Glass TS ■55 0'^ 
 Book J?^^IB7 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 mo 5' 
 
BROAD-CAST 
 
BROAD=CAST 
 
 By 
 
 ERNEST CROSBY 
 
 Author of " Plain Talk In Psalm and Parable' 
 "Tolstoy and His Message" etc. etc 
 
 r 
 
 FUNK and WAGNALLS COMPANY, 
 44—60. East 23rd Street, 
 New YorK, 
 1905 
 
T5 3^iJ^ 
 
 Gift 
 
 Author 
 
 27JI'05 
 
o 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 To 
 EDWARD CARPENTER 
 
 OEER beholding things divine. 
 Prophet of the olden line, — 
 Trumpeting a message clear 
 For the few with ears to hear, — 
 What though man be deaf to-day ? 
 Truth is bound to make its way. 
 Soon the world will be content 
 To uprear your monument. 
 Pardon my impatient pen 
 That it cannot wait till then. 
 Fare you better, — fare you worse, 
 If upon this scroll of verse 
 One whom you have taught to think 
 Writes your name in fading ink ? 
 
BROADCAST 
 
 " OO is the kingdom of God, 
 
 A s if one should cast seed in the ground. 
 And should sleep and arise, night and day. 
 And the seed should spring and grow up. 
 He knoweth not how, for the earth 
 Bringeth forth fruit of herself." 
 
 Thus would I sow to the winds 
 
 Broadcast the seed that may bear 
 
 Fruit in the harvest to be. 
 
 Others may rase and destroy, — 
 
 Tear down, demolish and waste ; — 
 
 Others may frame and construct. 
 
 Fitting together the stones. 
 
 As they think, of the city of God. 
 
 Mine be the lowlier task, — 
 
 Mine be the dropping of seed 
 
 In the long silent furrows of earth. 
 
 Where she bringeth forth fruit of herself. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Dedication. To Edward Carpenter ... 5 
 
 " Seer beholding things divine." 
 Broadcast " 
 
 " So is the kingdom of God." 
 
 Democracy ,;■'** ^ 
 
 " I saw laws and customs and creeds." 
 
 From the Sanscrit ,; * ' 
 
 " As the young mother clasps her infant son." 
 
 Stigmata Libertatis '^7 
 
 " Tell me what the signs may be." 
 
 God's Gift „• ^^ 
 
 " Where is my gift," said God, " that I gave to men ? " 
 
 The Land of the Noonday Night — A Miner's 
 
 Song , 29 
 
 " We have eyes to see like yours." 
 The Cotton Mill ;, " ' ^^ 
 
 " Ogre dread ! Slavery raised from the dead ! " 
 
 The Stoker „ ^^ 
 
 " Now and then a stoker came up to breathe 'tween decks. 
 
 The Escutcheon 35 
 
 •• Pounce on the innocent, Powers-that-be ! " 
 
 Coronal 3" 
 
 " Lo, the peoples, — all of them, — " 
 Beatus Ille ^ • • 37 
 
 " Happy the man who, probing what is meant." 
 To St. Francis of Assisi 37 
 
 " Dear Francis, did Assisi's burghers frown." 
 
 The School of Riches 38 
 
 " Blessed are the poor who know." 
 
 Look Sharp ! 39 
 
 " Look sharp ! thou art one of God's eyes." 
 
 Not a Christian 4° 
 
 " So you condemn him once for all." 
 
 Buddha 4° 
 
 " Passionless, contemplative, free from desire." 
 
 Religion 41 
 
 " The childish mistaking of pictures for facts." 
 
 Cain 4i 
 
 " Nay, flee not from me." 
 
 To Nero 45 
 
 " Nero, old dog, I see myself looking out." 
 
 7 
 
8 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 April 49 
 
 " See the apple orchard." 
 
 Spring Thoughts 50 
 
 " The leaves are not yet out." 
 
 Worship 59 
 
 " Bow before God in prone humility." 
 
 In the Garden 59 
 
 " I spied beside the garden bed." 
 
 Wine of Eternity 60 
 
 " God took a vial from its place." 
 
 Yesterday 61 
 
 " To-day and to-morrow will change " 
 
 Moods 62 
 
 " There is nothing but moods." 
 
 The Seers 72 
 
 " Like mountain peaks." 
 In the Saddle 72 
 
 " Mounted on Ahmar, flying at a mad run." 
 On the Suez Canal 74 
 
 " a starry night on the Suez Canal ! " 
 
 Christmas 76 
 
 " On the first of the lengthening days." 
 
 Judge Not 78 
 
 " Why do I punish ? " 
 Town Pictures 79 
 
 " I have travelled many ways." 
 Country Pictures 96 
 
 " Tramping down the broad green valley." 
 
 The Living Universe 102 
 
 " What are you, stars of night ? " 
 
 Love 104 
 
 " When I thought you were perfect." 
 God's Window 106 
 
 " God has a house that's wide and tall." 
 My Soul 107 
 
 " What must I do to be saved ? " 
 My Soul again 120 
 
 " ' Here where I live ' — thus spake my soul. " 
 
 You 121 
 
 " I would not break your will." 
 
 Microcosm 121 
 
 " I split a grain of common sand." 
 A Prayer 122 
 
 " Come to me, woo me, Soul of the All ! " 
 
 Hints 122 
 
 " Little care we for the mark." 
 Apologia 123 
 
 " I pulled up the flowers in my garden." 
 
 Afterthought - 126 
 
 " When these new ideas of ours become trite." 
 
Democracy 
 
 I 
 
 I SAW laws and customs and creeds and 
 Bibles rising like emanations from men 
 and women. 
 I saw the men and women bowing down and 
 worshipping these cloudy shapes, and I 
 saw the shapes turn upon them and rend 
 them. 
 Nay, but men and women are the supreme 
 facts ! 
 
 II 
 
 How rarely have men revered the truly 
 reverend, and respected the truly respect- 
 able ! 
 
 How much of reverence has been, and still is, 
 mere fetish-worship ! 
 
 Reverence for Moloch and Juggernaut, who 
 shall count its victims ? 
 
 Respect for tyrants and despots, for lying 
 priests and blind teachers, how it has 
 darkened the pages of history ! 
 
 There is only one true respect, the respect for 
 the conscious life that fulfils its true 
 function. 
 
 Revere humanity wherever you find it, in the 
 judge or in the farm hand, but do not 
 revere any institution or office or writing. 
 
10 DEMOCRACY 
 
 As soon as anything outside of divine humanity 
 
 is revered and respected, it becomes 
 
 dangerous, — 
 And every step forward in the annals of man 
 
 has been over the prostrate corpse of some 
 
 ancient unmasked reverence. 
 
 Ill 
 
 And yet I am no abohtionist. 
 
 I would abolish nothing except by disuse. 
 
 Slavery is good for those who believe in slavery, 
 
 for in a world of slaves there must be 
 
 masters, and men with the hearts of slaves 
 
 had better be slaves. 
 Government is good for those who believe in 
 
 government, and punishment for those 
 
 who believe in punishment, and war for 
 
 those who believe in war. 
 Anything is good enough for the man who 
 
 believes in it, and the first step upward is 
 
 not abolition but disbelief. 
 
 IV 
 They write histories of the French Revolution 
 
 as if it were over. 
 The French Revolution is not over ; it never 
 
 will be over. 
 That episode was a mere skirmish on the 
 
 picket-line. 
 The duel between oppression and freedom is 
 
 the very essence of life. 
 The French Revolution began ages before 
 
 David gathered his Coxey army at the 
 
DEMOCRACY ii 
 
 cave of Adullam, — ages before the great 
 labour-leaders Moses and Aaron put them- 
 selves at the head of the Hebrew brick- 
 makers' strike. 
 It will not end before the earth freezes into a 
 Spitzbergen or is scorched into a Sahara. 
 
 V 
 
 The lists are open ; the combat is on. 
 
 The brute-man of the past and the God-man 
 of the future must fight it out while heaven 
 and earth look on expectant. 
 
 You can easily distinguish them by their wea- 
 pons. 
 
 The brute-man fights with claws and teeth, 
 with spear and sword, with bayonet and 
 cannon and bomb. 
 
 The God-man has for his artillery naught but 
 the naked truth and undissembled love. 
 
 Yet the brute-man blanches with the sure 
 presentiment of his speedy overthrow, and 
 winces as the God-man gazes upon him 
 with infinite compassion. 
 
 VI 
 
 A murder on behalf of the people ? 
 
 That is no place for murders, — they belong on 
 
 the other side. 
 Poor, brave, cowardly, cruel fool, who thought 
 
 the people could be helped by murder, and, 
 
 thinking to lay low oppression, well-nigh 
 
 laid freedom low ! 
 
12 DEMOCRACY 
 
 But there are other fools, — those who suppose 
 that a foul deed can for long set back the 
 " 3 hands of time. 
 Can a crime alter facts ? 
 Can any mad assassin kill the eternal truth ? 
 
 VII 
 
 Clear the field for the grand tournament of 
 
 the nations, — 
 The struggle to think the best thought and to 
 
 express it best in tone and colour and form 
 
 and word, — 
 The struggle to do the greatest deeds and lead 
 
 the noblest and most useful lives, — 
 The struggle to see clearest and know truest and 
 
 love strongest. 
 Your other blood and bludgeon contests but 
 
 postpone the real fray. 
 The true knights are yearning to enter the lists, 
 
 and you block the high festival with your 
 
 brawling. 
 Is it possible that you mistake this horse-play 
 
 for the real event of history ? 
 Away with all your brutal disorder, and clear 
 
 the field for the tournament of Man. 
 
 VIII 
 
 I do not wish to be above people ; I wish to be 
 
 with people. 
 The tiresome, hateful climb upward on their 
 
 heads and shoulders, — 
 
DEMOCRACY 13 
 
 (It hurts their heads and shoulders, but it hurts 
 
 my feet still more), — 
 The thin, empty air, thinner and emptier and 
 
 less satisfying the higher I get, — 
 The platform of envious faces on which I 
 
 stand, — 
 The continual scrambHng and elbowing round 
 
 me and over me, — 
 The aimlessness and cruelty of it all, — 
 I am sick to death of it. 
 The soles of my feet yearn for the feel of God's 
 
 sod. 
 I do not wish to be above people. 
 I wish to be with people. 
 
 IX 
 
 The common people,— why common people ? 
 
 Does it not mean common life, common aspira- 
 tions, community of interests, communion 
 of man with man ? 
 
 Does it not imply the spirit of communism, of 
 fellowship, of brotherhood ? 
 
 Does it not suggest that human life down at the 
 bottom is more fluid and intermingled and 
 social than up at the top ? 
 
 Is not all this hidden away in the words " com- 
 mon people ? " 
 
 X 
 
 Would you make brothers of the poor by giv- 
 ing to them ? 
 
14 DEMOCRACY 
 
 Try it, and learn that in a world of injustice it 
 
 is the most unbrotherly of acts. 
 There is no gulf between men so wide as the 
 
 alms-gift. 
 There is no wall so impassable as money given 
 
 and taken. 
 There is nothing so unfratemal as the dollar, — it 
 
 is the very symbol of division and discord. 
 Make brothers of the poor if you will, but do it 
 
 by ceasing to steal from them ; 
 For charity separates and only justice unites. 
 
 XI 
 
 Peace between capital and labour, is that all 
 
 that you ask ? 
 Is peace then the only thing needful ? 
 There was peace enough in southern slavery. 
 There is a peace of life and another peace of 
 
 death. 
 It is well to rise above violence. 
 It is well to rise superior to anger. 
 i But if peace means final acquiescence in 
 
 wrong, — if your aim is less than justice 
 
 and peace, forever one — then your peace 
 
 is a crime, y 
 
 XII 
 
 I am homesick, — 
 
 Homesick for the home that I never have 
 seen, — 
 
DEMOCRACY 15 
 
 For the land where I shall look horizontally 
 
 into the eyes of my fellows, — 
 The land where men rise only to lift, — 
 The land where equality leaves men free to 
 
 differ as they will, — 
 The land where freedom is breathed in the air 
 
 and courses in the blood, — 
 Where there is nothing over a man between him 
 
 and the sky, — 
 Where the obligations of love are sought for as 
 
 prizes and where they vary with the moon. 
 /That land is my true country. I am here by -^,,^ %^^) 
 
 some sad cosmic mistake, — and I am 
 
 homesick./ 
 
 XIII 
 
 A strange lot this, to be dropped down in a 
 world of barbarians, — 
 
 Men who see clearly enough the barbarity of all 
 ages except their own, — 
 
 Who shudder at the thought of wheel and fag- 
 got, of putrid heads displayed not so long 
 ago on Temple Bar,— of stinking corpses 
 hanging in chains along the highways while 
 vultures devoured them, — of mere boys 
 put to death for stealing a shilling, — and 
 who notwithstanding are snugly contented 
 with the survival of gibbets and the happy 
 invention of electrocution chairs, — 
 
 Who are outraged at the picture of black priests 
 hovering about the flames of an auto-da-fe, 
 
i6 DEMOCRACY 
 
 but applaud their successors to-day as they 
 encourage with their blessings the butchery 
 of war, — 
 
 Who deplore the ancient miseries of the galleys, 
 the torture of witnesses, the agonies of 
 captives crucified or given to the lions, but 
 see nothing wrong in our overcrowded 
 prisons, our vice-breeding jails and our 
 cold, relentless machine of justice, — 
 
 Who look down on the ages when there were no 
 societies for the prevention of cruelty to 
 animals, and yet are blind to the horrors 
 of our abattoirs and laboratories, and take 
 pleasure in killing and maiming helpless 
 birds and harmless little brother beasts, — 
 
 Who condemn the brutality of the Spanish In- 
 quisition, but sanction the writhing pains 
 of the battle-field, the sabred face, the 
 d37namite gun and the dum-dum bullet, — 
 
 Who abhor chattel slavery, but accept the dis- 
 mal, hopeless enslavement of factory hands 
 and the starvation of thousands out of 
 work as heaven-born arrangements, — 
 
 Who sing paeans over the fall of political des- 
 potism, while they have scarcely a word 
 of criticism for the industrial tyrants who 
 tread us under foot, — 
 
 And who — strangest of all — are absolutely 
 ignorant of the fact that future generations 
 will consider them just as barbarous as 
 their predecessors. 
 
 It is a curious destiny indeed to be planted in 
 the midst of such a people. 
 
DEMOCRACY 17 
 
 XIV 
 
 And yet they boast of their high breeding and 
 accuse us of despising it. 
 
 Despise high breeding ? Nay, but we should be 
 fools indeed to throw overboard such a 
 treasure. 
 
 Good manners, the nice sense of what is fitting, 
 the refinement which is so difficult to learn 
 in a single lifetime, — far be it from us to 
 risk these hard-earned possessions of the 
 race in any social cataclysm. 
 
 But is it not you, rather, who put them in 
 peril — 
 
 You who would monopolize these gifts and re- 
 strict them to your narrow circle ; you, who 
 hoard them like your gold and silver ; — 
 who find the chief value of them in the 
 fact that others have them not ? 
 
 "Noblesse oblige," fine thought, — fair flower of 
 feudalism, foretelling a summer of even 
 fairer bloom. But " Manhood obhges," 
 is not that finer still ? 
 
 What are good manners but the traditional 
 expression of a good heart ? 
 
 They are the small change of unselfishness, and 
 if the heart is not pure metal, they ring 
 false on the counter. 
 
 If you are selfish within — if you wish to keep 
 
 these graces to yourselves, — by that very 
 
 fact they become the cheap trimmings of 
 
 hypocrisy. 
 
 As for us, we would make unselfishness common 
 
 B. B 
 
i8 DEMOCRACY 
 
 to all, and the natural expression of it in 
 
 outward life would follow. 
 We have nothing against aristocracy, — we wish 
 
 to spread it abroad and its manners. 
 We herald the advent of the true aristocracy, 
 
 the rule of the best over the worst in every 
 
 human soul. 
 We would not for the world rob mankind of one 
 
 gracious word or action ; 
 But our aim is to make of the treasures which 
 
 you lock up in your palaces the common 
 
 coin of the realm. 
 
 XV 
 
 The few, with their accumulation of money, 
 
 shall not rule. 
 Have we rid ourselves of kings for nothing ? 
 Is an exorbitant railway fare or telegraph charge 
 
 less tyrannous taxation than ship-money 
 
 or a duty on tea ? 
 Charles the First and George the Third have 
 
 risen from the dead, but industrial equality 
 
 will come as political equality came. 
 Our fathers died for the shadow, — we demand 
 
 the substance. 
 The few shall not rule. 
 
 XVI 
 
 It was all so simple in the old days, when people 
 saw, or thought they saw, tyranny and 
 oppression centred in one person, and in 
 
DEMOCRACY 19 
 
 attacking and destroying that person were 
 sure they were saving mankind. 
 
 How easy it is to treat a boil just as a boil and 
 to forget the corrupt blood that produced 
 it, running into every nook and cranny of 
 the body ! 
 
 To-day, alas, the tyrant spreads like a vicious 
 kind of nervous system throughout the 
 entire frame of society. 
 
 I am part tyrant, part slave, as we all are in 
 varying degree, and there seems to be no 
 other alternative possible. 
 
 We are caught in the meshes of our own web. 
 
 We must disentangle the tyrant from us, and 
 this new Gordian knot will not yield its 
 secret to the sword. 
 
