PS 3501 r' j Monographs \ William Frederick Allen \ J y^ — '±>- /I Copyright N» L^l^ CSffSRlCm DEPOSfT. MONOGRAPHS MONOGRAPHS BY WILLIAM FREDERICK ALLEN Boston The Four Seas Company 1919 Copyright, ipip, by The Four Seas Company Uti; 29 19(9 Boston, Mass., U. S. A. The Four Seas Press yGI.A55920l ri To S. A. WITH MEMORIES CONTENTS HYACINTHUS SEERS OF VISION THE STOKER NO CROSS TRINITAS MY FATHERLAND FIFTY YEARS HENCE BEWILDERMENT FOR YOU THE GARDEN BUILDER THE UNASLEEP AVE IMPERATOR! GOOD THOUGHT THE FINAL JUDGMENT THE BIG SMASH SECOND FIDDLES A NEW ENGLAND MEETING HOUSE THE PIPE "OMNIA MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM" ALL SAINTS' SAY MIDNIGHT IN NEW YORK .. THE DEATH OF OLD GERMANY .. ENGLAND POET TO WOMAN LONDON FOG SIMPLICITY WINTER TWILIGHT IN PRAGUE .. THESE DAYS YOU WHO ARE DEAD PATRIOTISM "GONE WEST" CHUCKED CONDOLENCE AMERICA KING GEORGE INTERRUPTED DEATH AND DAWN THE OLD HOUSE THE LONE CYPRESS AT MONTEREY GOD'S ANTHOLOGY IN FLORIDA FROM MY DORMER WINDOW .. RIPE GRAPES NUNC DIMITTIS POST BELLUM THE FAUN EVENING IN A HOSPITAL .. THE HOME COMING THE GRAY DAY Page 11 13 14 16 17 18 19 21 22 23 25 27 29 30 31 32 33 35 36 37 38 39 40 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 MONOGRAPHS HYACINTHUS Who sports with the gods must die! Woe, oh woe! Who prays for the wings must fly; Fate wills so. Who mocks at the loving friend Hath signed his death. He comes to the silent end Who scorns love's breath ! Thou, Hyacinthus, thou Didst spurn thy friend! Now, Phoebus playmate, now What is thine end? The stricken Zephry weeps Where thy white body sleeps ; The Sun-god lingers near And drops a shining tear. Where art thou Fair pouter now ? In the shades where lovers wait Message from the loved one's gate — Dead — alone. [II] A wind tossed stone Hath laid thee low ! Phoebus' kiss may not awake Nor thy beauty's silence Poor boyfair, no ! But still a flower soft in name Sighs why Hyacinthus came; The Zephry moans Where blood-kissed stones Have stained thy hair. The morning air Is sad with Phoebus' long-drawn sighs ; And when the pensive daylight dies He dreams on thee. Divinity Hath kept thee in his heart and soul; His melodies have sung thy dole. So what's amiss To die when Phoebus loves thee best? And earth bears on her fragrant breast Thy blood in flower? The high god's kiss Was thine, an hour. So thou art blessed past grief's annoy— The god of gods hath loved thee, boy! [12] SEERS OF VISION Thou art a Seer of Vision — thou — and thou! And I am run to kiss ye — brothers all ! My couch is heaped where forest pines grow tall — Where shyest birds nest on the thicket's bough ; And thou art of an attic's pinched confine — And thine is ermine of a purple throne — And thou doest pray where altar lights are thrown On acolytes bowed in a decorous line! Greet ye, my brothers ! "For us creeds unbend And royal kings wear homespun ! Attic walls Picture arbutus ; each to each is friend — And self same sun to self-same vision calls ! We gather up dead dreams as diamond dust And shape new dreams, the better for their death ! We lisp new tongues, we voice a Shibboleth From broken hopes till new worlds form their crust! Each to his own domain, his star of things — To dream, till dreams are Vision, faith is Sight." Each with the half -blind eyes made quickened light — Each with the feet grown fast Icarian wings ! Four points of Vision! Forest, attic, throne And olden gloried Church ! Each seer a god ! Each stumbling out a path the seers trod Of us unknowing, to us loved and known ! Oh, brothers to my woods ! The brook has wine Of sun-dyed summer! Let me play the host! Come thou, and thou, and thou, The Holy Ghost Hath signed my treasure yours, your treasure mine ! [13] THE STOKER How did he get there? Who does he stay there? How could I get him away? I'd die in such excluse of free summer air! I'd die if my day were his Pluto's day! There's something about him not human ! Is he flesh, as I'm flesh, born as I am, of woman? Is he Fafner or Titan? Has Thor Left Thorlings on earth? He's iron to the core — A god — but, My God, such a face ! 'Tis a brute's ! Is he one of my race Or shoot of a planet swung out of space And dropping its left overs on this terrene? And how could I help him? A boon To him Casey's corner saloon — The loud-natured gaff of his kind. A Sampson in strength, but a child in his mind — His mien no birth-mark my mien. Reason him? No! Pity him? Explain him? No! Yet his is one part of the voice that shouts "Go!" When this creature of science sweeps in her pride For a caprice of whim Like Dian turned bride. He's something to me ; I'm nothing to him ; If I love him, 'tis with head, not with heart; And head without heart is the scurviest part; His look fends thought from my speech. Why show him pomegranates he never can reach? The dried fruit he knows ; why harrow and teach Till his taste grows, and orchards with never a peach [14] For his eating! Alas, there's no platform of meeting! Sit him down to a symphony; some blotch of a tune Abortion of music, his tear or guffaw. There's no quick prescription of man-cozened law To bid an oaf thrill at the first rose of June And beauty's a magic ne'er to be seen But by the beauty born. I'm out again; back to the earth's bliss of green. He stays there — forlorn? Or happier than I am: I hear him, "That swell Don't know he's a-livin' — a drink pard — oh hell" And yet there's a God ; He made us ; and I And my huge stoker brother walk 'neath the same sky Lick up the same air in deep meeds of breath And live out a life to the free soil of death. And though I'd fain reason him, my reason won't tell How he got there ; Why he stays there ; Why he won't break away And live his full birthright of sunlight and May. How I got here ; Why I stay here ; Why I don't break away Who knows? And my stoker? God tell us, some day! [15] NO CROSS I bear no Cross — And therefore my loss. Death hath walked blind for me — Life hath smiled kind on me: When I would weep, dry dust were my tears. Fate spared me sorrow for humankinds' biers — Roses have reft for me, thorns. Wine sparkled in deep horns — And thus, I bear no Cross. And whence my loss? When others weep they read my tears as stones; My banquet paeons chill their requiem groans For mankind worse than dead. My heart lies emerald-crusted, ruby sharp — The cynic's discord haunts my spirit's harp That fain would sing of grief. Come Fate, bold ruthless thief — And strip mine orchard of its veinous sweets ! When sorrow next me greets Let her behold me clad in poverty — Feet bare, eyes blurred to see Life's worst; that I may clasp some work-worn hand Whose touch my fine skin's silk may not