SONGS OF CHALLENaE 
 
 i 
 
Class. ^ 
 Book . F Z 
 
 GoRTlgteW- 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 An anthology selected and arranged 
 by ROBERT FROTHINGHAM 
 
 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 
 THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBRIDGE 
 1922 
 
■^^\\1^ 
 
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 COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 /. 
 
 AUG 28 1922 
 
 QCfjc 3Ribcr«ibc ^vtii 
 
 CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
 PRINTED IN THE U.S.A 
 
 ©CLA6S1580 
 
TO 
 ERMAN J. RIDGWAY 
 
 ** Yet always the aspiring Soul, — 
 The Angel in the mortal clod, 
 
 The Vision that defies control, — 
 Will look through Nature up to God; 
 
 And strive in word and form to speak 
 The beauty it was bom to seek." 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 Man has always been at war with himself, and 
 every now and again he awakens to the conscious- 
 ness that his discontent is divine. Then he turns 
 in weariness from his greatest material accomplish- 
 ments toward the "Happy Isles" of his imagina- 
 tion. We all have our secret dreams, which gen- 
 erally include a revolt against our own limitations 
 and a longing for better things than those we know. 
 
 "Whence" and "Whither" will ever be insepa- 
 rable phases of the Great Adventure, as the real 
 man views it. And, inasmuch as this compilation 
 is meant for that particular breed, it will be quite 
 apparent to him that there is no intent to "point a 
 moral or adorn a tale," to either affirm or deny, 
 and least of all, to constitute itself a moral or spir- 
 itual finger-board. 
 
 From the standpoint of the materialist, one of 
 life's tragedies lies in the fact that so many of us 
 know so many things that are n't so. Scarce one of 
 us, however, but recognizes that 
 
 ** When the fight begins within himself, 
 A man's worth something." 
 
 Pin us down and you'll find that most of us be- 
 lieve in our kinship with the worth-while things, the 
 truly big things, "the stars which fleck our jour- 
 ney's dusks." But it's like squaring the circle when 
 we try to weave that belief into the warp and woof 
 
viii FOREWORD 
 
 of our daily grind. The great majority of us are es- 
 sentially religious — not theologically nor doctri- 
 nally, and frequently not even intellectually. But — 
 in the inner recesses of our spirit, where joy works 
 alone, there is a glow Uke unto the fire of a moun- 
 tain sunset of which the most wondrous view is to 
 be had from the most distant range: our souPs 
 intimate dream, human nature's Holy of Holies. 
 Here, under an impulse, conscious or unconscious, 
 to be free of laws and restraints, with the thousand 
 and one superfluous precepts of poor, timorous 
 humanity thrown aside, without the necessity for 
 breaking our shins against the Decalogue or rub- 
 bing our shoulders raw under the yoke of any partic- 
 ular creed, we kneel to "whatever gods may be" 
 and strive to play the game. 
 
 Of all the lessons brought home to us by the 
 World War, this reawakening of our relationship 
 with the Unseen, with its consequent reestablish- 
 ment of spiritual values is, perhaps, the most signif- 
 icant. We needed to be reminded of the fact that 
 man pays. He has always paid: for being born, for 
 living, for dying. The principal thing that has dis- 
 tinguished us from our early ancestors is that we 
 have been trying to get too much for our money. 
 We have been taking out more than we put in. We 
 invited a crash and we got it. Praises be, however, 
 along with it has come the Vision that is helping a 
 lot of us off the treadmill: the Vision of the Spirit 
 of Song. When a man can sing acceptably about 
 either his belief or his unbelief, whether it agrees 
 with what you and I think or not, we can afford to 
 stop and Usten; in fact, we can't afford not to do so. 
 
FOREWORD ix 
 
 Some writer has said that human needs are the 
 true ligatures between God and man. How small 
 vanities disappear and how vital stout sincerity 
 becomes in the face of such a belief I 
 
 There are a lot of men who claim to have no lik- 
 ing for poetry, others who read it surreptitiously as 
 though it were forbidden fruit, and still others who 
 profess to regard a love for it as a sort of effeminate 
 dilettantism. The very word "poetry" conveys a 
 wrong meaning to some men. This little book is 
 filled with robust verse, intended to appeal to the 
 very men I have described. If it has any mission at 
 all, it seeks simply to make vivid that Vision which 
 pierces the murk and scatters our up-to-date cock- 
 sureness to the four winds, and to restore to hearts 
 grown callous and dour the inspiration and the 
 warmth of the Spirit of Song: 
 
 "Beholding dimly from afar the glory of the Hidden 
 
 Face — 
 Our worship ever our reward, the quest our golden 
 
 coronal.'* 
 
 R. F. 
 
 New York 
 October, .1922 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 The editor acknowledges his indebtedness to the 
 following authors and publishers for the use of 
 copyright poems: 
 
 Messrs. Angus & Robertson, Ltd., Sydney, Aus- 
 tralia, for "Only Laughter is Sure,'* from The 
 Australian^ and "Stars in the Mist," from Hearts 
 of Gold, by Will H. Ogilvie; and "He Giveth his 
 Beloved Sleep," from Rio Grandees Last Race, by 
 Major A. B. Paterson. 
 
 Mr. Richard G. Badger for "A Cowboy's Prayer," 
 from Sun and Saddle Leather, by Badger Clark. 
 
 The Bookfellows of Chicago for "Requiem" and 
 "The Great Adventure," from Phantom Caravans, 
 by Major Kendall Banning. 
 
 Messrs. Chappell & Co., music publishers, Lon- 
 don, and the author for "Hush your Prayers," by 
 Conal O'Riordon (Norreys Connell, pseud.) 
 
 Messrs. Dodd, Mead & Co. for "Nirvana," from 
 Poems, by Rosamimd Marriott Watson; and "He 
 fell among Thieves," from The Island Race, by 
 Sir Henry Newbolt. 
 
 Messrs. George H. Doran Company for "A Poet 
 Enlists," from The Silver Trumpet (copyright, 
 1918), and "Because I Have Loved Life," from 
 Life and Living (copyright, 1916), by Amelia 
 Josephine Burr. 
 
 Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co. for "The Awak- 
 ening," from Poems and Portraits, by Don Marquis ; 
 
xii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 and "Barest thou now, O Soul," "Passage to 
 India," and "Song of the Universal," from Leaves 
 of Grass, by Walt Whitman. 
 
 Messrs. Duffield & Co. for "Wine of Omar 
 Khayyam," from Mimma Bella, by Eugene Lee- 
 Hamilton. 
 
 Messrs. E. P. Button & Co. for permission to 
 publish "The Bance of Beath," from The Collected 
 Poems of Austin Bob son. 
 
 Messrs. Forbes & Co. for "The Certain Victo- 
 ry," from Ballads of the Busy Days, by S. E. Kiser. 
 
 The Franklin Press for "He whom a Bream 
 hath Possessed," from The Blossomy Bough, hy 
 Shaemas O'Sheel. 
 
 Messrs. Harper & Brothers for "The Seeker," 
 from Dreams and Dust, by Bon Marquis; and "At 
 the Top of the Road," from Star-Glow and Song, by 
 Charles Buxton Going. 
 
 Messrs. Houghton Mifflin Company for "Make 
 me no Grave" and "The Sun- Worshipers," from 
 Songs of the Trail, by Henry Herbert Knibbs; 
 "Waiting," by John Burroughs; "Live your Life, 
 then take your Hat," by Henry Bavid Thoreau; 
 "The Problem," by Ralph Waldo Emerson; "Bawn 
 in the Besert," from Poems, by Clinton ScoUard; 
 " lo Victis," by William Wetmore Story ; and " Room 
 for a Soldier," by Thomas William Parsons. 
 
 Mr. Richard LeGallienne for "The Second Cru- 
 cifixion." 
 
 Messrs. Little, Brown & Co. for "Coronation," 
 from Poems, by Helen Hunt Jackson. 
 
 Erskine Macdonald for "Courage," by the late 
 Lieut. Byneley Hussey. 
 
 I 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii 
 
 The Macmillan Company for ** Atoms and Ages" 
 and "Peace on Earth," from Collected Poems by 
 Edwin Arlington Robinson; and "April Theology," 
 "Prayer for Pain," and "When I have gone Weird 
 Ways," from Tke Quest, by John G. Neihardt. 
 
 Mr. Thomas Bird Mosher for "Tears," from A 
 Wayside Lute, by Lizette Woodworth Reese; and 
 "A Man's Bargain," from Tomorrow's Road, by 
 Gertrude M. Hort. 
 
 Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons for "Each in his 
 Own Tongue," from Each in his Own Tongue, and 
 Other Poems, by William Herbert Carruth; and 
 "The Washerwoman's Song" and "Kriterion," 
 from Rhymes of Ironquill, by Eugene F. Ware. 
 
 George Routledge & Sons for "The Dance of 
 Death," from The Collected Poems of Austin Dob- 
 son. 
 
 Mr. Porter E. Sargent for "A Man's Guess" and 
 "The Question," from Miscellaneous Moods, by 
 Elihu Vedder. 
 
 Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons for "Atoms and 
 Ages," from Children of the Night, by Edwin Arling- 
 ton Robinson; and "The Departed Friend" and 
 "If this were Faith," by Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co. for "The Lost 
 Comrade," "Fear not the Menace," and "Scep- 
 tics," from Last Songs from Vagabondia, by Rich- 
 ard Hovey and Bliss Carman. 
 
 Messrs. Smith, Elder & Co. for "Before Action," 
 from Verse and Prose in Peace and War, by the late 
 Lieut. W. N. Hodgson. 
 
 Messrs. P. F. Volland & Co. for "Each in his 
 Own Tongue," by V/illiam Herbert Carruth. 
 
xiv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
 
 Yale University Press for "Hunger," from 
 Shadow Verses, by Gamaliel Bradford; and "The 
 Dying Pantheist to the Priest," from Poems, by 
 Henry A. Beers. 
 
 The American-Scandinavian Foundation for 
 "Longing," by Viktor Rydberg; and "Prayer amid 
 Flames," by Verner von Heidenstam, from An- 
 thology of Swedish Lyrics, 
 
 Century Magazine for "When the Time for 
 Parting Comes," by Dorothea Lawrance Mann. 
 
 Chicago Tribune for "A Nation's Face Up- 
 turned," by John Bemer Crosby. 
 
 Contemporary Verse for "The Naturalist on a 
 June Sunday," by Leonora Speyer; "Make no 
 Desperate Search for God," by John French Wil- 
 son; and " One Path," by William Alexander Percy. 
 
 McClure's Magazine for "The Pipes o* Gordon's 
 Men," by J. Scott Glasgow. 
 
 The Nation for "The Pagan," by Rose Hender- 
 son. 
 
 New York Sun for "Prayer of a Poet to God," by 
 Joseph Bernard Rethy. 
 
 New York Times for "The Laughing Prayer," 
 by Louise DriscoU; and "Deferred," by Stokely S. 
 Fisher. 
 
 New York Tribune for "The Last Tourney," 
 "Dissolution," "Worship," "Litany," and "To 
 Captain Dale Mabry," by Frederic F. Van de 
 Water; and "When Charon Beckons," by Francis 
 Woolsey Bronson. 
 
 The Outlook for "I Accept," by Harold Trow- 
 bridge Pulsifer. 
 
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xv 
 
 Reedy* s Mirror for "Exile from God," by John 
 Hall Wheelock. 
 
 The Roy crofters Anthology for "The Agnostic's 
 Creed," by Walter Malone. 
 
 Saturday Evening Post for "With the Tide," by 
 Edith Wharton. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 A POET ENLISTS, Amelia Josephine Burr ... 35 
 
 " AD CCELUM," Harry Romaine 52 
 
 AFTER DEATH IN ARABIA, Edwin Arnold ... 59 
 
 AFTERWARDS, Violet Fane 130 
 
 AGNOSTIC'S CREED, THE, Walter Malone ... 65 
 " ALIENI TEMPORIS FLORES," G. B. C. ... 80 
 APRIL THEOLOGY, John G. Neihardt .... 87 
 
 AT SUNSET, Seumas O'Sullivan 136 
 
 AT THE TOP OF THE ROAD, Charles Buxton Going 129 
 ATOMS AND AGES, Edwin Arlington Robinson . . 83 
 
 AWAKENING, THE, Don Marquis 104 
 
 " BECAUSE I HAVE LOVED LIFE," Amelia Josephine 
 
 Burr 22 
 
 BEFORE ACTION, Lieut. W. N. Hodgson ... 9 
 
 BEYOND, John Gibson Lockhart I74 
 
 BREAKING THE SILENCE, Amanda T. Jones . . 135 
 CERTAIN VICTORY, THE, S. E. Kiser .... 89 
 CLEANTHES' HYMN, Cleanthes the Stoic . . .166 
 COAST OF COURAGE, THE, Anonymous ... 56 
 
 COLLAR, THE, George Herbert 13 
 
 CONCLUSION, A, Rachel Annand Taylor . . . .162 
 
 CORONATION, Helen Hunt Jackson 34 
 
 «' CORONEMUS NOS ROSIS ANTEQUAM MARCES- 
 
 CANT," Thomas Jordan 92 
 
 COWBOY'S PRAYER, A, Badger Clark .... 21 
 DANCE OF DEATH, THE, Austin Dobson . . . 146 
 "BAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL," Walt Whitman 115 
 
xviii CONTENTS 
 
 DAWN IN THE DESERT, Clinton ScoUard . . .156 
 DEAD MARCH, A, Cosmo Monkhouse .... 126 
 
 DEFERRED, Stokely S. Fisher 73 
 
 DEPARTED FRIEND, THE, Robert Louis Stevenson . 137 
 
 DESERVINGS, Anonymous 65 
 
 " DIE, DRIVEN AGAINST THE WALL," Louise Imogen 
 
 Guiney 10 
 
 DISSOLUTION, Frederic F. Van de Water . . .111 
 DYING PANTHEIST TO THE PRIEST, THE, Henry A. 
 
 B^ers 76 
 
 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE, William Herbert Car- 
 ruth 51 
 
 EARTH GETS ITS PRICE, James Russell LoweU . . 39 
 END OF ALL, THE, James Clarence Mangan . . . 145 
 
 EPITAPH, Henry Herbert Knibbs I17 
 
 EXILE FROM GOD, John Hall Wheelock . . .168 
 " FEAR NOT THE MENACE," Richard Hovey . . 74 
 
 FLIGHT, THE, Lloyd Mifflin 118 
 
 " GATHER US IN," George Matheson . . . .155 
 GOD IN MY GARDEN, Thomas Edward Brown . . 75 
 GREAT ADVENTURE, THE, Major Kendall Banning . 141 
 HE FELL AMONG THIEVES, Sir Henry Newbolt . . 24 
 " HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP," Major A. B. 
 
 Paterson 113 
 
 " HE WHOM A DREAM HATH POSSESSED," Shae- 
 
 mas O'Sheel 86 
 
 HERACLITUS, William Johnson Cory 132 
 
 HILLS OF REST, THE, Albert Bigelow Paine . . .114 
 " HINC NOSTRA LACRIMiE," Don C. Seitz . . .134 
 HIS OWNE EPITAPH, Francois Villon, translated by 
 
 Wilfrid Thorley n8 
 
 HUNGER, Gamaliel Bradford 53 
 
 HUSH YOUR PRAYERS, Conal O'Riordan (Norroys 
 
 Connell, pseud.) 4 
 
CONTENTS xix 
 
 HYMN OF EMPEDOCLES, Matthew Arnold ... 63 
 I ACCEPT, Harold Trowbridge Pulsifer .... 3 
 "I SHALL NOT SCORN MY GRAVE," Sir Lewis 
 
 Morris 45 
 
 IF THIS WERE FAITH, Robert Louis Stevenson . . 72 
 
 IMMORTALITY, Joseph Jefferson 157 
 
 " 10 VICTIS," William Wetmore Story . . . .121 
 JESUS THE CARPENTER, Catherine C. Liddcll . . 82 
 
 KASIDAH, THE, Sir Richard Burton Io8 
 
 KRITERION, Eugene F. Ware 102 
 
 LAST APPEAL, A, Frederic William Henry Myers . . 69 
 LAST CAMP-FIRE, THE, Sharlot M. Hall ... 58 
 LAST TOURNEY, THE, Frederic F. Van de Water. . 7 
 LAUGHING PRAYER, THE, Louise DriscoU ... 55 
 LIE, THE, Sir Walter Raleigh . . . . . . .39 
 
 LIGHT OF THE WORLD, THE, Rev. John W. Chad- 
 wick 172 
 
 LITANY, Frederic F. Van de Water 42 
 
 LITTLE WORK, A. George Du Maurier .... 76 
 LIVE YOUR LIFE — THEN TAKE YOUR HAT, Henry 
 
 David Thoreau 53 
 
 LONGING, Viktor Rydberg, translated by Charies Whar- 
 ton Stork II 
 
 LOST COMRADE, THE, Bliss Carman .... 44 
 MABRY, CAPTAIN DALE, TO, Frederic F. Van de 
 
 Water 176 
 
 MAKE ME NO GRAVE, Henry Herbert Knibbs . . 15 
 MAKE NO DESPERATE SEARCH FOR GOD, John 
 
 French Wilson 81 
 
 MAN'S BARGAIN, A, G. M. Hort 5 
 
 MAN'S GUESS, Elihu Vedder 148 
 
 MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH, William Johnson Cory . 91 
 "MINE THE LIGHT OF SETTING SUN," William 
 Winter 171 
 
XX CONTENTS 
 
 MOVING FINGER WRITES, THE, Omar Khayy5m, 
 
 translated by Edward Fitzgerald 98 
 
 MY AIM, G. Linnseus Banks 69 
 
 MY OLD COUNSELOR, Gertrude Hall . . . .149 
 
 MYSTERY, Jerome B. Bell 63 
 
 NATION'S FACE UPTURNED, A, John Bemer Crosby 16 
 NATURALIST ON A JUNE SUNDAY, THE, Leonora 
 
 Speyer . 49 
 
 NAUGHTY NELL, Charles Wharton Stork .... 30 
 NIRVANA, Rosamund Marriott Watson .... 99 
 " NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE," Emily Bronte . .159 
 
 NOTHINGNESS, Owen Meredith 103 
 
 ONE FIGHT MORE, Robert Browning .... 8 
 ONE PATH, William Alexander Percy . . . . lOI 
 ONLY LAUGHTER IS SURE, Will H. Ogilvie ... 62 
 
 PAGAN, THE, Rose Henderson 85 
 
 PAINTING, THE, Dana Burnet 149 
 
 PASSAGE TO INDIA, Walt Whitman . . . .151 
 PASSING OF OLD TRINITY, Anonymous . . .169 
 PEACE ON EARTH, Edwin Arlington Robinson . . 26 
 PHANTOM CARAVAN, THE, Omar Khayyam, trans- 
 lated by Edward Fitzgerald 97 
 
 PIPES O' GORDON'S MEN, THE, J. Scott Glasgow . 128 
 
 PIPPA'S SONG, Robert Browning 166 
 
 PRAYER AMID FLAMES, Verner von Heidenstam, 
 
 translated by Charles Wharton Stork . . . .154 
 PRAYER FOR PAIN, John G. Neihardt .... 4 
 PRAYER OF A POET TO GOD, Joseph Bernard 
 
 Rethy 166 
 
 PROBLEM, THE, Ralph Waldo Emerson .... 94 
 
 QUESTION, A, Elihu Vedder 119 
 
 RELIGION, Paul Kester 154 
 
 REQUIEM, Major Kendall Banning 16 
 
 ROOM FOR A SOLDIER! Thomas William Parsons . 143 
 
CONTENTS xxi 
 
 RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM, THE, translated by 
 
 Edward Fitzgerald 97, 98 
 
 " SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT AVAILETH," 
 
 Arthur Hugh Clough 90 
 
 SCEPTICS, THE, Bliss Carman 120 
 
 SCIENTIST SPEAKS, THE, Charles Henry Mackintosh 92 
 SECOND CRUCIFIXION, THE, Richard Le GalUenne . 161 
 
 SEEKER, THE, Don Marquis 78 
 
 SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL, Walt Whitman . . . 175 
 STARS IN THE MIST, WiU H. Ogilvie . . . .100 
 SUN-WORSHIPERS, THE, Henry Herbert Knibbs . 68 
 
 TEARS, Lizctt© Woodworth Reese 163 
 
 " THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US," Words- 
 worth 38 
 
 •• THERE IS NO DEATH," John L. McCreery . . .172 
 THROUGH NATURE UP TO GOD, William Winter . 74 
 " 'T IS ALL AND NOTHING," Anonymous . . .133 
 TO CAPTAIN DALE MABRY, Frederic F. Van de 
 
 Water 176 
 
 UNBELIEF, Owen Meredith 57 
 
 " UNTO THE LEAST OF THESE," Arthur O'Shaugh- 
 
 nessy II2 
 
 UP-HILL, Christina Georgina Rossetti 138 
 
 VASTNESS, Tennyson 36 
 
 VILLON'S REGRETS, John D. Swain 122 
 
 *• VISION SPLENDID, THE," Wordsworth ... 89 
 
 WAITING, John Burroughs 48 
 
 WASHERWOMAN'S SONG, THE, Eugene F. Ware . 163 
 WE LODGE HIM IN THE MANGER, Anonymous . 71 
 
 WHAT IS TO COME, W. E. Henley 49 
 
 WHEN CHARON BECKONS, Francis Woolsey Bronson 7 
 WHEN I HAVE GONE WEIRD WAYS, John G. Neihardt 142 
 WHEN SHE CAME TO GLORY, Florence Wilkinson 
 . £yans 131 
 
xxii CONTENTS 
 
 " WHEN THE TIME FOR PARTING COMES," Doro- 
 thea Lawrance Mann Ii6 
 
 WINE OF OMAR KHAYYAM, Eugene Lee-Hamilton . 94 
 
 WISH, THE, Tennyson 159 
 
 WITH THE TIDE, Edith Wharton 139 
 
 " WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, NEITHER 
 
 SHADOW OF TURNING," Arthur Hugh Clough. . 165 
 WORSHIP, Frederic F. Van de Water 28 
 
SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I ACCEPT 
 
 I shall go out as all men go, 
 Spent flickers in a mighty wind, 
 Then I shall know as all must know, 
 What lies the great gray veil behind. 
 
 There may be nothing but a deep 
 And timeless void without a name 
 Where no sun hangs, no dead stars sleep, 
 And there is neither night nor flame. 
 
 There may be meadows there and hills, 
 Mountains and plains and winds that blow, 
 And flowers bending over rills 
 Springing from an eternal snow. 
 
 There may be oceans white with foam 
 And great tall ships for hungry men 
 Who called our little salt seas home. 
 And burn to launch their keels again. 
 
 There may be voices I have known, 
 Cool fingers that have touched my hair; 
 There may be hearts that were my own — 
 Love may abide forever there. 
 
 Who knows? Who needs to understand 
 If there be shadows there, or more — 
 
SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 To live as though a pleasant land 
 Lay just beyond an open door? 
 
 Harold Trowbridge Pulsijer 
 
 HUSH YOUR PRAYERS 
 
 Hush your prayers — 't is no saintly soul 
 Comes fainting back from the fought en field ; 
 Carry me forth on my broken shield ; 
 Trumpet and drum shall my requiem yield — 
 Silence the bells that toll. 
 
 Big no hole in the ground for me : 
 Though my body be made of mould and must. 
 Ne'er in the earth shall my dead bones rust; 
 Give my corse to the fiame*s white lust, 
 And sink my ashes at sea. 
 
 Reeking still with the sweat of the strife, 
 Never a prayer have I to say, 
 (My lips long since have forgotten the way) 
 Save this: "I have sorrowed sore in my day — 
 But I thank Thee, God, for my life." 
 
 Norreys Connell 
 
 PRAYER FOR PAIN 
 
 I do not pray for peace nor ease, 
 Nor truce from sorrow : 
 No suppliant on servile knees 
 Begs here against to-morrow! 
 
 Lean flame against lean flame we flash, 
 O Fates that meet me fair; 
 
A MAN'S BARGAIN 
 
 Blue steel against blue steel we clash — 
 Lay on, and 1 shall dare ! 
 
 But Thou of deeps the awful Deep, 
 Thou breather in the clay, 
 Grant this my only prayer — Oh keep 
 My soul from tiurning gray I 
 
 For until now, whatever wrought 
 Against my sweet desires, 
 My days were smitten harps strung taut, 
 My nights were slumbrous lyres. 
 
 And howsoe'er the hard blow rang 
 Upon my battered shield. 
 Some lark-like, soaring spirit sang 
 Above my battle-field; 
 
 And through my soul of stormy night 
 The zigzag blue-flame ran. 
 I asked no odds — I fought my fight — 
 Events against a man. 
 
 But now — at last — the gray mist chokes 
 And numbs me. Leave me pain I 
 Oh let me feel the biting strokes 
 That I may fight again 1 
 
 John G. Neihardt 
 
 A MAN'S BARGAIN 
 
 If I cry out for fellowship, 
 A comrade's voice, a comrade's grip, 
 A hand to hold me when I slip. 
 An ear to heed my groan — 
 
SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Renew that dark hour's ecstasy] 
 When all Thy waves went over me. 
 And Thou and I, with none to see, 
 Were joined in fight alone. 
 
 If I demand a sheltered space 
 Set for me in the battle-place. 
 Where I at times could tiu-n my face, 
 
 A screened and welcomed guest, — 
 Decree my soul should henceforth cease 
 From its wild hankering after peace. 
 And rest in that which gives release 
 - ^ From the desire for rest. 
 
 If I for final goal should ask — 
 Some meaning for the long day's task, 
 Some ripened field that yet may bask, 
 
 Secure from hurricane, — 
 Point to Thy locust-eaten sheaves — 
 The burnt-out stars, the still-born leaves I 
 And by the Toil no hope retrieves 
 Nerve me to toil again. 
 
 So, to Thy hard, propitious skies 
 Shall praise go up like sacrifice. 
 And all the will within me rise. 
 
 Applauding at Thy word : 
 Thou, in the Glory, jasper-walled. 
 By no reproach of mine be galled: 
 And I, among my kind, be called 
 
 The man whose prayers are heard. 
 
 G. M. Hort 
 
WHEN CHARON BECKONS 
 
 THE LAST TOURNEY 
 
 I shall go forth one day to joust with death; 
 
 The brittle little chains that hold me tied 
 
 To rusted hopes, to visions cracked and dried, 
 
 Shall break, and I shall hear the trumpet's breath 
 
 Go clamoring across the barren heath, 
 
 And for a flaming moment I shall ride 
 
 The lists' brief course to meet the Undefied — 
 
 And take the blow that I shall fall beneath. 
 
 Each day I make this single fervent prayer : 
 
 May then the blood of Bayard be my own; 
 
 May I ride hard and straight and smite him square, 
 
 And in a clash of arms be overthrown; 
 
 And as I fall hear through the evening air 
 
 The distant horn of Roland, faintly blown. 
 
 Frederic F. Van de Water 
 
 WHEN CHARON BECKONS 
 
 When Charon beckons me and marks my place 
 Within his barge, where whimpering souls are 
 
 pressed 
 So close together that the damned and blessed 
 Seem one vague lump of blasphemy and grace; 
 When fearlessly my eyes explore that space 
 Called Heaven or Hell by some, by others Rest, 
 I '11 mock the gasps of every awe-struck guest 
 And turn toward that shore a tranquil face. 
 
 For when that hour comes, as come it will. 
 My lips shall rim the cup of life to quaff 
 
8 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 The bitter-sweetish dregs — I shall not spill 
 
 One solitary drop — and then I '11 laugh 
 And lilt a sonnet with my dying breath 
 And cram a quatrain 'twixt the teeth of Death. 
 
 Francis Woolsey Bronson 
 
 ONE FIGHT MORE 
 
 Fear death? — to feel the fog in my throat, 
 
 The mist in my face, 
 When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 
 
 I am nearing the place. 
 The power of the night, the press of the storm, 
 
 The post of the foe; 
 Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form. 
 
 Yet the strong man must go : 
 For the journey is done and the summit attained. 
 
 And the barriers fall. 
 Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gain'd. 
 
 The reward of it all. 
 I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more, 
 
 The best and the last ! 
 I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and for- 
 bore. 
 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers 
 
 The heroes of old. 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 
 
 Of pain, darkness and cold. 
 For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave. 
 
 The black minute 's at end. 
 And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that rave. 
 
 Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
 
BEFORE ACTION 
 
 Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain. 
 
 Then a light, then thy breast, 
 O thou soul of my soul ! I shall clasp thee again, 
 
 And with God be the rest! 
 
 Robert Browning 
 
 BEFORE ACTION 
 
 By all the glories of the day, 
 And the cool evening's benison: 
 By the last sunset touch that lay 
 Upon the hills when day was done: 
 By beauty lavishly outpoured, 
 And blessings carelessly received. 
 By all the days that I have lived — • 
 Make me a soldier, Lord. 
 
 By all of all men's hopes and fears, 
 And all the wonders poets sing, 
 The laughter of unclouded years, 
 And every sad and lovely thing: 
 By the romantic ages stored 
 With high endeavour that was his, 
 By all his mad catastrophes — 
 Make me a man, O Lord. 
 
 I, that on my familiar hill 
 Saw with uncomprehending eyes 
 A hundred of Thy sunsets spill 
 Their fresh and sanguine sacrifice. 
 Ere the sun swings his noonday sword 
 Must say good-bye to all of this: — 
 By all delights that I shall miss — 
 Help me to die, O Lord. 
 
 Lieut. W. N. Hodgson 
 
10 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 "DIE, DRIVEN AGAINST THE WALL" 
 
 A man said unto his Angel : 
 "My spirits are fallen low. 
 And I cannot carry this battle: 
 O brother 1 where might I go? 
 
 "The terrible Kings are on me 
 With spears that are deadly bright; 
 Against me so from the cradle 
 Do fate and my fathers fight. " 
 
 Then said to the man his Angel : 
 " Thou wavering, witless soul. 
 Back to the ranks I What matter 
 To win or to lose the whole, 
 
 "As judged by the little judges 
 Who hearken not well, nor see? 
 Not thus, by the outer issue. 
 The Wise shall interpret thee. 
 
 "Thy will is the sovereign measure 
 And only event of things : 
 The puniest heart, defying, 
 Were stronger than all these Kings. 
 
 "Though out of the past they gather, 
 Mind's Doubt and Bodily Pain, 
 And pallid Thirst of the Spirit 
 That is kin to the other twain, 
 
 "And Grief, in a cloud of banners, 
 And riugletted Vain Desires, 
 
LONGING II 
 
 And Vice with the spoils upon him 
 Of thee and thy beaten sires, — 
 
 "While Kings of eternal evil 
 Yet darken the hills about, 
 Thy part is with broken saber 
 To rise on the last redoubt; 
 
 "To fear not sensible failure. 
 Nor covet the game at all, 
 But fighting, fighting, fighting, 
 Die, driven against the wall!" 
 
 Louise Imogen Guiney 
 
 LONGING 
 
 He longs with a tireless yearning, 
 Still seeking, wandering, turning 
 At all times and everywhere, 
 The sought-for goal receding, 
 Flitting, enticing, leading 
 With shifting likeness fair. 
 
 A nodding flower of azure 
 Above the field's ripe treasure 
 First lures the wanderer on; 
 But when he would stoop to pick it, 
 It sinks in the billowy thicket 
 Of rye-blades and is gone. 
 
 A banner all golden-rifted. 
 That spirit hands have lifted. 
 
12 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 On sunset towers upborne, 
 An echo resounding faintly 
 That 's blown from an old and quaintly- 
 Wrought silver legend-horn. 
 
 An organ-rapture outpouring 
 From some great cathedral soaring 
 'Mid streets where visions dwell; 
 The blow of a hammer thund'rous 
 When angels rear a wondrous 
 Dream-lovely citadel. 
 
 A sighing of ocean surges 
 When dawn's first wave emerges 
 On night's pale galaxy, — 
 He listens and looks with yearning, 
 Still this way and that way turning 
 To find what it may be. 
 
 A sea to which years run lightly, 
 A river that mirrors brightly 
 The Spring and its beauties rare. 
 Beside whose waters haunted 
 Two mortals languish enchanted 
 And see but each other there. 
 
 The river hastes from the flowers 
 To Autumn's golden bowers, 
 And whirls the dry leaves they wore 
 To Ocean, the dark Unbounded, 
 The wanderer staring astounded, 
 Asks: "What of the farther shore?" 
 
THE COLLAR ' 13 
 
 Perhaps his desire is bended 
 On something uncomprehended, 
 Which no man may comprehend; 
 But he must ever be yearning, 
 Must ever be wandering, turning, 
 And seeking it without end. 
 
 And should he reach World's Ending, 
 With no road further tending, 
 The border of Nothingness, — 
 He'd bend him over the steep there 
 And gaze into the deep there 
 "With straining-eyed distress. 
 
 And leaning over the steep there. 
 He 'd cry into the deep there, — 
 That echoless, vast Untrod, — 
 And onward the shout should go where 
 Is naught but the void of Nowhere, 
 Go ringing through Chaos: "God!" 
 
 From the Swedish of Viktor Rydberg 
 Translated by Charles Wharton Stork 
 
 THE COLLAR 
 
 I struck the board, and cried, "No more; 
 
 I will abroad. 
 What! shall I ever sigh and pine? 
 My lines and life are free; free as the road. 
 Loose as the wind, as large as store. 
 
 Shall I be still in suit? 
 Have I no harvest but a thorn 
 To let me blood and not restore 
 What I have lost with cordial fruit? 
 
14 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 " Sure fhere was wine, 
 Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn 
 
 Before my tears did drown it; 
 Is the year only lost to me? 
 Have I no bays to crown it, 
 No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted, 
 All wasted? 
 Not so, my heart; but there is fruit, 
 And thou hast hands. 
 
 "Recover all thy sigh-blown age 
 On double pleasures; leave thy cold dispute 
 Of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage, 
 
 Thy rope of sands 
 Which petty thoughts have made; and made to 
 thee ^ 
 Good cable, to enforce and draw, 
 
 And be thy law. 
 While thou didst wink and wouldst not see. 
 
 "Away! take heed; 
 I will abroad. 
 Call in thy death's-head there, tie up thy fears ; 
 He that forbears 
 To suit and serve his need 
 Deserves his load.'* 
 But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild 
 At every word, 
 Methought I heard one calling, "Child I" 
 And I replied, "My Lord!" 
 
 George Herbert 
 
MAKE ME NO GRAVE 15 
 
 MAKE ME NO GRAVE 
 
 Make me no grave within that quiet place 
 
 Where friends shall sadly view the grassy mound, 
 
 Politely solemn for a little space, 
 
 As though the spirit slept beneath the ground. 
 
 For me no sorrow, nor the hopeless tear; 
 
 No chant, no prayer, no tender eulogy: 
 I may be laughing with the gods — while here 
 
 You weep alone. Then make no grave for me. 
 
 But lay me where the pines, austere and tall. 
 Sing in the wind that sweeps across the West: 
 
 Where night, imperious, sets her coronal 
 Of silver stars upon the mountain crest. 
 
 Where dawn, rejoicing, rises from the deep, 
 And Life, rejoicing, rises with the dawn: 
 
 Mark not the spot upon the sunny steep. 
 For with the morning light I shall be gone. 
 
 Far trails await me; valleys vast and still. 
 
 Vistas undreamed-of, canon-guarded streams, 
 
 Lowland and range, fair meadow, fiower-girt hill, 
 Forests enchanted, filled with magic dreams. 
 
 And I shall find brave comrades on the way: 
 None shall be lonely in adventuring. 
 
 For each a chosen task to round the day, 
 New glories to amaze, new songs to sing. 
 
 Loud swells the wind along the mountain-side, 
 High burns the sun, unfettered swings the sea, 
 
i6 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Clear gleam the trails whereon the vanished ride, 
 Life calls to life : then make no grave for me ! 
 
 Henry Herbert Knibbs 
 
 REQUIEM 
 
 When I am dead, pray me no prayers; 
 
 Intone no mummer's rhyme, 
 Nor let the surpliced gentry ply 
 
 Their priestly pantomime. 
 Return, O God, my errant flesh 
 
 Back to my mother earth, 
 Wherein my dust may serve again, — 
 
 — God will, at Spring's rebirth. 
 Send back my dreams unto the hills 
 
 Whence, on the winds, they came; 
 Let strong, my passions, seek their own — 
 
 Flame back to quivering flame ! 
 Into Thy hands return that love 
 
 Men call the soul of me — 
 And give my spirit back to the indomitable sea. 
 
 Major Kendall Banning 
 
 A NATION'S FACE UPTURNED 
 October 4, 1914 
 
 The leader of our nation bids us pray; 
 
 He bids us pray that alien wars shall cease ; 
 
 He bids us pray 
 
 All on one day — 
 To pray, the mass of all of us — for peace. 
 
 We're not a praying nation, in the main; 
 We list, in mass, toward shallow-rooted dare; 
 
A NATION'S FACE UPTURNED 17 
 
 And yet his words 
 Have moved our herds 
 Of bold and cynic hearts to pristine prayer! 
 
 No race are we — yet race of races made; 
 Careless, impatient, and each day rebrained; 
 
 And still the core 
 
 Of our heart has more 
 Of reverence than ever yet has drained. 
 
 We are not skilled in prayer — nor know the form 
 That shall befit the crisis of our kia 
 
 Wliere'er they bide; 
 
 And yet he cried 
 Not vainly; for we sense the smell of sin; 
 
 And though we do not pray to sate the code, 
 We pray in euphony of honest hearts; 
 
 Our stumbling word 
 
 Will yet be heard 
 Above the rattle of the armored carts. 
 
 For know we that a prayer is but a wish 
 From heart so deep that rhetoric's poor plumb 
 
 Falls short, bereft 
 
 Of use; but left — 
 God finds the music of the hope born dumb. 
 
 In the tongue of every sufferer shall we pray — 
 With bungled, mumbled language hesitant; 
 
 But more 't will mean 
 
 On God to lean 
 With such than with the best the poets grant. 
 
i8 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 And some will name the god they seek, 
 
 And some will limn his face ! 
 
 And some will scar his thought of them 
 
 By hedging *round his place; 
 
 And some will fear the god they speak, 
 
 And some will say "My Brother — " 
 
 And some will say "My Father dear — *' 
 
 And some, this, that or other; 
 
 And every kind of god they hail 
 
 Will smile, and take their message, 
 
 And carry it to the God of gods — 
 
 You see what small things presage? 
 
 As a fleck of dust on an ocean crest 
 From the deck of a scoured yacht 
 Will look this earth, minute, of ours 
 To the God of gods as He turns His face, 
 *Mid the woven swirls of all His worlds, 
 In the whir of His frozen space — 
 
 And yet will He heed ; and He will say, 
 " What do my people wish to-day? 
 What is their debt they cannot pay? 
 Let mine own ear discern the hum 
 Of their discord: I bid them come." 
 
 And then, obscure as a gnat at night. 
 
 Shall we tell THE GOD of our brothers' plight: 
 
 And this our blurted prayer: — 
 
 "Fools they may be to fools have named 
 
 As masters of men — whose rule has maimed 
 
A NATION'S FACE UPTURNED 19 
 
 The bravest they had of muscle and soul — 
 Yet we forgive their folly 1 
 
 "They have exalted as Lords of Earth 
 The helmets small, and the wide of girth — • 
 They took the road and they've paid the toll — 
 And there's no rebate on folly. 
 
 "And now the mesh they have woven well 
 Is snaring them and their kin to hell. 
 For setting the spear above the poll — • 
 Lord God, condone their folly I 
 
 "We speak not of ourselves at all, 
 Lest we seek to exalt ourselves — and fall; 
 'T would not be true if we should state 
 That we alone know Thee. 
 
 "But, seeing our brothers in shrapnel hail — 
 Stung by the pang of their children's wail — 
 Scenting the skunk at the palace gate — ■ 
 We fear they have forgotten; — 
 
 "Our brothers are drunk with the taste of blood. 
 Their brains are sprayed with the sanguine flood — 
 Impregnate them with a hate for hate — 
 We pray Thee, Lord! 
 
 "Teach Thou them to love but Love — 
 Guide their baffled brains above — 
 Turn their hands to the worthy wheat — 
 For their sake, Lord I 
 
20 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 " Map for the kings their ending path — 
 Touch their tongues in Thy cup of wrath — 
 Flash in their eyes the judgment seat 
 For the kings' souls* sake, O Lord I 
 
 "'Lords of War* look very small; 
 Bid Thou them act not at all — 
 Bid Thou them reject the pall — 
 Bid Thou them avert the fall 
 By acceptance of Thy call — ■ 
 We pray Thee, Lord I 
 
 "And if our hopes be not too great — 
 And since Thou'rt kind enough to wait 
 For us to speak our plea devout — 
 
 (We thank Thee, Lord !) — 
 
 \{ 
 
 "Let us ask, for ourselves alone, 
 A word of cheer, to still our moan — 
 We mean so well — but so much doubt 
 What is Thy will — 
 
 " We feel so sure Thou soon wilt curb — 
 From Teuton lord to humble Serb, 
 From Saxon hull to Slavic knout — 
 Thy flouting. Lord. 
 
 "That it is hard for us to be 
 As patient as Thou think'st that we 
 (In view of our exempted lives, 
 Mayhap), should bide: 
 
 "Dear Lord, the gods of our sects have failed; 
 Facing their frowns no monarch quailed; 
 
A COWBOY'S PRAYER 21 
 
 Our gods all tried to do the right — 
 Our gods all sought to stop the fight, 
 But lacked the might; 
 
 "So now They come with us to THEE — 
 Our gods and us, on doubled knee — 
 Seeking to bathe in Thy great light, 
 O, God of gods! 
 
 "And thus we pray to Thee, Lord God — 
 Craving Thy love — nor fearing Thy rod — 
 Daring to face Thee from our hives — 
 We, our children and our wives — 
 Craving Thy deserved gyves — 
 Placing in Thy hands our lives — 
 
 "We pray Thee, Lord, 
 To guide us in our baffling days — 
 Stay us in our swaying ways — 
 Answer as our hearts have cried — 
 
 Stop these wars I 
 
 Oh, Lord of Peace!" 
 
 John Bemer Crosby 
 
 A COWBOY'S PRAYER 
 
 Lord, I've never lived where churches grow. 
 I love creation better as it stood 
 
 That day You finished it so long ago 
 
 And looked upon your work and called it good. 
 
 1 know that others find You in the light 
 
 That's sifted down through tinted window-panes. 
 And yet I seem to feel You near to-night 
 In this dim, quiet starlight on the plains. 
 
22 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I thank You, Lord, that I am placed so well, 
 
 That You have made my freedom so complete; 
 That I'm no slave of whistle, clock or bell, 
 
 Nor weak-eyed prisoner of wall and street. 
 Just let me live my life as I've begun 
 
 And give me work that's open to the sky; 
 Make me a pardner of the wind and sun. 
 
 And I won't ask a life that's soft or high. 
 
 Let me be easy on the man that's down; 
 
 Let me be square and generous with all. 
 I'm careless sometimes. Lord, when I'm in town. 
 
 But never let 'em say I'm mean or small I 
 Make me as big and open as the plains, 
 
 As honest as the hawse between my knees, 
 Clean as the wind that blows behind the rains, 
 
 Free as the hawk that circles down the breeze. 
 
 Forgive me. Lord, if sometimes I forget. 
 
 You know about the reasons that are hid. 
 You understand the things that gall and fret; 
 
 You know me better than my mother did. 
 Just keep an eye on all that's done and said 
 
 And right me, sometimes, when I turn aside, 
 And guide me on the long, dim trail ahead 
 
 That stretches upward toward the Great Divide. 
 
 Badger Clark 
 
 "BECAUSE I HAVE LOVED LIFE" 
 
 Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to 
 
 die. 
 I have sent up my gladness on wings, to be lost in 
 
 the blue of the sky. 
 
"BECAUSE I HAVE LOVED LIFE" 23 
 
 I have run and leaped with the rain, I have taken 
 
 the wind to ray breast. 
 My cheek like a drowsy child to the face of the 
 
 earth I have pressed. 
 
 Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to 
 
 die. 
 I have kissed young Love on the lips, I have heard 
 
 his song to the end. 
 I have struck my hand like a seal in the loyal hand 
 
 of a friend. 
 I have known the peace of heaven, the comfort of 
 
 work done well. 
 I have longed for death in the darkness and risen 
 
 alive out of hell. 
 
 Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to 
 
 die. 
 I give a share of my soul to the world v/here my 
 
 course is run. 
 I know that another shall finish the task I must 
 
 leave imdone. 
 I know that no flower, no flint was in vain on the 
 
 path I trod. 
 As one looks on a face through a window, through 
 
 life I have looked on God. 
 Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to 
 
 die. 
 
 Amelia Josephine Burr 
 
24 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 HE FELL AMONG THIEVES 
 
 "Ye have robb'd," said he, "ye have claughterM 
 and made an end; 
 Take your ill-got plunder, and bury the dead : 
 What will ye more of your guest and sometime 
 friend?" 
 "Blood for our blood,'* they said. 
 
 He laughM: "If one may settle the score for five, 
 I am ready; but let the reckoning stand till 
 day: 
 
 I have loved the sunlight as dearly as any alive." 
 "You shall die at dawn," said they. 
 
 He flung his empty revolver down the slope, 
 He climbM alone to the Eastward edge of the 
 trees; 
 
 All night long in a dream untroubled of hope 
 He brooded, clasping his knees. 
 
 He did not hear the monotonous roar that fills 
 The ravine where the Yassin river sullenly flows; 
 
 He did not see the starlight on the Laspur hills, 
 Or the far Afghan snows. 
 
 He saw the April noon on his books aglow. 
 The wistaria trailing in at the window wide; 
 
 He heard his father's voice from the terrace below 
 Calling him down to ride. 
 
 He saw the gray little church across the park, 
 The mounds that hid the loved and honour'd 
 dead; 
 
HE FELL AMONG THIEVES 25 
 
 The Norman arch, the chancel softly dark, 
 The brasses black and red. 
 
 He saw the School-close, sunny and green, 
 The runner beside him, the stand by the para- 
 pet wall, 
 
 The distant tape, and the crowd roaring between. 
 His own name over ail. 
 
 He saw the dark wainscot and timbered roof. 
 The long tables, and the faces merry and keen; 
 
 The College Eight and their trainer dining aloof. 
 The Dons on the dais serene. 
 
 He watch'd the liner's stem ploughing the foam, 
 He felt her trembling speed and the thrash of 
 her screw; 
 
 He heard the passengers' voices talking of home. 
 He saw the flag she flew. 
 
 And now it was dawn. He rose strong on his 
 feet, 
 And strode to his ruin'd camp below the wood; 
 He drank the breath of the morning cool and 
 sweet: 
 His murderers round him stood. 
 
 Light on the Laspur hills was broadening fast, 
 The blood-red snow-peaks chill'd to a dazzling 
 white ; 
 
 He turn'd, and saw the golden circle at last. 
 Cut by the Eastern height. 
 
26 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 " O glorious Life, Who dwellest in earth and sun : 
 I have lived, I praise and adore Thee." 
 
 A sword swept. 
 Over the pass the voices one by one 
 Faded, and the hill slept. 
 
 Sir Henry Newbolt 
 
 PEACE ON EARTH 
 
 He took a frayed hat from his head, 
 And "Peace on Earth'* was what he said. 
 "A morsel out of what you're worth. 
 And there we have it: Peace on Earth. 
 Not much, although a little more 
 Than what there was on earth before. 
 I'm as you see, I'm Ichabod, — 
 But never mind the ways I've trod; 
 I'm sober now, so help me God!" 
 
 I could not pass the fellow by: 
 "Do you believe in God?" said I; 
 "And is there to be Peace on Earth?" 
 
 " To-night we celebrate the birth, " 
 
 He said, "of One who died for men; 
 
 The Son of God, we say. What then? 
 
 Your God, or mine? I 'd make you laugh 
 
 Were I to tell you even half 
 
 That I have learned of mine to-day 
 
 Where yoiu-s would hardly seem to stay. 
 
 Could He but follow in and out 
 
 Some anthropoids I know about. 
 
 The god to whom you may have prayed 
 
 Might see a world He never made." 
 
PEACE ON EARTH 27 
 
 "Your words are flowing full," said I; 
 "But yet they give me no reply; 
 Your fountain might as v/ell be dry.'* 
 
 "A wiser One than you, my friend, 
 Would wait and hear me to the end; 
 And for his eyes a light would shine 
 Through this unpleasant shell of mine 
 That in your fancy makes of me 
 A Christmas curiosity. 
 All right, I might be worse than that; 
 And you might now be lying flat; 
 I might have done it from behind. 
 And taken what there was to find. 
 Don't worry, for I *m not that kind. 
 *Do I believe in God?' Is that 
 The price to-night of a new hat? 
 Has he commanded that his name 
 Be written everywhere the same? 
 Have all who live in every place 
 Identified his hidden face? 
 Who knows but he may like as well 
 My story as one you may tell? 
 And if he show me there be Peace 
 On Earth, as there be fields and trees 
 Outside a jail-yard, am I wrong 
 If now I sing him a new song? 
 Your world is in yourself, my friend, 
 For your endurance to the end; 
 And all the Peace there is on Earth 
 Is faith in what your world is worth, 
 And saying, without any lies. 
 Your world could not be otherwise." 
 
28 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 "One might say that and then be shot," 
 I told him; and he said: "Why not?" 
 I ceased, and gave him rather more 
 Than he was counting of my store. 
 
 "And since I have it, thanks to you, 
 Don't ask me v^^hat I mean to do," 
 Said he: "Believe that even I 
 "Would rather tell the truth than lie — 
 On Christmas Eve. No matter why." 
 
 His unshaved, educated face, 
 
 His inextinguishable grace, 
 
 And his hard smile, are with me still, 
 
 Deplore the vision as I will; 
 
 For whatsoever he be at, 
 
 So droll a derelict as that 
 
 Should have at least another hat. 
 
 Edwin Arlington Robinson 
 
 WORSHIP 
 
 I think that God might hear my prayer. 
 If I could kneel and worship where 
 A simple folk on Sunday use 
 The shallow ranks of narrow pews 
 As seats that audience afford 
 Before an almost-visioned Lord. 
 If I might see them kneeling, dressed 
 In strait and awkward Sabbath best, 
 To celebrate His ordained day, 
 I almost might relearn to pray. 
 
WORSHIP 20 
 
 I'd like to watch his careful tread 
 
 Along the aisle, red-carpeted; 
 
 His white bow-tie, his rusty frock — • 
 
 Old shepherd of a failing flock, 
 
 Who all the years his way has trod, 
 
 One hand upon the arm of God; 
 
 To see him in the pulpit stand, 
 
 And beat the time with withered hand, 
 
 And smile upon us as we raise 
 
 Old Hundred's ancient hymn of praise. 
 
 Perhaps his stark theology 
 
 Would fan to flame no spark in me. 
 
 I wonder if, to hail the Throne, 
 
 One needs a sanctimonious tone, 
 
 And must each plea for aid propose 
 
 In words that issue through the nose? 
 
 I doubt if heaven greatly savors 
 
 Hymns quite so full of flats and quavers; 
 
 But yet, perhaps, they rise far higher 
 
 Than anthems of a vested choir. 
 
 But I have watched the sunlight come, 
 Across the long prayer's drone and hum. 
 To touch a crown of thin, white hair 
 And weave a golden halo there; 
 Have seen, through windows open wide. 
 Broad fields where bobolinks abide; 
 Have seen the grasses sway and glisten 
 And daisies bow their heads to listen 
 Beneath a tranquil summer sky — 
 And heard God's footsteps passing by. 
 
 Frederic F. Van de Water 
 
30 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 NAUGHTY NELL 
 
 There came a knock at the door of Heaven 
 
 And the knock was firm and light. 
 
 St. Peter he opened the window grill 
 
 And looked on a puzzling sight: 
 
 A maiden sweet as a swaying bough 
 
 Of apple-buds pink and white. 
 
 He scratched his forehead and looked again: 
 
 No doubt but the girl was fair, 
 
 She lowered the lids of her blue-bell eyes 
 
 With a half impenitent air, 
 
 And the smile that lurked in her pouting lips 
 
 Had little to do with prayer. 
 
 "Name?" he inquired in formal tones. 
 
 "Nell Bassett," the answer feU. 
 
 "If you please, I thought I might come and knock 
 
 Before I was dragged to hell, 
 
 Though there's small use looking my record up, 
 
 For my nickname was Naughty Nell." 
 
 St. Peter he stretched to a dusty shelf 
 And hefted a volume down, 
 He read in the light that the halo shed 
 From the bald rim of his crown: 
 "Ah! Bassett, Eleanor, nineteen-two, 
 June twentieth, Dorking town." 
 
 He scanned her over the edge of the book, 
 And she answered him, "Yes, that's L 
 I *ve never done anything good, I know, 
 But I did n't have long to try. 
 
NAUGHTY NELL 31 
 
 I'd always meant to begin some day 
 Before I came to die." 
 
 "That's odd, for I find you lost your life 
 In the fever that came this year 
 Nursing a child whose mother died 
 While the rest kept away in fear." 
 "You would n't have had me let it starve, 
 The poor little lonely dear!" 
 
 "You were the girl that fought Bill Jenks 
 
 When he came home drunk one night, 
 
 And his wife screamed *Help!' but never a man 
 
 Durst enter the house for fright." 
 
 "Why, who was gladder of that than Bill 
 
 Next day when his head was right?" 
 
 "Be still, please, Nell. — Your case is clear, 
 Your faults are but light and few ; 
 Here's a page and a half of kindly deeds 
 That your short life found to do. 
 I need not hold you a minu-te more 
 From the bliss that waits for you.'* 
 
 The door swung wide, and a sudden glow 
 
 Of radiance blossomed out, 
 
 The air was rich with the scent of myrrh. 
 
 With song and triumphal shout; 
 
 Yet over the face of the dazzled girl 
 
 Came a look as of fear and doubt. 
 
 "Please, but it's all a mistake, I'm feared," 
 She stammered; "I was n't good. 
 
32 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I always did what I chose to do 
 As often as ever I could, 
 I never moidered and vexed myself 
 The way I was told I should. 
 
 "Are yoH sure that all of my sins are down, — 
 
 The time that I ran away 
 
 From prayers with Ned into Folsom Wood 
 
 And tarried there all the day, 
 
 And he kissed my lips that kissed again 
 
 By the streamside as we lay?" 
 
 "Whatever was sin is entered here," 
 
 Said Peter, and smote his book, 
 
 For his temper was short, the worthy saint. 
 
 But when he had cast a look 
 
 At the trouble that shadowed the girl's clear eyes, 
 
 All anger his heart forsook. 
 
 "Please help me," she faltered. "I know it*s 
 
 wrong. 
 But I feel a bit naughty still. 
 I want to frolic and race and dance, 
 Not sit and do God's will; 
 Will there anybody like me be there, 
 Or is everyone staid and chill? '* 
 
 Then Peter laughed — he could do no less — 
 
 "Why, Nell, are you then afraid 
 
 That Heaven will be like Dorking town 
 
 At church or dress parade. 
 
 That tongues are still and thoughts are chill — 
 
 And everyone dull and staid? 
 
NAUGHTY NELL 33 
 
 "The beams of light that spread ou earthj^ 
 
 'Wlien your clean spirit shone, 
 
 Were darted from the crystal depth 
 
 Of the Eternal Throne. 
 
 Hark to the raptm-ous shouts of praise 
 
 To Him Who sits thereon I 
 
 "The golden voice of sympathy, 
 
 The gallant din of mirth 
 
 That lust and pride and selfish fear 
 
 Have deafened upon earth, 
 
 All wishes flowering beauty-wards 
 
 That drooped of old in dearth — 
 
 "All these win free as purest thought 
 
 To flame aloft in heaven, 
 
 All oppositions melt away, 
 
 The rusted chains are riven, 
 
 A vast unending festival 
 
 To joy, to joy is given!'* 
 
 His ancient, youthful voice was still, 
 
 Too weak to utter more, 
 
 And Naughty Nell bowed silently 
 
 To marvel and adore; 
 
 Then, calm with ecstasy, she rose 
 
 And passed through the shining door. 
 
 Charles Wharton Stork 
 
34 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 CORONATION 
 
 At the king's gate the subtle noon 
 
 Wove filmy yellow nets of sun; 
 Into the drowsy snare too soon 
 
 The guards fell one by one. 
 
 Through the king's gate, unquestioned then, 
 A beggar went, and laughed: "This brings 
 
 Me chance, at last, to see if men 
 Fare better, being kings." 
 
 The king sat bowed beneath his crown, 
 Propping his face with listless hand; 
 
 Watching the hour-glass sifting down — 
 Too slow its shining sand. 
 
 "Poor man, what wouldst thou have of me?"- 
 
 The beggar turned, and pitying. 
 Replied, like one in dream, " Of thee, 
 
 Nothing. I want the king." 
 
 Uprose the king, and from his head 
 
 Shook off the crown, and threw it by — 
 
 " O man, thou must have known," he said, 
 "A greater king than I." 
 
 Through all the gates, unquestioned then, 
 Went king and beggar hand in hand. 
 
 Whispered the king, " Shall I know when 
 Before His throne I stand?" 
 
 The beggar laughed. Free winds in haste 
 Were wiping from the king's hot brow 
 
A POET ENLISTS 35 
 
 The crimson lines the crown had traced — 
 "Tiiis is his presence, now.'* 
 
 At the king's gate, the crafty noon 
 
 Unwove its yellow nets of sun; 
 Out of their sleep in terror soon 
 
 The guards waked one by one. 
 
 "Ho here! Ho there! Has no man seen 
 The king?" The cry ran to and fro; 
 
 Beggar and king, they laughed, I ween, 
 The laugh that free men know. 
 
 On the king's gate the moss grew gray; 
 
 The king came not. They called him dead; 
 And made his eldest son one day 
 
 Slave in his father's stead. 
 
 Helen Hunt Jackson 
 
 A POET ENLISTS 
 
 And all the songs that I might sing — 
 Madness to risk them so, you say? 
 
 How is it such a certain thing 
 That I can sing them if I stay? 
 
 The winds of God are past control, 
 They answer to no human call, 
 
 And if I lose my living soul 
 
 That is — for me — the end of all. 
 
 Better to shout one last great song, 
 Dying myself, to dying men, 
 
36 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Than crawl the bitter years along 
 And never sing again. 
 
 Amelia Josephine Burr 
 
 VASTNESS 
 
 Many a hearth upon our dark globe sighs after 
 
 many a vanish 'd face, 
 Many a planet by many a sun may roll with the 
 
 dust of a vanish'd race. 
 
 Raving politics, never at rest — as this poor earth's 
 
 pale history runs, — 
 What is it all but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a 
 
 million million of suns? 
 
 Lies upon this side, 'lies upon that side, truthless 
 
 violence mourn'd by the Wise, 
 Thousands of voices drowning his own in a popular 
 
 torrent of lies upon lies; 
 
 Stately purposes, valor in battle, glorious annals of 
 
 army and fleet. 
 Death for the right cause, death for the wrong 
 
 cause, trumpets of victory, groans of defeat; 
 
 Innocence seethM in her mother's milk, and Char- 
 ity setting the martyr aflame; 
 
 Thraldom who walks with the banner of Freedom, 
 and recks not to ruin a realm in her name; 
 
 Faith at her zenith, or all but lost in the gloom of 
 doubts that darken the schools; 
 
 Craft with a bunch of all-heal in her hand, follow'd 
 up by her vassal legion of fools ; 
 
VASTNESS 
 
 Trade flying over a thousand seas with her spice 
 and her vintage, her silk and her corn; 
 
 Desolate ofSng, sailorless harbors, famishing popu- 
 lace, wharves forlorn; 
 
 Star of the morning, Hope in the sunrise; gloom of 
 
 the evening, Life at a close; 
 Pleasure who flaunts on her wide downway with 
 
 her flying robe and her poison'd rose; 
 
 Pain, that has crawl'd from the corpse of Pleasure, 
 a worm which writhes all day, and at night 
 
 Stirs up again in the heart of the sleeper, and stings 
 him back to the curse of the light ; 
 
 Wealth with his wines and his wedded harlots; 
 
 honest Poverty, bare to the bone; 
 Opulent Avarice, lean as Poverty; Flattery gilding 
 
 the rift in a throne; 
 
 Fame blowing out from her golden trumpet a jubi- 
 lant challenge to Time and to Fate; 
 
 Slander, her shadow, sowing the nettle on all the 
 laurell'd graves of the Great; 
 
 Love for the maiden, crown'd v/ith marriage, no re- 
 grets for aught that has been. 
 
 Household, happiness, gracious children, debtless 
 competence, golden mean; 
 
 National hatreds of whole generations, and pigmy 
 
 spites of the village spire; 
 Vows that will last to the last death-ruckle, and 
 
 vows that are snapp'd in a moment of fire; 
 
38 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 He that has liv'd for the lust of a minute, and died 
 in the doing it, flesh without mind; 
 
 He that has nail'd all flesh to the Cross, till Self 
 died out in the love of his kind ; 
 
 Spring and Summer and Autumn and Winter, and 
 all these old revolutions of earth; 
 
 All new-old revolutions of Empire — change of the 
 tide — what is all of it worth? 
 
 What the philosophies, all the sciences, poesy, 
 
 varying voices of prayer? 
 All that is noblest, all that is basest, all that is filthy 
 
 with all that is fair? 
 
 What is it all, if we all of us end but in being our 
 
 own corpse-coffins at last, 
 Swallow'd in Vastness, lost in Silence, drown'd in 
 
 the deeps of a meaningless Past? 
 
 What but a murmur of gnats in the gloom, or a mo- 
 ment's anger of bees in their hive? — 
 
 Peace, let it be! for I loved him, and love him for 
 ever: the dead are not dead — but alive. 
 
 Tennyson 
 
 "THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US" 
 
 The world is too much with us; late and soon. 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: 
 Little we see in Nature that is ours. 
 
 Great God! I'd rather be 
 A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 
 
THE LIE 39 
 
 So might I standing on this pleasant lea, 
 
 Have gHmpses that would make me less forlorn; 
 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 
 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 
 
 Wordsworth 
 
 EARTH GETS ITS PRICE 
 
 Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us; 
 
 The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in, 
 The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us, 
 
 We bargain for the graves we lie in; 
 At the devil's booth are all things sold. 
 Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold; 
 
 For a cap and bells our lives we pay. 
 Bubbles we buy with a whole soul's tasking: 
 
 'T is heaven alone that is given away, 
 'T is only God may be had for the asking; 
 No price is set on the lavish summer; 
 June may be had by the poorest comer. 
 
 James Russell Lowell 
 
 THE LIE 
 
 Go, Soul, the Body's guest, 
 Upon a thankless arrant; 
 
 Fear not to touch the best; 
 The truth shall be thy warrant; 
 
 Go, since I needs must die, 
 
 And give the World the lie. 
 
 Say to the Court, it glows 
 And shines like rotten wood: 
 
40 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Say to the Church, it shows 
 
 What's good, and doth no good: 
 If Court and Church reply 
 Then give them both the lie. 
 
 Tell Potentates, they live 
 Acting by others' action, 
 
 Wot loved unless they give. 
 Not strong but by a faction: 
 
 If Potentates reply, 
 
 Give Potentates the lie. 
 
 Tell men of high condition 
 That manage the Estate, 
 
 Their purpose is ambition. 
 Their practice, only hate: 
 
 And if they once reply. 
 
 Then give them all the lie. 
 
 Tell them that brave it most. 
 They beg for more by spending, 
 
 Who, in their greatest cost. 
 Seek nothing but commending: 
 
 And if they make reply. 
 
 Then give them all the lie. 
 
 Tell Zeal it wants devotion ; 
 
 Tell Love it is but lust; 
 Tell Time it is but motion; 
 
 Tell Flesh it is but dust: 
 And wish them not reply. 
 For thou must give the lie. 
 
THE LIE 4'i 
 
 Tell Age it daily wasteth; 
 
 Tell Honor how it alters; 
 Tell Beauty how she blasteth; 
 
 Tell Favor how it falters: 
 And as they shall reply, 
 Give every one the lie. 
 
 Tell Wit how much it wrangles 
 In tickle points of niceness; 
 
 Tell Wisdom she entangles 
 Herself in over-wiseness: 
 
 And v/hen they do reply, 
 
 Straight give them both the lie. 
 
 Tell Physic of her boldness; 
 
 Tell Skill it is pretension; 
 Tell Charity of coldness; 
 
 Tell Law it is contention: 
 And as they do reply. 
 So give them still the lie. 
 
 Tell Fortune of her blindness; 
 
 Tell Nature of decay; 
 Tell Friendship of unkindness; 
 
 Tell Justice of delay: 
 And if they will reply, 
 Then give them all the lie. 
 
 Tell Arts they have no soundness, 
 
 But vary by esteeming; 
 Tell Schools they want profoundness, 
 
 And stand too much on seeming: 
 If Arts and Schools reply, 
 Give Arts and Schools the lie. 
 
42 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Tell Faith it's fled the City; 
 
 Tell how the Country erreth, 
 Tell Manhood shakes off pity; 
 
 Tell Virtue least pref erreth: 
 And if they do reply, 
 Spare not to give the lie. 
 
 So when thou hast, as I 
 
 Commanded thee, done blabbing, 
 
 Although to give the lie 
 
 Deserves no less than stabbing, — 
 
 Yet, stab at thee that will. 
 
 No stab the soul can kill! 
 
 Sir Walter Raleigh 
 
 LITANY 
 
 Give me Thy grace; 
 
 Not for the shouting assault when my banner ad- 
 vances; 
 Not for the thunder of hooves and the tempest of 
 
 lances. 
 Keep Thou my face 
 Calm in the heart-breaking crash of the overturned 
 
 dream. 
 When to my mouth comes the sickening, salt taste 
 
 of fear. 
 And over the tumult and cries of the vanquished I 
 
 hear 
 The hurrying wings of the Furies; their hideous 
 
 scream — 
 Give me Thy steadfastness then, O God. Give me 
 
 Thy grace I 
 
LITANY 43 
 
 Give me Thy mirth; 
 
 Hot for the sun and the sky and the summer wind's 
 laughter, 
 
 Not for the meeting of friends and the wine that 
 flows after. 
 
 But when the earth 
 
 Hardens to iron and the winds of adversity blow, 
 
 When the past walks, a terrible ghost, and the fu- 
 ture is vain, — 
 
 Give me Thy bright gift of laughter to flaunt before 
 pain ; 
 
 Give me Thy smile to fling stark in the teeth of the 
 foe; 
 
 Give me the flame of Thy manhood, God. Give me 
 Thy mirth. 
 
 Hear me, O Lord I 
 
 Teach me to stand on my feet in the final black 
 
 hour ; 
 Turn Thou my eyes unafraid to the oncoming 
 
 power. 
 Give me a sword ! 
 Grant that I cry for no shield to withstand his bleak 
 
 blade. 
 But a hilt in my hand and an edge that the foeman 
 
 may feel; 
 Let me pass to the chime and the chant and the 
 
 clangor of steel, 
 That You see and rejoice in the soul of the man You 
 
 have made; 
 This is my prayer to You, God of Men. Hear me, O 
 
 Lord I 
 
 Frederic F. Van de Water 
 
44 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 THE LOST COMRADE 
 
 Now v/ho will tell me aright 
 
 The way my lost companion went in the night? 
 
 My vanished comrade who passed from the roofs of 
 
 men, 
 And will not come again. 
 
 I have wandered up and down 
 Through all the streets of this bright and busy tovm, 
 Yet no one has seen a trace of him since the day 
 He silently went away. 
 
 I have haunted the wharves and the slips, 
 
 And talked with foreigners from the incoming 
 
 ships. 
 But when I questioned them closely about my 
 
 friend, 
 They seemed not to comprehend. 
 
 From men of book-learning, too, 
 I have sought knowledge, confident that they knew. 
 But when I inquired simply about my chum, 
 They glanced at me anfl were dumb. 
 
 I have entered your churches of stone. 
 
 And heard discourse about God and the throng 
 
 'round his throne. 
 But the preacher knew nothing at all, when I broke 
 
 in with: "Where?" — 
 And the people could only stare. 
 
 Ah, no, you may read and read. 
 
 Pile modern heresy upon ancient creed I 
 
"I SHALL NOT SCORN MY GRAVE" 45 
 
 But for all your study you know no more tlian I, 
 Under the open sky. 
 
 So — *t is, Back to the Inn for me, 
 
 WTiere my great friend and I were happy and free. 
 
 And I will remember his beautiful words and his 
 
 ways. 
 For the rest of my days; 
 
 How eager he was for truth. 
 
 Yet never scorned the good things of his youth — 
 The soul of gentleness and the soul of lovel 
 I shall be wise enough. 
 
 Bliss Carman 
 
 "I SHALL NOT SCORN MY GRAVE*' 
 
 Let me at last be laid 
 
 On that hillside I know which scans the vale, 
 
 Beneath the thick yews' shade. 
 
 For shelter when the rains and winds prevail. 
 
 It cannot be the eye 
 
 Is blinded when we die. 
 
 So that we know no more at all 
 
 The dawn's increase, the evening's fall; 
 
 Shut up within a mouldering chest of wood 
 
 Asleep, and careless of our children's good. 
 
 Shall I not feel the spring. 
 
 The yearly resurrection of the earth, 
 
 Stir thro' each sleeping thing 
 
 With the fair throbbings and alarms of birth, 
 
 Caljing at its own hour 
 
 On folded leaf and flower. 
 
46 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Calling the lamb, the lark, the bee, 
 Calling the crocus and anemone, 
 Calling new lustre to the maiden^s eye. 
 And to the youth love and ambition high? 
 
 Shall I no more admire 
 
 The winding river kiss the daisied plain? 
 
 Nor see the dawn*s cold fire . 
 
 Steal downward from the rosy hills again? 
 
 Nor watch the frowning cloud, 
 
 Sublime with mutterings loud, 
 
 Burst on the vale, nor eves of gold, 
 
 Nor crescent moons, nor starlights cold. 
 
 Nor the red casements glimmer on the hill 
 
 At Yule-tides, when the frozen leas are still? 
 
 Or, should my children's tread 
 
 Through Sabbath twilights, when the hymns are 
 
 done. 
 Come swiftly overhead, 
 
 Shall no sweet quickening through my bosom run, 
 Till all my soul exhale 
 Into the primrose pale. 
 And every flower which springs above 
 Breathes a new perfume from my love; 
 And I shall throb, and stir, and thrill beneath, 
 With a pure passion stronger far than death? 
 
 Sweet thought ! fair, gracious dream. 
 
 Too fair and fleeting for our clearer view ! 
 
 How should our reason deem 
 
 That those dear souls, who sleep beneath the blue, 
 
"I SHALL NOT SCORN MY GRAVE" 47 
 
 In rayless caverns dim, 
 
 *Mid ocean monsters grim, 
 
 Or whitening on the trackless sand, 
 
 Or with strange corpses on each hand 
 
 In battle-trench or city graveyard lie, 
 
 Break not their prison-bonds till time shall die? 
 
 Nay, *t is not so indeed: 
 
 With the last fluttering of the falling bieath 
 
 The clay-cold form doth breed 
 
 A viewless essence, far too fine for death; 
 
 And, ere one voice can mourn, 
 
 On upward pinions borne. 
 
 They are hidden, they are hidden, in some thin air, 
 
 Far from corruption, far from care. 
 
 Where through a veil they view their former scene, 
 
 Only a little touch'd by what has been. 
 
 Touch'd but a little; and yet. 
 
 Conscious of every change that doth befall, 
 
 By constant change beset. 
 
 The creatures of this tiny whirling ball, 
 
 Fill'd with a higher being, 
 
 Dower'd with a clearer seeing, 
 
 Risen to a vaster scheme of life, 
 
 To wider joys and nobler strife. 
 
 Viewing our little human hopes and fears 
 
 As we our children's fleeting smiles and tears. 
 
 Then, whether with fire they burn 
 
 This dwelling-house of mine when I am fled, 
 
 And in a marble urn 
 
 My ashes rest by my beloved dead, 
 
48 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Or in the sweet cold earth 
 I pass from death to birth, 
 And pay kind Nature's life-long debt 
 In heart's-ease and in violet — 
 In charnel-yard or hidden ocean wave^ 
 Where'er I lie, I shall not scorn my grave. 
 
 Sir Lewis Morris 
 
 WAITING 
 
 Serene, I fold my hands and wait, 
 Nor care for wind, or tide, or sea; 
 
 I rave no more 'gainst time or fate. 
 For, lo ! my own shall come to me. 
 
 I stay my haste, I make delays, 
 For what avails this eager pace? 
 
 I stand amid the eternal ways, 
 
 And what is mine shall know my face. 
 
 Asleep, awake, by night or day. 
 The friends I seek are seeldng me; 
 
 No wind can drive my bark astray, 
 Nor change the tide of destiny. 
 
 What matter if I stand alone? 
 
 I wait with joy the coming years; 
 My heart shall reap where it has sown, 
 
 And garner up its fruit of tears. 
 
 The waters know their own and draw 
 The brook that springs in yonder height; 
 
 So flows the good with equal law 
 Unto the soul of pure delight. 
 
NATURALIST ON A JUNE SUNDAY 49 
 
 The stars come nightly to the sky; 
 
 The tidal wave unto the sea; 
 Nor time, nor space, nor deep, nor high, 
 
 Can keep my own away from me. 
 
 John Burroughs 
 
 WHAT IS TO COME 
 
 What is to come we know not. But we know 
 That what has been was good — was good to show, 
 Better to hide, and best of all to bear. 
 We are the masters of the days that were: 
 We have lived, we have loved, we have suffered 
 . . . even so. 
 
 Shall we not take the ebb who had the flow? 
 Life was our friend. Now, if it be our foe — 
 E'en though it spoil and break us! — need we care 
 What is to come? 
 
 Let the great winds their worst and wildest blow, 
 Or the gold weather round us mellow slow: 
 We have fulfilled ourselves, and we 'can dare 
 And we can conquer, though we may not share 
 In the rich quiet of the afterglow 
 
 What is to come. 
 
 W. E. Henley 
 
 THE NATURALIST ON A JUNE SUNDAY 
 
 My old gardener leans on his hoe. 
 
 Tells me the way that green things grow; 
 
 "Goin* to church? Why, no. 
 
 All nature's church enough for mel" 
 
 Says he. 
 
50 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 "Preachin* o* flower and choir o* bird, 
 
 An' the wind passin' the plate — 
 
 Sweetest service that ever / heard, 
 
 That's straight! 
 
 Eternal Rest? 
 
 What for, friend? 
 
 Gimme a swarm o' bees to tend, 
 
 A honey-makin', world without end, 
 
 That's what I'd like the best! 
 
 (Scoop 'em right up an' find the queen. 
 
 They'd not sting me — the bees ain't mean!) 
 
 "Heaven's all right! 
 
 But still I guess I '11 kinder miss 
 
 The Lady Lunar-moth at night 
 
 And the White Wanderer butterfly 
 
 Crawlin' out of its chrysalis ! 
 
 I want my heaven human too, 
 
 'Twixt me an' you — 
 
 Why, I'd jus' love to see 
 
 A chipmunk hop up to the Lord 
 
 An' eat right out o' His dread Hand 
 
 Same as it does to me! 
 
 Eternity! Eternity! 
 
 Don't it sound grand? 
 
 But say, 
 
 What's the matter with to-day? 
 
 Just step into the wood an' take a look! 
 
 Ain't that a page o' teachin' from the Holy Book? 
 
 * He that hath eyes to see 
 
 An' ears to hear' — 
 
 That's good enough for mel 
 
 I guess God's pretty near, 
 
EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 51 
 
 IIe*ll understand, / know, 
 Why I ain't in no hurry to let June go!" 
 
 My old gardener turns to his hoe. 
 Helping the green things how to grow, 
 "The Missus can go to church for me! 
 Amen!" says he. 
 
 Leonora Speyer 
 
 EACH IN HIS OWN TONGUE 
 
 A fire-mist and a planet, — 
 
 A crystal and a cell, — ■ 
 A jellyfish and a saurian, 
 
 And caves where the cave-men dwell; 
 Then a sense of law and beauty, 
 
 And a face turned from the clod, — 
 Some call it Evolution, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 A haze on the far horizon, 
 
 The infinite, tender sky, 
 The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields, 
 
 And the wild geese sailing high, — 
 And all over upland and lowland 
 
 The charm of the goldenrod, — 
 Some of us call it Autumn, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, 
 When the moon is new and thin, 
 
 Into our hearts high yearnings 
 Come welling and surging in, — ' 
 
52 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Come from the mystic ocean, 
 Whose rim no foot has trod, — 
 
 Some of us call it Longing, 
 And others call it God. 
 
 A picket frozen on duty, — 
 
 A mother starved for her brood, — 
 Socrates drinking the hemlock, 
 
 And Jesus on the rood; 
 And millions who, humble and nameless, 
 
 The straight, hard pathway plod, — 
 Some call it Consecration, 
 
 And others call it God. 
 
 William Herbert Carruih 
 
 "AD CCELUM" 
 
 At the Muezzin's Call for prayer. 
 The kneeling Faithful thronged the square, 
 And on Pushkara's lofty height 
 The dark priest chanted Brahma's might. 
 Amid a monastery's weeds 
 An old Franciscan told his beads; 
 While to the synagogue there came 
 A Jew, to praise Jehovah's name. 
 The one great God looked down and smiled 
 And counted each his loving child; 
 For Turk and Brahmin, moak and Jew 
 Had reached Him through the gods they knew. 
 
 Harry Romaine 
 
LIVE YOUR LIFE 53 
 
 HUNGER 
 
 I've been a hopeless sinner but I understand a 
 saint, 
 
 Their bend of weary knees and their contortions 
 long and faint, 
 
 And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hun- 
 dred thousand pins, 
 
 A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins. 
 
 I love to wander widely but I understand a cell. 
 Where you tell and tell your beads because you've 
 
 nothing else to tell, 
 Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild, 
 
 fantastic tricks, 
 Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix. 
 
 I cannot speak for others but my inmost soul is 
 
 torn 
 With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn. 
 There are moments when I would untread the paths 
 
 that I have trod. 
 I'm a haunter of the devil but I hunger after God. 
 
 Gamaliel Bradford 
 
 LIVE YOUR LIFE — THEN TAKE YOUR 
 HAT 
 
 Conscience is instinct bred in the house; 
 Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin 
 By an unnatural breeding in and in, 
 I say, Turn it outdoors, 
 Into the moors. 
 
54 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I love a life whose plot is simple, 
 
 And does not thicken with every pimple, 
 
 A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it, 
 
 That makes the universe no worse than *t finds it. 
 
 I love an earnest soul 
 
 Whose mighty joy and sorrow 
 
 Are not drowned in a bowl. 
 
 And brought to life to-morrow; 
 
 That lives one tragedy, 
 
 And not seventy; 
 
 A conscience worth keeping, 
 
 Laughing, not weeping; 
 
 A conscience wise and steady, 
 
 And forever ready; 
 
 Not changing with events, 
 
 Dealing in compliments; 
 
 A conscience exercised about 
 
 Large things, where one may doubt. 
 
 I love a soul not all of wood. 
 
 Predestinated to be good, 
 
 But true to the backbone 
 
 Unto itself alone. 
 
 And false to none; 
 
 Born to its own affairs. 
 
 Its own joys and own cares; 
 
 By whom the work which God begun 
 
 Is finished, and not undone; 
 
 Taken up where He left off. 
 
 Whether to worship or to scoff; 
 
 If not good, why then evil. 
 
 If not good god, good deviL 
 
 Goodness! — you hypocrite, come out of that, 
 
 Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. 
 
THE LAUGHING PRAYER 55 
 
 I have no patience towards 
 Such conscientious cowards. 
 Give me simple laboring folk, 
 V/ho love their work, 
 Whose virtue is a song 
 To cheer God along. 
 
 Henry David Thoreau 
 
 THE LAUGHING PRAYER 
 
 The sorry prayers go up to God 
 
 Day after weary day, 
 They whimper through the eternal blue 
 
 And down the Milky Way. 
 
 Deaf to the music of the stars, 
 
 The children of desire. 
 Beggars before the Throne of God, 
 
 They wait for God to tire. 
 
 The proletariat of Heaven 
 Swarmed in the golden street 
 
 One day when Michael's host came by 
 Up to the Judgment Seat. 
 
 Above the heavenly mansions 
 
 Bright, streaming banners flowed, 
 
 While cherubim and seraphim 
 Were crowding in the road. 
 
 And then a little, laughing prayer 
 
 Came running from the sky, 
 Along the golden gutters where 
 
 The sorry prayers went by. 
 
56 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 It had no fear of anything, 
 
 But in that holy place 
 It found the very Throne of God 
 
 And smiled up in His face. 
 
 Then Michael waited in the road, 
 
 For Michael understood, 
 While God looked on the laughing prayer 
 
 And found it sweet and good. 
 
 So God was comforted. He said: 
 
 "There still is hope for men. 
 One man prays happily ! " And so 
 
 He turned to care again. 
 
 Louise Driscoll 
 
 THE COAST OF COURAGE 
 
 O Mighty Lord of Trade's high-running sea, 
 Grant us an echo of that distant main. 
 Beyond dark wastes of danger to attain 
 
 The Coast of Courage ! Strand of Bravery I 
 
 Grant an Assurance and a Hope more free 
 That over stiller waters we may gain 
 At length a vaster vision, not in vain. 
 
 Of Thine eternal Opportunity ! 
 
 Prepare a highway in this wilderness 
 Of wanton ways of traffic, a new heart 
 Of love and law and Justice in the Mart, 
 A loftier view of Commerce, limitless, 
 That sees no end therein Thou would'st not bless. 
 No consummation other than Thou art ! 
 
 Anonymous 
 
UNBELIEF 57 
 
 UNBELIEF 
 
 There is no unbelief; 
 Whoever plants a seed beneath the sod 
 And waits to see it push away the clod — • 
 He trusts in God. 
 
 Wlioever says when clouds are in the sky: 
 "Be patient, heart; light breaketh by and by," 
 Trusts the Most High. 
 
 Wlioever sees *neath Winter*s field of snow 
 The silent harvest of the future grow, 
 God's power must know. 
 
 Whoever lies down on his couch to sleep, 
 Content to lock each sense in slumber deep, 
 Knows God will keep. 
 
 Whoever says, "To-morrow," "The Unknown," 
 "The Future," trusts the Power alone 
 He dares disown. 
 
 The heart that looks on when eyelids close, 
 And dares to live when life has woes — 
 God's comfort knows. 
 
 There is no unbelief; 
 And day by day, unconsciously. 
 The heart lives by that faith the lips deny — 
 God knoweth vvhy ! 
 
 Owen Meredith 
 
58 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 THE LAST CAMP-FIRE 
 
 Scar not earth^s breast that I may have 
 Somewhere above her heart a grave; 
 Mine was a life whose swift desire 
 Bent ever less to dust than fire; 
 Then through the swift white path of flame 
 Send back my soul to whence it came; 
 From some^great peak, storm challenging, 
 My death-fire to the heavens fling; 
 The rocks my altar, and above 
 The still eyes of the stars I love; 
 No hymn, save as the midnight wind 
 Comes whispering to seek his kind. 
 
 Heap high the logs of spruce and pine, 
 Balsam for spices and for wine; 
 Brown cones, and knots a golden blur 
 Of hoarded pitch, more sweet than myrrh; 
 Cedar, to stream across the dark 
 Its scented embers spark on spark; 
 Long, shaggy boughs of juniper. 
 And silvery, odorous sheaves of fir ; 
 Spice-wood, to die in incense smoke 
 Against the stubborn roots of oak, 
 Red to the last for hate or love 
 As that red stubborn heart above. 
 
 Watch till the last pale ember dies, 
 Till wan and low the dead pyre lies, 
 Then let the thin white ashes blow 
 To all earth's winds a finer snow; 
 
AFTER DEATH IN ARABIA 5Q 
 
 There is no wind of hers but I 
 
 Have loved it as it whistled by; 
 
 No leaf whose life I would not share, 
 
 No weed that is not some way fair; 
 
 Hedge not my dust in one close urn, 
 
 It is to these I would return, — 
 
 The wild, free winds, the things that know 
 
 No master's rule, no ordered row, — 
 
 To be, if Nature will, at length 
 Part of some great tree's noble strength; 
 Growth of the grass; to live anew 
 In many a wild-fiower's richer hue; 
 Find immortality, indeed. 
 In ripened heart of fruit and seed. 
 Time grants not any man redress 
 Of his broad law. forgetfulness; 
 I parley not with shaft and stone, 
 Content that in the perfume blown 
 From next year's hillsides something sweet 
 And mine, shall make earth more complete. 
 
 Sharlot M. Hall 
 
 AFTER DEATH IN ARABIA 
 
 He who died at Azan sends 
 This to comfort all his friends : 
 
 Faithful friends! It lies, I know. 
 Pale and white and cold as snow; 
 And ye say, "Abdallah's dead!" — 
 Weeping at the feet and head. 
 
6o SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I can see your falling tears, 
 I can hear your sighs and prayers; 
 Yet I smile and whisper this, — • 
 "I am not the thing you kiss; 
 Cease your tears, and let it lie; 
 It was mine, it is not L" 
 
 Sweet friends I What the women lave 
 
 For its last bed of the grave, 
 
 Is a tent which I am quitting, 
 
 Is a garment no more fitting. 
 
 Is a cage from which, at last. 
 
 Like a hawk my soul hath pass'd. 
 
 Love the inmate, not the room, — 
 
 The wearer, not the garb, — the plume 
 
 Of the falcon, not the bars 
 
 Which kept him from these splendid stars. 
 
 Loving friends! Be wise, and dry 
 Straightway every weeping eye, — 
 What ye lift upon the bier 
 Is not worth a wistful tear. 
 'T is an empty sea-shell, — one 
 Out of which the pearl is gone; 
 The shell is broken, it lies there; 
 The pearl, the all, the soul, is here. 
 'T is an earthen jar, whose lid 
 Allah seal'd, the while it hid 
 That treasure of his treasury, 
 A mind that lov'd him ; let it lie I 
 Let the shard be earth*s once more, 
 Since the gold shines in his store! 
 
AFTER DEATH IN ARABIA 6i 
 
 Allah glorious I Allah good I 
 Now thy world is understood; 
 Now the long, long wonder ends; 
 Yet ye weep, my erring friends, 
 While the man whom ye call dead, 
 In unspoken bliss, instead, 
 •Lives and loves you; lost, 't is true, 
 By such light as shines for you; 
 But in light ye cannot see 
 Of unfulfill'd felicity,— 
 In enlarging paradise. 
 Lives a life that never dies. 
 
 Farewell, friends! Yet not farewell; 
 Where I am, ye, too, shall dwell. 
 I am gone before your face, 
 A moment's time, a little space. 
 When ye come where I have stepp'd 
 Ye will wonder why ye wept; 
 Ye will know, by wise love taught, 
 That here is all, and there is naught. 
 Weep awhile, if ye are fain, — 
 Sunshine still must follow rain; 
 Only not at death, — for death, 
 Now I know, is that first breath 
 Which our souls draw when we enter 
 Life, which is of all life centre. 
 
 Be ye certain all seems love, 
 View'd from Allah's throne above; 
 Be ye stout of heart, and come 
 Bravely onward to your home I 
 
62 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 La Allah ilia Allah! yeal 
 
 Thou love divine ! Thou love ahvay I 
 
 He that died at Azan gave 
 
 This to those who made his grave. 
 
 Edwin Arnold 
 
 ONLY LAUGHTER IS SURE 
 
 Send us Laughter, O gods, for our life is but 
 
 vain; 
 We are bruised by its rods, we are galled by its 
 
 chain. 
 What doth patience avail, or the strength to endure 
 In the fight where we fail ? Only Laughter is sure ! 
 
 Faith is comrade no more. Sorrow sees us and 
 
 nods. 
 From your generous store give us Laughter, O 
 
 gods ; 
 That with sword of it girt, and with helm of it 
 
 crowned. 
 We may battle unhurt, we may wander unbound ! 
 
 Send us Laughter, great lords, for our woes are too 
 
 deep 
 To be served by the swords save of Laughter or 
 
 Sleep! 
 Send us Laughter, O gods, and the world is our 
 
 own. 
 From the cloud to the clods, from the cot to the 
 
 throne I 
 
HYMN OF EMPEDOCLES 63 
 
 It shall soften the sting of the whips that are 
 
 whirled, 
 And a balm it shall bring for the wounds of the 
 
 world. 
 It shall lighten the rods, it shall cover the sore; 
 Send us Laughter, O gods, for our armour of warl 
 
 W. H. Ogilvie 
 
 MYSTERY 
 
 What is this mystery that men call death? 
 
 My friend before me lies; in all save breath 
 
 He seems the same as yesterday. His face 
 
 So Uke to life, so calm, bears not a trace 
 
 Of that great change which all of us so dread. 
 
 I gaze on him and say: He is not dead. 
 
 But sleeps; and soon he will arise and take 
 
 Me by the hand, I know he will awake 
 
 And smile on me as he did yesterday; 
 
 And he will have some gentle word to say, 
 
 Some kindly deed to do; for loving thought 
 
 Was warp and woof of which his life was wrought. 
 
 He is not dead. Such souls forever live 
 
 In boundless measure of the love they give. 
 
 Jerome B. Bell 
 
 HYMN OF EMPEDOCLES 
 
 Is it so small a thing 
 To have enjoy'd the sun, 
 To have lived light in the spring, 
 To have loved, to have thought, to have done; 
 To have advanced true friends, and beat down baf- 
 fling foes; 
 
64 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 That we must feign a bliss 
 Of doubtful future date, 
 And while we dream on this 
 Lose all our present state, 
 And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose? 
 
 Not much, I know, you prize 
 What pleasures may be had, 
 Who look on life with eyes 
 Estranged, like mine, and sad : 
 And yet the village churl feels the truth more 
 than you ; 
 
 Who^s loth to leave this life 
 Which to him little yields : 
 His hard-task'd, sunburnt wife, 
 His often-labour'd fields; 
 The boors with whom he talk'd, the coimtry 
 spots he knew. 
 
 But thou, because thou hear'st 
 Men scoff at Heaven and Fate; 
 Because the gods thou fear'st 
 Fail to make blest thy state, 
 Tremblest, and wilt not dare to trust the joys 
 there are. 
 
 I say, fear not ! Life still 
 Leaves human effort scope. 
 But, since life teems with ill, 
 Nurse no extravagant hope. 
 Because thon must not dream thou need'st 
 not then despair, 
 
 Matthew Arnold 
 
THE AGNOSTIC'S CREED 65 
 
 DESERVINGS 
 
 This is the height of our deserts: 
 A little pity for life's hurts; 
 A little rain, a little sun, 
 A little sleep when work is done. 
 
 A little righteous punishment, 
 Less for our deeds than their intent; 
 A little pardon now and then, 
 Because we are but struggling men. 
 
 A little light to show the way, 
 A little guidance where we stray; 
 A little love before we pass 
 To rest beneath the kirkyard grass. 
 
 A little faith, in days of change. 
 When life is stark and bare and strange; 
 A solace when our eyes are wet 
 With tears of longing and regret. 
 
 True it is that we cannot claim 
 Unmeasured recompense or blame, 
 Because our way of life is small: 
 A little is the sum of all. 
 
 Anonymous 
 
 THE AGNOSTIC'S CREED 
 At last I have ceased repining, at last I accept my 
 
 fate ; 
 I have ceased to beat at the Portal, I have ceased to 
 
 knock at the Gate; 
 
66 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I have ceased to work at the Puzzle, for the Secret 
 
 has ended my search, 
 And I know that the Key is entrusted to never a 
 
 creed nor church. 
 
 They have threatened with lakes of fire, they have 
 
 threatened with fetters of hell; 
 They have offered me heights of heaven with their 
 
 fields of asphodel; 
 But the Threat and the Bribe are useless if Reason 
 
 be strong and stout. 
 And an honest man can never surrender an honest 
 
 doubt. 
 
 The fables of hell and of heaven are but worn-out 
 Christmas toys, 
 
 To coax or to bribe or to frighten the grown-up 
 girls and boys; 
 
 I have ceased to be an infant, I have traveled be- 
 yond their span — 
 
 It may do for women and children, but it never will 
 do for a man. 
 
 They are all alike, these churches : Mohammedan, 
 
 Christian, Parsee; 
 You are vile, you are curst, you are outcast, if you 
 
 be not as they be; 
 But my Reason stands against them, and I go as it 
 
 bids me go; 
 Its commands are as calls of a trumpet, and I follow 
 
 for weal or woe. 
 
THE AGNOSTIC'S CREED 67 
 
 But 01 it is often cheerless, and 01 it is often 
 
 chill, 
 And I often sigh to heaven as my path grows steep 
 
 and still. 
 I have left behind my comrades, with their prattle 
 
 and childish noise; 
 My boyhood now is behind me, with all of its 
 
 broken toys I 
 
 O! that God of gods is glorious, the emperor of 
 
 every land; 
 He carries the moon and the planets in the palm of 
 
 His mighty hand; 
 He is girt with the belt of Orion, he is Lord of the 
 
 suns and stars, 
 A wielder of constellations, of Canopus, Arcturus 
 
 and Marsl 
 
 I believe in Love and Duty, I believe in the True 
 
 and Just; 
 I believe in the common kinship of everything born 
 
 from dust. 
 I hope that the Right will triumph, that the scep- 
 
 tered Wrong will fall. 
 That Death will at last be defeated, that the Grave 
 
 will not end all. 
 
 I believe in the martyrs and heroes who have died 
 
 for the sake of Right ; 
 And I promise, like them, to follow in my Reason's 
 
 faithful light; 
 
68 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 If my Reason errs in judgment, I but honestly 
 
 strive as I can; 
 If a God decrees my downfall, I shall stand it like a 
 
 man. 
 
 Walter Malone 
 
 THE SUN-WORSHIPERS 
 
 The trail is high whereon we ride, with all the 
 w^orld below to see, 
 The cleft of canon, sweep of range and winter- 
 white of lonely peak; 
 Lean foothold on the mountain-side, and on, be- 
 yond, The Mystery, 
 The unattained, the hidden land we may not find, 
 but ever seek. 
 
 Content were vain. Our discontent, divine, forever 
 urges on 
 Through stress and danger, scorned or shared, 
 though jomney's end be never won: 
 Say you our days are vainly spent whose eyes have 
 looked upon the dawn 
 From high Chilao's morning crest, and bathed 
 our faces in the Sun? 
 
 We worship not what men have made : no thing so 
 small is our desire. 
 The little words of men that die, the little 
 thoughts of men that dream 
 Shall perish in their utterance : and build for these 
 an altar fire? 
 Our creed is written in the sky, our song in the 
 eternal stream. 
 
MY AIM 69 
 
 We journey on from star to star, nor shall we find a 
 dwelling-place, 
 Nor yet implore surcease from toil: to be and to 
 adore, is all: 
 Beholding dimly from afar the glory of the Hidden 
 Face, 
 Our worship ever our reward, the Quest our 
 golden coronal. 
 
 Henry Herbert Knihbs 
 
 A LAST APPEAL 
 
 somewhere, somewhere, God unknown, 
 
 Exist and be! 
 
 1 am dying; I am all alone; 
 
 I must have thee I 
 
 God ! God I my sense, my soul, my all 
 
 Dies in the cry: — 
 Saw'st thou the faint star flame and fall? 
 
 Ah I it was L 
 
 Frederic William Henry Myers 
 
 MY AIM 
 
 I live for those who love me, whose hearts are kind 
 
 and true. 
 For the heaven that smiles above me, and awaits 
 
 my spirit too ; 
 For all human ties that bind me, for the task by 
 
 God assigned me; 
 For the bright hopes yet to find me and the good 
 
 that I can do. 
 
70 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I live to learn their story who suffered for my 
 
 sake; 
 To emulate their glory and follow in their wake : 
 Bards, patriots, martyrs, sages, the heroic of all 
 
 ages, 
 "Whose deeds crowd history^s pages, and Time's 
 
 great volume make. 
 
 I live to hold communion with all that is divine. 
 
 To feel there is a union 'twixt nature's heart and 
 mine; 
 
 To profit by affliction, reap truth from fields of fic- 
 tion, 
 
 Grow wiser from conviction, and fulfil God's grand 
 design. 
 
 I live to hail the season, by gifted ones foretold. 
 When man shall live by reason, and not alone by 
 
 gold; 
 When man to man united, and every wrong thing 
 
 righted, 
 The whole world shall be lighted, as Eden was of 
 
 old. 
 
 I live for those who love me, for those who know me 
 
 true; 
 For the heaven that smiles above me, and awaits 
 
 my spirit too; 
 For the cause that lacks assistance, for the wrong 
 
 that needs resistance. 
 For the future in the distance and the good that I 
 
 can do. 
 
 G. Linnzus Banks 
 
WE LODGE HIM IN THE MANGER 71 
 
 WE LODGE HIM IN THE MANGER 
 
 Yet if His Majesty, our sovereign lord, 
 
 Should of his own accord 
 
 Friendly himself invite, 
 
 And say "I'll be your guest to-morrow night," 
 
 How should we stir ourselves, call and command 
 
 All hands to work! "Let no man idle stand. 
 
 "Set me fine Spanish tables in the hall; 
 
 See they be fitted all; 
 
 Let there be room to eat 
 
 And order taken that there v/ant no meat. 
 
 See every sconce and candlestick made bright, 
 
 That without tapers they may give a light. 
 
 "Look to the presence: are the carpets spread, 
 
 The dazie o'er the head, 
 
 The cushions in the chairs, 
 
 And all the candles lighted on the stairs? 
 
 Perfume the chambers, and in any case 
 
 Let each man give attendance in his place!" 
 
 Thus, if a king were coming, would we do; 
 
 And 't were good reason too; 
 
 For 't is a duteous thing 
 
 To show all honour to an earthly king, 
 
 And after all our travail and our cost, 
 
 So he be pleased, to think no labour lost. 
 
 But at the coming of the King of Heaven 
 
 All's set at six and seven; 
 
 We wallow in our sin, 
 
 Christ cannot find a chamber in the inn. 
 
72 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 We entertain Him always like a stranger, 
 And, as at first, still lodge Him in the manger. 
 
 Anonymous 
 
 IF THIS WERE FAITH! 
 
 God ! If this were enough. 
 
 That I see things bare to the buff 
 
 And up to the buttocks in mire. 
 
 That I ask nor hope nor hire. 
 
 Not in the husk, 
 
 Nor dawn beyond the dusk, 
 
 Nor life beyond death: 
 
 God — if this were faith ! 
 
 Having felt Thy wind in my face 
 
 Spit sorrow and disgrace. 
 
 Having seen Thy evil doom 
 
 In Golgotha and Khartoum, 
 
 And the brutes, the work of Thine hands, 
 
 Fill with injustice lands 
 
 And stain with blood the sea. 
 
 If still in my veins the glee 
 
 Of the black night and the sun 
 
 And the lost battle run ; 
 
 If, an adept. 
 
 The iniquitous lists I still accept 
 
 With joy, and joy to endure and be withstood, 
 
 And still to battle and perish for a dream of good 
 
 God — if that were enough I 
 
 If to feel in the ink of the slough 
 And the sink of the mire 
 Veins of glory and fire 
 
DEFERRED 73 
 
 Run through and transpierce and transpire, 
 
 And a secret purpose of glory fill each part, 
 
 And the answering glory of battle fill my heart; 
 
 To thrill with the joy of girded men, 
 
 To go on forever and fail, and go on again, 
 
 And be mauled to the earth and arise, 
 
 And contend for the shade of a word and a thing 
 
 not seen with the eyes — 
 With the half of a broken hope for a pillow at night 
 That somehow the right is the right. 
 And the smooth shall bloom from the rough: 
 Lord — if that were enough 1 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 DEFERRED 
 
 All things at last I win — but all too late. 
 Like harvests gathered after he who sowed 
 Has died of hunger; or a debt, long owed, 
 
 The creditor dead, paid heirs of his estate. 
 
 Upon my eyelids hangs a burning weight 
 
 Of tears, now, looking on the long, long road 
 And thinking of the slavery and the goad 
 
 In empty years when little things seemed great. 
 
 Is Hope's high goal a picture hung in air, 
 
 The desert phantasm of the palm and Spring? 
 
 Yet even so, it still is real somewhere, 
 And that foregleam is so divine a thing 
 It works the forming of the spirit's wing — 
 
 Desire creative mastering all despair I 
 
 Stokely S. Fisher 
 
74 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 "FEAR NOT THE MENACE" 
 
 Life as it is I Accept it; it is thine! 
 The God that gave it, gave it for thy good. 
 The God that made it had not been divine 
 Could he have set thee poison for thy food. 
 
 Abstain not; Life and Love, like night and day, 
 Offer themselves to us on their own terms, 
 — Not ours. Accept their bounty while ye may, 
 Before we be accepted by the worms. 
 
 We rail at Time and Chance, and break our hearts 
 
 To make the glory of to-day endure. 
 
 Is the sun dead because the day departs? 
 
 And are the suns of Life and Love less sure? 
 
 Fear not the menace of the bye-and-bye. 
 To-day is ours ; to-morrow Fate must give. 
 Stretch out your hands and eat, although ye die ! 
 Better to die than never once to live. 
 
 Richard Hovey 
 
 THROUGH NATURE UP TO GOD 
 
 Where once Zenobia's bastions rose, 
 The wind that stirs the desert sand 
 
 Now softly sighs and sadly blows 
 O'er Tadmor's desolated land; — • 
 
 The dirge for life and glory fled, 
 
 The requiem for centuries dead. 
 
 The towers of Troy are sunk in tears, 
 The golden domes of Tyre are gone, 
 
GOD IN MY GARDEN 
 
 And only wandering echo hears 
 
 The vagrant name of Babylon; 
 And ravens flit and serpents hiss 
 O'er what was once Persepolis. 
 
 Yet always the aspiring Soul, — 
 The Angel in the mortal clod, 
 
 The Vision that defies control, — 
 Will look through Nature up to God; 
 
 And strive, in word and form, to speak 
 
 The beauty it was born to seek. 
 
 And not in vain, from age to age, 
 
 In forms of grandeur and of grace, 
 Is writ on more than History's page, 
 The progress of the human race — ■ 
 The rise of mind and feeling, shown 
 In golden poems made of stone. 
 
 William Winter 
 
 GOD IN MY GARDEN 
 
 A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot I 
 Rose plot. 
 
 Fringed pool, 
 Fern'd grot — 
 
 The veriest school 
 
 Of peace; and yet the fool 
 Contends that God is not — 
 Not God ! In gardens ! When the eve is cool? 
 
 Nay, but I have a sign; 
 
 *T is very sure God walks in mine. 
 
 Thomas Edward Brown 
 
76 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 A LITTLE WORK 
 
 A little work, a little play 
 
 To keep us going — and so, good-day! 
 
 A little warmth, a little light 
 
 Of lovers bestowing — and so, good-night! 
 
 A little fun, to match the sorrow 
 
 Of each day's growing — and so, good-morrow ! 
 
 A little trust that when we die 
 
 We reap our sowing ! And so, good-bye ! 
 
 George Du Maurier 
 
 THE DYING PANTHEIST TO THE PRIEST 
 
 Take yoiir ivory Christ away : 
 
 No dying god shall have my knee 
 
 While live gods breathe in this wild wind 
 And shout from yonder dashing sea. 
 
 When March brings back the Adonis flower — 
 No more the white processions meet 
 
 With incense to their risen lord 
 About the pillared temple's feet. 
 
 From tusk of boar, from thrust of spear 
 The dead rise not. At Eastertide 
 
 The same sun dances on their graves — • 
 Love's darling and the Crucified. 
 
 Yet still the year's returning tide 
 
 Flows greenly roimd each ruined plinth, 
 
THE DYING PANTHEIST 77 
 
 Breaking on fallen shafts in foam 
 Of crocus and of hyacinth: 
 
 Tossing a spray of swallows high, 
 
 To flutter lightly on the breeze 
 And fleck with tiny spots of shade 
 
 The sunshine on the broken frieze. 
 
 I know the gray-green asphodels 
 Still sheet the dim Elysian mead, 
 
 And ever by dark Lethe's wells 
 The poppy sheds her ghostly seed. 
 
 And once — O once! — when sunset lay 
 Blood-red across the winter sea, 
 
 Where on the sands we drained our flasks 
 And danced and cried our Evoe! — 
 
 Among the tossing cakes of ice 
 And spouting of the frozen spray, 
 
 We saw their white limbs twist and whirl — 
 The ancient sea-gods at their play. 
 
 The gold-brown liquor burned my heart, 
 The icy tempest stung my brow: 
 
 The twanging of Apollo's lyre — • 
 I heard it as I tear it now. 
 
 O no, the old gods are not dead: 
 
 I think that they will never die; 
 But I, who lie upon this bed 
 
 In mortal angiiish — what am I? 
 
78 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 A wave that rises with a breath 
 Above the infinite watery plain, 
 
 To foam and sparkle in the sun 
 A moment ere it sink again. 
 
 The eternal undulation runs: 
 A man, I die: perchance to be. 
 
 Next life, a white-throat on the wind, 
 A daffodil on Tempe's lea. 
 
 They lied who said that Pan was dead: 
 Life was, life is, and life shall be. 
 
 So take away your crucifix — 
 The everliving gods for me! 
 
 Henry A. Beers 
 
 THE SEEKER 
 
 The creeds he wrought of dream and thought 
 Fall from him at the touch of life. 
 His old gods fail him in the strife — 
 
 Withdrawn, the heavens he sought 1 
 
 Vanished the miracles that led. 
 
 The cloud at noon, the flame at night; 
 
 The vision that he wing'd and sped 
 
 Falls backward, baffled, from the height; 
 
 Yet in the wreck of these he stands 
 Upheld by something grim and strong; 
 Some stubborn instinct lifts a song 
 
 And nerves him, heart and hands ; 
 
 He does not dare to call it hope; — 
 It is not aught that seeks reward — 
 
THE SEEKER 79 
 
 Nor faith, that up some sunward slope 
 Runs aureoled to meet its lord; 
 
 It touches something elder far 
 
 Than faith or creed or thought in man, 
 It was ere yet these lived and ran 
 
 Like light from star to star; 
 
 It touches that stark, primal need 
 That from unpeopled voids and vast, 
 
 Fashioned the first crude, childish creed, — 
 And still shall fashion, till the last! 
 
 For one word is the tale of men: 
 They fling their ikons to the sod. 
 And having trampled down a god 
 
 They seek a god again I 
 
 Stripped of his creeds inherited. 
 Bereft of all his sires held true, 
 
 Amid the wreck of visions dead 
 
 He thrills at touch of visions new. . . . 
 
 He wings another Dream for flight. . . . 
 He seeks beyond the outmost dawn 
 A god he set there . . . and, anon, 
 
 Drags that god from the height I 
 
 But aye from ruined faiths and old 
 
 That droop and die, fall bruised seeds; 
 And when new flowers and faiths unfold, 
 They're lovelier flowers, they're kindlier 
 creeds. 
 
 Don Marquis 
 
8o SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 "ALIENI TEMPORIS FLORES" 
 
 (^*And wise men hold in due respect 
 the blossoms of other days.") 
 
 Let the dead past bury its dead? 
 
 No one denies the need of this, 
 
 The utter childlike human need; 
 
 Nor that dead dreams, dead tears, dead loves, 
 
 Should lie perdu 
 
 Within the vault of time; 
 
 Nor that the snows of other years 
 
 Must melt away 
 
 Before the hot procession of our headlong days. 
 
 But let it be no more than this ; 
 
 Let us not seize upon the hours 
 
 When blood ran tumbling to the lips, 
 
 And make of memory a thing of scorn; 
 
 Let us not taint the honest wine of old desire 
 
 With cheap regret : 
 
 The cheapest pain within all mortal range; 
 
 Let us not say that where we gave and took. 
 
 Full-hearted and full-hoped and daring all, 
 
 The world was aught the poorer for our dreams. 
 
 Let the dead past bury its dead? 
 
 Yes — but in full honor, too ! 
 
 Not only for the flame that was its breath, 
 
 But for the spark 
 
 That somewhere smolders in the grave. 
 
 G. B. C. 
 
MAKE NO DESPERATE SEARCH 8i 
 
 MAKE NO DESPERATE SEARCH 
 FOR GOD 
 
 Come out to our house any week-end in June, 
 When dandelions riot in the grass: 
 And drink the yellow floods of afternoon, 
 Poured from a sky of blue and quivering glass. 
 Go through the arbor where the ramblers mass 
 In crimson flame against white lattices: 
 Open the easy swinging gate, and pass 
 Beneath the birch, between the maple trees 
 With tops a-tremble in the southwest breeze: 
 Follow along the curving gravel walk 
 Up to the terrace top, where, as you please, 
 Tobacco, high adventure, casual talk. 
 And journey's end await, if you are one 
 
 Who would live much and quietly in the sun. 
 
 • • • 
 
 On Sunday morning you may go to church 
 
 In any way you please, or not at all. 
 
 There is a stately one beneath our birch, 
 
 A lowlier one out by the garden wall: 
 
 Methodist, Catholic, Episcopal, 
 
 Are all within an easy morning's stroll; 
 
 But if these venerable creeds appal, 
 
 A garden spade may benefit your soul; 
 
 Or some eternal verity unroll 
 
 As you spread paint upon the kitchen screens, 
 
 Or fix fresh-cut nasturtiums in a bowl, 
 
 Or hold communion with the lima beans. 
 
 Or you may put your clean white flannels on 
 
 And meet it as you ramble through the law^ 
 
82 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 But do not make a desperate search for God 
 
 Lest you offend his quiet dignity. 
 
 The week-end is no time to pant or plod 
 
 The rock-strewn roads of any Calvary. 
 
 It is a time to live in the sun, and see 
 
 Your favorite god by glimpses, everywhere. 
 
 I find him lurking quite persistently 
 
 In our young daughter's laugh, and in her hair; 
 
 And if the baby smiles, he lingers there: 
 
 But when the baby cries, he understands 
 
 And straightway slips without offense or care 
 
 Into my wife's brown eyes and her white hands; 
 
 And many a moonlit night in fall he comes 
 
 To dance among the red chrysanthemums. 
 
 John French Wilson 
 
 JESUS THE CARPENTER 
 
 "Is n*t this Joseph's son?" — ay, it is He; 
 Joseph the carpenter — same trade as me — 
 I thought as I 'd find it — I knew it was here — 
 But my sight 's getting queer. 
 
 I don't know right where as his shed must ha' 
 
 stood — 
 But often, as I've been a-planing my wood, 
 I 've took off my hat, just with thinking of He 
 At the same work as me. 
 
 He warn't that set up that He could n't stoop 
 
 down 
 And work in the country for folks in the town; 
 And I '11 warrant He felt a bit pride, like I 've done 
 At a good job begun. 
 
ATOMS AND AGES 83 
 
 The parson he knows that I'll not make too free, 
 But on Sunday I feels as pleased as can be, 
 When I wears my clean smock, and sits in a pew, 
 And has thoughts a few. 
 
 I think of as how not the parson hissen, 
 As is teacher and father and shepherd o' men, 
 Not he knows as much of the Lord in that shed, 
 Where He earned his own bread. 
 
 And when I goes home to my missus, says she, 
 "Are ye wanting your key?" 
 
 For she knows my queer ways, and my love for the 
 shed, 
 (We've been forty years wed.) 
 
 So I comes right away by mysen, with the book. 
 And I turns the old pages and has a good look 
 For the text as I've found, as tells me as He 
 Were the same trade as me. 
 
 Why don't I mark it? Ah, many says so, 
 But I think I'd as lief, with your leave, let it go: 
 It do seem that nice when I fall on it sudden — 
 Unexpected, you know! 
 
 Catherine C. Liddell 
 
 ATOMS AND AGES 
 
 Just as I wonder at the twofold screen 
 Of twisted innocence that you would plait 
 For eyes that uncourageously await 
 The coming of a kingdom that has been, 
 
84 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 So do I wonder what God's love can mean 
 To you that all so strangely estimate 
 The purpose and the consequent estate 
 Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen. 
 
 No, I have not your backward faith to shrink 
 Lone-faring from the doorway of God's home 
 To find Him in the names of buried men; 
 Nor your ingenious recreance to think 
 We cherish, in the life that is to come, 
 The scattered features of dead friends again. 
 
 Never until our souls are strong enough 
 To plunge into the crater of the Scheme — 
 Triumphant in the flash there to redeem 
 Love's handsel — and forevermore to slough, 
 Like cerements at a played-out masque, the 
 
 rough 
 And reptile skins of us whereon we set 
 The stigma of scared years — are we to get 
 Where atoms and the ages are one stuff. 
 
 Nor ever shall we know the cursed waste 
 Of life in the beneficence divine 
 Of starlight and of sunlight and soul-shine 
 That we have squandered in sin's frail distress, 
 Till we have drunk, and trembled at the taste, 
 The mead of Thought's prophetic endlessness. 
 Edwin Arlington Robinson 
 
THE PAGAN 85 
 
 THE PAGAN 
 
 But I shall feel the wind again, 
 
 Shall drink the scent of flower and pine: 
 And I shall bask in April suns 
 
 Where budding willow boughs are mine, 
 The stars will beat across the night, 
 
 The waves will shout their tumult then; 
 And I shall answer in my joy. 
 
 My joy at praising life again. 
 
 For I have lived with waving grass 
 
 And roots and golden sap astir; 
 The earth has held me to her breast, 
 
 And I shall laugh again with her. 
 I have loved clouds that drift and pass, 
 
 My heart has flamed to eager bloom 
 In gold and crimson poppy leaves 
 
 And rose perfume. 
 
 And I shall dance beneath the light 
 
 Of silver crescent moons in spring, 
 And I shall sleep upon the leaves 
 
 Of autumn's yellow mouldering. 
 For somewhere, there will open wide 
 
 A little magic, outer door. 
 And I shall pass beyond to find 
 
 The loveliness I knew before. 
 
 Rose Henderson 
 
86 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 "HE WHOM A DREAM HATH POSSESSED" 
 
 He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no 
 more of doubting, 
 For mist and the blowing of winds and the mouth- 
 ing of words he scorns ; 
 Not the sinuous speech of schools he hears, but a 
 knightly shouting. 
 And never comes darkness down, yet he greeteth 
 a million morns. 
 
 He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no 
 more of roaming; 
 All roads and the flowing of waves and the speed- 
 iest flight he knows ; 
 But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever 
 homing, 
 And going, he comes; and coming, he heareth a 
 call and goes. 
 
 He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no 
 more of sorrow. 
 At death and the dropping of leaves and the fad- 
 ing of suns he smiles. 
 For a dream remembers no past and scorns the de- 
 sire of a morrow. 
 And a dream in a sea of doom sets surely the 
 ultimate isles. 
 
 He whom a dream hath possessed treads the im- 
 palpable marches. 
 From the dust of the day's long road he leaps to a 
 laughing star, 
 
APRIL THEOLOGY 87 
 
 And the ruin of worlds that fall he views from eter- 
 nal arches, 
 And rides God*s battle-field in a flashing and 
 golden car. 
 
 Shaemas O'Sheel 
 
 APRIL THEOLOGY 
 
 Oh to be breathing and hearing and feeling and 
 
 seeing! 
 Oh the ineffably glorious privilege of being! 
 All of the World's lovely girlhood, unfleshed and 
 
 made spirit. 
 Broods out in the sunlight this morning — I see it, 
 
 I hear it! 
 
 So read me no text, O my Brothers, and preach me 
 no creeds; 
 
 I am busy beholding the glory of God in His deeds ! 
 
 See ! Everywhere buds coming out, blossoms flam- 
 ing, bees humming! 
 
 Glad athletic growers up-reaching, things striving, 
 becoming! 
 
 Oh, I know in my heart, in the sun-quickened, 
 
 blossoming soul of me, 
 This something called self is a part, but the world is 
 
 the whole of me! 
 I am one with these growers, these singers, these 
 
 earnest becomers — 
 Co-heirs of the summer to be and past eeons of 
 
 summers! 
 
88 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I kneel not nor grovel; no prayer with my lips shall 
 
 I fashion. 
 Close-knit in the fabric of things, fused with on© 
 
 common passion — 
 To go on and become something greater — we 
 
 growers are one; 
 None more in the world than a bird and none less 
 
 than the sun; 
 But all woven into the glad indivisible Scheme, 
 God fashioning out in the Finite a part of his 
 
 dream ! 
 
 Out here where the world-love is flowing, unfet- 
 tered, unpriced, 
 
 I feel all the depth of the man-soul and girl-heart 
 of Christ I 
 
 'Mid this riot of pink and white flame in this mira- 
 cle weather. 
 
 Soul to soul, merged in one, God and I dream the 
 vast dream together. 
 
 We are one in the doing of things that are done and 
 to be: 
 
 I am part of my God as a raindrop is part of the sea I 
 
 What ! House me my God? Take me in where no 
 blossoms are blowing? 
 
 Roof me in from the blue, wall me in from the 
 green and the wonder of growing? 
 
 Parcel out what already is mine, like a vendor of 
 staples? 
 
 See! Yonder my God burns revealed in the sap- 
 drunken maples! 
 
 John G. Neihardt 
 
THE VISION SPLENDID" 89 
 
 THE CERTAIN VICTORY 
 
 Why should I sit in doubt or fear? If I 
 
 Awake some morning from that dreaded sleep 
 
 To find myself new-born and lifted high, 
 Then I will turn, and, looking o'er the deep 
 
 That lies beneath me, shout for glee and throw 
 A last good-by at Pain and Fear, below. 
 
 But what if, at the last, no light shall break — 
 
 If this is all — if when I fall asleep 
 No angel's voice shall sweetly cry ** Awake,'* 
 And there shall be but Nothing, dark and 
 deep — 
 Ah, well, I shall not care if it be so, 
 
 I'll triumph still, for I shall never know. 
 
 S. E. Kiser 
 
 "THE VISION SPLENDID" 
 
 Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
 The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 And Cometh from afar; 
 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 
 From God, who is our home: 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy! 
 Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing Boy, 
 But He beholds the light, and whence it flows. 
 
 He sees it in his joy; 
 
90 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 The Youth, who daily farther from the east 
 Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 
 And by the Vision Splendid 
 Is on his way attended; 
 At length the Man perceives it die away, 
 And fade into the light of common day. 
 
 Wordsworth 
 
 "SAY NOT THE STRUGGLE NAUGHT 
 AVAILETH" 
 
 Say not the struggle naught availeth, 
 The labour and the wounds are vain, 
 
 The enemy faints not, nor faileth. 
 And as things have been they remain. 
 
 If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; 
 
 It may be, in yon smoke conceal 'd. 
 Your comrades chase e'en now the flyers, 
 
 And, but for you, possess the field. 
 
 For while the tired waves, vainly breaking,' 
 Seem here no painful inch to gain. 
 
 Far back, through creeks and inlets making, 
 Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 
 
 And not by eastern windows only. 
 
 When daylight comes, comes in the light; 
 
 In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly ! 
 But westward, look, the land is bright I 
 Arthur Hugh Clough 
 
MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH 91 
 
 MIMNERMUS IN CHURCH 
 
 You promise heavens free from strife, 
 Pure truth, and perfect change of will; 
 
 But sweet, sweet is this human life, 
 So sweet, I fain would breathe it still: 
 
 Your chilly stars I can forego, 
 
 This warm, kind world is all I know. 
 
 You say there is no substance here, 
 
 One great reality above: 
 Back from that void I shrink in fear, 
 
 And child-like hide myself in love : 
 Show me what angels feeK Till then, 
 I cling, a mere weak man, to men. 
 
 You bid me lift my mean desires 
 From faltering lips and fitful veins 
 
 To sexless souls, ideal choirs. 
 
 Unwearied voices, wordless strains: 
 
 My mind with fonder welcome owns 
 
 One dear, dead friend's remembered tones. 
 
 Forsooth the present we must give 
 To that which cannot pass away; 
 
 All beauteous things for which we live 
 By laws of time and space decay. 
 
 But oh, the very reason why 
 
 I clasp them, is because they die. 
 
 William Johnson Cory 
 
92 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 THE SCIENTIST SPEAKS 
 
 First, I abjure all dim unreasoning patter 
 Wherewith the ignorant befool their land; 
 
 Because I read among the Laws of Matter 
 The limitations of the human mind. 
 
 Then I will not believe, till I have cloven 
 Into the very heart of Law and Act ; 
 
 That no one need accept what I have proven 
 Till he has put it to the proof of Fact. 
 
 Nor will I let the teachings of another 
 Absolve me from my task of finding out, 
 
 Just as I will not force upon my brother 
 
 The answer I have made to mine own doubt. 
 
 I will be true to this, though all may doubt me, 
 I will write on, and over every sneer. 
 
 So will I build my Heaven here about me 
 And live my life within it, now and here. 
 
 Charles Henry Mackintosh 
 
 "CORONEMUS NOS ROSIS ANTEQUAM 
 MARCESCANT" 
 
 Let us drink and be merry, dance, joke, and re- 
 joice, 
 With claret and sherry, theorbo and voice ! 
 The changeable world to our joy is unjust, 
 
 All treasure *s uncertain, 
 
 Then down with your dust ! 
 In frolics dispose your pounds, shillings, and pence, 
 For we shall be nothing a hundred years hence. 
 
CORONEMUS NOS ROSIS 93 
 
 We'll sport and be free with Moll, Betty, and Dolly, 
 Have oysters and lobsters to cure melancholy: 
 Fish-dinners will make a man spring like a flea, 
 
 Dame Venus, love's lady. 
 
 Was born of the sea: 
 With her and with Bacchus we'll tickle the sense. 
 For we shall be past it a himdred years hence. 
 
 Your most beautiful bride who with garlands is 
 
 crowned 
 And kills with each glance as she treads on the 
 
 ground, 
 Whose lightness and brightness doth shine in such 
 
 splendor 
 That none but the stars 
 Are thought fit to attend her. 
 Though now she be pleasant and sfweet to the 
 
 sense, 
 Will be damnable mouldy a hundred years hence. 
 
 Then why should we turmoil in cares and in fears, 
 Turn all our tranquill'ty to sighs and to tears? 
 Let's eat, drink and play till the worms do corrupt 
 us, 
 'T is certain, "Post mortem 
 Nulla voluptas." 
 For health, wealth, and beauty, wit, learning and 
 
 sense. 
 Must all come to nothing a hundred years hence. 
 
 Thomas Jordan 
 
^4 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 WINE OF OMAR KHAYYAM 
 
 He rode the flame-winged dragon-steed of Thought 
 Through Space and Darkness, seeking Heav'n 
 
 and Hell; 
 And searched the furthest staxs where souls 
 might dwell 
 To find God's justice; and in vain he sought. 
 
 Then, looking on the dusk-eyed girl who brought 
 His dream-filled wine beside his garden well, 
 He said : "Her kiss; the wine-jug's drowsy spell; 
 
 Eulbul; the roses; death; — all else is naught: 
 
 "So drink till that." —What! drink, because the 
 abyss 
 Of Nothing waits? Because there is for man 
 But one swift hour of consciousness and light? 
 
 No — just because we have no life but this, 
 
 Turn it to use; be noble while you can; 
 Search, help, create ; then pass into the night. 
 
 Eugene Lee- Hamilton 
 
 THE PROBLEM 
 
 I like a church; I like a cowl; 
 I love a prophet of the soul; 
 And on my heart monastic aisles 
 Fall like sweet strains, or pensive smiles: 
 Yet not for all his faith can see 
 Would I that cowled churchman be. 
 Why should the vest on him allure, 
 Which I could not on me endure? 
 
THE PROBLEM 95 
 
 Not from a vain or shallow thought 
 
 His awful Jove young Phidias brought; 
 
 Never from lips of cunning fell 
 
 The thrilling Delphic oracle; 
 
 Out from the heart of Nature rolled 
 
 The burdens of the Bible old; 
 
 The litanies of nations came, 
 
 Like the volcano's tongue of flame, 
 
 Up from the burning core below, — 
 
 The canticles of love and woe: 
 
 The hand that rounded Peter's dome, 
 
 And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, 
 
 Wrought in a sad sincerity; 
 
 Himself from God he could not free; 
 
 He builded better than he knew; — 
 
 The conscious stone to beauty grew. 
 
 Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest 
 
 Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? 
 
 Or how the fish outbuilt her shell. 
 
 Painting with morn each annual cell? 
 
 Or how the sacred pine-tree adds 
 
 To her old leaves new myriads? 
 
 Such and so grew these holy piles, 
 
 Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. 
 
 Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, 
 
 As the best gem upon her zone. 
 
 And Morning opes with haste her lids, 
 
 To gaze upon the Pyramids; 
 
 O'er England's abbeys bends the sky, 
 
 As on its friends, with kindred eye; 
 
 For, out of Thought's interior sphere. 
 
 These wonders rose to upper air; 
 
96 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 And Nature gladly gave them place, 
 Adopted them into her race, 
 And granted them an equal date 
 With Andes and with Ararat. 
 
 These temples grew as grows the grass; 
 
 Art might obey, but not surpass. 
 
 The passive Master lent his hand 
 
 To the vast soul that o*er him planned; 
 
 And the same power that reared the shrine 
 
 Bestrode the tribes that knelt witkin. 
 
 Ever the fiery Pentecost 
 
 Girds with one flame the countless host, 
 
 Trances the heart through chanting choirs, 
 
 And through the priest the mind inspires. 
 
 The word unto the prophet spoken 
 
 Was writ on tables yet unbroken; 
 
 The word by seers or sibyls told. 
 
 In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, 
 
 Still floats upon the morning v/ind, 
 
 Still whispers to the willing mind. 
 
 One accent of the Holy Ghost 
 
 The heedless world hath never lost. 
 
 I know what say the fathers wise, — 
 
 The Book itself before me lies, — 
 
 Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, 
 
 And he who blent both in his line, 
 
 The younger Golden Lips or mines, 
 
 Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines. 
 
 His words are music in my ear, 
 
 I see his cowled portrait dear; 
 
 And yet, for all his faith could see, 
 
 I would not the good bishop be. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 
 
THE PHANTOM CARAVAN 97 
 
 THE PHANTOM CARAVAN 
 
 And if the wine you drink, the lip you press, 
 End in what all begins and ends in — Yes; 
 
 Think then you are To-day what Yesterday 
 You were — To-morrow you shall not be less. 
 
 So when the Angel of the darker drink 
 At last shall find you by the river-brink, 
 And, offering his cup, invite your Soul 
 Forth to your lips to quaff — you shall not shrink. 
 
 Why, if the Soul can fling the dust aside, 
 And naked on the air of Heaven ride, 
 
 Wer't not a shame — wer't not a shame for 
 him 
 In this clay carcase crippled to abide? 
 
 'T is but a tent where takes his one-day's rest 
 A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest; 
 
 The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash 
 Strikes, and prepares it for another guest. 
 
 And fear not lest existence closing your 
 
 Account, and mine, should know the like no more; 
 
 The Eternal Saki from that bowl has pour'd 
 Millions of bubbles like us, and will pour. 
 
 When you and I behind the veil are past, 
 
 Oh but the long long while the world shall last 
 
 Which of our coming and departure heeds 
 As the Sev'n Seas should heed a pebble-cast. 
 
98 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 A moment's halt — a momentary taste 
 Of Being from the well amid the waste — 
 
 And lo I — the phantom caravan has reach' d 
 The Nothing it set out from — Oh, make haste I 
 
 Omar Khayyam 
 Translated by Edward Fitzgerald 
 
 THE MOVING FINGER WRITES 
 
 I sent my soul through the invisible, 
 Some letter of that after-life to spell: 
 
 And by and by my Soul return'd to me, 
 And answer'd : " I myself am Heav'n and Hell." 
 
 Heav'n but the vision of fulfilPd desire, 
 And Hell the shadow of a soul on fire, 
 
 Cast on the darkness into which ourselves, 
 So late emerged from, shall so soon expire. 
 
 We are no other than a moving row 
 
 Of magic shadow-shapes that come and go 
 
 Round with this sun-illumin'd lantern held 
 In midnight by the Master of the Show;- 
 
 Impotent pieces of the game He plays 
 Upon this checker-board of nights and days ; 
 Hither and thither moves, and checks, and 
 slays, 
 And one by one back in the closet lays. 
 
 The ball no question makes of ayes and noes 
 ^But right and left as strikes the Player goes; 
 
 And He that toss'd you down into the field. 
 He knows about it all — He knows — He knows I 
 
NIRVANA 99 
 
 The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ, 
 
 Moves on: nor all your piety nor wit 
 
 Shall lure it back to cancel half a line, 
 
 Nor all your tears wash out a word of it. 
 
 » 
 And that inverted bowl they call the Sky, 
 
 Whereunder crawling coop'd we live and die. 
 
 Lift not your hands to It for help — for It 
 
 As impotently rolls as you or I. 
 
 Omar Khayyam 
 
 Translated by Edward Fitzgerald 
 
 NIRVANA 
 
 Sleep will He give His beloved? 
 Not dreams, but the precious guerdon of deepest 
 rest? 
 Aye, surely 1 Look on the grave-closed eyes. 
 And cold hands folded on tranquil breast. 
 Will not the All-Great be just and forgive? 
 For He knows (though we make no prayer nor 
 cry) 
 How our lone souls ached when our pale star waned. 
 
 How we watch the promiseless sky. 
 Life hereafter? Ah, no : we have lived enough. 
 
 Life eternal? Pray God it may not be so. 
 Have we not suffered and striven, loved and en- 
 dured. 
 Run through the whole wide gamut of passion 
 and woe? 
 
 Strangest illusion I Sprung from a fevered habit of 
 hope — 
 Wild enthusiast's dream of blatant perfection at 
 best 
 
loo SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Give us darkness for anguished eyes, stillness for 
 weary feet, 
 Silence and sleep; but no heaven of glittering, 
 loud unrest. 
 No more the life-long labour of smoothing the 
 stone-strewn way ; 
 No more the shuddering outlook athwart the 
 sterile plain, 
 Where every step we take, every word we say. 
 Each warm, living hand that we cling to, is but a 
 fence against pain. 
 
 And nothing may perish, but lives again? Where? 
 
 Out of thought, out of sight? 
 And where is your cresset*s flame that the rough 
 
 wind slew last night? 
 
 Rosamund Marriott Watson 
 
 STARS IN THE MIST 
 
 I have followed the sins of reckless youth 
 
 With the Devil to time the dance. 
 And farther and farther I drift from Truth 
 
 As the hopeless years advance ; 
 Roimd me and over the mists are spread, 
 
 With the pathway hard to find. 
 And the roar of the flames of Hell ahead 
 
 And the bridges burnt behind. 
 
 But I ask no help of the gods on high, 
 
 On the Devil I will not lean. 
 And I will not drop to my knees, not I, 
 
 For the whole world in between; 
 
ONE PATH loi 
 
 For, a-shirie on the gates of the Future barred, 
 
 Two stars in the darkness move 
 To guide me: the star of a man's regard 
 
 And the star of a woman's love. 
 
 I shall know no doubt, I shall hold no fear, 
 
 I shall suffer and make no sign, 
 As long as those stars in the night burn clear 
 
 And the way of those stars be mine; 
 And I shall go down to the Deep Abyss 
 
 With a scorn of the fears of old 
 If Fortune will leave me that true girPs kiss 
 
 And that true man's hand to hold. 
 
 Will H. Ogilvie 
 
 ONE PATH 
 
 Outside the Earthly Paradise, 
 Beneath its great gold walls, 
 
 I walk a little, grass-blurred path 
 Where simlight seldom falls. 
 
 I try no more the guarded gates 
 
 That will not let me in; 
 I cease to wonder what the cause, 
 
 What accident, or sin. 
 
 I walk the lonely path that's mine, 
 
 My heart and I employ 
 Our solitude in songs that hymn 
 
 The near-by Kingdom's joy. 
 
 And once while singing thus, we heard 
 Far-off and friendly cries 
 
102 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 And saw, high up, our happy kin, 
 Love in their lovely eyes. 
 
 Then on alone ! . . . Where leads my path 
 
 Or ends I can not tell; 
 Outside the Earthly Paradise 
 
 I know, — but that is well. 
 
 William Alexander Percy 
 
 KRITERION 
 
 I see the spire, 
 
 I see the throng, 
 I hear the choir, 
 I hear the song; 
 I listen to the anthem, while 
 It pours its volume down the aisle; 
 I listen to the splendid rhyme 
 That, with a melody sublime. 
 Tells of some far-off, fadeless clime — 
 Of man and his finality. 
 Of hope, and immortality. 
 
 Oh, theme of themes! 
 Are men mistaught? 
 Are hopes like dreams, 
 To come to naught? 
 Is all the beautiful and good 
 Delusive and misunderstood? 
 
 And has the soul no forward reach?, 
 And do indeed the facts impeach 
 The theories the teachers teach? 
 And is this immortality 
 Delusion or reality? 
 
NOTHINGNESS 103 
 
 What hope reveals 
 
 Mind tries to clasp, 
 But soon it reels 
 With broken grasp. 
 No chain yet forged on anvil's brink 
 Was stronger than its weakest link; 
 And are there not along this chain 
 Imperfect links that snap in twain 
 When caught in ^gic's tensile strain? 
 And is not immortality 
 The child of ideality? 
 
 And yet — at times — 
 
 We get advice 
 That seems like chimes 
 From paradise; 
 The soul doth sometimes seem to be 
 In sunshine which it cannot see; 
 At times the spirit seems to roam 
 Beyond the land, above the foam, 
 Back to some half-forgotten home. 
 Perhaps — this immortality 
 May be indeed reality. 
 
 Eugene F. Ware 
 
 NOTHINGNESS 
 
 Behind the hosts of suns and stars, behind 
 The rushing of the chariots of the wind, 
 Behind all noises and all shapes of things. 
 And men and deeds — behind the blaze of kiags. 
 Princes and paladins and potentates — 
 An immense, solitary Spectre waits. 
 
T04 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 It has no shape : it has no sound : it has 
 No place : it has no time : it is, and was, 
 And will be : it is never more nor less, 
 Nor glad, nor sad. Its name is Nothingness. 
 Power walketh high: and Misery doth crawl: 
 And the clepsydra drips : and the sands fall 
 Down in the hour-glass: and the shadows sweep 
 Around the dial: and men wake, and sleep. 
 Live, strive, regret, forget, and love, and hate, 
 And know it not. This spectre saith: "I wait." 
 And at last it beckons, and they pass. 
 And still the red sands fall within the glass: 
 And still the shades around the dial sweep: 
 And still the water-clock doth drip and weep : 
 And this is alL 
 
 Owen Meredith 
 
 THE AWAKENING 
 
 I 
 
 Outward from the planets are blown the fumes of 
 
 thought, 
 And the breath of prayer drifts out and makes a 
 mist between the stars; 
 
 The void shall be void no longer, 
 And the caverns of infinity shall be fulfilled of 
 spirit; 
 
 For in the wilderness between the worlds a sen- 
 tience struggles to awaken, 
 
 Passions and ghosts and visions gather into a 
 Form. 
 
THE AWAKENING 105 
 
 The God that we have worshipped for a million 
 
 years begins to be, 
 And he whom we have prayed to creates himself 
 
 out of the stuff of our prayers. 
 
 His wings are still heavy with chaos, 
 And his piciions are holden down as with a weight of 
 slumber; 
 
 His face is ambiguous, 
 
 His countenance is uncertain behind the veils of 
 space; 
 
 He has not speech, 
 
 He has but only thunder for his voice; 
 
 But the mornings gather to shape his eye, 
 And the fire of many dawns has thrilled his twilight 
 with a prescience of vision. 
 
 n 
 
 From myriad altars a reek of incense, 
 And outward from the constellations there leaps 
 the flame of burning prophets; 
 
 There goes forth the breath of lovely purpose, 
 As a south wind bearing seeds over a meadow it 
 goes forth across the firmament; 
 
 There arises a dew from the bruised foreheads of 
 
 martyrs, 
 And the broken hearts of the just, of them that have 
 
 loved justice, are dissolved into a bloody 
 
 dew; 
 
io6 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Out from the populated spheres a mist, 
 And from the peopled worlds a breeding fog: 
 
 And in the mist a God gathers unto Himself Form, 
 
 and apparels himself in Being; 
 For they that have desired a God create him from 
 
 the stuff of that desire. 
 
 in 
 
 In the nebular chasms there is a shaping soul, 
 And a light begins to glow in the dark abyss; 
 
 That which is to be draws to itself what has been 
 
 and what is. 
 He drinks up the hopes of them that were as a sun 
 
 sucks up water; 
 
 He builds himself out of the desperate faith of 
 
 them that have sought him, 
 And his face shall be wrought of the wish to see his 
 
 face. 
 
 Man has lifted his voice unto the hollow sky and 
 there was no answer but the echo of his voice, 
 But out of many echoes there shall grow a word. 
 
 There is a cry from the peaks of Caucasus, 
 From the throat of Prometheus a hoarse shout of 
 agony and courage and defiance ; 
 
 Answer, O you stars I and make reply, you rushing 
 
 worlds ! 
 Have you not always chained your Titans where 
 
 the vultures scream about the bloodied 
 
 rocks 
 
THE AWAKENING 107 
 
 Have you not thrust your beaks into the livers of 
 them that loved you? 
 
 There is a cry goes forth from all the stars, 
 The voice of rebels and great lovers; 
 
 Out of agonies and love shall God be made, 
 
 He is wrought of cries that meet between the 
 
 worlds, 
 Of seeking cries that have come forth from the 
 
 cruel spheres to find a God and be stilled. 
 
 Answer, you populations. 
 
 And make reply, you planets that are red in space: 
 Do not ten thousand broken Christs this hour cry 
 their despair? 
 
 Are not Golgothas shaken this hour and the suns 
 
 shamed? 
 Goes there not forth a manifold wailing of them 
 
 that cry; 
 "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 
 
 These cries have wandered out along the waste 
 
 places. 
 And these despairs have met in the wilderness of 
 
 chaos, 
 And they have wrought a God; 
 
 For he builds himself of the passion of martyrs, 
 And he is woven of the ecstasy of great lovers. 
 And he is wrought of the anguish of- them that have 
 greatly needed him, 
 
 Don Marquis 
 
io8 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 THE KASIDAH 
 ( The Lay of the Higher Law) 
 
 Do what thy manhood bids thee do, from none but 
 
 self expect applause; 
 He noblest lives and noblest dies who makes and 
 
 keeps his self-made laws. 
 
 All other Life is living Death, a world where none 
 
 but Phantoms dwell, 
 A breath, a wind, a sound, a voice, a tinkling of the 
 
 camel's-bell. 
 
 And, glancing down the range of years, fear not thy 
 
 future self to see; 
 Resigned to life, to death resigned, as though the 
 
 choice were naught to thee. 
 
 Pluck the old woman from thy breast; Be stout in 
 
 woe, be stark in weal; 
 Do good for Good is good to do: Spurn bribe of 
 
 Heav'n and threat of Hell. 
 
 To seek the True, to glad the heart, such is of life 
 
 the HIGHER LAW, 
 Whose difference is the Man's degree, the Man of 
 
 gold, the Man of straw. 
 
 See not that something in Mankind that rouses 
 
 hate or scorn or strife, 
 Better the worm of Izrail than Death that walks in 
 
 form of Life. 
 
THE KASIDAH 109 
 
 Survey thy kind as One whose wants in the great 
 
 Human Whole unite; 
 The Homo rising high from earth to seek the 
 
 Heav'ns of Life-in-Light; 
 
 And hold Humanity one man, whose universal 
 
 agony 
 Still strains and strives to gain the goal, where 
 
 agonies shall cease to be. 
 
 Believe in all things; none believe; judge not nor 
 
 warp by "Facts" the thought; 
 See clear, hear clear, tho' life may seem Maya and 
 
 Mirage, Dream and Naught. 
 
 Abjure the Why and seek the How: the God and 
 
 gods enthroned on high 
 Are silent all, are silent still; nor hear thy voice, nor 
 
 deign reply. 
 
 • • • 
 
 Perchance the law some Giver hath : Let be I let be I 
 
 what canst thou know? 
 A myriad races came and went; this Sphinx hath 
 
 seen them come and go. 
 
 Haply the Law that rules the world allows to man 
 
 the widest range; 
 And haply Fate 's a Theist-word, subject to human 
 
 chance and change. 
 
 This " I " may find a future life, a nobler copy of our 
 
 own, 
 Where every riddle shall be ree'd, where every 
 
 knowledge shall be known; 
 
no SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Where 'twill be man's to see the whole of what on 
 
 Earth he sees in part; 
 Where change shall ne'er surcharge the thought; 
 
 ttor hope defer'd shall hurt the heart. 
 
 But! — faded flower and fallen leaf no more shall 
 
 deck the parent tree ; 
 And man once dropt by Tree of Life what hope of 
 
 mother life has he? 
 
 The shatter'd bowl shall know repair; the riven lute 
 
 shall sound once more ; 
 But who shall mend the clay of man, the stolen 
 
 breath to man restore? 
 
 The shiver'd clock again shall strike; the broken 
 
 reed shall pipe again : 
 But we, we die, and Death is one, the doom of 
 
 brutes, the doom of men. 
 
 Then, if Nirwana round our life with nothingness, 
 
 'tis haply best; 
 
 Thy toils and troubles, want and woe at length have 
 
 won their guerdon — Rest. 
 • • • 
 
 Wend now thy way with brow serene, fear not thy 
 
 humble tale to tell : — 
 The whispers of the Desert-wind; the Tinkling of 
 
 the camel's-bell. 
 
 Sir Richard Burton 
 
DISSOLUTION III 
 
 DISSOLUTION 
 
 If he may come for me; 
 
 If, when the ebbing tide runs out to sea, 
 
 He'll come from out the gloom, once more, and 
 
 stand 
 There, close beside me, holding out his hand; 
 If I may see, ere blackness closes in, 
 The reassurance of his boyish grin — 
 I shall have grace to smile on those who weep, 
 And close my eyes in sleep. 
 
 If he will speak my name, 
 
 It will not be as though Death's Angel came. 
 
 Stern-eyed and winged with flame, to take me 
 
 home — 
 For there are purple hills we loved to roam; 
 We knew calm streams with shoals where fishes 
 
 spawn. 
 And sunsets' fires and bugles of the dawn, 
 And tranquil pools, inviting us to swim — 
 So, I would welcome him. 
 
 I would not that my eyes 
 
 Should see him in the garb of Paradise, 
 
 Serene and radiant, with the earthly clay 
 
 By fires of tribulation burned away, 
 
 A splendid spirit, bright and purified; 
 
 Nor with the smile that came the day he died — 
 
 That strange, high smile of cold austerity; 
 
 I pray this may not be. 
 
 I hope he may not speak 
 
 Some august, sounding summons to the weak 
 
112 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 And frightened spirit. Let his battered creel 
 Be slung and in his hand his rod and reel. 
 So let me see him stand there, kind and fat, 
 With grizzled hair and trout-flies in his hat, 
 And, bending, grin and slap my back and say: 
 "Come, son; they'll rise to-day!'* 
 
 Frederic F. Van de Water 
 
 "UNTO THE LEAST OF THESE" 
 
 The Lord was teaching folk by the sea shore; 
 His voice had quelled the storm, it raged no 
 
 more; 
 His word was like a balm, and did impart 
 Joy to the righteous, hope to the broken heart. 
 "Whoso shall love me perfectly," said He, 
 "Shall look upon my Father and on Me." 
 And people listened humbly to His Word. 
 
 Now on the outer side of them that heard, 
 A certain woman, leading by the hand 
 Her child, had halted, passing on that way. 
 And hearkening for a while the twain did stand. 
 She had grown old with gleaning, and that day 
 The load she carried was of straw, not wheat. 
 And all her mother's heart heaved full of sighs; 
 But lo, the boy was rosy-hued and sweet; 
 A fair, small child he was, with smiling eyes 
 That shamed the miserable rags he wore. 
 The child said : " Mother, who speaks there on 
 
 the shore?" 
 " Child, 't is a prophet : holy laws they be 
 He gives to men." 
 
"HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP" 113 
 
 "I wish that I could see 
 The prophet, mother." And the child strove 
 
 hard, 
 Stood on tiptoe, and pressed to find a breach 
 In the thick crowd; but many tall folk barred 
 And hemmed him in, so that he could not 
 
 reach 
 To look upon the Master whose kind speech 
 Wrought in his ear. Then, eager still, he cried: 
 **I should behold him, mother dear, if thou 
 Wouldst lift me in thine arms." 
 
 But she replied, 
 "Child, I am tired; I cannot lift thee now." 
 Then a great sadness came upon the child 
 And tears stood in the eyes that lately smiled. 
 
 But Jesus, walking through the crowd, drew 
 
 near 
 E'en to the child and said, "Lo, — I am here." 
 
 Arthur O'Shaughnessy 
 
 "HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP" 
 
 The long day passes with its load of sorrow: 
 
 In slumber deep 
 I lay me down to rest until to-morrow — 
 
 Thank God for sleep. 
 
 Thank God for all respite from weary toiling, 
 
 From cares that creep 
 Across our lives like evil shadows, spoiling 
 
 God's kindly sleep. 
 
114 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 We plough and sow, and, as the hours grow 
 later. 
 
 We strive to reap. 
 And build our bams, and hope to build them 
 greater 
 Before we sleep. 
 
 We toil and strain and strive with one another 
 
 In hopes to heap 
 Some greater share of profit than our brother 
 
 Before we sleep. 
 
 What will it profit that with tears or laughter 
 
 Our watch we keep? 
 Beyond it all there lies the Great Hereafter — 
 
 Thank God for sleep ! 
 
 For, at the last, beseeching Christ to save us, 
 
 We turn with deep. 
 Heart-felt thanksgiving unto God who gave us 
 
 The Gift of Sleep. 
 
 Major A. B. Paierson 
 
 THE HILLS OF REST 
 
 Beyond the last horizon's rim. 
 
 Beyond adventure's farthest quest, 
 
 Somewhere they rise, serene and dim, 
 The happy, happy Hills of Rest. 
 
 Upon their sunlit slopes uplift 
 
 The castles we have built in Spain — 
 
 While fair amid the summer drift 
 Our faded gardens flower again. 
 
"BAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL" 115 
 
 Sweet hours we did not live go by 
 To soothing note, on scented wing; 
 
 In golden-lettered volumes lie 
 
 The songs we tried in vain to sing. 
 
 They all are there: the days of dream 
 That build the inner lives of men; 
 
 The silent, sacred years we deem 
 
 The might be, and the might have been. 
 
 Some evening when the sky is gold 
 
 I'll follow day into the west; 
 Nor pause, nor heed, till I behold 
 
 The happy, happy Hills of Rest. 
 
 Albert Bigelow Paine 
 
 "BAREST THOU NOW, O SOUL" 
 
 Barest thou now, O soul. 
 
 Walk out with me toward the unknown region, 
 Where neither ground is foi the feet nor any path to 
 follow? 
 
 No map there, nor guide. 
 
 Nor voice sounding, nor touch of human hand, 
 Nor face with blooming flesh, nor lips, nor eyes, are 
 in that land. 
 
 I know it not, O soul! 
 Nor dost thou, all is a blank before us, — 
 All waits undreamed of in that region, that inacces- 
 sible land. 
 
ii6 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Till when the tie is loosened, 
 All but the ties eternal, Time and Space, 
 Nor darkness, gravitation, sense, nor any bounds 
 bounding us — 
 
 Then we burst forth, we float. 
 In Time and Space, O soul! prepared for them. 
 Equal, equipped at last, — O joy! O fruit of all! — 
 them to fulfill, O soul! 
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 "WHEN THE TIME FOR PARTING 
 COMES'* 
 
 When the time for parting comes, and the day is on 
 
 the wane. 
 And the silent evening darkens over hill and over 
 
 plain, 
 And earth holds no more sorrow, no more grief, and 
 
 no more pain. 
 Shall we weary for the battle and the strife? 
 
 When at last the trail is ending, and the stars are 
 growing near. 
 
 And we breathe the breath of conquest, and the 
 voices that we hear 
 
 Are the great companions' voices that have hal- 
 lowed year on year. 
 Shall we know an instant's grieving as we pass? 
 
 Shall we pause a fleeting moment ere we grasp the 
 
 eager hands. 
 Take one last long look of wonder at the dimming of 
 
 the lands, 
 
EPITAPH 117 
 
 Love the earth one glowing moment ere we pass 
 from its demands, 
 Cull all beauty in its essence as we gaze? 
 
 Or with not one backward longing shall we leap the 
 
 last abyss, 
 Scale the highest crags glad-hearted, fearful only 
 
 lest the bliss 
 Of an earth-remembering instant should delay the 
 great sun's kiss — 
 Consuming us within the splendor of the flame? 
 Dorothea Lawrance Mann 
 
 EPITAPH 
 
 That my great friend should lie 
 
 Blind to the morning sky. 
 
 The bold, persistent glory of the sun; 
 
 That men should say, 
 
 "Brave was his day, 
 
 Yet now his day is done,*' 
 
 Is the true grief I bear . . . 
 
 Not for my selfish share 
 
 In his keen mind, high heart, courageous 
 
 Ufe; 
 Sorrow he may not be 
 With earth's bright revelry, 
 In love, in strife. 
 
 Yet, while abiding here, 
 
 He left with me good cheer, 
 
 Calmly he met the darkness and the end; 
 
ii8 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 So on his tomb I lay 
 The wealth of yesterday, 
 That none may spend. 
 
 Henry Herbert Knihbs 
 
 HIS OWNE EPITAPH 
 
 Eternal rest on him bestowe, 
 O Lord, and everlastynge light, 
 Who lacked withal for sup or bite, 
 
 Shorn close on scalp and chin and browe. 
 
 Who was scrap't bare and smooth, I trowe 
 As any turnip round, poor wighte: 
 
 Eternal rest on him bestowe. 
 
 Hard doome befell him here belowe. 
 Drove forth and smote him in sore spite. 
 Though "I appeal!" he cried with mighte, 
 
 A form of speech that *s playne enowe; 
 
 Eternal rest on him bestowe. 
 
 Frangois Villon 
 Translated by Wilfrid Thorley 
 
 THE FLIGHT 
 
 Upon a cloud among the stars we stood : 
 The angel raised his hand, and looked, and said, 
 " Which world, of all yon starry myriad 
 Shall we make wing to?" The still soUtude 
 Became a harp whereon his voice and mood 
 Made spheral music round his haloed head. 
 I spake — for then I had not long been dead — 
 "Let me look round upon the vasts, and brood 
 A moment on these orbs ere I decide. . . . 
 
A QUESTION 119 
 
 What is yon lower star that beauteous shines 
 And with soft splendor now incarnadines 
 Our wings? — There would I go and there abide." 
 Then he, as one who some child's thought divines: 
 "That is the world where yesternight you died." 
 
 Lloyd Mifflin 
 
 A QUESTION 
 
 See proud monuments of every shape and size, 
 Or deep in earth, or soaring to the skies, 
 Scattered profusely over Earth's broad crust, 
 Fair, hollow caskets holding naught but Dust. 
 
 'T is strange how hard Men strive 
 
 To keep alive, 
 
 Tn every age and under every clime, 
 
 The memory of the Dead; 
 
 Or from the gnawing tooth of Time, 
 
 Save the frail body, whence that Life has fled. 
 
 Is it Men feel that Death is something real? 
 Something that will endure, — and are they sure 
 That after Death's sharp pain they rest, — 
 Nor dream another Life's tumultuous Dream 
 again? 
 
 If Man, instead of dying, at once flies 
 
 To happier worlds and fairer skies, 
 
 Why, then, proud monuments of every shape and 
 
 size? 
 Why mournful sables and sad weeping eyes? 
 
 Elihu Vedder 
 
120 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 THE SCEPTICS 
 It was the little leaves beside the road: 
 
 Said Grass, "What is that sound 
 
 So dismally profound, 
 
 That detonates and desolates the air?" 
 
 "That is St. Peter's bell," 
 
 Said rain- wise Pimpernel; 
 
 "He is music to the godly, 
 
 Though to us he sounds so oddly, 
 
 And he terrifies the faithful unto prayer." 
 
 Then something very like a groan 
 Escaped the naughty little leaves. 
 
 Said Grass, "And whither track 
 
 These creatures all in black. 
 
 So woebegone and penitent and meek?" 
 
 "They're mortals bound for church," 
 
 Said the little Silver Birch; 
 
 "They hope to get to heaven 
 
 And have their sins forgiven. 
 
 If they talk to God about it once a week." 
 
 And something very like a smile 
 Ran through the naughty little leaves. 
 
 Said Grass, "What is that noise 
 
 That startles and destroys 
 
 Our blessed summer — brooding when 
 
 we're tired?" 
 "That's folk a-praising God," 
 Said the tough old cynic Clod; 
 
lO VICTIS" 121 
 
 "They do it every Sunday, 
 
 They'll be all right on Monday; 
 
 It's just a little habit they've acquired." 
 
 And laughter spread among the little leaves. 
 
 Bliss Carman 
 
 "10 VICTIS" 
 
 I sing the hj'mn of the conquered, who fell in the 
 
 Battle of Life, — 
 The hymn of the wounded, the beaten, who died 
 
 overwhelmed in the strife; 
 Not the jubilant song of the victors, for whom the 
 
 resounding acclaim 
 Of nations was lifted in chorus, whose brows wore 
 
 the chaplet of fame, — 
 But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, 
 
 the broken in heart. 
 Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent 
 
 and desperate part; 
 Whose youth bore no flower on its branches, whose 
 
 hopes burned in ashes away, 
 From whose hands slipped the prize they had 
 
 grasped at, who stood at the dying of day 
 With the wreck of their life all around them, un- 
 
 pitied, unheeded, alone. 
 With Death sweeping down o'er their failure, and 
 
 all but their faith overthrown. 
 
 While the voice of the world shouts its chorus. — 
 its paean for those who have won; 
 
 While the trumpet is sounding triumphant, and 
 hijrh to the breeze and the sun 
 
122 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Glad banners are waving, hands clapping, and 
 hurrying feet 
 
 Thronging after the laurel-crowned victors, I stand 
 on the field of defeat — 
 
 In the shadow, with those who have fallen, and 
 wounded, and dying, and there 
 
 Chant a requiem low, place my hand on their pain- 
 knotted brows, breathe a prayer. 
 
 Hold the hand that is helpless, and whisper, 
 "They only the victory win. 
 
 Who have fought the good fight, and have van- 
 quished the demon that tempts us within; 
 
 Who have held to their faith unseduced by the 
 prize that the world holds on high; 
 
 Who have dared for a high cause to suffer, resist, 
 fight, — if need be, to die." 
 
 Speak, History! Who are Life's victors? Unroll 
 thy long annals, and say. 
 
 Are they those whom the world called the victors — 
 who won the success of a day? 
 
 The martyrs, or Nero? The Spartans who fell at 
 Thermopylae's tryst. 
 
 Or the Persians and Xerxes? His judges or Socra- 
 tes? Pilate or Christ? 
 
 William Wetmore Story 
 
 VILLON'S REGRETS 
 
 Francois Villon, being about to die, a worthy friar would 
 fain have shriven him, and did earnestly exhort him to 
 confess those acts of his life which he did regret. Villon 
 bade him return again when he might have had time to 
 
VILLON»S REGRETS 123 
 
 bethink him of his sins. Upon the good father's return, 
 Villon was dead; but by his side were the following verses, 
 his last, wherein he set forth those things which he did 
 regret. 
 
 I, FRANpOIS VILLON, ta'en at last 
 To the rude bed where all must lie, 
 Fain would forget the turbid past 
 And lay me down in peace and die. 
 Would I be shrived? Ah — can I tell? 
 My sins but trifles seem to be. 
 Nor worth the dignity of Hell; 
 If not, then ill avails it me 
 To count them one and all — and yet — 
 There be some things which I regret! 
 
 The sack of abbeys, many a brawl, 
 A score of knife-thrusts in the dark, 
 Forced oft by Fate against the wall, 
 And years in prison, cold and stark — 
 These crimes and pains seem far away 
 Now that I come at length to die; 
 'T is idle for the Past to pray, 
 'Tis hopeless for the Past to sigh; 
 These are a troubled dream — and yet 
 For them I have but scant regret I 
 
 The toil my mother had to know 
 What years I lay in gyves for debt; 
 A pretty song heard years ago. 
 When, I know not; where, I forget; 
 The crust I once kept for my own 
 (Though all too scant for my poor use) ; 
 
124 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 The friend I left to die alone, 
 
 (Perdie! The watchmen pressed us close!) 
 
 Trifles against my crimes to set I 
 
 Yet these are all which I regret. 
 
 Captains and cutthroats not a few, 
 And maidens fair of many a clime 
 Have named me friend in the wild past 
 Whenas we wallowed in the slime; 
 Gamblers and rogues and clever thieves, 
 And unfrocked priests, a sorry crew — 
 (How stubbornly the memory cleaves 
 To all who have befriended you!) 
 I drain a cup to them, and yet — 
 Not these the friends whom I regret ! 
 
 My foundered horse, who died for me 
 (Nor whip nor spur were his, I ween !) 
 That day the hangman looked to see 
 Poor Villon earth and sky between I 
 A mongrel cur who shared my lot 
 Three bitter winters on the Isle: 
 He held the rabble off, God wot ! 
 One time I cheated in the deal. 
 *T was but an instant, but I fled 
 Down a vile alley known to me — 
 There in the garbage he lay dead ; 
 The gamblers raged — but I was free ! 
 Humble, poor brutes at best; and yet — 
 They are the friends whom I regret 1 
 
 And once the lilies were a-blow 
 Through all the sunny fields of France; 
 
VILLON»S REGRETS 125 
 
 I marked one whiter than the snow, 
 And would have gathered it, perchance, 
 Had not some trifle I forget, 
 A Bishop's loot, a cask of wine 
 Purloined from some auberge — a bet — 
 Distracted this wild head of mine; 
 A childish fancy this, and yet — 
 It is this thing which I regret. 
 
 Again, I rode through Picardy 
 What time the vine was in the bud; 
 A little maiden smiled on me, 
 I might have kissed her, an* I would ! 
 I We known a thousand maidens since, 
 And many have been kind to me — 
 I've never seen one quite so fair 
 As she, that day in Picardy; 
 Ashes of roses these, and yet — 
 They are the things which I regret. 
 
 One perfect lily grew for me, 
 
 And blossomed on another's breast; 
 
 Others have clasped the little hands 
 
 Whose rosy palms I might have pressed : 
 
 So as I die, my wasted youth 
 
 Mocks my dim eyes and fading breath — • 
 
 Still, I have lived ! And having lived 
 
 That much is mine — I mock at Death. 
 
 I should confess, you say. But yet — 
 
 Only for Life have I regret I 
 
 L'ENVOI 
 O bubbles of the vanished wine 
 To which my lips were never seil 
 
126 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 O lips that dimpled close to mine, 
 Whose ruddy warmth I never met! 
 Father, poor trifles these, and yet — 
 They are the things which I regret I 
 
 John D, Swain 
 
 A DEAD MARCH 
 
 Play me a march, low-toned and slow — a march 
 
 for a silent tread, 
 Fit for the wandering feet of one who dreams of the 
 
 silent dead, 
 Lonely, between the bones below and the souls that 
 
 are overhead. 
 
 Here for a while they smiled and sang, alive in the 
 
 interspace, 
 Here with the grass beneath the foot, and the stars 
 
 above the face. 
 Now are their feet beneath the grass, and whither 
 
 has flown their grace? 
 
 Who shall assure us whence they come, or tell us 
 
 the way they go? 
 Verily, life with them was joy and, now they have 
 
 left us, woe. 
 Once they were not, and now they are not, and this 
 
 is the simi we know. 
 
 Orderly range the seasons due, and orderly roll the 
 
 stars. 
 How shall we deem the soldier brave who frets of 
 
 his wounds and scars? 
 Are we as senseless brutes that we should dash at 
 
 the well-seen bars? 
 
A DEAD MARCH 127 
 
 No, we are here, with feet unfixed, but ever as if 
 
 with lead. 
 Drawn from the orbs which shine above to the orb 
 
 on which we tread, 
 Down to the dust from which we came and with 
 
 which we shall mingle dead. 
 
 No, we are here to wait, and work, and strain our 
 
 banished eyes, 
 Weary and sick of soil and toil, and hungry and 
 
 fain for skies. 
 Far from the reach of wingless men, and not to be 
 
 scaled with cries. 
 
 No, we are here to bend our necks to the yoke of 
 
 tyrant Time, 
 Welcoming all the gifts he gives us — glories of 
 
 youth and prime. 
 Patiently watching them all depart as our heads 
 
 grow white as rime. 
 
 Why do we mourn the days that go — for the same 
 
 sun shines each day. 
 Ever a Spring her primrose hath, and ever a May 
 
 her may; 
 Sweet as the rose that died last year is the rose that 
 
 is born to-day. 
 
 Do we not, too, return, we men, as ever the roimd 
 
 earth whirls? 
 Never a head is dimmed with gray but another is 
 
 sunned with curls ; 
 She was a girl and he was a boy, but yet there are 
 
 boys and girls. 
 
128 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Ah, but alas ! for the smile of smiles that never but 
 
 one face wore; 
 Ah, for the voice that has flown away like a bird to 
 
 an unseen shore; 
 Ah, for the face — the flower of flowers — that 
 
 blossoms on earth no more. 
 
 Cosmo Monkhouse 
 
 THE PIPES O' GORDON'S MEN 
 
 Home comes a lad with the bonny hair, 
 
 And the kilted plaid that the hill-clans wear; 
 
 And you hear the mother say : 
 
 "Whear ha* ye ben, wee Laddie; whear ha' ye ben 
 
 th' day?" 
 "O! I ha' ben wi' Gordon's men; 
 Dinna ye hear th' bagpipes play? 
 And I followed th' soldiers across th' green, 
 And doon th' road tae Aberdeen. 
 And when I 'm a mon, my Mither, 
 And th' Hielanders parade, 
 I'll be marchin' there, wi' my fejrther's pipes, 
 And I '11 wear th' red cockade." 
 
 Beneath the Soudan's sky ye ken the smoke, 
 As the clans reply when the tribesmen spoke. 
 Then the charge roars by! 
 The death-sweat cUngs to the kilted form that the 
 
 stretcher brings, 
 And the iron-nerved surgeons say : 
 "Whear ha' ye ben, my Laddie; whear ha' ye ben 
 
 th' day?" 
 "O, I ha' ben wi* Gordon's men; 
 
AT THE TOP OF THE ROAD 129 
 
 Dinna ye hear th* bagpipes play? 
 An' I piped th* clans from the river barge 
 Across the sands, an* through the charge. 
 An* I — skirled — th' pibroch — keen — an* high, 
 But th* pipes — ben broke — an* — my — lips — 
 ben — dry.** 
 
 CORONACH 
 Upon the hill-side, high and steep, 
 Where rank on rank the soldiers sleep, — ' 
 Where the silent cannons beside the path. 
 Point the last forced-march that the soldier 
 
 hath, — 
 Where the falling grave-grass has partly hid 
 The round-shot, heaped in a pyramid — 
 A white stone rises ; across its face 
 You can read the words that the chisels trace : 
 "Whear ha* ye ben, wee Laddie; whear ha* ye 
 
 ben th* day?** 
 "O, I ha* ben wi* Gordon's men; 
 Dinna ye hear th* bagpipes play?** 
 
 y. Scott Glasgow 
 
 AT THE TOP OF THE ROAD 
 
 "But, Lord,** she said, "my shoulders still are 
 
 strong — 
 I have been used to bear the load so long; 
 
 "And see, the hill is passed, and smooth the 
 
 road . . .*» 
 f'Yet/' said the Stranger, "yield me now thy 
 
 load,'* 
 
130 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Gently he took it from^her, and she stood 
 Straight-lknbed and lithe, in new-found maiden- 
 hood, 
 
 Amid long, sunlit fields ; around them sprang 
 A tender breeze, and birds and rivers sang. 
 
 "My Lord,** she said, "the land is very fair!** 
 Smiling, he answered: ^*Was it not so there?" 
 
 "There?** In her voice a wondering question lay: 
 "Was I not always here, then, as to-day?** 
 
 He turned to her with strange, deep eyes aflame: 
 " Knowest thou not this kingdom, nor my name?" 
 
 "Nay,** she replied: "but this I understand — 
 That thou art Lord of Life in this dear land I** 
 
 " Yea, child," he murmured, scarce above his 
 
 breath: 
 **Lord of the Land! but men have named me 
 
 Death.". 
 
 Charles Buxton Going 
 
 AFTERWARDS 
 
 I know that these poor rags of womanhood, — 
 This oaten pipe, whereon the wild winds played 
 Making sad music, — tattered and outfrayed. 
 Cast off, played out, — can hold no more of 
 
 good. 
 Of love, or song, or sense of sun and shade. 
 
WHEN SHE CAME TO GLORY 131 
 
 What homely neighbors elbow me (hard by 
 'Neath the black yews) I know I shall not know, 
 Nor take account of changing winds that blow, 
 Shifting the golden arrow, set on high 
 On the gray spire, nor mark who come and go. 
 
 Yet would I lie in some familiar place. 
 
 Nor share my rest with uncongenial dead, — 
 
 Somewhere, maybe, where friendly feet will 
 
 tread, — 
 As if from oiit some little chink of space 
 Mine eyes might see them tripping overhead. 
 
 And though too sweet to deck a sepulcher 
 Seem twinkling daisy-buds and meadow-grass; 
 And so would more than serve me, lest they pass 
 Who fain would know what woman rested there, 
 What her demeanor, or her story was, — 
 
 For these I would that on a sculptured stone 
 (Fenced 'round with iron work to keep secure) 
 Should sleep a form with folded palms demure. 
 In aspect like the dreamer that was gone. 
 With these words carved: "/ hoped, but was 
 not sure" 
 
 Violet Fane 
 
 WHEN SHE CAME TO GLORY 
 
 Nay, loose my hand and let me go ! 
 God's glories pierce and frighten. 
 I want my house, my fires, my bread, 
 My sheets to wash and whiten. 
 
132 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I liked the dusty roads of earth, 
 The brambles and the roaming; 
 I liked the flowers that used to fade, 
 The small lamp in the gloaming. 
 
 The fields of God, they blind my eyes. 
 Dread is this heavenly tillage. 
 I want the sweet, lost homeliness 
 Of the door-yards of our village. 
 
 Where are the accustomed, common 
 
 things — 
 The cups we drank together; 
 The old shoes that he laced for me, 
 The cape for rainy weather? 
 
 Dear were our stimibling, hum&D. ways, 
 His words* impetuous flurry, 
 His tossed hair, the kind, anxious brow, 
 His steps' too-eager hurry. 
 
 O tall archangel with such wings, 
 Your beauty is too burning ! 
 Give me once more my threadbare dress 
 And the soimd of his feet returning. 
 
 Florence Wilkinson Evans 
 
 HERACLITUS 
 
 They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were 
 
 dead, 
 They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter 
 
 tears to shed. 
 
"TIS ALL AND NOTHING" 133 
 
 I wept as I rememberM how often you and I 
 Had tired the sun with talking and sent him down 
 the sky. 
 
 And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian 
 
 guest, 
 A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest, 
 Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, 
 
 awake ; 
 For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot 
 
 take. 
 
 William Johnson Cory 
 
 "'TIS ALL AND NOTHING" 
 
 Writ on a ruined palace in Kashmir : 
 "The end is nothing, and the end is near." 
 
 Where are the voices kings were glad to hear ? 
 Where now the feast, the song, the bayadere? 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 And yonder lovely rose; alas! my dear! 
 See the November garden, rank and drear. 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 See! how the rain-drop mingles with the mere, 
 Mark! how the age devours each passing year. 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 Forms rise and grow and wane and disappear. 
 The life allotted thee is now and here: — 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
134 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Then vex thyself no more with thought austere 
 Take what thou canst while thou abidest here. ^ 
 Seek finer pleasures each returning year : — 
 The end is nothing, and the end is near. 
 
 • • • 
 
 Joy is the Lord, and Love His charioteer; 
 Be tranquil and rejoicing; oh, my dear! 
 Shun the wild seas, far from the breakers steer; 
 The end is Vision, and the end is near. 
 
 Ah! banish hope and doubt, regret and fear. 
 Check the gay laugh, but dry the idle tear. 
 Search! Is the light within thee burning clear? 
 The end is Vision and the end is near. 
 
 List to the wisdom learned of saint and seer! 
 The living Lord is joy, and peace His sphere; 
 Rebel no more! throw down thy shield and spear. 
 Surrender all thyself; true life is here ; 
 The end is Vision, and the end is near. 
 
 Forget not this, forget not that, my dear! 
 'T is all and nothing, and the^end is near. 
 
 Anonymous 
 
 "HINC NOSTRflS LACRIM^" 
 
 'T was ever so — 
 
 The young, the beautiful, the brave — 
 
 Are first to go ! 
 
 T^e halt and blind 
 
 In all the days and ages gone 
 
 Kemain behind 1 
 
BREAKING THE SILENCE 135 
 
 They venture far 
 
 Who gird at fate and death to gain 
 
 The blazing star I 
 
 Yet shall they glow- 
 In constellations vast, above 
 The earthly show I 
 
 So rest our tears 
 
 To nouriEh memories green 
 
 l^hrough waiting years, 
 
 While in the sky 
 
 Shine they forever in^the golden light 
 
 Who dared to die \ 
 
 Don C, Seitz 
 
 BREAKING THE SILENCE 
 
 If I should fall asleep one day, 
 
 All overworn, 
 And should my spirit from the clay 
 Go dreaming out the Heavenward way, 
 
 Or thence be softly borne, — 
 
 I pray you, angels, do not first 
 
 Assail mine ear 
 With that blest anthem oft rehearsed, — 
 "Behold the bonds of Death are burst," - 
 
 Lest I should faint with fear. 
 
 But let some happy bird at hand 
 The silence break: 
 
136 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 So shall I dimly understand 
 That dawn has touched a blossoming land, 
 And sigh myself awake. 
 
 From that deep rest emerging so 
 
 To lift the head 
 And see the bath-flower's bell of snow, ♦ 
 The pink Arbutus, and the low 
 
 Spring-beauty streaked with red, 
 
 Will all suffice — no other where . 
 
 Impelled to roam, — 
 Till some blithe wanderer, passing fair, 
 Will smiling pause, of me aware, 
 
 And murmur, "Welcome home I" 
 
 So, sweetly greeted, I shall rise 
 
 To kiss her cheek; 
 Then lightly soar in lovely guise, 
 As one familiar with the skies. 
 
 Who finds, and need not seek. 
 
 Amandfi T, Jones 
 
 AT SUNSET 
 
 To all who went adventuring at the last. 
 And to new voyages at sunset passed. 
 Too brave at heart, too high of hope to see 
 Their sky horizoned by mortality : 
 Ossian who left the ease that age had earned 
 That he might win to where the Fenians burned ; 
 And him who found new hopes invincible 
 Because the sea had something yet to tell; 
 
THE DEPARTED FRIEND 137 
 
 And many another one who, scorning death, 
 Went forth enkindling with his latest breath 
 To glory and a never-dying flame, 
 The funeral pyre that lights a hero name : — 
 These lines I consecrate that they may aid 
 Me when I go upon that last crusade, 
 For though the West be grey and no light linger 
 Where beckoned once the sunset's flickering fin- 
 ger, 
 No business of the earth will hold me back 
 From seeking out where they have found a track. 
 I will launch forth elate, and leave again 
 These little harbours and the ways of men, 
 And light again all that old Western fire 
 With the red sunset of my last desire. 
 
 Seumas O'Sullivan 
 
 THE DEPARTED FRIEND 
 
 He is not dead, this friend, not dead. 
 But in the path we mortals tread. 
 Got some few trifling steps ahead 
 
 And nearer to the end, — 
 So that you, too, once past the bend 
 Shall meet again, as, face to face, this friend 
 
 You fancy dead. 
 
 Push gaily on, strong heart, the while 
 You travel forward, mile by mile. 
 He loiters with a backward smile 
 
 Till you can overtake, — 
 And strains his eyes to search his wake. 
 Or, whistling as he sees you through the break, 
 
 Waits on a stile. 
 
138 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Though he that ever Mnd and true 
 
 Kept stoutly step by step with you 
 
 Your whole, long, gusty life-time through 
 
 Be gone awhile before, 
 But now a moment gone before, — 
 Yet doubt not soon the seasons shall restore 
 
 Your friend to you. 
 
 He has but turned a corner; still 
 He pushes on with right good will. 
 Through mire and marsh, through heugh and 
 hill. 
 That selfsame, arduous way, 
 That selfsame, upland, helpful way. 
 That you and he through many a doubtful day 
 Attempted still. 
 
 Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 UP-HILL 
 
 Does the road wind up-hill all the way? 
 
 YeSf to the very end. 
 Will the day's journey take the whole long day? 
 
 From morn to night, my friend. 
 
 But is there for the night a resting-place? 
 
 A roof for when the slow, dark hours begin. 
 May not the darkness hide it from my face? 
 
 You cannot miss that inn. 
 
 Shall I meet other wayfarers at night? 
 
 Those who have gone before. 
 Then must I knock, or call when just in sight? 
 
 They will not keep you waiting at that door. 
 
WITH THE TIDE 139 
 
 Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak? 
 
 Of labor you shall find the sum. 
 Will there be beds for me and all who seek? 
 
 Yea, beds for all who come. 
 
 Christina Georgina Rossetti 
 
 WITH THE TIDE 
 
 (Written on the day after Theodore Roosevelt's death) 
 
 Somewhere I read, in an old book whose name 
 Is gone from me, I read that when the days 
 Of a man are counted, and his business done, 
 There comes up the shore at evening, with the tide, 
 To the place where he sits, a boat — 
 And in the boat, from the place where he sits, he 
 
 sees. 
 Dim in the dusk, dim and yet so familiar, 
 The faces of his friends long dead; and knows 
 They come for him, brought in upon the tide, 
 To take him where men go at set of day. 
 Then rising, with his hands in theirs, he goes 
 Between them his last steps, that are the first 
 Of the new life — and with the ebb they pass. 
 Their shaken sail grown small upon the moon. 
 
 Often I thought of this, and pictured me 
 
 How many a man who lives with throngs about 
 
 him, 
 Yet straining through the twilight for that boat, 
 Shall scarce make out one figure in the stern. 
 And that so faint, its features shall perplex him 
 With doubtful memories, and his heart hang back. 
 
140 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 But others, rising as they see the sail 
 Increase upon the sunset, hasten down, 
 Hands out and eyes elated; for they see, 
 Head over head, crowding from bow to stern. 
 Re-peopling their long loneliness with smiles. 
 The faces of their friends ; and such go forth 
 Content upon the ebb tide, with safe hearts. 
 
 But never 
 
 To worker summoned when his day was done 
 
 "Did mounting tide bring in such freight of friends 
 
 As stole to you up the white wintry shingle. 
 
 That night while they that watched you thought you 
 
 slept. 
 Softly they came, and beached the boat, and gath- 
 ered 
 In the still cove under the icy stars. 
 Your last-born, and the dear loves of your heart. 
 And all men that have loved right more than ease, 
 And honour above honours ; all who gave 
 Free-handed of their best for other men, 
 And thought their giving taking, they who knew 
 Man's natural state is effort, up and up — 
 All these were there, so great a company 
 Perchance you marvelled, wondering what great 
 
 ship 
 Had brought that throng unnumbered to the cove 
 Where the boys used to beach their light canoe 
 After old happy picnics — 
 
 But these, your friends and children, to whose 
 
 hands 
 Committed, in the silent night you rose 
 
THE GREAT ADVENTURE 141 
 
 And took your last faint steps — 
 These led you down, O great American, 
 Down to the winter night and the white beach. 
 And there you saw that the huge hull that 
 
 waited 
 Was not as are the boats of the other dead, 
 Frail craft for a brief passage ; no, for this 
 Was first of a long line of towering transports. 
 Storm-worn and ocean-weary every one, 
 The ships you launched, the ships you manned, 
 
 the ships 
 That now, returning from their sacred quest 
 With the thrice-sacred burden of their dead. 
 Lay waiting there to take you forth with them, 
 Out with the ebb tide, on some farther quest. 
 
 Edith Wharton 
 
 THE GREAT ADVENTURE 
 
 God, the Master Pilot — 
 
 Or Gods, if such there be — 
 Pour me no weakling's measure 
 
 When ye pour the wine for me>^ 
 Of pain, of love, of pleasure — 
 
 I'll drain the draught ye give; 
 Of good and ill, give me the fill 
 
 Of the life ye bade me live. 
 
 Spare me no tithe of favor, 
 With fortune pave my path, 
 
 Nor hold the hand of vengeance 
 When I deserve your wrath. 
 
142 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Whatever fates ye send me, 
 
 Whatever cast the sky, 
 Grant me the grace to live a man, 
 
 And as a man to die. 
 
 Upon the good I render 
 
 Let shine your proudest sun, 
 And rest me in the valleys 
 
 When my last trick is done. 
 For these, your utmost portions, 
 
 1*11 pay the utmost toll. 
 So this, my life, becomes the great 
 
 Adventure of my Soul. 
 
 Major Kendall Banning 
 
 WHEN I HA^/E GONE WEIRD WAYS 
 
 When I have finished with this episode, 
 
 Left the hard, up-hill road. 
 
 And gone weird ways to seek another load — 
 
 O, friends, regret me not, nor weep for me, 
 
 Child of Infinity. 
 
 Nor dig a grave, nor rear for me a tomb 
 To say with lying writ: "Here in the gloom, 
 He who loved bigness takes a narrow room. 
 
 Content to pillow here his weary head, 
 
 For he is dead." 
 
 But give my body to the funeral pyre, 
 
 And bid the laughing fire. 
 
 Eager and strong and swift, like my desire. 
 
 Scatter my subtle essence into space — 
 
 Free me of time and place. 
 
ROOM FOR A SOLDIER! 143 
 
 And sweep the bitter ashes from the hearth, 
 Fling back the dust I borrowed from the earth 
 Into the chemic broil of death and birth : 
 
 The vast alembic of the cryptic scheme, 
 
 V/arm with the master-dream. 
 
 And thus, — O little house that sheltered me, 
 Dissolve again in wind and rain, to be 
 Part of the cosmic weird economy. 
 And O ! how oft with new life shalt thou lift 
 Out of the atom-drift! 
 
 John G. Neihardt 
 
 ROOM FOR A SOLDIER! 
 
 Room for a soldier ! Lay him in the clover. 
 He loved the fields and they shall be his cover: 
 Make his mound with hers who called him once 
 her lover: 
 Where the rain may rain upon it, 
 Where the sun may shine upon it, 
 Where the lamb hath lain upon it, 
 And the bee will dine upon it. 
 
 Bear him to no dismal tomb under city churches; 
 Take him to the fragrant fields, by the silver 
 
 birches, 
 Where the whippoorwill shall mourn, where the 
 oriole perches: 
 Make his mound with sunshine on it. 
 Where the bee will dine upon it. 
 Where the lamb hath lain upon it. 
 And the rain will rain upon it. 
 
144 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Busy as the busy bee, his rest should be the clover; 
 Gentle as a lamb was he, and the fern should be his 
 
 cover ; 
 Fern and rosemary shall grow my soldier's pillow 
 over; 
 Where the rain may rain upon it, 
 Where the sun may shine upon it, 
 Where the lamb hath lain upon it, 
 And the bee will dine upon it. 
 
 Sunshine in his heart, the rain would come full 
 
 often 
 Out of those tender eyes which ever more did 
 
 soften : 
 He never could look cold till we saw him in his cof- 
 fin. 
 Make his mound with sunshiiss on it, 
 Where the wind may sigh upon it, 
 Where the moon may stream upon it. 
 And Memory shall dream upon it. 
 
 "Captain" or "Colonel" — whatever invocation 
 Suit our hymn the best, no matter for thy station, — 
 On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a 
 mighty nation ! 
 Long as the sim doth shine upon it. 
 Shall glow the goodly pine upon it; 
 Long as the stars do gleam upon it 
 Shall Memory come to dream upon it. 
 
 Thomas William Parsons 
 
THE END OF ALL 145 
 
 THE END OF ALL 
 
 Blest are the dormant^ 
 
 In death : they repose 
 
 From bondage and torment, 
 
 From passions and woes. 
 
 From the yoke of the world and the snares of 
 
 the traitor. 
 The grave, the grave is the true liberator. 
 
 Griefs chase one another 
 
 Around the earth*s dome: 
 
 In the arms of the mother 
 
 Alone is our home. 
 
 Woo pleasures, ye triflersi The thoughtful are 
 
 wiser; 
 The grave, the grave is their one tranquillizer. 
 
 Is the good man unfriended 
 
 On life's ocean-path? 
 
 Where storms have expended 
 
 Their turbulent wrath? 
 
 Are his labors requited by slander and rancor? 
 
 The grave, the grave is his sure bower-anchor. 
 
 To gaze on the faces 
 
 Of lost ones anew, 
 
 To lock in embraces 
 
 The loved and the true. 
 
 Were a rapture to make even Paradise brighter. 
 
 The grave, the grave is the great reuniter. 
 
 Crown the corpse then with laurels, 
 The conqueror's wreath, 
 
146 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Make joyous with carols 
 
 The chamber of death, 
 
 And welcome the victor with cymbal and psalter : 
 
 The grave, the grave is the only exalter. 
 
 James Clarence Mangan 
 
 THE DANCE OF DEATH 
 
 He is the despots' Despot. All must bide, 
 Later or soon, the message of his might; 
 Princes and potentates their heads must hide. 
 Touched by the awful sigil of his right; 
 Beside the Kaiser he at eve doth wait 
 And pours a potion in his cup of state; 
 The stately Queen his bidding must obey; 
 No keen-eyed Cardinal shall him affray; 
 And to the Dame that wantoneth he saith — 
 "Let be, Sweet-heart, to junket and to play.** 
 There is no King more terrible than Death. 
 
 The lusty Lord, rejoicing in his pride, 
 He draweth down; before the armed Knight 
 With jingling bridle-rein he still doth ride; 
 He crosseth the strong Captain in the fight; 
 The Burgher, grave, he beckons from debate; 
 He hales the Abbot by his shaven pate, 
 Nor for the Abbess* wailing will delay; 
 No bawling Mendicant shall say him nay; 
 E'en to the pyx the Priest he followeth. 
 Nor can the Leech his chilling finger stay . . . 
 There is no King more terrible than Death. 
 
 All things must bow to him. And woe betide 
 The Wine-bibber, — the Roisterer by night; 
 
THE DANCE OF DEATH 147 
 
 Him the feast-master, many bouts defied, 
 Him *twixt the pledging and the cup shall smite; 
 Woe to the Lender at usurious rate. 
 The hard Rich Man, the hireling Advocate ; 
 Woe to the Judge that selleth Law for pay; 
 Woe to the Thief that like a beast of prey 
 With creeping tread the traveller harryeth: — 
 These, in their sin, the sudden sword shall slay . , • 
 There is no King more terrible than Death, 
 
 He hath no pity,. — nor will be denied. 
 
 When the low hearth is garnished and bright, 
 
 Grimly he flingeth the dim portal wide, 
 
 And steals the Infant in the Mother's sight; 
 
 He hath no pity for the scorned of fate: — 
 
 He spares not Lazarus lying at the gate. 
 
 Nay, nor the Blind that stumbleth as he may; 
 
 Nay, the tired Plouglmian, — at the sinking ray, — 
 
 In the last furrow, — feels an icy breath. 
 
 And knows a hand hath turned the team astray . • • 
 
 There is no King more terrible than Death. 
 
 He hath no pity. For the new-made Bride, 
 Blithe with the promise of her life's delight, 
 That wanders gladly by her Husband's side, 
 He with the clatter of his drum doth fright; 
 He scares the Virgin at the convent grate ; 
 The Maid half -won, the Lover passionate; 
 He hath no grace for weakness and decay: 
 The tender Wife, the Widow bent and gray, 
 The feeble Sire whose footstep faltereth, ■— 
 All these he leadeth by the lonely way . . . 
 There is no King more terrible than Death. 
 
148 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 ENVOY 
 Youth, for whose ear and monishing of late, 
 I sang of Prodigals and lost estate, 
 Have thou thy joy of living and be gay; 
 But know not less that there must come a 
 
 day — 
 Aye, and perchance e*en now it hasteneth, — 
 When thine own heart shall speak to thee 
 
 and say, — 
 There is no King more terrible than Death. 
 
 Austin Dobson 
 
 MAN»S GUESS 
 
 Far beyond Man's utmost sight 
 
 His daring mind pursues its flight. 
 
 Yet ever ends where it began — in Night. 
 
 The clear eyes of the wisest Sage, 
 The firm faith of the greatest Saint; 
 One comes to where his Eyes grow dim, 
 The other where his Faith grows faint. 
 
 Scheme after scheme he vainly tries, 
 Star after star he sees arise. 
 And far beyond them in his fancy flies. 
 Ever returning with this vague surmise 
 To which he clings even in darkest night, 
 *T is but a guess, — 
 
 "All things may turn out right." 
 Elihu Vedder 
 
THE PAINTING 149 
 
 MY OLD COUNSELOR 
 
 The Sun looked from his everlasting skies, 
 He laughed into my daily-dying eyes ; 
 He said to me, the brutal shining Sun : 
 "Poor, fretful, hot, rebellious little one! 
 
 "Thou shalt not find it, yet there shall be truth; 
 Thou shalt grow old, but yet there shall be youth; 
 Thou shalt not do, yet great deeds shall be done, — 
 Believe me, child, I am an old, old Sun! 
 
 "Thou mayst go blind, yet fair will bloom the 
 
 spring; 
 Thou mayst not hear them, but the birds will sing; 
 Thou mayst despair, no less will hope be rife; 
 Thou must lie dead, but many will have life. 
 
 "Thou mayst declare of love: it is a dream! 
 Yet long with love, my love, the Earth will teem : 
 Let not thy foolish heart be borne so low, — 
 Lift up thy heart! Exult that it is so!'' 
 
 Gertrude Hall 
 
 THE PAINTING 
 
 There is a painting on my wall, 
 
 A blue daub of the sea. 
 
 With a black rock lifting tall 
 
 And a gray haze over all, 
 
 And the wind in a bended tree. 
 
 It is a window where my soul goes free ! 
 
150 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Dusk after dusk I come into that room 
 
 From the won fields of life, 
 
 From the weary hxmian strife, 
 
 And see my painting like a pleasant bloom, 
 
 Against the white wall there, 
 
 And know God meant His kingdoms to be fair. 
 
 The towers and the streets grow blurred and dim, 
 
 I see the world once more 
 
 As it occurred to Him, 
 
 The clean sea and the clasping shore, 
 
 And the wind's hand shaking music from a tree I 
 
 That is the living universe to me; 
 
 The rest becomes a painted masque of days 
 
 Wherein I build at golden make-believe, 
 
 For purses and for praise, 
 
 And put a solemn face upon it all 
 
 My childish fellow builders to deceive. 
 
 But here upon my study-wall 
 
 Hangs the blue gate to wide reality. 
 
 The strong rock, and the singing tree. 
 
 And the shore asleep in the water's arm. 
 
 Like a woman taken for her charm. 
 
 Clasped by that lover of all lands, the sea ! 
 
 Impoverished is the Man who owns one world, 
 
 And one alone, whose soul has never trod 
 
 The bold beginnings of the path to God, 
 
 Who goes with ne'er a flaming dream unfurled 
 
 Along the crawling highways of his kind, 
 
 Clinging to vapors and to husks 
 
 With futile hands, half lost and wholly blind, 
 
 Fearful of shadows, yet without the mind 
 
 To see what stars may fleck his journey's dusks. 
 
PASSAGE TO INDIA 151 
 
 To him be pity! For his soul shall grope 
 In vain for Beauty and for Hope. 
 
 Oh, that a window such as mine 
 
 Might swing in every wall I 
 
 With the black rock lifting tall 
 
 And the wind like sweet, untasted wine, 
 
 And the blown tree, 
 
 And the shore and the seat 
 
 Dana Burnet 
 
 PASSAGE TO INDIA 
 
 Singing my days ! 
 
 Singing the great achievements of the present, 
 
 The past — the infinite greatness of the past 1 
 
 Passage to India! 
 
 Lo, soul, seest thou not God*s purpose from the first? 
 The earth to be spann'd, connected by network. 
 The races, neighboiu-s, to marry and be given in 
 
 marriage. 
 The oceans to be crossed, the distant brought near, 
 The lands to be welded together. 
 
 A worship new I sing. 
 
 You captains, voyagers, explorers, yours. 
 
 You engineers, you architects, machinists, yours, 
 
 You, not for trade or transportation only. 
 
 But in God's name, and for thy sake O soul. 
 
 Ah more than any priest, O soul, we too believe in 
 
 God, 
 But with the mystery of God we dare not dally. 
 
152 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 soul thou pleasest me, I thee, 
 
 Sailing these seas or on the hills, or waking in the 
 
 night, 
 Thoughts, silent thoughts, of Time and Space and 
 
 Death, like waters flowing. 
 Bear me indeed as through the regions infinite, 
 Whose air I breathe, whose ripples hear, lave me 
 
 all over. 
 Bathe me O God in thee, mounting to thee, 
 
 1 and my soul to range in range of thee. 
 
 Thou transcendent I 
 Nameless, the fibre and the breath, 
 
 Light of the light, shedding forth universes, thou 
 
 centre of them. 
 Thou mightier centre of the true, the good, the 
 
 loving. 
 
 Thou moral, spiritual fountain — affection's source 
 — thou reservoir ! 
 
 (O pensive soul of me — O thirst unsatisfied — 
 waitest not there — 
 
 Waitest not haply for us somewhere there the Com- 
 rade perfect?) 
 
 Thou pulse — thou motive of the stars, suns, sys- 
 tems, 
 
 That circling, move in order, safe, harmonious, 
 
 Athwart the shapeless vastnesses of space ! 
 
 How should I think, how breathe a single breath, 
 how speak, if, out of myself, 
 
 1 could not launch, to those, su'perior universes? 
 
 Swiftly I shrivel at the thought of God, 
 
PASSAGE TO INDIA 153 
 
 At Nature and its wonders, Time and Space and 
 
 Death, 
 But that I, turning, call to thee, O soul, thou actual 
 
 Me — 
 And lo, thou gently masterest the orbs, 
 Thou matest Time, smilest content at Death, 
 And fillest, swellest full the vastnesses of Space. 
 
 Passage ! Immediate passage 1 The blood burns in 
 
 my veins ! 
 Away O soul! Hoist instantly the anchor! 
 Cut the hawsers — haul out — shake out every sail ! 
 Have we not stood here like trees in the ground 
 
 long enough? 
 Have we not grovePd here long enough, eating and 
 
 drinking like mere brutes? 
 Have we not darkened and dazed ourselves with 
 
 books long enough? 
 
 Sail forth — steer for the deep waters only ! 
 Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou 
 
 with me. 
 For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared 
 
 to go. 
 And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all. 
 
 O my brave soul ! 
 
 O farther farther sail ! 
 
 O daring joy, but safe ! are they not all the seas of 
 
 God? 
 O farther, farther, farther sail ! 
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
154 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 RELIGION 
 
 Creeds change, 
 
 All outward forms 
 
 Recast themselves. 
 
 Sacred groves, temples and churches 
 
 Rise and rot and fall. 
 
 Races and nations 
 
 And the various tongues of men 
 
 Come and go and are 
 
 Recorded, numbered 
 
 And forgotten in the repetition 
 
 And the drift 
 
 Of many ages. 
 
 All outward circumstances 
 
 May be different 
 
 But there lives no man — • 
 
 Nor ever lived one — 
 
 Who, in the silence of his heart, 
 
 Feeling his need, 
 
 Has not cried out, 
 
 Shaping some prayer 
 
 To the unchanging God. 
 
 Paul Kester 
 
 PRAYER AMID FLAMES 
 
 Holy Spirit, I cry to thee. 
 Fire and Victor-Song is thy name. 
 Shine in our need, oh spirit of power. 
 Shine o'er the gulf of our dread last hour, 
 Burn into ashes our mortal frame ! — 
 
"GATHER US IN" 155 
 
 Even in death mine arms shall be 
 Outstretched in prayer to thy deathless flame. 
 From the Swedish of Verner von Heidenstam 
 
 {Translated by Charles Wharton Stork) 
 
 "GATHER US IN" 
 
 Rend each man's temple veil and bid it fall, 
 Gather our rival faiths within thy fold ! 
 
 Gather us in, Thou Love that fiUest all ! 
 That we may know that Thou hast been of old — 
 Gather us in I 
 
 Gather us in ! We worship only Thee ; 
 
 In varied names we stretch a common hand ; 
 In diverse forms a common soul we see; 
 
 In many ships we seek one spirit-land — 
 Gather us in I 
 
 Each sees one color of Thy rainbow light. 
 Each looks upon one tint and calls it heaven; 
 
 Thou art the fulness of our partial sight; 
 We are not perfect till we find the seven — 
 Gather us in I 
 
 Thine is the mystic light great India craves. 
 Thine is the Parsee's sin-destroying beam, 
 
 Thine is the Buddhist's rest from tossing waves, 
 Thine is the empire of vast China's dream — 
 Gather us in I 
 
 Thine is the Roman's strength without his pride. 
 Thine is the Greek's glad world without its 
 graves, 
 
156 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Thine is Judea's law with love beside, 
 The truth that centers and the grace that 
 saves — 
 
 Gather us in I 
 
 Some seek a Father in the' heavens above/ 
 
 Some ask a human image to adore, 
 Some crave a spirit vast as life and love: 
 Within Thy mansions we have all and more - 
 Gather us in ! 
 
 George Matheson 
 
 "DkW^ IN THE DESERT 
 
 When the first opal presage of the morn 
 Quickened the east, the good Merwan arose, 
 And by his open tent-door knelt and prayed. 
 
 Now in that pilgrim caravan was one 
 
 Whose heart was heavy with dumb doubts, whose 
 
 eyes 
 Drew little balm from slumber. Up and down 
 Night-long he paced the avenues of sand 
 'Twixt tent and tent, and heard the jackals 
 
 snarl. 
 The camels moan for water. This one came 
 On Merwan praying, and to him outcried — 
 (The tortured spirit bursting its sealed fount 
 As doth the brook on Damavend in spring) 
 "How knowest thou that any Allah is?" 
 Swift from the sand did Merwan lift his face, 
 F4ung toward the east an arm of knotted bronze, 
 And said, as upward shot a shaft of gold : 
 
IMMORTALITY 157 
 
 "Dost need a torch to show to thee the dawn?" 
 Then prayed again. 
 
 "When on the desert's rim 
 In sudden awful splendor stood the sun, 
 Through all that caravan there was no knee 
 But bowed to Allah. 
 
 Clinton Scollard 
 
 IMMORTALITY 
 
 Two caterpillars crawling on a leaf, 
 
 By some strange accident in contact came; 
 Their conversation, passing all belief, 
 
 Was that same argument, the very same, 
 That has been "proed and conned,'* from man to 
 
 man; 
 Yea, ever since this wondrous world began. 
 The ugly creatures. 
 
 Deaf and dumb and blind, 
 Devoid of features 
 That adorn mankind, 
 Were vain enough, in dull and worldly strife, 
 To speculate upon a future life. 
 
 The first was optimistic, full of hope — 
 The second, quite dyspeptic, seemed to mope. 
 Said number one, "I'm sure of our salvation." 
 Said number two, "I'm sure of our damnation. 
 Our ugly forms alone would seal our fates. 
 And bar our entrance through the golden gates. 
 Suppose that death should take us unawares. 
 How Gould we ever climb the golden stairs? 
 If maidens shun us as they pass us by. 
 Would angels bid us welcome to the sky? 
 
158 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 I wonder what great crimes we have committed, 
 That leave us so forlorn, so unpitied? 
 
 Perhaps weVe been ungrateful, unforgiving, 
 
 *Tis plain to me life is not worth the living." 
 "Come, come, cheer up," the jovial one replied — 
 "Let's take a look upon the other side: 
 
 Suppose we cannot fly like moths and millers, 
 
 Are we to blame for being caterpillars? 
 Will that same God that doomed us crav/1 the earth, 
 A prey to every bird that's given birth. 
 
 Forgive our captor as he eats and sings. 
 
 And damn poor us because we have no wings? 
 If we can't skim the air, like owl or bat, 
 The worm will turn for a' that." 
 
 They argued through the Summer — Autumn 
 nigh; 
 
 The ugly things composed themselves to die — 
 And so, to make their funeral quite complete. 
 Each wrapped him in his little winding-sheet. 
 
 The tangled web encompassed them full soon — 
 
 Each for his coffin made him a cocoon. 
 All through the Winter's chilling blasts they lay. 
 Dead to the world, aye, dead as any human clay. 
 
 Lo ! Spring comes forth with all her warmth and 
 love; 
 
 She brings sweet justice from the realms 
 above — 
 She breaks the chrysalis — she resurrects the 
 
 dead — 
 Two butterflies ascend, encircling her head. 
 
 And so, this emblem shall forever be 
 
 A sign of Immortality. 
 
 Joseph Jefferson 
 
"NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE" i59 
 
 THE WISH 
 
 The wish, that of the living whole 
 No life may fail beyond the grave, 
 Derives it not from what we have 
 
 The likest God within the soul? 
 
 Are God and Nature then at strife. 
 That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
 So careful of the type she seems, 
 So careless of the single life 
 
 That I, considering everywhere 
 Her secret meaning in her deeds, 
 And finding that of fifty seeds 
 
 She often brings but one to bear — 
 
 I falter where I firmly trod. 
 
 And falling with my weight of cares 
 Upon the great world's altar-stairs 
 
 That slope thro' darkness up to God — 
 
 I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
 And gather dust and chaff, and call 
 To what I feel is Lord of all, 
 
 And faintly trust the larger hope. 
 
 Tennyson 
 
 "NO COWARD SOUL IS MINE" 
 
 No coward soul is mine. 
 No trembler in the world's storm-troubled sphere; 
 
 I see Heaven's glories shine, 
 And faith shines equal, arming me from fear. 
 
i6o SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 O God within my breast, 
 Almighty, ever-present Deity! 
 
 Life — that in me has rest, 
 As I — undying Life — have power in Thee I 
 
 Vain are the thousand creeds 
 That move men's hearts: unutterably vain; 
 
 Worthless as witherM weeds. 
 Or idlest froth amid the boundless main, 
 
 To waken doubt in one 
 Holding so fast by Thine infinity; 
 
 So surely anchor'd on 
 The steadfast rock of Immortality. 
 
 With v/ide-embracing love 
 Thy Spirit animates eternal years, 
 
 Pervades and broods above. 
 Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates and rears. 
 
 Though earth and man were gone, 
 And suns and universes cease to be, 
 
 And Thou were left alone — 
 Every existence would exist in Thee. 
 
 There is not room for Death, 
 Kor atom that his might could render void: 
 
 Thou — Thou art Being and Breath, 
 And what Thou art may never be destroyed. 
 
 Emily Bronte 
 
THE SECOND CRUCIFIXION i6i 
 
 THE SECOND CRUCIFIXION 
 
 Loud mockers in the roaring street 
 Say Christ is crucified again : 
 
 Twice pierced His gospel-bearing feet, 
 Twiee broken His great heart in vain, 
 
 I hear, and to myself I smile. 
 
 For Christ talk« with me all the while. 
 
 No angel now to roll the stone 
 From off His unawaking sleep, 
 
 In vain shall Mary watch alone. 
 In vain the soldiers vigil keep. 
 
 Yet while they deem my Lord is dead 
 My eyes are on His shining head. 
 
 Ah ! never more shall Mary hear 
 That voice exceeding sweet and low 
 
 Within the garden calling clear r 
 Her Lord is gone, and she must go. 
 
 Yet all the while my Lord I meet 
 In every London lane and street. 
 
 Poor Lazarus shall wait in vain. 
 And Bartimeus still go blind; 
 
 The healing hem shall ne'er again 
 Be touchM by suffering humankind. 
 
 Yet all the v/hile I see them rest, 
 The poor and outcast, on His breast. 
 
i62 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 No more unto the stubborn heart 
 
 With gentle knocking shall He plead, 
 
 No more the mystic pity start, 
 For Christ twice dead is dead indeed; 
 
 So in the street I hear men say — 
 Yet Christ is with me all the day. 
 
 Richard Le GcUienne 
 
 A CONCLUSION 
 
 If all the dream-like things are vain, 
 If all the strange delight and pain 
 
 Of love and beauty cannot be 
 
 The heirs of immortality, — • 
 Then shall I worship all the more 
 Those images I now adore. 
 
 If all things perish, it were best 
 
 To die with beauty, — lie at rest 
 In her great drift of ruined roses. 
 With lovely songs to have our closes, — 
 
 Yea, as on some transcendent pjrre 
 
 Of sandalwood, to pass in fire 
 'Mid broken alabaster, whence 
 Arise great clouds of frankincense. 
 
 Carved ivory and sard, and robes 
 
 Of purple dye, and magic globes 
 Of burning crystal, scattered gems 
 Like flowers, and holy diadems. 
 
 Papyrus writ with perfect rimes. 
 
 And lutes fulfilled of tender chimes, 
 And lucid cups all scriptured round 
 With slim, white, dancing gods vine-bound. 
 
THE WASHERWOMAN'S SONG 163 
 
 And agate lamps, whence tongues of light 
 Flare out into the endless night. 
 
 Rachel Annand Taylor 
 
 TEARS 
 
 When I consider Life and its few years — 
 
 A wisp of fog betwixt us and the sun; 
 
 A call to battle, and the battle done 
 
 Ere the last echo dies within our ears ; 
 
 A rose choked in the grass; an hour of fears; 
 
 The gusts that past a darkening shore do beat; 
 
 The burst of music down an unlistening street — 
 
 I wonder at the idleness of tears. 
 
 Ye old, old dead, and ye of yesternight, 
 
 Chieftains, and bards, and keepers of the sheep, 
 
 By every cup of sorrow that ye had. 
 
 Loose me from tears, and make me see aright 
 
 How each hath back what once he stayed to v/eep : 
 
 Eomer his sight, David his little lad ! 
 
 Lizette Wood worth Reese 
 
 THE WASHERWOMAN'S SONG 
 
 In a very humble cot. 
 
 In a rather quiet spot. 
 
 In the suds and in the soap. 
 Worked a woman full of hope; 
 
 "Working, singing, all alone. 
 
 In a sort of undertone: 
 
 "With the Savior for a friend, 
 He will keep me to the end.'* 
 
i64 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Sometimes happening along, 
 I had heard the semi-song, 
 And I often used to smile, 
 More in sympathy than guile; 
 But I never said a word 
 In regard to what I heard. 
 As she sang about her friend 
 Who would keep her to the end. 
 
 Not in sorrow nor in glee 
 Workiag all day long was she, 
 As her children, three or four. 
 Played around her on the floor; 
 But in monotones the song 
 She was humming all day long: 
 " With the Savior for a friend, 
 He will keep me to the end." 
 
 It*s a song I do not sing, 
 
 For I scarce believe a thing 
 Of the stories that are told 
 Of the miracles of old ; 
 
 But I know that her belief 
 
 Is the anodyne of grief. 
 And will always be a friend 
 That will keep her to the end. 
 
 Just a trifle lonesome she. 
 Just as poor as poor could be; 
 But her spirits alv/ays rose. 
 Like the bubbles in the clothes. 
 And, though widowed and alone. 
 Cheered her with the monotone, 
 
WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS 165 
 
 Of a Savior and a friend 
 
 Who would keep her to the end. 
 
 I have seen her nab and scrub, 
 On the washboard in the tub, 
 While the baby, sopped in suds, 
 Rolled and tumbled in the duds; 
 Or was paddling in the pools. 
 With old scissors stuck in spools; 
 She still humming of her friend 
 Who would keep her to the end. 
 
 Human hopes and human creeds 
 Have their root in human needs ; 
 And I should not wish to strip 
 From that washerwoman's lip 
 Any song that she can sing. 
 Any hope that songs can bring; 
 For the woman has a friend 
 Who will keep her to the end. 
 
 Eugene F, Ware 
 
 « WITH WHOM IS NO VARIABLENESS, 
 NEITHER SHADOW OF TURNING" 
 
 It fortifies my soul to know 
 That though I perish — Truth is so: 
 That howsoe'er I stray and range — 
 Whate'er I do, Thou dost not change. 
 I steadier step when I recall 
 That, if I slip, Thou dost not fall. 
 
 Arthur Hugh Clough 
 
I 
 
 1 66 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 PIPPA'S SONG 
 
 The year *s at the spring 
 And day's at the morn; 
 Morning's at seven; 
 The hillside's dew-pearled; 
 The lark's on the wing; 
 The snail's on the thorn: 
 God's in His heaven — 
 All 's right with the world ! 
 
 Robert Browning 
 
 CLEANTHES' HYMN 
 
 Lead thou me, God, Law, Reason, Motion, Life, 
 All names for Thee alike are vain and hollow : 
 Lead me, for I will follow without strife. 
 Or — if I strive, still must I blindly follow ! 
 
 Clean thes the Stoic 
 
 PRAYER OF A POET TO GOD 
 
 Have mercy. Thou, upon my soul, 
 Unclean against Thy flaming skies, 
 
 Unchaste beside Thy golden stole. 
 Have mercy Thou ! Let me arise 
 
 Before Thy throne in perfect peace. 
 
 Be pitiful, my soul release! 
 
 I know that all my days have been 
 Misspent in paths afar from Thee; 
 
 I know mine eyes have quickly seen 
 
 The things Thou wouldst not have me see. 
 
 That through the thoughtless years I saw 
 
 Uncounted scenes, but not Thy law. 
 
PRAYER OF A POET TO GOD 167 
 
 Forgive the lies my tongue exclaimed, 
 The heedless truths that slev/ the weak, 
 
 Forgive the many faults I blamed. 
 Not on myself, but on the meek. 
 
 Forgive, Divine and Gracious God, 
 
 The buds I broke upon Thy sod ! 
 
 Amazing is Thy mercy. Lord ! 
 
 Therefore remember not the times 
 My kisses, like a poisoned sword. 
 
 Killed innocence, awakened crimes; 
 Forgive my passions uncontrolled. 
 The years I wandered from Thy fold I 
 
 My life on scarlet seas was tost, 
 I swore to scorn Thy gift of grace, 
 
 I gloried Thou shouldst deem me lost — 
 Perhaps I njet Thee face to face? 
 
 Perhaps Thy wings refreshed my brow 
 
 The while I sealed with Vice a vow? 
 
 I stood on mounts and sang a song 
 In praise of those that hate Thy name, 
 
 With laughing lips I did a wrong 
 
 That shamed the very face of Shame. 
 
 Thrice blessed be Thy pity, God, 
 
 Else I should die beneath Thy rod I 
 
 Thou gavest me a singing voice 
 To fill the earth with loveliness; 
 
 But I -^ it made my soul rejoice 
 
 To make Thy children love Thee less, 
 
 Thy charity is boundless wide, 
 
 Forget, O Lord, my evil pride I 
 
i68 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 Have mercy, Thou, upon my soul 
 Unclean against Thy stainless skies, 
 
 Unchaste beside Thy golden stole. 
 
 Have mercy. Thou ! My streaming eyes 
 
 Reveal what hells lay in my heart 
 
 The age I stood from Thee apart. 
 
 Joseph Bernard Re thy 
 
 EXILE FROM GOD 
 
 I do not fear to lay my body down 
 
 In death, to share 
 The life of the dark earth and lose my own, 
 
 If God is there. 
 
 I have so loved all sense of Him, sweet might 
 
 Of color and sound, — 
 His tangible loveliness and living light j 
 
 That robes me 'roimd. 
 
 If to Hi>s heart in the hushed grave and dim 
 
 We sink more near. 
 It shall be well — living we rest in Him. 
 
 Only I fear 
 
 Lest from my God in lonely death I lapse, 
 
 And the dumb clod 
 Lose Him, — for God is life, and death, perhaps, 
 
 Exile from God. 
 
 John Hall Wheelock 
 
PASSING OF OLD TRINITY 169 
 
 PASSING OF OLD TRINITY 
 (Demolished seventy years ago) 
 
 Farewell! Farewell! They^re falling fast. 
 
 Pillar and arch and architrave; 
 Yon aged pile, to me the last 
 Sole record of the by-gone past, 
 
 Is speeding to its grave: 
 And thoughts from memory's fountain flow, 
 
 (As one by one, like wedded hearts, 
 
 Each rude and mouldering stone departs,) 
 Of boyhood's happiness and woe, — 
 
 Its sunshine and its shade : 
 ♦And though each ray of early gladness 
 Comes mingled with the hues of sadness, 
 
 I would not bid them fade. 
 They come, as come the stars at night, t— 
 Like fountains gushing into light — 
 And close around my heart they twine. 
 Like ivy round the mountain pine ! 
 Yes, they are gone — the sunlight smiles 
 All day upon its foot-worn aisles; 
 Those foot-worn aisles, where oft have trod 
 The humble worshipers of God, 
 In times long past, when Freedom first 
 From all the land in glory burst I 
 
 The heroic few! From him whose sword 
 Was wielded in his country's cause. 
 
 To him who battled with his word, 
 The bold expounder of her laws ! 
 
 And they'are gone — gone like the lone 
 Forgotten echoes of their tread; 
 
170 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 And from their niches now are gone 
 
 The sculptured records of the dead! 
 As now I gaze, my heart is stirred 
 
 With music of another sphere I 
 A low, sweet chime, which once was heard, 
 Comes like the note of some wild bird 
 
 Upon my listening ear — 
 Recalling many a happy hour. 
 Reviving many a v/ithered flower, 
 "Whose bloom and beauty long have laid 
 Within my sad heart's silent shade : 
 Life's morning flowers ! that bud and blow 
 
 And wither ere the sun hath kissed 
 The dewdrops from their breasts of snow, 
 
 Or dried the landscape's veil of mist! 
 
 Yes! When that sweetly mingled chime 
 Stole on my ear in boyhood's time. 
 My glad heart drank the thrilling joy, 
 
 Undreaming of its future pains — 
 As spell-bound as the Theban boy 
 
 Listening to Memnon's fabled strains! 
 
 Farewell, old fane! And though, unsung 
 
 By bards thy many glories fell. 
 Though babbling fame had never rung 
 
 Thy praises on his echoing bell — 
 Who that hath seen, can e'er forget 
 
 Thy grey old spire? — Who that hath knelt 
 
 Within thy sacred aisles, nor felt 
 Religion's self grow sweeter yet? 
 
 Yes ! Though the decking hand of Time 
 Glory to Greece's fanes hath given, 
 
MINE THE LIGHT 171 
 
 That, from her old heroic clime, 
 
 Point proudly to their native heaven ; 
 Though Rome hath many a ruined pile 
 
 To speak the glory of her land, 
 And fair, by Egypt's sacred Nile, 
 
 Her mouldering monuments may starid: 
 The joy that swells the gazer's heart. 
 
 The pride that sparkles in his eye. 
 When pondering on these piles where art 
 
 In crumbling majesty doth lie — 
 Ne'er blended with them keener joy 
 Than mine, when but a thoughtless boy 
 I gazed with awe-struck, wondering eye, 
 On thy old spire, my Trinity I 
 And thou shalt live like words of truth, — 
 Like golden monuments of youth — 
 As on the lake's unrippled breast 
 The mirrored mountain lies at rest, 
 So shalt thou lie, till life depart, 
 Mirrored for ages on my heart ! 
 
 Anonymous 
 
 "MINE THE LIGHT OF SETTING SUN'> 
 
 " The haggard sky, the surf's dull roar, 
 The midnight storm are mine no more; 
 But mine the light of setting sun — 
 The call of birds when day is done; 
 The last sad gleam is loth to pass, 
 It weeps upon the golden grass; | 
 The sigh of leaves in evening air. 
 The distant bell that calls to prayer 
 And nothing from my spirit bars 
 The benediction of the stars." 
 
 William Winter 
 
172 ' SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD 
 
 It singeth low in every heart, 
 
 We hear it each and all — 
 A song of those who answer not, 
 
 However we may call. 
 They throng the silence of the breast; 
 
 We see them as of yore — 
 The kind, the true, the brave, the sweet, 
 
 Who walk with us no more. 
 
 More homelike seems the vast unknown, 
 
 Since they have entered there; 
 To follow them were not so hard. 
 
 Wherever they may fare. 
 They cannot be where God is not, 
 
 On any sea or shore; 
 Whatever betides, thy love abides. 
 
 Our God for evermore ! 
 
 Rev* John W, Chad wick 
 
 "THERE IS NO DEATH" 
 
 There is no death ! The stars go down 
 
 To rise upon some fairer shore, 
 And bright in heaven's jeweled crown 
 
 They shine for evermore. 
 
 There is no death I The dust we tread 
 
 Shall change beneath the summer showers 
 
 To golden grain or mellow fruit 
 Or rainbow-tinted flowers. 
 
"THERE IS NO DEATH" 173 
 
 The granite rocks disorganize 
 
 To feed the hungry moss they bear; 
 
 The forest leaves drink daily life 
 From out the viewless air. 
 
 There is no death ! The leaves may fall, 
 The flowers may fade and pass away — • 
 
 They only wait, through wintry hours, 
 The coming of the May. 
 
 There is no death I An angel form 
 
 Walks o'er the earth with silent tread; 
 
 He bears our best loved things away, 
 And then we call them "dead." 
 
 He leaves our hearts all desolate — 
 He plucks our fairest, sweetest flowers 5 
 
 Transplanted into bliss, they now 
 Adorn immortal bowers. 
 
 The bird-like voice, whose joyous tones 
 Made glad this scene of sin and strife, 
 
 Sings now an everlasting song. 
 Around the tree of life. 
 
 Where'er He sees a smile too bright, 
 Or heart too pure for taint and vice, 
 
 He bears it to that world of light, 
 To dwell in Paradise. 
 
 Born unto that undying life. 
 
 They leave us but to come again; 
 
 With joy to welcome them — the same 
 Except in sin and pain. 
 
174 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 And ever near us, though unseen. 
 The dear immortal spirits tread; 
 
 For all the boundless Universe 
 Is life — there are no dead. 
 
 John L. McCreery 
 
 BEYOND 
 
 When youthful faith hath fled — 
 Of loving take thy leave ; 
 
 Be constant to the dead — 
 The dead cannot deceive. 
 
 Sweet, modest flowers of Spring, 
 How fleet your balmy day I 
 
 And man's brief year can bring 
 No secondary May: 
 
 No earthly burst again 
 Of gladness out of gloom. 
 
 Fond hope and vision vain — 
 Ungrateful to the tomb. 
 
 But 't is an old belief 
 
 That on some solemn shore, 
 
 Beyond the sphere of grief. 
 
 Dear friends shall meet once more ; 
 
 — Beyond the sphere of Time, 
 And Sin and Fate's control. 
 
 Serene in endless prime 
 Of body and of soul. 
 
SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL 175 
 
 That creed I fain would keep, 
 
 That hope I'll not forego; 
 Eternal be the sleep, 
 
 Unless to waken so. 
 
 John Gibson Lockhart 
 
 SONG OF THE UNIVERSAL 
 
 Come said the Muse, 
 
 Sing me a song no poet yet has chanted, 
 
 Sing me the universal. 
 
 In this broad earth of ours. 
 
 Amid the measureless grossness and the slag, 
 
 Enclosed and safe within its central heart. 
 
 Nestles the seed perfection. 
 
 • • • 
 
 And thou America, 
 
 For the scheme's culmination, its thought and its 
 
 reality, 
 For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived. 
 
 Thou too surroundest all. 
 
 Embracing, carrying, welcoming all, thou too by 
 
 pathways broad and new, 
 To the ideal tendest. 
 
 The measured faiths of other lands, the grandeurs 
 of the past. 
 
 Are not for thee, but grandeurs of thine own, 
 
 Deific faiths and amplitudes, absorbing, compre- 
 hending all. 
 
 All eligible to all. 
 
176 SONGS OF CHALLENGE 
 
 All, all for immortality, 
 
 Love like the light silently wrapping all, 
 
 Nature's amelioration blessing all. 
 
 The blossoms, fruits of ages, orchards divine and 
 
 certain. 
 Forms, objects, growths, himianities, to spiritual 
 
 images ripening. 
 
 Give me, O God, to sing that thought. 
 
 Give me, give him or her I love, this quenchless 
 faith. 
 
 In Thy ensemble, whatever else withheld, with- 
 hold not from us, 
 
 Belief in plan of Thee enclosed in Time and Space, 
 
 Health, peace, salvation universal. 
 
 Is it a dream? 
 
 Nay but the lack of it the dream, 
 
 And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream. 
 
 And all the world a dream. 
 
 Walt Whitman 
 
 TO CAPTAIN DALE MABRY 
 
 (The clothes were found burned from his body and the 
 flesh from his fingers, but the fingers still grasped the 
 wheel of the aircraft. — News Item. ) 
 
 At the portal of bright Valhalla 
 They bade a stranger stand. 
 **And where is your dented armor? 
 And where is your reeking brand? 
 Was it some mighty battle, 
 Where ye sloughed your body, then, 
 
TO CAPTAIN DALE MABRY 177 
 
 That ye stand at the close-tiled gateway 
 Of the Lodge of the Fighting Men?'V 
 
 There came no word of answer 
 
 From the soul besmirched with smoke, 
 
 But, reining her rearing charger, 
 
 The fierce-eyed Valkyr spoke: 
 
 " Out of the whirling fury 
 
 Of the scarlet flames I come; 
 
 It was there that I found his spirit, 
 
 And I bring his spirit home I 
 
 ** Over the dying Roma 
 
 The roaring fire-cloud swept 
 
 To the post in its blazing pathway; 
 
 To the post that his spirit kept ; 
 
 I charge you bid him welcome, f 
 
 Kot for his sword-blade's steel. 
 
 But the charred and twisted handclasps 
 
 On the charred and twisted wheel I" 
 
 At the portal of bright Valhalla 
 The sentinel stands aside. 
 And cries his name to the chamber. 
 Where the souls of the brave abide; 
 Their blades have flashed from their scab- 
 bards, 
 They have bidden a welcome high — 
 The men who died in their courage — 
 To the man who knew how to die. 
 
 Frederic F. Van de Water 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Arnold, Edwin 59 
 
 Arnold, Matthew 63 
 
 Banks, G. Linnaeus 69 
 
 Banning, Major Kendall 16, 141 
 
 Beers, Henry A 76 
 
 Bell, Jerome B 63 
 
 Bradford, Gamaliel 53 
 
 Bronson, Francis Woolsey 7 
 
 Bronte, Emily 159 
 
 Brown, Thomas Edv/ard 75 
 
 Browning, Robert 8, 166 
 
 Burnet, Dana 149 
 
 Burr, Amelia Josephine 22, 35 
 
 Bunoughs, John 48 
 
 Burton, Sir Richard . 108 
 
 C, G. B .80 
 
 Carman, Bliss 44, 120 
 
 Carruth, William Herbert 51 
 
 Chadwick, Rev. Jolm W 172 
 
 Clark, Badger 21 
 
 Cleanthes the Stoic 166 
 
 Clough, Arthur Hugh 90, 165 
 
 Connell, Norreys, pseud. (Conal O'Riordan) ... 4 
 
 Cory, William Johnson 91, 132 
 
 Crosby, John Bemer 16 
 
 Dobson, Austin 146 
 
 Driscoll, Louise 55 
 
i8o INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Du Maurier, George 76 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 94 
 
 Evans, Florence Wilkinson 131 
 
 Fane, Violet 130 
 
 Fisher, Stokely S 73 
 
 Fitzgerald, Edward 97i 98 
 
 G. B. C 80 
 
 Glasgow, J. Scott 128 
 
 Going, Charles Buxton 129 
 
 Guiney, Louise Imogen 10 
 
 Hall, Gertrude 149 
 
 Hall, Sharlot M 58 
 
 Heidenstam, Vomer von 154 
 
 Henderson, Rose 85 
 
 Henley, W. E 49 
 
 Herbert, George 13 
 
 Hodgson, Lieut. W. N 9 
 
 Hort. Gertrude M 5 
 
 Hovey, Richard 74 
 
 Jackson, Helen Hunt 34 
 
 Jefferson, Joseph 157 
 
 Jones, Amanda T 135 
 
 Jordan, Thomas 92 
 
 Kester;i Paul 154 
 
 Kiser, S. E 89 
 
 Knibbs, Henry Herbert 15, 68, 117 
 
 Lee-Hamilton, Eugene 94 
 
 Le Gallienne, Richard 161 
 
 Liddell, Catherine C 82 
 
 Lockhart, John Gibson 174 
 
INDEX OF AUTHORS i8i 
 
 Lowell, James Russell 3q 
 
 Lytton, Edward Robert Lytton Bulwer (Owen Mere- 
 dith, pseud.) 57> 103 
 
 McCreery, John L 172 
 
 Mackintosh, Charles Henry 92 
 
 Malone, Walter 65 
 
 Mangan, James Clarence 145 
 
 Mann, Dorothea Lawrance 116 
 
 Marquis, Don 78, 104 
 
 Matheson, George 155 
 
 Meredith, Owen 57j 103 
 
 Mifflin, Lloyd 118 
 
 Monkhouse, Cosmo 126 
 
 Morris, Sir Lewis 45 
 
 Myers, Frederic William Henry 69 
 
 Neihardt, John G • 4» 87, 142 
 
 Newbolt, Sir Henry 24 
 
 Ogilvie, Will H 62, 100 
 
 Omar Khayyam 97i 98 
 
 O'Shaughnessy, Arthur 112 
 
 O'Sheel, Shaemas 86 
 
 O'Sullivan, Seumas 136 
 
 Paine, Albert Bigelow . ; 114 
 
 Parsons, Thomas William 143 
 
 Paterson, Major A. B 113 
 
 Percy, William Alexander loi 
 
 Pulsifer, Harold Trowbridge 3 
 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter 39 
 
 Reese, Lizette Woodworth 163 
 
 Rethy, Joseph Bernard 166 
 
 Robinson, Edwin Arlington 26, 83 
 
 Romaine, Harry 52 
 
i82 INDEX OF AUTHORS 
 
 Rossetti, Christina Georgina 138 
 
 Rydberg, Viktor n 
 
 Scollard, Clinton 156 
 
 Seitz, Don C 134 
 
 Speyer, Leonora 49 
 
 Stevenson, Robert Louis , 72, 137 
 
 Stork, Charles Wharton , 11,30,154 
 
 Story, William Wetmore 121 
 
 Swain, John D 122 
 
 Taylor, Rachel Annand 162 
 
 Tennyson, Alfred 36, 159 
 
 Thoreau, Henry David 53 
 
 Thorley, Wilfrid 118 
 
 Van de Water, Frederic F 7, 28, 42, in, 176 
 
 Vedder, Elihu 119, 148 
 
 Villon, Fran$;ois 118 
 
 Ware, Eugene F 102, 163 
 
 Watson, Rosamund Marriott 99 
 
 Wharton, Edith 139 
 
 Wheelock, John Hall 168 
 
 Whitman, Walt 115, 151, 17s 
 
 Wilson, John French 81 
 
 Winter, William 74, 171 
 
 Wordsworth, William 38, 89 
 
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