 We must thresh the chaff from the corn, and 
 each grain has its separate outworn casing 
 waiting to be winnowed away. 
 
 Alas, it is no simple rebellion on the old lines 
 that calls for our adhesion and support ; 
 
 It is rather a complicated labour of unravelling 
 and extricating and liberating from the net- 
 work of poisonous creepers of the ages, 
 whose roots are in our own hearts. 
 
 XVII 
 
 Democracy, what called you into being ? 
 
 What induced you to persist in strugghng for 
 centuries to tear off your chains, one after 
 another ? • - ■ 
 
 It was the longing for freedom, the desire to 
 
20 DEMOCRACY 
 
 grow and develop and thrive untrammelled 
 and unrestrained, the determination to 
 have no masters but your own wisdom and 
 conscience and will. 
 
 Now that you have nearly reached the goal, — 
 now that you have almost achieved the 
 task, — how is it that you have forgotten 
 your object and renounced the freedom for 
 which you began the strife ? 
 
 Instead of knocking off the last shackles you 
 are busy patching and riveting your broken 
 chains. 
 
 You are having recourse to restriction and 
 interference, tying the hands of those who 
 would aid you, hampering the free play of 
 the nation's life. 
 
 Will you be your own Napoleon, bringing your 
 own revolution to naught to usher in again 
 the old regime ? 
 
 Beware, beware of chains, though they be of 
 your own making ; they were ever your 
 curse, and how can they become a blessing? 
 
 You have rid yourselves of your ancient tryants, 
 but their death was in vain if you try to 
 adopt their manner of reigning. 
 
 Stretch forth your free arms, breathe the un- 
 limited air, and think no more of using 
 force against your members. 
 
 y XVIII 
 
 Liberty, sad, dethroned queen, though all the 
 world turn against you, I will be true to 
 you. V 
 
DEMOCRACY 21 
 
 Dragged in triumph at the wheel of Coercion's 
 chariot, — bowed down, dishevelled, foot- 
 sore, — though you be, — 
 
 Though the fickle populace, which but yester- 
 day hailed your accession with frantic joy, 
 now hoot and hiss you and deride, — 
 
 Yet I still perceive the majesty of your mien 
 and look and gait, and I acknowledge my- 
 self proudly to be your loyal subject. 
 
 Why have the people changed ? 
 
 Do they say that you did not give them the 
 prosperity that you promised ? 
 
 Ah, but when did they ever trust you with even 
 half the power ? 
 
 When did they ever fairly wrest your realm 
 from the sway of your victorious rival ? 
 
 His acts of tyranny have ever afflicted the land. 
 
 He always held tight in his fetters the soil, the 
 source of all, and trade, the distributor of 
 all. 
 
 Were they so foolish as to charge these wrongs 
 to you ? 
 
 Because Coercion bore heavily upon the people, 
 must they for this extend his rule so as to 
 make, as it were, a balance of his mis- 
 deeds ? 
 
 Shout for the usurper, you mad, incoherent 
 throng ! 
 
 Little reck you that he will add to your yoke, 
 and, where there were whips, chastize you 
 with scorpions. 
 
 Many a weary year may pass along, ere you 
 bethink you again of your lawful queen. 
 
22 DEMOCRACY 
 
 XIX 
 
 Dear America ! 
 
 Vast, vigorous, boastful, untidy mother ! 
 
 I dwell upon your faults, not as an unfilial son, 
 
 but as an anxious father, — for you are my 
 
 daughter too. 
 You have made me what I am, and now it is 
 
 my turn to make you what I would have 
 
 you be. 
 Let others toil to prepare you fitting millinery ; 
 Let them seek to assure you health and strength 
 
 of body ; 
 My part will rather be to aid quietly in forming 
 
 your soul. 
 If we can but succeed in creating for you a 
 
 spirit commensurate with your greatness, 
 
 the rest will take care of itself. 
 The folds of your garments, the lines of your 
 
 face and figure, will surely take on the 
 
 beauty of your soul. 
 What nobler task is there on earth than shap- 
 ing the soul of a people ? 
 
 XX 
 
 To make men pull together, — 
 
 That was the aim which civilization set before 
 
 itself ; 
 Men pulled together at the word of command ; 
 The pyramids rose, Rome swallowed the earth, 
 
 — men worked long and wearily and 
 
DEMOCRACY 23 
 
 without a doubt that here was the finahty 
 of things. 
 
 Their dreamers and sages and saints could pic- 
 ture no golden age without slaves, 
 
 And the strong arm of the law made them toil. 
 
 But man grew, and looked, and asked why, 
 and slavery shrivelled and died. 
 
 And still the object was to make men pull to- 
 gether. 
 
 And the wage-system showed the way. 
 
 One man grasped all the good things he could 
 and hugged them, and said to those who 
 had none, " Work for me and I will give 
 you a little." 
 
 Men pulled together again with hunger in their 
 eyes ; 
 
 Factories sprang up, railways encircled the 
 earth, — men laboured long and eagerly 
 and without a doubt that here was the 
 finality of things. 
 
 Their dreamers and sages and saints could pic- 
 ture no golden age without the wage- 
 system. 
 
 And the strong arm of the law guarded the piles 
 of good things and let the men go, 
 
 For now men strove to get work, and it was 
 no one's interest to keep them through the 
 winter, and the death of a man, such as 
 once fetched his weight in coin, was no 
 longer of consequence, for another would 
 do as well. 
 
 But man grows and looks, and asks why, and 
 the wage-system quivers with terror. 
 
24 DEMOCRACY 
 
 There is a new way to make men pull 
 
 together. 
 Love, free co-operation, equal service, true 
 
 honour and honesty, — have you never 
 
 thought of these things ? 
 Let us dream better than the old-dreamers, — 
 
 and pull together. 
 
 /iw 
 
 XXI 
 
 Men's laws, — laws of tsars or of majorities 
 
 counted by the nose — 
 Call them laws if you will, but they are no laws. 
 Enforce them ; drag them after you like a 
 
 corpse in a hearse. 
 No matter how long your procession, how 
 
 grand your plumes and high-stepping 
 
 horses. 
 You are advancing to the grave, and, go as 
 
 slow as you please, before long you will get 
 
 there. ► 
 God's laws are other than these. 
 They live and breathe and enforce themselves. 
 They lead the way onward with back turned 
 
 to the cemetery. 
 If only one man feels the attraction and follows, 
 
 he becomes by that alone the autocrat of 
 
 the world. 
 When two or three join him, you have a divine 
 
 aristocracy. 
 When the people are at last won over, there is 
 
 democracy indeed. 
 
DEMOCRACY 2$ 
 
 God's laws are living germs and they quicken 
 the blood in spite of votes and edicts. 
 
 XXII 
 
 Where are the leaders who will show us the 
 way ? 
 
 Where are the discoverers who will search out 
 the secret of true living and then apply it 
 in their lives ? 
 
 We are ready to follow them. 
 
 When they discovered the uses of steam, we 
 adopted their invention although we com- 
 prehended it not. 
 
 When they lassoed the lightning, and broke it 
 in, and taught it to carry our words and 
 voices and bodies, and steadily to illum- 
 inate the darkness, then we appropriated 
 their inventions, though we did not under- 
 stand them. 
 
 When men shall have discovered the proper 
 functions of human energy and the way to 
 apply it to free and social living, again we 
 shall not be slow to adopt their invention, 
 whether it passes our comprehension or 
 not. 
 
 It is always enough that a few find the best 
 path, — forthwith the world follows. 
 
 We do not want more education or books or 
 legislation. 
 
 We have too much education, too many books, 
 too many laws already. 
 
26 DEMOCRACY 
 
 We need only, here and there, a leader to 
 discover and apply God's laws of social 
 industry, and we will throng after them ; 
 not one of us will be left behind. 
 
 XXIII 
 
 And who will lead the way ? 
 
 The good and wise must lead. 
 
 He that loves most is the best and wisest and 
 
 he it is that leads already. 
 Where the best lover sits is always the head of 
 
 the table. 
 Tell the great secret to the people. 
 Let the people love and they will lead. 
 No cunning device of ballot-machinery can 
 
 give them the power. 
 No system of common-schools, spending its 
 
 energies on mind alone, can give them the 
 
 power. 
 No campaign against monopoly and oppression, 
 
 however it may promise to succeed, can 
 
 give them the power. 
 Nay, but let the people love, and theirs is the 
 
 power ! 
 
 From the Sanscrit 
 
 AS the young mother clasps her infant son, 
 So let us cherish, as our course we run, 
 A boundless friendly mind toward every one. 
 
STIGMATA LIBERTATIS 27 
 
 Stigmata Libertatis 
 
 TELL me what the signs may be 
 Which forever mark the free. 
 
 First, they love all living things 
 Humbly, — yet as proud as kings. 
 
 Then of man they think no ill, 
 Let him do whate'er he will. 
 
 And this shows their freedom too. 
 That they grant the same to you. 
 
 Neither are they filled with woe 
 Over those who ripen slow, 
 
 For they know that, in the prime 
 Of the spirit's harvest-time, 
 
 Comes to every soul the hour 
 When it opens like a flower, 
 
 While the universe stands by, 
 Ever ready to supply 
 
 Lovingly its magic aid, — 
 Never hurried, never stayed. 
 
 Lastly, thus we know the free, 
 That they live right openly. 
 
 Standing naked as they are, 
 Unabashed by sun or star. 
 
 For they deem it grievous sin 
 To secrete the truth within. 
 
 Each of these is freedom's sign. 
 How I wish that it were mine ! 
 
28 GOD'S GIFT 
 
 God's Gift 
 
 WHERE is my gift," said God, "that I 
 gave to men — 
 The sun-wed, fruitful earth, with her freight of 
 
 good 
 For all their wants ? What mean these prayers 
 
 for food ? 
 Are there poor in a world which bursts with its 
 
 golden stores ? 
 Who are the few that dare to withhold from all 
 My gift to all of the fruitful, sun-wed earth ? " 
 
 And the few replied : " O, Lord, we give Thee 
 thanks. 
 
 Thou gavest the earth to all, it is true, but lo ! 
 
 Thy angels. Law and Order, who rule the world 
 
 When Thou art far away, have learned our 
 worth. 
 
 And rightly bestowed on us Thine inheri- 
 tance." 
 
 " I know them not," said God ; " they are 
 
 fiends from hell 
 That juggle thus with the gift that I gave to 
 
 man. 
 I am never far away from the world I gave. 
 And now once more and forevermore I give 
 This fruitful earth anew to the sons of men. 
 Woe to the fiends who shall dare usurp my 
 
 place ! 
 Woe to the few who say that my gift is theirs ! 
 Woe to the man who grasps his neighbour's 
 
 land ! " 
 
LAND OF THE NOONDAY NIGHT 29 
 
 The Land of the Noonday 
 Night 
 
 A MINER'S SONG. 
 
 WE have eyes to see like yours 
 Way down in the deep, deep mine, 
 But there's nothing to mark but the dreadful 
 dark 
 Where the sun can never shine. 
 On the banks of clammy coal 
 
 Our lamps cast a flickering light 
 At the bottom drear of the moist black hole 
 In the land of the noonday night. 
 
 We have children at home like yours, 
 
 But at eve when we homeward tread 
 We find them asleep in a tangled heap, 
 
 Three or four in a single bed. 
 In the morning our tasks begin 
 
 Before the sun shines bright, 
 For we have no sun and we have no kin 
 
 In the land of the noonday night. 
 
 But our home is not like yours. 
 
 'Tis a bare, unpainted shack. 
 Where the raindrops pour on the shaky floor. 
 
 And the coal-dust stains it black. 
 Not a flower or blade of grass 
 
 Can escape the grimy blight, 
 For the face of our yard is seared and scarred 
 
 In the land of the noonday night. 
 
 But the men who own the mines, 
 And who live like kings of old — 
 
30 LAND OF THE NOONDAY NIGHT 
 
 Ah ! little they care how their wage-slaves fare, 
 
 So long as they get their gold ! 
 And the fire-damp may explode 
 
 And a thousand die outright, 
 For the men come cheap who go down deep 
 
 In the land of the noonday night. 
 
 And like feathers they weigh the coal 
 
 When they pay us by the head, 
 But for you who buy it twice too high 
 
 They weigh it like chunks of lead. 
 And our wage goes back in rent — 
 
 For they have us in such a plight — 
 And they squeeze us sore at the company's 
 store 
 
 In the land of the noonday night. 
 
 And we labour with straining arms 
 
 For the pittance they deign to give, 
 And our boys must quit the school for the pit 
 
 To drudge that we all may live. 
 And our teeth feel the grit of the mine 
 
 In the very bread we bite. 
 Till our inmost soul is defiled with coal 
 
 In the land of the noonday night. 
 
 And if in the end we dare 
 
 To assert our just demands, 
 Then their courts emit an injunction writ 
 
 To shackle our tongues and hands. 
 And if in spite of their frown 
 
 We protest that we will unite, 
 Then they lock us up or they shoot us down 
 
 In the land of the noonday night. 
 
THE COTTON MILL 31 
 
 Who was it that made the coal ? 
 
 Our God as well as theirs ! 
 If He gave it free to you and me, 
 
 Then keep us out who dares ! 
 Let the people own their mines — 
 
 Bitumen and anthracite — 
 And the right prevail under hill and dale 
 
 In the land of the noonday night. 
 
 The Cotton Mill 
 
 OGRE dread ! 
 Slavery raised from the dead ! 
 I see you — not in the fields as of yore — 
 But stalking the factory floor. 
 Cracking your whip overhead. 
 While pale-faced children droop in the rum- 
 bling roar. 
 With tiny fingers twining the hateful thread, 
 And dreaming of bed. 
 
 Half gone is the night. 
 
 To left and right 
 
 An acre or more of dim-lit whirr extends. 
 
 For six dull hours' interminable length 
 
 These babies have strained their strength ; — 
 
 Another six must wear away 
 
 Before, at break of day. 
 
 Their torment ends. 
 
 What is that piercing cry ? 
 
 Only another thumb and finger crushed ; 
 
 Another little hand awry. 
 
 The cry is hushed. 
 
32 THE COTTON MILL 
 
 The girl has fainted, but the surgeon comes ; 
 How skilfully he cuts and binds and sews. 
 Fingers to sever, and thumbs, 
 How well he knows ! 
 Carelessness maims and kills, 
 And children will be careless in the mills. 
 Now he leads her out, never to climb 
 Those stairs again to earn her nightly dime. 
 
 Yes, in this dismal hall 
 
 Broods the angel of death. 
 
 Many his shapes. 
 
 He lurks in their very breath — 
 
 In the cloud of cotton-dust that hangs like a 
 
 pall. 
 Over all. 
 
 Strange that a child escapes. 
 For dropsy, the wasting sickness, the fatal 
 
 cough, 
 Crouch, ready to carry them off. 
 In a dozen years from to-day 
 Half of these infant slaves 
 Will sleep in forgotten graves. 
 More happy there than those who stay, 
 Still bound to the wheel of the mill. 
 And racked and tortured still. 
 
 Will a monument ever rise to attest 
 How they fell at the Ogre's behest ? 
 Yes, far away in the North 
 Will a Herod's palace set forth 
 Why they laboured and died ; 
 For its splendours will hardly hide 
 
THE COTTON MILL 33 
 
 Its foundation laid on their tombs, 
 And the walls of its sumptuous rooms 
 Cemented with children's blood, where lingers 
 The trace of bruised and wearied flesh and 
 mutilated fingers. 
 
 Murder will out ; 
 
 And the palace will tell 
 
 How its corner-stone stands firm in hell 
 
 With a shout ! 
 
 And, who knows ? our Herod may build 
 
 With the gold of the killed 
 
 A church to his devilish god — his Moloch, who, 
 
 from his throne 
 Gave him the world, as he thinks, for his own. 
 And asylum, and hospital, too, 
 May spring from the bleaching bones 
 Of these innocent ones. 
 Crying to heaven the truth 
 Of their massacred youth. 
 And the story of Herod anew 
 In an epitaph true. 
 
 These be thy triumphs, O Trade ! 
 
 Triumphs of peace, do they say ? — nay, of war. 
 
 At the cannon's foul mouth afar. 
 
 Sore afraid, 
 
 Brown men, and yellow and black, 
 
 Buy what they never would lack 
 
 When the Ogre says " Buy ! " 
 
 And with white lands as well it is war that we 
 
 wage. 
 Let them die ! [age 
 
 Their trade must be shattered to naught in this 
 
 B. C 
 
34 THE COTTON MILL 
 
 Of the dollar supreme. 
 
 We must conquer. Our dream 
 
 Is a beggared world at our feet. 
 
 So we draw up the armies of trade 
 
 And invade, 
 
 With the children in front, to fall first, as 
 
 is meet — 
 Children of mill and of sweat shop and mine — 
 And behind them the women stand, 
 Jaded and wan, in line ; 
 Then come the hosts of the diggers and builders, 
 
 artisans, craftsmen and all. 
 It is fine ! 
 It is grand ! 
 Let them fall ! 
 We are safe in the rear, with the loot in our 
 
 hand. 
 
 And you, makers of laws ! 
 
 Who are true to the gold-bag's cause — 
 
 Who will not interfere — 
 
 To whom commerce alone is dear. 
 
 And who pay any price — 
 
 Child's life, or woman's, or man's — 
 
 For its plans — 
 
 Makers of devil's laws, breakers of God's, 
 
 Open your eyes ! 
 
