ' The Man with the Hoe,' the passion for social righteousness fuses into a white heat, and is molded by the poet into a pure form of austere beauty." — Harriet Monroe. "Edwin Markham's 'Lincoln, the Man of the People,' is the greatest American poem; and his poem, 'The Man with the Hoe,' is undoubtedly the greatest poem of the world." — John Burns, Member of the Brit- ish Cabinet. "If you were to ask the first man you meet in the street who wrote 'Hamlet,' 'The Idyls of the King,' or ' The Man with the Hoe,' he would be most likely to know who wrote the hoe-poem." — The Seattle Post InteU ligencer. 142 CRITICAL OPINIONS "Edwin Markham's 'The Man with the Hoe,^ is the supreme poem now on the face of the globe; and Edwin Markham is the greatest poet on the American continent." — Edgar Lucian Larkin. "It is long since I entertained a doubt of Edwin Markham's eventual primacy among contemporary American poets." — Ambrose Bierce. " We who are standing here will pass into oblivion — we and all our works will vanish; but the name of Edwin Markham will echo down the centuries." — Thomas Marshall, Vice-President of the United States. "The storm-voiced Edwin Markham — a voice of large authority, terse as Tacitus, in non-conformity sublime — a vibrant voice the world must hear and heed — the clearest prophetic voice of this beclouded epoch." — Bailey Millard. "Many critics are saying that Markham's poem, * The Man with the Hoe,' is greater than any other poem since Browning and Tennyson; and other critics are calling it the high-water mark of poetry in the nineteenth century." — The New York Her- ald. 143 CRITICAL OPINIONS "The most conspicuous literary creation in the United States this year is Edwin Markham's 'The Man with the Hoe.'"— The London Morning Leader. "A new poem by Edwin Markham at- tracts more attention than a new poem by any other living American poet." — The New York Globe. "It is no vulgar journalist who has signed Edwin Markham's passports to fame — if not to immortality: it is Professor William James, it is Edmund Clarence Sted- man, it is William Dean Howells." — The New York Evening Post. "Edwin Markham's ' The Man with the Hoe,' is the greatest short poem of our gener- ation. No other poet has ever voiced as Markham voices the wrongs of outraged humanity — no other poet has ever flung his challenge so boldly into the teeth of cus- tom — no other poet has ever pictured in such awful blackness the consequences that rush down from social injustice — no other poet has ever portrayed in such prophetic fashion the coming of a time when Love shall conquer tyranny and greed. . . . Edwin Mark- ham is the one great poet left in America." — Joseph Dana Miller. 144 CRITICAL OPINIONS "Edwin Markham's 'Lincoln, the Man of the People,' is the finest thing ever written on the immortal martyr." — Pittsburg Chris- tian Advocate. "Edwin Markham is both lamb and lion — humble yet tempestuous. I am eager to include him in my new volume, Los Raros — The Rare Ones." — Ruben Dar'io, the great- est poet of Latin-America. "Edwin Markham's poem, 'The Man with the Hoe,' is a great thing and a beautiful thing, in the same sense that a strain from Wagner is great and beautiful." — Hamlin Garland. "Edwin Markham's books are now the most widely read poerris in America. They are more in demand than the poems even of Kipling." — Young Men's Magazine. "Edwin Markham is the greatest of our American poets, . . . and he is the supreme master of epithet in American letters." — Thomas Walsh. "Edwin Markham is the leader who gave us the greatest poem of the age — the most splendid of all utterances for man." — Charles Edward Russell. CRITICAL OPINIONS "A great poet is Edwin Markham — a Miltonian ring in his verses and a Swin- burnian richness in his rhymes and rhythms. I place him higher than Walt Whitman." — Max Nordau. "America is ablaze with controversy over the poetry of Edwin Markham. He is now given — before all the world — the primacy among living American poets." — Town Topics. "Edwin Markham is serious and yet is eternally young. He is the Man with the Hoe in the Shoes of Happiness." — The Reverend William Norman Guthrie. "Edwin Markham is a poet. If his volume contained nothing beyond his 'Look into the Gulf,' it would be a memorable volume. The first lines, particularly, are the spontaneous vision of a spacious imagi- nation." — Richard Le Gallienne. "I want poets who are moved and sur- prised by Truth and Beauty, and stirred by the spectacle and contacts of life. . . . Edwin Markham is a poet with a world vision — one who can love with Beauty, grieve with Sorrow, and blow the bugle-calls of Truth." — John Galsworthy. 146 CRITICAL OPINIONS "Edwin Markham — the magician of the pen — his name is a household word in two hemispheres." — The Suisun Courier. "Edwin Markham' s poem, 'The An- gelus,' reaches the highest attainable har- mony of artistic form and poetic feeling. . . . . This poem is worship in its highest, most Joyful form: it is a hymn that the evening — if not the morning — stars might sing with a new Adam in Paradise." —Dr. Marion Mills Miller. "Edwin Markham first arrested attention as a poet of the social vision. . . .. The poetry of the younger group in America was barren of the social motive before the appearance of his poem, 'The Man with the Hoe.' Whitman's message had not crystallized into definite social expression in our poetry. . . . The social unrest of the 90' s, all the passion for social justice then springing into life, had found no spir- itual expression in American art until Edwin Markham — with the vision of a seer — focused it all to a luminous centre in ' The Man with the Hoe.' Instantly America responded, a new realm was made free, and a great influx of vitality poured into American poetry." — The New York Times Book Review. H7 CRITICAL OPINIONS "Edwin Markham is the greatest poet in the America of to-day, a worthy comrade of Whitman and Emerson in the greatness of his soul, and sweeter than either of these in his songs." — Dr. George Wharton James. "The powerful genius that created 'The Man with the Hoe,' has, in his new poems, taken the boundless ages for his realm. They include 'The Angelus' and 'Lincoln, the Man of the People,' . . . Edwin Mark- ham undoubtedly stands first among con- temporary poets; and his 'Lincoln' and his 'Man with the Hoe' will survive the rack and ruin of time." — Book News Monthly. "Edwin Markham' s poems are the high" est expression of the genius of America and of the genius of humanity. Our Victor Hugo is the intellectual, the national, and the international brother of Edwin Markham." — Dr. Marcel Knecht, official representative of France in America. "Edwin Markham, in his poem, 'The Man with the Hoe,' sounded the humanitar- ian labour note in America in the early dawn of the 20th century. That note went oyer the world, sending a new quickening into the poetry of our age. Markham may be said to have originated a new tendency in 148 CRITICAL OPINIONS our poetry, a tendency that turns for inspir- ation to the common and human in the life of the toiling and struggling millions about us." — Jessie B. Rittenhouse. 149 THE COUNTRY LIFE FBESS GAKDEN CITY, N. Y. / ' I- ||'l|ll|'ini,i[''li|,'l|llii V.'li SjillSi^'tiiiiiifiifffii^^ :mm iiiiiiiil m iliiii