BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Class J?_Sj2_5:2.'7 CoipghtK°__i3_t3. CORfRIGHT DEPGSISi r Si?^* ",** ' wi r«fi ""ftiKt J.' . *f^? i-?t-*\KTC *< ■ BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER POEMS BY PAUL SHIVELL VOLUME ONE DAYTON THE STILLWATER PRESS 1919 Copyright, 1908, 1915, 1919 By PAUL SHIVELL Copyright, 1917, 1918 By the golden RULE COMPANY The Stillwater Press, Dayton, Ohio, U. S. A. EHectrotyped in Dayton by The Gilbert-Baker-Midlam Company ©Cf./\515833 MAY 15 1319 IMMORTAL COMPANY Immortal company of militant friends ! Most noble rich in Heaven's uncounted wealth! With you I share what glory may be due These songs, these race-bom products of a brain From social ages rich in human life Thus far developed, these joint compositions Of our co-authorship, sonant through me, Your delegate, to you. For more to you — More to you, comrades, than to me — pertains What praise, if any, as I think, must greet. And must accompany through larger years. My name's triumphal march. There was no time When without you my pulse beat high enough To hint in whispers what with your great help Boldly I shouted thus! Uncertainty? Here may be diverse faults to trip each critic; Doubt, never! He who honors all mankind Neither can doubt nor call in serious question Man's destiny sublime ! Let not one voice Decry our confident expectancy, But laugh with us ! Here are high youthful hopes. Firm trust, and that much larger fuller faith Which needs not argument to make divine The years found all-sufficient in themselves, With their great promise of continual V BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Renewment in That Future whither time Conducts us alL That 1 as in That Day Might greet you here ! But no ; these years are brief; We will submit; passive we must not be; So startling is the prospect lookt straight at With ungainsaying eyes ! We will be strong In Him Whose patient strength in ages past Makes us be patient out of gratitude And sober admiration. He it is Whose fateful pleasure and Whose master skill Hath form'd us and redeem'd us from ourselves Unto each other. Therefore Home to Him Let us as eager children bear our gifts, To grow as ageless angels in His wisdom, Progressively immortal. Faint not, we. Nor falter; or, if falter, as men may. Bear we each other up and on as tho We were as mighty in our separate selves As mutually we are. Transcendent all. In free consent with every natural law. On strict obedience implicit, still We rise, and are made one with all God's works, With all His boundless mind made one, to meet As kings in thought's grand kingdom, that rich realm. Love's all-inclusive aristocracy. Where to be kind is not less regal great Than to be hail'd as heroes for famed zeal In emprise; where love's golden crown and scepter Are sole authority, which God Himself, Tho King of Kings, doth not dispute with us, Nor we with one another. Our songs yet, VI IMMORTAL COMPANY These measured hymns of time, will with new measure Attend us, where, in no such transient forms, To noble, nobler, and yet noblest birth Will the sweet lyric and the mightier epic Persistently arrive. Then each may be His best, in keeping with God's high desire Whose purpose cannot fail. We are that purpose. We; even we. Not thou nor I apart; Tho each is by that spirit as complete As all he loves; yet 'tis not I nor thou; Nor they without us; nay, it is not God; Not Christ nor angels, nor the inhabitants Of those unguess'd eternities which baffle Our deepest thought and dumbfound speculation; No, not all these, if thou or I or any Of all that deathless undefeatable host Be from one heart excluded. Man is One; Men shall and must be. What were God's glory else? Heaven's magnificence, what can it be? What but Love's perfect purpose realized ! Then let us realize it here today. Forgiving one another and receiving With thankful hearts each one his brother's love. Or if men hate us, let us hate not back ; And if they wrong us, wrong them not again. Even finally when driven to defend Our homes against them, let compassion spare Their homes and country, while with great desire We fight for their deliverance from themselves Unto each other before God, that so We all may yet be closer bound in one, VII BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER A freer and diviner fellowship Of men and nations, till these times of strife Give birth to final union, and all triumph Together in one various family. When these old hindrances are fallen away. THE FLOWERY BANKS OF STILLWATER Come, Love, let us wander along The flowery banks of Stillwater, Where sweet birds woo their mates with song, By the flowery banks of Stillwater. There thou and I, with the earth and sky, Have renew'd our youth in years gone by; 'Tis heavenly Spring — let us draw nigh To the flowery banks of Stillwater ! The trees are putting forth their green By the flowery banks of Stillwater, So fair, so joyous and serene, — Oh, the flowery banks of Stillwater! Unhinder'd now by shade, the sun Shines laughing through on youngsters' fiin, Where we, as children, used to run. By the flowery banks of Stillwater ! Oh, happy days in the happy past. On the flowery banks of Stillwater ! Oh, years that lead us Home at last By the flowery banks of Stillwater ! The young fresh hours of Spring are brief; Summer will bind the golden sheaf. And Autumn too soon cast the leaf. On the flowery banks of Stillwater. IX BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER But, Love, our days are all delight. By the flowery banks of Stillwater; The peace of God through grief keeps bright The flowery banks of Stillwater. The Spring will pass ; 'tis here today ! Then come, sweet Gertrude, haste away! We '11 wander, loving, while we may, By the flowery banks of Stillwater ! CONTENTS PAGE Immortal Company V The Flowery Banks of Stillwater VII IN PROSPECT OF WAR To Battle! (Written 1906) 3 Ajalon (1906) 5 Sonnets Written Nineteen-ten I. " What are the quarrels of the Old World to me ? " 8 II. "I urge no personal grievance" 8 III. ''I bum with shame when I see reasoning men" 9 rV. *'Thru dust and smoke uprises over the nations" 9 V. "When I hear crying babies, children squalling" 10 They Shall See God (Written 1912) 11 SONNETS War Breaks out in Europe, August, Nineteen-four- TEEN I. **When from the curious excited throngs" 15 II. "War will not always plague the sure advance" 16 III. "Back of delay, over and underneath" 16 rV. "Sweet is the sense of duty in the heart" 17 XI CONTENTS SONNETS, Continued page V. "The world is full of cowards who will die" 17 VI. "'As a strong father fostereth his own" 18 Of the German Blood Carousal into Belgium and France I. Satanic Ambition 19 11. Devilish Logic 19 III. Moral Stupidity 20 IV. Revolutions Now Inevitable 21 V. National Egotism — Ethical Confusion — War 21 VI. Christian Candor 22 America's Disillusionment I. Twisting Truth To Serve Evil 23 II. Brain Worship 23 III. We Are Indebted 24 IV. Moral Passion 25 V. Attitude Is Destiny 25 VI. Be Prepared 26 Our International Police Duty I. "A vain, self-righteous, unforgiving spirit" 27 II . " Immoral German teaching corrupts to conquer " 27 III. "Too frail, but by no will of mine exempt" 28 IV. "I do not fear that these United States" 28 V. " Free states become more free and democratic " 29 VI. "For any man whose wife has been abused" 30 VII. "All knaves our brothers? Yes, brother. What then?" 30 VIII. "High time we waked up to the prior claims" 31 IX. "Home and religion cry aloud against" 31 X. " The years draw nigh when states must no more err" 32 XII CONTENTS SONNETS, Concluded page XI. "Pick up a daily paper and look through it" 32 XII. "Did 1 not wish my people wise and great" 33 XIII. "When I feel downcast that my lot is hard" 34 XIV. "There are worse fates than death — iniquities" 34 XV. "The prophet sometimes with a reverent word" 35 XVI. "Key to and Mystery of the Universe!" 35 XVII. "There is one definite way to end bloodshed" 36 XVIII. "I, worry, when God's promise is gainsaid?" 36 To Alva Martin Kerr: "Whither, I wonder" 37 On Hard Work I. "I like hard work, with crowbar, pick, trowel, spade" 38 II. "The hardest task in all this world would be" 38 III. "To comprehend in order and assemble" 39 IV. "Had I been blest with physical endurance" 39 V. "Thank God, I know that without Him I'm nothing!" 40 The Germans Bombard the Cathedral at Rheims ! I. "In that remote mysterious twilight dawn" 41 II. "Where architecture satisfies the soul" 41 III. "Indignant at the burning of Louvain" 42 IV. "In rapt imagination many times" 42 V. " The great cathedral stands? — will be restored? " 43 VI. "Beautiful aspiration of the race!" 44 VII. "In the (long night that brought us to the dawn" 44 VIII. "From glory still to glory the human heart" 45 IX. "Ah, shall we ever build again like that!" 45 X. "Of all peace-loving people fit to trust" 46 Militant Peace 49 xra CONTENTS PAGE HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD, FAITH, FRIENDSHIP Build THE Dams! 73 What to me ! 76 Go, Therefore 78 The Living Flag 79 The Watcher 80 Sonnets to my Pastor, Alva Martin Kerr November First 81 January Snowstorm I . ^' Last night I trudged to town in the deep snow " 81 11. "Ray Anewalt made public sale by crier" 82 III. "Through snow I bounced home, high on the broad back" 82 IV. "Unless I have a horse that should be shod" 83 V. "Thank Heaven there has been no boozing- place" 84 VI. "After my basketful of butter had been" 84 VII. "This afternoon the carrier, long delay 'd" 85 VIII . " You cannot serve me better than to love me " 85 Prayers for Virginia To Say I. "Morning again! I am awake" 86 II. "From morning until night, all day" 87 III. "Safe within my little bed" 88 Christian Fellowship 88 Cat Tales Told by Tiny Girlies 89 The Divine Warfare 90 Tree Sparrows in February 90 Golden Scars 93 Canzone: "Grieve not above this body when it dies" 94 Divine Guidance 95 XIV CONTENTS HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD, FAITH, FRIENDSHIP, Concluded page Universal Wonder 96 Sonnet and Other Verses to Bertha L "To gentle Bertha in that place of pain" 99 II. "Go, little Harbingers of Spring" 99 Sonnets Rupert Brooke 101 Lusitania 101 Yet Will I Trust Him 102 Sonnets: In Travail of Soul I. "So thin and high the clouds, they seem to soar " 103 II. "I am a rapturous despairing throb" 103 III. "Like one who bears a burden a long way" 104 IV. "Old Age is in the distance yet; but now" 104 V. "Forgive me. Master, that I vainly thought" 105 VI. "Among the first immortals of all time" 106 VII. "0 my fine-spirited ideal friends!" 106 VIII. "From intense childhood have I mused and dream'd" 107 IX. "If only I can keep a few firm friends" 107 X. "Father, I for myself nothing request" 108 SUMMER AND SUBMISSION "He Careth" 111 Pastoral: "Clovers in the heavy dew" 117 Sonnets Homeward at Sundown 123 Sabbath Afternoon 123 The Living Raiment 124 The King's Image and Superscription 124 "I Know Now" 125 XV CONTENTS SUMMER AND SUBMISSION, Concluded page Sonnets "When I Consider in what Blessed Ways" 125 "Dreaming of Living, till our Life Be Past" 126 Ships at Evening 127 Hesperus 128 Thunder Showers near Midnight 129 Sabbath Evening in Dog Days 131 Sonnet : " Where August pasture flowers of royal hue " 140 Naiad 141 IN PROSPECT OF WAR IN PROSPECT OF WAR TO battle! To battle ! To battle ! The heathen are raging ! God and His people, relentlessly loving, War on all hideous idols are waging! God with His armies on Mammon is moving! To battle I To battle ! The strife has been long, The struggle between the Right and the Wrong; But God has been trying His soldiers true ; And these many have grown from the faithful few ! To battle ! To battle ! Through freezing and scorching, Fast on the scenes of action assembling, Christ at the head of His people is marching ! Thrones are tottering I Tyrants are trembling ! To battle \ To battle ! The onset is led By martyrs and prophets the heathen call dead ! The angels from Heaven their strength send down ! And trumpets by seraphs on high are blown 1 To battle ! To battle ! Higher, ye toilers. Lift, as ye march, your torch of enlightening ! Behold the bloody hands of the spoilers ! — Their hollow pretentions ! — their schemes for your frightening ! BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER To battle ! To battle ! Advance to the fray ! The future will build where you struggle today! And children who read of your deeds then Will be proud to descend from such women and men! To battle ! To battle I Love's cohorts are gleaming ! Dust like smoke from their tramping feet Rises thick where their banners are streaming \^^ite and gold in the holy heat I To battle! To battle! To battle, ye brave! — Not the Fatherland, but the Race to save ! Let patriots kiss and be brothers now. And Hell, not nations, overthrow! To battle! To battle! To battle! To battle! God and His Christ and Humanity ever! Hark — like the thunder of stampeding cattle — The annies of God ! And who shall deliver ? Remember the word of the Lord of old : Spare not their idols ! — touch not their gold ! — Lest Satan, maskt as an angel of light, Should obtain a truce and delay the fight! To battle ! To battle ! The foe is retreating ! They slay themselves in their frantic delusion ! On ! On ! On to the final meeting ! See in their shrunken ranks what confusion ! Remember we fight for our children today ! — For their homes and their future ! On ! On to the fray ! Behold the warlike progress of Peace ! — Humanity's progress — that never shall cease! 4 IN PROSPECT OF WAR AJALON In the Valley of Ajalon Joshua made moon and sun Stand still till the battle was won By the children of Israel, So the old legends tell ; And many Amorites fell On that memorable day; For God sent hailstones, they say, As they fled before Joshua, And smote them that they died. In valley, on mountainside. Who Jehovah of Hosts defied, Who defied Jehovah, the Lord ! For they fell that day by the sword And hail, ever afterward To be a warning to us That sin shall perish thus! Light streams from the Cross ! Darkness flees from the Light! Neither by power nor might Shall ye prevail, but by Jehovah, the Right ! Learn from the legend old To fight for the Right and be bold ! Sun and moon as of old Stand still for the hero who dares ! The strength of a thousand years All in one day appears, 5 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER To fight in the Right with the few! As Jehovah overthrew The Amorites and slew With great hailstones, they say, The foe who fell that day. Will He not help us slay Evils, without, within. Public and secret sin. If we believe and begin Doing as we are bid, Obeying, as Joshua did. Who slew the kings that hid. Terrified at the sight Of Jehovah God, the Light, Through eclipse and tempest vindicating the Right ! Joshua is an example, Providentially ample As a warning, to them that trample Justice under their feet, Of the men whom they must meet, \^Tiom none shall ever defeat! Stem messengers of the Lord Who bear not vainly the sword To smite the heathenish horde In the name and by the command Of Jehovah, Who hath plan'd To deliver them into our hand ! The day is drawing nigh When banded Oppression shall cry IN PROSPECT OF WAR : AJALON Mercy! — and shall fly Before the face of events, Abandoning percents, Estates, utilities, rents. To the People, to whom they belong, Who have suffered ages of wrong At the cruel unjust hands of their cunningly strong. Nature will not stand still ; Time shall perform God's will; Tempest and war fulfill His purpose. His high behest. Perfecting without rest The worshipful, the best; Refining away the dross. Which in the light of the Cross Will perish without loss. Tlie world through winnowing time Will continue to change and climb; The Father's Dream Sublime Realized will be; Men in each other shall see Christ, Who is Liberty: Shall in His path, through pain, Unto Perfect Life attain. Where the mind, having shed the brain. Will think the thoughts that grow Out of the little we know Into God's Joy, whither with Christ we go ! 7 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER WRITTEN IN NINETEEN-TEN What are the quarrels of the Old World to me ? I read them or ignore them as I choose ; But me tho they ignore, mine they must use; And I, whatever the consequences be, Stand where I stand, agree or disagree. Tactlessly candid, tho all else I lose. Fortunate still am I who dare refuse Obedience in the name of Liberty ! Puppets of custom, fools of circumstance. By fashion coaxt and flatter'd into doing, Not what ye would, but what ye know's expected, Ye face, not I, war's overwhelming chance. Hopeful of gain, destructively pursuing Trade, when ye should have risen on honor and objected ! II I URGE no personal grievance, recognize No private enmity, assume no rights Not held by all in common. What incites Man against man I heartily despise ! No act of heroism can surprise Me. Nor shall Europe's ancient racial spites Defer my frank enjoyment of delights Too often miss'd by the too worldly wise. 8 SONNETS No slave myself, all slavery I hate! No tyrant I, tyrants would I imprison! No envier, how should ambition fool me? Willing with all my powers to serve the State, I serve my family first, honor my reason. And in God's name defy the universe to rule me ! Ill I BURN with shame when I see reasoning men. Wealth-ridden, priest-bestraddled, landlord-led. Quarrelling over tobacco, beer and bread The more they pile up swag ! And there and then I hate the whole sad system ! And my pen Flies o'er the paper, by the hot heart sped. Till I have pour'd out of my teeming head High Heaven's contempt! — and I can laugh again! If any people in this world can laugh, It is the Socialists who have not lost In Socialism their individual strength, But have grown strong in judgement, as a staff Stiffens with age, and who have climb'd and cross'd Mountains, and guess'd the future's breadth and length! IV Through dust and smoke uprises over the nations The phoenix. Freedom, out of battle thunder Borne high on sunbright wings of startled wonder ! Unguess'd by Doubt, unseen from observations, 9 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Yet visible in lofty contemplations ! — While empires of accmnulated plunder. By unforeseen rebellions rent asunder, Join in new democratic federations ! See how stem laws creative, war-outlasting, Busy through many minds in many manners. Combine from outlived social forms to burst Into new nebulous life ! See youth recasting Kingdoms into republics, whence with banners Uprise fresh rebels by strong Freedom nursed ! When I hear crying babies, children squalling. Dogs baridng, and the noises of the street, — The sound of many voices, many feet. At early morn, and when the night is falling, — Hear factory whistles growling, shrieking, calling, — Carhorns, trainrushings, horsetrucks clash and beat, I marvel how the Lord with man can meet Amid the hideous din of strife appalling ! For God is in that battle working out Through those conflicting interests one Nation, That shall transcend the prophets and the seers ! Deep in the glorious future a great shout. Endlessly echo'd, hails the New Creation, Ever advancing through Eternal Years ! 