 See what it means to succeed ! 
 
 Confess once for all that you worship the Ogre 
 
 of Greed. 
 And then 
 Turn again ! 
 For know, there are scorpions' rods 
 
THE ESCUTCHEON 35 
 
 Of remorse, and dishonour, and shame, 
 
 In the wake of his name. 
 
 Ogre dread ! 
 
 Send him and his slavery back to the dead ! 
 
 The StoRer 
 
 NOW and then a stoker, come up to breathe 
 between decks, glances under the canvas 
 awning at us as we yawn over our novels 
 in the long row of steamer-chairs aligned 
 on the leeward side of the upper deck. 
 
 I wonder what he thinks when he sees us. 
 
 Kind, good stoker, why do you not come and 
 sit in my chair and make me stoke in your 
 stead for a while ? 
 
 How good God is to give us first cabin passages 
 through life ! 
 
 And how nice of people to make ships for us 
 and provide us with a good table d'-hote and 
 comfortable beds and everything ready 
 just when it is wanted. 
 
 And how fortunate for us it is that the world's 
 hold is full of stokers who ask no questions 
 and have no sense of humour ! 
 
 The Escutcheon 
 
 POUNCE on the innocent, Powers-that-be ! 
 Live up to your coats-of-arms — 
 Vulture or beast of prey — 
 Whatever is cruel and harms, 
 And loves to torture and slay — 
 Your symbol and brand. 
 
36 CORONAL 
 
 Though the soft He drop from your Hps, on your 
 
 shields we see 
 The lust of your heart's desire as it guides your 
 . hand. 
 
 But the brutes are brave and will fight 
 With the best of their breed ; 
 While ye, ye nations, have goodly heed 
 To cringe to the men of might 
 And harry the weak. 
 All your courage of old — 
 All the strength that ye used to wreak — 
 Ye have lost in your search of the ends of the 
 earth for gold. 
 
 But now that ye are combined 
 
 In imperial sway. 
 
 Let your holy alliance find 
 
 An escutcheon new that will fit this ultimate 
 
 day. 
 Makers of money and empire, why not assume 
 The good old Medici arms of the Golden Balls ? 
 Dig them reverently up from the tomb. 
 And hang their eloquent sign from your outer 
 
 walls. 
 Leave their sins to the beasts — let us answer for 
 
 ours. 
 All hail to the arms of the Pawnbroking Powers. 
 
 Coronal 
 
 LO, the peoples, — all of them — 
 Form our Planet's diadem, — 
 Men and women, hand in hand. 
 Circling, linking land to land. 
 
TO ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI 37 
 
 Like a garland round her head, 
 See them, yellow, white and red, — 
 Sombre-hued and fair and dun, — 
 As she dances round the sun. 
 
 Pale or dusky though they be. 
 Yet she flaunts them equally, — 
 Proud of all of them, — afraid 
 Lest a single blossom fade. 
 
 Flowers, twine in friendship true ! 
 Buds be plenty, briars few ! 
 So the wreath that now adorns 
 Ne'er becomes her crown of thorns. 
 
 Beatus Ille 
 
 HAPPY the man, who, probing what is 
 meant 
 By the vague gnawing of his discontent, 
 Traces it back to discontent with self. 
 And then stops cursing his environment. 
 
 To St. Francis of Assisi 
 
 DEAR Francis, did Assisi's burghers frown 
 And did the women look askance and 
 chide 
 Because thou tookest for thy chosen bride 
 Lorn Poverty, thrice-shunned of all the town ? 
 The hard-earned wealth the ages handed down 
 Was it thy pleasure thus to thrust aside ? 
 What wonder then that all the world deride 
 To see thee wedded in a beggar's gown ? 
 
38 THE SCHOOL OF RICHES 
 
 Little they recked that from thine emptied hfe 
 
 Giotto and Cimabue would draw the power 
 
 To bring forth Art, nor that thy hymns when 
 
 rife 
 
 Would sow the seed of Dante's'splendid flower. 
 
 Nay, Poverty, I wot that never wife 
 
 Brought to her own true lord such priceless 
 dower ! 
 
 The School of Riches 
 
 BLESSED are the poor who know the 
 emptiness of riches. 
 
 The poor are no better than the rich. 
 J It is the poor in spirit — those who do not desire 
 riches (those who have passed beyond 
 riches, not those who are yet below them) 
 — who are better than the rich.v 
 
 We are all in the same school of the Vanity of 
 Riches, and the rich are in the senior class, 
 the class of experience, and will perhaps be 
 the first to be graduated. 
 
 Some day we shall all take the degree of Con- 
 tempt for Riches. 
 
 Blessed are the poor who know without experi- 
 ence the vanity of riches, for they shall 
 take the degree cum maxima laude. 
 
 II 
 
 Methought I heard God and Satan talking of me 
 as once they talked of Job. 
 
LOOK SHARP 39 
 
 And Satan said : " I am tired of all these 
 ancient forms of torture. The wri things of 
 the prisoner under the lash weary me. The 
 shrieks of the captive in Central Africa as 
 he feels the slow inevitable fire make me 
 yawn. All these old fashioned sufferings 
 have become maddening in their monotony. 
 When I was young, how I revelled in these 
 joys, but now, alas, those days have passed 
 away. What new punishment can I invent 
 for this man ? " 
 
 And God said : " What hath he done to deserve 
 punishment ? " 
 
 And Satan answered and said : "He prayed 
 continually for riches and pleasures and 
 consideration, and strove for them above 
 all things, and forgot Thee altogether." 
 
 And God said, " Give him wealth and its 
 honours and pleasures, and see to it that 
 he find no way to escape from them, and 
 then open his eyes that he behold what 
 manner of things they be." 
 
 And Satan went forth from the presence of God 
 exulting as of yore. 
 
 Look Sharp 
 
 LOOK sharp ! thou art one of God's eyes. 
 Speak clear, for His word thou art. 
 Be His finger, — act strong and wise. 
 Love hard, and get into His heart. 
 
40 BUDDHA 
 
 "Not a Christian" 
 
 SO you condemn him once for all as " not a 
 Christian." 
 What is your test of a Christian ? 
 I call Christians those whom Christ would be 
 
 likely to associate with if He came back to 
 
 earth to-day. 
 Do you think He would frequent bishops* 
 
 palaces ? 
 Are you sure that they would find Him quite 
 
 orthodox, — in short, your kind of a Chris- 
 tian ? 
 Where do you think He would preach, at St. 
 
 Paul's or in Hyde Park ? 
 Would he explain the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 
 and the efficacy of infant baptism, and the 
 
 use of proper vestments at the Mass ? 
 How the poor priests would huddle these things 
 
 out of the way, if they really saw and 
 
 recognized Him ! 
 But they would not recognize Him. 
 He would talk of Scribes and Pharisees, and 
 
 Chief Priests and Rulers in the good old 
 
 way. 
 And how long would you " Christians " listen to 
 Him without indignation ? 
 
 Buddha 
 
 PASSIONLESS, contemplative, free from 
 desire, 
 Beyond love and hate, beyond good and evil, 
 forever beyond the pairs of opposites, — 
 
CAIN 41 
 
 Is this, O Gautama — once so human, so lov- 
 able — is this the true goal that you have 
 reached ? 
 
 Is there no divine passion, no pure supreme 
 desire ? 
 
 May I not choose to dwell in the equilibrium of 
 the opposites rather than rise above them ? 
 
 If life and desire are one, must I crave death, 
 thus still desiring ? 
 
 Or do we really mean the same thing, and is 
 your immeasurable calm a more abundant 
 life? 
 
 If you could only have been in Galilee in those 
 other days ! 
 
 How you would have loved each other ! 
 
 And what would you have had to learn, and 
 what to teach ? 
 
 Religion 
 
 THE childish mistaking of pictures for 
 facts, — 
 The crass materialization of allegory, — 
 The infinite capacity of man for humbugging 
 
 himself, — 
 And underneath it all the shadowy outline of 
 truth. 
 
 Cain 
 
 NAY, flee not from me. Does this livid 
 brand 
 Stamped on my brow affright you ? Fear it 
 
 not. 
 It marks a sin, perhaps, but yet a sin 
 
42 CAIN 
 
 That had its root in kindliness of heart, 
 Which brought upon my soul, bent Edenward, 
 The hatred of my brother Abel's God. 
 For with my mother's milk I had sucked in 
 Eden's sweet memories, and she told me much 
 Of that glad time when all the beasts and birds 
 Were, as it were, her brethren — how it was. 
 The Master of the garden blessed them all, 
 And gave them every herb and every tree 
 To be to them for food, and how one day 
 She plucked the fairest fruit of all, and how 
 The Master drove them forth, Adam and Eve, 
 In anger, and how first He slew the beasts 
 That looked with trustful pitiful amaze 
 At this new monster, Death, and how he bound 
 Their bloody skins around her waist and his, 
 While both shrank back in horror. From the 
 
 day 
 I first could understand that oft-told tale, 
 I dreamt of Eden, and I sought to turn 
 Even with my baby hands this cursed earth 
 Into another garden. And I loved 
 To till the soil, and bring my choicest fruits 
 And lay them in my mother's lap, and ask 
 If these were fair as Eden's golden yield. 
 And she would smile, — oh, such a plaintive 
 
 smile, — 
 And tell me " Ay," and kiss me, but the tears 
 That fell upon my face and her deep sigh 
 Said " Nay " more clearly. Abel listened too 
 To all these tales, but little did he care 
 For Eden and its green luxuriant herbs. 
 Rather he loved to hear how the dumb beasts 
 
CAIN 43 
 
 Came to the slaughter, — how the skins were 
 
 ripped 
 From the warm bodies, how the sharpened 
 
 stone 
 Pierced the soft flesh, and how the blood gushed 
 
 forth. 
 
 And once upon a time, as with my foot 
 
 I guided through the thick and blackened soil 
 
 The irrigating waters, in the sky 
 
 I saw a smoke ascending, and I smelt 
 
 A burning stench, and heard the bleat of lambs. 
 
 Then ran I toward the place and through the 
 
 trees 
 Looked curiously. What was it that I saw ? 
 My brother Abel holding in his hands 
 A new-born lamb that cried just like a child 
 While he bent back its head and cut its throat ! 
 And well-nigh all its blood poured out and left 
 The trembling body. On a pile of stones 
 Crackled a mighty fire, while bones and wool 
 And bits of flesh and trickling streams of blood, 
 With here and there great splashes, made a 
 
 scene 
 That touched mine eyes with madness, and I 
 
 felt,— 
 As I beheld those helpless slaughtered lambs, — 
 The self-same spirit of blind blood-thirstiness 
 That filled their murderer, strike into my soul. 
 I stooped and lifted from the ground a stone 
 Large as my head and hurled it at the lad 
 Before he saw me. It felled him to the earth 
 Crushing his back. I saw his red life's blood 
 
44 CAIN 
 
 Mix with the lamb's upon his legs and arms, 
 And then I fled. . . . 
 
 If I had only guessed 
 That violence will not yield to violence, — 
 That butchery keeps alive the butcher's trade, 
 Shedding of blood the murderer's ! Had I known 
 That by my very deed I gave assent 
 To Abel's sin, and made it permanent. 
 Forever taking from myself the right 
 Of re-creating Eden ! Had I dreamed, 
 (As since that day I often have foreseen 
 In visions), how the centuries would drag on 
 From cruelty to cruelty, with that sin 
 Transmuted into custom, — slaughter-houses 
 Revered as temples, lines of butcher-priests 
 Pointing mankind to Moloch, conjuring up 
 A God who loves to hear his victim's cries, — 
 To sniff the smell of blood, and in the end 
 To torture his own son, whose followers — 
 The wolf-like followers of a lamb — should joy 
 In burning saints and prophets at the stake. 
 And later yet in preaching war and strife, 
 Bloodshed and tyranny against those who work 
 For peace and justice ! When I think of this, 
 And how one moment of a wider love. 
 Embracing killed and killer, in my heart 
 Might once have blotted out this tale of guilt 
 And changed the current of the stubborn years. 
 My punishment is more than I can bear. 
 
 But do not shun me. Do not turn away. 
 Be sorry, for this hateful brand proclaims 
 A sin that was at worst but half a sin. 
 
TO NERO 45 
 
 To Nero 
 
 I 
 
 NERO, old dog, I see myself looking out of 
 your big eyes. 
 We are volcanoes from the same subterranean 
 
 fires, — 
 Geysers from the same boiling, invisible sea, — 
 Rays from the same eternal sun. 
 You recognize me, don't you, brother ? I read 
 it in your trustful gaze. 
 
 II 
 
 How many cycles is it since we were all let 
 
 loose like homing pigeons to find our way 
 
 back to God ? 
 We each took our own course and all of us, 
 
 except man, have run into some cul-de-sac 
 
 or other. 
 Poor hop-toad and earth-worm, what ever 
 
 allured you into such ugly unpromising 
 
 paths ? 
 But I can understand the oak tree and golden 
 
 rod, yellow butterfly, the black-winged 
 
 scarlet tanager and the cheerily singing 
 
 wren. 
 I almost wonder that I too have not come to a 
 
 standstill in one of these pretty by-ways, 
 
 doomed to mark time forever in exquisite 
 
 aimlessness. 
 What an iron will it must have been that kept 
 
 me to the true road so long ! 
 
46 TO NERO 
 
 III 
 
 Centrifugal, centripetal, — 
 
 A going out, a coming in, — 
 
 A separating, each for himself, a gathering 
 together again, each for all, — 
 
 That is the history of life in the universe. 
 
 First the selfish plant, then the animal making 
 delicious experiments in mother-love, and 
 at last in us, men, scattering life at last 
 promising to respond for good and all to 
 the converging forces, — 
 
 Yet all of us alive with the one great life, com- 
 prehending, as it does, growth and com- 
 pletion, out-breath and in-breath, farewell 
 and hail. 
 
 The sap rises in yon tall sugar-maple at the 
 outer hem of the life universal, — the un- 
 conscious life of the world's digestive 
 organs, neither knowing nor thinking, its 
 nerves rooted low down in the cosmic 
 spinal column. 
 
 Your life, old Nero is higher, the reflex-motor 
 instinctive life that centres in the lower 
 brain of the world, knowing but knowing 
 not that it knows, doing but ignorant of 
 how it does, — just as we walk unconsci- 
 ously and stumble when we put our minds 
 to it, and use words unconsciously, which 
 seem strange when we repeat them. 
 
 And our man-life is loftier still, our nerves 
 communicating with the great upper brain, 
 ramifications of the Eternal Will, and of 
 that Will we are the offshoots. 
 
TO NERO 47 
 
 IV 
 
 How the good old mastiff longs to answer me ! 
 See it in his eyes and hear it in his whine ! 
 
 Alas, poor Nero, it is too late now. 
 
 In the old plastic days your Adam gave over 
 his mouth to gluttony and strife, and rele- 
 gated all signs of sympathy to his tail, and 
 hence his brain stood still. 
 
 He preferred indulgence by himself to socia- 
 bihty, and everlasting lonehness, perpetual 
 solitary confinement in self, was his reward. 
 
 V 
 
 O desire, creator, 
 
 Creator reft in twain,— self-desire and yearning 
 
 for others, — 
 The self-god triumphing in the beast of prey, — 
 The social God in man who is his brother's 
 
 keeper ! 
 For the social yearning it was that created man. 
 Man longed to commune with his fellows, and 
 
 shaped his mouth to speech and his brain 
 
 to thought. 
 It was because be cared more for communion 
 
 than for food or fight, and honoured his 
 
 tongue above his teeth, that he became man. 
 
 VI 
 
 And the social God is still at work creating. 
 
 His spark is kindled in the breast of man, and 
 we do not yet know what we shall be. 
 
 We are still on the main highway ; we have 
 successfully threaded the labyrinth thus 
 far ; we have a future before us. 
 
48 TO NERO 
 
 Shall we escape the blind alleys ? 
 
 Shall we have nerve to stick to the narrow path, 
 turning neither to the right hand nor to the 
 left? 
 
 Shall we succumb to the attraction neither of 
 gay feathers nor soft music, nor to the long- 
 ing to fly in the heavens above nor to 
 burrow in the earth beneath, nor to swim 
 in the water under the earth ? 
 
 Shall we advance with confident unswerving 
 instinct, knowing that the Overman, when 
 he comes, will be born of the social yearn- 
 ing ? 
 
 VII 
 
 And yet, Nero, I will not boast that I am human 
 
 and a man in your presence, for all life 
 
 must rise together. 
 Such epithets are too narrow for me ; they are 
 
 mere party-terms and faction-labels. 
 I will have none of them. 
 I will be nothing narrower than a neighbour 
 
 and a brother. 
 You are a neighbour and brother, and how do 
 
 I know that you are not human and a 
 
 man ? 
 I am persuaded that you have a future too. 
 We are all arrows shot at a mark at a venture. 
 Do you ask what blunderer with misty eye and 
 
 palsied arm sent you thus aimlessly through 
 
 space ? 
 Patience ! It was no blunderer, and we shall all 
 
 arrive. 
 
