V? "^^^O^ o- ^^.^yz'.^<^^ .^^''.•j^%*>- 4,^'^'A*i'.%. 4?' I. ' 8 >^. >,'V . •• o , **0 ^"-^^^ 33 1 GARGOYLES AND OTHER POEMS GARGOYLES And Other Poems HOWARD MUMFORD JONES THE CORNHILL COMPANY BOSTON v^^ Copyright, 1918 by THE CORNHILL COMPANY FEB -3 1212 5)CI.A512222 TO MY WIFE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Acknowledgment for permission to republish the following poems in book form is accorded the publishers. AT THE DUNES Numbers I-IV appeared in The Forum, August, 1916 Number V appeared in Poetry, December, 1916 HIS MOTHER Appeared in The Texas Review, April, 1917 UNIVERSITY SKETCHES Aphrodite and The Professor Muses appeared in Poetry, April, 1916 Librarians and Phonology appeared in The Midland Magazine, July 1917 Term Paper in English 37, under the name, Chaucer and Cressid, ap- peared in The Texas Review, February, 1917 "Heu Amor! Quam Dulcis in Universitatibus est Tua Memoria," "Each Student is Assigned to an Adviser," and To a Certain Scien- tist appeared in Reedv's Mirror in June, 1918. The six sonnets in this section are to appear in Contemporary Verse. CHICAGO Plows appeared in The Survey, in the fall of 1914 The Movies was printed in A Little Book of Local Verse (see From the Mississippi) Audiences appeared in The Playbook in 1914 Economics appeared in The American Magazine in 1913 A SONG OF BUTTE Is to appear in Contemporary Verse. FROM THE MISSISSIPPI Most of the poems under this head appeared in a privately-printed booklet, A Little Book of Local Verse. The Masque of Marsh and River appeared at the time of the production of the masque The Garden in September appeared in The Midland Magazine, March, 1916 GARGOYLES With the exception of numbers XII and XIV, these poems appeared in Contemporary Verse, December, 1916 Between the bud and the hlovm flower Youth talked with joy and grief an hour. With footless joy and wingless grief And twin-horn faith and disbelief Who share the seasojis to devour; And long ere these made up their sheaf Felt the winds rou7id him shake and shower The rose-red and the blood-red leaf. Delight whose germ grew never grain. And passion dyed in its own pain. Then he stood up, and trod to dust Fear and desire, mistrust and trust. And dreams of bitter sleep and sweet. And bound for sandals on his feet Knowledge and patience of what must And what things may be, in the heat And cold of years that rot and rust And alter; and his spirit's meat Was freedom, and his staff was wrought Of strength, and his cloak woven of thought. Swinburne, Prelude of Songs Before Sunrise CONTENTS AT THE DUNES page I. First Impressions 3 II. At Miller 5 III. Night 7 IV. Dawn 8 V. November 10 HIS MOTHER 13 UNIVERSITY SKETCHES Aphrodite 22 Librarians 25 The Professor Muses 27 Phonology 30 Term Paper in English 37 33 "Lo! I have worshiped beauty all my days" 38 "This is the crown they sought, the height they won" ... 39 "O wild and free upon the lawless hills" 40 " Master of arts ! Diploma tight in hand" 41 "We study Marlowe. Virgins, not unwise" 42 " A rag of sunset flaps my window-pane " 43 "Heu Amor! Quam Dulcis in Universitatibus est Tua Memorial" 44 "Each Student is Assigned to an Adviser" 47 To a Certain Scientist 49 CHICAGO In Factory Town 51 On Seeing Lorado Taft's " The Solitude of the Soul " . . . .53 Plows 54 The Wrecking of the House 54 The Movies 55 The Spinner 55 Audiences 57 Economics 57 Insomnia 60 THE MECHANIST 62 DEAD CHILDREN 63 ENIGMA 64 A SONG OF BUTTE 65 [ix] CONTENTS FROM THE MISSISSIPPI page At Eagle Bluff • • •. 67 Certain Reflections at Midway 69 "When shall we together" 71 From Trempealeau .73 Sunday 74 Railway Sketches 75 Anent the Street-Car 78 " Climb up with me to Clififwood and lie down " 80 June 81 Lyrics from " The Masque of Marsh and River " 83 Rain on the River 86 A Red Leaf 87 The Garden in September 88 Old Men .••..,, 90 "Deep within a coulie" 91 An Abandoned Cemetery 92 GARGOYLES I. Prelude 95 II. Fantasia 96 -III. Nocturne 97 IV. Immortality 98 V. Grotesque . 99 VI. Theme and Variations 99 VII. Fresco 100 VIII. Motto 101 IX. Hamlet 102 X. Arabesque 103 XI. Fugue Solonelle 104 XII. Interlude 105 XIII. Dialectics 106 XIV. Marche 107 XV. Allegory 108 GARGOYLES AT THE DUNES FIRST IMPRESSIONS Beyond the trouble of the street, Beyond the weary town An eager wind goes forth to meet The dunes and beaches brown, To walk by blue and lonely miles Wild and alone and free — Here where the ghost of summer smiles Across the autumn sea. By leagues the curving headlands wheel. By miles the beaches run, Grotesque beneath a sky of steel. Barren beneath the sun. And bleached like dry and whitened bones The fisher-houses stand Like bulwarks or like antique stones. More lonely than the land. Before, the blue lake shameless lies. Naked and gross and bare, As some Titanian siren tries To lure men to her lair; Behind, the bleak hills writhe and twist In obscure agony As though God had each by the wrist And each strove to be free. [3] GARGOYLES And here the stricken sand is thrown Forward and back and forth. And here before the winds are blown The great dunes south or north; They have nor sleep nor rest nor ease. They march incessantly Now lakeward from the twisted trees, Now shoreward from the sea. [4 AT THE DUNES II AT MILLER To Miller on a Sunday comes Each fellow with his girl, Deaf to the town's incessant drums And piccolo's shrill whirl; Her escort bears the lunch she takes And each girl giggles loud To hear the jokes her fellow makes Upon the joyous crowd. They build a fire upon the beach To roast their wieners by. They toss a ball from each to each With silly shout and cry; The plain girls read, the couples stroll, The men race on the sand, Or trousers to the knee they roll To wade a rod from land. Impertinent and useless things, They eat and drink and shout Until the night on throbbing wings Shakes all her star-dust out; Then two by two they hurry back Like hens to catch the car. While down the dead day's crimson track Falters the evening star. [5] GARGOYLES They are afraid to stand alone Under the empty sky; Back to the town they herd, and drone Their lives away and die; They huddle back to town in fear, Fear of the night and God — It's safer where the streets are near. Than where His feet have trod! The sun goes down, the stars come out Over the purple sea. And in the west the chimneys spout Hell forth all fiery, But though night be upon the wolds. And hell upon the sky, Impassively the lake beholds, The dunes, impassively. [6] AT THE DUNES III NIGHT And now the utter loneliness Is more than man can bear: The waves are sadder than distress, The dunes are like despair. The lake is blank and pallid gold Where only sea-gulls dwell, Spirits by God left unenroUed In heaven and earth and hell. Hard on the brown and fading sands The teeth of crumbled waves Bite out their stories of old lands And peoples in their graves; Above the sun is dead, below God and the world are dead. And only the leaden waters go Across their leaden bed. And slowly from the ashen air Shudders the paling light, And slowly up the sky doth fare The stark and naked night, Night of the mad and staring stars. Night beyond time or space. Void, vacant, blank as prison bars. Night, without form or face ! [7] GARGOYLES IV DAWN Not always are the dunes as bare, As lone, as lost as this: When morning winnows all the air With driven gold, the kiss Of the cool wave on the lit beach Softens the great, gaunt land And gently the little waves have speech With the bleak, barren sand. Then in the pink and yellow lake Along the golden shore The white mermaidens' bosoms break Red ripples on the floor Of the smooth sea, and faint and far Their wild song swells and sighs Across the beach, across the bar Under the shifting skies. And fitfully and reluctantly A lone leaf tiptoes down Across the sands into the sea To float, all curled and brown, A fairy shallop on the deep Wherein two pixies ride; Their little wizened faces peep Over the frigate's side. [8] AT THE DUNES Then dance on every wrinkled dune Sandmen and brownies small; The dry leaves keep a rustling tune. The sleepy birds do call, And from the poplars and the pines Dryads and nymphs peep out To see the elves in quavering lines Advance and turn about. The mermaids sing, the sandmen pace A jolly rigadoon. The pixies steer and reef and race Beneath a waning moon; The little stars look down to grin. The moon looks down to sigh, And longs to dance and prance and spin, Being lonely in the sky. And then a sudden shout goes forth. And the white birds come out, A cold wind hurries from the north To drive the stars about, And one by one the mermaids sink. The sandmen steal away. And up the steep sky's eastern brink Marches the awful day. GARGOYLES NOVEMBER The dunes are graves that shift and dance, Showing a skeleton When by the pushing wind's advance Their coffin is undone, And in the ribbed and bitter sand A murdered tree puts out A white Umb like a ghastly hand, A dead trunk like a snout. The dunes are ghosts that line the beach. Hidden and veiled and wild. Now holding silence each with each, Now lisping like a child, And to their speech the waves reply. The wind and the low waves. Whispering and wildly wondering why They talk of ghosts and graves. They are as graves, they are as ghosts, They are as sphinxes set For umpires on these desolate coasts With life and death at fret; Life with her grass and juniper. Death with his cloud of sand: She strives with him and he with her Between the lake and land. [101 AT THE DUNES The poplars and the pines are hers, His are the sands and wind; • Sometimes his desperate breathing blurs The air till she grows blind; With crooked hands and fingers green She clasps the dunes to kill — And always the troubled waters keen, Always the sea-gulls shrill. — The wind is fellow once with Death, Storming against the land; He howls across the hills, his breath Burdened with snow and sand; The wind is fellow once with Life, Sweeping against the sea. Sweeping across the waves in strife With Death for enemy. Yet life and death and land and lake. To him what things are these? Whether the sand-dunes shoreward shake, Fleeing the broken seas. Whether the water be as glass Or wild beasts without chains, They shift and change and scud and pass. Only the wind remains! Only the wind ! — The dead leaves flee, Like smoke the blue lake fades, The hills flow down into the sea. And night and day like shades [11] GARGOYLES About a carried lantern run Jigging alternately, And star and moon and bolted sun Slide crazily in the sky. O God! The whole world like the dunes Dances fantastic-wise Down to what end, before what tunes, Beneath what dancing skies ! And blown along like grains of sand Ourselves must whirl and flee Before a wind across the land Into what open sea! 12] HIS MOTHER The first shock of the letter that she had Was Hke a sudden sword-thrust through the brain; Then numbness, melting sharply into rain Of hard and stormy tears, more hard than sad; These left her staring as a man gone mad With brutal blows will sagely wait for pain. Desiring it, yet ever and again Shake for his fear that pain is dreary bad. Thereafter she arose and went about Some trivial duty of the house, of course. (A mother is a thing past finding out!) But always as she swept, some voice as hoarse As ocean in a fog where blind ships run. Spoke dumbly in her heart, "My son! My son!" II He wrote her that he loved this girl and sought To take her for his wife. She glowed to sense Under the halting words his reverence, The wonder for the woman God had wrought And the white beauty of her. She had taught Something like this, was proud to have him fence His love around with awe and excellence. And yet — O patient heart! — the pain he brought! [13] GARGOYLES Her only son! Almost she seemed to feel The little curling fingers on her breast, The small, weak mouth, the helpless limbs and feet Had she not kept his underclothing neat. And cooked his morning pancakes while he dressed? , And now — and now — why, this girl dared to steal! Ill So it had come at last, this dreaded thing Long taught to hide, as somewhere in each man Death sits with moveless mouth, a little span Forgot and hidden, till his hour shall ring. And the mouth move and speak. She felt the wing Of strange, familiar, sudden destiny fan Her blanching cheek. She knew . . . And yet there ran Some hours ere she grasped her suffering. Some hours ere her mind came flooding back In a great washing sea of bitterness: Her George — the hour had struck, if somewhat slack; The universal clockwork ticking on Compelled her through this futile dim distress, And would be ticking when her son was gone. IV It was not that the girl was bad or cheap; No, she was kind and good and gently raised, Better, perhaps, than George. Her anger blazed. Helpless against its privilege to weep, [14] HIS MOTHER (They'd think it fitting!) where she longed to sweep The Fact and God and George in one huge crazed Slow-tottering crash, while the stunned earth, amazed, Shrank from its pivot backward down the deep ! Oh, there were times she burned to face the Lord, In cold and desperate fury ached to know Why she was picked for this fantastic fun ! . . . And then a cold fear like a numbing blow Took hold of her, and she w ould read the Word, Praying, "Thy will, O God, Thy will be done!" She hoped and prayed that George had chosen well; Herself had drained love's goblet to the lees ! . . Beside a dead man lying down, she sees A loveless bride to whom the marriage bell Was little other than a marriage knell; Whom pride, not love, thus forced upon its knees An inward loathing. . . . Everyone agrees Her wedlock was the happiest they can tell. And when he died, they say she missed him much. Donned meekly then her widowhood and cried. None guessing at the reason. Now she prayed. Prayed that the bridegroom and the happy bride Be counted with the couples love had made. In praying she could not name any such. [15] GARGOYLES VI Sometimes she longed to have the marriage done. Remembering the tumult and the blur Of her own heart, the quickened pulse, the stir Of leaping sense, of body and soul made one. O pitifully weak for love to stun And cripple in his passionate quest they were, With all the soft young night aflame with her, And he made lord of star and moon and sun! Elsewhile she strove against the gates of love To break them down with terror, wildly pushed The great hand backward on the clock of life, Prayed, wrote him once, was blamed; for all her strife, The marching brazen hand still hourward rushed. The slow gates crushed her even as she strove. VII To her the house seemed very empty now. And wearily at night she climbed the stair, Holding her lamp against the darkness there, And half -afraid, and tired; her fine, large brow Looked puzzled, always, and her friends told how, Since George had got engaged, his mother's hair Was grayer, and that George was hardly fair. And how her body bent like an apple-bough. 16 HIS MOTHER But she rebuked them if they called him cruel, And said how glad she was, that George had been Kind to his mother always, and a jewel. And she was proud his girl was such a queen. — Yet every night her foot upon the stair Dragged slowlier up the empty darkness there. VIII And she who found him, shapeless, by a star In windy spaces where the dust is blown. Impalpable and thin, that being strown On earth, takes shape and breathes; who at the bar Of death looked down for him; who was the jar Wherein his essence mingled with her own. The tortured door that opened with a moan, The crucifixion and the fiery car; Upon another woman she must lay Through him that anguish and the rods of pain, Through him a mother must resign a son Still to some younger! . . . 'Twas eternal play Of cog and ratchet meeting, that was plain. Whose hidden millstones grind forever on. IX She raged against the injustice of her state, Thinking how willingly this only son She would have lost were battles to be won, Or God had need of such — O gentler fate! [17 1 GARGOYLES But thus to pay with sterling worth for plate, — A mouth, a flutter, a thing of twenty-one, A silly, giggling girl intent on fun. No, no! The purchase price was far too great. God had been tricked or had not understood. The books were falsified, the balance pan Disordered that so weighed with ribbons, blood: A sure accountant would correct his error. — Thus in her bed one night, while darkness ran In long, slow, leaping waves of shame and terror. X Her mind went back along unfooted ways By many a grass-grown, many a lonely road To that far field where love had his abode And one fair promise ruled the singing days; Her heartbeat quickened to dead lovers' praise, A thin cheek faintly burned, and old tears flowed To feel that her poor, withered lips yet glowed With ghostly kisses and one whispered phrase. Dim pranks of girlhood rash and very sweet Incredibly awoke — slight, foolish things: A solemn interchange of ruby rings, A dance, a furtive walk. — Outside, the street Under the dawn was blank and very still Till, of a sudden, birds began to trill. 18 HIS MOTHER XI "Well, she would not have George beloved of none, Would not object or hinder. Who was she, A poor, old, weary woman, to disagree To God's desire with maid and woman's son? Had George not stinted him of proper fun To buy her pretty things? And after tea Sat with her often? She was glad to see The love and happiness her boy had won. Honestly glad — 'twas time to wed — above All else would not be selfish. Thinking this, Her dry throat pained her much. . . . How youth could rob, And hurt and burn and sting! — And what was love? A little laughter broken by a kiss, A little kissing broken by a sob! XII The girl — the girl was coming ! Her shrewd eyes Where hunger had been levelled into pain. Like springs of troubled water filled again; O youth, the pliant willow, may despise Old oaks that have been twisted to strange guise By blowing winds across a desolate plain; To alter them is trouble all in vain. And youth is no admirer of the wise! . . . [19] GARGOYLES She felt that life had passed her in a dust With noisy trumpets and exultant face, Leaving her stunned and out-of-date; the place Was shabby and her dresses none too new, Her ways peculiar ways and old. . . . She must Think of some things a girl would like to do. . . . XIII Like one with desperate battle worn and fain Of rest by some untroubled, old-world sea Where no ships steer but always on the lea Is silence, and a languor in the brain, So, moving strangely ever and again To dusting, sweeping, baking bread, was she: Meanwhile her spirit worshiped changelessly A dim arcanum of perpetual pain. A solemn sorrow, half akin to joy Was her familiar friend that knew no change; She would have missed, she thought, the dreamy grief, Wherein her beaten spirit found relief, And if his sweetheart had renounced the boy. She could not feel more phantom-like or strange. XIV O friend, the strange ways of a mother's mind God does not wholly fathom, nor may we : Behold her waiting for the train at three, Waiting for George — and her. These eyes are kind, [20] HIS MOTHER Wistful — no more than that — which should be blind With looking on at hell's high revelry. And this old body that you smile to see Before all heaven was broken like a rind. Yet here she stands expectant for a train. Timid and tired, yet proud unconquerably, Who walked in darkness bitter hills of pain. And saw the passion of Gethsemane, Who saw and lived and, sheltered from the rain. Waits at the depot for the train at three. 21 UNIVERSITY SKETCHES APHRODITE I walked among the gray -walled buildings; The city girdles them, And distant clamors Break on their towers as the sea Whirls its long lines of sound against the coast. Among them the professors walked, Stooping men with glasses And queerly eager feet; Some wore Van Dyke beards, And on some the hair was silvered; They talked very rapidly, and all were laden With many books. From hall to solemn hall the students Streamed in black lines. Youths and maidens chatting endlessly. Worn women with drawn mouths, And dissatisfied men; They were seeking something, Seeking, seeking. Seeking they knew not what. I, too, passed with them into a building; It was crowded with students, And they seemed in the dingy light of the hall Like spectres of dead youth. [22] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES The walls were drab, The bulletin boards by the offices And the ugly chandeliers Looked dusty in the light, And I wondered what he did in this place, Struggling through the narrow panes, The lord of life. The eternal sun. Suddenly in the crowded hall I saw her walking toward me, The matchless, the miraculous, The divine Aphrodite, And around her the students swarmed, And saw her not. Ah Aphrodite ! Her body in the crowded way, like a pillar of light, Shone naked and beautiful. With Parian limbs and softly-moulded bosom; Her face was terrible. Sweet and swift as lightning launched at midnight; Crushing against her snowy breasts a burden Of crimson roses, blood against her skin, One arm was raised. And from her hand, her divine hand, She scattered roses. Red roses. Crisp flakes of kindling fire. A|murmur of music Floated about her head; Her feet, moving, echoed strangely in my heart — Eternal singing; [23] GARGOYLES The centuries were singing. The golden-hearted singers of the world Were singing with them Unutterable songs. Ah Aphrodite ! Thou dead, thou deathless goddess, Sprung of the wind and the wave and the clean, sweet foam ! The wild songs of thy moving feet Choked into silence. And I heard a sob arise As of a string plucked ardently and breaking With burden unutterably sweet. And I fell before thee, Before thy feet, O deity. Thy naked, flame-like feet. And kissed them. Passionately kissed them while the roses Dripped round me like red rain ! Ah the wild, sweet, unendurable pain of the roses. Sharp and bitter and fierce as flame-smitten lips! Ah the eyes, the burning lips, the bosom! Ah Aphrodite! . . . The students swarmed again about me. Women with drawn mouths. Dissatisfied men, Seeking something, seeking, Seeking they knew not what. 124] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES LIBRARIANS A bare-walled room; a counter at one end; The ages, catalogued and ticketed On neatly printed cards of black and red, Piled up in cases, down the floor extend; Four windows shoulder through the white-washed walls, Whereby the sunlight on the dusty floor And littered tables to the restless door From morn to night perpetually crawls. Above the desk, implacable, immune From all the little hates which stir the place, Sardonically with barren, sphinx-like face A clock beats out the hours from noon till noon. No rest nor respite in the changing room — The door perpetually swings to and fro. Perpetually the students come and go. Perpetually the clock ticks on like doom. Behind the desk stand the librarians, Bleak women, spare and angular and thin. Impersonal as God or Death, and in Their eyes and on each mask-like countenance Sits changeless irony to watch your whim. You ask for Shakespeare, and no more, no less Than if an equal fervor you express For something dull and dead, you get of him. [25] GARGOYLES They pile the centuries like building blocks, And nest dead Csesar with a magazine; Indecently, behind an office screen They watch the masters numbered up like stocks. Levelling all things in a catalog, They yield, and now withhold, imperial kings From any giggling girl that blithely rings For pilots in her intellectual fog. To sport with dead men as these women do — Is it so strange they look a little mad? Is it so strange they look profoundly sad, And life is subtly comic to their view? They look above the foolish ways of men, Cosmic and elemental things; their eyes Inscrutably are old and very wise. I think I shall behold that look again. For if, being dead, I walk the dead men's way Far on the windy prairies of the night. And suddenly within