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Title: Wampum and Old Gold

Author: Hervey Allen

Release date: August 24, 2021 [eBook #66133]

Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66133

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAMPUM AND OLD GOLD ***

Wampum and Old Gold

HERVEY ALLEN

NEW HAVEN * YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

LONDON * HUMPHREY MILFORD * OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

MDCCCCXXI

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

For permission to reprint poems appearing in this volume, thanks are due to the editors of The North American Review, The New Republic, Contemporary Verse, Life, La France, Harvey's Weekly, The Southern Review, The New York Times, The Boston Evening Transcript.

TO

FRANCIS FOWLER HOGAN

SOLDIER POET

CORPORAL FOURTH UNITED STATES INFANTRY

KILLED IN ACTION IN THE ARGONNE FOREST

OCTOBER SEVENTEENTH

1918

"Though my hands have not learned to model

The dreams of a groping mind,

Though my lips have not spoken their music

And are leaving no songs behind,

Think not that my life has been futile,

Nor grieve for an unsaid word,

For all that my lips might never sing

My singing heart has heard.

"I have etched the light on a willow

With neither a plate nor style;

I have made a song of the crescent moon

And a poem of only a smile;

Are they less because lips could not know them,

These songs that my heart has known?

Am I wholly mute who have sung with my heart

And sung with my heart alone?"

F. F. H.

CONTENTS.

POEMS WRITTEN SINCE 1918:

Confession

Despair

Vale

Aftermath

Hylas

Bacchus Is Gone

Tiger Lilies

Three Landscape Moods:

Youth

High Tide o' Life

Old Age

The Hermitage of Bells

The Seasons:

Spring's Pilgrimage

Summer

Autumn Portents

Autumn Invocation

Dream Fragment

When Shady Avenue Was Shady Lane

Triangles vs. Circles

The Old Judge

Bewitched

The Wingless Victory

POEMS WRITTEN IN FRANCE AT THE FRONT:

The Blindman

Hands Off

Soldier-Poet

Doomed

White Light

Beaumont

Villiers Le Bel Gonnesse

Dragon's Breath

We

POEMS WRITTEN SINCE 1918

CONFESSION.

I think, by God! It is no lie;

I shall go dreaming till I die!

There is no love so real to me

As the cold passion of the sea.

There is no little, wind-swept town

By harbors where the roads go down,

Or headland gray that sits and sips

The cup of ocean at its lips,

And gazes at the far-off ships—

Or tree or house or friend so real

As visions and the dreams I feel.

No—not the windy, vaultless arch

Where all the white stars flame and march,

Nor water at the river fords

Like horses mad among the swords,

Or oaks that lean from winter storms;

These only give my vision forms.

Away! White hands, I will not take!

And kissing mouths that cry, "Awake!"

For you I have no gramercy;

So leave me by my lotus tree,

To dream and gaze into the sky

Where red suns wither up and die,

I know! I know! I do not lie!

I shall go dreaming till I die!

DESPAIR.

You who made me

With first ecstasy

When I was sown,

And lovely things at night

I will not write

And burdened moan,

While veiny labyrinths with mystery ran

Till time and blood were life

And I began—

By holier things than God,

Or any other shibboleth of man,

Dead woman wan,

By the thin, silver scream that winter morn

In the dim, shuttered room where I was born,

Be gone!

Haunt me no more, Shroud Trailer,

Go to bed.

For the swift, golden wings I owe to you

Flap in the dust like some loose, common shoe;

Stay dead, stay dead!

I fear your glimmering bust in utter air,

The transparent eyes with shadowy stare,

The sleepy, sleepy scent of flowers

And the long hands—

They fill me with despair.

Touch me no more at night.

Borrow no form for me

Of sound or sight;

For all my days are spent by cluttered streams,

Distracted by a thousand things and faces,

And all unuttered die great dreams

Among the stagnant places.

I am not what you gave your life to buy,

And God knows what I shall be by and by!

The motes of habit sift down grain by grain,

Till I am what I am in heart and brain,

So young—so old—

Death keep you, darling,

Deaf and blind and cold.

VALE.

I love the little vale between your breasts,

But yet, farewell, for that is never still;

My garden far from you will be at rest

With lakes asleep beside a brooding hill

And cedar swales in hollow valley lands

With S-like streams between the O-shaped ponds,

Where grow frail ferns with upturned Gothic hands

And prayerful fronds.

In gray half-lights 'twill be a lovely thing

By Gypsy paths to wander at hearts-ease

Near campaniles where the bell folk sing

Down terraces of rustling linden trees,

And two hills like your breasts will be in death,

When lamps will cast their shadows silently,

Will rise still blue above the yellow corn

That ripples with a sleepy mystery.

AFTERMATH.

Under the placid surface of the days

So seeming clear,

Back of the habits of old ways,

A quiet fear;

The locked-up memories of war,

Our Bluebeard's room,

Where the blood creeps underneath the door.

Never will come

In streams of days that ring

Like clean coins down the merry grooves of change,

One without grief's alloy,

Struck from pure gold of joy,

Undimmed by unshed tears,

Nor is it strange.

For in the wraith-thronged brain

Are private ghosts of pain,

Aloof, like patient sick men in a crowd

With half-veiled faces and old sorrow bowed—

Ah! The free days can never come again!

They passed with the far, rolling drums,

Died to the moan and thunder of the guns,

And the mad, glad, clear, lyric birdsong never comes.

HYLAS.

Theocritus, Idyll XIII.

Where art thou, Hylas,

Of the golden locks?

Where art thou, Argive lad,

That fed thy flocks

In wind-swept Thessaly,

Beside the sea?

Alas! Alas! for thee,

Hylas, Alas!

I.

When the Pleiads rose no more

Rowed the heroes to the shore,

Much in fear of winter gales,

And they furled the wing-like sails,

Carrying up the corded bales

From the hollow, oaken Argo

Till they lightened her of cargo.

Then they beached her for the winter

Where nor rocks nor waves could splinter

There the heroes made their camp

By the whispering seashore damp,

But the mighty Heracles,

Tired of looking at the seas,

Rose and left those sounding beaches

For the upland's wind-swept reaches.

In a little beechwood gray

Hylas fed his flock that day,

Playing all alone but gayly

Where he fed his lambkins daily,

Singing to a five-stringed psalter

By a little woodland altar,

Where a shepherd's fire of oak

Made a ribbon scarf of smoke,

Curling highly, thinly, bluely,

From the faggots cut but newly.

Moving with a god-like ease,

Through the gray boles of the trees,

Hylas first spied Heracles,

Looming vast as huge Orion,

Tawny in his skin of lion;

While through interspace of leaves,

Through the network autumn weaves,

Fell bronze sunshine and bronze leaves

On the lion skin with its paws,

Dangling, fringed with crescent claws.