APRIL 49 
 
 April 
 
 SEE the apple-orchard 
 Bathing head and shoulders 
 In the dazzling pea-green 
 Rising-tide of April ; 
 While an ancient pear tree 
 In the kitchen garden 
 Spreads the rugged outline 
 Of its jet-black branches 
 Underneath a drifted 
 Mass of snowy blossoms. 
 Tinted is the herbage 
 With unnumbered violets. 
 Tiny sky-blue butterflies 
 Like uprooted flowrets 
 Flirt among the sunbeams. 
 Hickory-tips are bursting 
 Into clustering parachutes. 
 On the white-oak saplings 
 Pink and folded leaflets 
 Now uncurl their tendrils 
 Like the opening iingers 
 Of soft new-born babies. 
 Listen, from the marshes 
 Multitudinous frog notes 
 Ringing out metallic 
 Like the ghosts of sleigh-bells ; 
 While a red-winged blackbird, 
 Eager to be mating, 
 From a bare twig bugles, 
 " 0-kal-ee,— it's April ! " 
 
 B. D 
 
so SPRING THOUGHTS 
 
 Spring Thoughts 
 
 THE leaves are not out yet upon the moun- 
 tain, but the red promise of them 
 begins to tinge its grey flank. 
 
 And so my heart flushes with the springtide, 
 and the robins and blue-birds come back to 
 me also from the South. 
 
 For I am part and parcel of it all. 
 
 There is no feeling in bird or beast or insect, in 
 bud or tendril, which has not its counter- 
 part in me. 
 
 I am as bold as the bear emerging lean and 
 famished from his winter dormitory. 
 
 I tremble at the sound of the crackling branch 
 with the squirrel and rabbit, as they prick 
 up their ears and listen with ear and eye 
 and tail. 
 
 The snake and the toad hop and glide within 
 me, though I would fain deny them. 
 
 I am more natural than the nature around me, 
 for the wolf and the panther have left these 
 woods, but they still have their lair in my 
 heart, and no advance of civilisation will 
 ever drive them forth from that fastness. 
 
 I sleep and dream with the stolid forest trees, 
 lulled by the south-west wind. 
 
 I feel the sap rising in me, and I wake into 
 ardent blossoms. 
 
 I struggle for air and sunlight with them all, 
 
 though we look so innocent and peaceful. 
 Every note in the scale of creation from heaven 
 
SPRING THOUGHTS 51 
 
 to hell rouses to vibration some sympa- 
 thetic chord within me. 
 
 I cannot escape a single experience of the uni- 
 verse, if I would. 
 
 My cowardice is as futile as all cowardice is 
 futile. 
 
 I live with all the life I see. 
 
 The spring and summer are mine, and the fall 
 and winter will just as surely be mine, and 
 after them the following spring-time. 
 
 I must have all — all. 
 
 My lot must be completely bound up with the 
 common lot. 
 
 I claim no exclusive privilege. 
 
 I will live with them and I will die with them 
 and with them shall I rise from the dead. 
 
 Nature has not slighted me by exempting me 
 from any of her laws. 
 
 II 
 
 The willows are signalling with light green 
 
 streamers the arrival of Spring in the 
 
 offing. 
 The soft maples have hoisted the red standard 
 
 which in their code has the same meaning. 
 Sail in with swelling sails, O ship of life, for the 
 
 ice has long since ebbed out of the harbour. 
 Coming and going every year, O ship, bringing 
 
 the living and taking away the dead, tell 
 
 me, where is the other port at the end of 
 
 your annual journey ? 
 Do you bring them to life too, and take away 
 
 their dead ? 
 
52 SPRING THOUGHTS 
 
 On the deep, lonely sea is your cargo somehow 
 
 changed and transformed ? 
 I half guess the secret of your voyage. 
 Tell me, is it not true that death is only the 
 
 seamy side of birth ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 The pale-green finger-tips of the sombre firs 
 
 point in all directions at the wonders of 
 
 April. 
 In the woods the warm days have lured forth 
 
 the tender leaves on the young trees, and 
 
 undergrowth, but the lofty oaks show 
 
 hardly a sign of life as yet. 
 A greenish mist of leaves is rising sun-lit from 
 
 the ground, but it reaches only half way 
 
 up their towering trunks. 
 New yellow sprouts stand upright on the 
 
 diminutive pines like candles on a Christ- 
 mas-tree. 
 Each sprout, each needle, each leaf, grows forth 
 
 independently, obeying only the life within. 
 O woods, — 
 
 Untamed, unheeding woods, — 
 Ungoverned, unlicensed, unpermitted, — 
 Asking no one's leave to fulfil your destiny ! 
 In vain I peer and search beneath your branches 
 
 for a glimpse of the State. 
 Here at least the State is for once well out of 
 
 sight. 
 Before your leafy wands the giant Bogey of the 
 
 ages has vanished with all his spectral train 
 
 of rights divine. 
 
SPRING THOUGHTS 53 
 
 The only divine rights here are those of beech 
 and chestnut, — but that I am here too 
 with the rights divine of Man. 
 
 I pledge my allegiance with the forest trees. 
 
 Their oath is my oath and their State is my 
 State. 
 
 We are the true realists and deal only with 
 facts. 
 
 We are not like the sentimentalists in town 
 with their big books, pretending that they 
 are practical while they are lost in a maze 
 of Laws and Policies and Patriotisms and 
 Precedents and countless other shadowy 
 sentiments duly capitalized. 
 
 We know what they have forgotten, that the 
 one ultimate fact is life. 
 
 When the leaves of the oak are ruled by a 
 majority rather than by the inner life of 
 the tree, then, and not till then, will I 
 believe in majorities. 
 
 IV 
 
 Robin, robin, here you are once more. 
 Why did you desert us so early last Autumn ? 
 There were still plenty enough of seeds and 
 
 insects. 
 Why did you not stay with us longer ? 
 The robin answers not, but he cocks his head 
 
 as if to say : 
 " What makes you too fly away from the old 
 
 and tried to the new and unexplored ? " 
 
54 SPRING THOUGHTS 
 
 V 
 
 I have looked down upon the earth from afar. 
 
 I have noted its slow and regular respiration, 
 the summer rising and falling like the 
 bosom of a sleeping child, rolling its green 
 flood alternately north and south and ebb- 
 ing back again before the advancing snows. 
 
 I have watched the flight of birds up and down 
 the throbbing lands as it keeps time with 
 the swelling, sinking breath. 
 
 Whence comes the tireless, imperative push, 
 push, push, behind it all ? 
 
 I cannot tell you but I feel it in my heart. 
 
 I am like the bud ; I am conscious of a touch 
 of mysterious life at the very centre of me 
 that sets all the rest a-bursting. 
 
 Push, push, push, — the old hardened envelopes 
 of custom and habit on the outside which 
 have so long restrained me yield at last 
 and fall withering to the ground. 
 
 The old kernel swells outward and in turn falls 
 off likewise. 
 
 And yet forever streams into the centre a 
 steady flow of life, welling up from the 
 infinite source that fills the bird and flower. 
 
 Push, push, push. 
 
 As the word of the Lord came to Abram, as it 
 came to Israel and Moses, as it comes year 
 after year to the robin, so also it comes to 
 me, saying, 
 
 " Get thee out of thy country and from thy 
 kindred and from thy father's house, unto 
 a land that I will show thee." 
 
SPRING THOUGHTS 55 
 
 VI 
 
 May is almost over and the long rows of locusts 
 on the winding avenue are pale with blos- 
 soms, which are now beginning to fall like 
 snow on the carriage-way. 
 
 The air is heavy with their perfume and the 
 full clusters buzz with innumerable insects. 
 
 It is prayer-meeting night and the church-bells 
 are ringing their beautiful call once again 
 from the village. 
 
 I think of the sleepy, uncomfortable congrega- 
 tion, only quarter filling the chapel, — of 
 the general funereal pitch of the service, — 
 of the atmosphere of dismal duty. 
 
 The hum of the bees is as fresh as it was in 
 Eden ; — why then has the message of the 
 bells lost its freshness ? 
 
 The locust-blooms are as new-inspired to-day 
 as they were on the third day of Creation. 
 
 Why is it that the beautiful bells mean less every 
 
 year ? 
 
 VII 
 
 I see a dead beetle in the road and the ants are 
 devouring it with great haste. 
 
 I wonder what enemy cut short its life. 
 
 With all my fellow-feeling for this Spring- 
 world, surely there is something exotic in 
 my soul, and it did not all grow up from 
 this hard-hearted soil. 
 
 Its tap-root sucks up its compassion from some 
 warmer, softer loam, and something 
 
S6 SPRING THOUGHTS 
 
 foreign to this inter-struggling world has 
 taught it to be less pitiless. 
 
 Poor beetle, whose voice is it that the busy 
 voracious ants obey ? 
 
 Wonderful little inlet into which the ocean of 
 life once surged, now left high and dry but 
 still bearing the shape into which the great 
 water fashioned you ! 
 
 How the persistent waves of the sea of life con- 
 tinually assault the shores of matter, 
 working their way into it at every nook 
 and cranny, and then running inevitably 
 out, leaving the beach strewn with empty 
 shells like this poor beetle-case ! 
 
 But the sea is still full of water and not a drop 
 that was here but is there, rising and 
 falling with the living tide. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Coffined too long in my body, I spring forth at 
 
 last unaccountably free. 
 I make my choice to live outside, even on the 
 
 advancing outskirts of my subtle influence. 
 All these years I have been content to go to the 
 
 bottom like a stone and lie at rest in the 
 
 soft mud. 
 Now I choose to spread out forever on the sur- 
 face hke the widening undulating circles. 
 I did not know that I could walk on the water, 
 
 — but I can. 
 I tried it at first fearsomely as if it were thin 
 
 black ice which would give way with my 
 
 weight, — but it bears. 
 
SPRING THOUGHTS 57 
 
 Oh, the freedom of it, rising thus as it were 
 from the dead, — 
 
 Forsaking lonehness, ambition and pride, — 
 
 Swelhng out into fresh air, buoyancy, health 
 and love, — 
 
 Finding no frontier anywhere, — 
 
 Sensible of infinite, wasteful regions of elbow- 
 room, — 
 
 Breathing in space and leaving it behind, — 
 
 The universe passing through me as the ocean 
 passes through the gills of a fish. 
 
 IX 
 
 I leave my metropolis on all the railways at 
 once with a free pass which no one need 
 be ashamed of in my pocket. 
 
 My soul leaps forth north, south, east, west by 
 every quivering wire. 
 
 Before long I shall hold the whole world in a 
 net. 
 
 My nerves are the central office of a great tele- 
 phone company. 
 
 In every town and hamlet there will be a 
 branch office and an operator to see and 
 hear from me, responsive to my every 
 message. 
 
 It will be " hello, hello " to all the world with 
 the stars and planets thrown in, but there 
 will be no " good-bye." 
 
 I shall speak to them all at once and they will 
 speak to me all at once, but there will be 
 no confusion. 
 
58 SPRING THOUGHTS 
 
 Now I am free with the ultimate freedom of all 
 things. 
 
 For the first time I am at large and find myself 
 in my true element. 
 
 I was meant to fly ; I was half conscious of it 
 even when I lay in the befouled nest. 
 
 I know now how the fledgeling feels, when the 
 mother-bird hides all day in the sugar- 
 maple and peeps out to see if he will dare 
 to follow. 
 
 He is very hungry, he chirps piteously, he does 
 not know what has become of his hundred 
 meals a day and of the familiar warmth 
 which was as a part of himself. 
 
 He listens in vain for the well-known cluck 
 which means " Here's a worm for you." 
 
 When at length he is well-nigh desperate, some- 
 thing strange moves within him for it is 
 his Spring-time. 
 
 He hops out of the nest, he knows not why ; he 
 flutters his wings, he has faith, he flies, he 
 is born again. 
 
 Oh, life, life, that other existence in the old 
 nest was not life. 
 
 I am delirious with new-found joy. 
 
 O mother-bird, over there in the thick of the 
 maple-tree, are you not as happy as I am ? 
 
 XI 
 
 The creative movement is ecstasy. 
 
 You cannot have creation without ecstasy. 
 
IN THE GARDEN 59 
 
 Rose-bud red and robin-egg blue and rosy 
 blue-eyed baby all tell the same story of 
 ecstasy. 
 
 All life is conceived in ecstasy. 
 
 Fatherhood and motherhood are ecstasy. 
 
 God, the Father-Mother-Creator, is ecstasy. 
 
 And the return to God is ecstasy. 
 
 Worship 
 
 BOW before God in prone humility, 
 Till thou remember that He lives in 
 thee ; 
 Then lift thy head superb among the free. 
 
 In the Garden 
 
 I SPIED beside the garden bed 
 A tiny lass of ours, . 
 Who stopped and bent her sunny head 
 Above the red June flowers. 
 
 Pushing the leaves and thorns apart 
 
 She singled out a rose. 
 And in its inmost crimson heart, 
 
 Enraptured, plunged her nose. 
 
 " O dear, dear rose, come, tell me true,- 
 Come, tell me true," said she, 
 
 " If I smell just as sweet to you 
 As you smell sweet to me ! " ^-^ 
 
6o WINE OF ETERNITY 
 
 Wine of Eternity 
 
 GOD took a vial from its place, 
 His throne a span beyond, 
 And spilled into a chalice-glass 
 
 Its drops of diamond, 
 Which sparkled in the light of His face 
 Like brilliants of Golcond. 
 
 These be the waters of To-day, 
 
 Limpid and live and clear. 
 He put the empty vial away. 
 
 And chose another near, 
 Whose liquor was a yellow-grey, 
 
 Amber and dead and sere. 
 
 Drawn from the Past's dull stagnant lake, 
 This draught He poured likewise. 
 
 To watch the crystal wax opaque 
 Brought brine into mine eyes. 
 
 Like Asiel, when he spied the snake 
 Glide into Paradise. 
 
 Now still another addeth He — 
 
 A vial with darkness kissed, 
 Like fluid-night — the Time-to-be — 
 
 Of jet and amethyst — 
 And now He stirreth all the three 
 
 Into a purple mist. 
 
 Then in a tall translucent um 
 
 Seraphs decant the bowl. 
 Like wine upon the lees, to turn 
 
YESTERDAY 6i 
 
 The vintage of the soul, 
 And as they pour, the Hquids chum 
 And seethe and heave and roll. 
 
 They set it on a step below — 
 
 This urn of mystery — 
 And on it write as angels do, 
 
 " Wine of Eternity," 
 So that the tiniest cherubs know 
 
 What dangerous drink it be. 
 
 Ah, will it turn to amber pale, 
 
 A heartsick monochrome ? 
 Or will the amethyst entail 
 
 A violaceous doom ? 
 Nay, crystal Now, prevail, prevail. 
 
 And clarify the gloom ! 
 
 Yesterday 
 
 TO-DAY and To-morrow will change, but 
 Yesterday changes never. 
 To-day and To-morrow die, but Yesterday lives 
 forever. 
 
 And little they love each other, this trinity of 
 
 the ages, 
 And frightful is the war which each with the 
 
 other wages. 
 
 To-day pursues To-morrow through every kind 
 
 of weather, 
 With Yesterday at his heels, who swallows them 
 
 both together. 
 
62 MOODS 
 
 To-day is ever thin, and To-morrow grows 
 
 thinner and thinner. 
 But Yesterday waxes fat with his one eternal 
 
 dinner. 
 
 Though time seems long indeed and the uni- 
 verse stout and staunch, 
 
 Will Yesterday gulf it all in his huge omnivor- 
 ous paunch ? 
 
 Moods 
 
 THERE is nothing but moods. 
 Love underlies creation and love is a 
 mood. 
 Thought shares the burden with love, and 
 thought springs from axiom and premiss, 
 and axiom and premiss are moods. 
 Even mathematics rests on the number One, 
 and One, the idea of unity, is a mood, 
 which has nothing in nature to answer to 
 it, for all things are complex and compound. 
 It is moods then that bear the universe on their 
 
 back. 
 There is nothing but moods. 
 
 II 
 
 I am tired of thinking. 
 
 All things are true and so are their opposites. 
 I believe every philosophy, but not that it 
 contains all. 
 
MOODS 63 
 
 I adopt all religions, while I remain the uni- 
 versal heretic. 
 
 I agree with all men, but I see the other side 
 which they do not see. 
 
 I sympathise with every fad and also with the 
 blind hater of fads. 
 
 But what a weary vacuity this breadth of mine 
 is! 
 
 I could find it in me to envy the chipmunk in 
 yon narrow crack in the locust tree, with 
 just room enough to turn a somersault and 
 pop his head out before his tail is fairly in, 
 and with no object in life but nuts and 
 birds' eggs. 
 
 O chipmunk, what is the wisdom of the worlds 
 compared with yours ? 
 
 What need have you of the human philosopher 
 hugging his favourite horn of the eternal 
 dilemma ? 
 
 Surely you are the prince of philosophers, 
 cracking your history nut to a purpose 
 while I split my head in vain. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The world-riddle is heavy upon me to-night. 
 O Sphinx, why do you stop me on the road and 
 
 let the others pass by ? 
 Why do you mock my impotent brain and tear 
 
 my fevered heart asunder ? 
 How often I have spent the whole evening over 
 
 some idle mechanical puzzle, — 
 
64 MOODS 
 
 Cursing my stupidity for not being able to solve 
 
 it- 
 Cursing my infatuation for not being able to 
 
 give it up, — 
 Stretched and racked upon the horrible little 
 
 instrument of torture. 
 This is life. 
 The sphinx himself can furnish no formula by 
 
 way of solution. 
 Perhaps if I grow into him and he into me, I 
 
 may feel at last the answer of peace at the 
 
 roots of my being. 
 But meanwhile would that I could throw away 
 
 the toy, put out the lamp, and go to bed ! 
 