a shaft of light I meet the triune Fates who watch us play, The awful faces will not look so strange Of those with lips compressed who see us strain, Their eyes sardonic with a world of pain, Contemptuous of the little rooms we range. Contemptuous and pitiful of man's Interminable quest, those goddesses — What will they be — what are they more or less Than all eternity's librarians? [26] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES THE PROFESSOR MUSES (Physics Lecture Room — Before Class) I am afraid, O Lord, I am afraid! . . . These instruments so curiously formed, This dynamo and motor, that machine Cunning to grasp and hold with delicate hands Your chainless lightnings. . . . Lord, I am afraid Here in the empty silence of my room! This lecture hall is oddly like a mouth, Myself the tongue in it, myself the voice Shrill, thin, across these empty chairs — how queer, How skeleton-like appear these empty chairs! Blank walls, blank platform (ineffectual things) And bleak, bare windows where the startled day On tiptoe stands, too lovely to come in. . . . A mouth it seems, a maw, huge, grim, and fated Some day to close and crush me! Lord, Lord, Lord Am I the thing the daylight falters from. Spinning my dusty web of dusty words To catch the plunging star we call the world. Hanging it so a period? O fool. That spider-like weaves cosmic theories In gossamer nets to trap the universe. Spun but to tear a thousand tattered ways And hang on every lilac if a girl, A red-lipped, shallow, care-free Freshman girl Laugh at the sallies of a boy! [27] GARGOYLES Afraid! . . . Problems of sound and light, of light and sound, Experiments, materials, theories. The laws of motion, problems of sound and light. Problems of sound and light. . . . And presently A gong will ring here like a doomsday bell And through these doors, fresh winds that shake the woods, Sons of the wind and daughters of the dawn, Eternal, joyous, unafraid comes youth. Youth from a million colored realms of joy. Youth storming up the world with flying hair And laughter like a rose-red deluge spilled Down dawn-lit heavens burning all the sea! Problems of light and sound! . . . Why, what care they. These bright-eyed Chloes of our later date For theories of sound, themselves the sound — Themselves the light that brightens all the day? Round every corner flits a flying foot. Alluring laughter shaken fancy-free In silver bells that break upon the air. . . . Evoe — evoe! Pan and the nymphs! With lips Parted and sparkling eyes the young men follow. Follow the swift-foot, laughter-loving nymphs Whose eye-lids hold the world ! Problems of light. Problems of light — I am sick of light and sound! Youth storming up the world ! Hot, eager youth, Youth with a question ever on its lips [28] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES Impatient of the answer, youth with eyes Implacable, remorseless, passionless, Crying, "I thirst divinely — quench my thirst!" Crying, "I thirsted and ye helped me not!" And brushing past me! Amperes, dynamos. Questions of voltage, coils, transformers, watts. Shall these things touch them, teach them to be wise. Temperate, noble? Surely greater texts Lie in the lips and laughter of young girls Who look at me with pity scarce-concealed And curious wonder — me the dusty spider. Spinning my ageless web in this bare room, While scarcely do their eager tongues hold off From sparkling speech. O Lord, I am afraid! For when I think to have them, they elude me. And when I guess it not, then have I taught — Teach me, O Lord, and strengthen me — Thou knowest I am afraid and weak ... I am afraid! [29] GARGOYLES PHONOLOGY Through dusty windows streamed the sun Into the sombre class-room; The students at yellow tables Sat yawning, half-asleep. And behind his desk in partial gloom The learned professor. His face a ghastly yellow in the light, Droned dully through his lecture Of Anglo-Saxon phonology, The rules for umlaut. The sacred laws of change; How ae breaks into ea and how j Geminates a consonant. " . . . the first exemplified in ' beahgifa,' Line two, word two, in your text Of the Battle at Brunanburh. ..." "Beahgifa!" Ring-giver! Athelstan, king and lord of earls, Athelstan and his brother also, Edmund the atheling, Battling at Brunanburh, Battling with Anlaf for Crown and kingdom! I saw them battling, I saw other battles Fought by the wild, gray sea! [301 UNIVERSITY SKETCHES I saw the mist swirl and the day-candle rise Bloodless out of the icy waters, The lonely ship-way! Against the crash and clang of billows breaking I heard the sword-play Of warriors battling, The gnarr of battle-ax. Grind of steel By the gloomy waves! I heard the wild scream of the startled sea-mew rising, The snap of broken spears, The crack of shields of linden-wood shattering; And dimly in the mist Strode forward Trampling the dead. Gigantic warriors. Blood-red from wrist to shoulder, shouting grimly An ancient war-song! It was night. A screaming raven made the stars wink with his wings. And through the frore moonlight Across the sea Rode the Valkyries, Daughters of Wodan, With helmets of steel and Glistening byrnies On coal-black chargers The fair war-maidens Rode from the slaughter-field, Swifter than song. Shouting shrilly, [311 GARGOYLES Homeward hastening Straight o'er the whale-road. The icy waves. Down from each saddle-bow dangles a dead man, Valhalla's hero. Shrilly their song flies Over the frosty sea, Shrilly they scream Above the waves' bellow. They vanished, the wild horses and the wilder maidens; A raven croaked in the sky, The wind sang mournfully across The shuddering sea, And once in the heavens the hammer of Thor Sharply split the thunder. But below the sea and the screaming sea-mew. Below the shout of the fierce Valkyries, Below the war-songs of the men. Below the sword-play I heard an endless sound, a dull, dead droning — It grew distinct again. It was the learned professor plodding on Through the sacred laws of Grimm, Grammatical change. And the mystic virtues of h. [32] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES TERM' PAPER IN ENGLISH 37* {Chaucer and Cressid) " This Diomede, as bokes us declare. Was 171 his nedes prest and corageous " One windless afternoon near Acheron Came Cressid lightly through a gray-green field With billowing poppies starred. There Chaucer stood Hard by the shadowy river. Where she passed Her ankles stirred the little leaves to speak A sibilant, rustling word that ran before, And Chaucer heard and knew. Him Cressid hailed As unobtrusively he turned away: " Ho ! Geoffrey Chaucer — poet Geoffrey — Dan ! Sweet sir, sweet bard, O sweetest anything That stays your feet. What — not discourteous? Nay, look not sourly, Dan. Your Alisoun May scold till Time runs down and dies of her, But I — I thought you knew me better, Geoffrey. Cressid's no gossip out of Bath! Be friends — You liked me once before your pious cant And thrifty whine of ' Crist foryeve my giltes, Endytinges of wordly vanitees,' In which — God wot — you counted me. Stuff, straw, Stools to reach heaven on and save yourself From imminent damnation. Lies, lies, lies — Else how were you set with me in this field * 37. Chaucer. — Rapid reading and discussion of his works. Primarily for graduate students. Prerequisite: English 28. Mj. {Catalog of the Col- leges and Graduate Schools). [33 1 GARGOYLES By yonder river bound? H\'}^oorisy W'hicli bought you favor with that sickly prude, Your ^•i^tuous Aleestis, will not move The boundaries of Orcus! "'I wol biwayle The harm of hem that stode m heigh degree!' Yes — and your prioress lisps her tale in heaven Until the ears of God grow sick of her, While you. her poet, ^■i^tuous Geotfrey Chaucer, That \\-rote her down, companion me in hell. !Me. Geoffrey, whom you helped to damn with speech Smoother than fawning in my uncle's mouth. (Y'ou first, that de\'il Shakespeare afterward.) Xay. do not smile so. "Chaucer, I'll be cahu — Cool — I was ever cool. You called me so In that first temple-meeting and the last Sweet night when Diomed had his will of me. Sweet .^ God, how sweet! Xo sanctimony, Geoffrey! Are we not garnered to the thin -lipped dead.' Xo prude may scorn me here. Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet So like a taunting wren I'll prick their hate With mj' one crj' of Diomed, my sweet. "Was ever such a lad, sir poet.' Limbed Squarer than Troy and bastioned with great arms Whose muscle, twisting in its sun-brown sheath, Half-seemed tlie snake that slew Laokoon Long after. What a god he walked! "NMiy. War Was nought to Diomed in his pride of bronze, And lady Venus might mistake the two. Deserting Mars his bed. X'o puling boy, X'o carpet-knight to falter, pale and swoon [S4] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES Because the wind blew sea-ward, was not east. Was strong, was early, was not early, late — Not such was Diomed. He knew the way Men woo their women, and my heart was his When first he met me riding out of Troy. "You smile? What letter? — Shame on you and shame! What letter, Geoffrey? . . . Geoffrey, look at me — My golden hair yet golden in the dusk, My lips, my eyes — why, Helen hated them For bending Hector to a woman's boon. And Paris, — nay, that's blabbing! See my throat Still snowy in the gloom that slides across This sunless meadow — breast and queenly arm: My eyes — you called them clear. Look, Chaucer, look Am I not yet angelically fair? Could such a woman play at dice wnth faith? Besides, you called me virtuous. Am I Not virtuous still? "Ah, Chaucer, Master Chaucer, You have known women in your day, you rogue! Cecilia Chaumpayne! Does that recall No kisses to that elvish face of yours? And your release from her ambiguous De rapiu meo — now you wince and frown ! Well, cry you quits. If you may change your wife, Your shrew Philippa for a country wench Fresh as spring daisies in your Kentish fields. Might I not change for better coin a worse? Trade a foul uncle — how I hated him ! Faugh, what a fool I was. 'And would I dance And was his mistress here' — I, day by day. Thus dutifully fawning on his smile, [35] GARGOYLES His senile jests and whispering lecherous, And last, that crown of jests ! I could have sunk These fair, white, kissing fingers in his throat. And did not! "Dan, why should I be forbid Between a manly lover and a boy To make a woman's choice? My uncle Pandar, That cousined me and cheated me and laughed, My uncle Pandar being Troilus' friend, Who would not quit that self-same Troilus, Though he were Mars and Launcelot in one? Might I not right mistakes? Geoffrey, they were Strewn in my life like pretty maids in Greece, And if in the full hey-day bloom of spring I played a while, does playing time forbid My flinging youth aside when once I met Reality in love? Such law were shame! "Ah yet — ah heaven! Ah help me, Master Chaucer! I think I loved him once, my Troilus! He was so princely and so passionate. So loving-timid and so beautiful, And love in him was like a lonely flame Lighted upon a secret altar stone That else had known no worship. . . . "Oh, the pain To wander in these olive fields and know My name is driven forever down the years Linked with light loving and with wantonness ! Would I had died before I left my porch In windy Troy — before my father fled, A traitor, to the Greeks! O noble race. Father and child and uncle! . . . [36] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES "You smile again But now your smile is summer through the snow. If you had laughed — O Troilus! — I have talked With one of your good women, though less good Than I, the wanton Cressida. She told Her way of cheating shame. Had I been wise! Sir poet, would an asp not look as well Upon this breast as hers? You turn? "God grant Many merry hours with Cecilia, And that you meet not with your shrewish wife!" [37] GARGOYLES Lo! I have worshiped beauty all my days: The stars have been as lovers and the night, Fairer than thought. Trees, pictures, music, light, Old, crumbling sunsets and the lilac haze On summer-shadowy hills — these were a maze Of loveliness, with hushed and sandalled feet To wander, pausing where a brook was sweet. Or in lush meadows marvelling to gaze. And I have known high battles with the wind And felt the mystic tang of wet, kissed lips, And prayed at dawn. Alas! That these should pass! Lecturing on poets to a college class, Behold, I aid the Progress of the Mind — O why should beauty suffer such eclipse.'