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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimneysmoke, by Christopher Morley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chimneysmoke
+
+Author: Christopher Morley
+
+Illustrator: Thomas Fogarty
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37852]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIMNEYSMOKE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Steven Brown and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+ Transcribers Notes:
+
+ Bold faced text shown as: =abcde=
+ Italics text shown as: _abcde_
+ Unusual fonts shown as: _abcde_
+
+ [Illustrations:] have been moved to end of poem in all cases.
+
+ There are two instances of Greek in the text - π has been used.
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: Cover Page]
+
+
+
+
+ _Chimneysmoke_
+
+
+ [Illustration: Chimneysmoke]
+
+
+
+
+ _By Christopher Morley_
+
+
+ CHIMNEYSMOKE
+ HIDE AND SEEK
+ THE ROCKING HORSE
+ SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE
+ MINCE PIE
+
+
+ _New York: George H. Doran Company_
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _This hearth was built for thy delight,_
+ _For thee the logs were sawn,_
+ _For thee the largest chair, at night,_
+ _Is to the chimney drawn._
+
+ _For thee, dear lass, the match was lit,_
+ _To yield the ruddy blaze--_
+ _May Jack Frost give us joy of it_
+ _For many, many days._]
+
+
+
+
+ =_Chimneysmoke_=
+
+ _by_
+
+ _Christopher Morley_
+
+
+ [Illustration: Fireside Chair]
+
+
+ _Illustrated by_
+ _Thomas Fogarty_
+
+
+ _Garden City New York_
+ _Doubleday, Page & Co._
+ _1927_
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1919, 1920, 1921
+ BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY.
+ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN
+ THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY
+ LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+ _"How can I turn from any fire_
+ _On any man's hearthstone?_
+ _I know the wonder and desire_
+ _That went to build my own."_
+
+
+ --RUDYARD KIPLING, "_The Fires_"
+
+
+
+
+ _Author's Note_
+
+There are a number of poems in this collection that have not previously
+appeared in book form. But, as a few readers may discern, many of the
+verses are reprinted from _Songs for a Little House_(1917),
+_The Rocking Horse_ (1919) and _Hide and Seek_ (1920). There is
+also one piece revived from the judicious obscurity of an early escapade,
+_The Eighth Sin_, published in Oxford in 1912. It is on Mr. Thomas
+Fogarty's delightful and sympathetic drawings that this book rests its
+real claim to be considered a new venture. To Mr. Fogarty, and to
+Mr. George H. Doran, whose constant kindness and generosity contradict
+all the traditions about publishers and minor poets, the author expresses
+his permanent gratitude.
+
+ _Roslyn, Long Island._
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: Boat on Lake]
+
+
+ _Contents_
+
+ PAGE
+
+ TO THE LITTLE HOUSE 19
+
+ A GRACE BEFORE WRITING 20
+
+ DEDICATION FOR A FIREPLACE 21
+
+ TAKING TITLE 22
+
+ THE SECRET 25
+
+ ONLY A MATTER OF TIME 26
+
+ AT THE MERMAID CAFETERIA 28
+
+ OUR HOUSE 29
+
+ ON NAMING A HOUSE 31
+
+ A HALLOWE'EN MEMORY 32
+
+ REFUSING YOU IMMORTALITY 35
+
+ BAYBERRY CANDLES 36
+
+ SECRET LAUGHTER 37
+
+ SIX WEEKS OLD 38
+
+ A CHARM 41
+
+ MY PIPE 42
+
+ THE 5:42 44
+
+ PETER PAN 48
+
+ IN HONOR OF TAFFY TOPAZ 49
+
+ THE CEDAR CHEST 50
+
+ READING ALOUD 51
+
+ ANIMAL CRACKERS 52
+
+ THE MILKMAN 55
+
+ LIGHT VERSE 56
+
+ THE FURNACE 57
+
+ WASHING THE DISHES 58
+
+ THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES 61
+
+ ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY COAL-BIN 62
+
+ THE OLD SWIMMER 66
+
+ THE MOON-SHEEP 70
+
+ SMELLS 71
+
+ SMELLS (JUNIOR) 72
+
+ MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN 75
+
+ THE FAT LITTLE PURSE 76
+
+ THE REFLECTION 80
+
+ THE BALLOON PEDDLER 82
+
+ LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S BOOK PLATE 86
+
+ TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL 89
+
+ THE CRIB 90
+
+ THE POET 94
+
+ TO A DISCARDED MIRROR 97
+
+ TO A CHILD 98
+
+ TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN 100
+
+ TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET 104
+
+ BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING 105
+
+ BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER 106
+
+ A VALENTINE GAME 107
+
+ FOR A BIRTHDAY 108
+
+ KEATS 111
+
+ TO H. F. M., A SONNET IN SUNLIGHT 113
+
+ QUICKENING 114
+
+ AT A WINDOW SILL 115
+
+ THE RIVER OF LIGHT 116
+
+ OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS 118
+
+ IN AN AUCTION ROOM 119
+
+ EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY 120
+
+ SONNET BY A GEOMETER 121
+
+ TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER 122
+
+ TO AN OLD FRIEND 125
+
+ TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE 126
+
+ THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK 129
+
+ STREETS 130
+
+ TO THE ONLY BEGETTER 131
+
+ PEDOMETER 133
+
+ HOSTAGES 134
+
+ ARS DURA 137
+
+ O. HENRY--APOTHECARY 138
+
+ FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET 139
+
+ TWO O'CLOCK 140
+
+ THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 141
+
+ THE WEDDED LOVER 142
+
+ TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST 143
+
+ CHARLES AND MARY 144
+
+ TO A GRANDMOTHER 145
+
+ DIARISTS 146
+
+ THE LAST SONNET 147
+
+ THE SAVAGE 148
+
+ ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH 149
+
+ ADVICE TO A CITY 150
+
+ THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY 151
+
+ GREEN ESCAPE 153
+
+ VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS 157
+
+ THE ICE WAGON 158
+
+ AT A MOVIE THEATRE 161
+
+ SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE 163
+
+ THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS) 167
+
+ DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD? 168
+
+ RAPID TRANSIT 170
+
+ CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW 171
+
+ TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS 172
+
+ PEACE 173
+
+ SONG, IN DEPRECATION OF PULCHRITUDE 175
+
+ MOUNTED POLICE 176
+
+ TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT HE IS
+ NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY 179
+
+ THE INTRUDER 181
+
+ TIT FOR TAT 182
+
+ SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE 185
+
+ THE PLUMPUPPETS 186
+
+ DANDY DANDELION 190
+
+ THE HIGH CHAIR 192
+
+ LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 193
+
+ AUTUMN COLORS 197
+
+ THE LAST CRICKET 198
+
+ TO LOUISE 199
+
+ CHRISTMAS EVE 203
+
+ EPITAPH ON THE PROOFREADER OF THE
+ ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA 204
+
+ THE MUSIC BOX 205
+
+ TO LUATH 209
+
+ THOUGHTS ON REACHING LAND 212
+
+ A SYMPOSIUM 214
+
+ TO A TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO HAS A
+ BAD COLD 218
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED 219
+
+ THE TWINS 227
+
+ A PRINTER'S MADRIGAL 228
+
+ THE POET ON THE HEARTH 230
+
+ O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY 231
+
+ A STONE IN ST. PAUL'S GRAVEYARD 235
+
+ THE MADONNA OF THE CURB 236
+
+ THE ISLAND 240
+
+ SUNDAY NIGHT 242
+
+ ENGLAND, JULY, 1913 246
+
+ CASUALTY 250
+
+ A GRUB STREET RECESSIONAL 251
+
+ PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR A FUNERAL
+ SERVICE 253
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: Girl on Stool]
+
+
+ _Illustrations_
+
+ PAGE
+
+ _This hearth was built for thy delight_-- _Frontispiece_
+
+ _And by a friend's bright gift of wine,_
+ _I dedicate this house of mine_ 23
+
+ _And of all man's felicities_-- 33
+
+ _A little world he feels and sees:_
+ _His mother's arms, his mother's knees_-- 39
+
+ _The 5:42_ 45
+
+ _And Daddy once said he would like to be me_
+ _Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!_ 53
+
+ _But heavy feeding complicates_
+ _The task by soiling many plates_ 59
+
+ _How ill avail, on such a frosty night_ 63
+
+ _The old swimmer_ 67
+
+ _But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all_-- 73
+
+ _Perhaps it's a ragged child crying_ 77
+
+ _The Balloon Peddler_ 83
+
+ _If you appreciate it more_
+ _Than I--why don't return it!_ 87
+
+ _And then one night_-- 91
+
+ _The human cadence and the subtle chime_
+ _Of little laughters_-- 95
+
+ _What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps_-- 101
+
+ _A Birthday_ 109
+
+ _You must be rigid servant of your art!_ 123
+
+ _You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care_
+ _Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire_ 127
+
+ _Hostages_ 135
+
+ _My eyes still pine for the comely line_
+ _Of an outbound vessel's hull_ 155
+
+ _A man ain't so secretive, never cares_
+ _What kind of private papers he leaves lay_-- 165
+
+ _Mounted Police_ 177
+
+ _Courtesy_ 183
+
+ _The Plumpuppets_ 187
+
+ ... _It's hard to have to tell_
+ _How unresponsive I have found her_ 195
+
+ ... _When you see, this Great First Time,_
+ _Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!_ 201
+
+ _The music box_ 207
+
+ _Solugubrious_ 215
+
+ _In the midnight, like yourself,_
+ _I explore the pantry shelf!_ 221
+
+ _The Twins_ 227
+
+ _O praise me not the country_ 233
+
+ _The wail of sickly children_-- 237
+
+ _Ah, does the butcher--heartless clown--_
+ _Beget that shadow on her brow?_ 243
+
+
+
+
+ _Chimneysmoke_
+
+
+ [Illustration: Girl by Gate]
+
+
+
+
+ _=Chimneysmoke=_
+
+
+ TO THE LITTLE HOUSE
+
+
+ Dear little house, dear shabby street,
+ Dear books and beds and food to eat!
+ How feeble words are to express
+ The facets of your tenderness.
+
+ How white the sun comes through the pane!
+ In tinkling music drips the rain!
+ How burning bright the furnace glows!
+ What paths to shovel when it snows!
+
+ O dearly loved Long Island trains!
+ O well remembered joys and pains....
+ How near the housetops Beauty leans
+ Along that little street in Queens!
+
+ Let these poor rhymes abide for proof
+ Joy dwells beneath a humble roof;
+ Heaven is not built of country seats
+ But little queer suburban streets!
+
+ March, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+ A GRACE BEFORE WRITING
+
+
+ This is a sacrament, I think!
+ Holding the bottle toward the light,
+ As blue as lupin gleams the ink;
+ May Truth be with me as I write!
+
+ That small dark cistern may afford
+ Reunion with some vanished friend,--
+ And with this ink I have just poured
+ May none but honest words be penned!
+
+
+
+
+ DEDICATION FOR A FIREPLACE
+
+
+ This hearth was built for thy delight,
+ For thee the logs were sawn,
+ For thee the largest chair, at night,
+ Is to the chimney drawn.
+
+ For thee, dear lass, the match was lit
+ To yield the ruddy blaze--
+ May Jack Frost give us joy of it
+ For many, many days.
+
+
+
+
+ TAKING TITLE
+
+
+ To make this house my very own
+ Could not be done by law alone.
+ Though covenant and deed convey
+ Absolute fee, as lawyers say,
+ There are domestic rites beside
+ By which this house is sanctified.
+
+ By kindled fire upon the hearth,
+ By planted pansies in the garth,
+ By food, and by the quiet rest
+ Of those brown eyes that I love best,
+ And by a friend's bright gift of wine,
+ I dedicate this house of mine.
+
+ When all but I are soft abed
+ I trail about my quiet stead
+ A wreath of blue tobacco smoke
+ (A charm that evil never broke)
+ And bring my ritual to an end
+ By giving shelter to a friend.
+
+ These done, O dwelling, you become
+ Not just a house, but truly Home!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _And by a friend's bright gift of wine,_
+ _I dedicate this house of mine_]
+
+
+
+
+ THE SECRET
+
+
+ It was the House of Quietness
+ To which I came at dusk;
+ The garth was lit with roses
+ And heavy with their musk.
+
+ The tremulous tall poplar trees
+ Stood whispering around,
+ The gentle flicker of their plumes
+ More quiet than no sound.
+
+ And as I wondered at the door
+ What magic might be there,
+ The Lady of Sweet Silences
+ Came softly down the stair.
+
+
+
+
+ ONLY A MATTER OF TIME
+
+
+ Down-slipping Time, sweet, swift, and shallow stream,
+ Here, like a boulder, lies this afternoon
+ Across your eager flow. So you shall stay,
+ Deepened and dammed, to let me breathe and be.
+ Your troubled fluency, your running gleam
+ Shall pause, and circle idly, still and clear:
+ The while I lie and search your glassy pool
+ Where, gently coiling in their lazy round,
+ Unseparable minutes drift and swim,
+ Eddy and rise and brim. And I will see
+ How many crystal bubbles of slack Time
+ The mind can hold and cherish in one _Now_!
+
+ Now, for one conscious vacancy of sense,
+ The stream is gathered in a deepening pond,
+ Not a mere moving mirror. Through the sharp
+ Correct reflection of the standing scene
+ The mind can dip, and cleanse itself with rest,
+ And see, slow spinning in the lucid gold,
+ Your liquid motes, imperishable Time.
+
+ It cannot be. The runnel slips away:
+ The clear smooth downward sluice begins again,
+ More brightly slanting for that trembling pause,
+ Leaving the sense its conscious vague unease
+ As when a sonnet flashes on the mind,
+ Trembles and burns an instant, and is gone.
+
+
+
+
+ AT THE MERMAID CAFETERIA
+
+
+ Truth is enough for prose:
+ Calmly it goes
+ To tell just what it knows.
+
+ For verse, skill will suffice--
+ Delicate, nice
+ Casting of verbal dice.
+
+ Poetry, men attain
+ By subtler pain
+ More flagrant in the brain--
+
+ An honesty unfeigned,
+ A heart unchained,
+ A madness well restrained.
+
+
+
+
+ OUR HOUSE
+
+
+ It should be yours, if I could build
+ The quaint old dwelling I desire,
+ With books and pictures bravely filled
+ And chairs beside an open fire,
+ White-panelled rooms with candles lit--
+ I lie awake to think of it!
+
+ A dial for the sunny hours,
+ A garden of old-fashioned flowers--
+ Say marigolds and lavender
+ And mignonette and fever-few,
+ And Judas-tree and maidenhair
+ And candytuft and thyme and rue--
+ All these for you to wander in.
+
+ A Chinese carp (called _Mandarin_)
+ Waving a sluggish silver fin
+ Deep in the moat: so tame he comes
+ To lip your fingers offering crumbs.
+ Tall chimneys, like long listening ears,
+ White shutters, ivy green and thick,
+ And walls of ruddy Tudor brick
+ Grown mellow with the passing years.
+
+ And windows with small leaded panes,
+ Broad window-seats for when it rains;
+ A big blue bowl of pot pourri
+ And--yes, a Spanish chestnut tree
+ To coin the autumn's minted gold.
+ A summer house for drinking tea--
+ All these (just think!) for you and me.
+
+ A staircase of the old black wood
+ Cut in the days of Robin Hood,
+ And banisters worn smooth as glass
+ Down which your hand will lightly pass;
+ A piano with pale yellow keys
+ For wistful twilight melodies,
+ And dusty bottles in a bin--
+ All these for you to revel in!
+
+ But when? Ah well, until that time
+ We'll habit in this house of rhyme.
+
+ 1912
+
+
+
+
+ ON NAMING A HOUSE
+
+
+ When I a householder became
+ I had to give my house a name.
+
+ I thought I'd call it "Poplar Trees,"
+ Or "Widdershins" or "Velvet Bees,"
+ Or "Just Beneath a Star."
+ I thought of "House Where Plumbings Freeze,"
+ Or "As You Like it," "If You Please,"
+ Or "Nicotine" or "Bread and Cheese,"
+ "Full Moon" or "Doors Ajar."
+
+ But still I sought some subtle charm,
+ Some rune to guard my roof from harm
+ And keep the devil far;
+ I thought of this, and I was saved!
+ I had my letter-heads engraved
+ _The House Where Brown Eyes Are._
+
+
+
+
+ A HALLOWE'EN MEMORY
+
+
+ Do you remember, Heart's Desire,
+ The night when Hallowe'en first came?
+ The newly dedicated fire,
+ The hearth unsanctified by flame?
+
+ How anxiously we swept the bricks
+ (How tragic, were the draught not right!)
+ And then the blaze enwrapped the sticks
+ And filled the room with dancing light.
+
+ We could not speak, but only gaze,
+ Nor half believe what we had seen--
+ _Our_ home, _our_ hearth, _our_ golden blaze,
+ _Our_ cider mugs, _our_ Hallowe'en!
+
+ And then a thought occurred to me--
+ We ran outside with sudden shout
+ And looked up at the roof, to see
+ Our own dear smoke come drifting out.
+
+ And of all man's felicities
+ The very subtlest one, say I,
+ Is when, for the first time, he sees
+ His hearthfire smoke against the sky.
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _And of all man's felicities_
+ _The very subtlest one, say I,_
+ _Is when, for the first time, he sees_
+ _His hearthfire smoke against the sky._]
+
+
+
+
+ REFUSING YOU IMMORTALITY
+
+
+ If I should tell, unstinted,
+ Your beauty and your grace,
+ All future lads would whisper
+ Traditions of your face;
+ If I made public tumult
+ Your mirth, your queenly state,
+ Posterity would grumble
+ That it was born too late.
+
+ I will not frame your beauty
+ In bright undying phrase,
+ Nor blaze it as a legend
+ For unborn men to praise--
+ For why should future lovers
+ Be saddened and depressed?
+ Deluded, let them fancy
+ Their own girls loveliest!
+
+
+
+
+ BAYBERRY CANDLES
+
+
+ Dear sweet, when dusk comes up the hill,
+ The fire leaps high with golden prongs;
+ I place along the chimneysill
+ The tiny candles of my songs.
+
+ And though unsteadily they burn,
+ As evening shades from gray to blue
+ Like candles they will surely learn
+ To shine more clear, for love of you.
+
+
+
+
+ SECRET LAUGHTER
+
+
+ "I had a secret laughter."
+ --Walter de la Mare.
+
+
+ There is a secret laughter
+ That often comes to me,
+ And though I go about my work
+ As humble as can be,
+ There is no prince or prelate
+ I envy--no, not one.
+ No evil can befall me--
+ By God, I have a son!
+
+
+
+
+ SIX WEEKS OLD
+
+
+ He is so small, he does not know
+ The summer sun, the winter snow;
+ The spring that ebbs and comes again,
+ All this is far beyond his ken.
+
+ A little world he feels and sees:
+ His mother's arms, his mother's knees;
+ He hides his face against her breast,
+ And does not care to learn the rest.
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _A little world he feels and sees:_
+ _His mother's arms, his mother's knees_--]
+
+
+
+
+ A CHARM
+
+
+ For Our New Fireplace,
+ To Stop Its Smoking
+
+
+ O wood, burn bright; O flame, be quick;
+ O smoke, draw cleanly up the flue--
+ My lady chose your every brick
+ And sets her dearest hopes on you!
+
+ Logs cannot burn, nor tea be sweet,
+ Nor white bread turn to crispy toast,
+ Until the charm be made complete
+ By love, to lay the sooty ghost.
+
+ And then, dear books, dear waiting chairs,
+ Dear china and mahogany,
+ Draw close, for on the happy stairs
+ My brown-eyed girl comes down for tea!
+
+
+
+
+ MY PIPE
+
+
+ My pipe is old
+ And caked with soot;
+ My wife remarks:
+ "How can you put
+ That horrid relic,
+ So unclean,
+ Inside your mouth?
+ The nicotine
+ Is strong enough
+ To stupefy
+ A Swedish plumber."
+ I reply:
+
+ "This is the kind
+ Of pipe I like:
+ I fill it full
+ Of Happy Strike,
+ Or Barking Cat
+ Or Cabman's Puff,
+ Or Brooklyn Bridge
+ (That potent stuff)
+ Or Chaste Embraces,
+ Knacker's Twist,
+ Old Honeycomb
+ Or Niggerfist.
+
+ I clamp my teeth
+ Upon its stem--
+ It is my bliss,
+ My diadem.
+ Whatever Fate
+ May do to me,
+ This is my favorite
+ B
+ B B.
+ For this dear pipe
+ You feign to scorn
+ I smoked the night
+ The boy was born."
+
+
+
+
+ THE 5:42
+
+
+ Lilac, violet, and rose
+ Ardently the city glows;
+ Sunset glory, purely sweet,
+ Gilds the dreaming byway-street,
+ And, above the Avenue,
+ Winter dusk is deepening blue.
+
+ (Then, across Long Island meadows,
+ Darker, darker, grow the shadows:
+ Patience, little waiting lass!
+ Laggard minutes slowly pass;
+ Patience, laughs the yellow fire:
+ Homeward bound is heart's desire!)
+
+ Hark, adown the canyon street
+ Flows the merry tide of feet;
+ High the golden buildings loom
+ Blazing in the purple gloom;
+ All the town is set with stars,
+ _Homeward_ chant the Broadway cars!
+
+ All down Thirty-second Street
+ _Homeward, Homeward_, say the feet!
+ Tramping men, uncouth to view,
+ Footsore, weary, thrill anew;
+ Gone the ringing telephones,
+ Blessed nightfall now atones,
+ Casting brightness on the snow
+ Golden the train windows go.
+
+ Then (how long it seems) at last
+ All the way is overpast.
+ Heart that beats your muffled drum,
+ Lo, your venturer is come!
+ Wide the door! Leap high, O fire!
+ Home at length is heart's desire!
+ Gone is weariness and fret,
+ At the sill warm lips are met.
+ Once again may be renewed
+ The conjoined beatitude.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The 5:42_]
+
+
+
+
+ PETER PAN
+
+
+ "The boy for whom Barrie wrote Peter Pan--the original of
+ Peter Pan--has died in battle."
+
+ --New York Times.
+
+
+ And Peter Pan is dead? Not so!
+ When mothers turn the lights down low
+ And tuck their little sons in bed,
+ They know that Peter is not dead....
+
+ That little rounded blanket-hill;
+ Those prayer-time eyes, so deep and still--
+ However wise and great a man
+ He grows, he still is Peter Pan.
+
+ And mothers' ways are often queer:
+ They pause in doorways, just to hear
+ A tiny breathing; think a prayer;
+ And then go tiptoe down the stair.
+
+
+
+
+ IN HONOR OF TAFFY TOPAZ
+
+
+ Taffy, the topaz-colored cat,
+ Thinks now of this and now of that,
+ But chiefly of his meals.
+ Asparagus, and cream, and fish,
+ Are objects of his Freudian wish;
+ What you don't give, he steals.
+
+ His gallant heart is strongly stirred
+ By clink of plate or flight of bird,
+ He has a plumy tail;
+ At night he treads on stealthy pad
+ As merry as Sir Galahad
+ A-seeking of the Grail.
+
+ His amiable amber eyes
+ Are very friendly, very wise;
+ Like Buddha, grave and fat,
+ He sits, regardless of applause,
+ And thinking, as he kneads his paws,
+ What fun to be a cat!
+
+
+
+
+ THE CEDAR CHEST
+
+
+ Her mind is like her cedar chest
+ Wherein in quietness do rest
+ The wistful dreamings of her heart
+ In fragrant folds all laid apart.
+
+ There, put away in sprigs of rhyme
+ Until her life's full blossom-time,
+ Flutter (like tremulous little birds)
+ Her small and sweet maternal words.
+
+
+
+
+ READING ALOUD
+
+
+ Once we read Tennyson aloud
+ In our great fireside chair;
+ Between the lines, my lips could touch
+ Her April-scented hair.
+
+ How very fond I was, to think
+ The printed poems fair,
+ When close within my arms I held
+ A living lyric there!
+
+
+
+
+ ANIMAL CRACKERS
+
+
+ Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink,
+ That is the finest of suppers, I think;
+ When I'm grown up and can have what I please
+ I think I shall always insist upon these.
+
+ What do _you_ choose when you're offered a treat?
+ When Mother says, "What would you like best to eat?"
+ Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast?
+ It's cocoa and animals that _I_ love most!
+
+ The kitchen's the cosiest place that I know:
+ The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,
+ And there in the twilight, how jolly to see
+ The cocoa and animals waiting for me.
+
+ Daddy and Mother dine later in state,
+ With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;
+ But they don't have nearly as much fun as I
+ Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;
+ And Daddy once said, he would like to be me
+ Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _And Daddy once said he would like to be me_
+ _Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!_]
+
+
+
+
+ THE MILKMAN
+
+
+ Early in the morning, when the dawn is on the roofs,
+ You hear his wheels come rolling, you hear his horse's hoofs;
+ You hear the bottles clinking, and then he drives away:
+ You yawn in bed, turn over, and begin another day!
+
+ The old-time dairy maids are dear to every poet's heart--
+ I'd rather be the dairy _man_ and drive a little cart,
+ And bustle round the village in the early morning blue,
+ And hang my reins upon a hook, as I've seen Casey do.
+
+
+
+
+ LIGHT VERSE
+
+
+ At night the gas lamps light our street,
+ Electric bulbs our homes;
+ The gas is billed in cubic feet,
+ Electric light in ohms.
+
+ But one illumination still
+ Is brighter far, and sweeter;
+ It is not figured in a bill,
+ Nor measured by a meter.
+
+ More bright than lights that money buys,
+ More pleasing to discerners,
+ The shining lamps of Helen's eyes,
+ Those lovely double burners!
+
+
+
+
+ THE FURNACE
+
+
+ At night I opened
+ The furnace door:
+ The warm glow brightened
+ The cellar floor.
+
+ The fire that sparkled
+ Blue and red,
+ Kept small toes cosy
+ In their bed.
+
+ As up the stair
+ So late I stole,
+ I said my prayer:
+ _Thank God for coal!_
+
+
+
+
+ WASHING THE DISHES
+
+
+ When we on simple rations sup
+ How easy is the washing up!
+ But heavy feeding complicates
+ The task by soiling many plates.
+
+ And though I grant that I have prayed
+ That we might find a serving-maid,
+ I'd scullion all my days, I think,
+ To see Her smile across the sink!
+
+ I wash, She wipes. In water hot
+ I souse each dish and pan and pot;
+ While Taffy mutters, purrs, and begs,
+ And rubs himself against my legs.
+
+ The man who never in his life
+ Has washed the dishes with his wife
+ Or polished up the silver plate--
+ He still is largely celibate.
+
+ One warning: there is certain ware
+ That must be handled with all care:
+ The Lord Himself will give you up
+ If you should drop a willow cup!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _But heavy feeding complicates_
+ _The task by soiling many plates._]
+
+
+
+
+ THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES
+
+
+ As I went by the church to-day
+ I heard the organ cry;
+ And goodly folk were on their knees,
+ But I went striding by.
+
+ My minster hath a roof more vast:
+ My aisles are oak trees high;
+ My altar-cloth is on the hills,
+ My organ is the sky.
+
+ I see my rood upon the clouds,
+ The winds, my chanted choir;
+ My crystal windows, heaven-glazed,
+ Are stained with sunset fire.
+
+ The stars, the thunder, and the rain,
+ White sands and purple seas--
+ These are His pulpit and His pew,
+ My God of Unbent Knees!
+
+
+
+
+ ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY COAL-BIN
+
+
+ The furnace tolls the knell of falling steam,
+ The coal supply is virtually done,
+ And at this price, indeed it does not seem
+ As though we could afford another ton.