 IV 
 
 A plump little phebe-bird is perched on the 
 lowest branch of the pear tree, with her 
 head cocked on one side, watching the 
 waving sea of grass for her prey. 
 
 Ever and anon she darts down and comes back 
 in an instant to the same twig with a moth, 
 caught on the wing, in her bill. 
 
 A great dragon-fly sails slowly by, and the tiny 
 bird makes a dash for it, but, thinking 
 better of it, she hovers in the air a few 
 inches from the insect, following its flight. 
 
 Then she turns disconcerted and flies back to 
 her post, while the dragon-fly sails proudly 
 on. 
 
 I was not as wise as the phebe-bird. 
 
MOODS 65 
 
 When I saw the universe buzzing by, I pounced 
 upon it and we are still grappling with each 
 other. 
 
 V 
 
 I lie in bed in the morning, just awake enough 
 to be thankful that it is Sunday and that 
 breakfast is to be an hour later than usual, 
 but still I have a feeling that it must be 
 time to get up. 
 
 I take my watch from the chair by the bedside 
 and look at it. 
 
 But no. I have not really moved. I was 
 dreaming and I saw the dial through 
 closed eyelids. 
 
 Can I ever make up my mind to get out of bed ? 
 
 No ; surely never. 
 
 But all of a sudden I find myself throwing back 
 the covers and sitting up, and now the 
 hard-wood floor near the rug feels smooth 
 and cold to my feet as I seek my slippers. 
 
 What was it that at last drove me out of bed ? 
 
 Who fixed the moment of my rising and made 
 me doubt whether I am man or automa- 
 ton ? 
 
 VI 
 
 I caught an unexpected sidelong glimpse of my 
 right foot and ankle as I got out of my tub 
 this morning, and it startled me as if I had 
 met a faun or centaur in the woods. 
 
 How does it happen, — strange, inexplicable 
 B. E 
 
66 MOODS 
 
 animals that we are, — that we ever grow 
 
 accustomed to the sight of each other ? 
 We are creatures as extraordinary as the 
 
 grotesque shapes in the sea or under the 
 
 flat stones in the pasture. 
 How natural and inevitable in comparison is an 
 
 oak or a chestnut-tree. 
 If the blind man of Bethsaida had only seen 
 
 correctly ! 
 If men were only more like trees walking ! 
 The trees are so clean. 
 They never spit nor sweat. 
 They exude nothing less savoury than aromatic 
 
 odours, and they make the air sweet to 
 
 leeward. 
 Cut them open an5rwhere and they have no 
 
 ghastly secrets to reveal. 
 Their death is full of dignity and there is no- 
 thing revolting in their decay. 
 While men befoul the world, it is they that are 
 
 forever cleansing it. 
 I think that in heaven men will be more like 
 
 the forest trees. 
 And if our animal part is weird, that part of us 
 
 which is not animal is still weirder. 
 We are afraid of ghosts, and we are ghosts our- 
 selves. 
 There can be nothing more uncanny than the 
 
 crowd on Broadway. 
 It is as fantastic and gruesome as the wind-swept 
 
 clouds of shades in Hades. 
 It is enough to make your hair stand on end 
 
 and your voice stick in your throat. 
 
MOODS 67 
 
 If we were once to open our eyes, we should be 
 
 frightened out of our wits at the sight of 
 
 our fellow-gobhns. 
 I am surprised at my courage in being wilhng 
 
 to remain in a room with you on a dark 
 
 night. 
 
 VII 
 
 I met a man yesterday whom I had not seen or 
 thought of for thirty years, and the appal- 
 ling fact struck me that during all these 
 weary months he had never for a moment 
 been able to escape from himself. 
 
 What a frightful thing it is, when you come to 
 think of it, to be imprisoned for life in 
 yourself, and even in sleep to dog your own 
 footsteps liks a shadow. 
 
 How is it that we pray for an eternity of this 
 same monotony, and do not long, when we 
 rest from our labours, to rest also from 
 ourselves ? 
 
 VIII 
 
 There is no past and there is no future, for who 
 
 ever entered into either of those illusory 
 
 realms ? 
 There is only a now. 
 ^Be not anxious for the morrow for there is no 
 
 morrow. 
 Live in and for to-day, for all life is to-day, and 
 
 if your to-day is right, all is well for ever.''' 
 
68 MOODS 
 
 IX 
 
 Floating, slowly floating through the air, — 
 Gliding, now swiftly, over vast surfaces but 
 
 never touching them, — 
 Walking the waves and finding them soft and 
 
 pleasant to the feet, but preferring to 
 
 skim over them as the swallow skims, — 
 I could swear that this is my natural way of 
 
 locomotion. 
 How often I dream of it and come back to my 
 
 legs as to unfamiliar, awkward crutches ! 
 What is our swimming and diving, our coasting 
 
 and skating, our riding and cycling and 
 
 motoring and dancing, but a vain effort 
 
 to realize this dream ? 
 
 X 
 
 I am not really here. 
 
 I am really up there somewhere. 
 
 I look at myself with surprise to see myself 
 
 talking so glibly. 
 It is after dinner and we are sipping coffee in 
 
 the drawing-room. 
 The company are gossiping idly and I am 
 
 speaking to my neighbour. 
 I talk like the rest of them, but we are unUke, 
 
 for I at least feel that I am not all here. 
 I am up there somewhere, and my body with 
 
 its brain is my tool, which I gaze upon 
 
 and criticise. 
 There is that within me, my friends, that you 
 
 dream not of. 
 
MOODS 69 
 
 There is more in life than coffee and cigarettes 
 and hqueurs, if you will only stop chatter- 
 ing long enough to let it speak for itself. 
 
 XI 
 
 "^We are all marionettes, and I tire sometimes 
 
 of the play. 
 The comedy of it does not amuse me, and its 
 
 tragedy is too tragic. 
 I cannot follow the plot for its intricacy. - 
 The seats are uncomfortable to painfulness, 
 
 and there is no room for my cramped 
 
 knees and elbows. 
 The air is close and stifling and the garish light 
 
 sears my eyes. 
 I long for the last scene when we shall drop 
 
 the masques of time and space and find 
 
 behind them — just you and me ! 
 
 XII 
 
 Yet there is fascination too in the world as it is. 
 How I love the slap-dash, slam-bang of the 
 
 devil's gypsy music ! 
 Oh, to skim along without a soul, to dance 
 
 madly, to let yourself go, — 
 To slash yourself with knives, to set your teeth 
 
 and grasp the blades exultingly until 
 
 they cut to the finger-bones, — 
 To be completely inebriated with the rhythm 
 
 of passing things ! 
 But here come those wretched familiar scruples 
 
 again ! 
 
70 MOODS 
 
 What pleasure do you take in making my life 
 miserable ? 
 
 Just as I let myself out at a full run and con- 
 fidently brace myself for the leap, I am 
 sure to catch a glimpse of your sour dis- 
 approving faces ; my energy and resolu- 
 tion melt within me, my knees turn to 
 water and I halt in confusion. 
 
 I am forever rebelling against you, and then 
 following you slavishly wherever you 
 lead. 
 
 And yet I do not half believe in your paradise. 
 
 You promise me a quiet conscience and you 
 do not for a moment give it to me. 
 
 I begin to doubt if it lies in your direction. 
 
 I could envy the thick-skinned unscrupulous 
 men who ride rough-shod whither they 
 will, and no more think of lying awake 
 o' nights than earthquakes or thunder- 
 storms. 
 
 I will not be a cowardly, blameless man. There 
 you have my declaration of independence. 
 
 And yet, — and yet, — 
 
 What is that beyond that I hear ? 
 
 The calm compelling chords of a new celestial 
 harmony. 
 
 The stars of music shining down compassionate 
 upon the blazing crackling, crashing, 
 conflagration of sound. 
 
 The immortal sisters, heaven and hell, recog- 
 nising each other, and only differing as 
 the one is more mature and fairer and 
 wiser. 
 
MOODS 71 
 
 XIII 
 
 I hear my conscience speak.* 
 
 Alas, that I should hear it, for, just as to hear 
 my heart beat, it argues disorder and 
 disease. 
 
 Why did I arrive before the end of the morbid 
 centuries ? 
 
 V^'ho condemned me to be a degenerate, con- 
 scientious man ? 
 
 Who made me unfit to be free from myself, — 
 at once a slave and a tyrant ? 
 
 It will all pass away. 
 
 Like the hermit-cell, the hair shirt, the flagel- 
 lation, it will pass. 
 
 When brotherhood comes, when full com- 
 munion comes, it will already have passed. 
 
 XIV 
 
 Posterity, dear children, we are facing all this 
 perplexity and torment of spirit for you, — 
 
 Unravelling the loose ends of the mystery for 
 you,— 
 
 Discovering God, finding somethmg better 
 than creed and decalogue for you. 
 
 The growing-pains of the world have fallen 
 to us, but our joy will be in your full 
 growth and vigour. 
 
 The prisoner in his cell thinks most of free- 
 dom ; — 
 
 * These lines were suggested by an article in the 
 American Journal of Sociology for May, 1898, by 
 Professor E. A. Ross. 
 
72 IN THE SADDLE 
 
 The starving man dreams ever of choicest 
 
 meats ; — 
 And so my soul, walking alone and lonely, 
 
 ceaselessly conjures up fond pictures of 
 
 your reunited world, 
 Where conscience will be lost in rapture and 
 
 duty merged in love. 
 
 The Seers 
 
 LIKE mountain peaks, the morning tints 
 with gold 
 The loftiest brows in every land. 
 
 Look in those eyes of promise, and behold 
 The day at hand. 
 
 In the Saddle 
 
 MOUNTED on Ahmar, flying at a mad 
 run over the desert, — 
 
 The infinite deep blue sea on the left bound- 
 ing the infinite expanse of ruddy grey 
 sand, and from it the strong north wind 
 blowing under the infinite pale blue sky. 
 
 It is a trinity of infinities, and we feel infinite 
 too, my stallion and I. 
 
 His body heaves and falls between my legs 
 like a great bellows that I am working 
 and squeezing, and his girth creaks and 
 creaks. 
 
IN THE SADDLE 73 
 
 I wave my whip in the air, — he sees it from 
 the corner of his red off-eye, but it has no 
 effect on him, for he is always straining 
 every nerve with outstretched sweating 
 neck and wild mane. 
 
 I scarcely seem to move in the saddle. 
 
 How we enjoy it ! I sing aloud in glee. 
 
 Before we left the palm-groves, — the tall bend- 
 ing palms and the short palms buried 
 up to their necks in the sand, — I could 
 hardly hold him, and he would bolt while 
 we were still dangerously entangled 
 among the trunks. 
 
 At the well on the edge of the desert the Arab 
 girls saw us coming, and they caught up 
 their water-jars and scurried away, as I 
 laughed at them and shouted, " Riglak, 
 ya bint ! " 
 
 Now we see nothing human except the white 
 sunlit minaret by the sea. 
 
 How we enjoy it ! 
 
 Alexander rode here, and Caesar, and Napoleon. 
 
 Here Augustus and Antony fought for the world. 
 
 Nelson drove France from the seas off 
 the shore over there. 
 
 But all that is trivial ; the one important fact 
 is that here we are, man and mount, 
 merged and lost in the wind. 
 
 Heaven must be something like this, — and so 
 must hell, — 
 
 And between the two there is nothing quite 
 worth while. 
 
74 ON THE SUEZ CANAL 
 
 On the Suez Canal 
 
 A STARRY night on the Suez Canal ! 
 I am standing on the forward deck of 
 a tramp steamer, talking with the voluble 
 young French employee of the canal com- 
 pany who manages the searchlight. 
 
 I am the only passenger on board, and all the 
 ship's officers and crew, not on duty, are 
 at supper. 
 
 We two are in the shadow behind the great box 
 which belches forth radiance before us. 
 
 The bowsprit and white rail and tarred ropes 
 stand out with unnatural distinctness in 
 the glare. 
 
 Beyond them the widening streak of brilliance 
 silvers the everlasting desert, threaded by 
 the straight black waterway. 
 
 We steam slowly, ponderously southward, and 
 our yawning monster of light devours ever 
 new stretches of sand, and casts the 
 remnants behind him in the dark. 
 
 Now he unearths a miniature Bedouin en- 
 campment on the right — two tents and as 
 many camels. 
 
 One of the beasts, tethered, browses on tufts 
 of desert herbage like a live pyramid. 
 
 The other sleeps recumbent in the sand like a 
 pyramid fallen in ruins. 
 
 The lord of the tents comes out into the night 
 to look at us, and his outline has all the 
 dignity of an Abraham or a Moses. 
 
 " How strange it is," I say dreamily to my 
 
ON THE SUEZ CANAL 75 
 
 companion, " how strange it is to think 
 that across this very wilderness, looking 
 just as it does to-night, the children of 
 Israel once journeyed ! " 
 
 " Yes," said he, " and yon Arab is nearer to 
 Moses than we are to him." 
 
 " Ah, I am not so sure of that," I say to 
 myself, while he busies himself with his 
 wires. 
 
 Are we really so unlike Moses, the man who 
 with his mysterious searchlight, his pillar 
 of fire by night, led forth into the desert 
 to find the Promised Land ? 
 
 (He had his pillar of cloud by day too, just 
 such a one as our funnel poured out into 
 the sunlight this afternoon.) 
 
 Would he acknowledge any kinship to him- 
 self, except in externals, in the changeless 
 contented Bedouin ? 
 
 What better representative of our modern 
 world could there be than this steamer of 
 ours, traversing the waste of the ages with 
 its metallic tread, carrying its stokers and 
 feasters in its belly, with only my friend 
 and me visible beneath the sky to do duty 
 as the poet and reformer ? 
 
 There they are, ever at the prow with their 
 electric light, searching the same desert 
 for the same elusive Promised Land, and 
 ready to signal back on the very clouds of 
 heaven to the loitering hosts in their wake 
 such discoveries as may reward their 
 vigils. 
 
76 CHRISTMAS 
 
 Ah, it is often chilly, hungry work, and now 
 and again they would fain go below and 
 sup with the rest, or even help to shovel 
 coal into the glowing furnace. 
 
 They ask with Moses : " Who are we that we 
 should bring forth the children of Israel 
 out of Egypt ? " 
 
 They would gladly encamp in idleness forever 
 with the eternal Arab under the eternal 
 stars. 
 
 But the God of Moses is still in the desert, and 
 the cry of his children still comes to him, 
 and still he chooses his unwilling servants 
 to renew the endless journey to the land 
 of milk and honey, forever receding before 
 their searchlight in the distance. 
 
 Christmas 
 
 ON the first of the lengthening days. 
 When the years' early morn 
 Gives the first summer pledge with its rays, 
 He is born. 
 
 Light has conquered the Dark. Did we fear 
 
 As the days shrank and paled 
 In the trough of the night of the year. 
 
 Light had failed ? 
 
CHRISTMAS 77 
 
 And the night's irresistible powers, — 
 
 As the Hght ebbed away, — 
 How they swallowed the minutes and hours, 
 
 Day by day ! 
 
 To the depths of the valley of gloom 
 
 Had the sun to descend. 
 But to-day, lo ! the cycle of doom 
 
 Has an end ! 
 
 For the promise of summer reflects 
 
 On the brows of the sky 
 All the glory creation expects 
 
 By and bye. 
 
 Let the winter be cruel and grey ! 
 
 We care little who know 
 That our Christmas hails Easter to-day 
 
 O'er the snow : 
 
 And that Easter brings summer and heat 
 
 And the sunlight of love. 
 And the kingdom of heaven complete 
 
 From above. 
 
 Christmas Day with its greetings and song 
 
 And its brotherly cheer 
 Is the earnest of days which ere long 
 
 Will be here. 
 
 And the Child whom the manger reveals 
 
 'Twixt the sheep and the kine 
 Is the earnest of Manhood that feels 
 
 The Divine. 
 
78 JUDGE NOT 
 
 Judge Not 
 
 WHY do I punish ? 
 I may say that I do it to balance the 
 misdeed, to reform the misdoer, or to 
 improve the world. 
 I may say all this, — but why do I punish ? 
 I punish because I crave punishment as I 
 
 crave tobacco or whiskey. 
 When I learn to crave something better, I 
 shall cease to punish. 
 
 II 
 
 I judge you ? 
 
 Who made me to be a judge over you ? 
 
 What do I know about you ? 
 
 What do I know about myself ? 
 
 I sometimes think that I condemn myself on 
 
 inadequate evidence. 
 Is not the fact of being born a man or a woman 
 
 an all-sufficient extenuating circumstance ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 Do not think that I am judging you ; I am 
 judging myself. 
 
 I know you only as a reflection of myself.'' 
 
 All your worst faults are flourishing in my soul, 
 and it is only there that I can know them 
 and grapple with them. 
 
 I am merely using you as a lay-figure to repre- 
 sent myself. 
 
TOWN PICTURES 79 
 
 I cannot effectually invade your country. 
 I can only invite you to inaugurate a campaign 
 there on your own account. 
 
 IV 
 
 My punishment is what I am. 
 