* [38] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES This is the crown they sought, the height they won: After long years of travail, weary waits Through the dim night before unopening gates Of joy; or in waste lands, by star or sun Closing the foolish circle they had run, To seek escape; to know what tragic states The mind puts on; at last, slipped by the fates. To climb the rock-rim toward some larger sun; There on the bleak horns of the mountain scree To seize thin harps and in the icy moon To strain their throats and sing ! — This is their fame, After long years: grown peaceable and tame, In text-books caught, to make yon fresh-faced loon Yawn o'er his reading in my English Three. [391 GARGOYLES O wild and free upon the lawless hills My soul is up against the embattled hours! The harping of the stars descends in showers Upon me, and the moon her music spills. O Sightless ! Dweller by the shouting rills And planetary rivers what impowers, Resistless, thee to crown me with thy flowers. To set my feet upon thy golden sills? Me that was safe amid the hollow vales To make confederate with each bird that flies, Each wind and sun? O Power, was it wise? The stars are noisy on my trembling ears. Beneath my feet the golden threshold fails. Thy hills are steep, thy flowers too rich for tears. [40] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES Master of arts ! Diploma tight in hand. Hood on his back and triumph on his face, He drops benevolent smiles upon the place Which taught him what he does not understand. His arguments, 'tis true, have nearly spanned The missing plays of Ford, the date and case Of Piers the Plowman, Spenser's birth, the race Of Layamon. He knows. His air is bland. Master of arts and ignorant of all. He climbs another archway to his goal, The doctorate. His eyes are bad, his soul Is dubious, but his mind — his mind is good: Where twenty thousand facts are piled like wood. Will Shakespeare's secret lies at beck and call. 1411 GARGOYLES We study Marlowe. Virgins, not unwise, Some thirty-seven, seek my lecture room, Poise pen and wait. There's none but wears the bloom And signet of love's April in her eyes. Questioned, their voices trill me out replies Some boy should have 'twixt kisses. Now I speak, Their pens record the wisdom which they seek To store against the day I catechize. We study Marlowe, {Beautiful and young Leander, whom divine Musaeus sung Dwelt at Ahydosl), comment in our text On style and influence, skirt the unpleasant edge Of liberal phrases, shy at kisses, hedge — We study Marlowe. We do Shakespeare next. 42 UNIVERSITY SKETCHES A rag of sunset flaps my window pane With curious insistence; memoried trees Stand up like solemn eastern devotees; The empty campus floods with purple grain Behind them where they pray; one cloud in vain Threatens the moon, on dim and ghostly seas Of silent weather lost; day's emptied lees, Spilled through the west, tinge heaven a wine-red stain. Papers are marked. The quarter's past and done. Two sparrows, chattering, are very loud Where yesterday I heard a happy crowd At graduation. Now the belated sun Drops swiftly, and the vesper air is bowed With weight of growing stars. The quarter's done. 43 GARGOYLES "HEU AMOR! QUAM DULCIS IN UNIVERSITATIBUS EST TUA MEMORIA!" I am weary of institutions! Huddling together; jostling in the streets; the cutting off of all that is not symmetrical; the shoving down of what does not conform; Rules, customs, police, Y. M. C. A. workers, armies, generali- ties, mass, books, lectures, colleges — of these I am very weary. Also of college professors, perturbedly striving to fit life into patterns, afraid of what can not be measured; Running hurriedly in the first soft rains to pin labels upon blades of grass and the young leaves; Dissatisfied because the blades grow; complaining that the wind drifts among the roses and disorders them : For they wish to number the petals of the roses, and the careless opulence of spring will not allow them; they desire to pin the clouds together with pins, and catch the winds in springes clumsily set for them. Their lives are measured into lines, facts, recitations, theses, proofs, and what does not agree with the measure is cast aside. 144] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES They have made their measures into gods to whom they make human sacrifice. I say that hfe is not a thing put into boxes in a dark room wherein college professors go up and down desperately seeking what they have put away: it is their own souls they have put away. The soul is like a wild bird caught in the net of the fowler — how many yards is it long? The eyes of children haunt me with grave beauty; the wind cries out in my ear; the hair of a woman is wrapped around my heart, and they can not tell me why. I ain very weary of them. Therefore I will go up into the mountains and hide my face among a cloud of stars! I will talk familiarly with the moon, my brother, and with my elder brother, the wind. I will wander for a time under the cedar trees which have a certain secret thing to say to me : I think it concerns my beloved; Or I will lean to hear the talking together of the clouds. For perchance my beloved will pass by along the stars, my love that is whiter than the white moon for beauty and like the shining of the early stars. [45] GARGOYLES Her breasts are like clouds with the moon folded among them; her hair gives forth the fragrance of the cedars; She has rested one hand upon the mane of the Lion; she has trod out the burning of Jupiter with her feet. And because the wind is a harp across the mountain tops, my beloved and I will kiss and cling together like foolish children, until Orion shall laugh to see our love. The Star of my Desire shines above the mountain tops; I will go up to her breast; I will forget utterly the professors and their measures. In the great spaces of the sky, Where only the little leaves that are like a million tongues can see us, there we will build us a lodge and dwell in it together, A lodge of sapphire; of jacynth and beryl and green jade and burning gold. The sill of the doorway shall be a moonbeam; the rafters, light- ning; the windows of the lodge shall be stretched dew; the roof of the house of my beloved will I nail together with stars. my beloved, the winds will clap their hands together to see us two go into the house! 1 am weary of institutions! — Give me, O God, my beloved and my desire ! [46] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES "EACH STUDENT IS ASSIGNED TO AN ADVISER—" I talked yesterday with a college president who told me that his advisory system was a good one, saving the stu- dents from many errors. He explained to me the working of the system: how, when a student did not know whether to study biology or chemistry, I was to help him choose between biology and chemistry. . . . How shall I know whether to advise for chemistry or for biology? The secret wants of the soul; fugitive and furtive demands; the appetites bridled and unbridled; Hunger sweet in the mouth of youth for what is perfect and beautiful; How shall I know whether biology or chemistry satisfies that hunger? One finds God in cyanide of potassium, and another finds Him in Shelley, and sneers because he has found Him there; And to one man biology is the mouthing of harlots, laughter like the crackling of thorns beneath a pot, unmitigated and obscene laughter; [47 1 GARGOYLES But his brother can not enter the laboratory without fear; he could kneel down before a bottle of prussic acid and worship, except that he is ashamed; his eyes are dazzled; the blast furnace is like the choiring of a million angels, and the formula for magnesium, terrible as an army with banners, contains the glory of the Lord. And still others (and I suspect my freshmen are among them) find Him in the kisses of young girls; they dream of the breasts of virgins, and laugh aloud because of the sweet- ness of their dream; One man I know found the glory of God in a football suit, and another, in peddling milk to earn his way through college. I think I will go back and tell the president that I do not know how to advise that chemistry or biology be taken. Seeing that I do not know enough to advise with my own soul. 48] UNIVERSITY SKETCHES TO A CERTAIN SCIENTIST Come, my brother, let us sit down and reason profitably together: To you the soul is like a barracks full of soldiers in red coats, who, if they could only be got to drill together, would move up and down and back and forth in companies and squads forever. But I say to you, the soul is no such thing. It is a little room and a great room. In the ante-chamber there are perhaps one or two soldiers: I do not know. But the great room beyond is like a deserted chamber, dusty and vast, with cobwebs hanging from the walls and grey- ness over the window-panes. It is haunted by ghosts that go up and down and gibber together; it is filled with bats that squeak among the rafters; it is filled full of faces, music, dreams. Deeds done and deeds undone; kisses that were given, and kisses — O mystery ! — that were not given. Companies of masks go about in it continually; they dissolve and fade like clouds, and there are always masks behind them, and behind these, still other masks. [49 1 GARGOYLES Or the soul is like flowing water among caverns: who can dip up a goblet of that water? It is a kaleidoscope of sounds, shapes, desires, lusts, hungers, sins, affections, mysteries, thoughts, creeds, appetites, all jumbled together like a mirror broken into many pieces. The soul is not known to any man, nor is it known to God. Why, my brother, do you not see through the door of the ante-chamber into the mystery beyond? [50] CHICAGO IN FACTORY TOWN What service is this in Factory Town? Four cheap candles that sputter and blink Over a pineboard coffin; an altar Gilded and painted, and Mary o'erhead Gazing blankly at that low bed; Three wooden saints who nod and wink, Sardonic and silent — Mark, Luke and John In tinsel and crimson looking on. And a smug, smooth priest with his psalter. They leer down — Dumb saints — on a funeral in Factory Town. What bumps through the streets in Factory Town? A shabby hearse and a shabbier horse And one hired cab comes jolting after; In the hearse lies the coffin that holds the dead. And wan paper roses, white and red, (The cab was got for the priest, of course) And round them the people traffic and trade, The trolley cars clang and the little parade Moves on amid clamor and laughter. Thus goes down The funeral procession through Factory Town. [51] GARGOYLES And what place is this in Factory Town? This is the place which'lodges the dead, A bleak, bare lot by the river, Where wooden crosses push out of the sand To guard these mounds from a vandal hand — And that's a new grave, and prayers are said Hurriedly by the priest, and dust Thrown upon that which was more than dust. And lives (he says) forever. Lowered down To such graves are bodies in Factory Town. And who is it's dead in Factory Town? Nobody's dead of much account, Only Anna, the Croatian maiden, Who worked for Isaacs, the garment man, Hard and fast as a woman can, And she died of consumption. She didn't amount To anything much ! — too stupid. (She came To America because the name Promised relief to the laden !) — Don't look down. For no one will miss her in Factory Town. Well, why do you speak of Factory Town? Only for this : In her Croatian home When the work is done and the village Rests in the evening, the peasants sigh And talk of Anna