Softly all the flock were bleating

As he gave the lad good greeting,

Rubbing down with leaves his club,

Mighty as a chariot hub—

Hylas stood with golden locks,

Glowing mid the lichened rocks,

Laughing in the silver beeches,

White as milk and tanned like peaches.

Then the hero loved the lad,

For his beauty made him glad,

And he took him on his knees;

Tender was huge Heracles,

Telling him of strange journeys

To the far Hesperides,

Crossing oceans in a bowl,

Till he won him heart and soul.

So these two were friends forever,

Never seen apart, together

Were they all that winter weather.

And the hero taught the youth

How to shoot and tell the truth,

How to drive a furrow straight,

Plowing, plowing, very early

When the frosty grass was curly—

Taught him how to play the lyre,

Till each wire, and wire, and wire

Sang together like a choir;

And at night young Hylas crept

In the lion skin where he slept

Where the lowing oxen team

Stood beneath the smoke-browned beam,

Slept beside the hero clypt

By the giant, downy lipped.

Centuries have fled away

Since the hero came that day

To the little beechwood gray

Where young Hylas was at play;

But I shall, as poets may,

Wreathe these roses for his head,

For his beauty is not dead.

And a voice has sung to me

Like a memory of the sea,

Sung this ancient threnody,

Like an autumn melody:

"Alas! Alas! for thee,

Hylas, Alas!"

II.

When the springtime came again

And the shepherd to his spen

Led his cloudy flock again,

When the awkward lambkins bounded

While the twin pipes whistling sounded,

And old Charon from his glen

Saw below the smoke of men

Curling thinly from the trees,

Then the heroes sought the seas.

Then the Argo left the shore,

For each eager warrior thought,

When the Pleiads rose once more,

Of the golden fleece he sought.

Hylas went with Heracles,

Dancing to the dancing seas,

And he stood high in the bow,

Golden by the carven prow,

Or he lay within the furls

With the sea damp on his curls.

But at home his mother wept

With her hair upon the floor,

By the hearth where he had slept,

For her woman's heart was sore,

Saying, "He is gone from me!

Gone across the sounding sea!

Ai! Ai! Woe is me!

Alas! Alas! for thee,

Hylas, Alas!"

With the soft, south wind to follow

All the day the sail was hollow,

While the marvelous Orpheus sang,

Till the water furrows rang—

Never man sang as he sang—

Never man has sung the same—

And the ship flew till they came

Where the olive trees are gaunt

By the winding Hellespont,

And the Cian oxen wear

Water-bright the bronze plowshare.

On a fallow meadow hollow,

Where the Cian cattle wallow,

There they landed two by two;

They the grass and rushes strew

For their bed,

Leaves and pointed flag stocks callow,

Foot and head.

And the evening coming on,

Heracles and Telamon

Set the supper fires upleaping

And the shadows swooping, sweeping

Overhead.

Meanwhile, Hylas with a vase

Wandered inland through the haze,

Hoping there to fill his bronze,

Girt about with goat-foot fauns,

Polished.

And around and twice around it,

Where an inwrought girdle bound it,

Fled the rout of chaste Diana,

Goddess led.

Inland in a cup-shaped vale

Willow swart and galingale

Grew with swallowwort and sparsely

Maidenhair and blooming parsley,

And the shallow's level glass

Mirrored back the yellow grass

Where the swallow dipped his wings,

Making rings on rings in rings.

There a nymph dance was afoot

Where the country people put

Cloth and oaten cakes and bread

For the water spirits dread—

Two and two and in and out,

Three and two, around about,

Hands around and then they vanished,

Leaving Hylas there astonished.

But at last he stooped to dip

And the eager water slipped,

Stuttering past the metal lip,

Choking like a sunk bell rung—

Suddenly white nymph hands clung

Cold as iron around his arm

Till he cried out in alarm.

Gave a little silver cry

And the swallow skimming nigh

Darted higher in the sky,

And the echo when he spoke—

Awoke.

Now the white hands tighter cling,

Now the funneled water ring

Fills and flows till in its glass

Nods again the nodding grass.

Alas! Alas! for thee,

Hylas, Alas!

Then it was that Heracles

For sweet Hylas ill at ease,

Left the heroes by the fire,

Strung his bowstring taut as wire,

Went to look for Hylas inland

Past a little rocky headland,

Rising higher ever higher

Till he found the cup-shaped dale,

Where he called without avail,

Shouting loudly, "Hylas, Hylas,"

Echo answered back, "Alas,"

Echo answered very slowly,

Speaking sorrowfully and lowly,

When he called the lad, "Hy-las,"

Hollow echo said, "Alas."

And he never found him more

On the hill or by the shore,

On the upland, on the downland,

Never found him where he lay

Down among the boulders gray,

Limp among the watery rocks,

Where the lily raised its chalice

And the dread nymphs combed his locks,

Pale Nycheia, April-eyed,

And white Eunice and Malis.

For his voice came down to these

Vague as April in the trees,

Filtered through the water clear

Far and faint yet strangely near,

Very thin—

And no echo could they hear

Only ripples' silver din

And the dull splash of an otter;

Echo cannot live in water.

But that echo comes to me

Down through half eternity

Crying out, "Alas—Alas!"

For all beauty that must pass

Like a picture from a glass—

When time breathes it is not there—

Bony hands and coffined hair!

Alas! Alas! Alas!

BACCHUS IS GONE.

Bacchus is gone!

I saw him leave the shore

Upon a moonless time,

And he is gone—is gone—

Forevermore.

I saw the satyrs and the bacchanals—

Bacchus is gone—is gone—

With smoking torches as at funerals

Light him across the sea at dawn.

I saw the whimpering pards

Where he had passed—

Bacchus is gone—is gone—

Sniff to the water's edge,

Where purple stained, his footprints led—

I heard the Goat-foot whisper in the hedge,

"Bacchus is dead—is dead,"

And go aghast,

Snapping the myrtle branches as he fled.

Bacchus is gone!

And with him dancing Folly—

Bacchus is dead—is dead—

Oh, Melancholy!

No! No! He is not dead; he has but fled

To kindlier lands he knew in days before

Men snatched the purple roses from his head.

He does but wanton by some liberal shore—

Sun kissed—

And wreathed with vine leaves as of old,

With spotted beasts and maidens by his car,

And sound of timbrels like a story told

Of youth and love and blood and wine and war.

TIGER LILIES.

They make me think of battlefields I saw

Where butterflies with wings of sulphurous gold

Crawled on gray faces death had made obscene

That stared with stolid dolls' eyes from the mold.

They make me think of pools of wimpled slime,

Where lizards bask upon the quaking crust,

And crumbling walls where hairy spiders weave

And snakes lie coupling in the summer dust.