 Chains, prisons, solitary cells, are but faint 
 
 shadows of it. 
 And I am also my own reward ; 
 For a strain of heaven too has somehow worked 
 
 itself into my substance. 
 I am the product of my own good and evil. 
 VWhy should I judge and punish you, when we 
 
 must all judge and punish ourselves ? / 
 
 Town Pictures 
 
 I 
 
 I HAVE travelled many ways to find the real 
 centre of things human, the point to 
 which mankind converges and from 
 which it depends. 
 Here on Manhattan Island I think of it as 
 lying somewhere to the east in Europe, 
 but I have looked for it there in vain. 
 I could not put my hand on it in London or 
 
 Paris or Rome or Stamboul. 
 These cities were too far north or south or east 
 or west, and yet in passing from one to 
 the other I never felt myself at the true 
 
8o TOWN PICTURES 
 
 centre of gravity in the intermediate fields 
 and villages. 
 
 How much in earnest we all seem to be on the 
 express train ! 
 
 Surely we are a people with an object in life, 
 if any there be. 
 
 We pity the poor town and country folk whom 
 we see hopelessly adrift along the way as 
 we rush to the great capital. 
 
 Now we are approaching the terminus. 
 
 There is bustle and confusion as we don our 
 overcoats and gather shawlstraps and hat- 
 boxes. 
 
 Then the train stops short, and we sally forth 
 in every direction ; — and that is all ! 
 
 There is nothing but aimlessness and restless- 
 ness in the metropolis, and we cannot thus 
 extricate ourselves from the provinces. 
 
 And it is really so easy, no matter what out- 
 of-the-way corner you inhabit. 
 
 You have but one discovery to make. 
 
 Learn that your back door opens on eternity, 
 and there you are in the very centre of 
 
 i things. 
 
 •'The man who has eternity in his garden need 
 not worry about the street on which his 
 house fronts. • 
 
 II 
 
 Here I am in the station lunchroom, standing 
 at the counter and eating what supper I 
 may while our locomotive is drinking at 
 the pump. 
 
TOWN PICTURES 8i 
 
 I have my eye on the thickset, greybearded 
 conductor perched on a stool opposite me, 
 for I know that I am safe so long as he 
 does not move. 
 
 In his blue cloth and brass buttons, and with 
 the carnation in his buttonhole, he is as 
 dignified as an admiral, and far more useful. 
 
 He is talking with the girl who waits on him, 
 but there is a quiet reserve and sense of 
 strength beneath the surface which show 
 that he feels the panting of his iron charge 
 outside. 
 
 He and the girl are on an easy footing, as befit 
 co-operators in the great work of trans- 
 portation. 
 
 I like the pride and comradeship of these rail- 
 way people. 
 
 Even the women who were washing car-win- 
 dows at the Grand Central Station this 
 afternoon seemed conscious of a joint 
 interest in the whole line and of the fact 
 that these were no common panes of glass. 
 
 The newsboy on the way up stalked through 
 the train as if it was his quarterdeck, and 
 he was acknowledged by the conductor 
 and brakemen as a man of consideration. 
 
 Their looks seemed to say. We are members 
 one of another. 
 
 A whistle sounds from the north. " There's 
 ' Number Three,' " whispers to her neigh- 
 bour the aproned damsel who presides over 
 my repast — and she quietly glides to the 
 door. 
 
82 TOWN PICTURES 
 
 I follow her, fearing unreasonably that my 
 portmanteau may somehow go off without 
 me. 
 
 I am just in time to see the dazzling headlight 
 of the Western Express burst forth from 
 the cutting with a thundering roar like a 
 mad monster in a nightmare. 
 
 The bell on the engine rings out deafeningly, 
 the platform fairly shakes, and the rush of 
 wind almost carries away my hat. 
 
 There is a glimpse of the glowing faces of the 
 engineer and the fireman at their volcanic 
 hearth. 
 
 The heavy mail cars and then the unwieldy 
 sleepers, giving gleams of electric light and 
 upholstery, plunge by us into the dark- 
 ness. 
 
 On the last platform I see a trainman waving 
 his handkerchief at me above the blood- 
 shot bull's eye lamp in the rear. 
 
 But no, it is for the girl, whom I had well nigh 
 forgotten. 
 
 She waves her napkin and looks smiling 
 after the apparition until it is swallowed 
 up in the night like a stone in a black 
 pool. 
 
 Now she is again in her place at the counter. 
 
 In a half minute she has contributed her share 
 of sentiment to " Number Three " and 
 to the great iron system of which it forms 
 a part. 
 
 She has helped knit together the numerous 
 band of the comrades of the road. 
 
TOWN PICTURES 83 
 
 What would not Wagner have given could he 
 have chained this dragon, " Number 
 Three," with its rush and roar and romance 
 to his art. 
 
 It is our turn now to dash along, ponderous 
 and rumbling, to the north. 
 
 The conductor has descended from his pinnacle 
 and I follow him out to the train. 
 
 I am proud to be borne on my way by these 
 railway workers. 
 
 As I sit in my seat, looking out at the shadows 
 flying by, I wonder why we cannot run 
 our world as they do theirs. 
 
 We only need the same esprit de corps, which, 
 when exalted and extended, we call re- 
 ligion. 
 
 Is our orbit less worthy of it than the steel rails 
 of the Central Line ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 Is there anything on earth more forbidding 
 than a Court House ? 
 
 Is there a more hopeless sight than a criminal 
 court in session ? 
 
 Come up the dirty, clammy steps with me. 
 
 Ten thousand sorrows have stained the walls 
 and floor, and the air is heavy with the 
 sighs of a century. 
 
 Why is it that men's laws when they assert 
 themselves make all things hideous ? 
 
 We push through the green-baize doors be- 
 tween the policemen who stand on guard. 
 
84 TOWN PICTURES 
 
 The attendant opens the gate in the raihng 
 and we sit down among the members of 
 the bar. 
 
 The prisoners are huddled together in a pen 
 in the corner. 
 
 We can only see them as they are brought out 
 handcuffed one by one to plead. 
 
 Some — a very few — have ill-shapen heads from 
 which little good can be expected. 
 
 They need the moulding influence of mothers 
 and sisters and wives, or of guardians 
 who may tenderly fill their places. 
 
 We, in our wisdom, lock them up rather for 
 years, and then turn them loose again, 
 far more dangerous and miserable than 
 before. 
 
 The other prisoners are for the most part just 
 hke you and me. 
 
 Somehow I like their looks much better than 
 those of their gaolers and prosecutors. 
 \/ All that our punishing does for them is to de- 
 grade them. 
 
 It does not, as it should, expiate and annul 
 their crime. 
 
 On the contrary, we despise them, not for their 
 faults, but for the penalty we inflict. ^^ 
 
 We reserve our deepest contempt, not for the 
 thief, but for the gaol-bird, — not for the 
 contaminated soul, but for the striped 
 clothes we put on the body. 
 
 The court-officers are now hustling the wretched 
 men and women one after another up to 
 the bar as their names are called. 
 
TOWN PICTURES 85 
 
 They pass the hmp human merchandise along 
 Hke machines. 
 
 The monotonous clerk reads off the indictments 
 like a machine. 
 
 The bored, impassive judge presides over it all 
 like a machine. 
 
 For none of them are these hunted, frightened 
 creatures real human beings. 
 
 There is no more thought of brotherhood in 
 the Court than there is in the wheels and 
 cogs of a factory. 
 
 It is a dead, relentless mill. 
 
 The grindstones are made of human flesh un- 
 naturally petrified, and it is against nature 
 that they are grinding human flesh be- 
 tween them. 
 
 The judge and the lawyers and deputies 
 and policemen are nothing but bolts 
 and rivets and bars, — but iron and 
 flint. 
 'They are no longer men ; they have abdicated 
 their humanity and are now merely so 
 much machinery. 
 
 How sure His Honour is as he sits there that 
 he will enter into the kingdom of heaven 
 before these vulgar transgressors ! 
 
 I am not so sure. 
 /The greatest crime a man can commit is to 
 make a machine of himself. / 
 
 A machine is lower than a brute, and to sink 
 to that level is worse than robbery or 
 murder. 
 
 It is worse because it is less human. 
 
86 TOWN PICTURES 
 
 I think I comprehend now why I had such an 
 aversion for the hard faces of these legal 
 people. 
 
 A trial has begun at last. 
 
 They are swearing a detective as witness. 
 
 Every one knows that his trade and character 
 are much lower than the prisoner's at the 
 bar, but here he is recognised as a brother- 
 administrator of justice and is esteemed 
 accordingly. 
 
 A police-officer follows him and kisses the 
 greasy Bible. 
 
 They are all aware that a policeman will swear 
 to anything, though a man hang for it, 
 and yet here his word passes for gospel 
 truth. 
 
 It is the business of mills to grind and the faces 
 of the poor have always been ground ; 
 shall we blame the undiscriminating grind- 
 stones ? 
 
 In France they hang up a picture of Christ-on- 
 the-Cross over the bench in every court- 
 room. 
 
 That murder was the deed of a court of law, — 
 of two courts in fact. 
 
 What a gallery we could make of the sad work 
 of similar mills of justice ! 
 
 There I seem to see hanging on the dingy wall 
 the faces of Socrates and Paul, of Savon- 
 arola and More, of Huss and Galileo, of 
 Bameveldt and Sidney and John Brown. 
 
 If the judge could see and understand them, 
 he would feel less virtuous and superior. 
 
TOWN PICTURES 87 
 
 How many judges are only remembered now 
 on account of the felons whom they des- 
 pised ! 
 
 Ah, your Honour does not know what dirty 
 work this is at its best ! 
 
 You are the partner of the informer and execu- 
 tioner and not a whit more respectable 
 than they are. 
 
 Let us leave the fetid, accursed place. 
 
 At the door a thin, timid young woman, weary 
 and wan, a black shawl thrown over her 
 head, is asking a policeman where she can 
 find her husband. 
 
 She speaks English badly and holds up a soiled 
 piece of crumpled paper which bears his 
 name. 
 
 He has been arrested, she says, and all day 
 long she has sought him in vain, wander- 
 ing from court to court. 
 
 The man does not half listen to her. 
 
 How should a machine hear ? 
 
 He brushes her away. 
 
 She turns to another and another, but not one 
 of them will give her his attention. 
 
 They are all under the spell of machine-made 
 justice which knows neither mercy nor 
 humanity. 
 
 Cry on, poor child, in the foul dark corner of 
 the corridor under the feeble gas-jet. 
 
 If only you could get at the prisoners in the 
 pen and ask them your question, they 
 might perhaps hear you, and answer you, 
 and take some interest in you, for they are 
 
88 TOWN PICTURES 
 
 only unhappy human sinners and have 
 not yet been transformed into machines. 
 But here there is no hope for you. 
 Cry on, poor child ! 
 
 IV 
 
 I know you are not telling the truth. 
 
 You have no starving wife and children, and 
 
 you do not want a ticket to Boston to 
 
 enable you to find work. 
 What you wish for is another glass of whiskey. 
 You are not only lying but lying most unskil- 
 
 fully. 
 And yet I believe in you, though I do not believe 
 
 you. 
 If I did not believe in you, I should lose faith 
 
 in the Universe. 
 Underneath all this falsehood there is some- 
 thing firm and true that I will swear by. 
 It is well that I should assure you of it, for you 
 
 may not know it. 
 Here is your dollar ; spend it as you will ; but 
 
 remember that there is one who trusts you. 
 
 V 
 
 Riding down the Bowery on an electric car, I 
 see on the right a drayman, heavy, set in 
 his ways, trying perversely to drive across 
 the street with his load before we reach 
 him. 
 
TOWN PICTURES 89 
 
 Our motor-man sees him too, and might let him 
 pass by yielding his rights a little, but he 
 only pushes on the faster. 
 
 The drayman is forced to pull his team hastily 
 to one side, and the car strikes the nose of 
 the inoffensive near horse. 
 
 The driver scowls and mutters low, ineffectual 
 curses. 
 
 The motor-man looks back with a sneer of 
 exultation. 
 
 All hell has been loose in the Bowery this morn- 
 ing. 
 
 VI 
 
 When I skim over the literary journals one 
 after another in the reading-room, 
 
 How they cloy and pall upon me, like a diet of 
 sweets ! 
 
 Words, words, words ! — 
 
 The sickening idea of mere unrelated litera- 
 ture, — 
 
 The disgustingness of words as the main end of 
 life,— 
 
 x^s if words should be aught but the foot-notes 
 of life, — 
 
 The notes in small letters and the life itself 
 writ out in large, — 
 
 Such are the thoughts that I think in the 
 reading-room. 
 
 While I hear the heavy carts thunder along 
 towards Broadway, shaking the very 
 walls of the building. 
 
90 TOWN PICTURES 
 
 VII 
 
 The bustling, noisy street, in the foreground — 
 
 drays coming and going, electric cars 
 
 flying by and ringing their warning bell ; 
 Foot-passengers hastening their steps, each 
 
 intent on his own errand ; 
 Round the corner you see the great primary 
 
 school. 
 The two low doors, one at each end of the 
 
 facade, are opening, and now two streams 
 
 begin to flow out as from a tapped reservoir. 
 One stream is of frolicking, shouting small boys, 
 
 the other of chattering little girls. 
 Each of the twin streams splits in two, and the 
 
 two halves which flow our way mingle 
 
 their waters. 
 Boys and girls, red hoods and torn brown caps, 
 
 bags of books and lunch boxes ; on they 
 
 come, fearlessly, to the crossing. 
 Then on the curb for a moment they gather as 
 
 behind an invisible dam. 
 Will they dare to rush in between the cars and 
 
 carts and carriages ? 
 Can they possibly cross without accident ? 
 Ah, they know better than we do. 
 From the other side of the way their daily 
 
 friend advances to meet them, the gigantic, 
 
 broad-girthed policeman. 
 He holds out both hands and they flock around 
 
 him. 
 Soon he has a tiny maiden swinging in the air 
 
 on each arm. 
 
TOWN PICTURES 91 
 
 A half-dozen boys are hanging on to his ample 
 
 coat-tails. 
 There are children before him and behind him 
 
 and between his legs, so that he has to 
 
 pick his way. 
 He lifts his hand, and as before a new Moses 
 
 a pathway opens across the crowded 
 
 thoroughfare, the flood of traffic banked 
 
 up on either side. 
 Confidently relying on this towering pillar of 
 
 protection, the youngsters pass over and 
 
 scamper down the street until the last little 
 
 damsel disappears waving her hand back 
 
 at their champion. 
 *^0h, if uniforms and brass buttons always stood 
 
 for that ! ^ 
 
 VIII 
 
 The Hungarian band is in full swing. 
 
 The swarthy little Gypsy leader, with his back 
 to the three fiddlers and zither-player, is 
 swaying to and fro over his violin, oblivious 
 of everything but his half-improvised, 
 unmeasured outbursts of minor harmonies. 
 
 Round the tables sit comfortable listeners — 
 men, women and children — and before 
 each is a foaming mug of amber beer. 
 
 An occasional sandwich of rye bread and Swiss 
 cheese with plentiful mustard breaks the 
 monotony. 
 
 The music stops and there is much clapping of 
 hands, and now a low hum of conversation 
 sets in. 
 
92 TOWN PICTURES 
 
 There is a general sense of satisfaction and good 
 humour and leisure. 
 
 The genial red-faced host at the bar beams on 
 us like a veritable Gambrinus. 
 
 Even my blond, fat waiter looks as if he liked 
 to stand there dreaming, with a napkin 
 over the worn sleeves of his black alpaca 
 jacket. 
 
 On the walls are brilliant pictures of knights 
 and maidens let into the heavy wood work, 
 with mottoes from German ballads. 
 
 Can this be the infernal realm of King Alcohol 
 of which I have heard so much ? 
 
 Yesterday I was in the country of his enemy, 
 the dairy lunch-room. 
 
 Framed Scripture texts were hung up here and 
 there above my head, interspersed with 
 gentle reminders to " Beware of pick- 
 pockets." 
 
 The pale young clerk who sat opposite to me at 
 the narrow varnished table, ate his pork 
 and beans and buck-wheat cakes for dinner 
 in just seven minutes by the clock, and left 
 me before I had quite assimilated the fact 
 of his arrival. 
 
 All the rest were too busy in doing likewise to 
 notice him. 
 
 No one spqke to his neighbour and the only 
 dissipation was the universal reading of 
 the cheapest evening papers. 
 
 The spare, overworked damsels of uncertain age 
 who waited on us, made my heart ache for 
 their strident weariness. 
 
TOWN PICTURES 93 
 
 I was hardly surprised that the habitues made 
 
 such haste to get away. 
 Is it any wonder that King Alcohol, with all his 
 
 crimes on his head, should triumph over 
 
 King Temperance, relying solely on his 
 
 prim, dyspeptic, negative virtues ? 
 I believe joviality has its place in the Kingdom 
 
 of Heaven. 
 I believe the angels are jovial. 
 We ought to be jovial without beer, but, failing 
 
 that, a bastard beer joviality is better than 
 
 nothing. 
 
 IX 
 
 It is an August evening in a free roof-garden 
 built for the people on a pier over the river. 
 
 I am in a bad humour to-night, and I come here 
 to cure myself. 
 
 Crowds are sitting in rows on benches on each 
 side of the stand where the brass band is 
 playing, and round them and up and down 
 the long deck from one end to the other 
 passes a continuous stream of promenaders 
 under the electric lights. 
 
 I join the shabby procession, but the vulgar 
 flirting of those shrill shop-girls with the 
 rough young men behind them is quite 
 indecent, and offends me sadly. 
 