enviously. And say that by now she must be some [62] CHICAGO Wealthy lady, all done with toil. And wish they were she, and free from the soil, And through with the tax and the tillage! (They'll come down In time, to be buried in Factory Town !) ON SEEING LORADO TAFT'S "THE SOLITUDE OF THE SOUL" Of what avail, of what avail To touch with hands, to touch with lips? Behold our faces, they are pale, And from our eyelids slips the veil And from our souls the covering slips. Ye are alone when nearest you A figure presses, eyes afire, A mouth that drinks of honey-dew, A face to shape the world anew, A spirit flaming with desire. Ye are alone and soreliest tried When supple youth puts manhood on. And this sad woman by his side Who was, but is not now, a bride Kisses and finds the rapture gone. And what avails the hands ye pressed? We also clasp our hands in stone. We, too, were lovers breast to breast — Ah, nearest we were loneliest; Now we are nearer, being alone. [531 GARGOYLES PLOWS There were a thousand men in the factory; Some sweltered over forges, Others above great emory wheels Sent showers of sparks flying. With dirty face and sweat-stained shirt A workman passed by me and grinned; He was puUing a truck piled high with plow-shares. After him came another man, Naked to the waist, And on his grimy skin in little globules The sweat was standing. The roar of the emery wheels deafened me So that I could not hear what the manager was saying. But later in the office He told me proudly That his factory contained the latest devices For the making of plows. THE WRECKING OF THE HOUSE I passed where workmen were pulling down a house. It was snowing. And the soft, remorseful flakes like penitent kisses •Sifted into the staring rooms, And on the fire-place, indecently exposed, Clung desperately As a woman clings to an indifferent lover, Striving to reawaken in him The passion of past days. [54] CHICAGO The bedrooms, too, were visible, And the naked playroom Where the patter of feet had changed To noiseless footfalls of snow. Well? . . . THE MOVIES They sit like shadows in the playhouse dim Through half an hour's film of smiles and tears; They watch life like a shadow flow. That can not speak, but only walks and feels; One thing they do not know: Within the darkened playhouse of the years, Themselves like moving pictures come and go Upon the film of Time in seven reels For entertainment of the seraphim. THE SPINNER Before a doorway in the city sat A single spinner spinning in the sun, And in her eyes I looked. . . . I saw the toiling women of the world, I heard the silly laughter of young girls, I saw the sunken breasts of motherhood, The mumbling mouths of cynical, toothless crones. Young wives with weary faces and wet hair, And painted women beckoning men on. [55] GARGOYLES I saw the teeming tenements, The smothering sweatshops and the flimsy lofts. I smelled the smoke of ruthless factories, I heard the whirr of myriad machines Droning a grim, monotonous cradle-song, And to the power of that moaning song Ever new women bowed their heads and slept, And ever purred the humming grimlier on. I saw the bitter, pale economist Throw down his book and hide his eyes and weep; I saw the worker in the settlement Pity — and tire — and grow indifferent. I saw the legislatures trading spoils, I heard the preachers preaching useless gods, I entered schools disputing o'er dead kings, I saw the people rushing through the streets. And then I heard a single woman's cry That shivered to the unseen, stricken stars And slid along a sunbeam up to God. And there was silence in the restless streets, And silence in the purring factories, And silence in the crowded, flimsy lofts, And only the relentless shuddering sea Moaned and crept A little nearer to the restless streets, A little nearer to the factory walls. . . . A little nearer to the tenements. . . . Nay, I had but looked into the eyes Of one lone spinner spinning in the sun. 166] CHICAGO AUDIENCES Within, the dazzling lights are hushed and low. The music sinks to a faint breathlessness; There is a rustling of a woman's dress, A child cranes forward, listening; row on row Of strained, exalted faces seem to glow Like white flames in the dusk with sharp distress, Beholding Juliet dead; the aching press Of pain stabs the dry throat and will not go. Without, swung in illimitable space. Across the soundless stage the planet runs; Gigantically like shadows in the waste And silence of the night, the high gods lean, Shoulder to shoulder, peering on the scene Across the footlights of the spinning suns. ECONOMICS Dead! Dead where the greasy river winds. Tainted with filth that a factory grinds Out of the cattle skins — Dead! With bleared wide eyes and swollen hands And hair of matted slime, A sneer and a smile on his weak-willed face Like one who had conquered Time 1671 GARGOYLES And wrested the Secret in far-off lands From Death who withheld it a space, Dressed in coarse shirt and tattered coat — Briefly, that's how he looked afloat As he drifted down past the ships And the wondering men who trod The wharves by the reeking slips. "Who's dead?" "What's happened?" The rumor ran, "Only a common working man Floating dead in the stream," Strange ! Didn't he know of the freer range The century gives to a man? He certainly knew ! In the present age Labor and Capital and Land Divide the returns, hand and hand, And his wages were just and true, Tut — this will never do — Thus no economists scheme! Didn't he know we are happier (Proved so by rule, and we must be) In this age of machinery? Ask of the mocking lips Which know the answer in God ! Ask him there as he grimly lies Down by the grimy slips, Taunting the burning, brazen skies, Ask if his life was any lighter, Ask if his toil was any slighter Because of machinery. [58 1 CHICAGO Horribly, horribly dead, With the river filth on his head. Clammy with noisome ooze — and dead, Always horribly, horribly dead! They fear him now who hired him of old. And shrink away lest the swollen lips Shriek in laughter there by the ships. Laughing fearfully, fearfully. Nay, touch him not lest ye shiver The frail, thin walls of the flesh — touch not! Better to let him drift and rot, Better to let him find a spot Alone beneath the sluggish tide And let him be buried the way he died With the stream for a winding sheet. In the vaporous marshes let him rest In the grave he picked and chose. He never could sleep were he buried where The factory whistle blows And the plodding line of toilers goes To grind their lives out, lest He arise to work in the dim, dead dawn And fleet like a vulture across the lawn To his place in the tannery there. . . . Let him be buried anywhere. Anywhere, anywhere, save Your cemetery he shall not share — God will pick him a grave. 59 GARGOYLES INSOMNIA Long silences, interminably long, Mixed with an insane shrilling in the ears. . . . Did I give Nesmith. . . . what a fool to jump Because a window shakes! Drip, drip, drip, drip — The night has funny noises ! Did I give . . . God ! What if hell were like this ! In the drift Of black across the eyes small globes of light Irregularly swing like crazy ships — I wonder why they're made so. Anyway These the tired mind must calculate and note Whether they come on arcs, or leave in twos. . . . Did I give Nesmith ord — Nesmith be damned ! . . . Somewhere with leering fingers sleep looks out Among the swaying curtains of the dark — In this room somewhere — somewhere. Did I give Nesmith the order for that cedar deal? . . . That fat clerk's face again! Bang, bang, bang, bang The blood beats in the temples. Counting sheep. That's a cheap lie for fools — they turn to books, Fragments of conversation, faces, streets, Newspapers, — newspapers — Tribune . . . Did I give Nesmith the order — Hell, of course I did ! If I could only sleepl I used to sleep. Once in another world. It isn't fair To take away my sleep here in the dark! Let's see, that cedar order went to Nesmith; Tomorrow there's that Canada affair First thing, then Jenkins, then the freight-bills, then . . . What's the best way to calm old Jenkins down? 1601 CHICAGO I hate these whiskered chaps Hke Chester Arthur, Think they're Beau Brittels — Brimmel — Bram — oh hell! Are scrawny bankers always made so tight? Crack! — That's the shutter — or the window shade. . . The first car leaves at three, too. I could sleep If this fool nervousness would only stop. . . . Blood in your ears and twitches in your feet. And silence like a blanket striped with light. Did I give Nesmith? — Yes, of course I did. I must sleep — I can't stand this, I must sleep — Must sleep — must — must — must — must — must 61 GARGOYLES THE MECHANIST I made a trap to catch the stars. And built machines to move the moon; The wind and rain I caught in jars, And counted twelve at every noon. Six levers were for night and day. And six for twilight and for dawn. But when I tried to find a way Of carving roses — they were gone. Their petals blew among the chains Whereby I caused the clouds to wheel, And drifted, like still scarlet rains. Above my enginries of steel. I brushed them off; I drew my lines About the wheatfields and the corn. Shaping my vast, extreme designs To ripen them ere it was morn. And while my subtle pulleys whirled Against the growth that would be day's, I hurried where the sea-streams swirled On incommunicable ways; I caught them in a net at dawn, And then returned to reap my corn — A snow of rose-leaves hid the lawn. And choked my crop — and it was morn ! 62] DEAD CHILDREN DEAD CHILDREN I meant to marry you until She came. . . . Do you remember what we talked about? Women, and books, and how your eyes would flame At sundown as a lantern flickers out; I said your soul was quiet, like a song. . . . We planned our house. Do you remember how We laughed the day I got the stairway wrong? And do you like Circassian walnut now? You spoke of children we should have. The hours Stood listening and your whole face grew sweet. . . What are they now, those little babes of ours. Dust at our doorways blown along the street? [63] GARGOYLES ENIGMA I said, I do not need your lips, The raspberries are red. And though your heart is wild and free, I like the wind, I said. And for your hair, beside the road The brown-eyed Susan grows; Your kiss I think I can replace With some neglected rose. Your soul was filled with peace, and yet One noon beside a stream That loiters through a clover field, I found the world a dream. I said I did not need your love. Having wind and flowers and skies; I did not know the corn-flower then Was bluer than your eyes. [64] A SONG OF BUTTE A SONG OF BUTTE I am the city demoniac! Desolate, mournful, infernal Dweller apart among and upon the amazing hills. Seen of the poet of hell, I am she, the dark, the unvernal Cybele, wearing my crown of fantastic mines and mills! My breasts are girdled with iron; and under the place of my feet Is copper, and over my head in a green and copper sky A sulphurous sun goes by and I find his going sweet. My sisters have many jewels — is any so strange as I? I am the secret of night, transformed from an evil thing To a dream of passionate hope ! A blur and cluster of stars, A galley of tremulous light, I lift from my anchor and swing Outbound for the farthest ports that lie past the lighthouse Mars! I splinter the darkness with glory, I burn like fire on the hills, I am Caerleon and Usk! I am the hurt of the moon! Because of my lonely beauty the soul takes thought and fills Till I cause the pulse to leap that I stayed with horror at noon. I am the city cast out, harlot and common scold Shrilling loud in the street, the taunter of all ye love. Holding what others scorn, scorning what others hold. Flaunting the vulgar shame my sisters are reticent of. I am the mistress of many, untrue and adulterous queen, Naked, tawdry, Priapian! Lo, and what sin is mine.? They who have kissed farewell on my painted lips, have seen My sisters are hypocrite souls that blush for their lust and