I think it must have been along the Nile

That first these speckled membranes burst the pod,

Before the boy-flat breasts of some half-cat

Half-man and beryl-eyed Egyptian god.

Or first they grew about forgotten tombs

The apes inherit in hot jungles where

Like xanthic suns through aquid shade of leaves

A spotted leopard's dilate pupils stare.

These were the mottled blossoms of Gomorrah,

Wreathed on beast-gods by priestly Sodomites,

By Baal fires when the talking timbrel's sound

Fell from Astarte's groves on full moon nights.

They suck a yellow venom from the sun

And mid their reedy stocks there comes and goes

The forked, black lightning of a serpent's tongue

That hisses as his slippery body flows.

Such lilies bloom beside the gates of hell

And poison honey festers in their pods,

Olid as tales of lust told long ago

About the wanton mother of the gods.

And I would plant them by the lichened tomb

Of that veiled queen who died of leprosy

With two red princes smothered in her womb;

Their roots would feed on her in secrecy.

THREE LANDSCAPE MOODS.

The First: Youth.

Youth is a vale afire with hollyhocks,

Robbed by those greedy publicans the bees,

Where cuckoos call like fairy story clocks

And blue-jays holla in the apple trees.

No thunderheads come up with black despair

To dim its arching orchard's leafy sheen,

But clouds like ivory towers pile in air

And gothic woods stand, cloistered, cool and green.

It is a glade where earliest flowers grow,

Along the melting snowbanks in the spring,

The waxen-stemmed anemones first show,

And Madame Woodthrush preens her dainty wing.

White hyacinths like masts with flower spars

Stand in the woods and dot each bosky lawn,

Like distant sails or clusters of pale stars

Against an emerald sky at early dawn.

Cleft in life's hills, Youth is a sheltered swale

Where for a while we lie in indolence

And watch time's waterfall thin as a veil

That falls and hangs and smokes in long suspense,

And there a fountain spouts of purest joy

That feeds the fall, birds whistle on its brim,

Often I lay beside it when a boy

And saw the future mirrored vague and dim—

Heaven was there a strangely clouded page,

Two rivers on the plains met like a "Y,"

And blue as ghosts the mountains of old age

Rolled down the western sky.

The Second: High Tide o' Life.

High Tide o' Life's a city by the sea,

By tide rips where the flood comes shouting in,

On straits that bring up ships with spicèd freights

And sails as scarlet as a woman's sin.

A mart where merchants chaffer on the docks

For pearls and feather work and jewel'd shoon,

And hurry off to feast when all the clocks

Strike anvil-tongued a thousand-noted noon.

High Tide o' Life's a city proudly vain,

With minarets from whence men can descry,

Like domes of giants' houses, chain on chain,

Death's arid mountains arabesque the sky.

And hoary uplands wave with tasseled corn,

And long sun pencils strike the hills, afar,

The walled towns smolder in the fire of morn

Like embers of a sullen, fallen star.

High Tide o' Life's an upland where no breath

Of frost has ever crept across the grass,

But days as idle as a shibboleth

Like golden coins are quickly spent. They pass

In hidden valleys fit for secret lust,

Where strange winged-sins like griffin-hippogryphs

Bask with their glittering scales in white-hot dust

Along a sunstruck face of basalt cliffs.

It is an isle in red, witch-haunted seas

Where lovers' nights, the jade-faced moon stands still,

Pouring an amber twilight through the trees,

Across the copper ocean and the hill.

High Tide o' Life's a plain laid easterly

In realms ruled over by some fabled Djinn

Where rivers blue as lapis-lazuli

Rush down to meet the flood tides roaring in.

The Third: Old Age.

Old age is like a bleak plateau,

About—around—the dead leaves blow

In shouting, keening winter wind,

Below life's plains lie cloud bedimmed

Below.

In long gray lines the dead leaves go,

The stone blue shadows limn the snow,

The thwacking branches creak and mutter

In scarecrow desolation utter.

In scarecrow

Clothes the last leaves flutter

And in dry hollows rasp and putter

About the starved, old, carven faces,

Around the ancient burial places

About, around, below.

That land is very old and lonely

Beneath—among—the cliffs its only

Hope is kindling firelight

Before the coming of the night,

Before

There are no travelers there

Left any more to come and share

The shelter from the ghost wolves' patter,

The helter-skelter, bony clatter

The helter-skelter

And the scatter

Of riven, driven souls that chatter

Beneath the cliffs, while in and out

Among them raves the death wolves' rout,

Beneath, among, before.

And ever from each waning fire

Away—away—against desire

The death wolves snatch their struggling toll,

And snarl and harry down a soul,

And snarl

And harry down one other,

And then another and another,

To where Death sits, an idiot,

That stirs all things into a pot,

That stirs

Till everything is nought

Except the stirrer and the pot;

Beside eternities midriff,

Where time is bordered by a cliff,

With creaking bones and dismal whoop

He makes God's bitter charnel soup—

"Away," he cries, "or we shall quarrel,

Away, my wolves, for more and snarl

Away! Away! and snarl."

THE HERMITAGE OF BELLS.

A Drama of Sound.

Dramatis Personae.

The King.

The Queen.

The World,

The Five Bells.

The Earth.

Time: The Middle Ages.

Place: Lusitania.

I.

The king builds a hermitage from life and passion wherein he hangs many bells.

The king has built a hermitage of bells

Beyond the city walls upon a hill,

Save when the bells are ringing for the king,

His garden by the sea is forest still,

Set on a cape curved like a hunter's horn,

Rock terraced like the temples of Cathay,

It overlooks the town and fields of corn

And glimpses topsail-ships at break of day.

And there a deep spring flows called Blanchefontaine

That sings a deathlike monody of rest,

All night the sick moon totters on its alban waters—

It drips a sound like summer rain,

When the sun opens up his eye,

Until he stares like Cyclops from the west.

It slips through oak groves with an easy motion,

Twinkling like starlight from its shady source,

Three times it curves before it meets the ocean

Across the tide rip hoarse.

Like the bells in the garden, the water speaks of peace and sleep.

Farther up

The oak groves end abrupt,

But down that narrow valley

Like a darkened alley,

The water falls and calls

And seeps and leaps

And speaks by waterfalls;

Till the wanderer believes

There are voices in the leaves,

Whispering like thirsty lips,

Calling like muffled bells from misty ships,

Gurgling like pigeons from the eaves—

It is a demon din

Of subterranean voices old and thin,

An elfin carillon the water rings

As it sweeps on.

Halfway in that night

Of oak twilight,

Where the stream dashes down a verge,

The sound of ocean and of river merge.