 I stop at the end of the pier, and look out at 
 the dark river with its lights, white, red 
 and green. 
 
 It would be altogether beautiful, if it were not 
 for the shriek of the ferry whistles in the 
 
94 TOWN PICTURES 
 
 next slip, and the suggestion of sewage in 
 the south breeze. 
 
 But this will not do ; I have not come here to 
 complain, but to take my regular cure. 
 
 I sit down on the corner of a bench, not too 
 near the musicians. 
 
 And now I begin to love. 
 
 At first it is an effort, and I undertake only the 
 children, for they are the easiest. 
 
 There is a baby yonder, jumping on its mother's 
 arm in time with the trumpets, and another 
 tiny dot dancing across the floor holding 
 her pink skirts out with her hands. 
 
 Now I am loving them hard, like a new-kindled 
 coal fire with the blower on, and I can 
 almost hear my heart roar. 
 
 I have soon reached the point of loving all the 
 children (and how many there are), even 
 the most perverse, and gradually the 
 mothers too move into my focus. 
 
 The old people come next. How I love that 
 respectable old Irishwoman there with her 
 cap and red shawl, watching her grand- 
 child (or is it her great-grandchild ?) — and 
 the sturdy German grandsire asleep bolt 
 upright in his carefully brushed black 
 coat ! I could hug them both, and I do not 
 find it easy to keep my hands off them. 
 
 But now my love is boiling over, and becoming 
 indiscriminate. 
 
 I can put it to any test and try it on any one ; 
 it is a conflagration that would outstrip 
 any fire-extinguisher. 
 
TOWN PICTURES 95 
 
 I turn my heart loose on the shabby procession, 
 and now I pronounce it worthy of a place 
 on the frieze of the Parthenon, 
 
 I love the pale tailor in his dirty shirt-sleeves, 
 with his sickly boy in his arms. 
 
 I love the black hands of the machinist, and I 
 am glad that he has not washed them too 
 thoroughly. 
 
 I love the thin, grey-haired old maid with 
 spectacles (how surprised she would be if 
 she knew it !) and the young rowdies who 
 are waltzing together. 
 
 Here come the same vulgar youths and maidens 
 who shocked me an hour ago, quite as 
 vulgar as ever, and yet now I love them 
 till I see nothing that is not divine in them. 
 
 Love covers a multitude of sins — indeed it 
 does ! 
 
 But the band is playing " Home, Sweet Home," 
 and the multitude has already half dis- 
 appeared. 
 
 It is time for me to close the draughts and let 
 the fire go down. 
 
 My love-cure has worked its wonted miracle, 
 and blues and ill humour have gone. 
 
 As a patent-medicine I should like to sing its 
 praises and advertise its virtues, until 
 whole cities should take it for their muni- 
 cipal ailments, and statesmen prescribe it 
 to their several nations. 
 
 Who says there is no panacea ? 
 
 Love is the great panacea ! 
 
96 COUNTRY PICTURES 
 
 Country Pictures 
 
 I 
 
 TRAMPING down the broad green valley, 
 over the ribs of the mountains, — 
 Following the good old dusty road as it winds, 
 
 and catching glimpses of the distant creek 
 
 there below, — 
 Breathing it all in, — the summer air, the 
 
 harvest view, the noise of crickets, 
 
 with all our senses confused in one blithe 
 
 ecstasy, — 
 Rejoicing in the strength of our legs and walking 
 
 faster now near sun-down than we did in 
 
 the early morning, — 
 We are free, — free ! 
 We carry no burden to speak of, — we stop 
 
 where we like, — we are chained down by no 
 
 property or respectability — yet we own all 
 
 that we see and feel compassion for the 
 
 people we pass. 
 I spy the spire of a village, three miles below 
 
 us, at the turn in the valley. 
 We halt and examine our map ; yes, there we 
 
 shall sleep, unless we change our minds 
 
 before we get there. 
 Oh, to live ever like this, with our shirt-sleeves 
 
 rolled back well above the elbows and our 
 
 arms browning like the best of meer- 
 
 chaum, — 
 
COUNTRY PICTURES 97 
 
 Never to resort again to our prisons, — to be 
 forever on our own feet, like yon hawk on 
 y its own wings ! 
 
 Men made carriages and bicycles and motor- 
 cars and ambulances and hearses, but God 
 made legs ! y 
 
 II 
 
 They are taking the apple-orchard by assault. 
 
 The storming-party are attacking the old tree 
 in the corner and the butts of their ladders, 
 propped up against it, protrude beneath 
 the foliage. 
 
 There is a rustling of leaves, a noise of the soft 
 dropping of fruit into baskets, and of the 
 low talk of hidden men. 
 
 Now and then the sun shines on the apparition 
 of an eager hand or on a bit of checkered 
 clothing. 
 
 The red globes (redder on the south side of the 
 tree) have half disappeared, and the tree 
 is joining the rest of the row behind it in 
 sombre mourning verdure. 
 
 Little blotches of Paris-green from last April's 
 spraying still spot the leaves. 
 
 A cedar- waxwing, afraid to approach her nest, 
 chirps in the nearest tree. 
 
 Over there they empty the baskets on a sail- 
 cloth stretched on the ground in the shade, 
 and one of the men, seated on it, sorts 
 them into piles, jerking the bad ones 
 away behind him. 
 B. G 
 
98 COUNTRY PICTURES 
 
 Two others are filling a clean new barrel, and 
 the basketfuls fall in with a hollow musical 
 rumble. 
 
 They screw down the top with a hand-press, 
 squeezing the apples against each other, 
 and they drive in the nails around with a 
 sharp click. 
 
 A waggon will come to-night and draw the 
 barrels away to the river, and they will go 
 down to the harbour in a freight-boat, and 
 then they will board a great steamer and 
 set sail to cross the Atlantic on the morrow. 
 
 They are aU going to England, and in another 
 fortnight their ruddy tinge will be tinting 
 fresh English cheeks. 
 
 I stand under a tree and pick the fruit over my 
 head, occasionally slipping as I tread on 
 the windfalls in the grass, destined later for 
 the cider-barrel. 
 
 There is a delicious aroma of apples in the 
 air. 
 
 A dozen ripe fruit hang in a row above me from 
 a slender switch of a branch bent nearly 
 double by their weight, and it rises out of 
 my reach as I pluck them one by one. 
 
 There is something almost sensuous in the feel 
 of three big apples on one twig as I grasp 
 them in one hand and twist them off with 
 a turn of the wrist. 
 
 A grasshopper perched on an apple lying on the 
 ground seems to be watching me at my 
 work. 
 
 I would like to pack the atmosphere of the whole 
 
COUNTRY PICTURES 99 
 
 cheerful scene away in the barrels and send 
 it over sea too, and with it heaping basket- 
 fuls of good will. 
 
 How I wish that they could taste the added 
 flavour ! 
 
 But wait ! In my world, when I have created 
 it, all other fruit will taste sour, and my 
 apples will drink in friendliness to as good 
 purpose as they now absorb the sunshine. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Sleighing swiftly westward into the late sun- 
 set. — 
 
 The deep snow lies white over all, hill and plain 
 and distant Catskills. 
 
 The broad river is a solid shimmer of white, 
 sown with diamonds. 
 
 The stone wall bounding the road on the left is 
 hidden in snowdrifts. 
 
 The wall on the right is topped and corniced 
 with new-born marble. 
 
 The branches of the black hemlocks are bending 
 heavy laden with whiteness. 
 
 Before my cutter the track extends, two deep 
 ruts with a silvery pink streak at the bot- 
 tom of each, polished by burnished runners 
 and leading up to the western sky. 
 
 A layer of crimson rests upon the sweep of 
 snowy horizon ahead, tinting the rolling 
 snowfields with rosy shades. 
 
100 COUNTRY PICTURES 
 
 My horse, Charley, lets himself out at a full trot 
 
 along one of the deep ruts (for the shafts 
 
 are so hung that he may follow the one on 
 
 the left), and the soft snow between the 
 
 runners just grazes the bottom of the 
 
 sleigh. 
 He is so warm under his long furry hair that a 
 
 cloud of steam rises from his back and 
 
 sides. 
 His girdle of jubilant bells rings out and gives 
 
 voice to his own delight in his speed and 
 
 the crisp fresh air. 
 Oh, the exhilaration of it ! 
 What poet inventor discovered the eternal 
 
 affinity of snow and sleigh-bells ? 
 And I, too, am warm under my furs and wraps, 
 
 a clumsy oasis of heat in the midst of arctic 
 
 cold. 
 Only my fingers ache a little now and again, 
 
 and I must hold the reins in my right 
 
 hand for a time and thrust my left in 
 
 its thick woollen glove under the lap robes 
 
 and work my fingers until they are warm 
 
 again. 
 My upper lip is stiff with its frosted moustache 
 
 and my ears tingle j ust enough to make me 
 
 appreciate my glowing body. 
 I love the frozen, swift white road, free from 
 
 dust and mud and motor cars. 
 I love the beautiful white cold earth and the 
 
 beautiful pink, cold sky. 
 Not a breath of wind disturbs the intensity of 
 
 their stillness. 
 
COUNTRY PICTURES loi 
 
 (There is no noise in the sleigh-bells, for theirs 
 is only the spirit of tone.) 
 
 I would not be banished for all the year to the 
 noisy, buzzy summerland and miss for 
 ever this pure hushed zone of crystal and 
 silver. 
 
 I love to be a coal of fire in the midst of the 
 polar frost. 
 
 It is warm under the snow, too. 
 
 Think of the myriads of living things, of chip- 
 munks and woodchucks, of toads and 
 insects, and creatures that creep and fly, 
 snuggling and all tucked in under the kindly 
 coverlet. 
 
 They sleep through the winter night — with 
 the white counterpane on top and the 
 warm, green blanket underneath. 
 
 There are big rough bears dreaming over there, 
 too, on the mountains. 
 
 Think of the millions of seeds and eggs ready to 
 burst forth when the sun lifts their bed- 
 clothes and gives them a tepid bath in the 
 year's new morning. 
 
 The earth is as warm as I am under its wraps, 
 and, like me, only here and there in its 
 moustache and fingers does it feel the hurt 
 of the keen, clear air. 
 
 We are brothers — swift, warm brothers — the 
 earth and Charley and I — carrying our live 
 coals of joy through frigid space, with only 
 pain enough to accentuate the pleasure. 
 
 And the sleigh-bells — the sleigh-balls — are our 
 music of the spheres. 
 
I02 THE LIVING UNIVERSE 
 
 The Living Universe 
 
 WHAT are you, stars of night, revolving, 
 journeying, pulsing ever — 
 
 What are you, planets, visible and invisible, of 
 this and other systems — 
 
 What but life magnified — the life of my frame 
 and tissue infinitely, stupendously magni- 
 fied ? 
 
 Throw away your microscopes, O naturalists ! 
 your naked eye is as good as any magni- 
 fying glass. 
 
 Will you ever see clearer into germ or proto- 
 plasm than you see into the living heavens 
 with their shining molecules ? 
 
 II 
 
 I know the secret of the universe. 
 
 Now at last I have found out what ails it. 
 
 The universe is in love. 
 
 It is giving itself a prodigious reckless hug. 
 
 It hugs too hard, but it loves too much to give 
 
 any heed to protests. 
 Its love is the source of all pleasure and the 
 
 source of all pain. 
 It loves the lively birds and beasts and the 
 
 strenuous men who feed on them and the 
 
THE LIVING UNIVERSE 103 
 
 beautiful microbes and tumours that feed 
 on the men, and most of all it loves the 
 tremor and friction and oppugnance be- 
 tween its loves, and sets its teeth to the 
 shock and thrill of them. 
 
 There is a bite in its burning kiss that gives vent 
 to love's unbearable intensity. 
 
 The universe needs safety valves, and we are 
 its safety valves. 
 
 If it were not for its outlet through us and our 
 agonies, it would go mad or explode. 
 
 Yes, there is an agony in love and the universe 
 is in love. 
 
 Gravitation is love and the attraction of atoms 
 for each other is love. 
 
 The vibrant light is love, and the tingling of 
 heat is love. 
 
 The planets, straining in their orbits, trace 
 " love " on the face of the heavens. 
 
 The perplexed waves, drawn now skyward, now 
 earthward, write " love " all over the sea. 
 
 Love sucks the rivers to their sources and the 
 sap to the tips of the trees. 
 
 Love clasps star to star and molecule to mole- 
 cule. 
 
 There is nothing but love. 
 
 All life is nothing but hugging, and the uni- 
 verse is one long excruciating embrace ! 
 
104 LOVE 
 
 Love 
 
 I 
 
 WHEN I thought you were perfect and 
 far above our shps and trips, it was 
 an effort to love you. 
 But now that you have confessed your fault, 
 (so like my own fault that I have never con- 
 fessed) I am drawn irresistibly to you. 
 How can they love in heaven where there 
 are no common weaknesses to bind them 
 together ? 
 
 II 
 
 What do you love most in your sweetheart, — 
 that which she shares with all others, or 
 the inexplicable thing which differentiates 
 her from them all ? 
 
 When the deep underlying humanity is as 
 fascinating to us as the shallow variations, 
 what will then become of all our billing and 
 cooing and pairing ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 Do you love each other only ? 
 
 It will soon burn out, — that love. 
 
 One love will devour the other. 
 
 Try loving the world together, and turn your 
 
 bonfire of shavings into a blast-furnace 
 
 with all the universe for fuel. 
 
LOVE 105 
 
 IV 
 
 There is something beyond brotherhood. 
 
 Brotherhood is very good in its way, but court- 
 ing and wedlock are better. 
 
 I had rather woo the world than be brother to 
 it. 
 
 I want my life to be one long love-story. 
 
 There is a higher love than ours at its best. 
 
 The love which we know has too much alloy in 
 it of pity and compassion. 
 
 I want no one to pity me, and, by the Golden 
 Rule, I must not indulge too deeply in the 
 luxury of pitying others. 
 
 I want my mother to keep out of my eyes. 
 
 I do not wish my voice to quaver, nor do I 
 willingly lose control of my countenance. 
 
 The " Ewig-Weibliche " is better than self- 
 seeking and barbarism, no doubt, but we 
 shall find something still higher beyond it. 
 
 There is a love that can give and take on equal 
 terms without a tremor of the under-lip, 
 — which stands as firm on its base as 
 yonder Catskills, — which flows as broad 
 and steady as the Hudson at their feet. 
 
 Let us press forward to that supreme love. 
 
 VI 
 
 What is this talk of egoism and altruism, as if 
 they were at enmity with each other, and 
 
io6 GOD'S WINDOW 
 
 not rather the twin sides of character, 
 
 growing symmetrically and with even 
 
 balance ? 
 The infinite love of Jesus made him conscious 
 
 that he was the Son of God, and that he 
 
 and the Father were one. 
 Could his egoism have gone beyond this in its 
 
 effort to overtake his altruism ? 
 Nay, love the Lord thy God, — in thyself, — the 
 
 deepest egoism ; 
 Love thy neighbour, — and the Lord thy God 
 
 in him, — the widest altruism ; 
 Love God in all things, for this is the one 
 
 commandment. 
 
 God's Window^ 
 
 GOD has a house that's wide and tall, 
 And I'm a window in his wall. 
 How clear and pure I ought to be 
 If God must view his world through me ! 
 
MY SOUL 107 
 
 My Soul 
 
 " l^T rHAT must I do to be saved ? " 
 V V O narrow, selfish, trivial question ! 
 
 Implying no mere selfishness of a minute or 
 hour or day, but a whole eternity of in- 
 growing soul. 
 
 Is my salvation a matter of such importance ? 
 
 Those only are saved who do not care whether 
 they are saved or not. 
 
 The soul can indeed save itself, but only by 
 forgetting itself, and jumping overboard 
 out of itself. 
 
 II 
 
 I found my soul lying neglected, and I picked 
 
 it up and wondered what the strange 
 
 mechanism was for. 
 I went to school to learn what use to make of 
 
 my soul. 
 They taught me to think with it, but it strained 
 
 and creaked and nearly gave way under 
 
 the ordeal. 
 They showed me how to amuse myself with it, 
 
 but it speedily got out of order and refused 
 
 to work. 
 
io8 MY SOUL 
 
 Then they trained me to hate with my soul, but 
 
 it broke down utterly and nearly fell to 
 
 pieces. 
 I came back from school disgusted with my 
 
 soul and my teachers. 
 It was long after (alone, lying on my bed in the 
 
 night watches) that it flashed upon me 
 
 what my soul was for. 
 Why did none of them tell me that my soul 
 
 was a loving machine ? 
 
 Ill 
 
 Are there extinct suns revolving dark and in- 
 visible through space, waiting for their 
 fires to rekindle ? 
 
 Such I feel myself to be as I follow my dim 
 orbit. 
 
 Oh, to be a sun, a burning shining sun, with 
 healing in its beams. 
 
 Radiating all that is best in it so that all within 
 its circle is made clean and wholesome and 
 warm ! 
 
 I am a dynamo with the current turned off. 
 
 When will they turn it on ? 
 
 IV 
 
 Living at low pressure, — 
 Scarcely enough steam up to keep in motion at 
 all,— 
 
MY SOUL 109 
 
 Going through the forms of conviction and 
 enthusiasm on the memories of full, ecsta- 
 tic hours warmed over, — 
 
 I wait despondently for the moment of com- 
 plete collapse. 
 