wine. [651 GARGOYLES I am also the scoflFer, the tester, the prover of life! This one comes to me pure and I make him dirty and mean. This one comes to me lewd, and forth from my iron strife Joyous he goes and proud, and clean as a bride is clean ! sisters, look to your courts! Can ye look and say as much? How doth it stand with you? Have ye builded over a fen. That your white-faced, pasty brood shrinks back from my hurt and smutch? They that go down in my bowels and grip me are not as your men! 1 am likewise the challenge, the mixing of many in one : Lustful, reckless, I yield to the urge of life and the slack, A myriad races come and beneath my dispassionate sun I mix and change and remold and send them, a nation, back; Indifferent seeker and spurner, I lure from city and shore Italian, negro and Slav. Their foster-mother am I! And the man-child tugs at my breast and is nourished and knows no more The sound of an alien tongue or the heat of a foreign sky! I am also the spirit, the city chosen of God, Vast and pregnant seeker, aspirer and knower of dreams; I that search in the earth for dross go also abroad Rousing my sisters that sleep, contented, beside their streams. On a riddling quest I go as the ancient mother went — My sisters, ye look ashamed when my asking footsteps come, But under my breast I bear the answer the Riddler meant: I am Democracy's mother! O sisters, why are ye dumb? 166] FROM THE MISSISSIPPI AT EAGLE BLUFF From this bold rampart, by eternity Thrown up against the slow assaults of change. The valley seems unending; stately, slow, The labyrinthine river winds along The horned bases of the solemn hills; Stretches of prairie lie beyond; the fields Of wheat and corn for some enormous game Form intricate patterns, and the tiny barns And nestled houses counters are, and pawns. A marsh lies next, a bed of black and green. And far across, the blue Wisconsin hills Rim up the valley's edge. The colors change, Slow-shifting back and forth from dark to light By acres and by miles. It is the clouds — They float like pageants down the shimmering sky. Huge galleons of white that sail and sail An infinite ocean under cloudy capes And walled and misty towns. . . . Those are not clouds, Those ponderous shapes of white! They are the gods. Born on their catafalques of stainless pride To some gigantic grave — they are the gods, The ancient gods, now mercifully dead. [67] GARGOYLES They did not think to die as they desired, Weary with all the bitterness of heaven That could not help the waywardness of fools; Weary beside, with bitterness of life, Life everlasting, life insatiate. Life like a slow fire unescapable. Burdened with life as men with fear of death. Was there no other end for them, with all Their thunders and their priests and hecatombs, Thus, thus to drift in death before the wind, No other end, O unintelligible And tongueless gulf of air, no other end? Lo! The white-armed, the sea-born Aphrodite, Lo ! The curled brow and puzzled frown of Zeus, Dead Pallas on her shield — O Wisdom, where. Where is thy cunning now? And now Apollo Dead on his bier, and yet the sun still shines. And who are these on strange and carven barges. Gigantic, dim, two-headed, some like dogs And some like eagles — Thoth and Ophois And Isis and Osiris — they are dead. Despite the changeless pyramids, despite Karnak and Elephantis and the sands That blow round Memnon's statue. Viking ships Bear after them the raven-guarded Odin, Thor with his hammer. Balder and the Noms, Their pyres aflame behind them where the sun Burns like a death-ship. [68] FROM THE MISSISSIPPI These are almond-eyed And many-armed, or brown and hideous, Wild deities that to our western ears Are named uncouthly — they are dead, and India Knows not nor cares, and Ganges through his leagues Flows yet untroubled, and the Chinese bells Ring, and the lotos blossoms in Japan. And lastly comes a crucifix like snow, And one upon it whiter than his bier. . . . The gods are dead. . . . Only the wind drives on. Drives them before it as a flock of sheep. The gods are dead; where are the gods? O seek, Seek in the upper chambers of the world And find them with the never-dying wind. It freshens now — the milk-white barges haste. Pass and dissolve and fall in summer rain. CERTAIN REFLECTIONS AT MIDWAY At Midway town, at Midway town The dust-white road goes up and down, And flashing past and to and fro All summer long the autos go. They seldom stop at Midway town, — The place is small and dead and brown, A store, a station and a hall, A dozen houses — that is all. [69] GARGOYLES 'Tis true, the meadows are as fair At Midway town as anywhere, And overhead in August skies The clouds careen Hke argosies. The black-eyed Susans by the way Curtsey and dance there every day. And from the wheatfields joyously I heard the black birds mock at me. Surely at Midway one can feel At night the cruising planet reel. And see in heaven the milky wake Of star-dust its propellors make. And yet — and yet — at Midway town The silver road goes up and down. And flashing past and to and fro All summer long the autos go. [70] FROM THE MISSISSIPPI When shall we together Tramp beneath the sky, Thrusting through the weather As swimmers strive together, You and I? How we ranged the valleys, Panted up the road, Sang in sudden sallies Of mirth that woke the valleys Where we strode! Glad and free as birds are, Laughter in your eyes, Wild as poets' words are, You were as the birds are, Very wise. Not for you the prison Of the stupid town. When the winds were risen. You went forth from prison, You went down, Down along the river, Dimpling in the rain Where the poplars shiver By the dancing river, And again [711 GARGOYLES Climbed the hills behind you When the rains were done; Only God could find you With the town behind you In the sun! Don't you hear them calling, Black birds in the grain, Silver raindrops falling Where the larks are calling You in vain? Comrade, when together Shall we tramp again In the summer weather, You and I together. Now as then? 72 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI FROM TREMPEALEAU Below, The slumbrous flow Of waters laden down with sleep Beneath their immortality. . . . The stream goes by Indifferently Unto the deep — Men, cities, channel, hills, like April rains Vanish — the stream remains. These solid walls that seem so strong Were not, and ere long Will not be, and this citadel Of rock is, rightly known, More evanescent than a song, More fleeting than a trumpet blown. More wraith-like than Time flown. . . OGod, What hope.? Behold, The little scope. The life less durable than sod. The fingers that too soon grow cold! The stream remains. Full-breasted and inscrutable, And it is well. [73 1 GARGOYLES He can not stop His ways remote And bow Because an ant is crushed beneath your feet; His ways are other ways than ours Of ampler planets, stranger powers. Trouble Him not now With talk of pain Endured, the stricken throat, Lovers that part, A heart With unintended sorrow bitter-sweet. Vex not the Infinite with prattle of the dust! He must Be busy otherwhere; when we are slain. He and the stream remain. SUNDAY Your Hell and Heaven, what are they? I tramp the yellow road today. And deep among the grass I see The harebells' fairy blasphemy. They blow on Sunday as they blow On any day in all the row. Your Hell and Heaven, what are they.'^ / tramp the yellow road today. [74] FROM THE MISSISSIPPI RAILWAY SKETCHES Bunk Cars A row of broken box-cars by the track Below the water-tower; in the breeze A torn, blue curtain flaps uneasily In one rough window, and along their side A line of garments flutters in the wind. The blue smoke, rising, dances elfin-toed Upon the rusted stove-pipe, and beyond The great white sails of God go slowly by Over the rustling hills. . . . II The Section Crew In the chiU wet dawn of a morning in the fall When a gray mist lies on the river. And the dew-drenched lawn is shrouded in a pall And the hooded hills seem to shiver, I hear the squeak and the rumble of a door, And voices that swell and echo queerly, The clatter and the creak of a car lifted o'er The tracks and dropped again — nearly. [75] GARGOYLES There's a crash of tools and the odor of a pipe Astray on the cool, fresh morning; Silence — while the pools of the day grow ripe For an overflow of rain; then a warning Called from the boss, and the tramp of awkward feet, Stiff and chill from the station; A car rolls across the bridge with rhythmic beat, And the hollow places boom reverberation. Ill The Depot It nestles underneath the dark green hills, A doll-house painted red, and past it flies The lean, swift limited whose whistle shrills In one long sobbing shriek and slowly dies. A straw-like arm above the chimney shifts. Staccato clickings puncture the still air, A thin bell jingles faintly, and in rifts Of echoing rock two crows summon to prayer. 76 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI IV An Episode Drunken, blear-eyed, shambling, sodden, Clothed in rags and greasy-hatted Comes a gray old man with dirty Iron-gray hair into the depot. At the door he stands a moment Staring blankly at the wood-stove; To the nearest bench he lurches Where he sprawls in spineless comfort. On the wall a fly -specked placard: "Loafing not allowed." The agent Leaves his key and swearing softly. Kicks the fellow from the station. 77 GARGOYLES ANENT THE STREET CAR Street car? Yah! — Yellow box on wheels That bumps and reels From Farnam street to Main and back On a (sporadic) double track, Dusty or chilly — it depends On the time of year, and say. They're always late — Lord! Anyway, Don't talk street car here, my friends! Perhaps. . . . You ought to sit on people's laps. Or kneel against the pane, your nose The farthest angle from your toes. Street cars? Chariots that run From Zanzibar to Babylon Past New York and the sapphire bay Whereby the sultan's daughters play; Magic steeds of gold that fly Where polar bears and lions lie Hid in the wild Somewhat too neatly for a child; Enchanted yellow boats that swim A hundred miles or maybe ten The oceans dim Where funny little cities stand Just on the edges of the land. All ready to fall in (they don't!) [78] FROM THE MISSISSIPPI And full of funny little men Who look as if they'd bite — and won't; And each man has a tiny shop Beneath the tinkly trees. All full of gingerbread and pop, And drums, and elephants, and carts, And dolls, and candy hearts. And O, such shiny, shiny seas! Street car? Stop! Your brains need dusting — try to sneeze ! 179] GARGOYLES Climb up with me to Cliffwood and lie down Full-length upon the sunsoaked turf, your eyes Raised to the dazzling blue where August dies, Your head upon your arm — so ! — and the town Behind you, while its troubled noises drown In that clear gulf of air. The great clouds rise In solemn silence up the summer skies, And autumn somewhere waits in russet brown. Now send your soul through yonder rift of blue Among those drifting islands of the sky, Where all is quietness. Let summer die! What care we, who are borne on radiant wings Down depthless fields of hollow air, and through The stainless splendor which the summer brings! 