And it is strange to see

The leaves whirl eerily,

When like an icy kiss,

Comes the long withering hiss

Of the tormented sea.

The world, knowing only itself, thinks the king is mad or bewitched to leave it and the love of the queen for solitude.

The king is melancholy mad, I guess,

To dwell in such a dim and rustling place,

Perhaps he has a sin beyond redress,

Perhaps he sees him visions of a face.

Some say it is a bell

Has lured him to the garden by a spell,

And that the spell is holy;

Holy or not, it's melancholy!

For when the queen rides to him from the town,

With two maids posting, one on either side,

Her face is veiled with black when she rides down—

Like mourners by a hearse her two maids ride—

Her face is veiled with black,

The reins hang slack;

Some say she weeps,

But who can tell?

Why should the queen weep when she hears a bell?

The queen, desiring the love of her lord above all things, calls him from his garden, but is mocked by the voice of the solitude.

She stops by the gate blind-walled;

Mary! What called?

Did something die?

What answered back?

Did the queen shriek behind her veil of black?

Something said, "O," "O," "O"

With the voice of the queen's own woe!

Was it demon or echo?

It had an "O"-shaped mouth

And a voice like the wind in the south.

It mocked her like a child,

Each time less loud

And much more mild.

The unchanging attitude of nature makes the king fall in love with the earth.

The king, I guess, has lost his wits;

It must be so!

All day he sits

Where mast-straight poplars grow,

Four here, four there, foursquare,

Like columns in a row,

Still as the shadow on a mountain,

And in the middle is a fountain,

Held by two marble boys,

Whence the water falls with a sleepy noise.

It is a madman's choice

To listen to that fountain's voice.

It must be so!

In his garden he finds a peace like death in life.

For never comes to that enchanted place

A sound but of the water, sea, and bells;

The shadows lie like tattered lace.

One mood is fixed there and forever,

Like a look on a dead man's face,

Like a week of summer weather,

I would that I might lay my head on such a bed,

Where dreams make spells—

So must the king think when he hears the bells.

II.

In his youth the king heard a hermit's bell and in the ineffable peace of its sound realized the deepest longing of his heart.

Once in his youth,

While his new ears could yet distinguish truth,

He heard a listless bell clang langorously,

A liquid, languid clamor,

The talking tone of iron struck by the hammer,

A sound that blew like smoke across the sea,

Low, slow and trembling dreamfully

From the high, horn-shaped cape;

For there a hermit lived

And tended the wild grape,

Where white, campaniform, small lilies teem,

And there he died beside his cell,

Lost in his dream of heaven and of hell;

And the bell was the voice of that old dream.

One Lusitanian summer, long ago,

Upon a hot and azure afternoon,

While the oars trailed

And with the tide they sailed,

And tenor zithers an ivory tune—

Along cerulean coasts,

With islands like blue ghosts,

Rang the lone hermit's bell,

"Alone-lin-lang-alone,"

Clear as a wounded angel's voice,

Soft as a death spell that old women croon—

The harbor gulf lay placid,

And in the west there hung a half a moon.

Through all his life the bell never ceases to lure him. Weak from wounds, he sees a vision of the peace of death in life in the hermit's garden on the cape.

Never again in laughter or in tears,

Or in titantic days of crashing shields,

In triumphs with blue light upon the spears,

Or when he rivaled God upon his throne

Never had the bell's voice died;

In all his purple, blood-bought pride

It seemed to toll for him an overtone,

After the battle with his veins' blood spent,

Disheartened by the metal light of day,

Between the crisscross threads that made his tent,

The fear of life came on him as he lay;

"Outside the world is garish," thought the king,

And then—and then he heard the lone bell ring

And saw the peace and green light of a wood;

It was a very vision of escape,

A high-walled garden on the crescent cape,

Fair as an evil thing but good.

The cape is luniform

Whereon the hermit's form

Lies bony white and still

Beside the chapel on the hill;

The long grass waves as if he breathes

At every breeze that weaves;

The birds have nests among old votive wreaths

And there the snake sheds in the rustling leaves.

There are faint flower sounds

Around, for spider hands have rung

The lily with its yellow clapper tongue,

All day the mists take shape

And the high hawks slant drifting down the cape—

By night the heavenly hunter leads his hounds,

Wandering the zodiacal bounds,

And all the white stars march,

Flaming in the unalterable arch,

While the wind swings the listless bell

That rings the hermit's knell—

Sleep well, sleep well!

III.

By his art the king casts four new bells that blend in perfect harmony with the hermit's. When they ring together the five bells charm all the senses.

Three years the king has dwelt within a cell

That he might dream his garden first to build it well,

His ministers are black with wrath

And the stone floor is hollowed to a path,

But still he hears the bell,

A frozen sound clear as a cold, deep well.

The king is melancholy mad, I guess.

At nights

The tower windows flash with lights

And many an artisan

Comes after midnight with the garden's plan

Of walls and towers

And terraces and flowers,

And spreads them wondering upon the floor;

The queen comes seldom now and least

Of all the priest;

There is no priest alive

That can the king's soul shrive;

The dead hermit from his cell

Has lured him close to heaven with his bell,

A strange, a mad, a melancholy spell.

The master of campanology

Has cast four lovely voices for the king,

Four godlike metal throats that sing

In towers at the corners of the wall;

And all the garden hears them call,

Four miracles of tone,

Of sound that flows to nothingness

Like water lines upon a river stone.

Gracious as a good gift given freely,

Comes from each campanile

At each corner of the wall,

The keen voice of a bell,

"Lan-up, lan-up," they ring,

And call and call the king

With the voice of the old spell

That they inherit from the hermit's bell—

Five times as strong,—

The king must go ere long—

He has the key to the garden gates,

He only waits

In courtesy to say the queen farewell.

Alas! Alas! The king is mad!

The people throng to see him pass,

And he has heard a mass.

All the world is convinced of his madness, especially lovers.

It was an eery thing to see

The king go merrily

And all the world forgo—

At dawn when little birds sing charmingly,

There was a ringing sound of horses' feet

And lovers in their upper rooms stopped clinging,

To hear go down the street

The minstrelsy

And little foolscap bells a-ringing.

IV.

Having heard a mass the king takes leave of this world's shore and the queen.

Down at the river ford

Beside the ferry,

Dances a little wherry,

To every wave that blows in from the sea

It dances merrily;

To every wave it dips it

And to the wind it tips it.

This merry little boat the king will take,

The pale queen waits with outstretched hands,

And now he bends above the oars,

And now before the garden gates he stands—

It was an eery thing to see

Him leave so merrily—

The music played him to the shore

Where he will walk no more.

The king is mad to be so lonely glad,

And mad to throw the key into the sea.

In the perfect harmony of his garden the king is married by the power of art and nature to the beauty of the earth.