withstand With curse, "What hast thou with me !" Let me bleed Till I be healed of God, and cry "My creed Is mankind's own; I know, I bear the Cross — And know not isolation's worse than loss !" [i6] TRINITAS All-Father God is as the world at night ; Hints in the sky, of never sleeping suns; Unfathomed currents of etheric runs — Assumptioned dark, but, certain, molten light. Omniscient vastness ! Faith in stars and space — Limits unlimited ! Deep evolved to deeps ! Security, that somehow, somewhere, keeps A tireless vigil of eternal Grace ! And Christos God beams as the rising sun Who colours edgeless forms to shapes concrete ; Man glimpses traces of His hands. His feet In each new impulse of the day begun. The awfulness of night dispels in dew And morning freshness ; hope enforces sense To fuller being; some immortal lens Defines the Living God child-born, anew! But God the Holy Ghost, like some ravine Fast set mid ice-looked hills, gives forth no sign Of Deity, nor marks Himself divine Till God Allfather, Christos God are seen. Then fullest silence, incarnate in love In truth eternal, shadows visible! The Triune God in presence visual Illumes all space. Around, Within, Above! [17] MY FATHERLAND Where lies it — Greater Anglia — my Fatherland? Each reef where syllables the English tongue! Where'er an English verse, soul born, is sung There am I native ! There my flag, my strand. Or Union Jack or joyant Stripes and Stars No alien I b'neath either pennant ; mine The heritage of Shakespeare; Cana's wine Blushes for me by far Australia's bars As by rock-starred Maine; my brother he Who loves my Hawthorne with me ; let him hail From tide-hemmed Faulkland ; let his pearl-dipped sail Be set Hawaiian in the west-east sea ! What makes the foreigner? He whose heart Holds not the tongue I love ! — mine English right ! Him I may whisper, ''God give thee good-night" Is of my loins the most integral part! My Fatherland? My sun-proud spot of birth? Each vibrant clod of English-speaking earth? [i8] FIFTY YEARS HENCE Fifty years hence; the lad we plied To stricken France with convoys' train — May lean, an old man, 'gainst some fence And garble dried herbs o'er again Of trenches, long syne bearded fields The richer for their crimson bust. Drone toothless jars of Zeppelin birds With Anti-Christ's black pinions trussed. Naithless, above his frost bleared head Some new air bastard may contort — Though fixed in his war clouded mind — The year when nature ran distort With streaming hair, and palsied scream — When men gnashed thoughts embowelled in hate. He young, changed old; beheld for aye But France as the one square of fate. Unheeded as he mumbles on With gesture of his long-lived age — How what was Prussia griped the world — And greened anew old history's page. With feeble pipe he'll shrilly rant Of France, how England stemmed the tide — America last bared her arm — For honours' name young millions died! Fifty years hence ! And thus will speak These unborn minnows, bred to rules We wot not of; "These dotards squeak Like antique mice; away with fools Who mouth a Prussia lest than least. Why gnaw dead history's girth of bones? [19] The seas are free; their battle brunts Scant heeded mounts of scarce read stones!" But still we plied the lads of France For that posterity who seem A. dream unborn ; to whom we'll shape The shadow of a long dead dream. [20] BEWILDERMENT Submission — resignation. Are these the vestibule afront the door Of life eternal? To hear Zambesi's roar Nor heed it with the loin embued elation Youth's prompting circles — one mad leaping band Of heart plus soul, plus brain, plus Pan? Am I grown one with Christ? Is God's right hand Transforming me Saint John from Caliban? Or is ambition's fervour, tearful fled From me twain Icelands' cold ? Lord, do I sleep Dropped on mine eyes the film of atrophine — My veins time sluggish to the cast-off dead Who "rest eternal — light perpetual keep" — Mere deadwood, hush of summer fire and green? [21] FOR YOU For you he fought ; ne'er shall the f oeman's tread Profane the violet fragrance of your dust. Ne'er shall your grave be tramped by German lust — Thus did he guard the tryst sleep of his dead. Other's hallooed, fresh from their sweetheart's kiss — The arms' embrace, the heart tuned to the heart. God fend their love ! Not his their rapture's part — His was a shadow's dream, a captured bliss. And this his woe : 'neath custom's rigid guise — That hear "Good-Bye" breathed to another's ears — Beholds another dewed with vesper tears And looks at love caught in another's eyes. And yet was his a strength, they scarce could know Those quick young saplings; those whose pulses burn — Whose prayer demands their laurel twined return — God's victory wrest from time's most deadly foe. The great word, "Home" their slogan ; 'neath a tree In sacred Flanders, some unconscious Hun Made free his soul; his black of day was done — And 'twas your smile, erst years his rosemary For you — for England — yea, for France — His God — For soft-browed Death! What now the mirk of grief? Peace to your dust! No heathen German thief Dare break the holy silence of your sod ! [22] THE GARDEN BUILDER He who sows a garden, builds for God And to that end I work ! The trowel's edge Upturns and digs th' alembic of the soil To His great glory. Kings, and studded czars Upraise the sceptre, and to their decree Vast tablets rise in monumental stone And rich-veined marble; noble are such deeds And he is worth the laurels who so builds. More worthy he, of more supreme renown Who paints a picture ; he who carves his thought In precious matrix; rifle Daphne's groves. And crown these monarchs with the gods' esteem ! Still greater is the poet; in his lines The picture paints, the marble falls in moulds Of frozen music. But, the gardener Surpasses painter, poet, sculptor, all; For God Almighty, as the sage hath said First made Himself a garden, in the times When transience lingered with eternity — And truth, as yet, knew nought of falsehood's shame. Thus he who plants a tree, resembles God In earth's first Eden; he who tills the soil For beauty's virtue, dreams virginity — Millenium once known, and ages lost. No dullard is the gardener ; his no pain Of weary tedium; his the joy undimmed Bestowed on those who plant, and delve the earth To symbol resurrection. Hear, ye men, Give to the earth the flower-pregnant seeds — That she may sing a joyful stave to God ! [23] Make firm the stripling trees, and ye shall do The golden deeds that win the smiles of God! Perchance the garden-dreamer may restore The Eden-hour again — oh happy thought — And sinlessness and truth be incarnate In leaf, in flower, and