PROEM

"SO LET THEM PASS, THESE SONGS OF

MINE"

So let them pass, these songs of mine, Into oblivion, nor repine; Abandoned ruins of large schemes, Dimmed lights adrift from nobler dreams,

Weak wings I sped on quests divine, So let them pass, these songs of mine. They soar, or sink ephemeral-- I care not greatly which befall!

For if no song I e'er had wrought, Still have I loved and laughed and fought; So let them pass, these songs of mine; I sting too hot with life to whine!

Still shall I struggle, fail, aspire, Lose God, and find Gods in the mire, And drink dream-deep life's heady wine-- So let them pass, these songs of mine.

DAYLIGHT HUMORS

THIS IS ANOTHER DAY

I AM mine own priest, and I shrive myself Of all my wasted yesterdays. Though sin And sloth and foolishness, and all ill weeds Of error, evil, and neglect grow rank And ugly there, I dare forgive myself That error, sin, and sloth and foolishness. God knows that yesterday I played the fool; God knows that yesterday I played the knave; But shall I therefore cloud this new dawn o'er With fog of futile sighs and vain

regrets?

This is another day! And flushed Hope walks Adown the sunward slopes with golden shoon. This is another day; and its young strength Is laid upon the quivering hills until, Like Egypt's Memnon, they grow quick with song. This is another day, and the bold world Leaps up and grasps its light, and laughs, as leapt Prometheus up and wrenched the fire from Zeus. This is another day--are its eyes blurred With maudlin grief for any wasted past? A thousand thousand failures shall not daunt! Let dust clasp dust; death, death--I am alive! And out of all the dust and death of mine Old selves I dare to lift a singing heart And living faith; my spirit dares

drink deep Of the red mirth mantling in the cup of morn.

APRIL SONG

FLEET across the grasses Flash the feet of Spring, Piping, as he passes Fleet across the grasses, "Follow, lads and lasses! Sing, world, sing!" Fleet across the grasses Flash the feet of Spring!

Idle winds deliver Rumors through the town, Tales of reeds that quiver, Idle winds deliver, Where the rapid river Drags the willows down-- Idle winds deliver Rumors through the town.

In the country places By the silver brooks April airs her graces; In the country places Wayward April paces, Laughter in her looks; In the country places By the silver brooks.

Hints of alien glamor Even reach the town; Urban muses stammer Hints of alien glamor, But the city's clamor Beats the voices down; Hints of alien glamor Even reach the town.

THIS EARTH, IT IS ALSO A STAR

WHERE the singers of Saturn find tongue, Where the Galaxy's lovers embrace, Our world and its beauty are sung! They lean from their casements to trace If our planet still spins in its place; Faith fables the thing that we are, And Fantasy laughs and gives chase: This earth, it is also a star!

Round the sun, that is fixed, and hung For a lamp in the darkness of

space We are whirled, we are swirled, we are flung; Singing and shining we race And our light on the uplifted face Of dreamer or prophet afar May fall as a symbol of grace: This earth, it is also a star!

Looking out where our planet is swung Doubt loses his writhen grimace, Dry hearts drink the gleams and are young;-- Where agony's boughs interlace His Garden some Jesus may pace, Lifting, the wan avatar, His soul to this light as a vase! This earth, it is also a star!

Great spirits in sorrowful case Yearn to us through the vapors that bar: Canst think of that, soul, and be base?-- This earth, it is also a star!

THE NAME

IT shifts and shifts from form to form, It drifts and darkles, gleams and glows; It is the passion of the storm, The poignance of the rose; Through changing shapes, through devious ways, By noon or night, through cloud or flame, My heart has followed all my days Something I cannot name.

In sunlight on some woman's hair, Or starlight in some woman's eyne, Or in low laughter smothered where Her red lips wedded mine, My heart hath known, and thrilled to know, This unnamed presence that it sought; And when my heart hath found it so, "Love is the name," I thought.

Sometimes when sudden afterglows In futile glory storm the skies Within their transient gold and rose The secret stirs and dies; Or when the trampling morn walks o'er The troubled seas, with feet of flame, My awed heart whispers, "Ask no more, For Beauty is the name!"

Or dreaming in old chapels where The dim aisles pulse with murmurings That part are music, part are prayer-- (Or rush of hidden wings) Sometimes I lift a startled head To some saint's carven countenance, Half fancying that the lips have said, All names mean God, perchance!"

THE BIRTH

THERE is a legend that the love of God So quickened under Mary's

heart it wrought Her very maidenhood to holier stuff. . . . However that may be, the birth befell Upon a night when all the Syrian stars Swayed tremulous before one lordlier orb That rose in gradual splendor, Paused, Flooding the firmament with mystic light, And dropped upon the breathing hills A sudden music Like a distillation from its gleams; A rain of spirit and a dew of song!