And now he dwells within his hermitage of bells

Upon the cape shaped like a hunter's horn,

The five bells strike a unitone,

The wind comes fooling like an ape

And the strange boy-breasted sea things mourn.

The rock pools seep and creep,

Laugh like a mad child in a moonstruck sleep,

And then flow onward like an easy dream,

Talking among the rocks,

Into one valley stream,

That ticks and drips and strikes like distant clocks

Till with a snaky motion

It curves three times

And glides into the ocean.

Marry! The king now is a lover!

The bridegroom of his mother earth, no other,

It goes unholily that he should be

Enamored of the earth that gave him birth

And of the sea,

But now he has his will

And he is husband to the sea and hill

And to the wind a brother.

But the world still thinks the king mad.

At sunset all the garden swoons with bells,

Rolling across the sea and fells.

The demon sound stumbles along the ground.

Withering for miles around

And then is still—

All but one bell that dins on from the hill,

That strikes to ten,

While all the peasants pray

And cross themselves and say,

"Christ pity us!

It is the mad king's angelus,

Amen."

THE SEASONS.

Spring's Pilgrimage.

When Spring is born of Winter

Then there comes a day

In early April with the warmth of May,

The clouds go gadding and the winds turn mild,

And Spring is born in sunlight,

Merry child!

Her nurse is April with the misty eyes;

The birds sing round her cradle

Where she lies

In green-streaked woodlands by the mantled ponds,

Where the young ferns unfurl their snaky fronds.

She comes up from the South

With a bird whistle on her pouting mouth,

And sits upon some hill

Her mother, Winter, has kept cold and still,

Till her Sun-lover melts the snow—

Then out the strong floods go.

Leaping like horses to the sea,

And the green frogs go mad with glee.

Ah! When that child is on her way

The trees make ready, in the North

The robins herald her

And the buds put forth.

Puss Willow's little catkins are a-stir,

And it is all, is all for her!

But for a little while

She lingers in the South.

Wandering the moss-draped aisle,

Brushing the shiest flowers with her mouth.

Tuning her swanny throat

To the lush warble of the swamp-bird's note,

Beneath the lamp-hung jasmine's vine tent

Her warm, delicious childhood soon is spent.

Then forth she fares,

About the middle of the month of May,

A young girl, wild-eyed, gay;

The mountains are her stairs,

The birds her harbingers,

With merry song

The peewit pipes her as she trips along—

The trumpet flowers blow fanfares.

Even the sea caves know her

And deep down

The mermen chime the bells

In some dim town,

Where wrecks lie rotten and forgotten;

The shark's fin glides

More avidly among the sea-isle tides—

The whole glad earth

Hails her with gales of mirth.

The frantic midges dance;

There is tumultuous lowing from the cattle.

When Spring fares northward from the South,

The young sun hungers for her cherry mouth

And the black stallions scream as if in battle.

Summer.

Now come the Dog Days

When the fat-faced sun

Like Falstaff pours hot jest

On Prince and thieves;

The earth at morning smokes

And at high noon

Straight downward point the listless hanging leaves.

Come, love, come, come away with me,

Beneath the arbor tree,

Where is sweet greenery and shade within;

Shall we not take our ease in love's own inn?

Come to that elfin place

Where fawns feed on the tender grass

And slim, shy shepherds come

To see their sunburnt face

Upon a water glass,

Miraculously still—

Ah! Magic pool! They let the lead-sheep's bell

Grow fainter, fainter down the winding dell,

Until the only tone

That comes is the far "lina-lina-lone"

Of strayed sheep wandering on a windy hill.

Come, love, come, come away with me;

Drink from the coldest spring,

Where little frogs make Attic melody,

Tonight, perhaps, some moon-fooled bird will sing.

Dog Days,

I wish my love

Would come and live with me,

Beneath a tented tree,

The lush catalpa that in summer flowers,

Sol, I could laugh at thee!

If dalliance and sweet kisses sped the hours.

Autumn Portents.

The amber foam creams from the cider flagons,

Backward the shadow of the ground-hog shrinks,

The lanes creak with the laden harvest wagons,

And the fur thickens on the owl-eyed lynx,

The hunter sees cold mist about the moon,

And in the bottom lands at morn,

The print of tiny, thievish, fairy hands

Where the raccoon last night went stealing corn.

Autumn Invocation.

"The seasons wait their turn among the stars."

Come from the blinding sun fields where you are,

Come from the interspace of star and star,

Summer lies sleeping in her dusty tomb,

The owlets mourn her through the woodland's gloom

Where all the night birds are.

Autumn, come down!

Into the columned forests cast your torches,

Light all their shadowed aisles like temple porches,

Stop at the Dog Star first and snatch his fire,

Bold sun-hot yellow and the red that scorches

To light dead summer's funeral pyre.

Autumn, come down!

Lean down, High Lady, from your starry arch,

Over the maples and the fragrant larch,

Stoop down some frosty night,

Like a proud maiden from an old, walled town

Tossing a rainbow favor to her knight.

Lean down, lean down!

Come take our northern forests for your palace,

Dance in the witch fires of the borealis,

Stand misty-eyed upon the mountain tops

Or sit and gaze,

With wind-twitched cloak and merry, cast-back hood,

Down valleys purpled by the grape-blue haze,

Beside some flaming wood.

Come throw your mad flambeaux

Till all the motley, fire-streaked woodlands glow!

Autumn, come down!

Lady, how often must I ask it?

Proud plenty, if you will, with vine-wreathed basket

Shall bring you offerings of damasked plums—

For you in orchards mellow peaches plash

All night.

The lichens whiten on the lonely ash,

The clover blackens and the last bee hums.

Autumn, come down,

You brown-skinned sorceress,

And witch the leaves, for harvest home,

And bear the nodding sheaves

Into the red barns by the little town,

Autumn, come down, come down!

DREAM FRAGMENT.

I walked last night in southern Brittany,

In deep, warm meadows where the rouge-gorge sang,

A land cliff-bordered, by an azure sea,

Far off, far down, the muffled buoy bells rang

In bays that stretched into a land of indolence,

It seemed the peasants, in a fit of folly,

Had fled and left me in sweet impotence

To range blue uplands, tinged with melancholy,

In amethystine pastures, smooth and lone,

Charmed by a tepid ocean's magic moan.

WHEN SHADY AVENUE WAS SHADY LANE.

When Shady avenue was Shady lane,

Before the city fathers changed the name,

And cows stood switching flies beneath the trees,

And old-time gardens hummed with dusty bees,

And white ducks paddled in the summer rain;

Then everybody drove to church,

And Shady avenue was Shady lane.