+
+ Now fades the glossy, cherished anthracite;
+ The radiators lose their temperature:
+ How ill avail, on such a frosty night,
+ The "short and simple flannels of the poor."
+
+ Though in the icebox, fresh and newly laid,
+ The rude forefathers of the omelet sleep,
+ No eggs for breakfast till the bill is paid:
+ We cannot cook again till coal is cheap.
+
+ Can Morris-chair or papier-mâché bust
+ Revivify the failing pressure-gauge?
+ Chop up the grand piano if you must,
+ And burn the East Aurora parrot-cage!
+
+ Full many a can of purest kerosene
+ The dark unfathomed tanks of Standard Oil
+ Shall furnish me, and with their aid I mean
+ To bring my morning coffee to a boil.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _How ill avail, on such a frosty night_....]
+
+
+
+
+ THE OLD SWIMMER
+
+
+ I often wander on the beach
+ Where once, so brown of limb,
+ The biting air, the roaring surf
+ Summoned me to swim.
+
+ I see my old abundant youth
+ Where combers lean and spill,
+ And though I taste the foam no more
+ Other swimmers will.
+
+ Oh, good exultant strength to meet
+ The arching wall of green,
+ To break the crystal, swirl, emerge
+ Dripping, taut, and clean.
+
+ To climb the moving hilly blue,
+ To dive in ecstasy
+ And feel the salty chill embrace
+ Arm and rib and knee.
+
+ What brave and vanished laughter then
+ And tingling thighs to run,
+ What warm and comfortable sands
+ Dreaming in the sun.
+
+ The crumbling water spreads in snow,
+ The surf is hissing still,
+ And though I kiss the salt no more
+ Other swimmers will.
+
+
+ [Illustration: The Old Swimmer]
+
+
+
+
+ THE MOON-SHEEP
+
+
+ The moon seems like a docile sheep,
+ She pastures while all people sleep;
+ But sometimes, when she goes astray,
+ She wanders all alone by day.
+
+ Up in the clear blue morning air
+ We are surprised to see her there,
+ Grazing in her woolly white,
+ Waiting the return of night.
+
+ When dusk lets down the meadow bars
+ She greets again her lambs, the stars!
+
+
+
+
+ SMELLS
+
+
+ Why is it that the poets tell
+ So little of the sense of smell?
+ These are the odors I love well:
+
+ The smell of coffee freshly ground;
+ Or rich plum pudding, holly crowned;
+ Or onions fried and deeply browned.
+
+ The fragrance of a fumy pipe;
+ The smell of apples, newly ripe;
+ And printers' ink on leaden type.
+
+ Woods by moonlight in September
+ Breathe most sweet; and I remember
+ Many a smoky camp-fire ember.
+
+ Camphor, turpentine, and tea,
+ The balsam of a Christmas tree,
+ These are whiffs of gramarye ...
+ _A ship smells best of all to me!_
+
+
+
+
+ SMELLS (JUNIOR)
+
+
+ My Daddy smells like tobacco and books,
+ Mother, like lavender and listerine;
+ Uncle John carries a whiff of cigars,
+ Nannie smells starchy and soapy and clean.
+
+ Shandy, my dog, has a smell of his own
+ (When he's been out in the rain he smells most);
+ But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all--
+ She smells exactly like hot buttered toast!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all_--]
+
+
+
+
+ MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN
+
+
+ I like the Chinese laundryman:
+ He smokes a pipe that bubbles,
+ And seems, as far as I can tell,
+ A man with but few troubles.
+ He has much to do, no doubt,
+ But also much to think about.
+
+ Most men (for instance I myself)
+ Are spending, at all times,
+ All our hard-earned quarters,
+ Our nickels and our dimes:
+ With Mar Quong it's the other way--
+ He takes in small change every day.
+
+ Next time you call for collars
+ In his steamy little shop,
+ Observe how tight his pigtail
+ Is coiled and piled on top.
+ But late at night he lets it hang
+ And thinks of the Yang-tse-kiang.
+
+
+
+
+ THE FAT LITTLE PURSE
+
+
+ On Saturdays, after the baby
+ Is bathed, fed, and sleeping serene,
+ His mother, as quickly as may be,
+ Arranges the household routine.
+ She rapidly makes herself pretty
+ And leaves the young limb with his nurse,
+ Then gaily she starts for the city,
+ And with her the fat little purse.
+
+ She trips through the crowd at the station,
+ To the rendezvous spot where we meet,
+ And keeping her eyes from temptation,
+ She avoids the most windowy street!
+ She is off for the Weekly Adventure;
+ To her comrade for better and worse
+ She says, "Never mind, when you've spent your
+ Last bit, here's the fat little purse."
+
+ Apart, in her thrifty exchequer,
+ She has hidden what must not be spent:
+ Enough for the butcher and baker,
+ Katie's wages, and milkman, and rent;
+ But the rest of her brave little treasure
+ She is gleeful and prompt to disburse--
+ What a richness of innocent pleasure
+ Can come from her fat little purse!
+
+ But either by giving or buying,
+ The little purse does not stay fat--
+ Perhaps it's a ragged child crying,
+ Perhaps it's a "pert little hat."
+ And the bonny brown eyes that were brightened
+ By pleasures so quaint and diverse,
+ Look up at me, wistful and frightened,
+ To see such a thin little purse.
+
+ The wisest of all financiering
+ Is that which is done by our wives:
+ By some little known profiteering
+ They add twos and twos and make fives;
+ And, husband, if you would be learning
+ The secret of thrift, it is terse:
+ Invest the great part of your earning
+ In her little, fat little purse.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Perhaps it's a ragged child crying_]
+
+
+
+
+ THE REFLECTION
+ (To N. B. D.)
+
+
+ I have not heard her voice, nor seen her face,
+ Nor touched her hand;
+ And yet some echo of her woman's grace
+ I understand.
+
+ I have no picture of her lovelihood,
+ Her smile, her tint;
+ But that she is both beautiful and good
+ I have true hint.
+
+ In all that my friend thinks and says, I see
+ Her mirror true;
+ His thought of her is gentle; she must be
+ All gentle too.
+
+ In all his grief or laughter, work or play,
+ Each mood and whim,
+ How brave and tender, day by common day,
+ She speaks through him!
+
+ Therefore I say I know her, be her face
+ Or dark or fair--
+ For when he shows his heart's most secret place
+ I see her there!
+
+
+
+
+ THE BALLOON PEDDLER
+
+
+ Who is the man on Chestnut street
+ With colored toy balloons?
+ I see him with his airy freight
+ On sunny afternoons--
+ A peddler of such lovely goods!
+ The heart leaps to behold
+ His mass of bubbles, red and green
+ And blue and pink and gold.
+
+ For sure that noble peddler man
+ Hath antic merchandise:
+ His toys that float and swim in air
+ Attract my eager eyes.
+ Perhaps he is a changeling prince
+ Bewitched through magic moons
+ To tempt us solemn busy folk
+ With meaningless balloons.
+
+ Beware, oh, valiant merchantman,
+ Tread cautious on the pave!
+ Lest some day come some realist,
+ Some haggard soul and grave,
+ A puritan efficientist
+ Who deems thy toys a sin--
+ He'll stalk thee madly from behind
+ And prick them with a pin!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The Balloon Peddler_]
+
+
+
+
+ LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S
+ BOOK PLATE
+
+
+ To use my books all friends are bid:
+ My shelves are open for 'em;
+ And in each one, as Grolier did,
+ I write _Et Amicorum_.
+
+ All lovely things in truth belong
+ To him who best employs them;
+ The house, the picture and the song
+ Are his who most enjoys them.
+
+ Perhaps this book holds precious lore,
+ And you may best discern it.
+ If you appreciate it more
+ Than I--why don't return it!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _If you appreciate it more_
+ _Than I--why don't return it!_]
+
+
+
+
+ TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL
+
+
+ How many humble hearts have dipped
+ In you, and scrawled their manuscript!
+ Have shared their secrets, told their cares,
+ Their curious and quaint affairs!
+
+ Your pool of ink, your scratchy pen,
+ Have moved the lives of unborn men,
+ And watched young people, breathing hard,
+ Put Heaven on a postal card.
+
+
+
+
+ THE CRIB
+
+
+ I sought immortality
+ Here and there--
+ I sent my rockets
+ Into the air:
+ I gave my name
+ A hostage to ink;
+ I dined a critic
+ And bought him drink.
+
+ I spurned the weariness
+ Of the flesh;
+ Denied fatigue
+ And began afresh--
+ If men knew all,
+ How they would laugh!
+ I even planned
+ My epitaph....
+
+ And then one night
+ When the dusk was thin
+ I heard the nursery
+ Rites begin:
+
+ I heard the tender
+ Soothings said
+ Over a crib, and
+ A small sweet head.
+
+ Then in a flash
+ It came to me
+ That there was my
+ Immortality!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _And then one night_
+ _When the dusk was thin_
+ _I heard the nursery_
+ _Rites begin--_]
+
+
+
+
+ THE POET
+
+
+ The barren music of a word or phrase,
+ The futile arts of syllable and stress,
+ He sought. The poetry of common days
+ He did not guess.
+
+ The simplest, sweetest rhythms life affords--
+ Unselfish love, true effort truly done,
+ The tender themes that underlie all words--
+ He knew not one.
+
+ The human cadence and the subtle chime
+ Of little laughters, home and child and wife,
+ He knew not. Artist merely in his rhyme,
+ Not in his life.
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _The human cadence and the subtle chime_
+ _Of little laughters_--]
+
+
+
+
+ TO A DISCARDED MIRROR
+
+ [Transcriber's Note: The text below was in mirrored
+image in the original text].
+
+ Dear glass, before your silver pane
+ My lady used to tend her hair;
+ And yet I search your disc in vain
+ To find some shadow of her there.
+
+ I thought your magic, deep and bright,
+ Might still some dear reflection hold:
+ Some glint of eyes or shoulders white,
+ Some flash of gowns she wore of old.
+
+ Your polished round must still recall
+ The laughing face, the neck like snow--
+ Remember, on your lonely wall,
+ That Helen used you long ago!
+
+
+
+
+ TO A CHILD
+
+
+ The greatest poem ever known
+ Is one all poets have outgrown:
+ The poetry, innate, untold,
+ Of being only four years old.
+
+ Still young enough to be a part
+ Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
+ Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
+ And unselfconscious as the bee--
+
+ And yet with lovely reason skilled
+ Each day new paradise to build;
+ Elate explorer of each sense,
+ Without dismay, without pretence!
+
+ In your unstained transparent eyes
+ There is no conscience, no surprise:
+ Life's queer conundrums you accept,
+ Your strange divinity still kept.
+
+ Being, that now absorbs you, all
+ Harmonious, unit, integral,
+ Will shred into perplexing bits,--
+ Oh, contradictions of the wits!
+
+ And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
+ May make you poet, too, in time--
+ But there were days, O tender elf,
+ When you were Poetry itself!
+
+
+
+
+ TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+ My child, what painful vistas are before you!
+ What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps--
+ Indignities from aunts who "just adore" you,
+ And chicken-pox and measles, croup and mumps!
+ I don't wish to dismay you,--it's not fair to,
+ Promoted now from bassinet to crib,--
+ But, O my babe, what troubles flesh is heir to
+ Since God first made so free with Adam's rib!
+
+ Laboriously you will proceed with teething;
+ When teeth are here, you'll meet the dentist's chair;
+ They'll teach you ways of walking, eating, breathing,
+ That stoves are hot, and how to brush your hair;
+ And so, my poor, undaunted little stripling,
+ By bruises, tears, and trousers you will grow,
+ And, borrowing a leaf from Mr. Kipling,
+ I'll wish you luck, and moralize you so:
+
+ If you can think up seven thousand methods
+ Of giving cooks and parents heart disease;
+ Can rifle pantry-shelves, and then give death odds
+ By water, fire, and falling out of trees;
+ If you can fill your every boyish minute
+ With sixty seconds' worth of mischief done,
+ Yours is the house and everything that's in it,
+ And, which is more, you'll be your father's son!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps_--]
+
+
+
+
+ TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET
+
+ (Lizette Woodworth Reese)
+
+
+ Most tender poet, when the gods confer
+ They save your gracile songs a nook apart,
+ And bless with Time's untainted lavender
+ The ageless April of your singing heart.
+
+ You, in an age unbridled, ne'er declined
+ The appointed patience that the Muse decrees,
+ Until, deep in the flower of the mind
+ The hovering words alight, like bridegroom bees.
+
+ By casual praise or casual blame unstirred
+ The placid gods grant gifts where they belong:
+ To you, who understand, the perfect word,
+ The recompensed necessities of song.
+
+
+
+
+ BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING
+
+
+ When withered leaves are lost in flame
+ Their eddying ghosts, a thin blue haze,
+ Blow through the thickets whence they came
+ On amberlucent autumn days.
+
+ The cool green woodland heart receives
+ Their dim, dissolving, phantom breath;
+ In young hereditary leaves
+ They see their happy life-in-death.
+
+ My minutes perish as they glow--
+ Time burns my crazy bonfire through;
+ But ghosts of blackened hours still blow,
+ Eternal Beauty, back to you!
+
+
+
+
+ BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER
+
+
+ These are folios of April,
+ All the library of spring,
+ Missals gilt and rubricated
+ With the frost's illumining.
+
+ Ruthless, we destroy these treasures,
+ Set the torch with hand profane--
+ Gone, like Alexandrian vellums,
+ Like the books of burnt Louvain!
+
+ Yet these classics are immortal:
+ O collectors, have no fear,
+ For the publisher will issue
+ New editions every year.
+
+
+
+
+ A VALENTINE GAME
+
+ (_For Two Players_)
+
+
+ They have a game, thus played:
+ He says unto his maid
+ _What are those shining things_
+ _So brown, so golden brown?_
+ And she, in doubt, replies
+ _How now, what shining things_
+ _So brown?_
+
+ But then, she coming near,
+ To see more clear,
+ He looks again, and cries
+ (All startled with surprise)
+ _Sweet wretch, they are your eyes,_
+ _So brown, so brown!_
+
+ The climax and the end consist
+ In kissing, and in being kissed.
+
+
+
+
+ FOR A BIRTHDAY
+
+
+ At two years old the world he sees
+ Must seem expressly made to please!
+ Such new-found words and games to try,
+ Such sudden mirth, he knows not why,
+ So many curiosities!
+
+ As life about him, by degrees
+ Discloses all its pageantries
+ He watches with approval shy
+ At two years old.
+
+ With wonders tired he takes his ease
+ At dusk, upon his mother's knees:
+ A little laugh, a little cry,
+ Put toys to bed, then "seepy-bye"--
+ The world is made of such as these
+ At two years old.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _A Birthday_]
+
+
+
+
+ KEATS
+
+ (1821-1921)
+
+
+ When sometimes, on a moony night, I've passed
+ A street-lamp, seen my doubled shadow flee,
+ I've noticed how much darker, clearer cast,
+ The full moon poured her silhouette of me.
+
+ Just so of spirits. Beauty's silver light
+ Limns with a ray more pure, and tenderer too:
+ Men's clumsy gestures, to unearthly sight,
+ Surpass the shapes they show by human view.
+
+ On this brave world, where few such meteors fell,
+ Her youngest son, to save us, Beauty flung.
+ He suffered and descended into hell--
+ And comforts yet the ardent and the young.
+
+ Drunken of moonlight, dazed by draughts of sky,
+ Dizzy with stars, his mortal fever ran:
+ His utterance a moon-enchanted cry
+ Not free from folly--for he too was man.
+
+ And now and here, a hundred years away,
+ Where topless towers shadow golden streets,
+ The young men sit, nooked in a cheap café,
+ Perfectly happy ... talking about Keats.
+
+
+
+
+ TO H. F. M.
+
+ A SONNET IN SUNLIGHT
+
+
+ This is a day for sonnets: Oh how clear
+ Our splendid cliffs and summits lift the gaze--
+ If all the perfect moments of the year
+ Were poured and gathered in one sudden blaze,
+ Then, then perhaps, in some endowered phrase
+ My flat strewn words would rise and come more near
+ To tell of you. Your beauty and your praise
+ Would fall like sunlight on this paper here.
+
+ Then I would build a sonnet that would stand
+ Proud and perennial on this pale bright sky;
+ So tall, so steep, that it might stay the hand
+ Of Time, the dusty wrecker. He would sigh
+ To tear my strong words down. And he would say:
+ "That song he built for her, one summer day."
+
+
+
+
+ QUICKENING
+
+
+ Such little, puny things are words in rhyme:
+ Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs;
+ You see them printed here, and mark their chime,
+ And turn to your more durable affairs.
+ Yet on such petty tools the poet dares
+ To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime,
+ And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares
+ To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.
+
+ Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in,
+ This measured emptiness engulfs us all,
+ And yet he points his paper javelin
+ And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall,
+ And feels, between delight and trouble torn,
+ The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.
+
+
+
+
+ AT A WINDOW SILL
+
+
+ _To write a sonnet needs a quiet mind...._
+ I paused and pondered, tried again. _To write...._
+
+ Raising the sash, I breathed the winter night:
+ Papers and small hot room were left behind.
+ Against the gusty purple, ribbed and spined
+ With golden slots and vertebræ of light
+ Men's cages loomed. Down sliding from a height
+ An elevator winked as it declined.
+
+ Coward! There is no quiet in the brain--
+ If pity burns it not, then beauty will:
+ Tinder it is for every blowing spark.
+ Uncertain whether this is bliss or pain
+ The unresting mind will gaze across the sill
+ From high apartment windows, in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+ THE RIVER OF LIGHT
+
+ I. Broadway, 103rd to 96th.
+
+
+ Lights foam and bubble down the gentle grade:
+ Bright shine chop sueys and rôtisseries;
+ In pink translucence glowingly displayed
+ See camisole and stocking and chemise.
+ Delicatessen windows full of cheese--
+ Above, the chimes of church-bells toll and fade--
+ And then, from off some distant Palisade
+ That gluey savor on the Jersey breeze!
+
+ The burning bulbs, in green and white and red,
+ Spell out a _Change of Program Sun., Wed., Fri._,
+ A clicking taxi spins with ruby spark.
+ There is a sense of poising near the head
+ Of some great flume of brightness, flowing by
+ To pour in gathering torrent through the dark.
+
+
+
+
+ THE RIVER OF LIGHT
+
+ II. Below 96th
+
+
+ The current quickens, and in golden flow
+ Hurries its flotsam downward through the night--
+ Here are the rapids where the undertow
+ Whirls endless motors in a gleaming flight.
+ From blazing tributaries, left and right,
+ Influent streams of blue and amber grow.
+ Columbus Circle eddies: all below
+ Is pouring flame, a gorge of broken light.
+
+ See how the burning river boils in spate,
+ Channeled by cliffs of insane jewelry,
+ Painting a rosy roof on cloudy air--
+ And just about ten minutes after eight,
+ Tossing a surf of color to the sky
+ It bursts in cataracts upon Times Square!
+
+
+
+
+ OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS
+
+
+ The city's mad: through her prodigious veins
+ What errant, strange, eccentric humors thrill:
+ Day, when her cataracts of sunlight spill--
+ Night, golden-panelled with her window panes;
+ The toss of wind-blown skirts; and who can drill
+ Forever his fierce heart with checking reins?
+ Cruel and mad, my statisticians say--
+ Ah, but she raves in such a gallant way!
+
+ Brave madness, built for beauty and the sun--
+ In such a town who can be sane? Not I.
+ Of clashing colors all her moods are spun--
+ A scarlet anger and a golden cry.
+ This frantic town where madcap mischiefs run
+ They ask to take the veil, and be a nun!
+
+
+
+
+ IN AN AUCTION ROOM
+
+ (_Letter of John Keats to Fanny Browne, Anderson Galleries,_
+ _March 15, 1920._)
+
+ To Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach.
+
+
+ _How about this lot?_ said the auctioneer;
+ _One hundred, may I say, just for a start?_
+ Between the plum-red curtains, drawn apart,
+ A written sheet was held.... And strange to hear
+ (Dealer, would I were steadfast as thou art)
+ The cold quick bids. (_Against you in the rear!_)
+ The crimson salon, in a glow more clear
+ Burned bloodlike purple as the poet's heart.
+
+ Song that outgrew the singer! Bitter Love
+ That broke the proud hot heart it held in thrall;
+ Poor script, where still those tragic passions move--
+ _Eight hundred bid: fair warning: the last call:_
+ The soul of Adonais, like a star....
+ _Sold for eight hundred dollars--Doctor R.!_
+
+
+
+
+ EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY
+
+ "It is said that a poet has died young in the breast
+of the most stolid."--Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+
+ What was the service of this poet? He
+ Who blinked the blinding dazzle-rays that run
+ Where life profiles its edges to the sun,
+ And still suspected much he could not see.
+ Clay-stopped, yet in his taciturnity
+ There lay the vein of glory, known to none;
+ And moods of secret smiling, only won
+ When peace and passion, time and sense, agree.
+
+ Fighting the world he loved for chance to brood,
+ Ignorant when to embrace, when to avoid
+ His loves that held him in their vital clutch--
+ This was his service, his beatitude;
+ This was the inward trouble he enjoyed
+ Who knew so little, and who felt so much.
+
+
+
+
+ SONNET BY A GEOMETER
+
+ THE CIRCLE
+
+
+ Few things are perfect: we bear Eden's scar;
+ Yet faulty man was godlike in design
+ That day when first, with stick and length of twine,
+ He drew me on the sand. Then what could mar
+ His joy in that obedient mystic line;
+ And then, computing with a zeal divine,
+ He called π 3-point-14159
+ And knew my lovely circuit 2 π r!
+
+ A circle is a happy thing to be--
+ Think how the joyful perpendicular
+ Erected at the kiss of tangency
+ Must meet my central point, my avatar!
+ They talk of 14 points: yet only 3
+ Determine every circle: =Q. E. D.=
+
+
+
+
+ TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER SEEN ON A LEASH, IN THE PARK
+
+
+ Three times a day--at two, at seven, at nine--
+ O terrier, you play your little part:
+ Absurd in coat and skirt you push a cart,
+ With inner anguish walk a tight-rope line.
+ Up there, before the hot and dazzling shine
+ You must be rigid servant of your art,
+ Nor watch those fluffy cats--your doggish heart
+ Might leap and then betray you with a whine!
+
+ But sometimes, when you've faithfully rehearsed,
+ Your trainer takes you walking in the park,
+ Straining to sniff the grass, to chase a frog.
+ The leash is slipped, and then your joy will burst--
+ Adorable it is to run and bark,
+ To be--alas, how seldom--just a dog!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _You must be rigid servant of your art!_]
+
+
+
+
+ TO AN OLD FRIEND
+
+ (For Lloyd Williams.)
+
+
+ I like to dream of some established spot
+ Where you and I, old friend, an evening through
+ Under tobacco's fog, streaked gray and blue,
+ Might reconsider laughters unforgot.
+ Beside a hearth-glow, golden-clear and hot,
+ I'd hear you tell the oddities men do.
+ The clock would tick, and we would sit, we two--
+ Life holds such meetings for us, does it not?
+
+ Happy are men when they have learned to prize
+ The sure unvarnished virtue of their friends,
+ The unchanged kindness of a well-known face:
+ On old fidelities our world depends,
+ And runs a simple course in honest wise,
+ Not a mere taxicab shot wild through space!
+
+
+
+
+ TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE
+
+
+ Upstage the great high-shafted beefy choir
+ Squawked in 2000 watts of orange glare--
+ You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care
+ Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire.
+
+ Flung from the roof, spots red and yellow burned
+ And followed you. The blatant brassy clang
+ Of instruments drowned out the words you sang,
+ But goldenly you capered, twirled and turned.
+
+ Boyish and slender, child-limbed, quick and proud,
+ A sprite of irresistible disdain,
+ Fair as a jonquil in an April rain,
+ You seemed too sweet an imp for that dull crowd....
+
+ And then, behind the scenes, I heard you say,
+ "_O Gawd, I got a hellish cold to-day!_"
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care_
+ _Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire._]
+
+
+
+
+ THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK
+
+
+ The sonnet is a trunk, and you must pack
+ With care, to ship frail baggage far away;
+ The octet is the trunk; sestet, the tray;
+ Tight, but not overloaded, is the knack.
+ First, at the bottom, heavy thoughts you stack,
+ And in the chinks your adjectives you lay--
+ Your phrases, folded neatly as you may,
+ Stowing a syllable in every crack.
+
+ Then, in the tray, your daintier stuff is hid:
+ The tender quatrain where your moral sings--
+ Be careful, though, lest as you close the lid
+ You crush and crumple all these fragile things.
+ Your couplet snaps the hasps and turns the key--
+ Ship to The Editor, marked C. O. D.
+
+
+
+
+ STREETS
+
+
+ I have seen streets where strange enchantment broods:
+ Old ruddy houses where the morning shone
+ In seemly quiet on their tranquil moods,
+ Across the sills white curtains outward blown.
+ Their marble steps were scoured as white as bone
+ Where scrubbing housemaids toiled on wounded knee--
+ And yet, among all streets that I have known
+ These placid byways give least peace to me.
+
+ In such a house, where green light shining through
+ (From some back garden) framed her silhouette
+ I saw a girl, heard music blithely sung.
+ She stood there laughing, in a dress of blue,
+ And as I went on, slowly, there I met
+ An old, old woman, who had once been young.
+
+
+
+
+ TO THE ONLY BEGETTER
+
+ I
+
+
+ I have no hope to make you live in rhyme
+ Or with your beauty to enrich the years--
+ Enough for me this now, this present time;
+ The greater claim for greater sonneteers.
+ But O how covetous I am of NOW--
+ Dear human minutes, marred by human pains--
+ I want to know your lips, your cheek, your brow,
+ And all the miracles your heart contains,
+ I wish to study all your changing face,
+ Your eyes, divinely hurt with tenderness;
+ I hope to win your dear unstinted grace
+ For these blunt rhymes and what they would express.
+ Then may you say, when others better prove:--
+ "_Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love._"
+
+
+
+
+ TO THE ONLY BEGETTER
+
+ II
+
+
+ When all my trivial rhymes are blotted out,
+ Vanished our days, so precious and so few,
+ If some should wonder what we were about
+ And what the little happenings we knew:
+ I wish that they might know how, night by night,
+ My pencil, heavy in the sleepy hours,
+ Sought vainly for some gracious way to write
+ How much this love is ours, and only ours.
+ How many evenings, as you drowsed to sleep,
+ I read to you by tawny candle-glow,
+ And watched you down the valley dim and deep
+ Where poppies and the April flowers grow.
+ Then knelt beside your pillow with a prayer,
+ And loved the breath of pansies in your hair.
+
+
+
+
+ PEDOMETER
+
+
+ My thoughts beat out in sonnets while I walk,
+ And every evening on the homeward street
+ I find the rhythm of my marching feet
+ Throbs into verses (though the rhyme may balk).
+ I think the sonneteers were walking men:
+ The form is dour and rigid, like a clamp,
+ But with the swing of legs the tramp, tramp, tramp
+ Of syllables begins to thud, and then--
+ Lo! while you seek a rhyme for _hook_ or _crook_
+ Vanished your shabby coat, and you are kith
+ To all great walk-and-singers--Meredith,
+ And Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Rupert Brooke!
+ Free verse is poor for walking, but a sonnet--
+ O marvellous to stride and brood upon it!
+
+
+
+
+ HOSTAGES
+
+ "He that hath wife and children hath given
+hostages to fortune."--BACON.
+
+
+ Aye, Fortune, thou hast hostage of my best!
+ I, that was once so heedless of thy frown,
+ Have armed thee cap-à-pie to strike me down,
+ Have given thee blades to hold against my breast.
+ My virtue, that was once all self-possessed,
+ Is parceled out in little hands, and brown
+ Bright eyes, and in a sleeping baby's gown:
+ To threaten these will put me to the test.