A MOOD OF PAVLOWA

THE soul of the Spring through its body of earth Bursts in a bloom of fire, And the crocuses come in a rainbow riot of mirth.... They flutter, they burn, they take wing, they aspire. . . . Wings, motion and music and flame, Flower, woman and laughter, and all these the same! She is light and first love and the youth of the world, She is sandaled with joy . . . she is lifted and whirled, She is flung, she is swirled, she is driven along By the carnival winds that have torn her away From the coronal bloom on the brow of the May She

is youth, she is foam, she is flame, she is visible Song!

THE POOL

REACH over, my Undine, and clutch me a reed-- Nymph of mine idleness, notch me a pipe-- For I am fulfilled of the silence, and long For to utter the sense of the silence in song.

Down-stream all the rapids are troubled with pebbles That fetter and fret what the water would utter, And it rushes and splashes in tremulous trebles; It makes haste through the shallows, its soul is aflutter;

But here all the sound is serene and outspread In the murmurous moods of a slow-swirling pool; Here all the sounds are unhurried and cool; Every silence is kith to a sound; they are wed, They are mated, are mingled, are tangled, are bound; Every hush is in love with a sound, every sound By the law of its life to some silence is bound.

Then here will we hide; idle here and abide, In the covert here, close by the waterside-- Here, where the slim flattered reeds are aquiver With the exquisite hints of the reticent river, Here, where the lips of this pool are the lips Of all pools, let us listen and question and wait; Let us hark

to the whispers of love and of death, Let us hark to the lispings of life and of fate-- In this place where pale silences flower into sound Let us strive for some secret of all the profound Deep and calm Silence that meshes men 'round! There's as much of God hinted in one ripple's plashes-

- There's as much of Truth glints in yon dragon- fly's flight-- There's as much Purpose gleams where yonder trout flashes As in--any book else!--could we read things aright.

Then nymph of mine indolence, here let us hide, Learn, listen, and question; idle here and abide Where the rushes and lilies lean low to the tide.

"THEY HAD NO POET . . ."

"Vain was the chief's, the sage's pride! They had no poet and they died."--POPE.

By Tigris, or the streams of Ind, Ere Colchis rose, or Babylon, Forgotten empires dreamed and sinned, Setting tall towns against the dawn,

Which, when the proud Sun smote upon, Flashed fire for fire and pride for pride; Their names were . . . Ask oblivion! . . . "They had no poet, and they died."

Queens, dusk of hair and tawny-skinned, That loll where fellow leopards fawn . . . Their hearts are dust before the wind, Their loves, that shook the world, are wan!

Passion is mighty . . . but, anon, Strong Death has Romance for his bride; Their legends . . . Ask oblivion! . . . "They had no poet, and they died."

Heroes, the braggart trumps that dinned Their futile triumphs, monarch, pawn, Wild tribesmen, kingdoms disciplined, Passed like a whirlwind and were gone;

They built with bronze and gold and brawn, The inner Vision still denied; Their conquests . . . Ask oblivion! . . . "They had no poet, and they died."

Dumb oracles, and priests withdrawn, Was it but flesh they deified? Their gods were . . . Ask oblivion! . . . "They had no poet, and they died."

NEW YORK

SHE is hot to the sea that crouches beside, Human and hot to the cool stars peering down, My passionate city, my quivering town, And her dark blood, tide upon purple tide, With throbs as of thunder beats, With leaping rhythms and vast, is swirled Through the shaken lengths of her veined streets... She pulses, the heart of a world!

I have thrilled with her ecstasy, agony, woe-- Hath she a mood that I do not know? The winds of her music tumultuous have seized me and swayed me, Have lifted, have swung me around In their whorls as of cyclonic sound; Her passions have torn me and tossed me and brayed me; Drunken and tranced and dazzled with visions and gleams,

I have spun with her dervish priests; I have searched to the souls of her hunted beasts And found love sleeping there; I have soared on the wings of her flashing dreams; I have sunk with her dull despair; I have sweat with her travails and cursed with her pains; I have swelled with her foolish pride; I have raged through a thick red mist at one with her branded Cains, With her broken Christs have died.

O beautiful half-god city of visions and love! O hideous half-brute city of hate! O wholly human and baffled and passionate town! The throes of thy burgeoning, stress of thy fight, Thy bitter, blind struggle to gain for thy body a soul, I have known, I have felt, and been shaken thereby! Wakened and shaken and broken, For I hear in thy thunders terrific that throb through thy rapid veins The beat of the heart of a world.

A HYMN

(1914)

CLOTHED on with thunder and with steel And black against the dawn The whirling armies clash and reel. . . . A wind, and they are gone Like mists withdrawn, Like mists withdrawn!

Like clouds withdrawn, like driven sands, Earth's body vanisheth:

One solid thing unconquered stands, The ghost that humbles death. All else is breath, All else is breath!

Man rose from out the stinging slime, Half brute, and sought a soul, And up the starrier ways of time, Half god, unto his goal,

He still must climb, He still must climb!

What though worlds stagger, and the suns Seem shaken in their place, Trust thou the leaping love that runs Creative over space: Take heart of grace, Take heart of grace!

What though great kingdoms fall on death Before the stabbing blade, Their brazen might was only breath, Their substance but a shade-- Be not dismayed, Be not dismayed!

Man's dream which conquered brute and clod Shall fail not, but endure, Shall rise, though beaten to the sod, Shall hold its vantage sure-

- As sure as God, As sure as God!

THE SINGER

A LITTLE while, with love and youth, He wandered, singing:-- He felt life's pulses hot and strong Beat all his rapid veins along; He wrought life's rhythms into song: He laughed, he sang the Dawn! So close, so close to life he dwelt That at rare times and rapt he felt The fleshly barriers yield and melt; He trembled, looking on Creation at her miracles; His soul-sight pierced the earthly shells And saw the spirit weave its spells, The veil of clay withdrawn;-- A little while, with love and youth, He wandered, singing!

A little while, with age and death, He wanders, dreaming;--

No more the thunder and the urge Of earth's full tides that storm the verge Of heaven with their sweep and surge Shall lift, shall bear him on; Where is the golden hope that led Him comrade with the mighty dead? The love that aureoled his head?-- The glory is withdrawn! How shall one soar with broken wings? The leagued might of futile things Wars with the heart that dares and sings;-- It is not always Dawn! A little while, with age and death, He wanders, dreaming.

WORDS ARE NOT GUNS

Put by the sword (a dreamer saith), The years of peace draw nigh!

Already the millennial dawn Makes red the eastern sky!

Be not deceived. It comes not yet! The ancient passions keep Alive beneath their changing masks. They are not dead. They sleep.

Surely peace comes. As sure as Man Rose from primeval slime.

That was not yesterday. There's still A weary height to climb!

And we can dwell too long with dreams And play too much with words, Forgetting our inheritance Was bought and held with swords.

But Truth (you say) makes tyrants quail-- Beats down embattled Wrong? If truth be armed! Be not deceived. The strife is to the strong.

Words are not guns. Words are not ships. And ships and guns prevail. Our liberties, that blood has gained, Are guarded, or they fail.

Truth does not triumph without blows, Error not tamely yields. But falsehood closes with quick faith, Fierce, on a thousand fields.

And surely, somewhat of that faith Our fathers fought for clings! Which called this freedom's hemisphere, Despite Earth's leagued kings.

Great creeds grow thews, or else they die. Thought clothed in deed is lord. What are thy gods? Thy gods brought love? They also brought a sword.

Unchallenged, shall we always stand, Secure, apart, aloof? Be not deceived. That hour shall come Which puts us to the proof.

Then, that we hold the trust we have Safeguarded for our sons, Let us cease dreaming! Let us have More ships, more troops, more guns!

WITH THE SUBMARINES

ABOVE, the baffled twilight fails; beneath, the blind snakes creep; Beside us glides the charnel shark, our pilot through the deep; And, lurking where low headlands shield from cruising scout and spy, We bide the signal through the gloom that bids us slay or die.

All watchful, mute, the crouching guns that guard the strait sea lanes-- Watchful and hawklike, plumed with hate, the desperate aeroplanes-- And still as death and swift as fate, above the darkling coasts, The spying Wireless sows the night with troops of stealthy ghosts,

While hushed through all her huddled streets the tide-walled city waits The drumming thunders that announce brute battle at her gates. Southward a hundred windy leagues, through storms that blind and bar, Our cheated cruisers search the waves, our cap- tains seek the war; But here the port of peril is; the foeman's dread- noughts ride Sullen and black against the moon, upon a sullen tide. And only we to launch ourselves against their stark advance-- To guide

uncertain lightnings through these treach- erous seas of chance!

. . . . . .

And now a wheeling searchlight paints a signal on the night; And now the bellowing guns are loud with the wild lust of fight.

. . . . . .

And now, her flanks of steel apulse with all the power of hell, Forth from the darkness leaps in pride a hateful miracle, The flagship of their Admiral--and now God help and save!-- We challenge Death at Death's own game; we sink beneath the wave!

. . . . . .

Ah, steady now--and one good blow--one straight stab through the gloom-- Ah, good!--the thrust went home!--she founders-- flounders to her doom!-- Full speed ahead!--those damned quick-firing guns --but let them bark-- What's that--the dynamos?--they've got us, men! --Christ! in the dark!

NICHOLAS OF MONTENEGRO (1912)

HE speaks as straight as his rifles shot, As straight as a thrusting blade, Waiting the deed that shall trouble the truce His savage guns have made.