10 IN PROSPECT OF WAR THEY SHALL SEE GOD For my home, our neighbors, all people. Singing, I urge each day Deep-sighted constructive ambition. In the lowly Christian way, That whatever the difficulties. There shall be no haste nor delay. That we all with such gentle courage Serenely in Christ should abide That His beauty and compassion May all ugly boasting chide. Till out of the fiery trial We come forth purified. Then will our past fall from us ! Then will our spirits upsoar In vigorous knowledge of Jesus, Whom to serve is to adore ! We shall then be fit for God's presence. When unlove tempts us no more. Living for one another; Serving for joy, not gain ; Children of one Great Father, Redeem'd by one Savior slain; One hope, one faith, one purpose. Body and soul and brain, — We come, in our generation, With patriarchs of old, 11 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Prophets and saints and martyrs, Whose boldness makes us bold: The glorified with the glorying. One Shepherd and one Fold! From no continuing city. We seek that one to come Where for the just and the contrite God hath prepared us a Home, There to enjoy Him forever; There to know and be known. Soon we shall enter, seeing With spiritual eyes, Deeper than we have knowledge. Wiser than seers are wise, The Great Day, the Glad Day, When we meet at peace in the Skies ! 12 SONNETS SONNETS WAR BREAKS OUT IN EUROPE, AUGUST, NINETEEN-FOURTEEN When from the curious excited throngs, A man of thoughtful care, I hide my face. And in the ear of God make simple songs To please my unspoil'd heart and with wild grace Immortalize our virtues, time and place Bind me no more : for then my soul belongs To other scenes than these, where nothing base Disturbs the tranquil mind, nor hint of wrongs Upon the spiritual sense intrudes; But sin and strife are as bad dreams forgot; And darkest sorrows and most bitter moods Rise glorified, or vanish into naught. Then do I see, as tho my cares were wings, The inevitable outcome of all things. 15 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER II War will not always plague the sure advance Of calm intelligent Hope and gentle Peace. Can man delay Creation? Is there chance With the Almighty ? Think ! For war must cease Must pass from Heaven's development in man, As God foreknew from the beginning — He Who waxt not old with time ; nor ever ran Before His purpose; nor forgot to be Upon each instant of eternal ages The Presence of All Good that ever was, and is, And shall be , for the Universe is His : He is the Universe! And He presages His Own advent and triumph, long foretold In every star that wondering seers behold. Ill Back of delay, over and underneath. Is Truth's incessant opposition to that Infernal pretense which dares live and breathe In human beings on whose ears fall fiat Her loftiest challenges and mightiest pleas For high nobility. In sacred song — Such as have deathlessly preceeded these — Lives That authoritative Power Wliose tongue Transcends the bounds of language, time and place. Giving to man excuse for his existence Upon the earth, — building within the race 16 SONNETS: WAR IN EUROPE An ever-widening Heaven of resistance Against an all but irresistible night That lingers in brute men, base heirs of Light, IV Sweet is the sense of duty in the heart Of simple man and woman toiling on At thankless task, furthering each his part In the Great Scheme whose issue is unknown. Sweet is the knowledge that it pays each well To labor in high hope: that no fell power Can rob such trustful spirits as foretell In their own Heaven-order'd lives the hour Of certain rapture, seldom glimpsed on earth. But seal'd and sure and waiting in the womb Of time. So helpless babes await the birth They have no knowledge of. Shall men presume To hasten by miscarriage their seal'd fate. Warring against God's plans rather than toil and wait? ;♦•> The world is full of cowards who will die Rather than live as God would have men live. Hordes rush together at the battle cry. Slaying each other sooner than forgive. The world is full of fools who would be king, Whom the king's knaves can use to work his will. For a catchphrase they dare do anything. Except the things they should — even worse than kill! 17 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER The world is full of shams of every kind. How little, after all is done, will last! Oh, might I for myself that little find ! Safe in my bosom I would hold it fast ! Teacher! — make me brave and wise and true, To please God first in all I say and do. VI As a strong father fostereth his own, God guardeth them that keep with reverence His holy law. On tables not of stone. But in the secret heart is their defense Who trust in Him; there the deep consequence Of all their thoughts before His eye alone They daily work out moment by moment; whence Are manifest His mercies which atone For the sad errors of the human race. So Jesus lived and died, our chief Example And Guarantor, in Whom sin found no place. Because He made His heart God's holy temple. Unblemish'd Man ! — in Whose high character We recognize God's personal universal care. 18 SONNETS OF THE GERMAN BLOOD CAROUSAL INTO BELGIUM AND FRANCE SATANIC AMBITION Sensing the rise of Universal State, Germany schemes to make Earth Germany! The Autocrat, man's old Archenemy, Plotting world rule by ruin ! Years they wait. Busy with cheap ambition to be great; Self-hoodwinkt, self-enslaved, who might be free; Scholarly, frugal, toilsome, pious, with three Far-grasping murderous hands unawed by Fate ! Envied, suspected, fear'd, abhor'd of nations ; Once the too-much-admired ; now Time's fierce joke ! A noble race to an ignoble yoke Inhumanly submissive ! Civilization's Bad spectacle ! Religion mired in guile ! Materialism slumpt ! Heroically vile ! II DEVILISH LOGIC With insolent disgusting sophistry Now the chief moral pervert among nations Would justify his criminal aggressions And cowardly terrorizing, as tho he, 19 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER The murderer, not his victim, were the free. The wise, the righteous one! Of all obsessions, This agony to exalt the brutal passions Into a national fetish on the plea Of international necessity — What dastard broach, of Hell's black postulations, More grossly pagan and insane could be ! Yet we applauded them, follow'd their fashions, And bow'd us down, as tho it had been fit That all the nations at their feet should sit! Ill MORAL STUPIDITY Moral stupidity provokes false teaching; Blind guides to lead the blind stand ever ready. By your false choice your covetous hands are bloody; No power could have compel'd you but the itching Of your brute lust for power. You'll be beseeching For mercy yet. And after that you'll study To covet honor. Beware, everybody: Violate no man's rights by over-reaching; But guard all as your own, lest all confused Go back and down in savagery together; Whence none return sole victors, but all chasten'd Must rise as one, accuser with accused, As friends, not enemies, brother with brother, Our mutual deliverance thus hasten'd. 20 SONNETS: THE GERMAN BLOOD CAROUSAL IV REVOLUTIONS NOW INEVITABLE The ruler who assumes the dictator Might weigh and deal with causes and consequences First in his mind, before he takes all chances. Remembering, autocracy means war! — Rebellion ! — revolution ! — and the more To be expected as his cause advances. Even children, in least haughty words and glances, Read invitation violently to abhor The perpetrators of they know not what ! In all hearts dwells incipient revolt. Which tyranny soon fosters, and no wiles Nor flatteries can assuage. Wars will be fought As long as kings keep their presumptuous holt On patriots who dare gainsay their guiles. NATIONAL EGOTISM — ETHICAL CONFUSION — WAR As long as evil is call'd good, good evil, There will be war; and Christians will be found Fighting against each other within sound And sight of Heaven ! Egg'd on by their devil As heroes, they exalt the infernal revel Into a righteous passion, and astound The world with sacrifice ! Crippled and bound, They come back to their sense of what is civil, 21 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER To think, if whipt, how whipt the enemy was ; Or, victors, how supremely great they are; And so prepare to fight, these for revenge, Those for more prestige. The worthier the cause The less occasion should there be for war. And yet I would not that the right should cringe ! VI CHRISTIAN CANDOR 1 AM a hard, stem, unrelenting foe To superstitions, weaknesses and shams. There is That in me Which stands up and damns And challenges with scorn the first faint show Of smooth talk that would coax from yes and no A Heaven-responsible utterer who slams At frauds what he must think, without flim-flams ! I had as lief repeat as let lies go Unbranded from my presence. I '11 not take One hard word back if what I say is so. Lies can't scare facts; and men as God's dynams Never will quibble when the Truth 's at stake. I '11 be kind and forbearing while I can ; But when I face the Lie, I '11 strike! — for God-in-man! 2^ SONNETS America's disillusionment TWISTING TRUTH TO SERVE EVIL We all are bad enough without being thought Worse than we are. I trust that I have said Nothing in all my verses that if read Will give one false impression. I have wrought In awful dread of seeming what I'm not ; And yet I know my life has beat and bled Worse than in vain, if the bright living red Will register pink lies; for I was taught Better than that. All words are treacherous. Men make us say what they would have us think. We cannot trust our tongues nor guide the pen To say just what we would. Christ on the cross Is tortured into lying printer's ink To justify the schemes of bad ambitious men. II BRAIN WORSHIP For much of this premeditated bosh, These deep-laid long-hatch'd broods of serpent spawn. We have ourselves to blame ; for we look'd on In worshipful astonishment and gush 23 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER At all that dreary intellectual slush, And let our sons and daughters go and fawn And truckle and get stufft and overgone By solemn stupids, till their mountainous trash Bewilder'd us, and would have stultified Our spirit, whose far-fetcht flatteries helpt puff Them into scientific souUessness ! Had not hallucination, their false guide. Crazed them to crime, we might have got that stuff Into our blood and made the same foul mess ! Ill WE ARE INDEBTED We are indebted to them for their twaddle. The world is wiser for that folly henceforth. We trust ourselves more for the shoddy centsworth Got by long adulation and slow coddle From malted brains. We saw them meekly waddle After their masters in the morally dense North, While we stood glorifying the immense worth Of their self-advertising self-befuddle. And now! Are we to do as they've been doing? Is their sublime delusion to be ours? Are we to hug ourselves and ask all buggers To boost our brains? Are we to cease pursuing Our Great Idea, and devote free powers To breeding up a nation of brute sluggers? 24 SONNETS: AMERICA'S DISILLUSIONMENT IV MORAL PASSION There has been too much said on the soft side. Beware, my nation, — and thou dost beware: I know thee ; and I love thee ; and I swear. Blinking no facts, to still believe with pride. We covet no man's country! — yet decide Again, with strong worldwide benevolent care: Thou wilt not victimize the weak; nor dare Look sideways at thy duty ; nor misguide With smooth perversions of Eternal Fact Thy citizens; nor think to cheat mankind With sophistry; but more free, and yet more Determined to be free, that thou wilt act With, not against, thy highest, holiest mind. Waging on thine own sins uncompromising war ! ATTITUDE IS DESTINY We fast become what we prefer to be. Feeding new thoughts on thoughts that were our food. While destiny determines attitude. Our attitude fixes our destiny. Fate is environment and heredity. Cosmic, terrestrial, racial, neighborhood; All ages focus'd in habitual mood ; What our ancestors have been, and what we. 25 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER But in, through, and beneath, and over all, God's man, who lays hold on Eternal Cause The best he knows, shall know best how to act; For, having laid hold high, he shall grow tall By taking thought with care to keep the laws That must rule as a wise portentious Fact! VI BE PREPARED Men should so live as not to hesitate In thoughtful sacrifice for a just cause. So should a people by progressive laws Their future attitudes anticipate ; Nor trust themselves to whim; nor risk the State On doubtful prospects, when a fortnight's pause Means tragedy ! The time to uncover flaws And weaknesses is now ! — not then to wait In agonizing struggle and wild guess. Explaining why we fail — nay, fail we must not! This hour — this generation — century — yes. This age — depends on us: if we adjust not Ourselves to facts as they arise to threaten, We flout the Law, and somewhere shall be beaten ! 26 SONNETS OUR INTERNATIONAL POLICE DUTY A VAIN, self-righteous, unforgiving spirit Coils at the heart of all aggressive war. Eager to strike, it matters not what for. But always with a grievance ready. Fear it ! Believe not men who see in self all merit. Preening their souls as God's elect. At core They lie in wait, a spy at every door! Meet, — they are there! Speak secretly, — they hear it! This is the Devil of whom Jesus spake ! While Christians quarrel'd, he enslaved a nation! Who is he, and what is he ? He is man ! Man, puift with lust! The sly old slippery snake. Pretending piety, while with temptation He slimes his flatter'd victim ! Slay him while you can ! II Immoral German teaching corrupts to conquer ! If Europe falls a prey, next comes our turn ! It ought to make the soul within us bum To see with shame the brutal Prussian junker. His heel on Belgium's neck, and we the flunker Among great nations ! Shall we never learn To live above our boastful unconcern For what concerns US all ! Vainer and drunker 27 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER With blood the Teutons will become, till here From insolence they burst forth, Hell's debauch. And rend us into ruin! Every grouch Who calls himself a Socialist, but is a liar. Will rise against this country with a sneer And fight for German anarchy with fire ! Ill Too frail, but by no will of mine exempt. Not only do I lift stem voice and cry Against war's desecrations, but both I And my proud son stand eager to be campt And drill'd with veteran watchers who have trampt For us these guarded shores, arm'd lest the lie Take us by its feign'd sweetness, and we die Effeminates ! Let not fashionable contempt Sully my lips for those who wam'd and wrought. And whom we should have trusted ! Let no shirk Suppose me soft ! I have not toil'd in vain, And loved these pastoral solitudes for naught ! I know what wicked councils are at work Emasculating Christ to cause us future pain ! IV I DO not fear that these United States Would violate the confidence of man. With Christ we cannot ! Without Christ we can I Dare we, my people, become such ingrates, 28 SONNETS: OUR INTERNATIONAL DUTY Forgetful how we lived through what dire straits. To strive with mightiest nations in the van Of progress, joint custodians of God's plan, For which the bleeding world in anguish waits? Shall not the backward peoples come to know Our Captain and Deliverer as theirs? Could we defraud and disappoint them so? Betray their faith for whom the dear Christ cares? Looking for their redemption in our peace. Shall they not see us vow that violence must cease? Free states become more free and democratic Through international comity extending To all alike, but virile, self-defending, And resolutely just. No vague erratic. But the Avenger, swift and terrible And imminent as life and death, is He Upon Whose character is founded free The compact of these States whose guarantee Not all the world's false prophets can annul! Whatso abides must first be founded deep In adamantine justice. Men must reap As they have sown. Murderers must be kill'd. Or kept lockt up, let silly people weep ! Crown'd monsters upon thrones no sentiment can gild! 29 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER VI For any man whose wife has been abused By a bull coward, — for any son or brother Who slays to avenge a sister or a mother That villain by this woman's soul accused Of worse than murder, — I, a man not used To justifying crime, do altogether Feel with an understanding heart, nor smother The rising flame ! Rape cannot be excused Even by German science, nor condoned On plea of war. Still must mankind restrain And guide these higher passions, and not doubt The avenging Law, but vindicate ! They stoned In ancient times ; and better we should brain Than leave at large, unalter'd, prowling about ! VII All knaves our brothers? Yes, brother. What then? So are the decent, whose defense comes first Against the unselfgovem'd mob. And when Behind strong walls which none can climb nor burst All maniacs are kept, — not as accurst, But with intelligent consideration And skillful oversight, — then shall we durst Indulge the luxury of pity, our worst Having been put in proper isolation. Each citizen, then, a model of the nation. Each nation of the world ; the man or state 30 SONNETS: OUR INTERNATIONAL DUTY That fails in moral rectitude, to be Restrain'd, or if need, punish'd, without hate. All to the wholesome praise of liberty. VIII High time we waked up to the prior claims Of innocent posterity — the demands Of civilization — the most pure commands And statutes of a righteous God, Who shames Our vascillating cant and fickle aims With His unswerving purpose ! In His hands Are all things; and His intent comprehends All people of all nations, customs, names; For all are His. The iniquitous and the good Stand equal at His bar; for all have sin'd And forfeited all, the just and the unjust Reaping together, as He said they should ; The sowers of the wind reaping the whirlwind, All flesh corruption. Yet be stem we must ! IX Home and religion cry aloud against The evil of too lenient a hold These days on powerful criminals ! Of old With wild fanatic glee savages danced About their victims, who, it often chanced. Were of their kind, and would have been as bold To join the frenzy. Men like beasts were sold, Beaten, and chained in dungeons. Crime advanced, 31 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER And knave exceeded knave in opulent vice And sneakery ! Now the sentimental evil Is, we are over-scrupulously nice In dealing with great scoundrels as if civil. Not criminal, frauds ! Justice has been disarmed By Mercy, Peace delay 'd, and every good cause