+
+ Sure, since there are these pitiful poor chinks
+ Upon the makeshift armor of my heart,
+ For thee no honor lies in such a fight!
+ And thou wouldst shame to vanquish one, me-thinks,
+ Who came awake with such a painful start
+ To hear the coughing of a child at night.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Hostages._]
+
+
+
+
+ ARS DURA
+
+
+ How many evenings, walking soberly
+ Along our street all dappled with rich sun,
+ I please myself with words, and happily
+ Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run;
+ And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies
+ Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask,
+ Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes
+ And traitor hand that fails the well loved task!
+
+ Who ever learned the sonnet's bitter craft
+ But he had put away his sleep, his ease,
+ The wine he loved, the men with whom he laughed
+ To brood upon such thankless tricks as these?
+ And yet, such joy does in that craft abide
+ He greets the paper as the groom the bride!
+
+
+
+
+ O. HENRY--APOTHECARY
+
+ ("O. Henry" once worked in a drug-store in Greensboro, N.C.)
+
+
+ Where once he measured camphor, glycerine,
+ Quinine and potash, peppermint in bars,
+ And all the oils and essences so keen
+ That druggists keep in rows of stoppered jars--
+ Now, blender of strange drugs more volatile,
+ The master pharmacist of joy and pain
+ Dispenses sadness tinctured with a smile
+ And laughter that dissolves in tears again.
+
+ O brave apothecary! You who knew
+ What dark and acid doses life prefers
+ And yet with friendly face resolved to brew
+ These sparkling potions for your customers--
+ In each prescription your Physician writ
+ You poured your rich compassion and your wit!
+
+
+
+
+ FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET (1816)
+
+ "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer."
+
+
+ I knew a scientist, an engineer,
+ Student of tensile strengths and calculus,
+ A man who loved a cantilever truss
+ And always wore a pencil on his ear.
+ My friend believed that poets all were queer,
+ And literary folk ridiculous;
+ But one night, when it chanced that three of us
+ Were reading Keats aloud, he stopped to hear.
+
+ Lo, a new planet swam into his ken!
+ His eager mind reached for it and took hold.
+ Ten years are by: I see him now and then,
+ And at alumni dinners, if cajoled,
+ He mumbles gravely, to the cheering men:--
+ _Much have I travelled in the realms of gold._
+
+
+
+
+ TWO O'CLOCK
+
+
+ Night after night goes by: and clocks still chime
+ And stars are changing patterns in the dark,
+ And watches tick, and over-puissant Time
+ Benumbs the eager brain. The dogs that bark,
+ The trains that roar and rattle in the night,
+ The very cats that prowl, all quiet find
+ And leave the darkness empty, silent quite:
+ Sleep comes to chloroform the fretting mind.
+
+ So all things end: and what is left at last?
+ Some scribbled sonnets tossed upon the floor,
+ A memory of easy days gone past,
+ A run-down watch, a pipe, some clothes we wore--
+ And in the darkened room I lean to know
+ How warm her dreamless breath does pause and flow.
+
+
+
+
+ THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
+
+
+ Ah very sweet! If news should come to you
+ Some afternoon, while waiting for our eve,
+ That the great Manager had made me leave
+ To travel on some territory new;
+ And that, whatever homeward winds there blew,
+ I could not touch your hand again, nor heave
+ The logs upon our hearth and bid you weave
+ Some wistful tale before the flames that grew....
+
+ Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind
+ Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could
+ Remember rightly, and forget aright?
+ Remember just your lad, uncouthly good,
+ Forgetting when he failed in spleen or spite?
+ Could you remember him as always kind?
+
+
+
+
+ THE WEDDED LOVER
+
+
+ I read in our old journals of the days
+ When our first love was April-sweet and new,
+ How fair it blossomed and deep-rooted grew
+ Despite the adverse time; and our amaze
+ At moon and stars and beauty beyond praise
+ That burgeoned all about us: gold and blue
+ The heaven arched us in, and all we knew
+ Was gentleness. We walked on happy ways.
+
+ They said by now the path would be more steep,
+ The sunsets paler and less mild the air;
+ Rightly we heeded not: it was not true.
+ We will not tell the secret--let it keep.
+ I know not how I thought those days so fair
+ These being so much fairer, spent with you.
+
+
+
+
+ TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST
+
+
+ When we were parted, sweet, and darkness came,
+ I used to strike a match, and hold the flame
+ Before your picture and would breathless mark
+ The answering glimmer of the tiny spark
+ That brought to life the magic of your eyes,
+ Their wistful tenderness, their glad surprise.
+
+ Holding that mimic torch before your shrine
+ I used to light your eyes and make them mine;
+ Watch them like stars set in a lonely sky,
+ Whisper my heart out, yearning for reply;
+ Summon your lips from far across the sea
+ Bidding them live a twilight hour with me.
+
+ Then, when the match was shrivelled into gloom,
+ Lo--you were with me in the darkened room.
+
+
+
+
+ CHARLES AND MARY
+
+ (December 27, 1834.)
+
+
+ Lamb died just before I left town, and Mr. Ryle of
+the E. India House, one of his extors., notified it to me....
+He said Miss L. was resigned and composed at the
+event, but it was from her malady, then in mild type, so
+that when she saw her brother dead, she observed on his
+beauty when asleep and apprehended nothing further.
+
+ --Letter of John Rickman, 24 January, 1835.
+
+
+ I hear their voices still: the stammering one
+ Struggling with some absurdity of jest;
+ Her quiet words that puzzle and protest
+ Against the latest outrage of his fun.
+ So wise, so simple--has she never guessed
+ That through his laughter, love and terror run?
+ For when her trouble came, and darkness pressed,
+ He smiled, and fought her madness with a pun.
+
+ Through all those years it was his task to keep
+ Her gentle heart serenely mystified.
+ If Fate's an artist, this should be his pride--
+ When, in that Christmas season, he lay dead,
+ She innocently looked. "I always said
+ That Charles is really handsome when asleep."
+
+
+
+
+ TO A GRANDMOTHER
+
+
+ At six o'clock in the evening,
+ The time for lullabies,
+ My son lay on my mother's lap
+ With sleepy, sleepy eyes!
+ (_O drowsy little manny boy,_
+ _With sleepy, sleepy eyes!_)
+
+ I heard her sing, and rock him,
+ And the creak of the swaying chair,
+ And the old dear cadence of the words
+ Came softly down the stair.
+
+ And all the years had vanished,
+ All folly, greed, and stain--
+ The old, old song, the creaking chair,
+ The dearest arms again!
+ (_O lucky little manny boy,_
+ _To feel those arms again!_)
+
+
+
+
+ DIARISTS
+
+
+ They catalogue their minutes: Now, now, now,
+ Is Actual, amid the fugitive;
+ Take ink and pen (they say) for that is how
+ We snare this flying life, and make it live.
+ So to their little pictures, and they sieve
+ Their happinesses: fields turned by the plough,
+ The afterglow that summer sunsets give,
+ The razor concave of a great ship's bow.
+
+ O gallant instinct, folly for men's mirth!
+ Type cannot burn and sparkle on the page.
+ No glittering ink can make this written word
+ Shine clear enough to speak the noble rage
+ And instancy of life. All sonnets blurred
+ The sudden mood of truth that gave them birth.
+
+
+
+
+ THE LAST SONNET
+
+
+ Suppose one knew that never more might one
+ Put pen to sonnet, well loved task; that now
+ These fourteen lines were all he could allow
+ To say his message, be forever done;
+ How he would scan the word, the line, the rhyme,
+ Intent to sum in dearly chosen phrase
+ The windy trees, the beauty of his days,
+ Life's pride and pathos in one verse sublime.
+ How bitter then would be regret and pang
+ For former rhymes he dallied to refine,
+ For every verse that was not crystalline....
+ And if belike this last one feebly rang,
+ Honor and pride would cast it to the floor
+ Facing the judge with what was done before.
+
+
+
+
+ THE SAVAGE
+
+
+ Civilization causes me
+ Alternate fits: disgust and glee.
+
+ Buried in piles of glass and stone
+ My private spirit moves alone,
+
+ Where every day from eight to six
+ I keep alive by hasty tricks.
+
+ But I am simple in my soul;
+ My mind is sullen to control.
+
+ At dusk I smell the scent of earth,
+ And I am dumb--too glad for mirth.
+
+ I know the savors night can give,
+ And then, and then, I live, I live!
+
+ No man is wholly pure and free,
+ For that is not his destiny,
+
+ But though I bend, I will not break:
+ And still be savage, for Truth's sake.
+
+ God damns the easily convinced
+ (Like Pilate, when his hands he rinsed).
+
+
+
+
+ ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH
+
+
+ I stood on the pavement
+ Where I could admire
+ Behind the brown chapel
+ The cream and gold spire.
+
+ Above, gilded Lightning
+ Swam high on his ball--
+ I saw the noon shadow
+ The church of St. Paul.
+
+ And was there a meaning?
+ (My fancy would run),
+ Saint Paul in the shadow,
+ Saint Frank in the sun!
+
+
+
+
+ ADVICE TO A CITY
+
+
+ O city, cage your poets! Hem them in
+ And roof them over from the April sky--
+ Clatter them round with babble, ceaseless din,
+ And drown their voices with your thunder cry.
+
+ Forbid their free feet on the windy hills,
+ And harness them to daily ruts of stone--
+ (In florists' windows lock the daffodils)
+ And never, never let them be alone!
+
+ For they are curst, said poets, curst and lewd,
+ And freedom gives their tongues uncanny wit,
+ And granted silence, thought and solitude
+ They (_absit omen!_) might make Song of it.
+
+ So cage them in, and stand about them thick,
+ And keep them busy with their daily bread;
+ And should their eyes seem strange, ah, then be quick
+ To interrupt them ere the word be said....
+
+ For, if their hearts burn with sufficient rage,
+ With wasted sunsets and frustrated youth,
+ Some day they'll cry, on some disturbing page,
+ The savage, sweet, unpalatable truth!
+
+
+
+
+ THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY
+
+
+ No Malory of old romance,
+ No Crusoe tale, it seems to me,
+ Can equal in rich circumstance
+ This telephone directory.
+
+ No ballad of fair ladies' eyes,
+ No legend of proud knights and dames,
+ Can fill me with such bright surmise
+ As this great book of numbered names!
+
+ How many hearts and lives unknown,
+ Rare damsels pining for a squire,
+ Are waiting for the telephone
+ To ring, and call them to the wire.
+
+ Some wait to hear a loved voice say
+ The news they will rejoice to know
+ At Rome 2637 J
+ Or Marathon 1450!
+
+ And some, perhaps, are stung with fear
+ And answer with reluctant tread:
+ The message they expect to hear
+ Means life or death or daily bread.
+
+ A million hearts here wait our call,
+ All naked to our distant speech--
+ I wish that I could ring them all
+ And have some welcome news for each!
+
+
+
+
+ GREEN ESCAPE
+
+
+ At three o'clock in the afternoon
+ On a hot September day,
+ I began to dream of a highland stream
+ And a frostbit russet tree;
+ Of the swashing dip of a clipper ship
+ (White canvas wet with spray)
+ And the swirling green and milk-foam clean
+ Along her canted lee.
+
+ I heard the quick staccato click
+ Of the typist's pounding keys,
+ And I had to brood of a wind more rude
+ Than that by a motor fanned--
+ And I lay inert in a flannel shirt
+ To watch the rhyming seas
+ Deploy and fall in a silver sprawl
+ On a beach of sun-blanched sand.
+
+ There is no desk shall tame my lust
+ For hills and windy skies;
+ My secret hope of the sea's blue slope
+ No clerkly task shall dull;
+
+ And though I print no echoed hint
+ Of adventures I devise,
+ My eyes still pine for the comely line
+ Of an outbound vessel's hull.
+
+ When I elope with an autumn day
+ And make my green escape,
+ I'll leave my pen to tamer men
+ Who have more docile souls;
+ For forest aisles and office files
+ Have a very different shape,
+ And it's hard to woo the ocean blue
+ In a row of pigeon holes!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _My eyes still pine for the comely line_
+ _Of an outbound vessel's hull._]
+
+
+
+
+ VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS
+
+ (_Instead of "Marathon" the commuter may substitute_
+ _the name of his favorite suburb_)
+
+
+ The stars are kind to Marathon,
+ How low, how close, they lean!
+ They jostle one another
+ And do their best to please--
+ Indeed, they are so neighborly
+ That in the twilight green
+ One reaches out to pick them
+ Behind the poplar trees.
+
+ The stars are kind to Marathon,
+ And one particular
+ Bright planet (which is Vesper)
+ Most lucid and serene,
+ Is waiting by the railway bridge,
+ The Good Commuter's Star,
+ The Star of Wise Men coming home
+ On time, at 6:15!
+
+
+
+
+ THE ICE WAGON
+
+
+ I'd like to split the sky that roofs us down,
+ Break through the crystal lid of upper air,
+ And tap the cool still reservoirs of heaven.
+ I'd empty all those unseen lakes of freshness
+ Down some vast funnel, through our stifled streets.
+
+ I'd like to pump away the grit, the dust,
+ Raw dazzle of the sun on garbage piles,
+ The droning troops of flies, sharp bitter smells,
+ And gush that bright sweet flood of unused air
+ Down every alley where the children gasp.
+
+ And then I'd take a fleet of ice wagons--
+ Big yellow creaking carts, drawn by wet horses,--
+ And drive them rumbling through the blazing slums.
+ In every wagon would be blocks of coldness,
+ Pale, gleaming cubes of ice, all green and silver,
+ With inner veins and patterns, white and frosty;
+ Great lumps of chill would drip and steam and shimmer,
+ And spark like rainbows in their little fractures.
+
+ And where my wagons stood there would be puddles,
+ A wetness and a sparkle and a coolness.
+ My friends and I would chop and splinter open
+ The blocks of ice. Bare feet would soon come pattering,
+ And some would wrap it up in Sunday papers,
+ And some would stagger home with it in baskets,
+ And some would be too gay for aught but sucking,
+ Licking, crunching those fast melting pebbles,
+ Gulping as they slipped down unexpected--
+ Laughing to perceive that secret numbness
+ Amid their small hot persons!
+
+ At every stop would be at least one urchin
+ Would take a piece to cool the sweating horses
+ And hold it up against their silky noses--
+ And they would start, and then decide they liked it.
+
+ Down all the sun-cursed byways of the town
+ Our wagons would be trailed by grimy tots,
+ Their ragged shirts half off them with excitement!
+ Dabbling toes and fingers in our leakage,
+ A lucky few up sitting with the driver,
+ All clambering and stretching grey-pink palms.
+
+ And by the time the wagons were all empty
+ Our arms and shoulders would be lame with chopping,
+ Our backs and thighs pain-shot, our fingers frozen.
+ But how we would recall those eager faces,
+ Red thirsty tongues with ice-chips sliding on them,
+ The pinched white cheeks, and their pathetic gladness.
+ Then we would know that arms were made for aching--
+
+ I wish to God that I could go tomorrow!
+
+
+
+
+ AT A MOVIE THEATRE
+
+
+ How well he spoke who coined the phrase
+ _The picture palace!_ Aye, in sooth
+ A palace, where men's weary days
+ Are crowned with kingliness of youth.
+
+ Strange palace! Crowded, airless, dim,
+ Where toes are trod and strained eyes smart,
+ We watch a wand of brightness limn
+ The old heroics of the heart.
+
+ Romance again hath us in thrall
+ And Love is sweet and always true,
+ And in the darkness of the hall
+ Hands clasp--as they were meant to do.
+
+ Remote from peevish joys and ills
+ Our souls, _pro tem_, are purged and free:
+ We see the sun on western hills,
+ The crumbling tumult of the sea.
+
+ We are the blond that maidens crave,
+ Well balanced at a dozen banks;
+ By sleight of hand we haste to save
+ A brown-eyed life, nor stay for thanks!
+
+ Alas, perhaps our instinct feels
+ Life is not all it might have been,
+ So we applaud fantastic reels
+ Of shadow, cast upon a screen!
+
+
+
+
+ SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE
+
+
+ I
+
+ Each morn she crackles upward, tread by tread,
+ All apprehensive of some hideous sight:
+ Perhaps the Fourth Floor Back, who reads in bed,
+ Forgot his gas and let it burn all night--
+ The Sweet Young Thing who has the middle room,
+ She much suspects: for once some ink was spilled,
+ And then the plumber, in an hour of gloom,
+ Found all the bathroom pipes with tea-leaves filled.
+
+ No League of Nations scheme can make her gay--
+ She knows the rank duplicity of man;
+ Some folks expect clean towels every day,
+ They'll get away with murder if they can!
+ She tacks a card (alas, few roomers mind it)
+ _Please leave the tub as you would wish to find it!_
+
+
+ II
+
+
+ Men lodgers are the best, the Mrs. said:
+ They don't use my gas jets to fry sardines,
+ They don't leave red-hot irons on the spread,
+ They're out all morning, when a body cleans.
+ A man ain't so secretive, never cares
+ What kind of private papers he leaves lay,
+ So I can get a line on his affairs
+ And dope out whether he is likely pay.
+ But women! Say, they surely get my bug!
+ They stop their keyholes up with chewing gum,
+ Spill grease, and hide the damage with the rug,
+ And fry marshmallows when their callers come.
+ They always are behindhand with their rents--
+ Take my advice and let your rooms to gents!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _A man ain't so secretive, never cares_
+ _What kind of private papers he leaves lay_--]
+
+
+
+
+ THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS)
+
+
+ About these roaring cylinders
+ Where leaping words and paper mate,
+ A sudden glory moves and stirs--
+ An inky cataract in spate!
+
+ What voice for falsehood or for truth,
+ What hearts attentive to be stirred--
+ How dimly understood, in sooth,
+ The power of the printed word!
+
+ These flashing webs and cogs of steel
+ Have shaken empires, routed kings,
+ Yet never turn too fast to feel
+ The tragedies of humble things.
+
+ O words, be strict in honesty,
+ Be just and simple and serene;
+ O rhymes, sing true, or you will be
+ Unworthy of this great machine!
+
+
+
+
+ DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD?
+
+
+ Across the court there rises the back wall
+ Of the Magna Carta Apartments.
+ The other evening the people in the apartment opposite
+ Had forgotten to draw their curtains.
+ I could see them dining: the well-blanched cloth,
+ The silver and glass, the crystal water jug,
+ The meat and vegetables; and their clean pink hands
+ Outstretched in busy gesture.
+
+ It was pleasant to watch them, they were so human;
+ So gay, innocent, unconscious of scrutiny.
+ They were four: an elderly couple,
+ A young man, and a girl--with lovely shoulders
+ Mellow in the glow of the lamp.
+ They were sitting over coffee, and I could see their hands talking.
+
+ At last the older two left the room.
+ The boy and girl looked at each other....
+ Like a flash, they leaned and kissed.
+
+ Good old human race that keeps on multiplying!
+ A little later I went down the street to the movies,
+ And there I saw all four, laughing and joking together.
+ And as I watched them I felt like God--
+ Benevolent, all-knowing, and tender.
+
+
+
+
+ RAPID TRANSIT
+
+ (To Stephen Vincent Benét.)
+
+
+ Climbing is easy and swift on Parnassus!
+ Knocking my pipe out, I entered a bookshop;
+ There found a book of verse by a young poet.
+ Comrades at once, how I saw his mind glowing!
+ Saw in his soul its magnificent rioting--
+ Then I ran with him on hills that were windy,
+ Basked and laughed with him on sun-dazzled beaches,
+ Glutted myself on his green and blue twilights,
+ Watched him disposing his planets in patterns,
+ Tumbling his colors and toys all before him.
+ I questioned life with him, his pulses my pulses;
+ Doubted his doubts, too, and grieved for his anguishes.
+ Salted long kinship and knew him from boy-hood--
+ Pulled out my own sun and stars from my knapsack,
+ Trying my trinkets with those of his finding--
+ _And as I left the bookshop_
+ _My pipe was still warm in my hand._
+
+
+
+
+ CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW
+
+
+ Colin, worshipping some frail,
+ By self-deprecation sways her:
+ Calls himself unworthy male,
+ Hardly even fit to praise her.
+
+ But this tactic insincere
+ In the upshot greatly grieves him
+ When he finds the lovely dear
+ Quite implicitly believes him.
+
+
+
+
+ TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS
+
+ _Who Rallied Him for Praising Blue Eyes in His Verses_
+
+
+ If sometimes, in a random phrase
+ (For variation in my ditty),
+ I chance blue eyes, or gray, to praise
+ And seem to intimate them pretty--
+
+ It is because I do not dare
+ With too unmixed reiteration
+ To sing the browner eyes and hair
+ That are my true intoxication.
+
+ Know, then, that I consider brown
+ For ladies' eyes, the only color;
+ And deem all other orbs in town
+ (Compared to yours), opaquer, duller.
+
+ I pray, perpend, my dearest dear;
+ While blue-eyed maids the praise were drinking,
+ How insubstantial was their cheer--
+ It was of yours that I was thinking!
+
+
+
+
+ PEACE
+
+
+ What is this Peace
+ That statesmen sign?
+ How I have sought
+ To make it mine.
+
+ Where groaning cities
+ Clang and glow
+ I hunted, hunted,
+ Peace to know.
+
+ And still I saw
+ Where I passed by
+ Discarded hearts,--
+ Heard children cry.
+
+ By willowed waters
+ Brimmed with rain
+ I thought to capture
+ Peace again.
+
+ I sat me down
+ My Peace to hoard,
+ But Beauty pricked me
+ With a sword.
+
+ For in the stillness
+ Something stirred,
+ And I was crippled
+ For a word.
+
+ There is no peace
+ A man can find;
+ The anguish sits
+ His heart behind.
+
+ The eyes he loves,
+ The perfect breast,
+ Too exquisite
+ To give him rest.
+
+ This is his curse
+ Since brain began.
+ His penalty
+ For being man.
+
+ May, 1919
+
+
+
+
+ SONG, IN DEPRECATION
+ OF PULCHRITUDE
+
+
+
+ Beauty (so the poets say),
+ Thou art joy and solace great;
+ Long ago, and far away
+ Thou art safe to contemplate,
+
+ Beauty. But when now and here,
+ Visible and close to touch,
+ All too perilously near,
+ Thou tormentest us too much!
+
+ In a picture, in a song,
+ In a novel's conjured scenes,
+ Beauty, that's where you belong,
+ Where perspective intervenes.
+
+ But, my dear, in rosy fact
+ Your appeal I have to shirk--
+ You disturb me, and distract
+ My attention from my work!
+
+
+
+
+ MOUNTED POLICE
+
+
+ Watchful, grave, he sits astride his horse,
+ Draped with his rubber poncho, in the rain;
+ He speaks the pungent lingo of "The Force,"
+ And those who try to bluff him, try in vain.
+
+ Inured to every mood of fool and crank,
+ Shrewdly and sternly all the crowd he cons:
+ The rain drips down his horse's shining flank,
+ A figure nobly fit for sculptor's bronze.
+
+ O knight commander of our city stress,
+ Little you know how picturesque you are!
+ We hear you cry to drivers who transgress:
+ "_Say, that's a helva place to park your car!_"
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Mounted Police._]
+
+
+
+
+ TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT
+ HE IS NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY
+
+
+ Why did not Fate to me bequeath an Utterance Elizabethan?
+ It would have been delight to me
+ If _natus ante_ 1603.
+
+ My stuff would not be soon forgotten
+ If I could write like Harry Wotton.
+
+ I wish that I could wield the pen
+ Like William Drummond of Hawthornden.
+
+ I would not fear the ticking clock
+ If I were Browne of Tavistock.
+
+ For blithe conceits I would not worry
+ If I were Raleigh, or the Earl of Surrey.
+
+ I wish (I hope I am not silly?)
+ That I could juggle words like Lyly.
+
+ I envy many a lyric champion,
+ I. e., viz., e. g., Thomas Campion.
+
+ I creak my rhymes up like a derrick,
+ I ne'er will be a Robin Herrick.
+
+ My wits are dull as an old Barlow--
+ I wish that I were Christopher Marlowe.
+
+ In short, I'd like to be Philip Sidney,
+ Or some one else of that same kidney.
+
+ For if I were, my lady's looks
+ And all my lyric special pleading
+ Would be in all the future books,
+ And called, at college, _Required Reading_.
+
+
+
+
+ THE INTRUDER
+
+
+ As I sat, to sift my dreaming
+ To the meet and needed word,
+ Came a merry Interruption
+ With insistence to be heard.
+
+ Smiling stood a maid beside me,
+ Half alluring and half shy;
+ Soft the white hint of her bosom--
+ Escapade was in her eye.
+
+ "I must not be so invaded,"
+ (In an anger then I cried)--
+ "Can't you see that I am busy?
+ Tempting creature, stay outside!
+
+ "Pearly rascal, I am writing:
+ I am now composing verse--
+ Fie on antic invitation:
+ Wanton, vanish--fly--disperse!
+
+ "Baggage, in my godlike moment
+ What have I to do with thee?"
+ And she laughed as she departed--
+ "I am Poetry," said she.
+
+
+
+
+ TIT FOR TAT
+
+
+ I often pass a gracious tree
+ Whose name I can't identify,
+ But still I bow, in courtesy
+ It waves a bough, in kind reply.
+
+ I do not know your name, O tree
+ (Are you a hemlock or a pine?)
+ But why should that embarrass me?
+ Quite probably you don't know mine.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Courtesy_]
+
+
+
+
+ SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE
+
+
+ I'm glad our house is a little house,
+ Not too tall nor too wide:
+ I'm glad the hovering butterflies
+ Feel free to come inside.
+
+ Our little house is a friendly house.
+ It is not shy or vain;
+ It gossips with the talking trees,
+ And makes friends with the rain.
+
+ And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green
+ Against our whited walls,
+ And in the phlox, the courteous bees
+ Are paying duty calls.
+
+
+
+
+ THE PLUMPUPPETS
+
+
+ When little heads weary have gone to their bed,
+ When all the good nights and the prayers have been said,
+ Of all the good fairies that send bairns to rest
+ The little Plumpuppets are those I love best.
+
+ _If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat,_
+ _The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at;_
+ _They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat--_
+ _The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!_
+
+ The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds:
+ They have nothing to do but to watch sleepy heads;
+ They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight,
+ And they dance on your pillow to wish you good night!
+
+ No matter what troubles have bothered the day,
+ Though your doll broke her arm or the pup ran away;
+ Though your handies are black with the ink that was spilt--
+ Plumpuppets are waiting in blanket and quilt.
+
+ _If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat,
+ The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at;
+ They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat--
+ The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!_
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The Plumpuppets_]
+
+
+
+
+ DANDY DANDELION
+
+
+ When Dandy Dandelion wakes
+ And combs his yellow hair,
+ The ant his cup of dewdrop takes
+ And sets his bed to air;
+ The worm hides in a quilt of dirt
+ To keep the thrush away,
+ The beetle dons his pansy shirt--
+ They know that it is day!
+
+ And caterpillars haste to milk
+ The cowslips in the grass;
+ The spider, in his web of silk,
+ Looks out for flies that pass.
+ These humble people leap from bed,
+ They know the night is done:
+ When Dandy spreads his golden head
+ They think he is the sun!
+
+ Dear Dandy truly does not smell
+ As sweet as some bouquets;
+ No florist gathers him to sell,
+ He withers in a vase;
+ Yet in the grass he's emperor,
+ And lord of high renown;
+ And grateful little folk adore
+ His bright and shining crown.
+
+
+
+
+ THE HIGH CHAIR
+
+
+ Grimly the parent matches wit and will:
+ Now, Weesy, three more spoons! See Tom the cat,
+ _He'd_ drink it. You want to be big and fat
+ Like Daddy, don't you? (Careful now, don't spill!)
+ Yes, Daddy'll dance, and blow smoke through his nose,
+ But you must finish first. Come, drink it up--
+ (_Splash_!) Oh, you _must_ keep both hands on the cup.