"You have dared the wrath of a dozen states," Was the challenge that he heard; "We can die but once!" said the grim old King As he gripped his mountain sword.

"For I paid in blood for the town I took, The blood of my brave men slain,-- And if you covet the town I took You must buy it with blood again!"

Stern old King of the stark, black hills, Where the lean, fierce

eagles breed, Your speech rings true as your good sword rings-- And you are a king indeed!

DICKENS

"The only book that the party had was a volume of Dickens. During the six months that they lay in the cave which they had hacked in the ice, waiting for spring to come, they read this volume through again and again."--From a newspaper report of an antarctic expedition.

HUDDLED within their savage lair They hearkened to the prowling wind; They heard the loud wings of despair . . . And madness beat against the mind. . . . A sunless world stretched stark outside As if it had cursed God and died; Dumb plains lay prone beneath the weight Of cold unutterably great; Iron ice bound all the bitter seas, The brutal hills were bleak as hate. . . . Here none but Death might walk at ease!

Then Dickens spoke, and, lo! the vast Unpeopled void stirred into life;

The dead world quickened, the mad blast Hushed for an hour its idiot strife With nothingness. . . .

And from the gloom, Parting the flaps of frozen skin, Old friends and dear came trooping in, And light and laughter filled the room. . . . Voices and faces, shapes beloved, Babbling lips and kindly eyes, Not ghosts, but friends that lived and moved . . . They brought the sun from other skies, They wrought the magic that dispels The bitterer part of loneliness . . . And when they vanished each man dreamed His dream there in the wilderness. One

heard the chime of Christmas bells, And, staring down a country lane, Saw bright against the window-pane The firelight beckon warm and red. . . .

And one turned from the waterside Where Thames rolls down his slothful tide To breast the human sea that beats Through roaring London's battered streets

And revel in the moods of men. . . . And one saw all the April hills Made glad with golden daffodils, And found and kissed his love again. . . .

. . . . . .

By all the troubled hearts he cheers In homely ways or by lost trails,

By all light shed through all dark years When hope grows sick and courage quails, We hail him first among his peers; Whether we sorrow, sing, or feast, He, too, hath known and understood-- Master of many moods, high priest Of mirth and lord of cleansing tears!

A POLITICIAN

LEADER no more, be judged of us! Hailed Chief, and loved, of yore-- Youth, and the faith of youth, cry out: Leader and Chief no more!

We dreamed a Prophet, flushed with faith, Content to toil in pain If that his sacrifice might be, Somehow, his people's gain.

We saw a vision, and our blood Beat red and hot and strong: "Lead us (we cried) to war against Some foul, embattled wrong!"

We dreamed a Warrior whose sword Was edged for sham and shame; We dreamed a Statesman far above The vulgar lust for fame.

We were not cynics, and we dreamed A Man who made no truce With lies nor ancient privilege Nor old, entrenched abuse.

We dreamed . . . we dreamed . . . Youth dreamed a dream! And even you forgot Yourself, one moment, and dreamed, too-- Struck, while your mood was hot!

Struck three or four good blows . . . and then Turned back to easier things: The cheap applause, the blatant mob, The praise of underlings!

Praise . . . praise . . . was ever man so filled, So avid still, of praise?

So hungry for the crowd's acclaim, The sycophantic phrase?

O you whom Greatness beckoned to . . . O swollen Littleness Who turned from Immortality To fawn upon Success!

O blind with love of self, who led Youth's vision to defeat, Bawling and brawling for rewards, Loud, in the common street!

O you who were so quick to judge-- Leader, and loved, of yore-- Hear now the judgment of our youth: Leader and Chief no more!

THE BAYONET

(1914)

THE great guns slay from a league away, the death- bolts fly unseen, And bellowing hill replies to hill, machine to brute machine, But still in the end when the long lines bend and the battle hangs in doubt They take to the steel in the same old way that their fathers fought it out-- It is man to man and breast to breast and eye to bloodshot eye And the reach and twist of the thrusting wrist, as it was in the days gone by!

Along the shaken hills the guns their drumming thunder roll-- But the keen blades thrill with the lust to kill that leaps from the slayer's soul!

For hand and heart and living steel, one pulse of hate they feel. Is your clan afraid of the naked blade? Does it flinch from the bitter steel? Perish your dreams of conquest then, your swollen hopes and bold, For empire dwells with the stabbing blade, as it did in the days of old!

THE BUTCHERS AT PRAYER

(1914)

EACH nation as it draws the sword And flings its standard to the air Petitions piously the Lord-- Vexing the void abyss with prayer.

O irony too deep for mirth! O posturing apes that rant, and dare This antic attitude! O Earth, With your wild jest of wicked prayer!

I dare not laugh . . . a rising swell Of laughter breaks in shrieks somewhere-- No doubt they relish it in Hell, This cosmic jest of Earth at prayer!