garden holiness! [24] THE UNASLEEP For such as I, God pray — the Unasleep ! The weary swimmers on the midnight deep Of soul-rest and repose! The waking throes Of doubtful half-dreams, hinted nightmares ; thrills Of slumber journeys up steep-breasted hills — The hideous starts to life! This is our doom; the slow turn of the knife The dull night through Till morning dew As shallow substitute for Sleep ! Oh well for those who wide-eyed vigils keep ! Or well for those who chortle as the swine In sottish Lethe ; those who reach the fine Of dreamless rest! But God— we Unasleep ! The stab i' the breast By every creature of the baleful night ! Each flicker of the nightlamp's restless light; The long wail of the melancholy cat ; The chipper-chipper of the evil bat : The stern glance of the cold, imperial moon — The shuffling step of some drink-glad buffoon Who matters in the silence-shrouded street. The lone patrolman on his measured beat ; The chance pedestrian whose feet resound In quick-step o'er the pavement-piercing ground— What maddening staves they sing ! What ghoulish shapes the long-armed shadows fling Across the trappings of the loud-voiced room ! And we— the Unasleep— who through the gloom [25] Half-wake, half-sleep, hal f -dream ! Who turn and toss — Who yearn for peace, if but the tomb's cool moss — What tortures of the damned do we endure! The scaffold's hempen were a welcome cure; The Iron Maid, an action of delight — 'Gainst these thin phantoms of the mocking night — These dreams that be no dreams ! How foolish seem the stars with their cheap gleams — How futile seem the storms when they do chance ! What were a lover's kiss, a friend's soft glance? The monarch's sceptre, dubbing us as knight? The purest joy, earth's most effulgent might To us, the cureless, death-shunned Unasleep? We sigh as hapless Henry, or like him The ghostly mariner, whose eyes strained dim — Glared, red with pain, on Sleep that fled his face ! We pray — we pray; could Mary, with her grace — Or Christ Himself — could they but see our woe — Then might they learn what sorrow man can know ! Alas, they sleep above! Their calm is deep; And God and Nature shun the Unasleep ! [26] AVE IMPERATOR! Hail, vernal, smiling Death! I will not have thee cold ! thy smile a sneer At man's poor despite! I will not paint thee fear Thou fair bestower of the Further Breath Great God doth give! I will not gasp "I die,"— I'll shout "I live!" When night's soft mellowing haze extends the gold My sunset boasts! When every Rosary Bead last time is told — And every Sanctus Bell last time is knolled — I'll gird me for the coasts Thy sea fresh Presence brings ! Who deems thy voice knife sharp? The tid that sings! The greenwood dark to poetry's eteme Carols no sweeter than thy harmony ! I've heard full many a leaf entangled burn Slip through the fields, but none croons staves as thee Thou summer of the spring ! I've heard thee laugh of childhood's faery ring And crack quick jests as children spanned thy back To run afar with thee. Thou art no ghost! Thou art no iron-tongued rack As sorry mortals cry thee ! Azrael With face avert and dread sword ever bright To slay, men whisper thee. Why build bald hell Of blearing black of thee who art pure light And God's eyes are thine own! Thou art no requiem sob ; thou art no moan Of thorn-pierced grief ! Thou art no midnight vigilant sleepless thief — [27] For Sleep hies with thee; loveliest harbinger Of silvern dreams we may not dream here ! Myrrh Is not thy cup, and ice is not thy touch. Not thine the Master Corsair's boding clutch — A finger-print of goodness is thy mark! Nor have I seen the shroud sail of that bark Men garnish thee therewith ! With feathered oar On stilly seas I've seen thee. Oft I've followed thee beneath the orchard croft And watched thee read the script of blossom lore. When leaves were tenderest green and apple's pink Bound Heaven to earth in long bands of perfume ! Shrink, friend, from thee? Why, Angel, should shrink And throw about thine head a fold of gloom? Have I not spied thee sporting midst the bloom Of May's first showing? And shall I close a tomb Of that but is the Necessary Womb Of newer Life's seed substance? Nay! Come then And let us count the true shades down the glen Mortals call Vale of Shadows ! Come When corn is tasseled and the glad bees hum With honey of the June! Lute out for me an olden ditty's tune Of Rosalind or mad-cap Robin Hood! Come when thou wilt; thy coming is but good And thou art faery Oberon to my thought More than King Angel ; and come unsought Ere life doth make me old ; for thou art young And I would harken to thy music's tongue With heart child joyful; come then, Death For Thou art Victory's Kiss and Beauty's Breath ! [28] GOOD THOUGHT If good wine's worth drinking Then good thought's worth thinking — Or better no thought at all ! For poor wine's but sour ; And poor thought's ne'er flower To roses worth naming Saint Paul ! [29] THE FINAL JUDGMENT Elohim-sense stripped clean of flesh; The kernel of the soul laid bare ! Stuffs filched out from suppression's mesh — Corporeal in the keen-eyed air! Each sin disrobed of life's abuses — Each virtue weighed exact in worth ! Each impulse freed from gauze abuses — The whole seized from the cloy of earth! Thank God a God is Judge ! I'll tell My reasons branded reasonless ! And why, what seemed a lust of hell Flamed out a fire love needs must bless ! My voice quick stifled, an I speak Herewards to men my rights turned wrongs ; I'll shout to God, how strong, why weak I trammeled in my several thongs ! Sin's nucleus glorified in truth — I'll chant with God's firm clasp of hand — I'll sort the grain from chaff of youth — And thank God, God will understand ! So, fear the Judgment? Rather fear The stupid law of man below ; Loins girt, heart singing, I'll appear Face God, tell all, and God will know ! [30] THE BIG SMASH Till the Big Smash comes — The man is a brute ; An insect that hums / Mid sweet nectared fruit Unfit for the solitude grandeured by thought. Weak brawned for the forges where iron truths are wrought. Small troubles, the hare's bite the parsley amid; Soon grown o'er, the nibbling by pushing shoots hid, But the Big Smash — a foundering mid torture of rocks — A sob to the heedless that life's tournay mocks. Then after — the silence: the healing of wounds; An ear harp accord to the wildering of sounds The world shrieks. An eye quick to rose dust of tears on the cheeks. The heart quivering sharp to the warmth of the hand. The lips' press, "Come, comrade; I too understand!" And the man born, true upright; true jointured with Christ ; Who clasped Jew and Greek in the brotherhood