+ All gone? Now for the prunes....
+ And so it goes.
+
+ This is the battlefield that parents know,
+ Where one small splinter of old Adam's rib
+ Withstands an entire household offering spoons.
+ No use to gnash your teeth. For she will go
+ Radiant to bed, glossy from crown to bib
+ With milk and cereal and a surf of prunes.
+
+
+
+
+ LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
+
+
+ Not long ago I fell in love,
+ But unreturned is my affection--
+ The girl that I'm enamored of
+ Pays little heed in my direction.
+
+ I thought I knew her fairly well:
+ In fact, I'd had my arm around her;
+ And so it's hard to have to tell
+ How unresponsive I have found her.
+
+ For, though she is not frankly rude,
+ Her manners quite the wrong way rub me:
+ It seems to me ingratitude
+ To let me love her--and then snub me!
+
+ Though I'm considerate and fond,
+ She shows no gladness when she spies me--
+ She gazes off somewhere beyond
+ And doesn't even recognize me.
+
+ Her eyes, so candid, calm and blue,
+ Seem asking if I can support her
+ In the style appropriate to
+ A lady like her father's daughter.
+
+ Well, if I can't then no one can--
+ And let me add that I intend to:
+ She'll never know another man
+ So fit for her to be a friend to.
+
+ Not love me, eh? She better had!
+ By Jove, I'll make her love me one day;
+ For, don't you see, I am her Dad,
+ And she'll be three weeks old on Sunday!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _ ... It's hard to have to tell_
+ _How unresponsive I have found her._]
+
+
+
+
+ AUTUMN COLORS
+
+
+ The chestnut trees turned yellow,
+ The oak like sherry browned,
+ The fir, the stubborn fellow,
+ Stayed green the whole year round.
+
+ But O the bonny maple
+ How richly he does shine!
+ He glows against the sunset
+ Like ruddy old port wine.
+
+
+
+
+ THE LAST CRICKET
+
+
+ When the bulb of the moon with white fire fills
+ And dead leaves crackle under the feet,
+ When men roll kegs to the cider mills
+ And chestnuts roast on every street;
+
+ When the night sky glows like a hollow shell
+ Of lustered emerald and pearl,
+ The kilted cricket knows too well
+ His doom. His tiny bagpipes skirl.
+
+ Quavering under the polished stars
+ In stubble, thicket, and frosty copse
+ The cricket blows a few choked bars,
+ And puts away his pipe--and stops.
+
+
+
+
+ TO LOUISE
+
+ (A Christmas Baby, Now One Year Old.)
+
+
+ Undaunted by a world of grief
+ You came upon perplexing days,
+ And cynics doubt their disbelief
+ To see the sky-stains in your gaze.
+
+ Your sudden and inclusive smile
+ And your emphatic tears, admit
+ That you must find this life worth while,
+ So eagerly you clutch at it!
+
+ Your face of triumph says, brave mite,
+ That life is full of love and luck--
+ Of blankets to kick off at night,
+ And two soft rose-pink thumbs to suck.
+
+ O loveliest of pioneers
+ Upon this trail of long surprise,
+ May all the stages of the years
+ Show such enchantment in your eyes!
+
+ By parents' patient buttonings,
+ And endless safety pins, you'll grow
+ To ribbons, garters, hooks and things,
+ Up to the Ultimate Trousseau--
+
+ But never, in your dainty prime,
+ Will you be more adored by me
+ Than when you see, this Great First Time,
+ Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!
+
+ December, 1919.
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _... When you see, this Great First Time,_
+ _Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!_]
+
+
+
+
+ CHRISTMAS EVE
+
+
+ Our hearts to-night are open wide,
+ The grudge, the grief, are laid aside:
+ The path and porch are swept of snow,
+ The doors unlatched; the hearthstones glow--
+ No visitor can be denied.
+
+ All tender human homes must hide
+ Some wistfulness beneath their pride:
+ Compassionate and humble grow
+ Our hearts to-night.
+
+ Let empty chair and cup abide!
+ Who knows? Some well-remembered stride
+ May come as once so long ago--
+ Then welcome, be it friend or foe!
+ There is no anger can divide
+ Our hearts to-night.
+
+
+
+
+ EPITAPH ON THE PROOFREADER OF
+ THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
+
+
+ Majestic tomes, you are the tomb
+ Of Aristides Edward Bloom,
+ Who labored, from the world aloof,
+ In reading every page of proof.
+
+ From A to And, from Aus to Bis
+ Enthusiasm still was his;
+ From Cal to Cha, from Cha to Con
+ His soft-lead pencil still went on.
+
+ But reaching volume Fra to Gib,
+ He knew at length that he was sib
+ To Satan; and he sold his soul
+ To reach the section Pay to Pol.
+
+ Then Pol to Ree, and Shu to Sub
+ He staggered on, and sought a pub.
+ And just completing Vet to Zym,
+ The motor hearse came round for him.
+
+ He perished, obstinately brave:
+ They laid the Index on his grave.
+
+
+
+
+ THE MUSIC BOX
+
+
+ At six--long ere the wintry dawn--
+ There sounded through the silent hall
+ To where I lay, with blankets drawn
+ Above my ears, a plaintive call.
+
+ The Urchin, in the eagerness
+ Of three years old, could not refrain;
+ Awake, he straightway yearned to dress
+ And frolic with his clockwork train.
+
+ I heard him with a sullen shock.
+ His sister, by her usual plan,
+ Had piped us aft at 3 o'clock--
+ I vowed to quench the little man.
+
+ I leaned above him, somewhat stern,
+ And spoke, I fear, with emphasis--
+ Ah, how much better, parents learn,
+ To seal one's censure with a kiss!
+
+ Again the house was dark and still,
+ Again I lay in slumber's snare,
+ When down the hall I heard a trill,
+ A tiny, tinkling, tuneful air--
+
+ His music-box! His best-loved toy,
+ His crib companion every night;
+ And now he turned to it for joy
+ While waiting for the lagging light.
+
+ How clear, and how absurdly sad
+ Those tingling pricks of sound unrolled;
+ They chirped and quavered, as the lad
+ His lonely little heart consoled.
+
+ _Columbia, the Ocean's Gem_--
+ (Its only tune) shrilled sweet and faint.
+ He cranked the chimes, admiring them
+ In vigil gay, without complaint.
+
+ The treble music piped and stirred,
+ The leaping air that was his bliss;
+ And, as I most contritely heard,
+ I thanked the all-unconscious Swiss!
+
+ The needled jets of melody
+ Rang slowlier and died away--
+ The Urchin slept; and it was I
+ Who lay and waited for the day.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The Music Box_]
+
+
+
+
+ TO LUATH
+
+ (_Robert Burns's Dog_)
+
+
+ _"Darling Jean" was Jean Armour, a "comely country lass" whom Burns
+met at a penny wedding at Mauchline. They chanced to be dancing in the
+same quadrille when the poet's dog sprang to his master and almost
+upset some of the dancers. Burns remarked that he wished he could get
+any of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did.
+
+ Some days afterward, Jean, seeing him pass as she was bleaching clothes
+on the village green, called to him and asked him if he had yet got any
+of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did.
+
+ That was the beginning of an acquaintance that coloured all of
+Burns's life._
+
+ --NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.
+
+
+ Well, Luath, man, when you came prancing
+ All glee to see your Robin dancing,
+ His partner's muslin gown mischancing
+ You leaped for joy!
+ And little guessed what sweet romancing
+ You caused, my boy!
+
+ With happy bark, that moment jolly,
+ You frisked and frolicked, faithful collie;
+ His other dog, old melancholy,
+ Was put to flight--
+ But what a tale of grief and folly
+ You wagged that night!
+
+ Ah, Luath, tyke, your bonny master
+ Whose lyric pulse beat ever faster
+ Each time he saw a lass and passed her
+ His breast went bang!
+ In many a woful heart's disaster
+ He felt the pang!
+
+ Poor Robin's heart, forever burning,
+ Forever roving, ranting, yearning,
+ From you that heart might have been learning
+ To be less fickle!
+ Might have been spared so many a turning
+ And grievous prickle!
+
+ Your collie heart held but one notion--
+ When Robbie jigged in sprightly motion
+ You ran to show your own devotion
+ And gambolled too,
+ And so that tempest on love's ocean
+ Was due to you!
+
+ Well, it is ower late for preaching
+ And hearts are aye too hot for teaching!
+ When Robin with his eye beseeching
+ By greenside came,
+ Jeanie--poor lass--forgot her bleaching
+ And yours the blame!
+
+
+
+
+ THOUGHTS ON REACHING LAND
+
+
+ I had a friend whose path was pain--
+ Oppressed by all the cares of earth
+ Life gave him little chance to drain
+ His secret cisterns of rich mirth.
+
+ His work was hasty, harassed, vexed:
+ His dreams were laid aside, perforce,
+ Until--in this world, or the next....
+ (His trade? Newspaper man, of course!)
+
+ What funded wealth of tenderness,
+ What ingots of the heart and mind
+ He must uneasily repress
+ Beneath the rasping daily grind.
+
+ But now and then, and with my aid,
+ For fear his soul be wholly lost,
+ His devoir to the grape he paid
+ To call soul back, at any cost!
+
+ Then, liberate from discipline,
+ Undrugged by caution and control,
+ Through all his veins came flooding in
+ The virtued passion of his soul!
+
+ His spirit bared, and felt no shame:
+ With holy light his eyes would shine--
+ See Truth her acolyte reclaim
+ After the second glass of wine!
+
+ The self that life had trodden hard
+ Aspired, was generous and free:
+ The glowing heart that care had charred
+ Grew flame, as it was meant to be.
+
+ A pox upon the canting lot
+ Who call the glass the Devil's shape--
+ A greater pox where'er some sot
+ Defiles the honor of the grape.
+
+ Then look with reverence on wine
+ That kindles human brains uncouth--
+ There must be something part divine
+ In aught that brings us nearer Truth!
+
+ So--continently skull your fumes
+ (Here let our little sermon end)
+ And bless this X-ray that illumes
+ The secret bosom of your friend!
+
+
+
+
+ A SYMPOSIUM
+
+
+ There was a Russian novelist
+ Whose name was Solugubrious,
+ The reading circles took him up,
+ (They'd heard he was salubrious.)
+
+ The women's club of Cripple Creek
+ Soon held a kind of seminar
+ To learn just what his message was--
+ You know what bookworms women are.
+
+ The tea went round. After five cups
+ (You should have seen them bury tea)
+ Dear Mrs. Brown said what she liked
+ Was the great man's _sincerity_.
+
+ Sweet Mrs. Jones (how free she was
+ From all besetting vanity)
+ Declared that she loved even more
+ His broad and deep _humanity_.
+
+ Good Mrs. Smith, though she disclaimed
+ All thought of being critical,
+ Protested that she found his work
+ A wee bit _analytical_.
+
+ But Mrs. Black, the President,
+ Of wisdom found the pinnacle:
+ She said, "Dear me, I always think
+ Those Russians are so _cynical_."
+
+ Well, poor old Solugubrious,
+ It's true that they had heard of him;
+ But neither Brown, Jones, Smith, nor Black
+ Had ever read a word of him!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Solugubrious_]
+
+
+
+
+ TO A TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO
+ HAS A BAD COLD
+
+
+ How hoarse and husky in my ear
+ Your usually cheerful chirrup:
+ You have an awful cold, my dear--
+ Try aspirin or bronchial syrup.
+
+ When I put in a call to-day
+ Compassion stirred my humane blood red
+ To hear you faintly, sadly, say
+ The number: _Burray Hill dide hudred!_
+
+ I felt (I say) quick sympathy
+ To hear you croak in the receiver--
+ Will you be sorry too for me
+ A month hence, when I have hay fever?
+
+
+
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE
+ TENDER-HEARTED
+
+ (Dedicated to Don Marquis.)
+
+
+ I
+
+
+ Scuttle, scuttle, little roach--
+ How you run when I approach:
+ Up above the pantry shelf.
+ Hastening to secrete yourself.
+
+ Most adventurous of vermin,
+ How I wish I could determine
+ How you spend your hours of ease,
+ Perhaps reclining on the cheese.
+
+ Cook has gone, and all is dark--
+ Then the kitchen is your park:
+ In the garbage heap that she leaves
+ Do you browse among the tea leaves?
+
+ How delightful to suspect
+ All the places you have trekked:
+ Does your long antenna whisk its
+ Gentle tip across the biscuits?
+
+ Do you linger, little soul,
+ Drowsing in our sugar bowl?
+ Or, abandonment most utter,
+ Shake a shimmy on the butter?
+
+ Do you chant your simple tunes
+ Swimming in the baby's prunes?
+ Then, when dawn comes, do you slink
+ Homeward to the kitchen sink?
+
+ Timid roach, why be so shy?
+ We are brothers, thou and I.
+ In the midnight, like yourself,
+ I explore the pantry shelf!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _In the midnight, like yourself,_
+ _I explore the pantry shelf!_]
+
+
+
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE
+ TENDER-HEARTED
+
+
+ II
+
+
+ Rockabye, insect, lie low in thy den,
+ Father's a cockroach, mother's a hen.
+ And Betty, the maid, doesn't clean up the sink,
+ So you shall have plenty to eat and to drink.
+
+ Hushabye, insect, behind the mince pies:
+ If the cook sees you her anger will rise;
+ She'll scatter poison, as bitter as gall,
+ Death to poor cockroach, hen, baby and all.
+
+
+
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE
+ TENDER-HEARTED
+
+
+ III
+
+
+ There was a gay henroach, and what do you think,
+ She lived in a cranny behind the old sink--
+ Eggshells and grease were the chief of her diet;
+ She went for a stroll when the kitchen was quiet.
+
+ She walked in the pantry and sampled the bread,
+ But when she came back her old husband was dead:
+ Long had he lived, for his legs they were fast,
+ But the kitchen maid caught him and squashed him at last.
+
+
+
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE
+ TENDER-HEARTED
+
+
+ IV
+
+
+ I knew a black beetle, who lived down a drain,
+ And friendly he was though his manners were plain;
+ When I took a bath he would come up the pipe,
+ And together we'd wash and together we'd wipe.
+
+ Though mother would sometimes protest with a sneer
+ That my choice of a tub-mate was wanton and queer,
+ A nicer companion I never have seen:
+ He bathed every night, so he must have been clean.
+
+ Whenever he heard the tap splash in the tub
+ He'd dash up the drain-pipe and wait for a scrub,
+ And often, so fond of ablution was he,
+ I'd find him there floating and waiting for me.
+
+ But nurse has done something that seems a great shame:
+ She saw him there, waiting, prepared for a game:
+ She turned on the hot and she scalded him sore
+ And he'll never come bathing with me any more.
+
+
+
+
+ THE TWINS
+
+
+ Con was a thorn to brother Pro--
+ On Pro we often sicked him:
+ Whatever Pro would claim to know
+ Old Con would contradict him!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The Twins_]
+
+
+
+
+ A PRINTER'S MADRIGAL
+
+ (_Extremely technical_)
+
+
+ I'd like to have you meet my wife!
+ I simply cannot keep from hinting
+ I've never seen, in all my life,
+ So fine a specimen of printing.
+
+ Her type is not some =bold-face= font,
+ Set solid. Nay! And I will say out
+ That no typographer could want
+ To see a better balanced layout.
+
+ A nice proportion of white space
+ There is for brown eyes to look large in,
+ And not a feature in her face
+ Comes anywhere too near the margin.
+
+ Locked up with all her sweet display
+ Her form will never pi. She's like a
+ Corrected proof marked _stet, O. K._--
+ And yet she loves me, fatface =Pica!=
+
+ She has a fine one-column head,
+ And like a comma curves each eyebrow--
+ Her forehead has an extra lead
+ Which makes her seem a trifle highbrow.
+
+ Her nose, _italicized brevier_,
+ Too lovely to describe by penpoint;
+ Her mouth is set in _pearl_: her ear
+ And chin are comely Caslon ten-point.
+
+ Her cheeks (a pink parenthesis)
+ Make my pulse beat 14-em measure,
+ And such typography as this
+ Would make =De Vinne= scream with pleasure.
+
+ And so, of all typefounder chaps
+ Her father's best, in my opinion;
+ She is my NONPAREIL (IN CAPS)
+ And I (in lower case) her _minion_.
+
+ I hope you will not stand aloof
+ Because my metaphors are shoppy;
+ Of her devotion I've a proof--
+ I tell the urchin, _Follow Copy_!
+
+
+
+
+ THE POET ON THE HEARTH
+
+
+ When fire is kindled on the dogs,
+ But still the stubborn oak delays,
+ Small embers laid above the logs
+ Will draw them into sudden blaze.
+
+ Just so the minor poet's part:
+ (A greater he need not desire)
+ The charcoals of his burning heart
+ May light some Master into fire!
+
+
+
+
+ O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY
+
+
+ O praise me not the country--
+ The meadows green and cool,
+ The solemn glow of sunsets, the hidden silver pool!
+ The city for my craving,
+ Her lordship and her slaving,
+ The hot stones of her paving
+ For me, a city fool!
+
+ O praise me not the leisure
+ Of gardened country seats,
+ The fountains on the terrace against the summer heats--
+ The city for my yearning,
+ My spending and my earning.
+ Her winding ways for learning,
+ Sing hey! the city streets!
+
+ O praise me not the country,
+ Her sycamores and bees,
+ I had my youthful plenty of sour apple trees!
+ The city for my wooing,
+ My dreaming and my doing;
+ Her beauty for pursuing,
+ Her deathless mysteries.
+
+ O praise me not the country,
+ Her evenings full of stars,
+ Her yachts upon the water with the wind among their spars--
+ The city for my wonder,
+ Her glory and her blunder,
+ And O the haunting thunder
+ Of the Elevated cars!
+
+
+ [Illustration: Seascape]
+
+
+
+
+ A STONE IN ST. PAUL'S GRAVEYARD
+
+ (New York)
+
+
+ _Here Lyes the Body of_
+ _Iohn Jones the Son of_
+ _Iohn Jones Who Departed_
+ _This Life December the 13_
+ _1768 Aged 4 Years & 4 Months & 2 Days_
+
+ Here, where enormous shadows creep,
+ He casts his childish shadow too:
+ How small he seems, beneath the steep
+ Great walls; his tender days, so few,
+ Lovingly numbered, every one--
+ John Jones, John Jones's little son.
+
+ O sunlight on the Lightning's wings!
+ Yet though our buildings skyward climb
+ Our heartbreaks are but little things
+ In the equality of Time.
+ The sum of life, for all men's stones:
+ He was John Jones, son of John Jones.
+
+
+
+
+ THE MADONNA OF THE CURB
+
+
+ On the curb of a city pavement,
+ By the ash and garbage cans,
+ In the stench and rolling thunder
+ Of motor trucks and vans,
+ There sits my little lady,
+ With brave but troubled eyes,
+ And in her arms a baby
+ That cries and cries and cries.
+
+ She cannot be more than seven;
+ But years go fast in the slums,
+ And hard on the pains of winter
+ The pitiless summer comes.
+ The wail of sickly children
+ She knows; she understands
+ The pangs of puny bodies,
+ The clutch of small hot hands.
+
+ In the deadly blaze of August,
+ That turns men faint and mad,
+ She quiets the peevish urchins
+
+ By telling a dream she had--
+ A heaven with marble counters,
+ And ice, and a singing fan;
+ And a God in white, so friendly,
+ Just like the drug-store man.
+
+ Her ragged dress is dearer
+ Than the perfect robe of a queen!
+ Poor little lass, who knows not
+ The blessing of being clean.
+ And when you are giving millions
+ To Belgian, Pole and Serb,
+ Remember my pitiful lady--
+ Madonna of the Curb!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _The wail of sickly children_
+ _She knows; she understands_
+ _The pangs of puny bodies,_
+ _The clutch of small hot hands._]
+
+
+
+
+ THE ISLAND
+
+
+ _A song for England?_
+ _Nay, what is a song for England?_
+
+ Our hearts go by green-cliffed Kinsale
+ Among the gulls' white wings,
+ Or where, on Kentish forelands pale
+ The lighthouse beacon swings:
+ Our hearts go up the Mersey's tide,
+ Come in on Suffolk foam--
+ The blood that will not be denied
+ Moves fast, and calls us home!
+
+ Our hearts now walk a secret round
+ On many a Cotswold hill,
+ For we are mixed of island ground,
+ The island draws us still:
+ Our hearts may pace a windy turn
+ Where Sussex downs are high,
+ Or watch the lights of London burn,
+ A bonfire in the sky!
+
+ What is the virtue of that soil
+ That flings her strength so wide?
+ Her ancient courage, patient toil,
+ Her stubborn wordless pride?
+ A little land, yet loved therein
+ As any land may be,
+ Rejoicing in her discipline,
+ The salt stress of the sea.
+
+ Our hearts shall walk a Sherwood track,
+ Our lips taste English rain,
+ We thrill to see the Union Jack
+ Across some deep-sea lane;
+ Though all the world be of rich cost
+ And marvellous with worth,
+ Yet if that island ground were lost
+ How empty were the earth!
+
+ _A song for England?_
+ _Lo, every word we speak's a song for England._
+
+
+
+
+ SUNDAY NIGHT
+
+
+ Two grave brown eyes, severely bent
+ Upon a memorandum book--
+ A sparkling face, on which are blent
+ A hopeful and a pensive look;
+ A pencil, purse, and book of checks
+ With stubs for varying amounts--
+ Elaine, the shrewdest of her sex,
+ Is busy balancing accounts.
+
+ Sedately, in the big armchair,
+ She, all engrossed, the audit scans--
+ Her pencil hovers here and there
+ The while she calculates and plans;
+ What's this? A faintly pensive frown
+ Upon her forehead gathers now--
+ Ah, does the butcher--heartless clown--
+ Beget that shadow on her brow?
+
+
+ A murrain on the tradesman churl
+ Who caused this fair accountant's gloom!
+ Just then--a baby's cry--my girl
+ Arose and swiftly left the room.
+ Then in her purse by stratagem
+ I thrust some bills of small amounts--
+ She'll think she had forgotten them,
+ And smile again at her accounts!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _Ah, does the butcher--heartless clown--_
+ _Beget that shadow on her brow?_]
+
+
+
+ ENGLAND, JULY 1913
+
+ To Rupert Brooke
+
+
+ O England, England ... that July
+ How placidly the days went by!
+
+ Two years ago (how long it seems)
+ In that dear England of my dreams
+ I loved and smoked and laughed amain
+ And rode to Cambridge in the rain.
+ A careless godlike life was there!
+ To spin the roads with _Shotover_,
+ To dream while punting on the Cam,
+ To lie, and never give a damn
+ For anything but comradeship
+ And books to read and ale to sip,
+ And shandygaff at every inn
+ When _The Gorilla_ rode to Lynn!
+ O world of wheel and pipe and oar
+ In those old days before the War.
+
+ O poignant echoes of that time!
+ I hear the Oxford towers chime,
+ The throbbing of those mellow bells
+ And all the sweet old English smells--
+
+ The Deben water, quick with salt,
+ The Woodbridge brew-house and the malt;
+ The Suffolk villages, serene
+ With lads at cricket on the green,
+ And Wytham strawberries, so ripe,
+ And _Murray's Mixture_ in my pipe!
+
+ In those dear days, in those dear days,
+ All pleasant lay the country ways;
+ The echoes of our stalwart mirth
+ Went echoing wide around the earth
+ And in an endless bliss of sun
+ We lay and watched the river run.
+ And you by Cam and I by Isis
+ Were happy with our own devices.
+
+ Ah, can we ever know again
+ Such friends as were those chosen men,
+ Such men to drink, to bike, to smoke with,
+ To worship with, or lie and joke with?
+ Never again, my lads, we'll see
+ The life we led at twenty-three.
+ Never again, perhaps, shall I
+ Go flashing bravely down the High
+ To see, in that transcendent hour,
+ The sunset glow on Magdalen Tower.
+
+ Dear Rupert Brooke, your words recall
+ Those endless afternoons, and all
+ Your Cambridge--which I loved as one
+ Who was her grandson, not her son.
+ O ripples where the river slacks
+ In greening eddies round the "backs";
+ Where men have dreamed such gallant things
+ Under the old stone bridge at _King's_.
+ Or leaned to feed the silver swans
+ By the tennis meads at _John's_.
+ O Granta's water, cold and fresh,
+ Kissing the warm and eager flesh
+ Under the willow's breathing stir--
+ The bathing pool at _Grantchester_....
+ What words can tell, what words can praise
+ The burly savor of those days!
+
+ Dear singing lad, those days are dead
+ And gone for aye your golden head;
+ And many other well-loved men
+ Will never dine in Hall again.
+ I too have lived remembered hours
+ In Cambridge; heard the summer showers
+ Make music on old _Heffer's_ pane
+ While I was reading Pepys or Taine.
+ Through _Trumpington_ and _Grantchester_
+
+ I used to roll on _Shotover_;
+ At _Hauxton Bridge_ my lamp would light
+ And sleep in _Royston_ for the night.
+ Or to _Five Miles from Anywhere_
+ I used to scull; and sit and swear
+ While wasps attacked my bread and jam
+ Those summer evenings on the Cam.
+ (O crispy English cottage-loaves
+ Baked in ovens, not in stoves!
+ O white unsalted English butter
+ O satisfaction none can utter!)...
+
+ To think that while those joys I knew
+ In Cambridge, I did not know you.
+
+ July, 1915.
+
+
+
+
+ CASUALTY
+
+
+ A well-sharp'd pencil leads one on to write:
+ When guns are cocked, the shot is guaranteed;
+ The primed occasion puts the deed in sight:
+ Who steals a book who knows not how to read?
+
+ Seeing a pulpit, who can silence keep?
+ A maid, who would not dream her ta'en to wife?
+ Men looking down from some sheer dizzy steep
+ Have (quite impromptu) leapt, and ended life.
+
+
+
+
+ A GRUB STREET RECESSIONAL
+
+
+ O noble gracious English tongue
+ Whose fibers we so sadly twist,
+ For caitiff measures he has sung
+ Have pardon on the journalist.
+
+ For mumbled meter, leaden pun,
+ For slipshod rhyme, and lazy word,
+ Have pity on this graceless one--
+ Thy mercy on Thy servant, Lord!
+
+ The metaphors and tropes depart,
+ Our little clippings fade and bleach:
+ There is no virtue and no art
+ Save in straightforward Saxon speech.
+
+ Yet not in ignorance or spite,
+ Nor with Thy noble past forgot
+ We sinned: indeed we had to write
+ To keep a fire beneath the pot.
+
+ Then grant that in the coming time,
+ With inky hand and polished sleeve,
+ In lucid prose or honest rhyme
+ Some worthy task we may achieve--
+
+ Some pinnacled and marbled phrase,
+ Some lyric, breaking like the sea,
+ That we may learn, not hoping praise,
+ The gift of Thy simplicity.
+
+
+
+
+ PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR A
+ FUNERAL SERVICE: BEING A
+ POEM IN FOUR STANZAS
+
+
+ Say this poor fool misfeatured all his days,
+ And could not mend his ways;
+ And say he trod
+ Most heavily upon the corns of God.
+
+ But also say that in his clabbered brain
+ There was the essential pain--
+ The idiot's vow
+ To tell his troubled Truth, no matter how.
+
+ Unhappy fool, you say, with pitiful air:
+ Who was he, then, and where?
+ Ah, you divine
+ He lives in your heart, as he lives in mine.
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: To bed]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimneysmoke, by Christopher Morley
+
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diff --git a/old/37852-8.zip b/old/37852-8.zip
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimneysmoke, by Christopher Morley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Chimneysmoke
+
+Author: Christopher Morley
+
+Illustrator: Thomas Fogarty
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2011 [EBook #37852]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIMNEYSMOKE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Steven Brown and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+ Transcribers Notes:
+
+ Bold faced text shown as: =abcde=
+ Italics text shown as: _abcde_
+ Unusual fonts shown as: _abcde_
+
+ [Illustrations:] have been moved to end of poem in all cases.