barm'd. The years draw nigh when states must no more eiT On either side as now they err on both. Justice will vindicate herself as Truth To honest hearts, tho diplomats concur In adroit circumlocutions and still stir Hate in the people's hearts. Knaves loll in sloath. Circumvent laws, and under solemn oath Perjure themselves, dodge taxes, and deter Man's progress yet wherever possible, So scurvy with the dead and unslought past Are all our backward institutions. Lies, Shaming our boasted progress ! Heaven and Hell Marching to Christian music ! Freedom with caste Mixt up, in church and state, college and enterprise! XI Pick up a daily paper and look through it, And ask yourself if advertisers divulge Commercial facts. Not many men dare do it. Gaze at the big-eyed headlines : how they bulge 32 SONNETS: OUR INTERNATIONAL DUTY With over-statement! So an empty cruet, Smear'd with molasses, will draw most flies to it. For news purveyors must, they say, indulge A childish public. Rub your trap with suet! sophistry! thy name is — Prussianism? Here, everywhere the mighty little leaven Keeps quietly at work; and lawyers, even. Are to be found who never could be driven To prey upon the innocent. Sarcasm? No, this is, really, enthusiasm. XII Did I not wish my people wise and great, I, too, could let ambition swell my speech: Could put aside humanity and teach What goes before a nation's fall: could sate My soul with monstrous dreaming, and face Fate With grim burlesque ! But would my neighbors each Prove gullible — be taught to over-reach And grasp at half the world with hideous hate ! America loathes with vigilant defiance Old snake-eyed Usurpation which directs The private soul's heroic sacrifice Into a power-worshiping compliance With military murder! Such abjects Require our pity that they were not wise. 33 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER XIII When I feel downcast that my lot is hard, It does not satisfy my soul to know That everywhere most men find their lot so. I grieve to think how many lives are mar'd That might be sweet if most men stood strict guard And helpt each other as God bids us. Oh! — I think it would be beautiful to grow More upright, yet more gentle, in accord With our Great Father's wishes for us all. As Jesus in His heavenly life on earth So kindly shows us. But we love self best, And take slight pains to please God, hence we fall Into bad habits, setting too much worth By schemes with which our minds become obsesst. XIV There are worse fates than death — iniquities More reprehensible than vandalism. There is a seeming peace that, while a chasm Yawns between states full-arm 'd for wars like these. Bridges and brings together. Good men please Their fancy with fond hopes, till the hell-spasm Vomits! — and with sublime enthusiasm Bewilder'd boys rush forth to fall ! Kings sieze On any pretext, so it be a lie ! They cannot speak plain truth ! Had truth been spoken, — War? — no! — there are not simpletons enough! 34 SONNETS: OUR INTERNATIONAL DUTY Prime rights there are for which most men would die : These are kept threaten'd ; and arm'd truce once broken. How shall Disease, Rapine and Murder be call'd off! XV The prophet sometimes with a reverent word Will bid irreverence cease and nations kneel. Into the speaking presence of the Lord His anguish brings proud hearts and makes men feel Ashamed of their false pride, stirring to zeal From penitence. But if he be not true. His words are wasted and have no appeal; For tho they seem to accomplish that whereto They seem directed, and to really do The work of God, not so. God does His work, And always did do all, if men but knew. As the clear sun shines on when earth is dark, Creation is enlightening and proceeds According to God's object and man's needs. XVI Key to and Mystery of the Universe ! — On Whom proud men of unregenerate brain Bring all their wits to bear, scheming in vain To falsify What they cannot explain — We look to Thee, both to escape the curse Of superstition and idolatry. And to enjoy the knowledge that in Thee We each can be what God wants us to be, 35 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Ourselves at our own individual best. With that fair expectation always bright, And the Way open while we seek aright. Our minds are clarified by every test That brings us hourly nearer to fulfilling God's heavenly purpose as we grow more willing. XVII There is one definite way to end bloodshed: The foremost nations must the strongest be ! Enlightened militant democracy Must rule the federated world ! Instead Of being by swashbuckling bluffers led To autocratic slaughter, let us free Those ignorant boys, and end that royal spree ! Obnoxious now, when they have starved and bled And stagger'd down from triumph to defeat, Soak'd sober in their own fast ebbing life. They will give up Hell's hopeless fearful strife, And beg for Christian peace. Then all shall meet. Good neighbors, and resolve as one that war Between democracies shall be no more ! XVIII I, WORRY, when God's promise is gainsaid? The angels know that I am glad with them ! Seraphic among shining seraphim, Far in the future I project my head — 36 SONNETS Beyond the stars, colossus-like, outspread Majestic wings ! For I am one with Him Who bounds Eternity! Aloft I swim Above those warring atoms — peer whence their dead Are fast besieging Heaven — and I shout PEACE ! And succeeding generations there Among those echoing mountains as one voice. Like distant music heard with ears devout, Answer! — while starbright souls ascend in prayer — And the enraptured Heavens, listening, rejoice! TO ALVA MARTIN KERR Whither, I wonder, and how fares my friend? So soon he disappear'd, so long he stays. We grow now anxious for him as the days Bring meagre word. When will his journey end? Is his frail health not hopeful? — does he mend? — Or what? — and why? Perhaps in rapt amaze He rests among grand mountains, — or will gaze On the wide sea, — while shades of night descend, And in that lofty theater the stars Begin to play their silent parts for him. Where God is Playwright, God Stagemanager, And the Great Prompter God ! He sees red Mars Ascendant now, where warclouds cannot dim The splendor of that scene in that wide theater I 37 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER ON HARD WORK I LIKE hard work, with crowbar, pick, trowel, spade. Laying stone wall, or digging a tile ditch. On my own time, not some boss to enrich, But cautious of expense, to build, fill, grade. Sod, park and beautify, plant trees for shade. And make the world a pleasant place in which To bring up children. First I plan and sketch, Alter, develop, then when the scheme is laid To scale on paper, I will spare no pains To get each detail so all parts agree. And nothing has been overdone or slighted. Such work is rest. But now, body and brains Rebel at all exertion as drudgery. And will not be even in sleep united. II The hardest task in all this world would be, Without Christ, to believe our Maker cares. I cannot comprehend the charity That loves me and appreciates my prayers. I 've trudged the crowded streets of a great city. Proud and rebellious, and have still loved men; But scorn'd with all my soul to seek their pity : Work at just wage was all I wanted then. 38 SONNETS Foolish? I 'd rather die than stoop or crawl To get what 's due me in most dire distress. I know there are kind people everywhere; I '11 speak for them and for the good of all ; But for myself, no, I will not confess My personal need, but walk proud and keep square. Ill To comprehend in order and assemble These vigorous faculties that else would mar Their wise Creator's purpose, I make war Outside myself — will not submit nor tremble, But march right on, head up, and if I stumble, God's there to give me courage and restore My strength against the day when I '11 need more Than I can use yet; for I '11 not dissemble, But act straightforward without weak pretense, Dealing as I have dealt, on the same hard Uncompromising principles as now I strive to live by before God, and hence Must demonstrate. For I am on my guard, Facing all facts of life with serene brow. IV Had I been blest with physical endurance To stand up to the heavy tasks I like. What more could heart desire? Still I can hike Among the stars with laughing self-assurance ! 39 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER And hate sin with implacable abhorrence ! Inspire respect as I come down the pike ! And if I 'm struck I can refuse to strike ! Fight if I 'm forced to, and still show forbearance ! I live in just the age and hour and spot That suits me best, wherever I may be. Have just the limitations and the task That fit the case, whether my choice or not. If I can feel, altho I may not see. That I am doing as my Lord would ask ! Thank God, I know that without Him I 'm nothing ! And may that hour not come wherein I fail To seek His counsel ; for my need is great ; So great I cannot know how great it is ! Enough that I am not my own, but His; And trusting Him, whatever time and fate May have in store for me, naught shall prevail Against me! Tho without Him I am nothing, In His all-strength I am as powerful As I dare be: unfathomable Source And Center of my life ! And may my heart For gratitude fail not, but grow alert To do Him thoughtful service with all the force He lends my mind, that else were mean and dull. 40 SONNETS THE GERMANS BOMBARD THE CATHEDRAL AT RHEIMS ! In that remote mysterious twilight dawn When man's intelligence first found expression In sculptured rock, from which he learn'd to fashion Rude implements and weapons, graving thereon Apt semblances of strange beasts, long since gone With the first artists, there were even then Primeval builders among savage men, Who speak to us in monstrous altar stone And earthwork; and these finally reach'd their height And demonstrated the magnificence And grandeur of their mighty enterprise In awful temples, till we find our sight Thrill'd by the great cathedrals, with a sense Of their vast beauty soaring to the skies ! II Where architecture satisfies the soul. We feel ennobled by the echoing sound Of our own footfalls! — while we gaze around In mute astonishment, both that the whole Structure and that each detail shows the control Man exercises loftily to astound Himself with his divine instincts ! The ground Beneath our feet has toil'd up with one sole 41 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Intelligent purpose: to redeem with strength. Unto exalted dignity of form And beauty of expression, all that past By which we came unto the breadth and length And height of such fine aptitude, through storm And stress, to do things godlike, that shall last. Ill Indignant at the burning of Louvain, For Rheims I walk'd the fields in grief and wept ! man, hell-bent on murder! thou hast slapt Thy Savior in the face, and at His pain Mockt, while He loved you still; and still for gain Thou hast betray'd Him; but through death He kept God's purpose to redeem you ! Oh, accept His proffer'd peace and gentleness — refrain — Refrain thy feet from swiftness to shed blood ! Nobly in paths of prayer turn all thy thoughts ! Let fierce Destruction her doom'd self destroy, And not halt thee, who art the blest of God ! Thy destiny is more than lines and dots On a king's map, heir of immortal joy! IV In rapt imagination many times I 've stood and watch'd and worshiped in thy streets, Where bursting steel shrieks death! — and loud hoofbeats Of cavalry instead of evening chimes 42 SONNETS: RHEIMS CATHEDRAL Are heard, burnt and desecrated Rheims ! Christ's fairest monument no longer greets The beauty-loving eye, nor proudly meets Man's highest expectation! The soul climbs To heights like this in carved stone no more. Imperious and irreverent is man: Busy with armies and material schemes, Kings have their dark way with him as of yore : He spares to God what little time he can From building mortal power on love's demolish'd dreams. The great cathedral stands? — will be restored? — All its ennobling and transcendent beauty Yet to these eyes may speak in that quaint city Where yet these reverent feet may come? Good word. Bringing small comfort. Oh, that men abhor 'd Sin ! — and in mutual furtherance of duty Would live! — not flock to death and without pity Slaughter each other in Thy name, dear Lord ! Cathedrals have their value ; but what worth Can be ascribed to grandeur more than Thou, Father, hast for the least of men through love Made possible? Not all the templed earth Could balance in Thy sight the hearts that bow To humble tasks which their devotion prove. 43 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER VI Beautiful aspiration of the race ! Thy lovely silent protest seems in vain. Around thy ruins, piling up the slain. The war goes on, the ancient world's disgrace Disgracing yet the nations in the face Of the dear Christ. Oh, why will men profane Thy holy altars. Lord, and with bad Cain Murder their brothers, and themselves debase ! Sweet piled-up sacrifices of the past ! Earth's counterpart of what in Heaven must be ! Thou hast fiU'd full thy part in the sad labors To which His life He gave. Be not downcast. My soul, but still believing. Time shall see These very nations one, and all men friends and neighbors. VII In the long night that brought us to the dawn Of modem days, this giant lily grew; And none but the divine Creator knew How, when the darkness finally was gone, This lovely myriad-petal'd flower of stone Would stand before men's minds in the soft blue Of those deep tender skies, like a grand view Of God Himself, wondrous to gaze upon ! But is the long, long night really past? — While men in God's just presence can despise And hatefully desecrate His priceless token ! 44 SONNETS: RHEIMS CATHEDRAL Yes ; for in vain the false betrayer tries To force us back into that dreadful vast ! Our hearts may break, but Satan's power is broken! VIII From glory still to glory the human heart. With vigorous determined will aspiring. Leads on the racial thought to the acquiring Of apter skill in science and in art, Making of matter the mind's counterpart, Project to prospect answering without end. Returning on our past, we still transcend Immediate expectation with some start Suggested by late failures, on and up And ever young, from out the past once more. By some fresh excellence that naught can stop. Surpassing all that ever went before. Till now the universal mind of man Begins to see that what we will we can ! IX Ah, shall we ever build again like that! Shall man, aspiring with enlighten'd brain. Yet higher, nobler altitudes attain? Shall he with contrite strength of purpose yet Surpass proud Rome? — a finer finial set Upon a fairer spire conceived with sane Unsuperstitious brow that shall disdain All sacrilege with a divine regret? 45 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Oh ! I must think that it shall yet be so — That man, to his Creator's image wrought, Shall make as he is made, more and more true. His mind, expanding as his faith shall grow, Must follow still his far-projected thought. Until his earthly work is done which he must do. Of all peace-loving people fit to trust, Does any man with whole-soid'd hate abhor The military life? — I loathe it more! It seems to me most heinously unjust That men who do not want to quarrel must ! — That boys who know not what they 're fighting for Should be incensed against each other! War? How speak my hot contemptuous disgust ! Only by jailing those responsible For war's continuance can war be ended; And no amount of blood and treasure expended Can be compared with such world peace as shall, After this monstrous grapple, be at last Establish'd on the ruins of the past ! 46 MILITANT PEACE MILITANT PEACE There are times when I feel as if I were That innocent brave soldier once again: A little harmless inoffensive child Imagining himself a sturdy hero ! Then I go fifing, drumming, blowing bugles, Along the road to town, or through the pasture. To my own martial music keeping step, Grand as a brigadier in uniform, An army in my soul ! Not now I worship The plumed chapeau, sash, epaidets, belt, sword, Ornaments and insignia. No more On dress parade for envious boys dash by Equestrian birds-of-paradise in blue And gold, becorded and bestriped and terribly Important! These old loose patch'd overalls Are statelier to me than all that cheap Discarded trumpery. But it took the eye With color and with pompous form and orderly Advance ! It had the effect 'twas meant to have. Convincing little stout hearts in the street ! The populace was dazzled! Youth fell in line, And march'd away before proud weeping mothers! Maidens hung with romantic admiration On handsome soldier lads going to war Against their country's foe ! And warm true hearts 49 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Not all in vain were stir'd to many an act Of patriotic sacrifice and deep Devotion to their God. War! The Rebellion Held with dark, sad, exciting memories yet The imagination of our little worid, When heroes in their faded uniforms Were common as blue flowers. Small captains, fired To imitative action, led in battle Their mimic armies to the incessant beat Of tinpan drums, over wild vacant lots, Down foreign alleys, through dread backyards — bang! Bang ! — bang ! — vociferated every fierce Defiant youngster, squinting down the barrel Of black imaginary blunderbus ! Batter'd pot-cover cymbals clasht with dire And dreadful clangor to the toot and shrill Of horns and fifes ! Conflicting the commands To fire ! — to charge ! — to halt ! — but the retreat, — Tliat was a pell-mell impulse of the soul, Defying orders! Dead came back to life. And down again fell slain ! 