 But no. The power rises ; the pressure re- 
 doubles ; the heat kindles ; the heart 
 quickens. 
 
 I shall once more really live, and there are still 
 full ecstatic hours in store. 
 
 I can hardly keep from smiling indecorously 
 this sunshiny morning as I walk along 
 Broadway, I am on such good terms with 
 everybody ; 
 
 They are all such good fellows, I am sure they 
 are. 
 
 I wish I could think of some one who had served 
 me a bad turn, so that I might play him a 
 good one in revenge. 
 ^ What a luxury forgiveness is ! 
 
 I am in serious danger of loving my enemies 
 more than my friends to-day,— 
 
 I am under such obligations to them for bring- 
 ing out all that is most delicious in me. . 
 
 The sun is shining this morning inside and out. 
 
no MY SOUL 
 
 VI 
 
 You who would convince me of my immortality 
 by means of mysterious rappings in dark- 
 ened rooms and magic slates and moving 
 tables, 
 
 How hopelessly beside the mark are all your 
 efforts ! 
 
 I have Moses and the prophets, David and 
 Isaiah, Paul and John, Tolstoy and Whit- 
 man, and if I hear not them, neither shall 
 I be persuaded though one rose from the 
 dead. - 
 
 The man who is deaf to the prophets has failed 
 to become conscious of his own immortal 
 self, and the self that he cherishes shall 
 die, all the slates and tables to the con- 
 trary notwithstanding. 
 
 VII 
 
 I stand wistfully at the door. 
 
 I want to go in but the price of admission is too 
 high for me. 
 
 I say that the door is shut, — that there is no 
 room for me within, — that others are 
 keeping me out, — that it would be selfish 
 to go in alone, — but I know it is all untrue. 
 
 What I mean is that the price is too high. 
 
 And what is the price ? 
 
 The price is simply to go in, — to take the one 
 short, necessary step across the threshold. 
 
MY SOUL III 
 
 VIII 
 
 Prayer is not an asking for things, 
 
 Nor a solemn repetition of good words, 
 
 Nor a Hindoo wheel turning in the wind. 
 
 Prayer is a vital change. 
 
 It is the deepening of the soul. 
 
 It is the shifting inward of my centre of gravity 
 
 toward the great Source of life. 
 This is the only prayer. 
 And there is but one answer to prayer, and 
 
 that is the influx of the waters of life 
 
 welling up within me. 
 
 IX 
 
 No far-away despot, 
 
 No worn tradition, 
 
 No shadowy background for Nature's give and 
 
 take. 
 No algebraic insoluble X, nor mark devised to 
 
 stand for an unknowable infinity. 
 No arbitrary postulate or working theory, 
 No guess in the dark, — 
 My God is none of these things. 
 Nay, God is an experience of the soul. 
 
 X 
 
 Stop rummaging in the past for musty causes, 
 O scientist ! 
 
112 MY SOUL 
 
 Seek not the living among the dead. 
 
 Life is, — not was, — and must ever continue to 
 
 be. 
 How can the vanished columns of ages ago 
 
 sustain our present temples ? 
 Then search, not for dead causes, but for the 
 
 Living God. 
 
 XI 
 
 At the source of my being, — 
 
 At the point where life wells up within me, — 
 
 There my soul opens out into a new and wider 
 plane, — 
 
 There I am in touch at all points with all 
 things, — 
 
 There I feel dim suggestions of another di- 
 mension, — hints of the unfolding of new- 
 celestial vistas from every commonplace, 
 familiar spot of earth. 
 
 XII 
 
 But I seldom venture into the spiritual storm- 
 centre which is myself, — 
 
 That vortex of the contending east and west 
 winds of truth ; — 
 
 I fear the strain upon my outer self too much. 
 
 I live for the most part on the outskirts with 
 back turned and fingers in ears, gazing at 
 the rigid world outside. 
 
MY SOUL 113 
 
 And yet I know, and am content to know that 
 sooner or later I shall be drawn in and 
 through and up, beyond the east wind and 
 the west wind, and the rush and roar of 
 opposites, and the duel of good and evil, 
 to the balance and poise which are even to 
 a greater degree myself. 
 
 XIII 
 
 O my heart's flood, run high ! 
 
 Thou round bright magnet of the midnight 
 skies, bend down and lift the waters till I 
 overflow and float, buoyed up in my own 
 liquid atmosphere, while love and truth 
 come rushing in from the eternal sea to fill 
 the void. 
 
 To be filled, to run over, to float,— what is there 
 else to live for ? 
 
 O my heart's tide, run high ! 
 
 XIV 
 
 Madness, divine madness ! 
 
 Who ever hved a hfe worth living without 
 
 madness ? 
 Who ever saw the ineffable dream and came 
 
 back completely sane ? 
 There is a comprehensive sanity above the 
 
 madness, but that is beyond human reach. 
 The only other sanity is that which men share 
 
 with other animals and trees. 
 B. H 
 
114 MY SOUL 
 
 We cannot rest in that. 
 Onward, upward, to the other, — through the 
 madness ! 
 
 XV 
 
 As I He in my bed at night, 
 
 I go forth and hover over the many-mansioned 
 
 city. 
 I can see into all its multitudinous homes, and 
 
 I give of myself with both hands to the 
 
 eager, expectant inmates. 
 Hungrily they lift their arms toward me and 
 
 we are drawn to each other. 
 But I am also drawn upward by an attraction 
 
 from above ; I do not descend, — I rise, 
 
 and they rise with me. 
 Like an aeronaut throwing off ballast, I go up, 
 
 up. 
 Then, when I should attain the acme of all, I 
 
 am left in confusion. 
 There is light there, — and peace, — and intense 
 
 action, — I feel it, — but it all baffles me, — 
 
 baffles me again and again, 
 As I lie in my bed. 
 
 XVI 
 
 Poised in the buoyant atmosphere of universal 
 love, all things may fall away from my 
 soul, and yet leave it still secure, self-cen- 
 tred in the firmament. 
 
 I 
 
MY SOUL 115 
 
 I float in a sea of love. 
 
 Can there be love without a Lover, I wonder. 
 
 Is love the mere act of lovers, or are lovers 
 
 episodes and eddies in the ocean of love ? 
 Which comes first, love or lover ? 
 Does personality blossom into love, or does 
 
 love wake into personality ? 
 I know not, but I float in a sea of love. 
 
 XVII 
 
 In the dark. 
 
 Between the stars without and the stars within, 
 
 My soul is deftly hung and balanced. 
 
 How rarely I go out to look at the stars at 
 night ? 
 
 And when I go out how seldom I lift my eyes 
 to heaven ! 
 
 And in the other inner dark, how there too I 
 shun the constellations, and, when I am 
 not actually sleeping, how I hug the 
 candle-light and lamp-light instead ! 
 
 XVIII 
 
 When my compass is deranged and the needle 
 vacillates idly round the horizon, — 
 
 When the constellations seem hopelessly tan- 
 gled and I cannot tell the Great Bear from 
 the Southern Cross, — 
 
ii6 MY SOUL 
 
 Even then there is one sure resource, — 
 I can still tug at my anchor-chain and feel it 
 rooted in the solid earth. 
 
 XIX 
 
 My soul is a tree, a drowsy, monotonous tree, 
 
 but what care I ? for the birds come and 
 
 sing in its branches. 
 Only the common garden birds stay long enough 
 
 for me to describe them to you, and chirp 
 
 plainly enough for me to learn their song. 
 But what of the scarlet birds of the woods that 
 
 alight for a moment and then in a moment 
 
 are off again ? 
 What of the flitting shadows of song that will 
 
 not be scrutinized, while they pour forth 
 
 weird minor shivers of melody whose bass 
 
 notes vibrate into eternity ? 
 I cannot tell you of them. You must watch 
 
 your own branches for them. 
 No tree is so dead but the birds will sing in its 
 
 branches. 
 
 XX 
 
 What is this within me which sometimes when 
 
 I am bent on enjoyment, peremptorily 
 
 cries out. Nay ? 
 Is it not my best self, jealous of some other, 
 
 outer, lower mastery and anxious to 
 
 assert its sway ? 
 
MY SOUL 117 
 
 What is this within me which, when I have 
 learned the lesson, gently whispers, " Now, 
 if you still care to, do as you wished " ? 
 
 Is It not still the same hidden captain, sure 
 now of my loyalty and trusting me far 
 afield ? 
 
 At last he knows that even in the heart of the 
 enemy's country I shall not think of 
 deserting. 
 
 XXI 
 
 1 cannot enjoy a thing freely so long as I am 
 subject to it,— so long as I cannot do 
 without it. 
 
 I must master it and pass beyond it before I 
 can turn round and enjoy it.-" 
 
 If you wish to own a thing, let it go. 
 
 Hold fast to it, if you wish to be its slave. 
 
 The chess-player keeps his head well above the 
 board. 
 
 He rises superior to it, he looks down upon it, 
 he knows this is only a game. 
 
 Play as he does with your passions and appe- 
 tites. 
 
 Move them about as pawns wherever you would 
 have them go, 
 
 But remember that hfe is something other. 
 
 Then even if the game is lost, defeat will not 
 have reached you at your point of vantage. 
 
ii8 MY SOUL 
 
 XXII 
 
 Who would lead a life tedious with tame suc- 
 cesses ? 
 
 There is nothing so dull, so dispiriting as suc- 
 cess, for it robs me of my chief treasure, 
 the future. 
 
 It takes the relish out of life and leaves nothing 
 behind. 
 
 It is defeat that is bracing, — 
 
 To feel that defeat was powerless to reach 
 you,— 
 
 To lose all and exult to find yourself still in- 
 tact, — 
 
 To be impregnable and eternal and independent 
 of things and conditions, — 
 
 To possess the essence of victory in your un- 
 conquerable courage. 
 / Life is a school wherein failure is a better 
 teacher than success.^ 
 
 XXIII 
 
 Where are the cowards who bow down to en- 
 vironment, — 
 
 Who think they are made of what they eat 
 and must conform to the bed they lie in ? 
 
 I am not wax, — I am energy. 
 
 Like the whirlwind and waterspout I twist my 
 environment into my form, whether it will 
 or not. 
 
 What is it that transmutes electricity into 
 auroras, and sunlight into rainbows, and 
 
MY SOUL 119 
 
 soft flakes of snow into stars, and ada- 
 mant into crystals, and makes solar 
 systems of nebulae ? 
 
 Whatever it is, I am its cousin german. 
 i I too have my ideals to work out and the uni- 
 verse is given me for raw material. 
 
 I am a signet and I will put my stamp upon 
 the molten stuff before it hardens. 
 
 What allegiance do I owe to environment ? I 
 shed environments for others as a snake 
 sheds its skin. 
 
 The world must come my way — slowly, if it 
 will — but still my way. 
 
 I am a vortex launched in chaos to suck it into 
 shape. 
 
 XXIV 
 
 I want nothing, nothing, but you, O Truth ! 
 
 Give yourself to me, — my arms are open wide. 
 
 Drive away the illusions that tremble at your 
 approach. 
 
 I do not care how you may look to my dis- 
 torted eyes. 
 
 After my long debauch with these phantasms 
 I may find you uncomely, — but you are 
 comely, — you only are comely. 
 
 Deep down within me, — deeper than I think 
 or feel or dream, — even there I need you, — 
 there is your empty throne. 
 
 And Truth whispered, " Love,— and I will 
 come." 
 
120 MY SOUL AGAIN 
 
 My Soul Again 
 
 HERE, where I live (thus spake my soul 
 To me whose hair is turning grey), 
 No clock doth chime the flight of time, 
 For we know it is Now all day. 
 
 Here, where I live (thus spake my soul 
 
 As it smiled at the white that flecked ray 
 hair), 
 
 No milestones show the road we go, 
 For our Here is Ever3nvhere. 
 
 Grow old, if you will (thus spoke my soul). 
 But I am as young as a new-born child. 
 
 Though your head be hoar and burden sore, 
 I am strong and free and wild. 
 
 So I thanked my cheery childlike soul, 
 And laughed to know that all was well ; 
 
 And I turned away from my head of grey 
 And went to my soul to dwell. 
 
MICROCOSM 121 
 
 You 
 
 I WOULD not break your will, for, like mine, 
 it is a sprout of the infinite will. 
 I might indeed wish to transform it, but so 
 long as it is will, let it have its way. 
 
 11 
 
 ''''Express yourself. 
 Whatever you are, out with it ! 
 We do not want a world of masqueraders. 
 Make yourself felt, — make your real self felt. 
 Put your private stamp upon the future. 
 Make the world go a bit differently from what 
 
 it would have gone if you had never been 
 
 born. 
 Imitate no one, — saint, sage or hero. 
 Be yourself, and perhaps you will find that 
 
 you are by your own birthright one of the 
 
 elect. , 
 
 Microcosm 
 
 I SPLIT a grain of common sand 
 And behold ! within it lay 
 The vaulted universe bespanned 
 By the uttermost Milky Way. 
 
 I delved in my narrow soul, and lo ! 
 
 At my being's inmost core 
 I saw the eternal Godhead glow 
 
 And the heavenly hosts adore. 
 
122 HINTS 
 
 A Prayer 
 
 COME to me, woo me, Soul of the All ! 
 Early and late, 
 As I labour, I wait 
 For thy quickening call. 
 
 Carry me off, O thou Soul of Desire, 
 
 For a moment of bliss. 
 
 To the central abyss 
 In thy chariot of fire ! 
 
 Let me know in the long quiet years that succeed, 
 Looking down from above 
 On the gross forms of love, 
 
 What it is to be freed. 
 
 Hints 
 
 LITTLE care we for the mark 
 At which our winged words are aimed ; 
 Just aside there in the dark 
 
 Lurks the thought we never named. 
 
 So the vague magnetic pole 
 
 In the boreal skies afar 
 Like a disembodied soul 
 
 Haunts the obvious polar star. 
 
 Not the star at which we gaze 
 
 Thrills and joins our souls on high, 
 
 But the one whose furtive rays 
 Catch the corner of our eye. 
 
 Not the songs the poet sings 
 
 Set our ears and hearts a-ringing. 
 
 But unutterable things 
 
 Which he stops just short of singing. 
 
APOLOGIA 123 
 
 Apologia 
 
 I PULLED up the flowers in my garden, for 
 I had learned that they were poisonous. 
 Yet I loved them, — purple and red and white, — 
 
 and I pulled them up with tears. 
 My garden was a desert and my garden was 
 
 all my life. 
 In the morning I went to weep again in my 
 garden, and I found these pansies growing 
 wild where my tears had fallen. 
 
 II 
 
 A motto for critics, Be silent on your blind side ! 
 There are things that you reck not of. 
 There are worlds that you know not. 
 There are forces to which you are impervious. 
 No one of us can see and appreciate the whole. 
 Let us then hold our peace in the dark. 
 
 Ill 
 
 We who have been there have all beheld the 
 same landscape. 
 
 We make use of different symbols, — we may 
 seem to talk contrariwise, — we may even 
 misunderstand and denounce each other, — 
 
124 APOLOGIA 
 
 but read between the lines and you will 
 
 perceive that our descriptions tally. 
 If we repeated each other's story by rote, like 
 
 the witnesses in an Oriental law-suit, you 
 
 would do well to disbelieve us ; 
 But note our divergencies and our enthusiasm 
 
 and recognise the very ear-marks of truth. 
 Trace them back to their misty, radiant source, 
 
 and you will apprehend the only thing 
 
 worth knowing. 
 
 IV 
 
 You must listen to me for I have something 
 to say. 
 
 You will not like my form of speech, but I 
 know no other. 
 
 You will resent my sharp words, but I have no 
 blunt arrows in my quiver. 
 
 You will try to shake me off and go to sleep 
 again, but I will not be shaken off ; and 
 even into your sleep I will inject the fer- 
 ment of my dreams. 
 
 V 
 
 My ideas dangerous ? 
 
 But how is it with your own ? 
 
 Your idea for instance that it is quite right for 
 men in uniform to slaughter each other,— 
 an idea which slays its thousands every 
 day? 
 
APOLOGIA 125 
 
 Your idea that it is proper for you to pocket 
 as much of other men's earnings as the law 
 allows, — an idea which fills the world with 
 poverty, starvation, disease and death. 
 
 And all your other silly time-worn ideas. 
 
 Is it your ideas or mine that are dangerous ? 
 
 VI 
 
 (After the Chinese.) 
 
 I played my lute to the world, but the world 
 danced not and went on its way unheeding. 
 
 Only here and there I saw a solitary dancer, 
 unnoticed of the rest, in an obscure 
 corner. 
 
 And I grieved at the world, for I loved my 
 music. 
 
 But when I looked again and discerned who 
 they were that danced to my lute, for- 
 sooth I sorrowed no longer ; 
 
 For they were the children of the new day. 
 
126 AFTERTHOUGHT 
 
 \ 
 
 Afterthought 
 
 TyJ/'HEN these new ideas of ours heco^ne 
 trite, — 
 
 When they pass glibly current from 7nouth to 
 mouth without conviction or comprehen- 
 sion, — 
 
 When the clean-cut edge of the mintage is rubbed 
 off and the impression half obliterated, — 
 
 Then there will be a shade of sadness even iji 
 victory ; — 
 
 Then we shall have to pray for the advent of new 
 truths and new heretics. 
 
 Butler and Tanner The Selwood Printing Works Frome and Lj3ndon 
 
iUl 18 19C5