+
+ There are two instances of Greek in the text - IEuro has been used.
+
+
+ * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: Cover Page]
+
+
+
+
+ _Chimneysmoke_
+
+
+ [Illustration: Chimneysmoke]
+
+
+
+
+ _By Christopher Morley_
+
+
+ CHIMNEYSMOKE
+ HIDE AND SEEK
+ THE ROCKING HORSE
+ SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE
+ MINCE PIE
+
+
+ _New York: George H. Doran Company_
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _This hearth was built for thy delight,_
+ _For thee the logs were sawn,_
+ _For thee the largest chair, at night,_
+ _Is to the chimney drawn._
+
+ _For thee, dear lass, the match was lit,_
+ _To yield the ruddy blaze--_
+ _May Jack Frost give us joy of it_
+ _For many, many days._]
+
+
+
+
+ =_Chimneysmoke_=
+
+ _by_
+
+ _Christopher Morley_
+
+
+ [Illustration: Fireside Chair]
+
+
+ _Illustrated by_
+ _Thomas Fogarty_
+
+
+ _Garden City New York_
+ _Doubleday, Page & Co._
+ _1927_
+
+
+
+
+ COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1919, 1920, 1921
+ BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY.
+ ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN
+ THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY
+ LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N.Y.
+
+
+
+
+ _"How can I turn from any fire_
+ _On any man's hearthstone?_
+ _I know the wonder and desire_
+ _That went to build my own."_
+
+
+ --RUDYARD KIPLING, "_The Fires_"
+
+
+
+
+ _Author's Note_
+
+There are a number of poems in this collection that have not previously
+appeared in book form. But, as a few readers may discern, many of the
+verses are reprinted from _Songs for a Little House_(1917),
+_The Rocking Horse_ (1919) and _Hide and Seek_ (1920). There is
+also one piece revived from the judicious obscurity of an early escapade,
+_The Eighth Sin_, published in Oxford in 1912. It is on Mr. Thomas
+Fogarty's delightful and sympathetic drawings that this book rests its
+real claim to be considered a new venture. To Mr. Fogarty, and to
+Mr. George H. Doran, whose constant kindness and generosity contradict
+all the traditions about publishers and minor poets, the author expresses
+his permanent gratitude.
+
+ _Roslyn, Long Island._
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: Boat on Lake]
+
+
+ _Contents_
+
+ PAGE
+
+ TO THE LITTLE HOUSE 19
+
+ A GRACE BEFORE WRITING 20
+
+ DEDICATION FOR A FIREPLACE 21
+
+ TAKING TITLE 22
+
+ THE SECRET 25
+
+ ONLY A MATTER OF TIME 26
+
+ AT THE MERMAID CAFETERIA 28
+
+ OUR HOUSE 29
+
+ ON NAMING A HOUSE 31
+
+ A HALLOWE'EN MEMORY 32
+
+ REFUSING YOU IMMORTALITY 35
+
+ BAYBERRY CANDLES 36
+
+ SECRET LAUGHTER 37
+
+ SIX WEEKS OLD 38
+
+ A CHARM 41
+
+ MY PIPE 42
+
+ THE 5:42 44
+
+ PETER PAN 48
+
+ IN HONOR OF TAFFY TOPAZ 49
+
+ THE CEDAR CHEST 50
+
+ READING ALOUD 51
+
+ ANIMAL CRACKERS 52
+
+ THE MILKMAN 55
+
+ LIGHT VERSE 56
+
+ THE FURNACE 57
+
+ WASHING THE DISHES 58
+
+ THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES 61
+
+ ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY COAL-BIN 62
+
+ THE OLD SWIMMER 66
+
+ THE MOON-SHEEP 70
+
+ SMELLS 71
+
+ SMELLS (JUNIOR) 72
+
+ MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN 75
+
+ THE FAT LITTLE PURSE 76
+
+ THE REFLECTION 80
+
+ THE BALLOON PEDDLER 82
+
+ LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S BOOK PLATE 86
+
+ TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL 89
+
+ THE CRIB 90
+
+ THE POET 94
+
+ TO A DISCARDED MIRROR 97
+
+ TO A CHILD 98
+
+ TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN 100
+
+ TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET 104
+
+ BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING 105
+
+ BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER 106
+
+ A VALENTINE GAME 107
+
+ FOR A BIRTHDAY 108
+
+ KEATS 111
+
+ TO H. F. M., A SONNET IN SUNLIGHT 113
+
+ QUICKENING 114
+
+ AT A WINDOW SILL 115
+
+ THE RIVER OF LIGHT 116
+
+ OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS 118
+
+ IN AN AUCTION ROOM 119
+
+ EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY 120
+
+ SONNET BY A GEOMETER 121
+
+ TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER 122
+
+ TO AN OLD FRIEND 125
+
+ TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE 126
+
+ THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK 129
+
+ STREETS 130
+
+ TO THE ONLY BEGETTER 131
+
+ PEDOMETER 133
+
+ HOSTAGES 134
+
+ ARS DURA 137
+
+ O. HENRY--APOTHECARY 138
+
+ FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET 139
+
+ TWO O'CLOCK 140
+
+ THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER 141
+
+ THE WEDDED LOVER 142
+
+ TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST 143
+
+ CHARLES AND MARY 144
+
+ TO A GRANDMOTHER 145
+
+ DIARISTS 146
+
+ THE LAST SONNET 147
+
+ THE SAVAGE 148
+
+ ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH 149
+
+ ADVICE TO A CITY 150
+
+ THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY 151
+
+ GREEN ESCAPE 153
+
+ VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS 157
+
+ THE ICE WAGON 158
+
+ AT A MOVIE THEATRE 161
+
+ SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE 163
+
+ THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS) 167
+
+ DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD? 168
+
+ RAPID TRANSIT 170
+
+ CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW 171
+
+ TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS 172
+
+ PEACE 173
+
+ SONG, IN DEPRECATION OF PULCHRITUDE 175
+
+ MOUNTED POLICE 176
+
+ TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT HE IS
+ NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY 179
+
+ THE INTRUDER 181
+
+ TIT FOR TAT 182
+
+ SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE 185
+
+ THE PLUMPUPPETS 186
+
+ DANDY DANDELION 190
+
+ THE HIGH CHAIR 192
+
+ LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT 193
+
+ AUTUMN COLORS 197
+
+ THE LAST CRICKET 198
+
+ TO LOUISE 199
+
+ CHRISTMAS EVE 203
+
+ EPITAPH ON THE PROOFREADER OF THE
+ ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA 204
+
+ THE MUSIC BOX 205
+
+ TO LUATH 209
+
+ THOUGHTS ON REACHING LAND 212
+
+ A SYMPOSIUM 214
+
+ TO A TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO HAS A
+ BAD COLD 218
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED 219
+
+ THE TWINS 227
+
+ A PRINTER'S MADRIGAL 228
+
+ THE POET ON THE HEARTH 230
+
+ O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY 231
+
+ A STONE IN ST. PAUL'S GRAVEYARD 235
+
+ THE MADONNA OF THE CURB 236
+
+ THE ISLAND 240
+
+ SUNDAY NIGHT 242
+
+ ENGLAND, JULY, 1913 246
+
+ CASUALTY 250
+
+ A GRUB STREET RECESSIONAL 251
+
+ PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR A FUNERAL
+ SERVICE 253
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: Girl on Stool]
+
+
+ _Illustrations_
+
+ PAGE
+
+ _This hearth was built for thy delight_-- _Frontispiece_
+
+ _And by a friend's bright gift of wine,_
+ _I dedicate this house of mine_ 23
+
+ _And of all man's felicities_-- 33
+
+ _A little world he feels and sees:_
+ _His mother's arms, his mother's knees_-- 39
+
+ _The 5:42_ 45
+
+ _And Daddy once said he would like to be me_
+ _Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!_ 53
+
+ _But heavy feeding complicates_
+ _The task by soiling many plates_ 59
+
+ _How ill avail, on such a frosty night_ 63
+
+ _The old swimmer_ 67
+
+ _But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all_-- 73
+
+ _Perhaps it's a ragged child crying_ 77
+
+ _The Balloon Peddler_ 83
+
+ _If you appreciate it more_
+ _Than I--why don't return it!_ 87
+
+ _And then one night_-- 91
+
+ _The human cadence and the subtle chime_
+ _Of little laughters_-- 95
+
+ _What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps_-- 101
+
+ _A Birthday_ 109
+
+ _You must be rigid servant of your art!_ 123
+
+ _You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care_
+ _Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire_ 127
+
+ _Hostages_ 135
+
+ _My eyes still pine for the comely line_
+ _Of an outbound vessel's hull_ 155
+
+ _A man ain't so secretive, never cares_
+ _What kind of private papers he leaves lay_-- 165
+
+ _Mounted Police_ 177
+
+ _Courtesy_ 183
+
+ _The Plumpuppets_ 187
+
+ ... _It's hard to have to tell_
+ _How unresponsive I have found her_ 195
+
+ ... _When you see, this Great First Time,_
+ _Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!_ 201
+
+ _The music box_ 207
+
+ _Solugubrious_ 215
+
+ _In the midnight, like yourself,_
+ _I explore the pantry shelf!_ 221
+
+ _The Twins_ 227
+
+ _O praise me not the country_ 233
+
+ _The wail of sickly children_-- 237
+
+ _Ah, does the butcher--heartless clown--_
+ _Beget that shadow on her brow?_ 243
+
+
+
+
+ _Chimneysmoke_
+
+
+ [Illustration: Girl by Gate]
+
+
+
+
+ _=Chimneysmoke=_
+
+
+ TO THE LITTLE HOUSE
+
+
+ Dear little house, dear shabby street,
+ Dear books and beds and food to eat!
+ How feeble words are to express
+ The facets of your tenderness.
+
+ How white the sun comes through the pane!
+ In tinkling music drips the rain!
+ How burning bright the furnace glows!
+ What paths to shovel when it snows!
+
+ O dearly loved Long Island trains!
+ O well remembered joys and pains....
+ How near the housetops Beauty leans
+ Along that little street in Queens!
+
+ Let these poor rhymes abide for proof
+ Joy dwells beneath a humble roof;
+ Heaven is not built of country seats
+ But little queer suburban streets!
+
+ March, 1917.
+
+
+
+
+ A GRACE BEFORE WRITING
+
+
+ This is a sacrament, I think!
+ Holding the bottle toward the light,
+ As blue as lupin gleams the ink;
+ May Truth be with me as I write!
+
+ That small dark cistern may afford
+ Reunion with some vanished friend,--
+ And with this ink I have just poured
+ May none but honest words be penned!
+
+
+
+
+ DEDICATION FOR A FIREPLACE
+
+
+ This hearth was built for thy delight,
+ For thee the logs were sawn,
+ For thee the largest chair, at night,
+ Is to the chimney drawn.
+
+ For thee, dear lass, the match was lit
+ To yield the ruddy blaze--
+ May Jack Frost give us joy of it
+ For many, many days.
+
+
+
+
+ TAKING TITLE
+
+
+ To make this house my very own
+ Could not be done by law alone.
+ Though covenant and deed convey
+ Absolute fee, as lawyers say,
+ There are domestic rites beside
+ By which this house is sanctified.
+
+ By kindled fire upon the hearth,
+ By planted pansies in the garth,
+ By food, and by the quiet rest
+ Of those brown eyes that I love best,
+ And by a friend's bright gift of wine,
+ I dedicate this house of mine.
+
+ When all but I are soft abed
+ I trail about my quiet stead
+ A wreath of blue tobacco smoke
+ (A charm that evil never broke)
+ And bring my ritual to an end
+ By giving shelter to a friend.
+
+ These done, O dwelling, you become
+ Not just a house, but truly Home!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _And by a friend's bright gift of wine,_
+ _I dedicate this house of mine_]
+
+
+
+
+ THE SECRET
+
+
+ It was the House of Quietness
+ To which I came at dusk;
+ The garth was lit with roses
+ And heavy with their musk.
+
+ The tremulous tall poplar trees
+ Stood whispering around,
+ The gentle flicker of their plumes
+ More quiet than no sound.
+
+ And as I wondered at the door
+ What magic might be there,
+ The Lady of Sweet Silences
+ Came softly down the stair.
+
+
+
+
+ ONLY A MATTER OF TIME
+
+
+ Down-slipping Time, sweet, swift, and shallow stream,
+ Here, like a boulder, lies this afternoon
+ Across your eager flow. So you shall stay,
+ Deepened and dammed, to let me breathe and be.
+ Your troubled fluency, your running gleam
+ Shall pause, and circle idly, still and clear:
+ The while I lie and search your glassy pool
+ Where, gently coiling in their lazy round,
+ Unseparable minutes drift and swim,
+ Eddy and rise and brim. And I will see
+ How many crystal bubbles of slack Time
+ The mind can hold and cherish in one _Now_!
+
+ Now, for one conscious vacancy of sense,
+ The stream is gathered in a deepening pond,
+ Not a mere moving mirror. Through the sharp
+ Correct reflection of the standing scene
+ The mind can dip, and cleanse itself with rest,
+ And see, slow spinning in the lucid gold,
+ Your liquid motes, imperishable Time.
+
+ It cannot be. The runnel slips away:
+ The clear smooth downward sluice begins again,
+ More brightly slanting for that trembling pause,
+ Leaving the sense its conscious vague unease
+ As when a sonnet flashes on the mind,
+ Trembles and burns an instant, and is gone.
+
+
+
+
+ AT THE MERMAID CAFETERIA
+
+
+ Truth is enough for prose:
+ Calmly it goes
+ To tell just what it knows.
+
+ For verse, skill will suffice--
+ Delicate, nice
+ Casting of verbal dice.
+
+ Poetry, men attain
+ By subtler pain
+ More flagrant in the brain--
+
+ An honesty unfeigned,
+ A heart unchained,
+ A madness well restrained.
+
+
+
+
+ OUR HOUSE
+
+
+ It should be yours, if I could build
+ The quaint old dwelling I desire,
+ With books and pictures bravely filled
+ And chairs beside an open fire,
+ White-panelled rooms with candles lit--
+ I lie awake to think of it!
+
+ A dial for the sunny hours,
+ A garden of old-fashioned flowers--
+ Say marigolds and lavender
+ And mignonette and fever-few,
+ And Judas-tree and maidenhair
+ And candytuft and thyme and rue--
+ All these for you to wander in.
+
+ A Chinese carp (called _Mandarin_)
+ Waving a sluggish silver fin
+ Deep in the moat: so tame he comes
+ To lip your fingers offering crumbs.
+ Tall chimneys, like long listening ears,
+ White shutters, ivy green and thick,
+ And walls of ruddy Tudor brick
+ Grown mellow with the passing years.
+
+ And windows with small leaded panes,
+ Broad window-seats for when it rains;
+ A big blue bowl of pot pourri
+ And--yes, a Spanish chestnut tree
+ To coin the autumn's minted gold.
+ A summer house for drinking tea--
+ All these (just think!) for you and me.
+
+ A staircase of the old black wood
+ Cut in the days of Robin Hood,
+ And banisters worn smooth as glass
+ Down which your hand will lightly pass;
+ A piano with pale yellow keys
+ For wistful twilight melodies,
+ And dusty bottles in a bin--
+ All these for you to revel in!
+
+ But when? Ah well, until that time
+ We'll habit in this house of rhyme.
+
+ 1912
+
+
+
+
+ ON NAMING A HOUSE
+
+
+ When I a householder became
+ I had to give my house a name.
+
+ I thought I'd call it "Poplar Trees,"
+ Or "Widdershins" or "Velvet Bees,"
+ Or "Just Beneath a Star."
+ I thought of "House Where Plumbings Freeze,"
+ Or "As You Like it," "If You Please,"
+ Or "Nicotine" or "Bread and Cheese,"
+ "Full Moon" or "Doors Ajar."
+
+ But still I sought some subtle charm,
+ Some rune to guard my roof from harm
+ And keep the devil far;
+ I thought of this, and I was saved!
+ I had my letter-heads engraved
+ _The House Where Brown Eyes Are._
+
+
+
+
+ A HALLOWE'EN MEMORY
+
+
+ Do you remember, Heart's Desire,
+ The night when Hallowe'en first came?
+ The newly dedicated fire,
+ The hearth unsanctified by flame?
+
+ How anxiously we swept the bricks
+ (How tragic, were the draught not right!)
+ And then the blaze enwrapped the sticks
+ And filled the room with dancing light.
+
+ We could not speak, but only gaze,
+ Nor half believe what we had seen--
+ _Our_ home, _our_ hearth, _our_ golden blaze,
+ _Our_ cider mugs, _our_ Hallowe'en!
+
+ And then a thought occurred to me--
+ We ran outside with sudden shout
+ And looked up at the roof, to see
+ Our own dear smoke come drifting out.
+
+ And of all man's felicities
+ The very subtlest one, say I,
+ Is when, for the first time, he sees
+ His hearthfire smoke against the sky.
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _And of all man's felicities_
+ _The very subtlest one, say I,_
+ _Is when, for the first time, he sees_
+ _His hearthfire smoke against the sky._]
+
+
+
+
+ REFUSING YOU IMMORTALITY
+
+
+ If I should tell, unstinted,
+ Your beauty and your grace,
+ All future lads would whisper
+ Traditions of your face;
+ If I made public tumult
+ Your mirth, your queenly state,
+ Posterity would grumble
+ That it was born too late.
+
+ I will not frame your beauty
+ In bright undying phrase,
+ Nor blaze it as a legend
+ For unborn men to praise--
+ For why should future lovers
+ Be saddened and depressed?
+ Deluded, let them fancy
+ Their own girls loveliest!
+
+
+
+
+ BAYBERRY CANDLES
+
+
+ Dear sweet, when dusk comes up the hill,
+ The fire leaps high with golden prongs;
+ I place along the chimneysill
+ The tiny candles of my songs.
+
+ And though unsteadily they burn,
+ As evening shades from gray to blue
+ Like candles they will surely learn
+ To shine more clear, for love of you.
+
+
+
+
+ SECRET LAUGHTER
+
+
+ "I had a secret laughter."
+ --Walter de la Mare.
+
+
+ There is a secret laughter
+ That often comes to me,
+ And though I go about my work
+ As humble as can be,
+ There is no prince or prelate
+ I envy--no, not one.
+ No evil can befall me--
+ By God, I have a son!
+
+
+
+
+ SIX WEEKS OLD
+
+
+ He is so small, he does not know
+ The summer sun, the winter snow;
+ The spring that ebbs and comes again,
+ All this is far beyond his ken.
+
+ A little world he feels and sees:
+ His mother's arms, his mother's knees;
+ He hides his face against her breast,
+ And does not care to learn the rest.
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _A little world he feels and sees:_
+ _His mother's arms, his mother's knees_--]
+
+
+
+
+ A CHARM
+
+
+ For Our New Fireplace,
+ To Stop Its Smoking
+
+
+ O wood, burn bright; O flame, be quick;
+ O smoke, draw cleanly up the flue--
+ My lady chose your every brick
+ And sets her dearest hopes on you!
+
+ Logs cannot burn, nor tea be sweet,
+ Nor white bread turn to crispy toast,
+ Until the charm be made complete
+ By love, to lay the sooty ghost.
+
+ And then, dear books, dear waiting chairs,
+ Dear china and mahogany,
+ Draw close, for on the happy stairs
+ My brown-eyed girl comes down for tea!
+
+
+
+
+ MY PIPE
+
+
+ My pipe is old
+ And caked with soot;
+ My wife remarks:
+ "How can you put
+ That horrid relic,
+ So unclean,
+ Inside your mouth?
+ The nicotine
+ Is strong enough
+ To stupefy
+ A Swedish plumber."
+ I reply:
+
+ "This is the kind
+ Of pipe I like:
+ I fill it full
+ Of Happy Strike,
+ Or Barking Cat
+ Or Cabman's Puff,
+ Or Brooklyn Bridge
+ (That potent stuff)
+ Or Chaste Embraces,
+ Knacker's Twist,
+ Old Honeycomb
+ Or Niggerfist.
+
+ I clamp my teeth
+ Upon its stem--
+ It is my bliss,
+ My diadem.
+ Whatever Fate
+ May do to me,
+ This is my favorite
+ B
+ B B.
+ For this dear pipe
+ You feign to scorn
+ I smoked the night
+ The boy was born."
+
+
+
+
+ THE 5:42
+
+
+ Lilac, violet, and rose
+ Ardently the city glows;
+ Sunset glory, purely sweet,
+ Gilds the dreaming byway-street,
+ And, above the Avenue,
+ Winter dusk is deepening blue.
+
+ (Then, across Long Island meadows,
+ Darker, darker, grow the shadows:
+ Patience, little waiting lass!
+ Laggard minutes slowly pass;
+ Patience, laughs the yellow fire:
+ Homeward bound is heart's desire!)
+
+ Hark, adown the canyon street
+ Flows the merry tide of feet;
+ High the golden buildings loom
+ Blazing in the purple gloom;
+ All the town is set with stars,
+ _Homeward_ chant the Broadway cars!
+
+ All down Thirty-second Street
+ _Homeward, Homeward_, say the feet!
+ Tramping men, uncouth to view,
+ Footsore, weary, thrill anew;
+ Gone the ringing telephones,
+ Blessed nightfall now atones,
+ Casting brightness on the snow
+ Golden the train windows go.
+
+ Then (how long it seems) at last
+ All the way is overpast.
+ Heart that beats your muffled drum,
+ Lo, your venturer is come!
+ Wide the door! Leap high, O fire!
+ Home at length is heart's desire!
+ Gone is weariness and fret,
+ At the sill warm lips are met.
+ Once again may be renewed
+ The conjoined beatitude.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The 5:42_]
+
+
+
+
+ PETER PAN
+
+
+ "The boy for whom Barrie wrote Peter Pan--the original of
+ Peter Pan--has died in battle."
+
+ --New York Times.
+
+
+ And Peter Pan is dead? Not so!
+ When mothers turn the lights down low
+ And tuck their little sons in bed,
+ They know that Peter is not dead....
+
+ That little rounded blanket-hill;
+ Those prayer-time eyes, so deep and still--
+ However wise and great a man
+ He grows, he still is Peter Pan.
+
+ And mothers' ways are often queer:
+ They pause in doorways, just to hear
+ A tiny breathing; think a prayer;
+ And then go tiptoe down the stair.
+
+
+
+
+ IN HONOR OF TAFFY TOPAZ
+
+
+ Taffy, the topaz-colored cat,
+ Thinks now of this and now of that,
+ But chiefly of his meals.
+ Asparagus, and cream, and fish,
+ Are objects of his Freudian wish;
+ What you don't give, he steals.
+
+ His gallant heart is strongly stirred
+ By clink of plate or flight of bird,
+ He has a plumy tail;
+ At night he treads on stealthy pad
+ As merry as Sir Galahad
+ A-seeking of the Grail.
+
+ His amiable amber eyes
+ Are very friendly, very wise;
+ Like Buddha, grave and fat,
+ He sits, regardless of applause,
+ And thinking, as he kneads his paws,
+ What fun to be a cat!
+
+
+
+
+ THE CEDAR CHEST
+
+
+ Her mind is like her cedar chest
+ Wherein in quietness do rest
+ The wistful dreamings of her heart
+ In fragrant folds all laid apart.
+
+ There, put away in sprigs of rhyme
+ Until her life's full blossom-time,
+ Flutter (like tremulous little birds)
+ Her small and sweet maternal words.
+
+
+
+
+ READING ALOUD
+
+
+ Once we read Tennyson aloud
+ In our great fireside chair;
+ Between the lines, my lips could touch
+ Her April-scented hair.
+
+ How very fond I was, to think
+ The printed poems fair,
+ When close within my arms I held
+ A living lyric there!
+
+
+
+
+ ANIMAL CRACKERS
+
+
+ Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink,
+ That is the finest of suppers, I think;
+ When I'm grown up and can have what I please
+ I think I shall always insist upon these.
+
+ What do _you_ choose when you're offered a treat?
+ When Mother says, "What would you like best to eat?"
+ Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast?
+ It's cocoa and animals that _I_ love most!
+
+ The kitchen's the cosiest place that I know:
+ The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,
+ And there in the twilight, how jolly to see
+ The cocoa and animals waiting for me.
+
+ Daddy and Mother dine later in state,
+ With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;
+ But they don't have nearly as much fun as I
+ Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;
+ And Daddy once said, he would like to be me
+ Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _And Daddy once said he would like to be me_
+ _Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!_]
+
+
+
+
+ THE MILKMAN
+
+
+ Early in the morning, when the dawn is on the roofs,
+ You hear his wheels come rolling, you hear his horse's hoofs;
+ You hear the bottles clinking, and then he drives away:
+ You yawn in bed, turn over, and begin another day!
+
+ The old-time dairy maids are dear to every poet's heart--
+ I'd rather be the dairy _man_ and drive a little cart,
+ And bustle round the village in the early morning blue,
+ And hang my reins upon a hook, as I've seen Casey do.
+
+
+
+
+ LIGHT VERSE
+
+
+ At night the gas lamps light our street,
+ Electric bulbs our homes;
+ The gas is billed in cubic feet,
+ Electric light in ohms.
+
+ But one illumination still
+ Is brighter far, and sweeter;
+ It is not figured in a bill,
+ Nor measured by a meter.
+
+ More bright than lights that money buys,
+ More pleasing to discerners,
+ The shining lamps of Helen's eyes,
+ Those lovely double burners!
+
+
+
+
+ THE FURNACE
+
+
+ At night I opened
+ The furnace door:
+ The warm glow brightened
+ The cellar floor.
+
+ The fire that sparkled
+ Blue and red,
+ Kept small toes cosy
+ In their bed.
+
+ As up the stair
+ So late I stole,
+ I said my prayer:
+ _Thank God for coal!_
+
+
+
+
+ WASHING THE DISHES
+
+
+ When we on simple rations sup
+ How easy is the washing up!
+ But heavy feeding complicates
+ The task by soiling many plates.
+
+ And though I grant that I have prayed
+ That we might find a serving-maid,
+ I'd scullion all my days, I think,
+ To see Her smile across the sink!
+
+ I wash, She wipes. In water hot
+ I souse each dish and pan and pot;
+ While Taffy mutters, purrs, and begs,
+ And rubs himself against my legs.
+
+ The man who never in his life
+ Has washed the dishes with his wife
+ Or polished up the silver plate--
+ He still is largely celibate.
+
+ One warning: there is certain ware
+ That must be handled with all care:
+ The Lord Himself will give you up
+ If you should drop a willow cup!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _But heavy feeding complicates_
+ _The task by soiling many plates._]
+
+
+
+
+ THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES
+
+
+ As I went by the church to-day
+ I heard the organ cry;
+ And goodly folk were on their knees,
+ But I went striding by.
+
+ My minster hath a roof more vast:
+ My aisles are oak trees high;
+ My altar-cloth is on the hills,
+ My organ is the sky.
+
+ I see my rood upon the clouds,
+ The winds, my chanted choir;
+ My crystal windows, heaven-glazed,
+ Are stained with sunset fire.
+
+ The stars, the thunder, and the rain,
+ White sands and purple seas--
+ These are His pulpit and His pew,
+ My God of Unbent Knees!
+
+
+
+
+ ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY COAL-BIN
+
+
+ The furnace tolls the knell of falling steam,
+ The coal supply is virtually done,
+ And at this price, indeed it does not seem
+ As though we could afford another ton.
+
+ Now fades the glossy, cherished anthracite;
+ The radiators lose their temperature:
+ How ill avail, on such a frosty night,
+ The "short and simple flannels of the poor."