'Twas terrible ! Big childhood, pretematurally murderous. Made war a butchery ! But none Was badly hurt. The reminiscent veteran Told tales of camp and prison, — of battlefields Reeking with bloody carnage ! Hideous The roar! — the smoke! — the tumult! — the headlong Peril-defying charge and hand-to-hand Encounter with heart-seeking bayonet And swift sword ! Flash and fall pistol and man Together ! Over faces and mangled bodies 50 MILITANT PEACE Blown into vulture's meat beyond human semblance They hack-stab-shoot-pound-throttle-curse each other! — Leaving the brain'd and silenced, wounded and dead, Piled up for surgery or burial Or putrifaction, breeding dread disease. Maggots and buzzards. Groaning in hospitals. Beseeching to be put out of their maim'd And miserable despairing life, they wait Through year-long days and nights their turn, And finally having that, their death, or dreary Pathetic half-existence in a shatter'd And helpless hulk; else back to try again Killing and being kill'd. And that were better Than lingering in pain, sick, motionless From loss of blood ; while thoughts of home and mother Wake the weak flesh with tears during long nights Pass'd hour by hour in lonely faint desire For life and strength, to see and reassure Fond hearts, kiss dear kind faces, once again. Always a dying somewhere in the stillness; Always a carrying out to burial; And more brought from the rumble in the distance; Moanings, with dreams of tumult! — staggerings back! — Wild clutchings out! — long fallings into darkness! What tales they told ! How dreadful did it seem ! Yet always was it calculated to fire Self-confident youth, and awe the credulous With scenes of enviable fortitude And sacrifice, keeping alive in man The old outworn delusion, that supremely On battlefields, in carnal strife, is courage 51 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Triumphant over fear — that man fighting Best serves his age — that only midst mad waste Of human life can patriot prove himself A patriot indeed. Our loyal hearts Must to old customs and traditions bow With that unquestioning implicit trust Which absolute authority demands In the all-sacred name of the Most High ! As tho submission and obedience Were necessarily noble ! Too little said In burning condemnation of the bestial Debauchery which made the soldier's life As grave a menace to posterity As the alternative curse from which he saved us ! Yet vice waits not on war; for vice is war; And both are Hell ; and Hell is of the heart. Peace is proportion'd unto righteousness; For righteousness is peace; and peace is Heaven. These are the great alternatives, the fates : Choice rests with us ; and day by day we choose ; And as we choose we bless or blight our lives With peace or war; and both are cumulative. Righteousness in our favor, iniquity Against a day of national reckoning — here When we shall least expect it ! God yet rules ; And man must bow in meek obedience Before His holy law and absolute will. No matter what his vanity prefers. We are not man's crude workmanship : He made us ; And He cannot be false to His Own trust. Whose instant awful task we are. 52 MILITANT PEACE So shaped In biblical nobility were the Christians Who in their humble thoughts dared entertain Unpopular doubt: who, having themselves waged War against war within, — Heaven against Hell Prevailing! — dared on high principle oppose Carnality, with all its works ; for all Are equally wicked in the sight of God : False peace and self-security no less Than war. Tho all true men deprecate war. We know that war will baffle peace till justice Is honor'd among nations, and right rules! So, free men, disagreeing less and less. And more and more united, shall, we think. By God's grace, in the not too distant years. Accomplish peace and hand the victory on To their descendants. Ignoble and degrading Is war ; but the degraded and ignoble Are always, everywhere, cursing the world ! Only the inherent nobleness Of divine human nature, after centuries Call'd Christian, in the light of Heaven can see What high-soul'd independence peace requires. Great menacing armaments by pagan force Maintain'd against the questioning centuries Men challenge now as nations in an age Surcharged with peace ideals not all yet Deeply accepted. For the primal purpose Of gilt and tinsel, from the painted savage To modem pomp, has been, to dazzle friends 53 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER And frighten enemies. All ceremony Is a cheap substitute for truth and justice. Men camouflage their purposes from each other. And the great age of racial comradeship From century to century postpone. Yet who will say peace is not nearer now Than sane, strong, equitable, brotherly peace Has ever been ! The world by war is made Less bellicose. Like strong drink, or indulgence Even in good, battle becomes revolting, And in the wise economy of nature Disgusts us all at last, and makes of soldiers Moral reformers and peace advocates. Men are not quite such fools as once they were; They ask less pomp and more reality; Stale idle soldiering appeals not now To busy men in this tremendous age. Our sons grow satisfied with home and friends, Where such pursuits as promise healthier minds Demand their thought. Why weigh their future down And prostitute their reason to tom-toms — To all that neolithic inheritance From a dead past? Why drag a chamel house Of dark ancestor worship, with all its cruel Wierd mesmeristic frummery, long since Discredited, and never, let us hope. To be respectable again! Half-slought, War drops off slowly from the future's Emerging body. We stand out ashamed. In open acknowledgement before the world That war is ignorance, therefore criminal, 54 MILITANT PEACE Hence cannot be exalted with specious pleas Of race necessity ! War is delusion ! — A drunkard's dream ! — a maniac's paradise ! — A cry of **Thief !" cunningly staged for plunder! Too far war now has hounded our advance Like a fierce pack of wolves! — or bands of ruthless Marauders! — which we could not hope to more Than keep at bay, or frighten for a time. Knowing they would again catch up and find us Never too well prepared. Then treadmill progress moved So slow as to be imperceptible from age To age; while generation follow'd blindly On generation, to no purpose, it seem'd. But tribal rivalry, tyrannic ambition, Religious fanaticism, and excesses Of every base kind that our mortal weakness Could conjure up. But now, at last, we thought. Invention and the spirit of the times Carried us fast ahead and urged us on To such achievements as left far behind The plagues and terrors that had dog'd us long Through tedious years. Still falsely in the name Of God and Christian civilization gambling For prestige and the markets of the world. Ourselves and one another we enslaved. And risk'd our hard- won peace. Now we must enter. Not of our choice, this bitterest struggle, and fight As men have never fought, against new foes. Created for no diabolical use. But wrested from God's purpose by foul fiends. And turn'd against humanity ! No choice 55 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Is left us but to spoil the infernal sport, And make those devils rue the day they stuck Their heads up out of Hell with frightful faces, After their forty-years conspiracy, To bluff by brutal murder, in God's name. The race our Savior died for on the cross ! Now when peace-loving Christians who foresaw Great change in man are disappointed and sad, Let them not be self-righteous and condemn The brave who fought for freedom, and who henceforth Must fight for peace, as long as powerful foes Demand it. We are not yet out of the woods. Let vigilance not be relaxt; but rather At full strength, with all- watchful discipline, Must we who look for permanent peace maintain Our vigor, and with set determination One course pursue, looking to see establish'd And guarded as a grave reality The noble dream that else were worse than vain. Tho war must pass into sublime disuse. And in historical perspective be A wonder legend of the past, not so The warrior — never the free valiant spirit That went to war! But let courageous hearts Unite to the great universal cause. Democracy ; and let brave men be just In mutual service: that unmutual war May perish of its pathos, and be ever A pity to the nations and a sorrow Before mankind. Until that hour is come, I shall not hesitate to take my stand 56 MILITANT PEACE On the just side of international quarrels. And give my voice to end them for all time As they arise, putting not off with weak And cowardly postponement what today Demands the world's attention ! While I voice The Christian's Hope, I sympathize with all Who seek to solve their problems, not to shirk them. The universe cannot be limited ; Nor will I be, who am the universe In miniature. And shall I limit man? Am I a fool, that I should set myself God's task! When kings presume to interfere With a Republic! — bidding free men conform To their distortions! — rise up, Man, in wrath! — Slay them ! — leave not a vestige of their power ! Posterity demands it ! From the ground Cries out the sacred blood of heroes ! — War ! — War! — War! — till the usurpers cry upon their knees For mercy! Then let vindicated Right, Magnanimous, dictate and guard the peace. 'Twill come ! But first the nations must join forces Against this universal foe, and conquer! 'Twas in man's blood : a great war had to come. And sicken us with loathing of our past. That nations might be just at home and honest With one another, as all must and shall be ! Hence when the master mood is on me thus. Heroically do I comport myself, With a decisive military tread. As if I were the nations of the earth Moving to battle! — no more against each other, 57 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER But all on one just side, and all to one High animant hymn, the words whereof I feel Down through my blood, and in my brain, and out From every pore and nerve of my rhythmic body, Demanding timed expression ! Improvisations Original and unpremeditated. Bolder than any master's masterpieces. Possess me with a mighty power, and surge Through all my being ! August I march ahead, The proud drum major whirling with dexterous hand His tassel'd baton like a fiery wheel ! I toss it high — and as it turns and falls — Catch it — whirl it — and still beating time. Step onward to the music in my soul ! I am the sweet musicians keeping step To my own winged wild concoursive spirit ! I the glad notes harmoniously blown And nimbly finger'd from the golden bells Of silver horns, and from the ebony-throated Shrill- warbling piccolos fifed ! With bright brass clang'd. Cymbal on cymbal, in my bosom ringing To measured time beat loud from deep, hoarse, harsh. Reverberating drums, I throb and swell In unison, a marching host! — within me All instruments of a military band Concording, as redeem'd Humanity Shall yet concord in Truth's triumphant hour. When men share common life on equal terms As brothers, and all wars that must be fought Are ended and forgotten in the light Of loftier days ! But now I billow along, 58 MILITANT PEACE Regiments of militia on the march, Led by the Prince of Peace to victory! — bands, Rmnbhng artillery, clattering cavalcades, Interminable grand wave on grand wave Of bright batallions in brave uniforms, — Officers in regalia prancing by, — Legions of angels hovering in air. Gold-panoplied and by archangels led, — Crowds cheering, — a world war within myself. Sweeping to battle before the Lord of Hosts ! What care I if nobody cares that I Feel so magnificent with moral splendor ! Let such as shrink within themselves take heart: Not all the sensitive, not all who faint. Not all who hesitate to shed blood are cowards; Nor are all soldiers moral heroes. Go, Commit thy body back to earth, thy spirit To Him who gave it; with a prayerful heart. If thou canst not destroy thy brother's body. Nurse it to life ; minister to the dying ; Feed, clothe and house the desolate; but never, As thou desirest the respect of man. Play neutral with great issues ! At thy peril Thou takest lightly what should stir in thee A deeper, holier reverence toward God, Anxiety and sorrow for mankind. Resentment against all forms of injustice ! Fine rhetoric is a poor substitute For passionate fellow feeling with betray 'd Hmnanity ! It is thy duty, thy mission, To be intelligent, and not confuse 59 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Thyself nor them that look to thee for guidance. Moral confusion is inexcusable In any man. As thou hast influence. Or seekest to have, thou hast no right to fumble Great facts, failing in the discharge of life's Most paramount duty : to think upright thoughts. Act nobly, and as a strong truth-speaker learn And teach in steadfast unconcern for self. To die in battle, be the cause most just, Were no more than to live with one's whole might For righteousness and justice and good will Among all men. Life demands no less courage Than death : both must be faced in the same strength. And to the same high purpose. Irrational talk! Where liberty and justice are assail'd, How can a neutral peace be honorable ! Preach not to me a passive pacifism ! Whatever else I am or men may be, I would grow strong and masterful in spirit. Ruling my thoughts and passions with a divine Self-dominant personality under God ! What tho I march alone, I dare be I, Composite and sufficient in myself, A personal representative of the race. As all true souls are. Shall I be disturb'd. Because I seem so unlike other men. Being so like them all in everything: An advocate and a despiser of peace. Loathing bloodshed, yet seeing God in soldiers, 60 MILITANT PEACE As in all human life, the Friend of man, Helping each work out his escape from self Through suffering, until he turn to God And as a contrite act of reverence Worshipfully surrender and submit To be disarm'd with all his fellow men? Ah, are the nations ready to do that? Are there enough who've had enough of war? He doubts not God who doubts not his own manhood. Who doubts not his own manhood doubts not man. I who love both, shall I not still believe Most men love God tho they admit it not? Tho men should kill my body, I will trust That somewhere, sometime, they must love God yet. Must see in Him their Brother and their Friend ! Fools would deny God for His pure exalted Severity and proud unwearying march Against all compromise with public wrong. Tliey cannot hate Him ; 'tis themselves they hate ; Sin shames them; weakness mocks them; and they kill To hush the Voice and justify their lust. Authority against his sin man spurns; Loathes innocence; kills truth; murders his friend! When God speaks, man must hear, or hate himself. So nations, whose iniquity has grown Beyond control, take refuge in destruction. And are destroy'd! — or to their mutual good Scourge one another in their fateful hour Of reckoning ! Be sure our turn will come ; And we, even tho we justify our course By Heaven's inviolable will, must suffer. 61 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER When nations forget God, and substitute Logic and ritual for fervent love, Serve self, and hate each other, judgement breeds As a great storm: the more delay'd, the more It threatens : till the surcharged atmosphere Bursts with relentless fury and engulfs Guilty, innocent, fool, wise, just, unjust. All in one roaring flood of ruin ! Man : Does it seem hard to keep the law — to serve Thy Maker and to honor Him each hour With upright life and truthful speech — is it hard? The penalties for self-will must be paid : Paid to the last groan in blood and bitter anguish: Paid in hot sweat and tears. Yes, the sad costs, Tho never bargain'd for, must all be met. Art thou unhappy at the thought of this ? Be not cast down. Neither be frivolous. There is a golden mean 'twixt devotees Of war and peace : there walk with Him Who trod That path alone, to which all men must come From violence and bloodshed, for clean hands And pure hearts; and from selfish pacifism For sacrificing courage. The same law Has been from the beginning for both lamb And lion : that a little child shall lead them. The happiest, mightiest citizen this side Eternal Heaven, whither we are bound. Is the imaginative grown-up child, Unswerved by argument, uncow'd by cynic, 62 MILITANT PEACE With not a doubt of life's transcendency, The wise fool hero of the universe, Bearing within his undiscouraged heart The living, throbbing, fateful future ! Watch him ; You meet him everywhere : but yesterday A blundering babe : today those infant dreams The child by perseverance brings to pass. And is admitted to the fellowship Of other mighty children who once thought Such nonsense, and who now are working out Together their combined progressive dream, Wliich these call Socialism, those Industrial Democracy; but by whatever name. It is the Kingdom of Heaven among men, The burden of the prophets, the desire Of all the ages, as personified In Jesus, its Chief Hero! Let it come! The Master Dreamer's Dream ! Let it come true ! Opposing might with might and skill with skill, Invention with invention, undismay'd By any cruel test of courage devised Or possible to be devised by man. The Great Deliverer works out through strife Our unifying and deliverance From war to peace, in the long, slow, sure way Of daily discipline and practical Proceedure, trying out by fire and flood And time and disappointment all our plans And projects, with a view to every risk Of every kind that human institutions Must meet: that all may hold firm in that hour 63 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER When the great testing comes. For it must come. To men and nations it is ever arriving And on the way. And he who is himself. And not ashamed to be the child he was Before he leam'd to doubt, he best shall stand In the great disaster. As I wish to meet Each moment of decision when to act Is destiny, I keep to all the world An open mind and friendly heart, forgiving And being forgiven, that no bitterness May rise within me then to over-rule The choice I ought to make who am a child And comrade of the Highest . For I know That without great care to be ever watchful I cannot trust myself to be the man I ought to be, and that I dared believe The little boy would surely grow into. God help me not to disappoint the child ! For I am still the same child I was then. Who thought he must become so different From what he seem'd, but is content to stay His unsophisticated singular self, Avshamed of all the guile he could not learn. Yet cannot quite discard, — ingenuous, Hating hypocrisy with all his soul, While still detecting hourly in his actions, And in his speech, and in his secret thoughts. Traces of every form of every sin. Inherited and acquired, which weakens man And drives him and delays him in his efforts To work out some improvement in himself. 64 MILITANT PEACE And all men everywhere are much like me; And I am much like all men everywhere; No better and no worse, considering Their birth and mine, my opportunities And theirs. Our fortunes are inseparable ; We rise or fall together; and our children Come handicapt to their inheritance By every law we break, or helpt by laws Kept sacred. What affects one affects all. Therefore since I cannot be, tho I try. The man I nevertheless must try to be, I am that irrepressible child who did Escort swell funerals beside the hearse. Or with the band, before the solemn Templars, The Knights of Pythias, or such grand heroes, A-stretching legs and stepping to the drum With tireless feet ! They threaten'd him, they spankt. They coaxt; but undissuaded he marcht on. Perhaps a half a block away, but marcht ! They drove him to the sidewalk from the street; Policemen by the hand convoy'd him home; His mother put him in his sister's dresses; In nightgown; tied him to the bed. He escaped! — And proudly with the bodyguard marcht on Beside the slow-drawn hearse. What did he care — What cares he now — that he was chased away? Did he stay frighten'd? He came back proud still. And did his share of the marching, step by step. With soulful serious long strides to the grave. Then back at quickstep! — still beside the band! — The band ! — the band ! — Oh, the melodious band ! — 65 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER The military music! — how I loved it! — How love it yet! And may it charm me still. When to the long roll of the deep dead march I watch them bear my body to the grave. The child knew not if he was being cheated ; 'Twas all majestic, sweet and wonderful, Past comprehension to his credulous mind. Unknown to him the tricks of the male nature, The sordid vanity behind it all, The nasty foul-mouth'd evil-hearted brute That mar'd the music in so many ears, — Not then in mine ; for I was a sweet babe. Oblivious of discord, hearing none In my then sinless heart as now, a sinful Apologist for a sinful race, I must. Oh, I am glad the little child was happy! It satisfied the yearnings of his breast For what it seem'd to be, noble, refined, Immortal ! And it stirs him yet to think How beautiful it was — how far beyond. In his then undeveloped taste, the poor Cheap silly claptrap ragtime of the hour! Perhaps because he loved their music so: Perhaps because he would not be dissuaded From following the band : perhaps because He was so laughably sincere and simple: Those men liked him — he knew they did — they must- They could not help but like him — they envied him — They blest the boy ! They saw how he was there In God's name, as a valorous man, to do His part, and that he did it well, on fire 66 MILITANT PEACE With an inherent and unquenchable Enthusiasm — little flag on shoulder, Eyes all delight! Oh, now, through all my toil. My stem relentless hard self-discipline. Whatever else I seem, I still, with laughter And with contagious faith, am that same child, — The same unconquerable enthusiast That I was then, and hope I still shall be Down to my latest years ; in full accord With all the good in man; intolerant Of any evil ; yet more patient, strong And masterful to do with brotherly Forbearance my persistent little part. The martial spirit in me is still strong; And I am marching to the music now As I march'd then, — sometimes behind the hearse, Struggling to keep the grief out of my face. But marching on. I still delight in crowds, In uniforms and military pomp; In all brave men and measures I still rejoice, — Am not yet tired of sweet sounds finger'd in tune And stept to in deep earnest ! I need not Array my form proudly in soldier's garb; Overalls or plain citizen's attire Suffice me. For while young at heart as then, I grow mature in mind, steadfast in purpose, More reasonable and willing to be led By wiser counsels to the furtherance Of better plans, in the straight narrow path Of rectitude and loving sacrifice. From which I hanker less and less to stray. 67 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER And so I live my plain old-fashion'd life. Pleased with such ordinary simple joys As come to men at work in shop or field, Or at nightfall returning, or going forth At daybreak, to and from their homely tasks, Cheer'd by the presence of dear hearts that care. Tho warlike in my spirit, I am at peace With all safe men. Only against injustice — Against crime and its causes — am I at war. As I have fought with fists, I could with weapons, If home and love demanded, — could perish fighting Beside true neighbors in defense of what To me is principle ! Is life so sweet, Is peace so precious, yet not worth defending? For without liberty there were no peace. And life would be a burden. Peace or war. To live and die in a great cause is great ! — To exercise just rights, and nobly dare Be to the world all meanings of God's love, — No less of His stern justice and swift wrath Than of His deep long-suffering compassion, — Exemplifying in our zeal for man The Gospel of the militant Son of God, The Bravest of the Bravest of the Brave. If His aggressive sanity has been Distorted every way, love sets Him right Before a hopelessly divided world. In His eternal-minded, all-inclusive Unity and completeness the One Teacher Of all the race in Whom all can agree. MILITANT PEACE Peace is the great proposal. Shall we live it? God's peace was in the world from the beginning; And will be here unto the end of time. Is man to set up some peace of his own? Peace, and yet not God's peace, is he to have? What kind of peace, proud man? What kind of peace? The only peace I know is of the heart; War cannot rob me of it, it is here; I feel it like a wine through all my blood : A living, throbbing, powerful, militant peace! A peace that soothes my weary mind to rest. A satisfying peace, the peace of God, That passeth knowledge. All the peace there is. Or ever was or can be. Heavenly peace. Except a man have that peace he hath war! War in himself and war against mankind ! Oh, mighty is the man whose strength is peace: The man of peace blest with a warrior soul ! In battle there is peace if God be there ; And there God is if in the heart is peace. Many have found Him there who did not know. And might not else have leam'd, what Jesus meant. Who show'd us plainly and bequeath'd to us That peace which is as far above man's thought As Heaven is above the earth. I 've read The morbid doubts and idle questionings That rob us of our birthright. But for me. As for that child, the ardent boy I was, We may seem simple to believe so much, — To be still gospel-hearted, when so many 69 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Have thrown away old golden thoughts for bright New jingling German brass, — but 0, serene, My soul! — crusader for no sepulcher: Soldier of no cheap fortune : seeking not Contemporary and contemptible fame: Still undissuaded, hold thyself in line, With lowly, clean, devoted, militant Christians, And march on in the service of thy King ! Step to the music that was bom in thee, eager heart! — still steadfast to the end. Tho to the grave thou goest, go in earnest; Go trusting in thy Maker and thy God; Go as a little child; as a strong youth; As a young man and as a just man go ; A patriarch, stoop'd with toil, and white and wrinkled With many years, go to thy grave alone. It shall be well with thee, and with all those Who put their trust in Him. He in that hour Shall welcome thee; therefore march on in peace. At quickstep shall thy spirit issue thence, Review'd by clouds of witnesses ! In Heaven's Bright army, from victorious wars returning, Thou in the midst of everlasting peace Wilt there be met by loved ones whom to see Were of itself reward enough for all Thy trials here on earth. Yet Christ our Captain Is there, with God our Father and our King, In Whose great armies here we served, for Whom We died in action, laying down at last Our earthly life, to take up Life with Him In Heaven, the Capital of the Universe. 70 HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD, FAITH, FRIENDSHIP HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD, FAITH, FRIENDSHIP BUILD THE DAMS ! One voice from up Stillwater, Down the valley that was flooded, Sends you a neighbor's greeting, At a time when men are weak ! For parent, son and daughter These pulses throb red-blooded! There must be no defeating Of this project! Let me speak - At God's pleasure, In full measure. For your treasure Let me speak! Are we freak — Are we foolish — in our dotage — That we hesitate like heathen. In the wake of wide disaster, At such testing-time as this? Shall we value farm and cottage, A mere place to toil and breathe in! Tho 'twere gold and alabaster — The it shelter'd every bliss — 73 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Shall we measure All our treasure By mere pleasure? What were bliss. If we miss Being noble men and women. Worthier than our possessions ! What were house and farm and future, If we fail before the Lord ! — If our homes make us inhuman ! — If acres crush these passions WTiich dignify our nature ! Can we as men afford At our pleasure Thus to measure Out our treasure To, or hoard From, the Lord! — Face our generous Creator With a bargain-seeking caution? — Cheat the good God of a duty Which we owe Him, every one? What will you say when later — But too late! — that rushing ocean Descends upon the beaut)' Of that city, where your son Or your daughter In that slaughter By Stillwater Is undone! — Will you run 74 BUILD THE DAMS! To the rescue? Who will ask you? You will know, when all is over! Base abject ! In your weakness, Will you then have faith in prayer? Ah! — for memory will task you: "Tho you saved your corn and clover. Your heart now faints for sickness At the thought (if think you dare!) That you waited ! — Hesitated ! — Scolded ! — hated ! — Were not fair!" Where, then, — where Will you go for consolation? — When the innocent have perish'd ! God is tenderly forgiving. And still patient with us all; But beneath self-condemnation The tobacco crop you cherish'd, With house and farm and saving. Will seem pitifully small, When you measure Then your pleasure By stale treasure ! Like a pall Truth will fall! Earth will crush you! Oh, self-hater! You were doom'd from that cheap hour When you thought in terms of taxes! — When you loved with less than life! For the just Administrator, 75 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Unchanged in word and power. When man's vigilance relaxes, Tho he gain by sordid strife, — The Creator, Sooner, later. Is Testator Of your life. Child and wife. Home and fortune. Man, how dare you. With so many lives depending On your kindliness and courage, Ah, how dare you urge low claim ! For the Voice shall say, "Where were you? You were getting, saving, spending: Time demands a full demurrage: On your soul rests all the blame; For you waited. Hesitated, Till, belated. And in shame. Yes, you came." WHAT TO ME What is my freedom to me While my brother is not free! How mean my happiness That does not lift him and bless! A Christian, I? 'Tis a sham. If no one is glad that I am ! I acknov/ledge my self-distrust: 76 WHAT TO ME! God! — that I were just! When my brother sins I see it; But my sin! — do I flee it? Be it with shame confest, 1 never have done my best. Yet whatever else my sin, A doubter I have not been; I have tried, have fail'd, Strived harder and not prevail'd. But because with might and main I strived when strife seem'd vain, And would not cease to trust God and believe Him just, I shall have infinite chances To make divine advances. And in Eternal Time Soar where I could not climb ! Conscious development Keeps me brisk and content; My undiscouraged eyes Covet no mortal prize; These busy feet pursue So swiftly nothing new; The labor of my hands God sees and understands. He knows that if I could Master my fate I would; And His ungrudging love Will give all I fail of. My faith, hope, love are His. How magnanimous God is ! 77 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER GO, THEREFORE If I had a houseful of children. But one was lost or had died, Till I found the babe of my bosom I could not feel satisfied. Had I of sons and daughters More than one father's share, No comforts could take their places; Love would have none to spare. Sin, with subtle persistence. Might cause my home to mourn; But with pleading and full forgiveness I must tenderly counsel and yearn. So in the heart of our Father The least and lowest of men Hath equal place with the upright, Tho fallen again and again; And I can only please Him As I enter with Christ that care Which makes me my brother's keeper. Always and everywhere; Ever and without ceasing To seek the lost, and to pray: Father, Thy heavenly purpose On earth be done alway. 78 HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD, FAITH, FRIENDSHIP THE LIVING FLAG Robed in the Stars and Stripes, Queen Edith ! Forth stept she, An emotional rhythmic statue Of the Goddess of Liberty ! Down over the Flag of the Free Falls her full dark hair: When was the Star-Spangled Banner, On sea or land, so fair! To the music of the Hymn, By expressional figure and face, She describes that perilous night, Floating and flowing with grace. An undulatory Standard, O'er the ramparts in the breeze ! Our hearts are there in the fortress ! Our eyes look over the seas — There ! Still there ! See it wave — Now hiding, now revealing her, (Bright Colors of the true and the brave!) Their beautiful Interpreter! And was that Carrie's voice, In full sustain'd soprano telling The story of that anxious night. With the Flag falling and swelling? 79 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Proud Nation, that can guard such girls To be the mothers of men ! May no wars in the future Cause woman anguish again! In mutual trust let nations. The arts of peace pursuing. Join hands and hearts and flags and marts In noble deeds worth doing! Till under One Living Standard The white dove folds her wings: One Nation, the Kingdom of Heaven ! One Ruler, the King of Kings ! THE WATCHER Any evening, any hour. At the twilight in the tower. Silhouetted on the sky. Seems to every passer-by Someone standing looking forth. To the south, or to the north. 'Tis the bell that calls to prayer. Hanging in the belfry there; But the thoughtful heart will see A picture of life's tragedy : Someone standing — standing yet — Leaning o'er the parapet, Watching, waiting, yearning still For who should come that never will, 80 SONNETS TO MY PASTOR, ALVA MARTIN KERR NOVEMBER FIRST Our own once more come back to us in power ! Strong teacher, by the force of love commanding God's willing ones, we have desired this hour; And He Whose goodness baffles understanding Hath given us our wish; and we have heard Again that friendly voice, and seen that face Which like a phoenix from the burning Word, Or spirit from the Blest with deathless grace On All Saints' Day, hath come our hearts to search; And we have yielded gladly to the spell Which we cannot explain; and as a church Are risen to know and do God's blessed will. What wilt thou say? — if He shall whisper: Son, Arise; be strong; thy work here is not done. JANUARY SNOWSTORM Last night I trudged to town in the deep snow. I seem'd the only one of all my race In all the world. Soft through the still cold air Fine flakes were falling yet. Some kist my face. I could not see them, but I knew them fair. They were my little guardian angels there, Lest I should founder in some lonely place Along the unbroken road, and none know where. 81 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER With glorious exhilerating snow The town was hush'd. I saw thy gleaming light. And in my joyous freedom thought of thee, Shut in from robust romp, wild to be free, While thousands who at will can come and go Hug fires and shudder at the winter night. Ray Anewalt made public sale by crier. Of livestock and farm tools ; for he intends Moving to town ; and it was my desire To be on hand all day with neighbors and friends And help keep bidding lively if I could. The crowd stay'd in the strip shed round the fire, Laughing and cutting up, while a few stood — I with them — in the gusty log bam. Good! I got some extra bargains fair and square: A big young gentle iron-gray work mare, A lot of harness, pitchfork, saw, clamp, chains. And don't know what all. Standing so long there, I frosted both my feet; now for my pains I '11 have another siege of seven-year chilblains! ra Through snow I bounced home, high on the broad back Of my big prancing prize ! Her foretop tost, She snift and snorted at the flying frost. Yet to the halter bow'd her arched neck, 82 SONNETS And slept along with ease, making a track From side to side, where roads might have been lost But for the fences. Now the brook bridge we crost, Enter'd the lane, and soon at the feed-rack In warm straw-bedded stall I tum'd her loose, Comfortable and affectionate, — did my feeding. And milkt my cows. By that time I was about As sleepy as an old cat; but, no use: Gertrude had made the butter, and we were needing Some groceries from town. I ate, and started out. IV Unless I have a horse that should be shod, I seldom loaf at Johnny's blacksmith shop Warm days, where idle men are joking and chaffing. But last night, it would not have seem'd so odd To hang around the grocery, or stop Where wags lounge talking and spitting, smoking and laughing. Tired and bewilder'd with the all-day storm, I felt that I could settle down and nod By any fire, so it was cozy and warm. And I could snooze forgetful of the cold. I hate stink of tobacco on my person ; But I believe last night I could have roU'd Under a bar-room stove, and snored sweet-soul'd, Where drunken blab-mouth bums were slandering and cursing. 83 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Thank Heaven there has been no boozing-place In Pleasant Hill these twenty years and more ; And may there never be such foul disgrace Brought on us by that impudent few-score Of boastful soaks and swaggerers who swore They'd fetch out enough voters of their kind To force it through ! Our nauseous rank spitoon, Vile with tobacco drool from quid in cheek, Is spew enough without their pukey saloon. That may not sound quite pious and rifined, But curse the swinish business! — when I speak, I 'U use words that convey facts to the mind. God give you strength to rise and biff the beast Squarely between the blinks a few more times at least ! VI After my basketful of butter had been Delivered as usual to our customers, I tum'd for home. Had I been wrapt in furs, I might have dropt off sound asleep there in The deep soft snow, a comfortable grin Frozen across my face. Not a breath stirs, Nor flake falls. The retiring villagers Darken their homes. A few stars now begin To sparkle from between drift fields of mist : I watch them peep and disappear, as heavily The frozen river I cross, and climb up Lauver's Hill. 84 SONNETS It seem'd I never felt the world so still. At last I heard our spring tinkle over its gravelly Bed; and in mine I slept, luU'd by its chime to rest. VII This afternoon the carrier, long delay'd. Left in our box this letter fraught with pain; This yearning cry that doth its wish obtain, Not youth, but manly fortitude instead ; The boy heart guided by the man's wise head; Sad-seeming life enlighten'd and made plain. Where every loss hath its peculiar gain. And disciplined affections learn to spread The all-uniting Gospel. Under deep frost A million summers wave ! So surely thou Hast or shalt have with wildest leaping yet Thy irrepressible boyhood ! Nothing is lost In the glad Universe of God. Even now Thy valor is a priceless coronet. VIII You cannot serve me better than to love me; You cannot love me better than to show. As you have shown me here, that hour of woe When strong men most need friendship. Only prove me, 'Tis all I ask of the sweet Heaven above me ; 'Tis all we of each other here can know : That we proved faithful, and in love dared grow. Scorning despair! Speak to thy heart: say of me, 85 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER "He is my steadfast friend." Our griefs help build Some noble part of the great Kingdom of Heaven, Which cannot be destroyed. God is well pleased When gentle souls in anguish thus are still'd One with another and their trials eased By confidences mutually given. PRAYERS FOR VIRGINIA TO SAY Morning again! I am awake To live this day for Jesus' sake. Dear Savior, guide me safely through The happiest day I ever knew. Happy, because for Thee I live. And quickly, tenderly forgive. Love and obey my parents dear. And wrong thoughts, words and actions fear. holy angels, guard this day Each little child upon its way, And let no evil thing befall Their pure sweet innocence at all. So may my hours in good be spent. Until at night I come content, Living this earnest prayer I 've said. To lay me in my little bed. 86 PRAYERS FOR VIRGINIA II From morning until night, all day, God's little child I run and play; For while my heart to Him is true, I hardly think of what I do. 'Tis because Jesus is with me, That I can feel so glad and free; With me about my play He goes, And all I think and do He knows. I could not wish, Lord, to offend So kind, so true, so dear a friend; When I have cross and naughty been. Make me feel sorry for my sin. And when I 've tried and tried, and then Still done the same wrong things again, And Thou has loved me and been true, So may I love my playmates, too. I wish not ever to forget That I may be forgiven yet, However wayward I have been. If I am sorry for my sin. But I must keep a loving heart, If I would stay, Lord, where Thou art; Must tenderly forgiving be ; Then shall it all be well with me. 87 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER III Safe within my little bed, On Jesus' breast I lay my head; His happy child I 've tried to be ; Now while I sleep He cares for me. So till I wake at morning light, And day by day and night by night. All my life long, year after year. The gentle Savior watches near. Each day to me the Christ is bom; Each day dawns new the Easter mom; For while I trust God's loving care, I find my Heaven everywhere. Dear Lord, I pray, let not depart Thy holy Sabbath from my heart; But pure and kind each day I 'd be, Gireful because Christ cares for me. CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP How swiftly the delightful days have flown. Since we so pleasantly, so briefly met! The memory of this quaint country home I shall not soon forget. Even in Heaven, when for me life ends. There will I fondly treasure in my heart HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD, FAITH, FRIENDSHIP The influence of these kind Christian friends, From whom I now must part. When, at the close of each brief earthly day, I at God's mercy seat shall kneel in prayer. And for the friends I love, in secret pray. These I'll remember there. The day will come when time shall be no more; When friends shall meet with friends not thus to sever. There we shall join God's praise. Be glad, therefore! We part, but not forever. CAT TALES TOLD BY TINY GIRUES Once 'ey was a pretty 'ittie kitty Lived wiv its mamma in a biggie, biggie city; An' its naughty mamma wouldn' give it any tittie; An' it cwied, an' it cwied, an' it cwied, an' it cwied; An' nen, — w'y nen, — w'y nen, — it died. Oh ! wasn' 'at a drea'ful, drea'ful pity For ne poor 'ittie bittie pretty kitty? Free 'ittol tittens, two sissers an' a bruwer, Wented to town wif ner arms awound each uwer, A-lookin' an' a-lookin' an' a-lookin' for ner muwer. An' nen, when ner saw'd her, ner wun'd fas' 's ner tould. An' tell'd her ner beedhave nerselves an' ack awfu* dood, While her was wented to town for some mice. Oh, wasn' nem free 'ittol tittens nice? 89 HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD, FAITH, FRIENDSHIP THE DIVINE WARFARE In the teeth of every temptation without, Conscious of wayward passions within, I have fought and conquer'd and grown more stout Against besetting implacable doubt, Which keeps the way open for sin; And tho I am not yet divinely devout, I have only begun to begin ! There is time; and to fight is to win! — Then the shout! TREE SPARROWS IN FEBRUARY Chirping sparrows in the bam. Of a wintry day, When I go to feed my stock. Laugh chill thoughts away. "Thank you, sir, for seeds," they sing, "We are waiting here for Spring — Are we welcome, pray? Or do you object to guests Who have neither food nor nests. If uninvited they?" Nay, my merry birdies, nay! For I love each happy creature God hath lent us for our pleasure; Houseless birds, ye are the Lord's, — Come, and share my treasure I 90 TREE SPARROWS IN FEBRUARY Flit along the beams and pick, Hop beneath the rafter; All I ask is cheerful chirps; Food is what ye 're after ! "Thank you, sir, for seeds," they say, " Which we find among your hay ! " I respond with laughter, Saying, welcome, jolly guests. In brown tailcoats and furry vests, — Each gay pot-bellied grafter Banquets at my expense hereafter! I am waiting, too, for April; But 'tis blustering snowy weather; Fly about the barn and shout! — We will wait together. Winter now will soon be gone. Cold will soon be over. Then glad Spring home will bring Many a lyric lover. All about my Sweetheart's farm Wrens will build when days are warm, Phoebes here seek cover; Starlings and fieldlarks will mate, Calling early, calling late. In swamps and upland clover; And the noisy moonlight plover. Wheeling round o'er the ground. Where fresh earth is broken. Will begin their sad sea-sound. Sweeter heard than spoken. 91 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Stay, then, with your busy voices. Perch and chirp and flit; Arthur has a sparrow-house; You shall build in it. Minstrels pay well their way. Singing, as I hope you may, When the weather's fit. And you rude uproarious elves Jubilantly sun yourselves. Where you used to sit, In shrubbery, twittering as you lit. Chirping, chirping, chirping, chirping, — Twittering as you curved away, And returning, — fluttering, chirping, All the livelong day ! Fly away, my flock, my song. My little birds, go free ! Fly where song can do no wrong. Wherever that may be ; Fly to open hearts and enter. From the snowy, stormy winter, Bearing love from me ! Go and flutter in and out And back and forth and all about! He Who holds the key To all kind hearts, will welcome thee ! Go requite them with the Spirit Of Immortal Pleasure, reaching Far beyond thy lowly merit And thy simple teaching. 92 HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD, FAITH, FRIENDSHIP GOLDEN SCARS My books by little hands are torn; My chairs are scratcht by little shoes. little shoes, too soon outworn ! Dear little hands, too soon forlorn ! My books and chairs were made to use; And what wise use could wiser be Than to give joy, my babe, to thee ! Before she went whom they call dead, She brought these old dry asters in. Arranged them in the vase and said, "Don't take them down," and shook her head, She loved them; and they still have been With living flowers, year after year. Upon the fireplace mantel here. The days may come when I shall prize This page by Virgie's fingers mar'd, As now the mist will blur my eyes. Seeing this chair by Edith scar'd. Dear little Edie! 'Twould be hard Now, since she runs no more about. To see these tokens polish'd out. These humble floors, by baby feet Made consecrated floors of Heaven, — These walls — will never more repeat Her pretty prattle. Through cold and heat Long ten years daily ageward driven, 93 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER I reach back through the empty past, To where she kist me and loved me last. If our proud hearts these many years Have been and still must wounded be, From sinful doubts and sordid fears They tenderer have been kept with tears. To joy distiird, sweet babe, for thee; And not to shirk heartbreaking pain We 'd wish those glad times back again. O Thou Who wast on Calvery mar'd. That we might share Thy living faith ! No heavy grief shall be too hard For Thee to bear with us through death To where our gentle Angel hath These ten years been at home, while we Toil'd on together trusting Thee. CANZONE Grieve not above this body when it dies; Canst thou not enter with me into that Peace Which waits the spirit's birth, when all the Skies Shall open to receive me? Shall I cease, And be no more? Then wherefore grieve, sweet eyes! An hour, a week, a year, comes thy release; Go forward, then, to meet thy Lord with me ; This was thy love's poor house ; this was not he. But Oh! — if I lost thee! — my light! — if I lost thee! 94 HOME, NEIGHBORHOOD, FAITH, FRIENDSHIP DIVINE GUIDANCE My passions are too full and strong: It does no good for me to fight them: To let bad habits lead me wrong, Then foolishly expect to right them. Desire will get the best of me. Unless each moment, hour by hour, I dominate as destiny, And rule my life with moral power. But where to get that strength benign, To do as I well know I should? Creator, the desire is Thine, Thy vigor, too, must make it good; The wisdom and the will are one, To see and do what must be done. To know the Ruler just and kind. And then deny His rule, were treason. I therefore yield my finite mind To be control'd by infinite Reason. If happiness before me lies, Or tragic sorrow, I know not; But there shall be no compromise; I am abiding by my lot. Against Thy will I dare not go. But cling to Thee and struggle on, Knowing, as past all doubt I know. My face is toward the Eternal Dawn; And I shall find, as I have found. He masters most who is most bound. 9S BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER UNIVERSAL WONDER After the evening prayers are said, And my loved ones are snug in bed, I turn down low the kitchen light. Visit the stable for the night. Then, with snufft lantern swung in hand. Sometimes a long, long while I'll stand. And watch the solemn starry scene. Wondering what it all may mean ! Or if the moon unclouded blends With the blue deep as she ascends. Or clouded now, now doubly cheers The rapt soul as she reappears! — Or if the night be thick and dark. And I can only pause and hark: Snowing or raining, it may be, — All, all is marvellous to me ! How many of my fellow creatures Grow docile to those voiceless teachers. As year by year, while ages roll. Expands the mind that reads yon scroll ! How many, anguishing with grief, Have in that silence found relief! What promises unspeakable Still those inspiring prophets tell ! Those desert distances we fear ! But ah, what shifting scenes are here! 96 UNIVERSAL WONDER Qouds bring the grandeur of all skies Home to our grief-dim spirit eyes. Even when they shut the calm stars out, They rest our faith, reprove our doubt. And by all contrasts, day and night, They multiply the joys of sight ! All beauty that inspires my breast Is Love to love made manifest. Not clouds nor distance, time nor death. To aught but God's love witnesseth. How glorious and fair through tears The beauty of the Christ appears ! And Heaven, when our loved ones die. Seems to the suffering heart how nigh ! I step out on a still clear night. And look up at the stars ! Their light. Suddenly seen far shining there. Thrills me with pleasure ! I stand and stare. Speechless ! Breathing the Universe Into my soul, I seem, in my course. One with all those stars I see. Created, like them, God, for Thee ! Bright stars, I am a human heart ; I cannot dwell, as you, apart From human influences yonder In the deep void. I would not sunder My soul from erring fellow mortals. Man's beauty more my spirit startles, 97 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER When I consider his bright future. Than all the wondrousness of nature I For all mankind my bosom heaves: For him that joys, for him that grieves, I feel an intimate concern, To help, to counsel, and to warn. Uplifted through the night by stars, I see them at their toils and wars : Sinful, but slowly conquering wrong; And Oh, I wonder. Lord, how long! In them, through ages of distress, I wonder at Thy faithfulness ! And how, from vice and ignorance yet. The worst must all that past forget ! Doubtless in other worlds men grieve. Rejoice in hope, fail, yet achieve. And are, as we, made strong thereby, To toil, to suffer, and to die. Lovers, perhaps, who share God's bliss In other worlds, beholding this. Are wondering in transport deep. While with my family I sleep, What splendid sweet display of spheres To their unclouded sight appears. And send to me their love divine. Across the vast, as I send mine! 98 SONNET AND OTHER VERSES TO BERTHA To gentle Bertha, in that place of pain. We send our love, with anxious hearts that blend In supplication, that the Christ may lend His tender strength to her whom we would fain Help with our futile hands. For she hath lain Too many times near that mysterious End, Which we, in fear of losing our sweet friend, So ignorantly dread. Yet doth she gain. With each descent near to the gates of Death, More courage, with fine Christian fortitude. To face hard life anew; in a strange place To make new friends ; inspire old friends with faith ; And help us all be simply kind and good, Seeing in such as she our Savior's face. II Go, little Harbingers of Spring, Your smiles to Bertha's bedside bring! Sweet Bertha, bearing long distress With unembitter'd gentleness. To those dear tired eyes of hers Hasten, little Harbingers! Pickt by loving hands at home. From the leafless woods you come, 99 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER By fierce engines of man's thought Over plains and mountains brought. In your modest beauty saying, " Spring will not be long delaying ! " Dost recall, far friend, the day We wander'd through the woods of May, With the children, — happy hours! — By Stillwater, gathering flowers? We will soon be glad again To wander through the woods as then ; And the flowers we gather there Will, as those, be fresh and fair; And thy gracious presence will By our side go with us still. In the deep-stored memory, A sacred consciousness of thee. As by Galilee Man's Friend Walk'd in love, so to the End We with Him and one another Shall in spirit walk together. Those whom Christ hath join'd in heart Time and distance cannot part; Nor death His love obliterate. Whose love is life. Whose life is fate. God give us grace to see it so. While friends and seasons come and go. Till side by side in wondering talk Through groves of Paradise we walk. 100 SONNETS RUPERT BROOKE Here might have been — here was — here is, indeed, A gentle hero of wise mascuhne soul. Our friend and brother. All men own him now. And proudly. There 's his likeness. Read here how He perish'd paying part of the blood toll For Freedom's progress in her hour of need. Exacted by barbarians crazed with greed Of empire. He abhor'd their state control Over the sacred character — could not bow To the crass fraud himself, neither allow Hordes to impose it on the nations. Roll That frightful stone up hill, as was decreed In Berlin, ye misguided, — back on them Comes guilt's dread avalanche to utterly condemn ! LUSITANIA The murderer of Belgium suicides. Sinking her scuttled honor in the sea! Not Freedom has gone down; but Germany, Disgraced beneath all nations, foully hides Her awful record! — while triumphant rides. Bearing a charmed life, more and more free, Toward Peace, the noble ship Humanity, Freighted with Love and Hope, by winds and tides Borne onward ! For those poor misguided fools. Those galley slaves of that black privateer, Not hatred nor revenge. Comrades, befit 101 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER The modern mind, but judgement ! They in schools Were warpt from earliest childhood thus to sneer At all but Germans. Pity the half-wit. YET WILL I TRUST HIM The anguish of these months of pain Seems more sometimes than strength can bear, So limited my human brain, So crusht my life with care. Helpless the day's demands to meet, Anxious to meet them as before. From lifelong failure and defeat I now can strive no more. But God will lead me wisely on, Through many a sad and joyous birth. Till I, from joy and sorrow gone. Am perish'd from the earth. Gone into Everlasting Love, Where needs not pain nor grief nor death His life in me to purge and prove To the last faithful breath. Father, let me hear Thy voice In sunset bush and whispering tree ! Tho sorrowing, I still rejoice To walk in pain with Thee. 102 SONNETS IN TRAVAIL OF SOUL So thin and high the clouds, they seem to soar Beyond the moon, among the stars, in Heaven! Angelic hosts, on errand free, not driven By upper current urging evermore Their mindless will, but winging toward some shore Of that blue spacious Altitude, where not even And morn succeed, nor twelvemonths, nor the seven Familiar days, nor echo from the roar Of distant sunbiith comes, but an eternal Silence. Oh, that my spirit might partake Of that vast hush — that I here might become A happy pilgrim, free from all these carnal Desires and earthly passions that would break The stubborn hold on Him Who is my Home ! II I AM a rapturous despairing throb Of the great heart of Love ! God's human veins, Through us He pours His Life, and all our pains He shares with us to the last mortal sob. No chance in all the universe can rob One injured soul that in His ear complains; With our hot tears He cleanses all our stains. And from the unanguishing impenitent mob 103 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Rescues one desperate discouraged heartbroken Immortal spirit ! If I could but wake up, And go upon glad feet about my share Of the world's work, as a devout love-token To God and family and mankind, my cup Of joy would overflow, that now fills with despair ! Ill Like one who bears a burden a long way. Until his body on a twist stays bent, So I have borne shame and discouragement; And while I have grown steadier day by day, Yet have not lost the child instinct to play With little children, and am confident My task is right for me, I do resent With growing irritation and dismay The limits of this life. I am distraught With too much care. There seems here no occasion For such high spirit in so frail a mask. With exquisite sensibilities for thought Wasting away in painful determination, * Unequal to the stupifying provident task. IV Old Age is in the distance yet; but now I glimpse him hobbling slowly whither I haste To find 'tis I ! The past grows like a waste Of momentary sands that have somehow 104 SONNETS: IN TRAVAIL OF SOUL Escaped me ! While to each day's tasks I bow. Time flees away! The future I once faced Now faces me, and nothing done ! Disgraced I go to meet my doom, with wrinkled brow, But unafraid. For I have long reflected : (And all must think as I who feel as truly) We need and seek and find and love God more The more our self-dependence is subjected To merciless defeat; for strong and holy And wondrous kind is He Whom we adore. Forgive me, Master, that I vainly thought Advancement by my strictest care to earn. Be Thy great sacrifice my chief concern, That what Thy life hath in my spirit wrought Truthfully I may teach, as Thou hast taught. Oh ! may my heart a living altar bum. Where by devotion's constancy I learn God's blessed will, to do it as I ought. When I have sadly fail'd, as all must fail. The measure of my lack, sweet Lord, supply. When I have toil'd in vain for Love's dear sake. My earthbom weaknesses when I bewail, And seem so small I almost wish to die, — Thou art my Heaven-sent Comfort in heartache. 105 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER VI Among the first immortals of all time I take my lowest place with childlike wonder. All weaknesses forgiven, and every blunder Religiously ignored, each faulty rime Seen to be there to offset the sublime, Foil brilliant lightning and majestic thunder, So any child who will may read and under- stand the plain Issue ! It had been high crime To prostitute such office ! Not for gain Or literary note I sacrificed Those lesser principles, if that be proved Against me. Isolated unto pain, I laught and pray'd and have immortalized In secret agony the friends I loved. VII MY fine-spirited ideal friends ! — Than whom none more devout, in flesh and blood. Could walk the rugged ways of hardihood Required of man and woman — oft these hands To you in anguish I reach out! But bands Bind my else broken life, to Ultimate Good In silence held. We seem not understood By one another; but God understands; And Heaven will recompense our isolation With grand according unity, whose bond Is Christ. Meanwhile our undivided trust 106 SONNETS: IN TRAVAIL OF SOUL We to one Father yield, and through submission Find our lives lifted to bright hopes beyond The sordid facts of an age that seems unjust. VIII From intense childhood have I mused and dream 'd That I God's messenger of Life must prove ; At home was early nicknamed "Brotherly Love," For the stout hope, that I, tho fools blasphemed, G)uld make men love each other ! I esteem'd As heroes all who generously strove Against oppressive lies to help improve The human race, that all might be redeem'd ! Abject and helpless I must never be ! So much vain error still to contradict! Such unjust arrogant insidious wrong! My yet first fond ambition urges me With an undying hope to the conflict, Wherein I still imagine myself strong ! If only I can keep a few firm friends, Before them always Gertrude, to the close Of my impetuous career that owes How much to her and them! — and when life ends. Can look into their faces, hold their hands. And know they love me with a love that glows And brightens through Eternity, where those Who 've gone await my soul as it ascends 107 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER To meet its Maker and the Christ in peace, — Then shall God show me how to live as they. Whose manageable temperaments here Encourage me to hope and never cease Attempting in my wild original way That Life of Love which seems for me the most sincere. Father, I for myself nothing request, But that I be found watching when this tent I leave, to join in peace the grand ascent Of all immortals unto that high Rest Which Thou hast promised all who stand steadfast In Thee, Exalted Purpose of my being ! Oh, aid me to that End ! With bright foreseeing Support my weakness mightily to the last ! All Earth must fail me then — why trust it now? All flesh will then be weak to save my soul, Or lend me any comfort. Oh — before That hour shall come, — today, while yet my brow Pulsates with young ambition, — Lord, control My passionate thinking! — make me love Thee more! lOB SUMMER AND SUBMISSION SUMMER AND SUBMISSION CASTING ALL YOUR CARES UPON GOD, FOR HE CARETH FOR YOU" Content to serve with my fellows, One of an infinite throng, I have not denied my soul the joy Of fellowship in song, But finding men preoccupied, Have waited and labor'd apart. In ignorance, but with gratitude And the peace of God in my heart* Had I felt mature and ready. Or been what I ought to be, I could have enjoy'd an audience; Men might have listen'd to me; But I distrusted ambition; All thought of self seem'd sin ; I must write worthier, and become Better than I had been. The pleasure of self-expression Was incentive enough. I kept Thinking, writing, thinking, Sometimes when I should have slept; 111 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER But I never supposed myself Other than just a lad Following his natural bent, As great men before me had. There have been mysteries in my life That I do not try to explain ; Some of God's ways, too deep for me. Mysterious must remain; If I know enough to be truthful. And to do as I know I should, I shall find out by experience More than I otherwise could. As long as my strength held out. The wish to pursue my way In undisturb'd meditation. Like a child busy at play, Prevail'd over the wistful And sometimes passionate yearning For universal companionship As a lover devoutly discerning. While youth was in my favor I forged ahead on trust; But my warning body refuses now To let me toil as I must; This feeble frame is failing; My brain rebels ! A clod, I rise and struggle against my fate, Bewilder'd, but trusting God. 112 ''HE CARETH" Long nights I cannot sleep; Dull months I cannot wake. In a boat with an unlocated leak I am sinking, far out in the lake! Now while I can I must signal for help ■ Must humble my heart and pray That God's good will to men be still Done in my life today. In secret now no longer I '11 boyishly hide my past; I must bring forth to judgement What must perish with what will last. If a few years more are mine. And this task is soon begun. Perhaps I can get it finish'd yet. And enjoy seeing it done. Why should I hesitate in love? In trust why hesitate? God's faithfulness is instant; His kindness does not wait. I cannot prove as faithful And patient as I would; But I must act as if I were Gentle and wise and good. To all who will receive me, Without reserve or sham. In the spirit of Jesus my Master I offer all I am. BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER I feel so frank and friendly To every human soul, I cannot help but give myself. Full and complete and whole. In spite of and because of The faults we cannot mend We gravitate toward each other: I am everybody's friend. In spite of and because of Our faults, I cannot cease Hoping for and anticipating Universal peace. Or ever that time approaches When all men shall be friends, Let me for the world's shortcomings Hasten to make amends; For unless I still be friendly In a world where friends are few, I cheat the world of its greatest need. Even as others do. Let us make one more effort. As ever, with open heart; Tho we meet the same discouragement. To be friendly is our part. I cannot drive my body; My nerves refuse to rest; This is my solemn duty To those whom I love best. 114 "HE CARETH" It is my sacred duty; I dare not shirk it therefore; Heaven is my Witness : I will somehow publish once more. And if none cares to heed me, Low may my heart be bow'd. To do the will of my Father, To be true and meek and proud. The hour will come, is coming. When all men shall be kind; Tho I shall not live to see it, Let me bear it well in mind. In the Place where I am going. To meet my Master There, I shall be glad to have served Him, And to have trusted His care. Maybe I am not doing As He would have me do. Perhaps I need discouragement. I am ready, if that is true. But I feel impel'd with hope To lay before my friend The fact that he can help me now, Or if not now, in the end. Someone some day will care enough; I may not be here then ; God will choose my friends for me. He knoweth whom and when; 115 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER My choice might not be His ; But I must hear and heed : Must act now on what light I have, In my hour of greatest need. I seek but what in Heaven Is known to be best for me. Here I am, a little child, Dependent, Lord, on Thee. The good I desire, yet hinder, Thy love must bring about; Thou wilt not compromise with sin; Thou dost not deal in doubt. Because I have lived to exalt Thee, Thou hast not regarded my shame ; Thou hast loved me with a deathless love. More precious than gold or fame ! And tho ardently devoted To Thee Whom I adore, I must try harder to serve Thee Than I ever have heretofore. As long as I may live, Tho every hour I die, I would please Thee, my Maker, And let all else go by. Such is my heart's intent; This flesh will fail, I know; But in Thy great compassion, Father, 'twere better so. 116 SUMMER AND SUBMISSION PASTORAL Clovers in the heavy dew, I must wade barefoot through you ; I must press you and pass over Your bright heads, you pretty clover; I must feel sensations sweet Through my happy naked feet. While they drink the dew down there, As I drink the morning air. Here in soft moonbeams last night You were fair and sparkling bright; For I waded through you then On my way back home again. I was looking for my cow. The same one I'm hunting now; Gone from home since yestermom, Is she hiding in the corn? Just before she freshens thus She escapes and hides from us: A wild way some Jerseys have When they are about to calve. Cows, wet clover and hot sun. Of all combinations, none Fills with such portentious dread The anxious dairyman's tired head. I feel almost glad she's gone. Else I might not in the dawn 117 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER And at dusk and by the moon Have enjoy 'd you so this June, I must work so many hours, you lovely wealth of flowers. Lifting glad a lake of gems On all your glittering diadems ! Pink alsike, with little red; Giant, some, with coarser head; White, on stems that would be tall; Herdsgrass waving over all ; With a fleabane here and there, — Naughty daisies, yet so fair! What more beautiful could be Than this scented scene to me ! Far and near this time of year Joy is in the atmosphere ! Everywhere I go I feel Nature's generous appeal ! Pleasures restful to the mind Would, tho I were deaf and blind, Reach my inmost consciousness With warm power to soothe and bless. There my cow stands yonder — see — Like a wild deer watching me — Nose and horns uplifted — yes — Shy, alert and motionless. 1 must pause here, too, a while. Conjuring up all my guile ; 118 "CLOVERS IN THE HEAVY DEW" For by many a breathless chase Well I know with cows my place. Sook, sook, sook, sook, Sook, bossy, come, a nubbin, look. No? Won't have it? Well, we'll wait. Take your time, tho it is late. There's no hurry, take it aisy. As the Irish say, come, Daisy, Come, a last year's nubbin, look, Sook, sook, sook, sook, — (0 you tantalizing dumb Statue of a wild thing, come!) Come, my pet, — there, ah, soft, now. Don't be naughty, pretty cow, (Handling stubborn folks and cattle, Gentleness is half the battle) Nod your head, not shake it, no, Not that way, but meekly, so. I can wait if you can, missus : Must I throw boquets and kisses? All my milking yet to do. And me held up here by you ! Well, what nerve! — leisurely there Eating clover ! — I de-clare ! And me patiently here waiting? Say but you are aggravating ! Ah! She makes a move, at last! Gentle creature, not so fast, — 119 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Here, I have a nubbin for you, — Wait and see — wait, I implore you — Do not make me chase you so, Liberty is sweet, I know; But in pasture it were best For my cows to graze and rest. Long time holding out the corn, Talking sweet, (She shakes her horn! She is eyeing me as tho Wild with fear ! ) behind her, slow. Startling not her timid strength, Towards the fence I edge at length. And with tact sagacious gain And ope, the gate into the lane. Thence round to her other side, Still by brute suspicion eyed, Gradually up I come Straight along the fence toward home. Steady, steady, not too fast, Pausing at the gate at last. Where the ear of corn, tost over, Lures her, tempts her, from the clover; Through the prison gap she looks, Halts and barkens, lows and hooks. Lifting head and watching round For a sight — for a sound — Of the herd, remember'd lost: — Seen! — with head and tail uptost, 120 "CLOVERS IN THE HEAVY DEW" Through she scampers and away Down the pasture as in play ! Welcoming their lost mate now, One butts her and one licks her brow; Heifers, playing, push each other; Old cows think that too much bother; Standing by the creek in mud, Sleepy-eyed, they chaw the cud; Others, couchant, ruminate; Calves bawl at the barnyard gate. Primal creature, dumb and daring. Wild, unthinking and uncaring. In the stable you must go. For I fear to trust you so. At the brook you'll drink your fill; Clover, though so fair, can kill ! But less danger if shut in. Salted daily as you Ve been. Good that you no milk were giving, Else you might not now be living; Bloated paunch and fever'd udder, — When I think of it I shudder ! So, because I know your nature, As I pity you, poor creature, I must at an empty manger Tie you safe a while from danger. Twelve days, if I err not, till. Fresh again, my pails you '11 fill 121 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER With your warm rich foaming flow, — There, now, truant, in you go! If a heifer calf you bear. Or of twins a lucky pair, Glad I '11 be, as I raised you, To bring up your increase, too. So oh! So oh! (I '11 have to drive them up, I know; Might as well start first as last; After milking time goes past. Until flies get bad, they 're crazy For the outdoors, and as lazy As fat swine!) Hey! Sun your beds! Get up, solemn sleepy-heads, — Hey there! — hey! — must I throw stones To start you, old lazybones ? Shall I pound you like a gong? Wake up, Dinah, move along! All the rest will follow you, (If they take a notion to) Throw your carcass into gear ! — Confound you ! — get out of here ! 122 SONNETS HOMEWARD AT SUNDOWN With hoe and rake on shoulder, home returning, I hear a thrush's note in yonder grove : He carols to his mate as to my love I soon shall say sweet words of tender yearning. Homeward with lingering step, the bright day burning Beyond yon tall dark trees that tower above — Still, still I pause to hear him singing of His little joys, as in the golden morning I heard him, and shall hear him till the heat Saddens his happy heart, as mine will sadden. Ah, lyric voice, to hear your song no more ! Yet may the cool dawns from this deep retreat Call forth a few birdnotes my heart to gladden; And June will come again with roses to my door. SABBATH AFTERNOON Delightful day ! happy day of days ! God's Inn, the tired soul's wayside rest ! With joy From my sore heart the burdens of the week I lay aside, and with glad thoughts of praise. In humble gratitude let me employ These blessed moments ! Down the pasture creek I '11 wander, and in rapt love as I gaze Upon all beauteous things that never cloy My spirit, I will let my Father speak With His tired child, who seriously plays That he is now no more a simple boy, 123 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER But a big provident man! I will be meek, And let the brook flow through my heart and bear All stains away that might be lingering there. THE LIVING RAIMENT Creation is the veil of Deity, The garment of our God. Flower and gem. Symbolic of His attributes we see, Bost and embroider 'd on the healing hem, And stars and moon adorn His diadem Beyond our mortal reach. Glad let us be To touch His vestures and be heal'd by them; For tho these fair devices are not He, His rugged robes they prank; and from His heart The simple virtues which His children need. Through blossoms flowing fresh to us, impart The grace to trust His love. Then let us heed. As Jesus taught, the message of the flowers. And make through faith in God their childlike beauty ours. THE king's IMAGE AND SUPERSCRIPTION Art thou from bodily afflictions free ? Health perfect? And is that what you call blest? Unhinder'd livest thou thy life with zest? And thinkest thus to sympathize with me, As if I were afflicted ? Who envies thee ! Rejoice in strength while perfect health shall last; But let me, too, rejoice, that in the test My spirit fails not. Gold coins let us be, 124 SONNETS Enjoying circulation from the Hand That minted us, mediums of exchange Between two countries, I worn smooth with spending. Thou new, but both redeemable in that Land From whence we came; and think it, friend, not strange If the unhoarded coin, batter 'd, is still worth lending. "i KNOW now" I KNOW now what has hurt me all these years. I have not fail'd ; have been no sloath nor coward ; Have stood up under heavy odds, empower'd By the Almighty over doubts and fears To triumph ! And I trust with grateful tears, By His shed blood Who died for me and shower'd My life with every blessing, to have tower'd Above at least myself. Humbled through cares And bodily imperfections, through sorrow chasten'd, I foresee and shall steadfastly expect Good and good only out of all my trials. Not yet so great but I can stand erect And bear them still with laughter — at least with smiles As forward on the winged years I 'm hasten'd. ''when I CONSIDER IN WHAT BLESSED WAYS" When I consider in what blessed ways My feet have f alter 'd all down through the years, I think of a lost child that perseveres From home and mother, wanders aside and plays, 125 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Then suddenly remembers that it strays ! — And turns and runs, crying with piteous tears To know in which direction! — thinks it hears Its name! — its mother's voice! — one instant stays To listen — and then flees to her caress, And goes with her toward home ! So I at seasons Have been rebellious one hour, and the next Most penitent and docile. Deep distress Has deepen'd my obedience and vext My spirit racially^ for universal reasons I "dreaming of uving, till our life be past" When I desire to do what I cannot, I wrong my Maker and my race and age, Failing to be what I might be and what In God's foresight were my best heritage. Thus do we miss by too much toil our wage. Too far afield pursuing rainbow gold. And after many a wasted pilgrimage Return, wishing that we were not grown old. Fondly we let our spirits be control'd By future thoughts and idle quests for power, Till wasted years have left our pulses cold, And on regret we squander many an hour. Ardently from our earliest to our last Dreaming of living, till our life be past. 126 SUMMER AND SUBMISSION SHIPS AT EVENING No rose that ever bloom'd Is so beautiful to me As a graceful sailing vessel. At sunset, on the sea! And I watch it change from white. Through rose and gold, to blue. Till it passes out of sight. And is lost to my view In the night, When, No star that ever sparkled Speaks more mystery to me Than a distant sailing vessel. At twilight, on the sea! Long after it is gone. Lost in the gathering gloam, I can feel it, sailing on, Through ocean, toward its home ! By a sense more sure than sight It cleaved the bounding bay ! — And my spirit with delight Goes with it, on its way. Through the night! — Till, No poem ever utter'd Is so musical to me As the motion of that vessel, Through the darkness, on the sea! 127 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER HESPERUS This evening as I came out of the woods, The wide west still aglow with divine flame, And all the deep green darkling in the glow, A star shone sudden above one of the trees That cloud the skyline there, a silver star. Bright in bright gold, a large clear lovely world. Far, very far away from our sad Earth, Farther than any thought of time could go ; So far, it look'd a gem in the deep sky. And not a distant sun to which our globe Were nothing. Long I watch'd it as I walk'd. And when I tum'd it seem'd to follow me From hill to hill, now high above the dark As I ascended, now hidden as I went down The valley road that brought me on toward home, Absorb'd in my dream thoughts, and in that star. That silver light, from which I took rapt eyes Only to rest them in the gathering gloom, That deepen'd as I went, till all but heaven Was dark. There many stars made grand the night, Scatter'd through wide expanse of beauteous blue, Whereof the solemn trees were witnesses ; And shadowy fields and gurgling waterbrooks Enjoy 'd them, for they sparkled as if they Knew, and were happy with me. Often I linger'd. And the man-haunting Spirit That pervades The universe with holy rapturous awe Paused, or went homeward with me, as toward Heaven, 128 MIDNIGHT THUNDER SHOWERS He hourly brings me, His delighted child. Or sick with grief, but trustful by His help. And wishing nothing that I must not have, Because I am already passing rich, Being so thrill'd with His great fellowship, That whispers to my spirit peace and strength. Here soon by dear expectant wife and children Met with affectionate welcome, I arrived Within my earthly home, as we in His Must soon arrive, so fast the Earth speeds on. So true to His true heart are all His works, His purpose and His power so kind and sure. THUNDER SHOWERS NEAR MIDNIGHT Last night. After the moon had gone. Leaving the lovely stars more bright. We stood out on the lawn. And watcht the black storm coming, rolling on. And felt its hush, and saw faint flashes of light. And heard it as it loom'd, roaring, rising in height, Upgathering all its furious rumbling might To scare with mountainous delight The puifmg little zephyrs Before it scampering like frighten'd bullocks and heifers And lay the dust With gust after gust Of driving windy downpour Out of the muflled bellowing uproar 129 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER And far moaning Of the heavy high-explosive deep-detoning Thunder ! — Lit With child-frightening Lightning ! — As tho the Titan powers That sit Above the thick clouds, with crystal showers Of derisive wit Were satirizing our old pious theologic heathen blunder. And in a rolicking spasm Of giant mirth— A vast fit Of reverberant iconoclasm — Were blasting heaven and earth Asunder ! — While from the wide shelter Of the porch we were under, Where we ran helter-skelter With glee From wind, rain and lightning, we In awe-struck ecstatic wonder Watch and list Through the night and the cool fresh flying mist The grand on-going elemental war, And the running water and the swollen springbrook's brawling roar! 130 SUMMER AND SUBMISSION SABBATH EVENING IN DOG DAYS We must go now and let the creatures out; All day in the cool stable have they on straw Been hiding from the flies that plague them so; It is not long till evening; come, Virginia, We '11 turn them out and drive them down the pasture; And there we '11 watch the minnows in the brook, And gather wildflowers for the supper table. And spend a pleasant hour wandering and wading And sitting telling stories in the shade. Best hang your little check sunbonnet up; You '11 hardly need it this late. Dearie. You stand And guard the door while I go drive them out; Here, take this lath, and if they lag, slap them; Watch lively — stay right where you are — now hear? Don't get out in their way, you might get hurt; The gate 's closed, so they can't break for the stanchions. How satisfied they look reposing there In the cool shadows, drowsily chawing the cud — Come, the big box stall doors are open wide. File out, you sleepy cows ! They take their time, The stupid things, cow-fashion, looking at me From big dark bright expressionless innocent eyes. With all the dumb sang-froid of the brute beast. Watch out now, here they come! Get out, slow pokes! Old Dinah, she 's the head of the dynasty — Stand back — they're coming, Indian file — Lucinda — Jemima — Chloe — Belinda — Aunt Maria — Big black Susanne — all might have red bandanas 131 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Tied round their heads, like southern darky mammies; Only, cows can't be jolly. Buttercup, You naughty cow, get out; and shame on you. To have to wear that poke over your neck To keep you in the pasture ! Better call you The Yellow Peril. But you 're not as breachy As the Red Devil that we had to butcher, Or that Black Demon that just stood around And lookt like Satan studying up mischief. Steers, weanlings, yearling heifers, the twins, Blackie And Brownie, Gloomy the bull, all out. Now, Queen, Come, Queen, your stall door's open too. Queen, Come. Come, good old faithful horsie, you 're out of jail. You solemn sleepy jade, wake up, join the procession — Get out — scat — spat her — that's right. Shut the door. All dawdle down the lane through the big gate That opens into pasture; and we follow. For a brief Sabbath hour till milking time. Isn't it fine to live on our home farm. And keep so many cattle that give milk. With goodie cream, for little ones to drink. And careful Mama to make butter and cheese And — yes, cookies! — and with such a pleasant pasture, And running water to catch minnows in, And crawdads? That 's how Papa used to play When he was a little person; only his parents Lived in the city, and he always had To trudge out where farms were and find such fun Away from home, and — Oh, yes, he got tired. And hungry, too, and had to wait to eat Till he got back, even if it was dark. 132 SABBATH EVENING IN DOG DAYS But you live right here, and don't have to hunt For places to be happy in; why, no, Of course you don't ; we just stay here at home And laugh and play and run and shout and sing And pick wildflowers and sit down and rest Wherever and whenever we want to. That is, you can, and I when I 'm not busy. Well, yes, dear, I am busy most of the time; Some day perhaps we '11 come back here and live As I have always wisht we might. Some day. I cannot bear to think of giving up ; I love my work; if fondness be call'd love. Bred in me from I know not how far back; We have been happy here, haven't we. Sweetheart? We think it fun — don't we? — just being glad. And doing right, and living among fields And woods, where birds of many kinds make love And sing and build their nests and brood upon Frail eggs and feed soft fledglings and teach them To fly ! Tomorrow, when you go to Dayton To visit Grandma and see Cousin Mildred And David and Auntie Maud and Uncle Walter, Aunt Lizzie, and I could not name them all, — Oh, yes, you could, I know; and they '11 be pleased To see our girlie, too! — then you can tell them About the birds and flowers, the calves and — yes. And minnows — look at all those silver minnows. How swiftly they can fin upstream against The current, among rocks, and never strike Nor hurt themselves; like birds that flit and dart Among the branches of the trees and never 133 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Are knockt about by them as we would be. Now we '11 start back, wading and gathering flowers. Yes, goldenrod — hi! — yonder skips a rabbit! — Run, bunny, for your life! — there, now, he squats, A tuft of grass but for his big dark eye Looking this way — ho! — bouncing cottontail! — Over the hill and gone! Follow my finger — A striped water snake sunning on that flat rock, See? No, stand still, no, he can't hurt you, no, I wouldn't let him anyhow. We '11 shy A — stone-aX-him — see him slide off the moss Into the reeds and grasses — there he is — Look — that's his ugly head, close to the bank. There — in the shadow where the roots and sod Are undermined — an old snag — now he's — here- There he goes now across to the other side — The nasty things! All right, we '11 go; I hate The looks of serpents — and a snake 's a snake. No difference if colubers are harmless. Yes, now we'll gather flowers — Queen Anne's lace For Mama-dear. This is almost the last Of the butterflyweed. It looks, I sometimes fancy, Like pink sheep laurel that grows wild in Maine, Where Sister Edith was a little thing, Younger than you are now by several years. Yes, I believe she thinks of us and loves us; We might go see her almost any day; Don't ever let yourself doubt Jesus' word. No matter what else happens. Life and death And time and space are very real to us. And sadly tragic sometimes ; but our trust 134 SABBATH EVENING IN DOG DAYS Is not in them; we know our Father loves us. Is faithful, so we leave it all with Him, Dear little children, doing what we can The best we know, each hour. For scarlet, we '11 pick Boneset; this blush makes the green sessile leaves More floral than the grayish flower heads, I think. Don't you? — the plant our grannies used to dry, To steep a bitter tea from, in the days Of chills and fever, when the land was dark With forests, and green stagnant water stood All summer, breeding sickness, until the air Hung laden with dank poison call'd miasma. Fierce gnatclouds of mosquitoes tortured cattle, And almost drove the people mad, at times. Hot nights they had to shut both doors and windows To get a little miserable sleep. They had no screens then. Dearie, but cotton netting; And few had even that in the early days. And Oh, the flies ! They were a pest ! They buzz'd In swarms all over everything all day. Got in the milk, the butter and the cooking. Kept babes awake, wore poor tired mothers out. And tantalized the sick and aged. Mealtime Somebody had to stand and wave a flag Above the table — strips of tissue paper Tackt on a long stick, often neatly made In colors — to shoo darting flies from food, So tired and sweaty souls could eat in peace. We children had to do that. Many a time I 've thought my back would cave in and my arms Break! But no doubt it did us good. We learn'd 135 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Kind thoughtfulness for other people's comfort, And gratitude for the conveniences We now enjoy. Rooms were kept darken'd all day With drawn blinds and closed shutters until evening. And had a stale cool smell. Asparagus Was stuck up behind pictures about the walls For flies to settle on. And calcimining. Especially in blue, for flies hate blue, Was common. In some dining rooms, but more In grocery stores, meat stalls and barber shops. And generally in public eating places. Large fancy-pattem'd rosette paper hangings Adom'd the ceiling around chandeliers And chain-suspended lamps, as roosts for flies, To protect things from being all speckt up. Ague? Yes, almost everyone had ague; And delicate children sometimes died of it. I was a delicate child, but I pull'd through. That always seem'd a miracle to my mother. To me it is a greater miracle That any frail child could survive the doctors And epidemics of those days. Yes, Dearie, In Indianapolis, where I was bom. And where we lived till I was four years old, There was a ditch near our street call'd Pogue's Run; And wading there, I got all through my system Those noxious mold effluvia. Mosquitoes, We now know, differing from these common kinds. Harbor the parasitic spores that cause In human blood the febrile paroxysms Call'd intermittent fever, autumn chills, 136 SABBATH EVENING IN DOG DAYS And like names; and some such malignant mites Probed and infected me with ague. Ugh! It was a wretched melancholy feeling ! One minute you began to get seasick, And then a slow chill crept up from your spine All through your body and extremities And took you and shook your dead bones till your teeth Chatter'd with cold the hottest summer days. And when the chill had taken its spite out on you, It left you burning up with a dry fever. At last you broke out in a sweat; the drug. Whatever they had given you, was working; The room swung round ; your ears buzz'd ; and your head Had to be propt up with a pillow. They sweat me. Gave me hot footbaths, and I was kept wrapt up In heavy comforts, until I could not walk, I was so weak. The doctors dosed all victims With quinine, but my mother twisted it In thinnest onion skin so I could take it And wash it down without that bitter taste. Capsules were not in use; or I saw none. Family physicians known as allopaths Prescribed strong medicine for all their patients. Because they knew no better; and some men Kept up on whisky; many became drunkards; Ague was such a plausible excuse. There always is a better way. One morning A kind old German marketwoman came And told my mother to enswathe my feet In so much salt with so much cayenne pepper, Nine days; and when they took those saltbags off, 137 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Would you believe? — my feet were green with stain That had to wear away; and from that time I never had malaria any more. Nobody in the world knows everything; The dopequacks didn't like such granny ways Of curing sickness; but it cured me. Wait — I '11 bend down this tall ironweed — you break The purple plume for your boquet — you can't? — Let me. And now, self-heal, — swamp dahlias, yes. And yellow black-eyed susans, with bright blue. Lobelia, a quack potion sick folk steept For that disgusted feeling at their food ; Indian tobacco. Yes, they say the Indians Dried it and smoked the leaves. Put in a few racemes Of this large-flower'd handsome kind. Oh — yonder May be some cardinals yet, across the brook! I '11 ride you on my back so you won't bruise Your feet. All right, we '11 wade, then, give me your hand< One time, when I was little, and we lived Near Wolf Creek, in Miami City, now call'd West Dayton, in a desperate hour I stole From my sick mother's almost empty purse A little bright new silver three-cent piece ; And weak with guilty fear, I started out To wade across Wolf Creek and see the world ! 1 got out in the middle, where the stream Flow'd kneedeep, and in my excitement the money Slipt from my hand! I saw it, but the water Stream'd on so fast I could not reach down straight To where it waver'd in the sunlit gravel. It would not stay still for an instant. Dizzied, 138 SABBATH EVENING IN DOG DAYS I turn'd back; but the current running then The other way, bewilder'd me. I sat — Gasping — a — mong — crawdads — flounder'd a — shore. And made for home ! So we '11 wade back again And move up stream, for it grows late. First, the, These curving tall swamp grasses in among The richly color'd flowers will add grace. I '11 trim the lower thorns from this bull thistle. Letting some prickly leaves appear above. With a few blades of calamus to curve And wave over them all, blending their odor With steeples of spearmint, and the darker leaved And stronger scented peppermint. And now We 're ready to go home ; and on the way, A few sprays of forget-me-nots we '11 pick, That grow so fresh along the waterside. And then some white cress, and 'twill then be time For supper. Then I '11 milk my cows, and then To bed, and soon asleep, to wake up bright And early in the morning; and after brea||cfast, Quick as the work's done, off to town you '11 go Behind old Queen with Mama in the carriage To take the car for Dayton. And what then Will Daddy do without his Dearie Love? But never mind, you '11 be back Thursday or Friday, And I '11 be right there at the car to meet you. Have a good time; tell Mildred and David and all To come and see us; and when you get — yes, Oh, yes, I '11 feed your pigeons and your calfie And — yes, but let us go in now, for Mama Is waiting supper on us. Look, Gertrude, 139 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Virginia brought you a big bunch of posies ! ( Run get some water, and I '11 rearrange These in a jardiniere ; for at each plate Mother has laid sprays of forget-me-nots, With a frail vase of roses where we thought To put these ; but this riot will look best On the new tabouret that Arthur made; Too gorgeous and aromatic for the center Of the dining table, isn't it, Virgie?) There! Look, Love, isn't that a beautiful boquet ! Where's Arthur? — reading? Come, Boy, supper time (This big wide porch is a delightful place.) Qose up your book, my Son, we 're waiting on you. SONNET Where August pasture flowers of royal hue Offer their sweets to bees and butterflies, I will content me looking at the skies. Watching the clouds, as oftentimes I do. But tho I see the clouds, I think of you; And in their glory tho I seem to rise. Attended by a flowery paradise As fair as ever on this planet grew. Yet must I wish that thou wert with me, Dear, Sharing my joy, or I with thee shared thine; For what in all this world so sweet to me As to be conscious that my Love is near ! What would I not relinquish if 'twere mine, Darling, to choose between all else and thee! 140 SUMMER AND SUBMISSION NAIAD Down, streaming over the gravel. Ripples the beautiful water. Flowing ever away, Laughing and gurgling along — There ! — I saw my nymph unravel Her hair- — there! — again I caught her — Yonder! She shall — aye — Shall be the theme of my song ! — The mischievous tease of my song ! Ah, lovely creature of fancy, Provokingly disappearing. Glimpsed as a lost surprise Round a bowery bend in the brook — Why must your fading entrance me To follow, all-seeing, all-hearing, With expectant quick ears and eyes, In vain to listen and look, Yet loath not to listen and look ! Why at a mocking distance Keep me just failing to glimpse thee. Wild water-haunting sprite, Coquettishly luring me on? Though you have no delicious existence. Your grace elusive more tempts me To peer through the dancing light That only reveals thee gone — Into other simbeams — but gone ! 141 BY THE BANKS OF STILLWATER Soon I must leave these meadows; But thou goest where I am going; I leave them here, not thee, Beside my beloved stream. Elsewhere in river shadows, Or where clear waters are flowing, And in city crowds, I shall see My tantalizing dream — My unrealizable dream. From a little child, shy creature. With passionate youthful addresses I have woo'd thee, and thought thee fair, Call'd! — but thou wilt not wait. Still from the past through the future I pursue thy vanishing tresses, beautiful Freedom! There! — Almost, — but just too late! Almost, — but always too late! No violence will I do thee; No, my delight, my darling! Still undismay'd I smile, — Gone! — but not far away. Still undiscouraged I woo thee. In the brook's musical purling, — In all earth's charms that beguile Thou art mine, for thou art Play ! Thou art Liberty ! Thou art Play ! 142 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: Sept. 2009 PreservationTechnologies A WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATtOH Cranberry Township, PA 16066 (724)779-2111 li'i'l ■ ■ m