tryst. When the Big Smash fails A life is a death! And a sad Heaven wails For a lost gift of breath ! [31] SECOND FIDDLES Gray heroes, these; the drab contralto third Their ash-hued lot. These line the walks of life As meek medicinal herbs : the second wife Like to some voiceless hedge contented bird Who weaves her nest with noiseless tender love Unpraised and patient; such a Phoebe she Who becks a ghost wife's children to her knee ' And feels affection's hand touch 'neath a glove — No glow of true warmth's flesh; the maid unwed Grown old in sacrifice ; the man whose toil Sends forth a brother where ambition's moil Slakes gold, fit crowned for him in proxy's stead. Madonnas who give forth their virile Christs Then humbly shrinking 'neath the willow shade; Second fiddles ; Magnificats assayed That Song with God may hold its glory trysts ! Mid Stradivari of earth's violins The silent angels mark these second ones; Not theirs the strings of ribbon lustrumed suns But theirs the hum of quiet singing linns. Praise to the second fiddle ; should he fail The first must fall from Music's God to Baal ! [32] A NEW ENGLAND MEETING HOUSE Meeting house — in truth ! What makes the Church — The Psalm, the Sacred Host, the AUar's heart This white pile lacks ; and yet the charm is here The charm New England holds in firm-clutched leash — Feared to let slip, and show the dryad's smile Beneath the frigid virgin's austere frown! A beauty as of violets found in clefts Of frore beard rocks; architecture? None Of Rheims or Cologne; yet the thus-and-so Of prim hewn walls is ice-bound music seemed — The sombre swell of gray Georgian chaunts — Or Palestrina's clef of treble fauns Baptized and garbed as nuns ! Maple luxuriance The elm's grace vesture, benediction give Of green old Pagan nature — bless her soul — The loved untamed barbarian! "Vanity Is Beauty's face ; and Life is but a sweet We needs must sour, or our duty's dead.' " Thus preachers droned ; but elm and maple laughed And tipped and lurched, while nasal psalmody Arose in quavers on the Sabbath air And shattered 'gainst their branches ; meeting house — Wilt take a greeting from a son of Rome — Thy fearful "Scarlet Woman"? Cross and cowl And true made priest, thy lack — yet, grim browed friend I'll whisper thee a secret ; she will know The Juno elm, or that bold Mercury The gamboling maple — that iron spine you boast [33] Of holden virtue, is the jewel of Rome Poached by an errant child ; so, good will, friend — For though thou champed the door to bar her out In thy duir heart our great Rome entered in ! [34] THE PIPE You've piped to me, old Death — Thrice, with voice of mouse's squeak ! I girt in haste, with saints to speak And deemed them worth a puff of breath. The whiff of feast, that counterfeit Of you, old Death, called Life, affords. I culled old psalm staves — Lord of Lords And King of kings; the room was lit With Aves, Venites, Adestes — I knew How Christ looked: how His Mother smiled, I smelled the lilies, saw her cloak of blue; Some ante chamber, silence tiled I felt was built for me; and then You scruffed me back, you piebald god — A sick bed ! Moss of scragged fen After wide rose acres ! Untrod The stepping stones of unfamiliar space; Now that I'm back to number and place What compensation offered? If again you pipe Let your skull-sconce certify the angels' fruit as ripe! 35 "OMNIA MAJOREM DEI GLORIAM" Loyola, hadst thou made no pledge but this Foremost thy station mid the sons of God! This chaplet; 'tis the Hebrew singer's rod Psychos to call from Panian chrysalis ! But this the slogan of those supermen The star-eyed Jesuits, cross-bowed of hate, Who brushed old slumber from the Sphinx of Fate And sowed the lily in the dragon's den ! Bruised, spat upon; their truths distort to lies These words the Rosary of their every breath ! Thus hewed they life, ploughed Beulah fields in Heth 'Neath frore of bergs and carmined southern skies ! Oft have I marked the humble spoil of stones The sad marcation of an holy fane; Where spake these men as n'er man speaks again — Ezekiels mid the chaos vale of bones ! To God's great glory; Luther, Calvin, Knox Base metals 'gainst this diamond orthodox! [36] ALL SAINTS' SAY Saints were warriors — I'll chew on that! And most of them warred on little things ; Little wasps, whose petty stings Wounds of mighty pain begat! And they didn't fare forth with broil of drums To pompous battles with swords waved high But they walked where life turned down its thumbs And callously bade the unfit die. For they turned dry earth into fertile sod .Cried "Nil Desperandum" from Ichabod These Saints we laud today! And we have their blood, and we have their might And we can't twist wrong from the spoken right For their truths we must obey! And we'll burst forth, as virgin maids And warrior knights, and we'll ply God's trades By the Christ that speaks within ! For we'll break the glebe of stubborn sin As strong-girt Saints, and we'll wreak the best From untilled soils, and doubts confessed — That they may know who fought before We still have the stuff to fight God's war! [37] MIDNIGHT IN NEW YORK Chance sleeps tonight some promise of a child Foredoomed by Nature's tooth, rat-like to merge From human sewerage, oozing from its verge These rodent souls. (How matter hath defiled The spirit God makes pure!) The quiet seems A secret hiss of unseen cobras ! Lairs Of fevered wolves, these houses ! Glares A snarl of moon; here sing no lyric dreams Of frond-tipped fancy; jaw-champed faces wear The jungle likeness ; here slink beasts, not men ! Each chance abutt the jackal's covert den — Not women, she-dogs, brazoned in despair This sisterhood immortal; yet outlines The Christian's Cross against the pallid sky Symbol of Him who asked and answered "WHY?" The question failed of human-skilled designs. Let me this question ask, "How much is sin What loneliness, what heart-ache, dearth of soul In this outpouring? I'st the brain's control Alone that breeds the lust carked deep within Our carven loins ? But God, All God, doth know And God is patience, born eternally. But weary age seems Atlas laid on me That sacred life must crawl in offal so ! [38] THE DEATH OF OLD GERMANY There lives a land whose death is Sodom's end Whose name shall live an hissing, a reproach. But, lived on land, the wide world hailed as friend — Passed with Kultur's syphilis encroach. A land whose every window framed a light For Him the Christ-Child with His young good will ; (The blue-eyed tots who chattered Christmas night With hearts of stone soon marshaled forth to kill!) Sodden with drink, scarlet with whorish lust The junglings closed, who hailed Saint Nicholas. Sweet