We lived on Arabella street, that too

Is changed—Kentucky avenue—

And where the tollgate stood beside the spring,

The phlox and hollyhocks

Once flourished by the box

Where the gatekeeper sat with key and ring.

A wiser looking man there never was,

In contemplative mood he smoked and spat,

There by the gate he sat

In an old dog-eared hat

And listened to the yellow jackets' buzz.

All this is gone—

Gone glimmering down the ways

Of old, loved things of our lost yesterdays,

After the little tollgate by the spring.

And the gatekeeper odd

Rests in the quiet sod,

Safe in the arms of God

Where thrushes sing.

Even the spring has gone, for long ago

They walled that in,

And its dark waters flow

A sunless way along;

And no one stops to wonder where they go,

For no one hears their song.

Only a few old hearts

Of these much changed parts,

Whose time will soon run out on all the clocks,

Catching the scent of clover,

Live all the old days over

When Shady avenue was Shady lane.

Δ'S VERSUS ☉'S.

Do you not see, you American people,

What the triangle means?

Mind, soul, body.

Man is to live and die

In a little metaphysical, three-roomed apartment,

Office, chapel, and kitchenette.

As I sat and listened to the words of the wise man,

I looked out of the window

And suddenly a feeling of great well-being came on me.

I saw that I was made of the same stuff as the hillside

And that tomorrow I would be flowers,

Or dance in the dust motes in the sun

And that all things are one.

Then two laughing children came

And threw a stone into a fountain

And the ring widened till it was lost in the pool.

Behold a sign!

And I awoke and the wise man babbled like a fool.

And yet, O Great Republic,

The symbol of your state church

Is a triangle, blood red,

Pointing downward.

THE OLD JUDGE.

Around the courthouse corner from the square,

Where Poet Timrod's bust stands in the glare,

There is an ancient office shuttered tight,

With fluted pillars and the paint worn bare.

Seldom, if ever now, do passing feet

Disturb that little, cobbled cul-de-sac

Or rouse dull echoes in the quiet street

Where time has eddied back.

Only the old judge comes,

With quivering hands and thin,

With palsied scraping at the rusty lock

And enters in.

He is the last of all the courtly men,

Those lion-hearts who knew their Montesquieu,

And fought for what he taught them, too,

The STATE was something then—

But now—but now—he seems a very ghost

That haunts the little office off the square,

A Rip Van Winkle of the place at most

At which to stare.

Only on Saturdays he goes,

And no one knows,

And enters by the dusty, blinded door,

And sits and sits

While the long sunlight streams between the slits

And the rats scurry underneath the floor.

And there he stays all afternoon;

The wagons rumble in the square,

And the cracked, plaster bust of grim Calhoun

Frowns with its classic stare.

What dreams are these, old judge, of the old days,

When cotton bales made mountains on the ways,

When clipper ships were loading at the quays—

Or statelier, courtlier times of ease

And manners without flaw,

When Smythe & Pringle,

The name is all but weathered from the shingle,

Were the state's foremost firm at law.

Aye! Those were times!

They leap to life among the steeple chimes,

A passion and a white tone in the bells

Flatters his sleep until he dreams of bout

And rapier thrust at law—

Of frosty marches,

Camp fires and faces of dead men,

The War,

And old Virginia's academic arches—

And he is young again!

Oh! Life! Oh! Glory!

He leaps up from his seat—

Ah! Judge, the old, old story;

The blood can scarcely creep

Back to the icy feet

As the old man startles from his sleep,

The last bell hums and then—

Memento mori!

Dream, dream, old judge,

May quiet bring you ease,

Among the Wedgwood phantoms of old Greece,

Dream while the carved lambs in the frieze

Trot to the voiceless sound

Of Pan-pipes in the Georgian mantelpiece,

Summon the forms of men you used to know;

Till dead men's footfalls creak across the floor—

Is it your partner's who once long ago

Planted the brick court with rêve d'or?

Ah! He is gone now with his roses,

Gone these thirty years and more.

And now the new South quickens, in the square

The huge trucks thunder and the motors blare.

The park oaks droop with Spanish moss and age,

The jedge no longer now is marss but boss,

And all the old things suffer change and loss

But still he makes his weekly pilgrimage.

Some day, some waif will look in through the pane

And see him sitting with his gold-head cane

With wide unseeing eyes a-stare—

Then there will be an end of dreams and care,

A courtesy will pass we cannot spare,

And humor, sparkling, dry as old champagne.

BEWITCHED.

A little lad was he

Who loved a fisher maid in Brittany,

Where sands stretch flat and wide

When ebbs the tide,

Smooth as a threshing floor,

And there they played, young Véronique and Pierre,

Along the shore.

Often they used to walk

Hand fast in hand,

And laughed and kissed,

Lost in such heavenly talk

That spirits there,

Who dwelt in sunny places in the mist,

Drew very near to Véronique and Pierre,

And the shrill curlews cried,

And there were rainbow castles in the foam

Where seawites died.

Mornings, dear Véronique brought shells

And laid them on the stone beside Pierre's door,

Sea-shapes of beauty, magic as the stars,

Washed from old ocean's dragon-haunted floor,

And Pierre would dream that she was sitting there

And hoped that he would find her when he woke;

And so he did—and she would look at Pierre

And he at her—and neither of them spoke.

So passed July, whose molten hours flow,

The sun laughed hot and high,

And then they said good-bye,

For Pierre must go.

He left her standing dumbly in the lane,

Her lips a-tremble with his parting kiss,

And had her farewell gift, a twisted shell,

Bewitched! Bewitched! With melancholy spell,

For in that shell it was that little Pierre

First heard love's secret whispered thus, "De-ssspairr."

THE WINGLESS VICTORY.

Nike of Samothrace,

Thy godlike wings

Cleft windy space

Above the ships of kings,

Fain of thy lips,

By hope made glorious,

Time kissed thy grand, Greek face

Away from us.

Our Nike has no wings;

She has not known

Clean heights, and from her lips

Comes starvèd moan.

Mints lie that coin her grace,

And Time will hate her face,

For it has turned the world's hope

Into stone.

POEMS WRITTEN IN FRANCE AT THE FRONT

1918

THE BLINDMAN.

A Ballad of Nogent l'Artaud.

At Nogent, on the river Marne,

I passed a burning house and barn.

I went into the public square

Where pigeons fluttered in the air

And empty windows gaped a-stare.

There crouched a blindman by the wall

A-shivering in a ragged shawl,

Who gave a hopeless parrot screech

And felt the wall with halting reach.

He went around as in a trap.

He had a stick to feel and rap.

A-rap-a-tap, a-rap-a-tap.

I strode across the public square.

I stopped and spoke him full and fair.

I asked him what he searched for there.

There came a look upon his face

That made me want to leave the place.