80 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI JUNE Between the sun-down and the moon's slow rise There came a spirit down the vesper skies Full of glad sound and music, and with feet Wild and sweet Upon the hushed meadows, and her hair Darker than midnight air. She came with singing, and her voice was wild With the joy-hearted laughter of a child, Inmixed with tears and sudden prophecies Of lovelier eyes Than ever yet looked meekly on this earth At love's perpetual birth. She sang, if singing be to give full throat To all shy woodland things that have no note Made vocal else — quaint whispers in the grass. Moods that pass Strangely across the leaves, and old, wise words Gossiped among the birds. Her eyes were deep and clear and very old, Lucent with starlight and with liquid gold. And yet a shadow brooding there to screen Secrets unseen, Fair promises of womanhood to come. Now sweetly hid and dumb. [81] GARGOYLES And she was clad in delicate shades of spring, The tender inward of a rosebud's wing, The timid baby green that early flushes In emerald blushes On swelling larch-leaves, and the faint-breathed pink Anemones do drink. Among the solemn-bearded, counsellor trees I saw her dancing with a summer breeze, Her slender, snowy feet like flashing stars Across the bars And jetty shadows of the vesper wood, Willful and wild in mood. And through the starlit silences her singing, As though a thousand fairy bells were ringing Like little liquid fountains, to my ear Sweet and clear. Melodiously sweet and clear, outrang, And I heard what she sang. I heard, but can not tell you what she sang. Save that the ancient meadows swiftly sprang To melody behind her, and the tongue Of each tree rung In laughter, and each June-time flower that swells Tinkled like elfin bells. And as I sprang to catch her and discover Whether, indeed, some wood god were her lover Who thus made music for her on the lawn. She was gone! And I alone, and all the woods alone. Grew silent as a stone. [82] FROM THE MISSISSIPPI Perchance she fled away to the sunbeams. Or in the secret sources of the streams Hides, or in silver fountains of the air, Or anywhere (Who knows?) unsearchable beneath the moon. The spirit that was June! LYRICS FROM "THE MASQUE OF MARSH AND RIVER" (Presented at La Crosse, Wisconsin, June 8, 1915) Song of the Woodland Voices Tonight the woods have tongue again. Tonight the streams are free, And all the world grows young again. And bird and leafy tree, Hearing the old runes sung again, Shall join — shall join Our forest minstrelsy! II Sung hy The Spirit of June For as I came By river and hill. By marsh and meadow, Soft as shadow I touched with flame The lips that were still. [83 1 GARGOYLES And wind and shower, The tongued trees. The dewy grasses In star-lit passes, Anemones, And the blue May-flower Came trooping after My magic feet. They follow, they follow To this green hollow With whisperings sweet And shy soft laughter. Ill Song of Sunrise Rose of the dawn — a rose in the sky, And the wide, white pool is a shining rose ! The blushing river runs dimpliijg by, To the sea it flows. The sea, the sea that is all one rose! Rose of the dawn — the pale, pearl moon Crumbles like surf on a rose-red sea, And the ageing stars in this youth of noon, They die — let them be! For youth, for youth is a rose like the sea! Rose of the dawn — and the woods are stirred By a wind from the rose-red east that blows. Life wakes with a blush at the waking bird To the morn that blows To the love in life that is all one rose! [84] FROM THE MISSISSIPPI IV The Spirit of Sunrise Ye have seen, O king, in our dance this thing: The fleet of the silver stars, They sink before me in a crimson sea, Struck down by my sunrise bars; The winds go forth, east, south and north And west, led by desire Of the trembling clouds, those palpitant shrouds, Whose hearts are a nest of fire. Now springs new birth on the waking earth Where the winds, my couriers, run, And the trees and flowers, as by vernal showers. Are renewed and glad of the sun. On the gray hillsides my glory slides Swift, swift from crest to plain, Where the kindling river leaps down a-quiver To mix with the crimson main. The river awakes as the sunlight shakes To the waves its thousand lances; From emerald high land and splendid island The golden radiance glances! O King, by the might of dawn over night. By June, your dearest of daughters. By your own fair fame, O call him by name, Mississippi, the monarch of waters! 85] GARGOYLES RAIN ON THE RIVER Rain on the river! And dance, dance, dance, Bobbing and tripping And sliding and slipping, One little leg dipping Into the stream where a drop of rain With a circular stain Melts on the river, the elf -men prance! One elf to a drop. One drop to an elf — Will he never stop To recover himself? Nay! Plop — plop — plop In the early morn The quick rain rattles and patters away! Who could stop With such an orchestra set to play Music riddles And fugues that chase Prom top to bottom and back again At a most impossible pace! If you don't believe me, listen then — To the hundred drums As small as your thumbs Hid just under the river's stop. Invisible fiddles, A tiny horn. And a great big bullfrog bass! [86] FROM THE MISSISSIPPI And look out there on the ballroom floor Where every eddy has twenty score Of fairy dancers And goblin prancers! Each little elf-man whirls like a top. In a mad, mad dance they jostle and prance. And skip and flop And slip and drop And never stop For rest or breath or a change at all In this incredible carnival, This maddest Gladdest Kind of a ball ! — Let them rest if they possible can, They've danced on the river since day began! A RED LEAF A little child is crying in the wind, Yuhoo she sobs, and Yuhoo! I have seen her many times: On desolate moorlands and bleak, bare hilltops. On the myriad, pouting lips of the river, And in autumn trees, A tiny, red-coated girl Dancing with rage and crying: It is the little sister of the wind. She has lost her doll and seeks everjrwhere, Everywhere in the world. Hunting for it. And finds it not. [87 1 GARGOYLES THE GARDEN IN SEPTEMBER Chill drives the wind across this lonely space Sadder beneath the sky than any rain. And wanly now the ineffectual sun Gleams, and the pale light fades and leaves no stain. As those faint ripples on the pool leave none. As wind across the grasses leaves no trace. The bleached astors stare with mournful eyes Upon their scrawny stems of dying leaves; The stricken peonies droop that now no foot Goes by them where the swaying grape-vine grieves, And foliage plants, like withered beggars, mute With obscure prayer, beseech the autumn skies. Against the eastern wall the hollyhocks In wild confusion of a wasted dream Toss vacantly like branches in a wood, Or bend like willows slanting toward a stream. And over-ripe, their flowers are as blood Clotted and dark upon their yellow stalks. And all around, the dank discolored wall With crumbling woodbine laden, and below The moss grows in the cracks of the stained walks. And water stands where tiles are sunken. So All things are dying here, where only stalks Of old flowers toss, and dead leaves clash and fall. . 1881 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI O beauty over-ripe and to disuse Fallen in this supreme and strange decay. Dying, yet never dead ! When shall you die, When sleep, O grass, O flowers, where no birds stay, No April maidens pass and dream, whereby No poets mutter at the world's abuse? The golden girls are sleeping a strange sleep. Some with the lads they loved and more alone. But all asleep, too worn for any dream To trouble them, too tired for any moan — Out of the air I heard, or else the scream Of rubbing branches that the cedars keep, Or was it noise of grass in one high urn, Forever troubled by the keening wind? — The garden may not die, though lads are dead Who walked within it, loved and laughed and sinned • The lilies trembled in the lily bed — The maidens long ago have ceased to yearn. Still dance the shrivelled astors wearily. And still the woodbine mutters to the grass. The cedars moan like one gone gently mad And can not sleep or die ... April lass, Give thanks, with joy give thanks, laughing lad^ That you are other than these flowers he! [89] GARGOYLES OLD MEN The stars are old, old men. It is very cold in heaven, And they blink and huddle closer to the fire, Each at his separate hearthstone. And mourn for the good old times When peace and friendship Were everywhere found on earth. Their old limbs tremble. And their ancient teeth Chatter and shake in the cold. They draw their ragged blankets over their heads. And shout across the inter-stellar space That it is very cold in heaven, Very cold! It is they who cause the winking of the stars. The old men tremble so By their firesides That their bodies shake like the leaves of the maple in autumn. And the light shakes, too, And they dance before it To keep warm. Or shiver, sitting down, And moan for the good old times That were never cold. [90] FROM THE MISSISSIPPI Deep within a coulie An apple-orchard glows With startling gleams of yellow And little spots of rose. The heavy scent of summer Upon the valley lies, The smell of ripened wheat-fields. The warmth of stainless skies. And buried in the clover Beneath the apple-trees A lass awaits her lover, A robin waits the breeze. The breeze will come by sunset. She hopes the lover may. — I know that apple-orchard, He will not come today. [91] GARGOYLES AN ABANDONED CEMETERY This is their immortaUty — to lie Among these fields of ripening corn and rye, Here where the tangled shadows of old trees Stain the rank grass and, nodding down the breeze. Huge growths of fireweed swarm around the graves. Below their little hill the slow creek laves Its heap of pebbly gravel by the scar Of raw, red clay above, and with a jar Like bells of music breaking, in the turn Shivers against the boulders. Did they learn The permanency of all impermanent things Because the brook flows and the black bird sings And weeds grow tall — tansy and cockle-burr And burdock — where the spire and altar were? For look — the shameless woodbine climbs and sprawls Along the broken stones of crumbling walls, And sapling birches quiver in the shade Where once the choir sang and the organ played. Did they not care enough, those loving ones, Who came with passionate tears and orisons, And left them here with pageantry of grief? Eternal sorrow, was it then so brief That they forget? Or was it God forgot Whom they adored in this forsaken spot. Since of His temple there remain alone This graveless space and tumbled piles of stone? [921 FROM THE MISSISSIPPI God whom they called Eternal — He is gone, And grief has dried between the night and dawn, Which seemed eternal. Only transient grass, The brooklet never still, brown birds that pass Like winged moods across the blowing grain, Shadows and clouds and sunlight — these remain Where all things else, imagined without change Of spirit or flesh, have vanished. Is it strange These tombstones sag above the graves, or lie Heavy with fruitless immortality.? Look here: "Belove . . . wife . . Aet . . Rest with God," And here: "sister . . peace . . her soul . . " The sod Is sunken where they rest, and in the noons The crickets sing among the grass. Our boons Come strangely to us. . . . It is better so. Better to sleep as they do, and lie low Beneath the ragged shadows and the rain. Now they are spared the infinite slow pain Of stirring life above them, the loud bell. The quavering hymns, the words of heaven and hell. Them shall no trampling feet disturb, nor cries Of children playing make them lift their eyes, Vexed that the living take so little care To keep the fret of life away from there. And most of all, the futile trick of flowers Laid on their breasts to wither with the hours And force the dead remember and awaken From their slow sleep — this trouble, too, is taken. Now beyond God or man, they only have [93 1 GARGOYLES To keep the secure quiet of the grave, Here where the rain falls and the tangled leaves Of birch and elm trees shade them. Past the sheaves Beyond the road the distant reapers whir, A grosbeak startles up, a grasshopper Sings from a headstone — sounds that like the stream Are drowsier than voices in a dream. . . . O come away and leave them where they lie Beneath the benediction of the sky While the slow sun against the west is red — There are none happier than forgotten dead. [94] GARGOYLES A EUNICE I PRELUDE We saw, in this mad city where we dwell, My dearest dear and I, a beggar dip. Passing along the street, and catch up dust, And press it to his rags, and to his lip. He held but mire blown dry, and yet he'd tell Ten pretty names for it without disgust. A hundred people passed him where he stood, Kissing that gathered dust, and to the street Crying, it was his dear, his love, his soul ! Yet no one stopped that doddering man to greet — Unconscious, deaf, as he were stone or wood. They hurried by to some more personal goal. My love and I, beholding one so prize Most filthy treasure, stared at him. Then each Turned suddenly, and lo! the soul had fled Out of the other's face, and without speech Our hands unclasped. We turned our stricken eyes • The beggar, sprawling on the street, was dead. 95 GARGOYLES II FANTASIA The city where you hve, my dear, is strange! There corpses hurry by in motor cars And dead men walk the street at six o'clock. Before your door a crowded street car jars, Whose stark conductor carefully makes change And rings up carrion fares at every block. Along the streets the lighted windows show Here pretty cakes for filthy hands to buy, There ribbons to adorn a pallid head. Gigantic signs are swung against the sky — Ice, cigarettes, and beer. Does no one know Your city is the city of the dead? Why, there is mold upon your very walk, And bones fall down along the curbstone. Still That strange policeman never moves his eyes (His blue coat smells like earth) and never will. Queer, that the dead should rise each morn to walk Such rotting squares beneath indifferent skies! And, sweet, this very letter that I send A staring corpse delivers at your door; Cold, ghoulish fingers twitter at your arm To guide your feet across the ballroom floor. And you yourself — O God of Heaven f orfend ! — The mouth that has kissed mine is scarcely warm! [96] GARGOYLES III NOCTURNE Under the moon we hear the stormy lake Toss Hke a man in sick-bed endlessly, And suddenly we turn and cling and kiss, Searching some passionate door to endless bliss Beneath the driven stars, above the sea. Beyond the death-like town where none awake. We lean against the gale. With feverish lips Our spirits climb the crags and towers of night, Hunting behind the wind some windless grot, Some city in the sea that trembles not. Or in the rack of driven cloud and light Some clock behind the stars that never slips. And O the senseless way we seek for these! You clasp me in your arms, your face is blind, Uplifted to my mad and thirsty mouth! Eternity we somehow seek in youth. Youth that is less than foam or cloud or wind, Beneath the stars, beside the tumbling seas! 97 GARGOYLES IV IMMORTALITY Eunice, when this wild music that we hear Is silent, and the fever and the passion. The rich mouth shaping to a lover's kiss, The bosom and the arms of you, the fear Of loss, the hope of some dim, ultimate bliss — When all this arch is dust which now we fashion. And you are grass upspringing from a grave. And I in some far corner of the world Enrich the earth by one more lover's heart. They will not know the good we worked to save. They will not care what stars we saw, or start Because upon my breast your hand is curled! Instead, the Tribune on its thirteenth page. In little type, along with stocks and such, (And marriages) will list your name and mine. And Christian Shimultowski's name and age, And Mamie Kaeppler's, dead at forty-nine. Beloved wife of John, who mourns her much. 198] GARGOYLES GROTESQUE It is most odd to see a skeleton eat, Jingling the knife and fork against its teeth! It is most odd to see a skeleton shed An opera cloak, and carefully unsheathe Its arms of snowy gloves, and take its seat, A fluffy hat upon its grinning head. The Blackstone dining room is soft and pink. The wine is excellent, the music good. You would not think to see a skeleton there! Yet Thursday night across our dainty food I sat with one at table. Dear, don't shrink. This terrapin is really very fair. VI THEME AND VARIATIONS I do recall the feet of many lovers Trod the same roses into dust as we. And in the gloom which round this city hovers They feverishly kissed like you and me. And passed to dissolution and to dust. Even, O my dearest heart, even as we must! [99] GARGOYLES I do recall the shadow-wandering faces Of poets in the twilight ere I came: They walk behind the night with velvet paces, Upon the streets their heads are pale with flame, Each one alone, apart, and desolate. Oblivious music fingered on by fate. I do recall the maidens and the laughter. Red lips we trample in the street's much dust. Eyelids and bosoms that men hungered after. And bodies that were made for love and lust — A thousand years of kisses pave the street, Beloved, underneath your careless feet! O heart! The night is full of ghosts and pity! Shadows, old tears, embraces stir the trees. And souls that wandered this indifferent city When time was young are kissing in the breeze — Despite the asseveration of your face, The death of lovers is so commonplace ! VII FRESCO Behold a student in a little room (The same being I) who pores upon a book. Outside, the April sky is like a child. And dandelions gleam, and winds are mild, But here at college is a crazy nook By spring forgot, the world being all a-bloom! [100] GARGOYLES Through owl-Uke spectacles the student reads (Myself being he) . That book he deems as gold Which deals with buried kings and lovers dead. For tiptoeing, they cluster round his head. Thin majesties with crowns of phantom gold. And lovely lads for whom the world yet bleeds, What need has he of spring who holds in fee Imperial Caesars, kings with brows anoint. Ladies that were great lovers long ago? . . . Only the corners of his chamber show Row after row of ghastly hands which point. And shadowy lips that grin sardonically. VIII MOTTO Our city has a playhouse where we go And sit in darkness, clasping hands, and hark; The curtain never rises while we stay. But on its front two flickering lanterns play Sometimes in that funereal gloom and lo! Touching, they vanish and the house is dark. 101 GARGOYLES IX HAMLET Odd, is it not? The sacred hand I kiss. So curiously formed with skin and joint. Whose flesh love's chrism, whose touch love's charms anoint^ In nothing differs from more rotten flesh; And yet with promise of eternal bliss Mere carrion finger-tips a soul enmesh! A soul, or what the flow of chemic change In this queer net of unconsidered cells. As soul to blind, peculiar atoms tells. Whose home is brain, whose motion is the me! Odd — but as lover you are still more strange, And you are strangest as eternity! O God! that mere mortality should take Presumption from the touch of lover's hands; Or dead men think corruption ever stands Because two hands are love's galvanic poles; That law or dream or custom so mistake And curiously tangle us with souls ! [102 GARGOYLES X ARABESQUE In love, men want Byronic brows of night. They scale no stars, nor Uke Hernani die; Romantic is proclaimed a childish lie. And even in opera, Werther's out of date. The breed of lovers, haply, is not great? Or was the immortal flame mere candle light? I am, I swear, chin-deep in love with you. Yet have not sighed nor cursed, and neither recks This mere propinquity of youth and sex A portent of our immortality! What is this thing called love for which men die? Or do the liars treat the false as true? Love sits not in your lips, your face, your eyes — Your body is the haunt of sex and time! If either brags heroic prose or rhyme. The other smiles. (We moderns live for taste! We can not bound all heaven in a waist, Or leap upon a kiss to Paradise!) Young love is old, old love was spent in vain Down every age that found its women fair. For us, a satyr grins beside you there. Or else the cloth a skeleton bedecks. My dear, we lack the candor that is sex, And know too much to be insanely sane! 1 103 ] GARGOYLES XI FUGUE SOLONELLE Well, if men lied concerning love till now, Admit, at least, she has a pretty waist. And even though she flirt, her clothes are chaste, — There's beauty in her! Then no matter how; Instead of women, if men females take. Still note the pleasant friends that females make. Wise words! We are not souls who taste the stars Upon the blur and tumult of a kiss : There is a purpose in our sexual bliss. Time, like a huge and hostile engine, jars The seven planets even as we wed, And corpse-like do we creep to marriage-bed. Yet, nonetheless, a flash ere death appears. The mighty wheels of life have once revolved. Anew the dying planet is absolved From stoppage with the throbbing of the years. . . Wise words! Since vast mechanic wheels are cased Within those lovely eyes, that modest waist! [104 GARGOYLES XII INTERLUDE At Miller now the plums are blossoming Upon the hills in May, and in the hollows Arbutus shyly blows. The skeleton dunes Whose ribs all winter made fantastic tunes Feather with delicate green. I saw two swallows Swooping above the sands like very spring. Last March the lake had on a belt of snow White in the winter sun, an icy ring Where now is all the blue of Helen's eyes. Softly the foam fleets rise and fall and rise Against the yellow sands with murmuring, Speaking some secret matter as they flow. In May, I think, the resurrection hour Comes here upon the dunes! These are not hills Of dust and sand. They are the mingling lips Of lovers who were lost on many ships, And every grain of sand that downward spills Was once a kiss and soon will be a flower. 105] GARGOYLES XIII DIALECTICS I blame you for your virtue and my shame, I blame you for the good you forced me to! Alas! what virtue is in being you, If you, renunciate, are as others are, A tedious candle and no lawless star, A mere example for the good to name? Men say you were heroic, loving me, Yet, for your conscience, putting passion by; Ah, know their praises curse you more than I, For shifty virtue ever causes ill. And devils mask men's cowardice as will, And lust in hell is named sobriety. I say, your welfare is imperilled still; The torment that I have, I say, is you; I say, the expectancy you led me to Will damn you when your moderation's dead; My ruin falls upon a saintly head, And you are lost for good, as I, for ill ! [106] GARGOYLES XIV MARCHE It is not God's desire to cheat us so: Himself removes from brightness into shade According to the custom He has made Unwittingly. Himself He can not mend. Helpless, He flows toward some determined end As moons arise or waters ebb and flow. Be just and do not blame Him. Had He known, I think He would have builded otherwise, Himself being gentle. When a lover dies He grieves and would not have it. He is spun Round a machine whose flywheel is the sun. Whose bolts are stars, whose humming drowns His moan. And though we sat together on the heights, And kissed amid the hollows of the hills. Let's smile and bravely part before His mills Shall turn again. So shall we spare Him pain. And He will be a little glad and gain Some courage to endure His lonely nights. [ 107 GARGOYLES XV ALLEGORY There is a temple in our mystic city Where mumbhng masks perpetually come. The mighty gates are brass. Two women stand, Two brazen figures, veiled and vast and dumb. Beside the doors like sentinels on each hand. And one is Fear, and one — alas! — is Pity. Within those speechless courts, that awful portal. The light of sun or star is never known: Dim pillars rise and some strange altar fire Burns gem-like in the dark where shadows moan. And hollow echoes as of bells are dire, And mockery flouts the path of every mortal. There, from the velvet walls drip down confusion, Mixings of soul and sense, of shadow and sound Which on the spirit fall like blood and rain. I think the place is some enchanted ground Where kneeling masks implore eternal pain Of their mad god whose name is Disillusion ! My soul, my love and I came here one day. And wondered at the walls, the fire, the floors, The drip of silence and the lisping dead, And all we knelt by vague, mysterious doors — Then horror fell upon us and we fled. My love and I. My soul remained to pray. [108] r HU ^^ SlAVE I -HOWUUID hM t!\ FrmklMi Sk TiOSTWI ,0 'lu *-7^^-^%* a> o_ '^bv* ^""^t. ' .^^ vv ^Coc,. : "^^Ao^ '0^ HECKMAN ■* BINDERY INC. ^ DEC 88 M§^ N. MANCHESTER, $S^ INDIANA 46962