+
+ Though in the icebox, fresh and newly laid,
+ The rude forefathers of the omelet sleep,
+ No eggs for breakfast till the bill is paid:
+ We cannot cook again till coal is cheap.
+
+ Can Morris-chair or papier-mAcchA(C) bust
+ Revivify the failing pressure-gauge?
+ Chop up the grand piano if you must,
+ And burn the East Aurora parrot-cage!
+
+ Full many a can of purest kerosene
+ The dark unfathomed tanks of Standard Oil
+ Shall furnish me, and with their aid I mean
+ To bring my morning coffee to a boil.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _How ill avail, on such a frosty night_....]
+
+
+
+
+ THE OLD SWIMMER
+
+
+ I often wander on the beach
+ Where once, so brown of limb,
+ The biting air, the roaring surf
+ Summoned me to swim.
+
+ I see my old abundant youth
+ Where combers lean and spill,
+ And though I taste the foam no more
+ Other swimmers will.
+
+ Oh, good exultant strength to meet
+ The arching wall of green,
+ To break the crystal, swirl, emerge
+ Dripping, taut, and clean.
+
+ To climb the moving hilly blue,
+ To dive in ecstasy
+ And feel the salty chill embrace
+ Arm and rib and knee.
+
+ What brave and vanished laughter then
+ And tingling thighs to run,
+ What warm and comfortable sands
+ Dreaming in the sun.
+
+ The crumbling water spreads in snow,
+ The surf is hissing still,
+ And though I kiss the salt no more
+ Other swimmers will.
+
+
+ [Illustration: The Old Swimmer]
+
+
+
+
+ THE MOON-SHEEP
+
+
+ The moon seems like a docile sheep,
+ She pastures while all people sleep;
+ But sometimes, when she goes astray,
+ She wanders all alone by day.
+
+ Up in the clear blue morning air
+ We are surprised to see her there,
+ Grazing in her woolly white,
+ Waiting the return of night.
+
+ When dusk lets down the meadow bars
+ She greets again her lambs, the stars!
+
+
+
+
+ SMELLS
+
+
+ Why is it that the poets tell
+ So little of the sense of smell?
+ These are the odors I love well:
+
+ The smell of coffee freshly ground;
+ Or rich plum pudding, holly crowned;
+ Or onions fried and deeply browned.
+
+ The fragrance of a fumy pipe;
+ The smell of apples, newly ripe;
+ And printers' ink on leaden type.
+
+ Woods by moonlight in September
+ Breathe most sweet; and I remember
+ Many a smoky camp-fire ember.
+
+ Camphor, turpentine, and tea,
+ The balsam of a Christmas tree,
+ These are whiffs of gramarye ...
+ _A ship smells best of all to me!_
+
+
+
+
+ SMELLS (JUNIOR)
+
+
+ My Daddy smells like tobacco and books,
+ Mother, like lavender and listerine;
+ Uncle John carries a whiff of cigars,
+ Nannie smells starchy and soapy and clean.
+
+ Shandy, my dog, has a smell of his own
+ (When he's been out in the rain he smells most);
+ But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all--
+ She smells exactly like hot buttered toast!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all_--]
+
+
+
+
+ MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN
+
+
+ I like the Chinese laundryman:
+ He smokes a pipe that bubbles,
+ And seems, as far as I can tell,
+ A man with but few troubles.
+ He has much to do, no doubt,
+ But also much to think about.
+
+ Most men (for instance I myself)
+ Are spending, at all times,
+ All our hard-earned quarters,
+ Our nickels and our dimes:
+ With Mar Quong it's the other way--
+ He takes in small change every day.
+
+ Next time you call for collars
+ In his steamy little shop,
+ Observe how tight his pigtail
+ Is coiled and piled on top.
+ But late at night he lets it hang
+ And thinks of the Yang-tse-kiang.
+
+
+
+
+ THE FAT LITTLE PURSE
+
+
+ On Saturdays, after the baby
+ Is bathed, fed, and sleeping serene,
+ His mother, as quickly as may be,
+ Arranges the household routine.
+ She rapidly makes herself pretty
+ And leaves the young limb with his nurse,
+ Then gaily she starts for the city,
+ And with her the fat little purse.
+
+ She trips through the crowd at the station,
+ To the rendezvous spot where we meet,
+ And keeping her eyes from temptation,
+ She avoids the most windowy street!
+ She is off for the Weekly Adventure;
+ To her comrade for better and worse
+ She says, "Never mind, when you've spent your
+ Last bit, here's the fat little purse."
+
+ Apart, in her thrifty exchequer,
+ She has hidden what must not be spent:
+ Enough for the butcher and baker,
+ Katie's wages, and milkman, and rent;
+ But the rest of her brave little treasure
+ She is gleeful and prompt to disburse--
+ What a richness of innocent pleasure
+ Can come from her fat little purse!
+
+ But either by giving or buying,
+ The little purse does not stay fat--
+ Perhaps it's a ragged child crying,
+ Perhaps it's a "pert little hat."
+ And the bonny brown eyes that were brightened
+ By pleasures so quaint and diverse,
+ Look up at me, wistful and frightened,
+ To see such a thin little purse.
+
+ The wisest of all financiering
+ Is that which is done by our wives:
+ By some little known profiteering
+ They add twos and twos and make fives;
+ And, husband, if you would be learning
+ The secret of thrift, it is terse:
+ Invest the great part of your earning
+ In her little, fat little purse.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Perhaps it's a ragged child crying_]
+
+
+
+
+ THE REFLECTION
+ (To N. B. D.)
+
+
+ I have not heard her voice, nor seen her face,
+ Nor touched her hand;
+ And yet some echo of her woman's grace
+ I understand.
+
+ I have no picture of her lovelihood,
+ Her smile, her tint;
+ But that she is both beautiful and good
+ I have true hint.
+
+ In all that my friend thinks and says, I see
+ Her mirror true;
+ His thought of her is gentle; she must be
+ All gentle too.
+
+ In all his grief or laughter, work or play,
+ Each mood and whim,
+ How brave and tender, day by common day,
+ She speaks through him!
+
+ Therefore I say I know her, be her face
+ Or dark or fair--
+ For when he shows his heart's most secret place
+ I see her there!
+
+
+
+
+ THE BALLOON PEDDLER
+
+
+ Who is the man on Chestnut street
+ With colored toy balloons?
+ I see him with his airy freight
+ On sunny afternoons--
+ A peddler of such lovely goods!
+ The heart leaps to behold
+ His mass of bubbles, red and green
+ And blue and pink and gold.
+
+ For sure that noble peddler man
+ Hath antic merchandise:
+ His toys that float and swim in air
+ Attract my eager eyes.
+ Perhaps he is a changeling prince
+ Bewitched through magic moons
+ To tempt us solemn busy folk
+ With meaningless balloons.
+
+ Beware, oh, valiant merchantman,
+ Tread cautious on the pave!
+ Lest some day come some realist,
+ Some haggard soul and grave,
+ A puritan efficientist
+ Who deems thy toys a sin--
+ He'll stalk thee madly from behind
+ And prick them with a pin!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The Balloon Peddler_]
+
+
+
+
+ LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S
+ BOOK PLATE
+
+
+ To use my books all friends are bid:
+ My shelves are open for 'em;
+ And in each one, as Grolier did,
+ I write _Et Amicorum_.
+
+ All lovely things in truth belong
+ To him who best employs them;
+ The house, the picture and the song
+ Are his who most enjoys them.
+
+ Perhaps this book holds precious lore,
+ And you may best discern it.
+ If you appreciate it more
+ Than I--why don't return it!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _If you appreciate it more_
+ _Than I--why don't return it!_]
+
+
+
+
+ TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL
+
+
+ How many humble hearts have dipped
+ In you, and scrawled their manuscript!
+ Have shared their secrets, told their cares,
+ Their curious and quaint affairs!
+
+ Your pool of ink, your scratchy pen,
+ Have moved the lives of unborn men,
+ And watched young people, breathing hard,
+ Put Heaven on a postal card.
+
+
+
+
+ THE CRIB
+
+
+ I sought immortality
+ Here and there--
+ I sent my rockets
+ Into the air:
+ I gave my name
+ A hostage to ink;
+ I dined a critic
+ And bought him drink.
+
+ I spurned the weariness
+ Of the flesh;
+ Denied fatigue
+ And began afresh--
+ If men knew all,
+ How they would laugh!
+ I even planned
+ My epitaph....
+
+ And then one night
+ When the dusk was thin
+ I heard the nursery
+ Rites begin:
+
+ I heard the tender
+ Soothings said
+ Over a crib, and
+ A small sweet head.
+
+ Then in a flash
+ It came to me
+ That there was my
+ Immortality!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _And then one night_
+ _When the dusk was thin_
+ _I heard the nursery_
+ _Rites begin--_]
+
+
+
+
+ THE POET
+
+
+ The barren music of a word or phrase,
+ The futile arts of syllable and stress,
+ He sought. The poetry of common days
+ He did not guess.
+
+ The simplest, sweetest rhythms life affords--
+ Unselfish love, true effort truly done,
+ The tender themes that underlie all words--
+ He knew not one.
+
+ The human cadence and the subtle chime
+ Of little laughters, home and child and wife,
+ He knew not. Artist merely in his rhyme,
+ Not in his life.
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _The human cadence and the subtle chime_
+ _Of little laughters_--]
+
+
+
+
+ TO A DISCARDED MIRROR
+
+ [Transcriber's Note: The text below was in mirrored
+image in the original text].
+
+ Dear glass, before your silver pane
+ My lady used to tend her hair;
+ And yet I search your disc in vain
+ To find some shadow of her there.
+
+ I thought your magic, deep and bright,
+ Might still some dear reflection hold:
+ Some glint of eyes or shoulders white,
+ Some flash of gowns she wore of old.
+
+ Your polished round must still recall
+ The laughing face, the neck like snow--
+ Remember, on your lonely wall,
+ That Helen used you long ago!
+
+
+
+
+ TO A CHILD
+
+
+ The greatest poem ever known
+ Is one all poets have outgrown:
+ The poetry, innate, untold,
+ Of being only four years old.
+
+ Still young enough to be a part
+ Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
+ Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
+ And unselfconscious as the bee--
+
+ And yet with lovely reason skilled
+ Each day new paradise to build;
+ Elate explorer of each sense,
+ Without dismay, without pretence!
+
+ In your unstained transparent eyes
+ There is no conscience, no surprise:
+ Life's queer conundrums you accept,
+ Your strange divinity still kept.
+
+ Being, that now absorbs you, all
+ Harmonious, unit, integral,
+ Will shred into perplexing bits,--
+ Oh, contradictions of the wits!
+
+ And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
+ May make you poet, too, in time--
+ But there were days, O tender elf,
+ When you were Poetry itself!
+
+
+
+
+ TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN
+
+
+ My child, what painful vistas are before you!
+ What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps--
+ Indignities from aunts who "just adore" you,
+ And chicken-pox and measles, croup and mumps!
+ I don't wish to dismay you,--it's not fair to,
+ Promoted now from bassinet to crib,--
+ But, O my babe, what troubles flesh is heir to
+ Since God first made so free with Adam's rib!
+
+ Laboriously you will proceed with teething;
+ When teeth are here, you'll meet the dentist's chair;
+ They'll teach you ways of walking, eating, breathing,
+ That stoves are hot, and how to brush your hair;
+ And so, my poor, undaunted little stripling,
+ By bruises, tears, and trousers you will grow,
+ And, borrowing a leaf from Mr. Kipling,
+ I'll wish you luck, and moralize you so:
+
+ If you can think up seven thousand methods
+ Of giving cooks and parents heart disease;
+ Can rifle pantry-shelves, and then give death odds
+ By water, fire, and falling out of trees;
+ If you can fill your every boyish minute
+ With sixty seconds' worth of mischief done,
+ Yours is the house and everything that's in it,
+ And, which is more, you'll be your father's son!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps_--]
+
+
+
+
+ TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET
+
+ (Lizette Woodworth Reese)
+
+
+ Most tender poet, when the gods confer
+ They save your gracile songs a nook apart,
+ And bless with Time's untainted lavender
+ The ageless April of your singing heart.
+
+ You, in an age unbridled, ne'er declined
+ The appointed patience that the Muse decrees,
+ Until, deep in the flower of the mind
+ The hovering words alight, like bridegroom bees.
+
+ By casual praise or casual blame unstirred
+ The placid gods grant gifts where they belong:
+ To you, who understand, the perfect word,
+ The recompensed necessities of song.
+
+
+
+
+ BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING
+
+
+ When withered leaves are lost in flame
+ Their eddying ghosts, a thin blue haze,
+ Blow through the thickets whence they came
+ On amberlucent autumn days.
+
+ The cool green woodland heart receives
+ Their dim, dissolving, phantom breath;
+ In young hereditary leaves
+ They see their happy life-in-death.
+
+ My minutes perish as they glow--
+ Time burns my crazy bonfire through;
+ But ghosts of blackened hours still blow,
+ Eternal Beauty, back to you!
+
+
+
+
+ BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER
+
+
+ These are folios of April,
+ All the library of spring,
+ Missals gilt and rubricated
+ With the frost's illumining.
+
+ Ruthless, we destroy these treasures,
+ Set the torch with hand profane--
+ Gone, like Alexandrian vellums,
+ Like the books of burnt Louvain!
+
+ Yet these classics are immortal:
+ O collectors, have no fear,
+ For the publisher will issue
+ New editions every year.
+
+
+
+
+ A VALENTINE GAME
+
+ (_For Two Players_)
+
+
+ They have a game, thus played:
+ He says unto his maid
+ _What are those shining things_
+ _So brown, so golden brown?_
+ And she, in doubt, replies
+ _How now, what shining things_
+ _So brown?_
+
+ But then, she coming near,
+ To see more clear,
+ He looks again, and cries
+ (All startled with surprise)
+ _Sweet wretch, they are your eyes,_
+ _So brown, so brown!_
+
+ The climax and the end consist
+ In kissing, and in being kissed.
+
+
+
+
+ FOR A BIRTHDAY
+
+
+ At two years old the world he sees
+ Must seem expressly made to please!
+ Such new-found words and games to try,
+ Such sudden mirth, he knows not why,
+ So many curiosities!
+
+ As life about him, by degrees
+ Discloses all its pageantries
+ He watches with approval shy
+ At two years old.
+
+ With wonders tired he takes his ease
+ At dusk, upon his mother's knees:
+ A little laugh, a little cry,
+ Put toys to bed, then "seepy-bye"--
+ The world is made of such as these
+ At two years old.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _A Birthday_]
+
+
+
+
+ KEATS
+
+ (1821-1921)
+
+
+ When sometimes, on a moony night, I've passed
+ A street-lamp, seen my doubled shadow flee,
+ I've noticed how much darker, clearer cast,
+ The full moon poured her silhouette of me.
+
+ Just so of spirits. Beauty's silver light
+ Limns with a ray more pure, and tenderer too:
+ Men's clumsy gestures, to unearthly sight,
+ Surpass the shapes they show by human view.
+
+ On this brave world, where few such meteors fell,
+ Her youngest son, to save us, Beauty flung.
+ He suffered and descended into hell--
+ And comforts yet the ardent and the young.
+
+ Drunken of moonlight, dazed by draughts of sky,
+ Dizzy with stars, his mortal fever ran:
+ His utterance a moon-enchanted cry
+ Not free from folly--for he too was man.
+
+ And now and here, a hundred years away,
+ Where topless towers shadow golden streets,
+ The young men sit, nooked in a cheap cafA(C),
+ Perfectly happy ... talking about Keats.
+
+
+
+
+ TO H. F. M.
+
+ A SONNET IN SUNLIGHT
+
+
+ This is a day for sonnets: Oh how clear
+ Our splendid cliffs and summits lift the gaze--
+ If all the perfect moments of the year
+ Were poured and gathered in one sudden blaze,
+ Then, then perhaps, in some endowered phrase
+ My flat strewn words would rise and come more near
+ To tell of you. Your beauty and your praise
+ Would fall like sunlight on this paper here.
+
+ Then I would build a sonnet that would stand
+ Proud and perennial on this pale bright sky;
+ So tall, so steep, that it might stay the hand
+ Of Time, the dusty wrecker. He would sigh
+ To tear my strong words down. And he would say:
+ "That song he built for her, one summer day."
+
+
+
+
+ QUICKENING
+
+
+ Such little, puny things are words in rhyme:
+ Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs;
+ You see them printed here, and mark their chime,
+ And turn to your more durable affairs.
+ Yet on such petty tools the poet dares
+ To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime,
+ And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares
+ To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.
+
+ Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in,
+ This measured emptiness engulfs us all,
+ And yet he points his paper javelin
+ And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall,
+ And feels, between delight and trouble torn,
+ The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.
+
+
+
+
+ AT A WINDOW SILL
+
+
+ _To write a sonnet needs a quiet mind...._
+ I paused and pondered, tried again. _To write...._
+
+ Raising the sash, I breathed the winter night:
+ Papers and small hot room were left behind.
+ Against the gusty purple, ribbed and spined
+ With golden slots and vertebrA| of light
+ Men's cages loomed. Down sliding from a height
+ An elevator winked as it declined.
+
+ Coward! There is no quiet in the brain--
+ If pity burns it not, then beauty will:
+ Tinder it is for every blowing spark.
+ Uncertain whether this is bliss or pain
+ The unresting mind will gaze across the sill
+ From high apartment windows, in the dark.
+
+
+
+
+ THE RIVER OF LIGHT
+
+ I. Broadway, 103rd to 96th.
+
+
+ Lights foam and bubble down the gentle grade:
+ Bright shine chop sueys and rA'tisseries;
+ In pink translucence glowingly displayed
+ See camisole and stocking and chemise.
+ Delicatessen windows full of cheese--
+ Above, the chimes of church-bells toll and fade--
+ And then, from off some distant Palisade
+ That gluey savor on the Jersey breeze!
+
+ The burning bulbs, in green and white and red,
+ Spell out a _Change of Program Sun., Wed., Fri._,
+ A clicking taxi spins with ruby spark.
+ There is a sense of poising near the head
+ Of some great flume of brightness, flowing by
+ To pour in gathering torrent through the dark.
+
+
+
+
+ THE RIVER OF LIGHT
+
+ II. Below 96th
+
+
+ The current quickens, and in golden flow
+ Hurries its flotsam downward through the night--
+ Here are the rapids where the undertow
+ Whirls endless motors in a gleaming flight.
+ From blazing tributaries, left and right,
+ Influent streams of blue and amber grow.
+ Columbus Circle eddies: all below
+ Is pouring flame, a gorge of broken light.
+
+ See how the burning river boils in spate,
+ Channeled by cliffs of insane jewelry,
+ Painting a rosy roof on cloudy air--
+ And just about ten minutes after eight,
+ Tossing a surf of color to the sky
+ It bursts in cataracts upon Times Square!
+
+
+
+
+ OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS
+
+
+ The city's mad: through her prodigious veins
+ What errant, strange, eccentric humors thrill:
+ Day, when her cataracts of sunlight spill--
+ Night, golden-panelled with her window panes;
+ The toss of wind-blown skirts; and who can drill
+ Forever his fierce heart with checking reins?
+ Cruel and mad, my statisticians say--
+ Ah, but she raves in such a gallant way!
+
+ Brave madness, built for beauty and the sun--
+ In such a town who can be sane? Not I.
+ Of clashing colors all her moods are spun--
+ A scarlet anger and a golden cry.
+ This frantic town where madcap mischiefs run
+ They ask to take the veil, and be a nun!
+
+
+
+
+ IN AN AUCTION ROOM
+
+ (_Letter of John Keats to Fanny Browne, Anderson Galleries,_
+ _March 15, 1920._)
+
+ To Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach.
+
+
+ _How about this lot?_ said the auctioneer;
+ _One hundred, may I say, just for a start?_
+ Between the plum-red curtains, drawn apart,
+ A written sheet was held.... And strange to hear
+ (Dealer, would I were steadfast as thou art)
+ The cold quick bids. (_Against you in the rear!_)
+ The crimson salon, in a glow more clear
+ Burned bloodlike purple as the poet's heart.
+
+ Song that outgrew the singer! Bitter Love
+ That broke the proud hot heart it held in thrall;
+ Poor script, where still those tragic passions move--
+ _Eight hundred bid: fair warning: the last call:_
+ The soul of Adonais, like a star....
+ _Sold for eight hundred dollars--Doctor R.!_
+
+
+
+
+ EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY
+
+ "It is said that a poet has died young in the breast
+of the most stolid."--Robert Louis Stevenson.
+
+
+ What was the service of this poet? He
+ Who blinked the blinding dazzle-rays that run
+ Where life profiles its edges to the sun,
+ And still suspected much he could not see.
+ Clay-stopped, yet in his taciturnity
+ There lay the vein of glory, known to none;
+ And moods of secret smiling, only won
+ When peace and passion, time and sense, agree.
+
+ Fighting the world he loved for chance to brood,
+ Ignorant when to embrace, when to avoid
+ His loves that held him in their vital clutch--
+ This was his service, his beatitude;
+ This was the inward trouble he enjoyed
+ Who knew so little, and who felt so much.
+
+
+
+
+ SONNET BY A GEOMETER
+
+ THE CIRCLE
+
+
+ Few things are perfect: we bear Eden's scar;
+ Yet faulty man was godlike in design
+ That day when first, with stick and length of twine,
+ He drew me on the sand. Then what could mar
+ His joy in that obedient mystic line;
+ And then, computing with a zeal divine,
+ He called IEuro 3-point-14159
+ And knew my lovely circuit 2 IEuro r!
+
+ A circle is a happy thing to be--
+ Think how the joyful perpendicular
+ Erected at the kiss of tangency
+ Must meet my central point, my avatar!
+ They talk of 14 points: yet only 3
+ Determine every circle: =Q. E. D.=
+
+
+
+
+ TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER SEEN ON A LEASH, IN THE PARK
+
+
+ Three times a day--at two, at seven, at nine--
+ O terrier, you play your little part:
+ Absurd in coat and skirt you push a cart,
+ With inner anguish walk a tight-rope line.
+ Up there, before the hot and dazzling shine
+ You must be rigid servant of your art,
+ Nor watch those fluffy cats--your doggish heart
+ Might leap and then betray you with a whine!
+
+ But sometimes, when you've faithfully rehearsed,
+ Your trainer takes you walking in the park,
+ Straining to sniff the grass, to chase a frog.
+ The leash is slipped, and then your joy will burst--
+ Adorable it is to run and bark,
+ To be--alas, how seldom--just a dog!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _You must be rigid servant of your art!_]
+
+
+
+
+ TO AN OLD FRIEND
+
+ (For Lloyd Williams.)
+
+
+ I like to dream of some established spot
+ Where you and I, old friend, an evening through
+ Under tobacco's fog, streaked gray and blue,
+ Might reconsider laughters unforgot.
+ Beside a hearth-glow, golden-clear and hot,
+ I'd hear you tell the oddities men do.
+ The clock would tick, and we would sit, we two--
+ Life holds such meetings for us, does it not?
+
+ Happy are men when they have learned to prize
+ The sure unvarnished virtue of their friends,
+ The unchanged kindness of a well-known face:
+ On old fidelities our world depends,
+ And runs a simple course in honest wise,
+ Not a mere taxicab shot wild through space!
+
+
+
+
+ TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE
+
+
+ Upstage the great high-shafted beefy choir
+ Squawked in 2000 watts of orange glare--
+ You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care
+ Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire.
+
+ Flung from the roof, spots red and yellow burned
+ And followed you. The blatant brassy clang
+ Of instruments drowned out the words you sang,
+ But goldenly you capered, twirled and turned.
+
+ Boyish and slender, child-limbed, quick and proud,
+ A sprite of irresistible disdain,
+ Fair as a jonquil in an April rain,
+ You seemed too sweet an imp for that dull crowd....
+
+ And then, behind the scenes, I heard you say,
+ "_O Gawd, I got a hellish cold to-day!_"
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care_
+ _Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire._]
+
+
+
+
+ THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK
+
+
+ The sonnet is a trunk, and you must pack
+ With care, to ship frail baggage far away;
+ The octet is the trunk; sestet, the tray;
+ Tight, but not overloaded, is the knack.
+ First, at the bottom, heavy thoughts you stack,
+ And in the chinks your adjectives you lay--
+ Your phrases, folded neatly as you may,
+ Stowing a syllable in every crack.
+
+ Then, in the tray, your daintier stuff is hid:
+ The tender quatrain where your moral sings--
+ Be careful, though, lest as you close the lid
+ You crush and crumple all these fragile things.
+ Your couplet snaps the hasps and turns the key--
+ Ship to The Editor, marked C. O. D.
+
+
+
+
+ STREETS
+
+
+ I have seen streets where strange enchantment broods:
+ Old ruddy houses where the morning shone
+ In seemly quiet on their tranquil moods,
+ Across the sills white curtains outward blown.
+ Their marble steps were scoured as white as bone
+ Where scrubbing housemaids toiled on wounded knee--
+ And yet, among all streets that I have known
+ These placid byways give least peace to me.
+
+ In such a house, where green light shining through
+ (From some back garden) framed her silhouette
+ I saw a girl, heard music blithely sung.
+ She stood there laughing, in a dress of blue,
+ And as I went on, slowly, there I met
+ An old, old woman, who had once been young.
+
+
+
+
+ TO THE ONLY BEGETTER
+
+ I
+
+
+ I have no hope to make you live in rhyme
+ Or with your beauty to enrich the years--
+ Enough for me this now, this present time;
+ The greater claim for greater sonneteers.
+ But O how covetous I am of NOW--
+ Dear human minutes, marred by human pains--
+ I want to know your lips, your cheek, your brow,
+ And all the miracles your heart contains,
+ I wish to study all your changing face,
+ Your eyes, divinely hurt with tenderness;
+ I hope to win your dear unstinted grace
+ For these blunt rhymes and what they would express.
+ Then may you say, when others better prove:--
+ "_Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love._"
+
+
+
+
+ TO THE ONLY BEGETTER
+
+ II
+
+
+ When all my trivial rhymes are blotted out,
+ Vanished our days, so precious and so few,
+ If some should wonder what we were about
+ And what the little happenings we knew:
+ I wish that they might know how, night by night,
+ My pencil, heavy in the sleepy hours,
+ Sought vainly for some gracious way to write
+ How much this love is ours, and only ours.
+ How many evenings, as you drowsed to sleep,
+ I read to you by tawny candle-glow,
+ And watched you down the valley dim and deep
+ Where poppies and the April flowers grow.
+ Then knelt beside your pillow with a prayer,
+ And loved the breath of pansies in your hair.
+
+
+
+
+ PEDOMETER
+
+
+ My thoughts beat out in sonnets while I walk,
+ And every evening on the homeward street
+ I find the rhythm of my marching feet
+ Throbs into verses (though the rhyme may balk).
+ I think the sonneteers were walking men:
+ The form is dour and rigid, like a clamp,
+ But with the swing of legs the tramp, tramp, tramp
+ Of syllables begins to thud, and then--
+ Lo! while you seek a rhyme for _hook_ or _crook_
+ Vanished your shabby coat, and you are kith
+ To all great walk-and-singers--Meredith,
+ And Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Rupert Brooke!
+ Free verse is poor for walking, but a sonnet--
+ O marvellous to stride and brood upon it!
+
+
+
+
+ HOSTAGES
+
+ "He that hath wife and children hath given
+hostages to fortune."--BACON.
+
+
+ Aye, Fortune, thou hast hostage of my best!
+ I, that was once so heedless of thy frown,
+ Have armed thee cap-A -pie to strike me down,
+ Have given thee blades to hold against my breast.
+ My virtue, that was once all self-possessed,
+ Is parceled out in little hands, and brown
+ Bright eyes, and in a sleeping baby's gown:
+ To threaten these will put me to the test.
+
+ Sure, since there are these pitiful poor chinks
+ Upon the makeshift armor of my heart,
+ For thee no honor lies in such a fight!
+ And thou wouldst shame to vanquish one, me-thinks,
+ Who came awake with such a painful start
+ To hear the coughing of a child at night.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Hostages._]
+
+
+
+
+ ARS DURA
+
+
+ How many evenings, walking soberly
+ Along our street all dappled with rich sun,
+ I please myself with words, and happily
+ Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run;
+ And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies
+ Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask,
+ Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes
+ And traitor hand that fails the well loved task!
+
+ Who ever learned the sonnet's bitter craft
+ But he had put away his sleep, his ease,
+ The wine he loved, the men with whom he laughed
+ To brood upon such thankless tricks as these?
+ And yet, such joy does in that craft abide
+ He greets the paper as the groom the bride!
+
+
+
+
+ O. HENRY--APOTHECARY
+
+ ("O. Henry" once worked in a drug-store in Greensboro, N.C.)
+
+
+ Where once he measured camphor, glycerine,
+ Quinine and potash, peppermint in bars,
+ And all the oils and essences so keen
+ That druggists keep in rows of stoppered jars--
+ Now, blender of strange drugs more volatile,
+ The master pharmacist of joy and pain
+ Dispenses sadness tinctured with a smile
+ And laughter that dissolves in tears again.
+
+ O brave apothecary! You who knew
+ What dark and acid doses life prefers
+ And yet with friendly face resolved to brew
+ These sparkling potions for your customers--
+ In each prescription your Physician writ
+ You poured your rich compassion and your wit!
+
+
+
+
+ FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET (1816)
+
+ "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer."
+
+
+ I knew a scientist, an engineer,
+ Student of tensile strengths and calculus,
+ A man who loved a cantilever truss
+ And always wore a pencil on his ear.
+ My friend believed that poets all were queer,
+ And literary folk ridiculous;
+ But one night, when it chanced that three of us
+ Were reading Keats aloud, he stopped to hear.
+
+ Lo, a new planet swam into his ken!
+ His eager mind reached for it and took hold.
+ Ten years are by: I see him now and then,
+ And at alumni dinners, if cajoled,
+ He mumbles gravely, to the cheering men:--
+ _Much have I travelled in the realms of gold._
+
+
+
+
+ TWO O'CLOCK
+
+
+ Night after night goes by: and clocks still chime
+ And stars are changing patterns in the dark,
+ And watches tick, and over-puissant Time
+ Benumbs the eager brain. The dogs that bark,
+ The trains that roar and rattle in the night,
+ The very cats that prowl, all quiet find
+ And leave the darkness empty, silent quite:
+ Sleep comes to chloroform the fretting mind.
+
+ So all things end: and what is left at last?
+ Some scribbled sonnets tossed upon the floor,
+ A memory of easy days gone past,
+ A run-down watch, a pipe, some clothes we wore--
+ And in the darkened room I lean to know
+ How warm her dreamless breath does pause and flow.
+
+
+
+
+ THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
+
+
+ Ah very sweet! If news should come to you
+ Some afternoon, while waiting for our eve,
+ That the great Manager had made me leave
+ To travel on some territory new;
+ And that, whatever homeward winds there blew,
+ I could not touch your hand again, nor heave
+ The logs upon our hearth and bid you weave
+ Some wistful tale before the flames that grew....
+
+ Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind
+ Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could
+ Remember rightly, and forget aright?
+ Remember just your lad, uncouthly good,
+ Forgetting when he failed in spleen or spite?
+ Could you remember him as always kind?
+
+
+
+
+ THE WEDDED LOVER
+
+
+ I read in our old journals of the days
+ When our first love was April-sweet and new,
+ How fair it blossomed and deep-rooted grew
+ Despite the adverse time; and our amaze
+ At moon and stars and beauty beyond praise
+ That burgeoned all about us: gold and blue
+ The heaven arched us in, and all we knew
+ Was gentleness. We walked on happy ways.
+
+ They said by now the path would be more steep,
+ The sunsets paler and less mild the air;
+ Rightly we heeded not: it was not true.
+ We will not tell the secret--let it keep.
+ I know not how I thought those days so fair
+ These being so much fairer, spent with you.
+
+
+
+
+ TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST
+
+
+ When we were parted, sweet, and darkness came,
+ I used to strike a match, and hold the flame
+ Before your picture and would breathless mark
+ The answering glimmer of the tiny spark
+ That brought to life the magic of your eyes,
+ Their wistful tenderness, their glad surprise.
+
+ Holding that mimic torch before your shrine
+ I used to light your eyes and make them mine;
+ Watch them like stars set in a lonely sky,
+ Whisper my heart out, yearning for reply;
+ Summon your lips from far across the sea
+ Bidding them live a twilight hour with me.
+
+ Then, when the match was shrivelled into gloom,
+ Lo--you were with me in the darkened room.
+
+
+
+
+ CHARLES AND MARY
+
+ (December 27, 1834.)
+
+
+ Lamb died just before I left town, and Mr. Ryle of
+the E. India House, one of his extors., notified it to me....
+He said Miss L. was resigned and composed at the
+event, but it was from her malady, then in mild type, so
+that when she saw her brother dead, she observed on his
+beauty when asleep and apprehended nothing further.
+
+ --Letter of John Rickman, 24 January, 1835.
+
+
+ I hear their voices still: the stammering one
+ Struggling with some absurdity of jest;
+ Her quiet words that puzzle and protest
+ Against the latest outrage of his fun.
+ So wise, so simple--has she never guessed
+ That through his laughter, love and terror run?
+ For when her trouble came, and darkness pressed,
+ He smiled, and fought her madness with a pun.
+
+ Through all those years it was his task to keep
+ Her gentle heart serenely mystified.
+ If Fate's an artist, this should be his pride--
+ When, in that Christmas season, he lay dead,
+ She innocently looked. "I always said
+ That Charles is really handsome when asleep."
+
+
+
+
+ TO A GRANDMOTHER
+
+
+ At six o'clock in the evening,
+ The time for lullabies,
+ My son lay on my mother's lap
+ With sleepy, sleepy eyes!
+ (_O drowsy little manny boy,_
+ _With sleepy, sleepy eyes!_)
+
+ I heard her sing, and rock him,
+ And the creak of the swaying chair,
+ And the old dear cadence of the words
+ Came softly down the stair.
+
+ And all the years had vanished,
+ All folly, greed, and stain--
+ The old, old song, the creaking chair,
+ The dearest arms again!
+ (_O lucky little manny boy,_
+ _To feel those arms again!_)
+
+
+
+
+ DIARISTS
+
+
+ They catalogue their minutes: Now, now, now,
+ Is Actual, amid the fugitive;
+ Take ink and pen (they say) for that is how
+ We snare this flying life, and make it live.
+ So to their little pictures, and they sieve
+ Their happinesses: fields turned by the plough,
+ The afterglow that summer sunsets give,
+ The razor concave of a great ship's bow.
+
+ O gallant instinct, folly for men's mirth!
+ Type cannot burn and sparkle on the page.
+ No glittering ink can make this written word
+ Shine clear enough to speak the noble rage
+ And instancy of life. All sonnets blurred
+ The sudden mood of truth that gave them birth.
+
+
+
+
+ THE LAST SONNET
+
+
+ Suppose one knew that never more might one
+ Put pen to sonnet, well loved task; that now
+ These fourteen lines were all he could allow
+ To say his message, be forever done;
+ How he would scan the word, the line, the rhyme,
+ Intent to sum in dearly chosen phrase
+ The windy trees, the beauty of his days,
+ Life's pride and pathos in one verse sublime.
+ How bitter then would be regret and pang
+ For former rhymes he dallied to refine,
+ For every verse that was not crystalline....
+ And if belike this last one feebly rang,
+ Honor and pride would cast it to the floor
+ Facing the judge with what was done before.
+
+
+
+
+ THE SAVAGE
+
+
+ Civilization causes me
+ Alternate fits: disgust and glee.
+
+ Buried in piles of glass and stone
+ My private spirit moves alone,
+
+ Where every day from eight to six
+ I keep alive by hasty tricks.
+
+ But I am simple in my soul;
+ My mind is sullen to control.
+
+ At dusk I smell the scent of earth,
+ And I am dumb--too glad for mirth.
+
+ I know the savors night can give,
+ And then, and then, I live, I live!
+
+ No man is wholly pure and free,
+ For that is not his destiny,
+
+ But though I bend, I will not break:
+ And still be savage, for Truth's sake.
+
+ God damns the easily convinced
+ (Like Pilate, when his hands he rinsed).
+
+
+
+
+ ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH
+
+
+ I stood on the pavement
+ Where I could admire
+ Behind the brown chapel
+ The cream and gold spire.
+
+ Above, gilded Lightning
+ Swam high on his ball--
+ I saw the noon shadow
+ The church of St. Paul.
+
+ And was there a meaning?
+ (My fancy would run),
+ Saint Paul in the shadow,
+ Saint Frank in the sun!
+
+
+
+
+ ADVICE TO A CITY
+
+
+ O city, cage your poets! Hem them in
+ And roof them over from the April sky--
+ Clatter them round with babble, ceaseless din,
+ And drown their voices with your thunder cry.
+
+ Forbid their free feet on the windy hills,
+ And harness them to daily ruts of stone--
+ (In florists' windows lock the daffodils)
+ And never, never let them be alone!
+
+ For they are curst, said poets, curst and lewd,
+ And freedom gives their tongues uncanny wit,
+ And granted silence, thought and solitude
+ They (_absit omen!_) might make Song of it.
+
+ So cage them in, and stand about them thick,
+ And keep them busy with their daily bread;
+ And should their eyes seem strange, ah, then be quick
+ To interrupt them ere the word be said....
+
+ For, if their hearts burn with sufficient rage,
+ With wasted sunsets and frustrated youth,
+ Some day they'll cry, on some disturbing page,
+ The savage, sweet, unpalatable truth!
+
+
+
+
+ THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY
+
+
+ No Malory of old romance,
+ No Crusoe tale, it seems to me,
+ Can equal in rich circumstance
+ This telephone directory.
+
+ No ballad of fair ladies' eyes,
+ No legend of proud knights and dames,
+ Can fill me with such bright surmise
+ As this great book of numbered names!
+
+ How many hearts and lives unknown,
+ Rare damsels pining for a squire,
+ Are waiting for the telephone
+ To ring, and call them to the wire.
+
+ Some wait to hear a loved voice say
+ The news they will rejoice to know
+ At Rome 2637 J
+ Or Marathon 1450!
+
+ And some, perhaps, are stung with fear
+ And answer with reluctant tread:
+ The message they expect to hear
+ Means life or death or daily bread.
+
+ A million hearts here wait our call,
+ All naked to our distant speech--
+ I wish that I could ring them all
+ And have some welcome news for each!
+
+
+
+
+ GREEN ESCAPE
+
+
+ At three o'clock in the afternoon
+ On a hot September day,
+ I began to dream of a highland stream
+ And a frostbit russet tree;
+ Of the swashing dip of a clipper ship
+ (White canvas wet with spray)
+ And the swirling green and milk-foam clean
+ Along her canted lee.
+
+ I heard the quick staccato click
+ Of the typist's pounding keys,
+ And I had to brood of a wind more rude
+ Than that by a motor fanned--
+ And I lay inert in a flannel shirt
+ To watch the rhyming seas
+ Deploy and fall in a silver sprawl
+ On a beach of sun-blanched sand.
+
+ There is no desk shall tame my lust
+ For hills and windy skies;
+ My secret hope of the sea's blue slope
+ No clerkly task shall dull;
+
+ And though I print no echoed hint
+ Of adventures I devise,
+ My eyes still pine for the comely line
+ Of an outbound vessel's hull.
+
+ When I elope with an autumn day
+ And make my green escape,
+ I'll leave my pen to tamer men
+ Who have more docile souls;
+ For forest aisles and office files
+ Have a very different shape,
+ And it's hard to woo the ocean blue
+ In a row of pigeon holes!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _My eyes still pine for the comely line_
+ _Of an outbound vessel's hull._]
+
+
+
+
+ VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS
+
+ (_Instead of "Marathon" the commuter may substitute_
+ _the name of his favorite suburb_)
+
+
+ The stars are kind to Marathon,
+ How low, how close, they lean!
+ They jostle one another
+ And do their best to please--
+ Indeed, they are so neighborly
+ That in the twilight green
+ One reaches out to pick them
+ Behind the poplar trees.
+
+ The stars are kind to Marathon,
+ And one particular
+ Bright planet (which is Vesper)
+ Most lucid and serene,
+ Is waiting by the railway bridge,
+ The Good Commuter's Star,
+ The Star of Wise Men coming home
+ On time, at 6:15!
+
+
+
+
+ THE ICE WAGON
+
+
+ I'd like to split the sky that roofs us down,
+ Break through the crystal lid of upper air,
+ And tap the cool still reservoirs of heaven.
+ I'd empty all those unseen lakes of freshness
+ Down some vast funnel, through our stifled streets.
+
+ I'd like to pump away the grit, the dust,
+ Raw dazzle of the sun on garbage piles,
+ The droning troops of flies, sharp bitter smells,
+ And gush that bright sweet flood of unused air
+ Down every alley where the children gasp.
+
+ And then I'd take a fleet of ice wagons--
+ Big yellow creaking carts, drawn by wet horses,--
+ And drive them rumbling through the blazing slums.
+ In every wagon would be blocks of coldness,
+ Pale, gleaming cubes of ice, all green and silver,
+ With inner veins and patterns, white and frosty;
+ Great lumps of chill would drip and steam and shimmer,
+ And spark like rainbows in their little fractures.
+
+ And where my wagons stood there would be puddles,
+ A wetness and a sparkle and a coolness.
+ My friends and I would chop and splinter open
+ The blocks of ice. Bare feet would soon come pattering,
+ And some would wrap it up in Sunday papers,
+ And some would stagger home with it in baskets,
+ And some would be too gay for aught but sucking,
+ Licking, crunching those fast melting pebbles,
+ Gulping as they slipped down unexpected--
+ Laughing to perceive that secret numbness
+ Amid their small hot persons!
+
+ At every stop would be at least one urchin
+ Would take a piece to cool the sweating horses
+ And hold it up against their silky noses--
+ And they would start, and then decide they liked it.
+
+ Down all the sun-cursed byways of the town
+ Our wagons would be trailed by grimy tots,
+ Their ragged shirts half off them with excitement!
+ Dabbling toes and fingers in our leakage,
+ A lucky few up sitting with the driver,
+ All clambering and stretching grey-pink palms.
+
+ And by the time the wagons were all empty
+ Our arms and shoulders would be lame with chopping,
+ Our backs and thighs pain-shot, our fingers frozen.
+ But how we would recall those eager faces,
+ Red thirsty tongues with ice-chips sliding on them,
+ The pinched white cheeks, and their pathetic gladness.
+ Then we would know that arms were made for aching--
+
+ I wish to God that I could go tomorrow!
+
+
+
+
+ AT A MOVIE THEATRE
+
+
+ How well he spoke who coined the phrase
+ _The picture palace!_ Aye, in sooth
+ A palace, where men's weary days
+ Are crowned with kingliness of youth.
+
+ Strange palace! Crowded, airless, dim,
+ Where toes are trod and strained eyes smart,
+ We watch a wand of brightness limn
+ The old heroics of the heart.
+
+ Romance again hath us in thrall
+ And Love is sweet and always true,
+ And in the darkness of the hall
+ Hands clasp--as they were meant to do.
+
+ Remote from peevish joys and ills
+ Our souls, _pro tem_, are purged and free:
+ We see the sun on western hills,
+ The crumbling tumult of the sea.
+
+ We are the blond that maidens crave,
+ Well balanced at a dozen banks;
+ By sleight of hand we haste to save
+ A brown-eyed life, nor stay for thanks!
+
+ Alas, perhaps our instinct feels
+ Life is not all it might have been,
+ So we applaud fantastic reels
+ Of shadow, cast upon a screen!
+
+
+
+
+ SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE
+
+
+ I
+
+ Each morn she crackles upward, tread by tread,
+ All apprehensive of some hideous sight:
+ Perhaps the Fourth Floor Back, who reads in bed,
+ Forgot his gas and let it burn all night--
+ The Sweet Young Thing who has the middle room,
+ She much suspects: for once some ink was spilled,
+ And then the plumber, in an hour of gloom,
+ Found all the bathroom pipes with tea-leaves filled.
+
+ No League of Nations scheme can make her gay--
+ She knows the rank duplicity of man;
+ Some folks expect clean towels every day,
+ They'll get away with murder if they can!
+ She tacks a card (alas, few roomers mind it)
+ _Please leave the tub as you would wish to find it!_
+
+
+ II
+
+
+ Men lodgers are the best, the Mrs. said:
+ They don't use my gas jets to fry sardines,
+ They don't leave red-hot irons on the spread,
+ They're out all morning, when a body cleans.
+ A man ain't so secretive, never cares
+ What kind of private papers he leaves lay,
+ So I can get a line on his affairs
+ And dope out whether he is likely pay.
+ But women! Say, they surely get my bug!
+ They stop their keyholes up with chewing gum,
+ Spill grease, and hide the damage with the rug,
+ And fry marshmallows when their callers come.
+ They always are behindhand with their rents--
+ Take my advice and let your rooms to gents!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _A man ain't so secretive, never cares_
+ _What kind of private papers he leaves lay_--]
+
+
+
+
+ THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS)
+
+
+ About these roaring cylinders
+ Where leaping words and paper mate,
+ A sudden glory moves and stirs--
+ An inky cataract in spate!
+
+ What voice for falsehood or for truth,
+ What hearts attentive to be stirred--
+ How dimly understood, in sooth,
+ The power of the printed word!
+
+ These flashing webs and cogs of steel
+ Have shaken empires, routed kings,
+ Yet never turn too fast to feel
+ The tragedies of humble things.
+
+ O words, be strict in honesty,
+ Be just and simple and serene;
+ O rhymes, sing true, or you will be
+ Unworthy of this great machine!
+
+
+
+
+ DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD?
+
+
+ Across the court there rises the back wall
+ Of the Magna Carta Apartments.
+ The other evening the people in the apartment opposite
+ Had forgotten to draw their curtains.
+ I could see them dining: the well-blanched cloth,
+ The silver and glass, the crystal water jug,
+ The meat and vegetables; and their clean pink hands
+ Outstretched in busy gesture.
+
+ It was pleasant to watch them, they were so human;
+ So gay, innocent, unconscious of scrutiny.
+ They were four: an elderly couple,
+ A young man, and a girl--with lovely shoulders
+ Mellow in the glow of the lamp.
+ They were sitting over coffee, and I could see their hands talking.
+
+ At last the older two left the room.
+ The boy and girl looked at each other....
+ Like a flash, they leaned and kissed.
+
+ Good old human race that keeps on multiplying!
+ A little later I went down the street to the movies,
+ And there I saw all four, laughing and joking together.
+ And as I watched them I felt like God--
+ Benevolent, all-knowing, and tender.
+
+
+
+
+ RAPID TRANSIT
+
+ (To Stephen Vincent BenA(C)t.)
+
+
+ Climbing is easy and swift on Parnassus!
+ Knocking my pipe out, I entered a bookshop;
+ There found a book of verse by a young poet.
+ Comrades at once, how I saw his mind glowing!
+ Saw in his soul its magnificent rioting--
+ Then I ran with him on hills that were windy,
+ Basked and laughed with him on sun-dazzled beaches,
+ Glutted myself on his green and blue twilights,
+ Watched him disposing his planets in patterns,
+ Tumbling his colors and toys all before him.
+ I questioned life with him, his pulses my pulses;
+ Doubted his doubts, too, and grieved for his anguishes.
+ Salted long kinship and knew him from boy-hood--
+ Pulled out my own sun and stars from my knapsack,
+ Trying my trinkets with those of his finding--
+ _And as I left the bookshop_
+ _My pipe was still warm in my hand._
+
+
+
+
+ CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW
+
+
+ Colin, worshipping some frail,
+ By self-deprecation sways her:
+ Calls himself unworthy male,
+ Hardly even fit to praise her.
+
+ But this tactic insincere
+ In the upshot greatly grieves him
+ When he finds the lovely dear
+ Quite implicitly believes him.
+
+
+
+
+ TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS
+
+ _Who Rallied Him for Praising Blue Eyes in His Verses_
+
+
+ If sometimes, in a random phrase
+ (For variation in my ditty),
+ I chance blue eyes, or gray, to praise
+ And seem to intimate them pretty--
+
+ It is because I do not dare
+ With too unmixed reiteration
+ To sing the browner eyes and hair
+ That are my true intoxication.
+
+ Know, then, that I consider brown
+ For ladies' eyes, the only color;
+ And deem all other orbs in town
+ (Compared to yours), opaquer, duller.
+
+ I pray, perpend, my dearest dear;
+ While blue-eyed maids the praise were drinking,
+ How insubstantial was their cheer--
+ It was of yours that I was thinking!
+
+
+
+
+ PEACE
+
+
+ What is this Peace
+ That statesmen sign?
+ How I have sought
+ To make it mine.
+
+ Where groaning cities
+ Clang and glow
+ I hunted, hunted,
+ Peace to know.
+
+ And still I saw
+ Where I passed by
+ Discarded hearts,--
+ Heard children cry.
+
+ By willowed waters
+ Brimmed with rain
+ I thought to capture
+ Peace again.
+
+ I sat me down
+ My Peace to hoard,
+ But Beauty pricked me
+ With a sword.
+
+ For in the stillness
+ Something stirred,
+ And I was crippled
+ For a word.
+
+ There is no peace
+ A man can find;
+ The anguish sits
+ His heart behind.
+
+ The eyes he loves,
+ The perfect breast,
+ Too exquisite
+ To give him rest.
+
+ This is his curse
+ Since brain began.
+ His penalty
+ For being man.
+
+ May, 1919
+
+
+
+
+ SONG, IN DEPRECATION
+ OF PULCHRITUDE
+
+
+
+ Beauty (so the poets say),
+ Thou art joy and solace great;
+ Long ago, and far away
+ Thou art safe to contemplate,
+
+ Beauty. But when now and here,
+ Visible and close to touch,
+ All too perilously near,
+ Thou tormentest us too much!
+
+ In a picture, in a song,
+ In a novel's conjured scenes,
+ Beauty, that's where you belong,
+ Where perspective intervenes.
+
+ But, my dear, in rosy fact
+ Your appeal I have to shirk--
+ You disturb me, and distract
+ My attention from my work!
+
+
+
+
+ MOUNTED POLICE
+
+
+ Watchful, grave, he sits astride his horse,
+ Draped with his rubber poncho, in the rain;
+ He speaks the pungent lingo of "The Force,"
+ And those who try to bluff him, try in vain.
+
+ Inured to every mood of fool and crank,
+ Shrewdly and sternly all the crowd he cons:
+ The rain drips down his horse's shining flank,
+ A figure nobly fit for sculptor's bronze.
+
+ O knight commander of our city stress,
+ Little you know how picturesque you are!
+ We hear you cry to drivers who transgress:
+ "_Say, that's a helva place to park your car!_"
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Mounted Police._]
+
+
+
+
+ TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT
+ HE IS NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY
+
+
+ Why did not Fate to me bequeath an Utterance Elizabethan?
+ It would have been delight to me
+ If _natus ante_ 1603.
+
+ My stuff would not be soon forgotten
+ If I could write like Harry Wotton.
+
+ I wish that I could wield the pen
+ Like William Drummond of Hawthornden.
+
+ I would not fear the ticking clock
+ If I were Browne of Tavistock.
+
+ For blithe conceits I would not worry
+ If I were Raleigh, or the Earl of Surrey.
+
+ I wish (I hope I am not silly?)
+ That I could juggle words like Lyly.
+
+ I envy many a lyric champion,
+ I. e., viz., e. g., Thomas Campion.
+
+ I creak my rhymes up like a derrick,
+ I ne'er will be a Robin Herrick.
+
+ My wits are dull as an old Barlow--
+ I wish that I were Christopher Marlowe.
+
+ In short, I'd like to be Philip Sidney,
+ Or some one else of that same kidney.
+
+ For if I were, my lady's looks
+ And all my lyric special pleading
+ Would be in all the future books,
+ And called, at college, _Required Reading_.
+
+
+
+
+ THE INTRUDER
+
+
+ As I sat, to sift my dreaming
+ To the meet and needed word,
+ Came a merry Interruption
+ With insistence to be heard.
+
+ Smiling stood a maid beside me,
+ Half alluring and half shy;
+ Soft the white hint of her bosom--
+ Escapade was in her eye.
+
+ "I must not be so invaded,"
+ (In an anger then I cried)--
+ "Can't you see that I am busy?
+ Tempting creature, stay outside!
+
+ "Pearly rascal, I am writing:
+ I am now composing verse--
+ Fie on antic invitation:
+ Wanton, vanish--fly--disperse!
+
+ "Baggage, in my godlike moment
+ What have I to do with thee?"
+ And she laughed as she departed--
+ "I am Poetry," said she.
+
+
+
+
+ TIT FOR TAT
+
+
+ I often pass a gracious tree
+ Whose name I can't identify,
+ But still I bow, in courtesy
+ It waves a bough, in kind reply.
+
+ I do not know your name, O tree
+ (Are you a hemlock or a pine?)
+ But why should that embarrass me?
+ Quite probably you don't know mine.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Courtesy_]
+
+
+
+
+ SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE
+
+
+ I'm glad our house is a little house,
+ Not too tall nor too wide:
+ I'm glad the hovering butterflies
+ Feel free to come inside.
+
+ Our little house is a friendly house.
+ It is not shy or vain;
+ It gossips with the talking trees,
+ And makes friends with the rain.
+
+ And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green
+ Against our whited walls,
+ And in the phlox, the courteous bees
+ Are paying duty calls.
+
+
+
+
+ THE PLUMPUPPETS
+
+
+ When little heads weary have gone to their bed,
+ When all the good nights and the prayers have been said,
+ Of all the good fairies that send bairns to rest
+ The little Plumpuppets are those I love best.
+
+ _If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat,_
+ _The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at;_
+ _They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat--_
+ _The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!_
+
+ The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds:
+ They have nothing to do but to watch sleepy heads;
+ They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight,
+ And they dance on your pillow to wish you good night!
+
+ No matter what troubles have bothered the day,
+ Though your doll broke her arm or the pup ran away;
+ Though your handies are black with the ink that was spilt--
+ Plumpuppets are waiting in blanket and quilt.
+
+ _If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat,
+ The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at;
+ They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat--
+ The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!_
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The Plumpuppets_]
+
+
+
+
+ DANDY DANDELION
+
+
+ When Dandy Dandelion wakes
+ And combs his yellow hair,
+ The ant his cup of dewdrop takes
+ And sets his bed to air;
+ The worm hides in a quilt of dirt
+ To keep the thrush away,
+ The beetle dons his pansy shirt--
+ They know that it is day!
+
+ And caterpillars haste to milk
+ The cowslips in the grass;
+ The spider, in his web of silk,
+ Looks out for flies that pass.
+ These humble people leap from bed,
+ They know the night is done:
+ When Dandy spreads his golden head
+ They think he is the sun!
+
+ Dear Dandy truly does not smell
+ As sweet as some bouquets;
+ No florist gathers him to sell,
+ He withers in a vase;
+ Yet in the grass he's emperor,
+ And lord of high renown;
+ And grateful little folk adore
+ His bright and shining crown.
+
+
+
+
+ THE HIGH CHAIR
+
+
+ Grimly the parent matches wit and will:
+ Now, Weesy, three more spoons! See Tom the cat,
+ _He'd_ drink it. You want to be big and fat
+ Like Daddy, don't you? (Careful now, don't spill!)
+ Yes, Daddy'll dance, and blow smoke through his nose,
+ But you must finish first. Come, drink it up--
+ (_Splash_!) Oh, you _must_ keep both hands on the cup.
+ All gone? Now for the prunes....
+ And so it goes.
+
+ This is the battlefield that parents know,
+ Where one small splinter of old Adam's rib
+ Withstands an entire household offering spoons.
+ No use to gnash your teeth. For she will go
+ Radiant to bed, glossy from crown to bib
+ With milk and cereal and a surf of prunes.
+
+
+
+
+ LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT
+
+
+ Not long ago I fell in love,
+ But unreturned is my affection--
+ The girl that I'm enamored of
+ Pays little heed in my direction.
+
+ I thought I knew her fairly well:
+ In fact, I'd had my arm around her;
+ And so it's hard to have to tell
+ How unresponsive I have found her.
+
+ For, though she is not frankly rude,
+ Her manners quite the wrong way rub me:
+ It seems to me ingratitude
+ To let me love her--and then snub me!
+
+ Though I'm considerate and fond,
+ She shows no gladness when she spies me--
+ She gazes off somewhere beyond
+ And doesn't even recognize me.
+
+ Her eyes, so candid, calm and blue,
+ Seem asking if I can support her
+ In the style appropriate to
+ A lady like her father's daughter.
+
+ Well, if I can't then no one can--
+ And let me add that I intend to:
+ She'll never know another man
+ So fit for her to be a friend to.
+
+ Not love me, eh? She better had!
+ By Jove, I'll make her love me one day;
+ For, don't you see, I am her Dad,
+ And she'll be three weeks old on Sunday!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _ ... It's hard to have to tell_
+ _How unresponsive I have found her._]
+
+
+
+
+ AUTUMN COLORS
+
+
+ The chestnut trees turned yellow,
+ The oak like sherry browned,
+ The fir, the stubborn fellow,
+ Stayed green the whole year round.
+
+ But O the bonny maple
+ How richly he does shine!
+ He glows against the sunset
+ Like ruddy old port wine.
+
+
+
+
+ THE LAST CRICKET
+
+
+ When the bulb of the moon with white fire fills
+ And dead leaves crackle under the feet,
+ When men roll kegs to the cider mills
+ And chestnuts roast on every street;
+
+ When the night sky glows like a hollow shell
+ Of lustered emerald and pearl,
+ The kilted cricket knows too well
+ His doom. His tiny bagpipes skirl.
+
+ Quavering under the polished stars
+ In stubble, thicket, and frosty copse
+ The cricket blows a few choked bars,
+ And puts away his pipe--and stops.
+
+
+
+
+ TO LOUISE
+
+ (A Christmas Baby, Now One Year Old.)
+
+
+ Undaunted by a world of grief
+ You came upon perplexing days,
+ And cynics doubt their disbelief
+ To see the sky-stains in your gaze.
+
+ Your sudden and inclusive smile
+ And your emphatic tears, admit
+ That you must find this life worth while,
+ So eagerly you clutch at it!
+
+ Your face of triumph says, brave mite,
+ That life is full of love and luck--
+ Of blankets to kick off at night,
+ And two soft rose-pink thumbs to suck.
+
+ O loveliest of pioneers
+ Upon this trail of long surprise,
+ May all the stages of the years
+ Show such enchantment in your eyes!
+
+ By parents' patient buttonings,
+ And endless safety pins, you'll grow
+ To ribbons, garters, hooks and things,
+ Up to the Ultimate Trousseau--
+
+ But never, in your dainty prime,
+ Will you be more adored by me
+ Than when you see, this Great First Time,
+ Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!
+
+ December, 1919.
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _... When you see, this Great First Time,_
+ _Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!_]
+
+
+
+
+ CHRISTMAS EVE
+
+
+ Our hearts to-night are open wide,
+ The grudge, the grief, are laid aside:
+ The path and porch are swept of snow,
+ The doors unlatched; the hearthstones glow--
+ No visitor can be denied.
+
+ All tender human homes must hide
+ Some wistfulness beneath their pride:
+ Compassionate and humble grow
+ Our hearts to-night.
+
+ Let empty chair and cup abide!
+ Who knows? Some well-remembered stride
+ May come as once so long ago--
+ Then welcome, be it friend or foe!
+ There is no anger can divide
+ Our hearts to-night.
+
+
+
+
+ EPITAPH ON THE PROOFREADER OF
+ THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA
+
+
+ Majestic tomes, you are the tomb
+ Of Aristides Edward Bloom,
+ Who labored, from the world aloof,
+ In reading every page of proof.
+
+ From A to And, from Aus to Bis
+ Enthusiasm still was his;
+ From Cal to Cha, from Cha to Con
+ His soft-lead pencil still went on.
+
+ But reaching volume Fra to Gib,
+ He knew at length that he was sib
+ To Satan; and he sold his soul
+ To reach the section Pay to Pol.
+
+ Then Pol to Ree, and Shu to Sub
+ He staggered on, and sought a pub.
+ And just completing Vet to Zym,
+ The motor hearse came round for him.
+
+ He perished, obstinately brave:
+ They laid the Index on his grave.
+
+
+
+
+ THE MUSIC BOX
+
+
+ At six--long ere the wintry dawn--
+ There sounded through the silent hall
+ To where I lay, with blankets drawn
+ Above my ears, a plaintive call.
+
+ The Urchin, in the eagerness
+ Of three years old, could not refrain;
+ Awake, he straightway yearned to dress
+ And frolic with his clockwork train.
+
+ I heard him with a sullen shock.
+ His sister, by her usual plan,
+ Had piped us aft at 3 o'clock--
+ I vowed to quench the little man.
+
+ I leaned above him, somewhat stern,
+ And spoke, I fear, with emphasis--
+ Ah, how much better, parents learn,
+ To seal one's censure with a kiss!
+
+ Again the house was dark and still,
+ Again I lay in slumber's snare,
+ When down the hall I heard a trill,
+ A tiny, tinkling, tuneful air--
+
+ His music-box! His best-loved toy,
+ His crib companion every night;
+ And now he turned to it for joy
+ While waiting for the lagging light.
+
+ How clear, and how absurdly sad
+ Those tingling pricks of sound unrolled;
+ They chirped and quavered, as the lad
+ His lonely little heart consoled.
+
+ _Columbia, the Ocean's Gem_--
+ (Its only tune) shrilled sweet and faint.
+ He cranked the chimes, admiring them
+ In vigil gay, without complaint.
+
+ The treble music piped and stirred,
+ The leaping air that was his bliss;
+ And, as I most contritely heard,
+ I thanked the all-unconscious Swiss!
+
+ The needled jets of melody
+ Rang slowlier and died away--
+ The Urchin slept; and it was I
+ Who lay and waited for the day.
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The Music Box_]
+
+
+
+
+ TO LUATH
+
+ (_Robert Burns's Dog_)
+
+
+ _"Darling Jean" was Jean Armour, a "comely country lass" whom Burns
+met at a penny wedding at Mauchline. They chanced to be dancing in the
+same quadrille when the poet's dog sprang to his master and almost
+upset some of the dancers. Burns remarked that he wished he could get
+any of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did.
+
+ Some days afterward, Jean, seeing him pass as she was bleaching clothes
+on the village green, called to him and asked him if he had yet got any
+of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did.
+
+ That was the beginning of an acquaintance that coloured all of
+Burns's life._
+
+ --NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.
+
+
+ Well, Luath, man, when you came prancing
+ All glee to see your Robin dancing,
+ His partner's muslin gown mischancing
+ You leaped for joy!
+ And little guessed what sweet romancing
+ You caused, my boy!
+
+ With happy bark, that moment jolly,
+ You frisked and frolicked, faithful collie;
+ His other dog, old melancholy,
+ Was put to flight--
+ But what a tale of grief and folly
+ You wagged that night!
+
+ Ah, Luath, tyke, your bonny master
+ Whose lyric pulse beat ever faster
+ Each time he saw a lass and passed her
+ His breast went bang!
+ In many a woful heart's disaster
+ He felt the pang!
+
+ Poor Robin's heart, forever burning,
+ Forever roving, ranting, yearning,
+ From you that heart might have been learning
+ To be less fickle!
+ Might have been spared so many a turning
+ And grievous prickle!
+
+ Your collie heart held but one notion--
+ When Robbie jigged in sprightly motion
+ You ran to show your own devotion
+ And gambolled too,
+ And so that tempest on love's ocean
+ Was due to you!
+
+ Well, it is ower late for preaching
+ And hearts are aye too hot for teaching!
+ When Robin with his eye beseeching
+ By greenside came,
+ Jeanie--poor lass--forgot her bleaching
+ And yours the blame!
+
+
+
+
+ THOUGHTS ON REACHING LAND
+
+
+ I had a friend whose path was pain--
+ Oppressed by all the cares of earth
+ Life gave him little chance to drain
+ His secret cisterns of rich mirth.
+
+ His work was hasty, harassed, vexed:
+ His dreams were laid aside, perforce,
+ Until--in this world, or the next....
+ (His trade? Newspaper man, of course!)
+
+ What funded wealth of tenderness,
+ What ingots of the heart and mind
+ He must uneasily repress
+ Beneath the rasping daily grind.
+
+ But now and then, and with my aid,
+ For fear his soul be wholly lost,
+ His devoir to the grape he paid
+ To call soul back, at any cost!
+
+ Then, liberate from discipline,
+ Undrugged by caution and control,
+ Through all his veins came flooding in
+ The virtued passion of his soul!
+
+ His spirit bared, and felt no shame:
+ With holy light his eyes would shine--
+ See Truth her acolyte reclaim
+ After the second glass of wine!
+
+ The self that life had trodden hard
+ Aspired, was generous and free:
+ The glowing heart that care had charred
+ Grew flame, as it was meant to be.
+
+ A pox upon the canting lot
+ Who call the glass the Devil's shape--
+ A greater pox where'er some sot
+ Defiles the honor of the grape.
+
+ Then look with reverence on wine
+ That kindles human brains uncouth--
+ There must be something part divine
+ In aught that brings us nearer Truth!
+
+ So--continently skull your fumes
+ (Here let our little sermon end)
+ And bless this X-ray that illumes
+ The secret bosom of your friend!
+
+
+
+
+ A SYMPOSIUM
+
+
+ There was a Russian novelist
+ Whose name was Solugubrious,
+ The reading circles took him up,
+ (They'd heard he was salubrious.)
+
+ The women's club of Cripple Creek
+ Soon held a kind of seminar
+ To learn just what his message was--
+ You know what bookworms women are.
+
+ The tea went round. After five cups
+ (You should have seen them bury tea)
+ Dear Mrs. Brown said what she liked
+ Was the great man's _sincerity_.
+
+ Sweet Mrs. Jones (how free she was
+ From all besetting vanity)
+ Declared that she loved even more
+ His broad and deep _humanity_.
+
+ Good Mrs. Smith, though she disclaimed
+ All thought of being critical,
+ Protested that she found his work
+ A wee bit _analytical_.
+
+ But Mrs. Black, the President,
+ Of wisdom found the pinnacle:
+ She said, "Dear me, I always think
+ Those Russians are so _cynical_."
+
+ Well, poor old Solugubrious,
+ It's true that they had heard of him;
+ But neither Brown, Jones, Smith, nor Black
+ Had ever read a word of him!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _Solugubrious_]
+
+
+
+
+ TO A TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO
+ HAS A BAD COLD
+
+
+ How hoarse and husky in my ear
+ Your usually cheerful chirrup:
+ You have an awful cold, my dear--
+ Try aspirin or bronchial syrup.
+
+ When I put in a call to-day
+ Compassion stirred my humane blood red
+ To hear you faintly, sadly, say
+ The number: _Burray Hill dide hudred!_
+
+ I felt (I say) quick sympathy
+ To hear you croak in the receiver--
+ Will you be sorry too for me
+ A month hence, when I have hay fever?
+
+
+
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE
+ TENDER-HEARTED
+
+ (Dedicated to Don Marquis.)
+
+
+ I
+
+
+ Scuttle, scuttle, little roach--
+ How you run when I approach:
+ Up above the pantry shelf.
+ Hastening to secrete yourself.
+
+ Most adventurous of vermin,
+ How I wish I could determine
+ How you spend your hours of ease,
+ Perhaps reclining on the cheese.
+
+ Cook has gone, and all is dark--
+ Then the kitchen is your park:
+ In the garbage heap that she leaves
+ Do you browse among the tea leaves?
+
+ How delightful to suspect
+ All the places you have trekked:
+ Does your long antenna whisk its
+ Gentle tip across the biscuits?
+
+ Do you linger, little soul,
+ Drowsing in our sugar bowl?
+ Or, abandonment most utter,
+ Shake a shimmy on the butter?
+
+ Do you chant your simple tunes
+ Swimming in the baby's prunes?
+ Then, when dawn comes, do you slink
+ Homeward to the kitchen sink?
+
+ Timid roach, why be so shy?
+ We are brothers, thou and I.
+ In the midnight, like yourself,
+ I explore the pantry shelf!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _In the midnight, like yourself,_
+ _I explore the pantry shelf!_]
+
+
+
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE
+ TENDER-HEARTED
+
+
+ II
+
+
+ Rockabye, insect, lie low in thy den,
+ Father's a cockroach, mother's a hen.
+ And Betty, the maid, doesn't clean up the sink,
+ So you shall have plenty to eat and to drink.
+
+ Hushabye, insect, behind the mince pies:
+ If the cook sees you her anger will rise;
+ She'll scatter poison, as bitter as gall,
+ Death to poor cockroach, hen, baby and all.
+
+
+
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE
+ TENDER-HEARTED
+
+
+ III
+
+
+ There was a gay henroach, and what do you think,
+ She lived in a cranny behind the old sink--
+ Eggshells and grease were the chief of her diet;
+ She went for a stroll when the kitchen was quiet.
+
+ She walked in the pantry and sampled the bread,
+ But when she came back her old husband was dead:
+ Long had he lived, for his legs they were fast,
+ But the kitchen maid caught him and squashed him at last.
+
+
+
+
+ NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE
+ TENDER-HEARTED
+
+
+ IV
+
+
+ I knew a black beetle, who lived down a drain,
+ And friendly he was though his manners were plain;
+ When I took a bath he would come up the pipe,
+ And together we'd wash and together we'd wipe.
+
+ Though mother would sometimes protest with a sneer
+ That my choice of a tub-mate was wanton and queer,
+ A nicer companion I never have seen:
+ He bathed every night, so he must have been clean.
+
+ Whenever he heard the tap splash in the tub
+ He'd dash up the drain-pipe and wait for a scrub,
+ And often, so fond of ablution was he,
+ I'd find him there floating and waiting for me.
+
+ But nurse has done something that seems a great shame:
+ She saw him there, waiting, prepared for a game:
+ She turned on the hot and she scalded him sore
+ And he'll never come bathing with me any more.
+
+
+
+
+ THE TWINS
+
+
+ Con was a thorn to brother Pro--
+ On Pro we often sicked him:
+ Whatever Pro would claim to know
+ Old Con would contradict him!
+
+
+ [Illustration: _The Twins_]
+
+
+
+
+ A PRINTER'S MADRIGAL
+
+ (_Extremely technical_)
+
+
+ I'd like to have you meet my wife!
+ I simply cannot keep from hinting
+ I've never seen, in all my life,
+ So fine a specimen of printing.
+
+ Her type is not some =bold-face= font,
+ Set solid. Nay! And I will say out
+ That no typographer could want
+ To see a better balanced layout.
+
+ A nice proportion of white space
+ There is for brown eyes to look large in,
+ And not a feature in her face
+ Comes anywhere too near the margin.
+
+ Locked up with all her sweet display
+ Her form will never pi. She's like a
+ Corrected proof marked _stet, O. K._--
+ And yet she loves me, fatface =Pica!=
+
+ She has a fine one-column head,
+ And like a comma curves each eyebrow--
+ Her forehead has an extra lead
+ Which makes her seem a trifle highbrow.
+
+ Her nose, _italicized brevier_,
+ Too lovely to describe by penpoint;
+ Her mouth is set in _pearl_: her ear
+ And chin are comely Caslon ten-point.
+
+ Her cheeks (a pink parenthesis)
+ Make my pulse beat 14-em measure,
+ And such typography as this
+ Would make =De Vinne= scream with pleasure.
+
+ And so, of all typefounder chaps
+ Her father's best, in my opinion;
+ She is my NONPAREIL (IN CAPS)
+ And I (in lower case) her _minion_.
+
+ I hope you will not stand aloof
+ Because my metaphors are shoppy;
+ Of her devotion I've a proof--
+ I tell the urchin, _Follow Copy_!
+
+
+
+
+ THE POET ON THE HEARTH
+
+
+ When fire is kindled on the dogs,
+ But still the stubborn oak delays,
+ Small embers laid above the logs
+ Will draw them into sudden blaze.
+
+ Just so the minor poet's part:
+ (A greater he need not desire)
+ The charcoals of his burning heart
+ May light some Master into fire!
+
+
+
+
+ O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY
+
+
+ O praise me not the country--
+ The meadows green and cool,
+ The solemn glow of sunsets, the hidden silver pool!
+ The city for my craving,
+ Her lordship and her slaving,
+ The hot stones of her paving
+ For me, a city fool!
+
+ O praise me not the leisure
+ Of gardened country seats,
+ The fountains on the terrace against the summer heats--
+ The city for my yearning,
+ My spending and my earning.
+ Her winding ways for learning,
+ Sing hey! the city streets!
+
+ O praise me not the country,
+ Her sycamores and bees,
+ I had my youthful plenty of sour apple trees!
+ The city for my wooing,
+ My dreaming and my doing;
+ Her beauty for pursuing,
+ Her deathless mysteries.
+
+ O praise me not the country,
+ Her evenings full of stars,
+ Her yachts upon the water with the wind among their spars--
+ The city for my wonder,
+ Her glory and her blunder,
+ And O the haunting thunder
+ Of the Elevated cars!
+
+
+ [Illustration: Seascape]
+
+
+
+
+ A STONE IN ST. PAUL'S GRAVEYARD
+
+ (New York)
+
+
+ _Here Lyes the Body of_
+ _Iohn Jones the Son of_
+ _Iohn Jones Who Departed_
+ _This Life December the 13_
+ _1768 Aged 4 Years & 4 Months & 2 Days_
+
+ Here, where enormous shadows creep,
+ He casts his childish shadow too:
+ How small he seems, beneath the steep
+ Great walls; his tender days, so few,
+ Lovingly numbered, every one--
+ John Jones, John Jones's little son.
+
+ O sunlight on the Lightning's wings!
+ Yet though our buildings skyward climb
+ Our heartbreaks are but little things
+ In the equality of Time.
+ The sum of life, for all men's stones:
+ He was John Jones, son of John Jones.
+
+
+
+
+ THE MADONNA OF THE CURB
+
+
+ On the curb of a city pavement,
+ By the ash and garbage cans,
+ In the stench and rolling thunder
+ Of motor trucks and vans,
+ There sits my little lady,
+ With brave but troubled eyes,
+ And in her arms a baby
+ That cries and cries and cries.
+
+ She cannot be more than seven;
+ But years go fast in the slums,
+ And hard on the pains of winter
+ The pitiless summer comes.
+ The wail of sickly children
+ She knows; she understands
+ The pangs of puny bodies,
+ The clutch of small hot hands.
+
+ In the deadly blaze of August,
+ That turns men faint and mad,
+ She quiets the peevish urchins
+
+ By telling a dream she had--
+ A heaven with marble counters,
+ And ice, and a singing fan;
+ And a God in white, so friendly,
+ Just like the drug-store man.
+
+ Her ragged dress is dearer
+ Than the perfect robe of a queen!
+ Poor little lass, who knows not
+ The blessing of being clean.
+ And when you are giving millions
+ To Belgian, Pole and Serb,
+ Remember my pitiful lady--
+ Madonna of the Curb!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _The wail of sickly children_
+ _She knows; she understands_
+ _The pangs of puny bodies,_
+ _The clutch of small hot hands._]
+
+
+
+
+ THE ISLAND
+
+
+ _A song for England?_
+ _Nay, what is a song for England?_
+
+ Our hearts go by green-cliffed Kinsale
+ Among the gulls' white wings,
+ Or where, on Kentish forelands pale
+ The lighthouse beacon swings:
+ Our hearts go up the Mersey's tide,
+ Come in on Suffolk foam--
+ The blood that will not be denied
+ Moves fast, and calls us home!
+
+ Our hearts now walk a secret round
+ On many a Cotswold hill,
+ For we are mixed of island ground,
+ The island draws us still:
+ Our hearts may pace a windy turn
+ Where Sussex downs are high,
+ Or watch the lights of London burn,
+ A bonfire in the sky!
+
+ What is the virtue of that soil
+ That flings her strength so wide?
+ Her ancient courage, patient toil,
+ Her stubborn wordless pride?
+ A little land, yet loved therein
+ As any land may be,
+ Rejoicing in her discipline,
+ The salt stress of the sea.
+
+ Our hearts shall walk a Sherwood track,
+ Our lips taste English rain,
+ We thrill to see the Union Jack
+ Across some deep-sea lane;
+ Though all the world be of rich cost
+ And marvellous with worth,
+ Yet if that island ground were lost
+ How empty were the earth!
+
+ _A song for England?_
+ _Lo, every word we speak's a song for England._
+
+
+
+
+ SUNDAY NIGHT
+
+
+ Two grave brown eyes, severely bent
+ Upon a memorandum book--
+ A sparkling face, on which are blent
+ A hopeful and a pensive look;
+ A pencil, purse, and book of checks
+ With stubs for varying amounts--
+ Elaine, the shrewdest of her sex,
+ Is busy balancing accounts.
+
+ Sedately, in the big armchair,
+ She, all engrossed, the audit scans--
+ Her pencil hovers here and there
+ The while she calculates and plans;
+ What's this? A faintly pensive frown
+ Upon her forehead gathers now--
+ Ah, does the butcher--heartless clown--
+ Beget that shadow on her brow?
+
+
+ A murrain on the tradesman churl
+ Who caused this fair accountant's gloom!
+ Just then--a baby's cry--my girl
+ Arose and swiftly left the room.
+ Then in her purse by stratagem
+ I thrust some bills of small amounts--
+ She'll think she had forgotten them,
+ And smile again at her accounts!
+
+
+ [Illustration:
+
+ _Ah, does the butcher--heartless clown--_
+ _Beget that shadow on her brow?_]
+
+
+
+ ENGLAND, JULY 1913
+
+ To Rupert Brooke
+
+
+ O England, England ... that July
+ How placidly the days went by!
+
+ Two years ago (how long it seems)
+ In that dear England of my dreams
+ I loved and smoked and laughed amain
+ And rode to Cambridge in the rain.
+ A careless godlike life was there!
+ To spin the roads with _Shotover_,
+ To dream while punting on the Cam,
+ To lie, and never give a damn
+ For anything but comradeship
+ And books to read and ale to sip,
+ And shandygaff at every inn
+ When _The Gorilla_ rode to Lynn!
+ O world of wheel and pipe and oar
+ In those old days before the War.
+
+ O poignant echoes of that time!
+ I hear the Oxford towers chime,
+ The throbbing of those mellow bells
+ And all the sweet old English smells--
+
+ The Deben water, quick with salt,
+ The Woodbridge brew-house and the malt;
+ The Suffolk villages, serene
+ With lads at cricket on the green,
+ And Wytham strawberries, so ripe,
+ And _Murray's Mixture_ in my pipe!
+
+ In those dear days, in those dear days,
+ All pleasant lay the country ways;
+ The echoes of our stalwart mirth
+ Went echoing wide around the earth
+ And in an endless bliss of sun
+ We lay and watched the river run.
+ And you by Cam and I by Isis
+ Were happy with our own devices.
+
+ Ah, can we ever know again
+ Such friends as were those chosen men,
+ Such men to drink, to bike, to smoke with,
+ To worship with, or lie and joke with?
+ Never again, my lads, we'll see
+ The life we led at twenty-three.
+ Never again, perhaps, shall I
+ Go flashing bravely down the High
+ To see, in that transcendent hour,
+ The sunset glow on Magdalen Tower.
+
+ Dear Rupert Brooke, your words recall
+ Those endless afternoons, and all
+ Your Cambridge--which I loved as one
+ Who was her grandson, not her son.
+ O ripples where the river slacks
+ In greening eddies round the "backs";
+ Where men have dreamed such gallant things
+ Under the old stone bridge at _King's_.
+ Or leaned to feed the silver swans
+ By the tennis meads at _John's_.
+ O Granta's water, cold and fresh,
+ Kissing the warm and eager flesh
+ Under the willow's breathing stir--
+ The bathing pool at _Grantchester_....
+ What words can tell, what words can praise
+ The burly savor of those days!
+
+ Dear singing lad, those days are dead
+ And gone for aye your golden head;
+ And many other well-loved men
+ Will never dine in Hall again.
+ I too have lived remembered hours
+ In Cambridge; heard the summer showers
+ Make music on old _Heffer's_ pane
+ While I was reading Pepys or Taine.
+ Through _Trumpington_ and _Grantchester_
+
+ I used to roll on _Shotover_;
+ At _Hauxton Bridge_ my lamp would light
+ And sleep in _Royston_ for the night.
+ Or to _Five Miles from Anywhere_
+ I used to scull; and sit and swear
+ While wasps attacked my bread and jam
+ Those summer evenings on the Cam.
+ (O crispy English cottage-loaves
+ Baked in ovens, not in stoves!
+ O white unsalted English butter
+ O satisfaction none can utter!)...
+
+ To think that while those joys I knew
+ In Cambridge, I did not know you.
+
+ July, 1915.
+
+
+
+
+ CASUALTY
+
+
+ A well-sharp'd pencil leads one on to write:
+ When guns are cocked, the shot is guaranteed;
+ The primed occasion puts the deed in sight:
+ Who steals a book who knows not how to read?
+
+ Seeing a pulpit, who can silence keep?
+ A maid, who would not dream her ta'en to wife?
+ Men looking down from some sheer dizzy steep
+ Have (quite impromptu) leapt, and ended life.
+
+
+
+
+ A GRUB STREET RECESSIONAL
+
+
+ O noble gracious English tongue
+ Whose fibers we so sadly twist,
+ For caitiff measures he has sung
+ Have pardon on the journalist.
+
+ For mumbled meter, leaden pun,
+ For slipshod rhyme, and lazy word,
+ Have pity on this graceless one--
+ Thy mercy on Thy servant, Lord!
+
+ The metaphors and tropes depart,
+ Our little clippings fade and bleach:
+ There is no virtue and no art
+ Save in straightforward Saxon speech.
+
+ Yet not in ignorance or spite,
+ Nor with Thy noble past forgot
+ We sinned: indeed we had to write
+ To keep a fire beneath the pot.
+
+ Then grant that in the coming time,
+ With inky hand and polished sleeve,
+ In lucid prose or honest rhyme
+ Some worthy task we may achieve--
+
+ Some pinnacled and marbled phrase,
+ Some lyric, breaking like the sea,
+ That we may learn, not hoping praise,
+ The gift of Thy simplicity.
+
+
+
+
+ PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR A
+ FUNERAL SERVICE: BEING A
+ POEM IN FOUR STANZAS
+
+
+ Say this poor fool misfeatured all his days,
+ And could not mend his ways;
+ And say he trod
+ Most heavily upon the corns of God.
+
+ But also say that in his clabbered brain
+ There was the essential pain--
+ The idiot's vow
+ To tell his troubled Truth, no matter how.
+
+ Unhappy fool, you say, with pitiful air:
+ Who was he, then, and where?
+ Ah, you divine
+ He lives in your heart, as he lives in mine.
+
+
+
+
+ [Illustration: To bed]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Chimneysmoke, by Christopher Morley
+
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