He could not answer for a space.

He moved his trembling hands about

And in-and-out, and in-and-out.

"Kind sir," he said, "I scarcely know—

A week ago there fell a blow—

I think it was a week ago.

I sent my little girl to school,

With kisses and her book and rule,

A week ago she went to school."

The pigeons all began to coo,

"A-cock-a-loo, a-cock-a-loo."

"O God! to be a blinded fool;

I cannot find the children's school—

The gate, the court about the pool—

But, sir, if you will guide my feet

Across the square and down the street,

I think I know then where it lies.

O Jesu! Give me back my eyes!

O Jesu! Give me back my eyes!"

I led him down the littered street,

He seemed to know it with his feet,

For suddenly he turned aside

And entered through a gateway wide.

It was the court about the pool.

Long shadows slept there deep and cool.

No sound was there of beast or bird;

It was the silence that we heard.

"And this," he said, "might be the place,"

An eager look came on his face.

He raised his voice and gave a call;

An echo mewed along the wall,

And then it rose, and then it fell,

Like children talking down a well.

"Go in," he said, "see what you see,

And then come back again for me."

Like one who bears a weight of sin

And walks with fear, I entered in—

A turn—and halfway up the stair

There was a sight to raise your hair;

A dusty litter, books and toys,

Three bundles that were little boys,

White faces like an ivory gem;

A statue stood and looked at them.

So thick the silence where I stood,

I thought I wore a woolen hood;

The blood went whispering through my ears,

Like secrets that one overhears.

I looked upon the dead a while;

I saw the glimmering statue smile.

The children slept so sweetly there,

I scarce believed the tainted air.

And then I heard the blindman's stick,

As rhythmic as a watch's tick,

A step—a click, a step—a click—

As slow as days grow to a year,

So long it seemed while he drew near,

But sure and blind as death or fate,

He came and said, "I dared not wait.

It was too silent at the gate."

"And tell me now, sir, what you see

That keeps you here so silently."

"Three harmless things," I said, "I fear,

Three things I see but cannot hear,

Three shadows of what was before,

Cast by no light are on the floor."

"Sir," said the blindman, "lead me round,

Lest I should tread on holy ground."

Like men they lead at dawn to doom,

We slowly climbed the stairway's gloom

And came into a sunlit room.

The ceiling lay upon the floor,

And slates, and books, and something more—

The master with a glassy stare,

Sat gory in his shivered chair

And gazed upon his pupils there.

The blindman grasped me eagerly.

"And tell me now, sir, what you see?

This is the place where she should be—

My Eleanor, who used to wear

Short socks that left her brown legs bare.

She had a crown of golden hair."

I saw his blind eyes peer and stare.

Now there and here, now here and there.

"Blindman," I cried, "these things I see:

Time here has turned eternity.

The clock hands point but only mock,

For it is always three o'clock.

I see the shadows on the wall;

I see the crumbling plaster fall."

"Oh! sir," he said, "I crave your eyes—

Be not so kindly with your lies."

I drew the blindman to my side;

I told the truth I wished to hide.

I said, "I see your Eleanor

And she is dead upon the floor.

And something fumbles with her hair;

I guess the wind is playing there.

And I see gray rats sleek and stout

That dart about and dart about."

"Now, sir," he said, "I love your lies

And Christ be thanked that took my eyes!

But lead me, lead me to my dead!

And let me touch her once," he said.

I placed his hand upon her head.

And when we left the charnel place,

I dared not look upon his face;

For suddenly upon the street

Arose the sound of trampling feet,

And wheels that rumbled on the ground,

And ground around and ground around,

The din of them that go to slay,

The shout of men and horses' neigh,

And men and beasts swept on to war

A dreadful drumming on before.

It throbbed and throbbed through Nogent Town,

Till desolation settled down.

The blindman leaned against the door;

"And tell me, sir, about the war,

What is it they are fighting for?"

"Blindman," I cried, "Can you not see?

It is to set the whole world free!

It is for sweet democracy—"

"I do not know her, sir," he said.

"My little Eleanor is dead."

HANDS OFF.

Dedicated to Orators and Others.

I know a glade in Argonne where they lean—

Those crosses—loosened by last winter's snows,

Throwing their silent shadows on the green;

There I could go this very day—God knows!

To hide a sorrow mocked by tears and words,

To fall face downward on the catholic grass

That sprang this springtime through the shroud of snows

And let the little, greenwood birds say mass.

Like sound of taps at twilight from the hill,

The solemn thought comes that these lads are gone;

At evening when the breathing world grows still

And ghostly day steals from the bird-hushed lawn,

When over wooded crests the swimming moon

Casts ivory spells of beauty they have lost,

Across delicious valleys warm with June

I count the ghastly price the victory cost.

I count it in moongold and coin of life,

The love and beauty that these dead have missed,

Who lived to reap no glory from the strife,

But are like sleepers by the loved one kissed;

Each sleeps and knows not that she is so near,

Or at the most sinks deeper in his dream,

And life, and all blithe things they once held dear,

Are far and faint like voices of a stream.

Hands off our dead! For all they did forbear

To drag them from their graves to point some speech;

Less sickening was the gas reek over there,

Less deadly was the shrapnel's whirring screech;

You cannot guess the uttermost they gave;

Those martyrs did not die for chattering daws

To loot false inspiration from the grave

When mouthing fools turn ghouls to gain applause.

SOLDIER-POET.

To Francis Fowler Hogan.

I think at first like us he did not see

The goal to which the screaming eagles flew;

For romance lured him, France, and chivalry;

But Oh! Before the end he knew, he knew!

And gave his first full love to Liberty,

And met her face to face one lurid night

While the guns boomed their shuddering minstrelsy

And all the Argonne glowed with demon light.

And Liberty herself came through the wood,

And with her dear, boy lover kept the tryst;

Clasped in her grand, Greek arms he understood

Whose were the fatal lips that he had kissed—

Lips that the soul of Youth has loved from old—

Hot lips of Liberty that kiss men cold.

DOOMED.

Connigis from Bois de la Jutte, July, 1918.

Left to its fate, the little village stands

Between the armies trenched on either hill,

Raising twin spires like supplicating hands

From meadow lands where all lies ghastly still.

The lakes of clover ripple to the breeze

As from the vineyards glides a rancid breath,

Bringing the homelike murmur of the bees,

Mixed with a sickening whiff of carrion death.

It is the valley of the shadow there,

Where death lies ambushed in the tossing flowers

Whose very beauty seems to cry, "Beware!"

For terror haunts its villages and towers.

That home where peasants led their blameless life,

That thatched, stone cottage is a clever trap

With painful wounds and fatal danger rife,

Noted with two red circles on the map.

Seen through the glass, dead, sleeps the petite place.