sane old customs spurred heels tramped to dust Song's golden store lay rent where demons massed! Toll, toll the bell ! She welters, smitten, slain Our fair Rhine-maiden, old loved Germany; From whose white hands and balsam learned brain Dropped purest songs of holiest minstrelsy ! All, all are gone; the Minnesingers' art Whose wreath empyrean clasped the lore of Rome I Lo here a fiend, 'gainst here whose matron heart Taught us the glory of the earth-Heaven — home! Wagner is perished, Fafner wrote his fate — Where was the transport of the Homeric page Nought scrawls but spittle of impotent hate — True manhood shrivelled to the spite of age ! Toll, toll the Bell, ye towers of Cologne — Ring out your tears ! Old Germany is dead ! Where grew her myrtles new tongues shall be known — She lives a curse — her soul forever fled! [39] ENGLAND I love thee, England! English is my name My heart, my soul ! Brief fifty years agone — He saw this Newer England, he, whose blood Runs in these veins, and English blood, God praise ! My sires clustered mid the pale faced hills Of bard begetting Cheviot; o'er the moors The clefts of furze capped rocks, the minstrels roamed When Robin's crown was not of dust begat And Alan coaxed his songs from woodland gods ! Loin of my Loins, in these few latter years Shall I lose thought of thee, my fathers' womb? This Newer England is thy strong-limbed child Stalwart as fits her mother's natal gift! And now my heart is glad with that old joy My kinsmen felt dead generations gone When friend laid bare his falchion that his friend Might know the name of friendship fervour's heat No mere thin-silvered gloss. Two Englands move — Two souls made one ; mine is America By right, by love; and, England, thou art mine By first imperial birth of ancestry — By reason's choice-nay, were thy blood not mine I still would crown thee time's imperial queen ! Thy faults be those of gods ; thine errors mass More pure than others' virtues ! He, the knave On this our western shore, who bites thy heel Is bastard to thee, dastard to this west That shall live English while the waters roar — And Nature heralds spring in bloss of green! Let whine the peevish dolt, thy soul is here [40] In this America ! Who strikes at thee Strikes her, thy strongest daughter; England, Uve The generous mistress of the cirding seas — And with thy children rule the listening stars ! And we, who boast thy blood, be David's sons The line most royal since creation shaped This nebulous substance from the breath of God! Thank God for England ! God be praised, my screed My tribute scroll, I write in English words ! [41] POET TO WOMAN I know thee; From the dark womb of my thought Children have sprung, veil-garbed in verse and rhyme. Like thee from pain and travail have I wrought Truth substance, hell conceived, in God's full time. I know thee. Anguish only climbs to love As thou and I must climb, our birth's decree. Men walk; the virgin's wings are ours to hove By black-starred shores of ill-read mystery. Friend, I have woman in me ; dreams ne'er screed By form of man, all man; and I, like thee In being's fond by right of godhood bleed; Creation's Egg, all woman, sheathes in me ! [42] LONDON FOG A writhing witch, with tenuous fluttering arms — Her yellow locks outstreaming to the wind. She breeds an hell-broth with her nebulous charms ; She staggers; hair a-twist — the witch is blind! Jointured with dying, Madge Wildfire in death — House, palace, street ; on each her f rore is laid. The nightmare ether of a sickman's breath — This London fog! One sun-lance, lo, crusade Of Baldurs, of clear invigorating blue! A fist of hours, the witch is fled afar Her half-soul stirring mid the thick of brew 'Gainst chance of visitation; yet, though touch Of her, this Hell-thing, seems the Third Sad Fate — Yet is her threat a shadow's weakling clutch! A chimera, a nothingness of fate. Below — lies London ! Fogs a-gone, a-come No whit dismay the world's most blazoned queen; Nor shall a monster fog with scare of drum Affront this London's grave imperial mien ! As pass these harpy wraiths, so came to pass A war's chimeric hell-smoke; London stands A rock when Berlins melt as futile glass — A smiling mother to the English lands ! [43] SIMPLICITY A fervent prayer; soul sick of war — Good Lord, give us simplicity! We dree our weird — complexity — And hence our plight; an unhealed sore We needs must heal ; let us return To single-minded Galilee; The truths we blur as platitudes Let fall by Him who was of Thee. We've hatched the dreadful Loki broods The Midgard snake ; the ice of Hel. We've "reasoned," till this Egg took form Whose monster woke this horrent mell. 'Gainst pastured meads we chose the storm The chaos of a doubtful skill. And whence our boast ? The end, the front Of sophist's wisdom — this — to kill! Well have we earned this devil's brunt We, things of paste-cheeked luxury! Behold in sackcloth we repent — Kind Lord, give us simplicity ! Now done with noise of armament Let us bruise herbs beside Thy brooks ; Again read Nature's woodland books — Dear Lord, give us simplicity! [44] WINTER TWILIGHT IN PRAGUE Opal steals through the opaque gray Now that the sad day's closing; black Of the night, dusked with dim purple steals On like a soft-shod thief. Blurred lamps Stream like the friendly struggling beams Of far-off lighthouses through the mist Dank-deep at sea. The soul feels cold ! Mysticism sighs in the air! Knife-sharp welts of cold alone betray The prod of winter's iron malignant sting. But else, how unrelated, how unreal Mid life's ambitions is this somethingness Of lineless wavering, soft, yet tangible Veiled o'er the soul ere it enwraps the flesh ! 'Tis like the half -waked Slav; 'tis like old Prague Sleeping hard sleep ; white-haired from centuries Of hack-hewed battles ; wise with wisdom's droop Of eyes fast closed, as sight had served its worth ! 'Tis melancholia; shuffling footsteps seem As weak half -ghosts, who feebly would essay The angel garments; voiceless, timid, weak — Yet wistful of eternities undreamed. 'Twixt gray of day and night's nun-veil of black Is scarce a breath ; but in that breath hath passed As a soul half-dead; so tired that death's advent Is but the slipping off of needless shoon And stealing bare-foot on a path unknown To vague unwondered nothingness ; Truth, this is Nirvana's foretaste ; and a ghost am I Mid ghosts as fellows, dead as they are dead. [45] THESE DAYS We've nerves these days ! No head, no heart, no soul — mere nerves ! We shriek in angles, sneer in curves — We writhe in Pandemonium maze. We each are blood of the Gummidge tribe. We croak like frogs in a stagnant pool. We may be gods, but we ape the fool — We stick out tongues ; we mouth and gibe Like children o'er some toffee bit ; And yet, God knows, there's work to do ! But, chip on shoulder wild hullabaloo — And nineteen ways of spittling spit ! We wage on beer and nicotine — We seize each by his front and throat. God, force on us Thy creosote — Pray rub our souls with Nature's green ! Or else we perish, Bander-Log — Unfit to walk Thy kindly meads ! By Christ's Eternal Heart that bleeds To watch us grovel, each a dog Chained to his vomit — give us heads Cool as the snows, give tempered hearts! Look — selfish greed bestrides our marts And hog with satyr boldly weds ! God, save our nations, lest array Our souls lost on Thy Judgment Day ! [46] YOU WHO ARE DEAD You're not gone ; translated, changed, nor decayed. You're lying there, staring through six feet of earth With black eyes wink full of Dickensesque mirth And grinning at life as a game well outplayed ! And I see you, rogue comrade, stumbling o' nights O'er Molly prim rose-bushes, pooh-poohing wreaths Mocking each ass soul that wiggles and breathes Whilst you prowl amidst graves and their trig-nancied sights ! Still, there are stars, and a moon, random whiles — And you've me, silent gypsy, to sing to your soul ; Though you can't toss a posset, or drain a deep bowl You can feast on our fellowship's echo of smiles. For we're one. If you're lonely, just conjure up me Your trail-mate, fast bound to a winter of days And a black grief that chokes me, that coils close, and stays Till I envy you, comrade, ice-laid, but free ! For you can't reckon life as the prism I know With your part soul gripped fast where trails all must end. But still I half sense you ; and praise God, leal friend — You're a real speaking something — God whispered me so! [47] PATRIOTISM Perchance 'tis well — a sugared snatch of song Profaned of music's grand intrinsic worth; The crude half -thinker's sway of rhythm's mirth The wildfire thrill bom of the dim-brained throng :- Perchance, 'tis well ; the flag thrown to the wind — The hand spat tribute wrest from Moll and Jock — This — patriotism: the quick galvanic shock Harmonic to the yokel and his kind. The mob is still the mob, let fall the cloak — The pompous nomen of esprit de corps. Now Brutus, now Antonius earns its roar — Christ or Barabas — crowned the last who spoke. Patriotism! The statesman blenched with thought Lives its white passion ; the evolvent master brain Stammers its terrors; mid the careless train Ne'er may its godhood be mid blood-heat wrought! Silence its travail ; sapience, its fruit : Bruit antipodes its birth-pains; where it broods Apoethosis still all lesser moods And for its octave seventh grasps are mute! Patriotism! For me 'tis most akin To that most awful hush, when God in Host Descends in fulness of the Holy Ghost And dwells each recess of my soul within! A truth I dare not limit ; raising me To something of its fixed divinity ! [48] "GONE WEST" He's just "Gone West." And he left this watchword — "Carry on !" There was blood and smirch ; a rose-pink dawn And a Thing left dead ; but what's the rest ? Out of the thing a soul sprang free — A spirit man, six foot and three! Spirit, not phantom, in God clothes dressed — With brown eyes steadfast to the west! And it's best. "Carry on !" He has work to do — And I, his mother, I'll "carry on" too — For the breeze of the Blessed Isles blows here I feel it ; I'll not damp his trail with a tear For the Blessed Isles lie west ! I'll carry on — an American! For I bore six foot of allied man Whose clarioning "Westward ho !" The ruled out west-path I can't know But God and the stalwart Christ are there And Mother Mary ; the tang of air Blows health to the Allied cause ! I care not what mete theology's laws He's "gone west"— Not dead — my night's his dawn — And we've both the watchword — "Carry on!" [49] CHUCKED You're chucked; kicked out from all worth while. Your milestone's passed on Heartbreak Hill. You'll learn now — a maiden grief can't kill Or a first thrust rasp a sunrise smile. Nor yet the second, nor yet the third; You'll find the rope gripped round my neck — The rope that bites, but never hangs — You'll kiss the bark with hidden fangs And still seek fruit sans littlest speck Look at me ! I've been chucked and chucked And still can shrug my soul and laugh ! The heart wounds leave my face unscarred — I still dream wheat though fed on chaff. You'll head gates five-knife points barred As I and others — rise, well plucked — Tom, bruised and battered; bleeding, scarred — Yet praying, laughing! Snibs of sun And tastes of green will cry you on To champ once more from Babylon And play Quixote ! Chucked? Well done! Shake hand with soul — your wreath ? Well plucked ! There's God — His place — there, no one's chucked! [so] CONDOLENCE I who have moaned Tenebra thrice three times — Have looked long down the Valley of the Shades ; Say thus to thee; build not conjectured climes From ill-wrought dreams of heavenly palisades Where lost ones chance may dwell ; God's heart is here — Here in the humdrum of the commonplace. In box-hedged gardens lies thy salve of grace; And trivial bits; the fragrant brew of tea — The tropic lustred coffee; homespun toil — Life's lettuce leaves ; iotas fend from thee The lead of snake now 'gainst thy breast a-coil. This wear thee on thy bosom's seeming stone As rosemary- ; Nature is one with God ; And both fain heal in wholesome monotone With tasks that set the shivering feet a-plod Till simple duties, angel vigils keep And thou dost know thy dead in God asleep ! [51] AMERICA America ; — In after years, the pomp of fighting done — The keen blade rusted, victories' tale hearth-spun — When commerce pinions forth in peace once more And grass downs breast the earth's harass of war : Forget not those who thrilled with love of you Loathing of Mars, but praising truth — as true — Your truth and England's — forget not those, I pray Who sink to garrulous life's dull after-day; One socket eyeless, one sleeve less its arm — One limb oblation to the dread alarm Of belching hell ; oh, praise is theirs in truth While yet the slaught lives on in echo's youth ! While glamour glists as hero each who fought And eyes droop for wonders God hath wrought! But when the glamour fades, and plaudits cool- Dub not the hero maimed as "tiresome fool" — And think not penny pensions meet largesse For those who doffed the clerkman's harmless dress And donned the guise that beckoned steel and shell And made of life's sweet solstice garnished hell ! Remember these, in after years, I pray — Do not as Judas, thy liege Christs betray — America ! [52] KING GEORGE No widening breach therein ; democracy Britannia as America endowers. Full sceptered here the magisterial powers — Fraternal founded, England's royalty. The crowned Republic, the Republic crowned; "What's in a name?" King friend of Windsor, hail! Iron is thine English staunch armorial mail — Long live thy land in purple worth renowned ! A king here domiciled? Anomaly! England in plain clothes? Boorish peasant jest! Peace guard the ways ! King indeed professed First gentleman of England! Honesty Heart's praise impels; Victoria's scion thou — God save the King who gave thy land her Queen! While spreads the loyal oak its shoots of green The monarch's emblem bind the Windsor's brow ! Night's death blast Hohenzollerns ; autocrats All breeds, all births ; our brothers' love is thine ! The goldenrod and English rose atwine Dower alike Time's true aristocrats ! Long live King George! America we sing — Our under rhythm shouts God save thee — King! [53] INTERRUPTED His laugh was interrupted; 'twas a shell — Of war a part — his life's synecdoche. Valhalla from a bawdy bit of hell — He left his laugh — the greater part — with me! My blood flows still unspilled — I feel it crime To live unscathed, my Damon hurtled "west." That Falstaff slice of laugh! Some future time He'll tell me why his sudden flight was best ! God never interrupts us ; past a doubt He'll hold that laugh for me and laugh it out ! [54] DEATH AND DAWN Strange and terrible ! Terrible and strange ! That gray black hour before the Dawn's pink mist; Aurora's steeds steeped forth the deeps to range On Sleep's invisible mount of amythest — Men creatures ravel out! That hush of time When stillness cuddles earth maternally — When cherubs scatter banded dreams of thyme That Easter hour — that Death should canter free His grim horse Hecate pale ; and snatch in souls -By gibbering handf uls ; bird feeds piping faint — Wood dryads fluttering on moss satin knolls — Then to thin out the death-chant's toneless plaint! Life wombed anew ; and as the vestal flush Blesses the world in hyacinthine prayer — Death tiptoes out ; hush greets in passing, Hush — A two-fold sigh strings on the violin air ! Thus Death and Dawn ; a queen that greets a king — Exchanged in passing crown and signet-ring! [551 THE OLD HOUSE The old house is drugged to sleep By some narcotic of the past. One drowsing window wakes to peep At ponderous dray-carts jumbling fast O'er sharp-voiced pavestones ; dead repose Of human history's dropped morphine. That pile some lurid story knows — Some dangled skeleton has seen! [56] THE LONE CYPRESS AT MONTEREY Ages it watched thus; is its glance malign Or wearied with the chance moods of the sea To it, one mood. Tide's sweep froth of line Dashing exultant, staving minstrelsy Of rack and death ; lamb's touch on the sward In gentler passions ; both, a child's intent To this lone pterodactyl; is 't on guard — Its dim eye fearful of new armament From strange blear yellow seas? Or doth it dream A race long lost, of nobler form? It sighs Chance, for a child long since a man; a gleam Of moon translucence gilds it. Dust-kissed eyes Have wondered on its wonder; eyes to come May ponder its first meaning; its old youth. Shall it be this land then ? Will Fate's turned thumb Sluff out this people, spurned remorse and ruth? Still shall the cypress gnarl in awkward grace — Beholding eyes — set in a yellow face? [57] GOD'S ANTHOLOGY Ghastly ! The poets who were poets ! They All died; do any live? Thus, he and he Wrote sonnet, ode and epic; here and there A woman's thought soared as a meadow lark. Great song ! True verse ! The clock struck twelve times twelve Ten thousand times ten thousand, strand and zone ! But God — all dead — all vanished! So and so Lived such a place, wrote such a line — and died! If, as the Scriptures read, God's witnesses Dwell ever on the earth, His poets must Be incarnate in hidden baby forms ; And, in their passing to the Fuller Sound Give poet's eye and ear to some mute soul New sprung to sense of being. But, the past Shines with a lustre gathered through the years — And present purpose no enchantment has Because its nearness dims its diamond worth. Thus in the Last Recessional, we know Strains will be heard that died here on the earth; And every impulse of the poet's soul Will live when God makes His Anthology ! [58] IN FLORIDA When Elman played, th' applause, made hippocrene O'er flowed in alabaster. Soft, his bow- Prayed in the Ave Maria; faith's Nicene Glowed lucent in the slow devotional flow Of strings concorded to the Merlian rod. "Ave Maria!" 'twas the cygnian cry Of those who love, and love, alas, to die — Their sins by Mary born as pearls to God ! The orange tree withdrew its bold perfume Abashed before the music's natal sighs. The oleanders oped their languid eyes And gazed, trance bounden, through the foyer's gloom. "Ave Maria" ; sudden wailed without A shattered fiddle's meek unconscious hymn; A tenuous prayer, through Schubert's interim Beseeching them, the peacock feathered route. For few brief pence, the fiddler blind and old Shambled in rasps, "When you and I were young." Still Elman's bow in master cadence swung — Without, within, which were the tone of gold To Mary's heart? 'Twas Dives at the gate Of Lazarus; who scrolled it — chance or Fate? [59] FROM MY DORMER WINDOW Night and silence! Cloudy night, no stars; I see in faint outline far-lying roofs. I hear below the rush of noisy cars. The pound of horses pelting with their hoofs. Silence! How many dying while I stand Here at the window? Vice and sin unloose Their kennel's breed; this hour's shifting sand May chronicle a murder, mark abuse Of mind or body. Dimly I perceive Two Crosses rise on near-by church. I know The Christ keeps watch and mankind must believe He welcomes friend and pardons blinded foe. And I am happy ! I have heard the voice Born on the wire of my beloved! Night, Thou hast thy sorrows, but I must rejoice — Thou night, art blind, but I have spirit's sight ! No need to tell my love to him; he knows Without the telling; so I send my prayer To him. In silence my whole being goes — He looks — he knows — and I am with him there! [60] RIPE GRAPES Give me ripe grapes ! The leaves may fall, The blight of autumn brood o'er all. The fruit is sweet — our blood is red — Let's live the heart despite the head! [6i] NUNC DIMITTIS The blare of battle died in smoke away; The soldier gasped ; his hand strayed to his beads. He dying with the sad vermilian day Shuddering before the sight of Moloch deeds Done in the name of war ; his fingers, numb With death's antarctic, told the Aves ten — The six last Paters ; hands fell : voice was dumb But eyes beseeched — oh to behold again The Crucifix worn o'er his burnt-out heart Star of his faith, alembic of his soul ! A sombre Rabbai mused a space apart Tranced by the guns last Pandemonium roll. A Judas Maccabeus of his race; An exile of the Babylonish streams. The Christ he knew not lit his eager face — His gaze fixed on the earth, its shell-made seams. Sudden his eyes the war-claimed soldier swept ; In pity's moistened flash he knelt beside. The Cross on death-dewed Hps were laid; he wept. The soldier smiled ; his eyes spake thanks ; he died. Nunc Dimittis ! These poor unworthy eyes Have seen creeds merge to further Paradise! [62] POST BELLUM Now 'tis ended; Why had it to be? Home and love rended — Death-sown the sea. Doubt; dark; bewilderment; ice breaths of pain For the lone dead on crimson fields lain. Crash, dies the music ! Hiss, die the lights ! Days, webbed with memories ; long starless nights When cry the Rachels; Marys at Cross Beat milkless breasts for the wild sense of loss. One flare of pageant — then moments to think — Marah, not Lethe, in deep quaffs to drink. God, the All-Terrible, why was it, why? Thou, who art Life, what sped men to die? Beyond and above is the Cause — Father — Thou! Still, Thou art Love, and still needs we bow Whispering, hands clasped, *'Thy will be done" — Calvary, the Mother, Calvary, the Son. Leal fare the nations? Perished the sword? Finite, we question Thee, Battles' strong Lord! Infinite wonder — why had it to be? Thou 'twas who urged us ; Thine the decree ! Do as Thou wilt with us ; fain must we weep — Scythes of destruction; first fruts of sleep Fix us Medusa-like; this, we implore — Smite us, but nevermore, nevermore, war! Now 'tis ended — Why had it to be? Home and love rended — But, Father, 'twas Thee ! [63] THE FAUN The Faun is the Superman ! The Man-Woman Plato prophesied — And hopeless, sighed While prophesying. He looked forward : vision ran Outvieing Good nature sense, that roots so deep The grass may not find it, nor long womb sleep Of great oak embryos. The Faun alone it is, who knows The Over- Soul of God; The Lower-Soul of Man; The Somewhat-Soul of Flowers and Beasts! The acorn in the sod. The human caravan. The soul-pulse in the four foot priests Of Nature, make the Christ! This, in old tryst The Faun doth know! The All- Soul he — And had but Plato opened vision's history This had he known. The pointed ears, the dancing toe, alone Bespeak the Superman. Christ is born of Pan; The Trinity in wildwood Unity; The beast culled in the flower, The hill's rock power In the babe's smile — Mary in Ceres. Some new mile In man's new reckoning shows the antique Faun The foremost figure in the world's new Dawn ! [64] EVENING IN A HOSPITAL Evening gloams; ghost-mantled with snow But few brief paces distant-Ufe and light. Street lamps moon globed with kindly fostering glow- A welcome clatter dins the friendly night. And here — a bed, a window ; two gaunt pines Caught in the pane's rectangle ; night or day — Here life snaps links with life; these cribbed fines Know nought of man's routine; man's holiday Is still the world of physic, glass and spoon — A couch where 'tis to drone, half-wake, half -sleep. The stars, the dawn, the crowned joy of noon — Are nought to beats the pulses' rhythm keep. Here life is steeped in Death, and Sleep may touch His Elder Brother's hand, and share his cold. Here joy crawls out, impeded by a crutch — And, chained to sick-beds, who is young, who old? Yet no inertia's Limbo ! Strife is waged 'Twixt Love and Silence — Courage and Despair! Here voiceless fields of battle! Here the gage Is flung each sand-slip; here resolve in prayer! And there is mystery ; the greater mind In throb accordant with the surgeon's knife; The lesser mind, in mercy deaf and blind To agony of soul arest with Life ! And here the Great Physician ever stands His heart a-brim with germinance of peace. His is the healing in the skilful hands — Or Life, or Death — from Pain He yields release! [65] THE HOME COMING With the laggard sunset, home we came ; We entered; one purple tinge of flame Enwrapped us, as through the door we passed. April rains, and buds amassed On the wisteria, sprawled o'er the porch Set afire by the sun's last torch. We entered; we spoke not; we heard the sea Sighing its endless litany — And a half felt sadness dimmed me; sight Was barred me of its monotone's might. For to feel, and hear e'en taste the deep And know it droned through the hours of sleep — Yet live anear, and all unseen Its foamy tracks of salt-flecked green Seemed like the rose of an infant's breath Sucked on milk that was drawn of death. The lights were glimmering; and what my fears For the bridal night, and the brood of years Stretching in endless procession away From the mileage-post of the wedding-day I could not tell ; I smelt the turf — And felt like some olden riveted serf Chained to her master; and yet, had I turned Where the feeble death lights of sunset burned To ash of blackness — I knew my feet Would bear me back from the prosing street And urge me straight to his arms again And what might come of undreamed pain ! His arms wound round me; the thick night fell — Our home ; my Heaven ! — ^yet reached through hell ! [66] THE GRAY DAY The day slinks out like a gray old rat And curls in the wet depths of the sky. And there it yawns : like curds from a vat It poaches the mist-bits, drifting by. And whether to melt in a sheet of rain Or sulk till misnomered sunset strives To piece sun honey as sweet again — Where the day bees drip in their dampened hives,- I know not ; 'tis a day for a "poet's moode" To pout of ivy on mouldy walls; And sigh for the graveyard trench as good — And moan of the wind to the mist that calls. And dream of childhood's vanished joys, And count life's pleasures a babbling noise — And life's enhancements as broken toys — And men of valor but puling boys ! But what of the day and its rodent face? A mood's not a permanency ! Sun bees will hum And a day burst forth with a moss rose grace ; And inspirations will sprout, and come In galaxies ambrosial rich ! And the autumn leaves clattering in the ditch Will be over gold a cloak of pitch — And this day that seems a drab old witch Will be a faery greenwood Hght! So drowse, old rat of a day! Your coat Is gray as doubt and cold as fear ! But one day's not the worth of a year And joy's immortal! For her no bier [67] Of back- thread sighs ! So your nought to me For I Uve and I love for Eternity ! And the sober coat of a gray old day Can't filch an eternal kingdom away! The End. [68] LIBRARY OF CONGRESS liSlil liill S!!!! Iliil !!!!! I!!l! !!ll! !■"■ "I'l I'H! !■«■ nil mi 015 799 389 6