Where white-capped housewives lingered once to chat

On market days, or after early mass;

Now nothing moves there but the stealthy cat—

The only thing that even dares to stir;

It hugs short shadows near the walls at noon,

Lashing its tail to hear an airplane purr,

Circling about a peering, fat balloon.

The houses gleam too bright, their limelight glare,

Pure sunlight though it be, is filled with gloom;

They are too white, too garnished and too bare—

They are too much like walls about a tomb.

The windows stare beside each gaping door,

Where once in gingham apron and a shawl,

In days now passed away forevermore,

Some little mother sat and nursed her doll.

Sepulchral silence and a lonely dread

And desolation's calm have settled down,

Making brief peace there for the rigid dead—

Tonight the shells will burst upon the town!

WHITE LIGHT.

How like high mountain air this air in France;

The sun is so intense, so clear, so bright,

The fields unearthly green, the poplars glance,

Shivering their leafy lances in the light.

Those drilling troops flash back a steely gleam.

Others with distant din of clean delight,

Bathe where their bodies flash along the stream

And everywhere, the air, a lake of light!

White light, strange light of tense romantic days,

You are too rare, too cloudless and too clear,

Like a deep crystal where a seer might gaze

And see some vast disaster drawing near.

Petite Villiers,

July 4th, 1918.

BEAUMONT.

Deep in the mystery of the woodland's gloom,

Topping the sea of trees with pointed cone,

So that from many hills its towers loom,

The old château of Beaumont stands alone.

This generation saw its last sons go

To spill their noble blood with humbler men;

So Madame lives alone at the château

And waits for steps that never come again.

The sunlight sleeps along the buttressed walls,

And on the stagnant moats the midges dance,

And in the haunted wood the cuckoo calls,

Where hunted once the vanished kings of France.

The terraced gardens hum with greedy bees,

And Madame walks among the orange trees.

Boxed orange shrubs—they stand in potted row

Along the plaisance—Madame takes her ease;

But it is lonely at the old château;

The milky statues glimmer through the trees,

So silent, too! What can make Madame start?

Down in the garden where late roses blow,

She has heard laughter there that stopt her heart

Like echoes from old summers long ago.

But no—it cannot be! For hark! the click

Of little peasants' sabots; down the walk

That winds among the rows of hedges thick,

The children's voices die away in talk.

Alas! Who knows, who knows,

Why Madame bends so long above the rose?

Gently, old heart—there is no recompense

For the last uttermost you had to give.

Yet there is peace for you to outward sense—

God gives you Beaumont as a place to live.

The white herds graze in stately indolence,

While you sit knitting on the terrace there,

And that your hands still feel no impotence,

Witness the poor and Croix Rouge at St. Pierre;

And sweet the drive home through the wooded park,

When faintly chime the far-off steeple clocks

At dusk when village dogs begin to bark,

And the long lanes go glimmering white with flocks,

When the first, steely stars begin to peep

And the young shepherd whistles to his sheep.

St. Pierre-Le Moutier,

1918.

VILLIERS LE BEL GONNESSE.

Here in this garden where the roses bloom,

And time is scarcely marked by silent days,

The walls and pear trees cast a pleasant gloom,

A wavy, weed-grown fountain softly plays.

And fate has left us listless for a while

Upon the brink of what we do not know;

Outside the walls a passing schoolboy calls,

And lumbering oxcarts rumble as they go.

Red roofs, a spire, white roads and poplar trees;

An aeroplane goes droning through the skies;

The petals fall, there is no breath of breeze;

The old dog by the sundial snaps at flies.

My comrades by the fountain are asleep.

Far on the lines I hear a great gun boom;

Here in the garden, though, white peace lies deep,

And in the limelight heat the roses bloom.

DRAGON'S BREATH.

We held the last stone wall—when day was red—

They crept like morning shadows through the dead,

The flammenwerfer with their dragon's breath

Compressed in nippled bottle-tanks of death.

They puffed along the wall and one long cry

Withered away into the morning sky,

And some made crablike gestures where they lay

And all our faces turned oil gray,

Before the smoke rolled by.

It is beyond belief

How men can live

All curled up like a leaf.

I saw a man bloom in a flower of flame,

Roaring with fire,

Three times he called a name;

Three times he whirled within a white-hot pod

With busy hands and cried, "Oh, God! Oh, God!"

Now when the crumpets lie with blusterous joy

And the silk, wind-tweaked colors virgin fresh,

Borne by the blithe, boy bodies glitter past,

As the old gladiators throw their mesh;

The dragon's breath leaps from the bugle blast

And Azrael comes pounding with his drum—

Fe, fe, ... fi, fo, fum—

I smell the roasting flesh!

WE.

We who have come back from the war,

And stand upright and draw full breath,

Seek boldly what life holds in store

And eat its whole fruit rind and core,

Before we enter through the door

To keep our rendezvous with death.

We who have walked with death in France,

When all the world with death was rife,

Who came through all that devils' dance,

When life was but a circumstance,

A sniper's whim, a bullet's glance,

We have a rendezvous with life!

With life that hurtles like a spark

From stricken steel where anvils chime,

That leaps the space from dark to dark,

A blinding, blazing, flaming arc,

As clean as fire, and frank and stark—

White life that lives while there is time.

We will not live by musty creeds,

Who learned the truth through love and war,

Who tipped the scales for right by deeds,

When old men's lies were broken reeds,

We follow where the cold fact leads

And bow our heads no more.

Deliver us from tactless kin,

And drooling bores that start "reforms,"

And unctious folk that prate of sin,

And theorists without a chin,

And politicians out to win,

And generals in uniforms.

We have come back who broke the line

The hard Hun held by bomb and knife!

All but the blind can read the sign;

The time is ours by right divine,

Who drank with Death in blood red wine,

We have a rendezvous with life!

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Table of Contents

Wampum and Old Gold

POEMS WRITTEN SINCE 1918

CONFESSION.

DESPAIR.

VALE.

AFTERMATH.

HYLAS.

BACCHUS IS GONE.

TIGER LILIES.

The First: Youth.

The Second: High Tide o' Life.

The Third: Old Age.

THE HERMITAGE OF BELLS.

Spring's Pilgrimage.

Summer.

Autumn Portents.

Autumn Invocation.

DREAM FRAGMENT.

WHEN SHADY AVENUE WAS SHADY LANE.

Δ'S VERSUS ☉'S.

THE OLD JUDGE.

BEWITCHED.

THE WINGLESS VICTORY.

THE BLINDMAN.

HANDS OFF.

SOLDIER-POET.

DOOMED.

WHITE LIGHT.

BEAUMONT.

VILLIERS LE BEL GONNESSE.

DRAGON'S BREATH.

WE.

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE