:i|ii III ! lliili -'' ' ,,,. : ■ "M 1 1 1 Book, -/T/^^ GopyiightN" /Td ? COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. MONDAY MORNING AND OTHER POEMS Monday Morning AND OTHER POEMS By JAMES OPPENHEIM Author of "Doctor Rast," etc. STURGIS & WALTON COMPANY 1909 2,%%^ 7& Copyright 1909 BySTURGIS & WALTON COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published December, 1909 THE MASON-HENRY PEBSS SYRACUSE AND NEW YORK ©CLA^?5:r: ^0 90V ^^itt CONTENTS Page Monday Morning 3 Saturday Night 6 The Child 9 The Grandmother 10 The Lincoln-Child 12 First Glimpses of the Hills 23 The Haunted World 24 Far in Virginia Hills 25 New York, from a Skyscraper 30 The Ice-Cream Saloon 33 A Tenement Room 36 Morning in Central Park 39 Hymn Before Marriage 44 The Sweat-shop Workers 46 The Women Wage-Slaves 49 Up Long Island Sound 51 Wireless 53 The New Knighthood 56 An Italian Funeral 59 Lower Broadway 63 The Nickel Theater 66 The Coming of May 69 Ellis Island 72 The Home-Coming 76 The Excursion Boat 80 Immigrants in the Bay 83 vii viii Contents Page Home, after Work 86 Pain 88 The World-Home gi A Song of Labor 93 The Human Dead 96 Mountaintop 99 Roosevelt 106 The Marriage-Hymn 114 The Deeps 119 The Cry of Man 120 The Jews 127 The Social Workers 129 The May Party 132 Manhattan, O My Home 134 Coney Island 138 The Sun-Hymn of the City 140 Morning 142 In the Forest 145 The East River Bridge Market 147 The Trolley Lovers 150 Prepare Ye the Way! 153 The Night of Souls 156 Ocean 158 The Fight of Peace 160 Leaving New York 163 Early April 165 The Reason 167 Revelation 168 A Bit of Spring Music 170 Contents ix Page You Mean So Much to Me 175 May 176 Home in the Storm 177 Ecstatic May 1 79 Mother and Father 180 Excerpts from "Adam and Eve" I am rocked in the cradle of love 201 What shall I love ? 202 Adam, when told about Eve 203 Adam, on first seeing Eve 204 henceforth I shall go 206 Adam's Song to Eve 207 We must love each other forever 209 Eve's Song 210 1 pant with the glory of the woods 211 Daffodil buds waken 212 The Death-Birth Days 214 Adam's Prayer 215 Eve to her Child , 216 The Child 217 Sunrise on the Mountaintop 218 Morning Song 220 Under the leaves of the maple 221 Hymn on the Mountain 223 MONDAY MORNING AND OTHER POEMS MONDAY MORNING MOROSE gray Monday morning again, and baleful business again, And the ride from YorkvUle to Chatham Square, jammed with women and men In the cylinder car on Its thumping wheels, and the moody, sad, seared faces Burled In morning papers, and squalid as smoke- and time-soiled laces. Shopgirls, salesmen, factory hands, cashiers, me- chanics, clerks — O Shelley, Shakespeare, Darwin, Christ I you were human, your works Made Earth the brain of God's million worlds! Through the crowded City of Stars Earth wandered with dream and toll — ^but to-day? What Christ illumes these cars? Have epochs of suns flaking worlds cast forth this Monday carload alone? O dreams of David, O faith of Luther, O love of Lincoln, and moan, 4 Monday Morning Still shaking the world from our million martyrs, our saints' prophetical pity — Are these the issues of their mighty hearts, these stern stone-souls of the city? Cease! This is human judging of human! If among all the storming suns Yonder wizened and withered woman whom the crowd tramples and shuns Were the only created soul, what a marvel, what a splendor of strength and brain — What a miracle that the dead dust should think, labor, feel joy, feel pain ! O life, God-yeasted! Even last night, next door, was a new-born soul Forced crying through human flesh to the Earth, a being cast solid and whole. With heart, with brain, with soul among men — ^as real as I am — as human — And lo, in this paper, a list of deaths — what man lost worlds, what woman? Surely this moment huge Earth is rolling beneath the floors of these cars. Monday Morning 5 And we wonderful living organisms are blown In the cyclone of stars ! Yet do I know that God's purpose with man reaches each life like a root, That His worlds of suns In myriad millions Is a Tree and Man Is the Fruit ! O we miracles humbled In the day's dust of our life's minute exactness! O Sin and Pain and Death, and the Soul crouching and crying In blackness ! Earth is God's foundry; we are the slag — slag that is spirit and clod That is angel and ape — In terrible fires we are wrought by the living God ! Wrought by the God Into working Souls — let be, manners and features ! Behind each face Is a greater than stars — creators are these, not creatures. Our way is toward God this Monday morning, toward Death's unvlslon'd Goals, This car is winging through Deeps of the Lord with Its eighty Earth-anchored Souls. SATURDAY NIGHT THE lights of Saturday night beat golden, golden over the pillared street — The long plate-glass of a Dream- World olden is as the footlights shining sweet — Street-lamp — flambeau — glamour of trolley — com- et-trail of the trains above Splash where the jostling crowds are jolly with echoing laughter and human love. This Is the City of the Enchanted: and these are her Enchanted People : Far and far is Daylight, haunted with whistle of mill and bell of steeple — The Eastern tenements loose the women, the West- ern flats release the wives To touch, where all the ways are common, a glory to their sweated lives. The leather of shoes In the brilliant casement sheds a lustre over the heart — The high-heaped fruit In the flaring basement glow with the tints of Turner's art — 6 Saturday Night 7 Darwin's dream and the eye of Spencer saw not such a gloried race As here, In copper light intenser than desert sun, glides face by face. This drab washwoman, dazed and breathless, ray- chiselled in the golden stream. Is a magic statue standing deathless — her tub and soap-suds touched with Dream — Yea, in this people, glamour-sunnied, democracy, wins heaven again — Here the unlearned and the unmoneyed laugh in the lights of Lover's Lane ! O Dream-World lights that lift through the ether millions of miles to the Milky Way ! To-night Earth rolls through a golden weather that lights the Pleiades where they play ! Yet . . . God? Does He lead these sons and daughters? Yea, do they feel, with a passion that stills, God on the face of the moving waters, God in the quiet of the hills ? 8 Saturday Night Yet . . . what if the million-mantled mountains, and what if the million-moving sea Are here alone in facades and fountains — our deep stone-world of humanity — We builders of cities and civilizations walled away from the sea and the sod Must reach, dream-led, for our revelations through one another — as far as God. Through one another — through one another — no more the gleam on sea or land — But so close that we see the Brother — and under- stand — and understand! Till, drawn in swept crowd closer, closer, we see the gleam in the human clod, And clerk and foreman, peddler and grocer are In our Family of God! THE CHILD YOU may be Christ or Shakespeare, little child, A saviour or a sun to the lost world — There is no babe born but may carry furled Strength to make bloom the world's disastrous wild ! O what then must our labors be to mould you, To open the heart, to build with dream the brain, To strengthen the young soul in toil and pain, Till our age-aching hands no longer hold you — Vision far-dreamed! — But soft! if your last goal Be low, if you are only common clay — What then? Toil lost? Were our toil treb- led, nay! You are a Soul, you are a human Soul, A greater than the skies ten-trillion starred, Shakespeare no greater, O you slip of God! GRANDMOTHER The glory of her face still lives with us . . . The glory of her heart works in our hearts . . . The glory of her Soul is warmth of Sun And light of Sun, and in her holy presence Hushed are our wild world-hearts with pouring Peace ! Ah, golden days, ah, mellow Indian Summer, Ah, golden Autumn of the year of man . . . The days are hers, the golden days are hers ! She has known life, she has known earliest dreams Of wandering childhood, earliest girlhood dreams, Earliest womanly love; the passion of the mother; The burden of the maker of the Home; The pangs of Birth; the quicksand-clutch of Death . . . Wife, woman, toiler, mother, guardian, nurse . . . O lowly angeT of three generations ! She has gone through it all : all dreams we know, All pangs we seek to tear from our torn hearts. All joys that thrill us, all wild hours of grief, All folly, wisdom, all that makes up life. Grandmother ii Has she gone through . . . gone through unknown to Fame, Unhonored, unapplauded, meek and pure, And lo, now she emerges from the Fight, The Smoke and Thunder and the Noise of Life, Radiant, mellowed, and the golden days Are hers : the golden Autumn days are hers ! Unvexed by brawling problems of the hour Her very glance solves all : she brings to us A sweet solution of the Life on Earth, Yea, tender touches of eternal God, Not preached in words, but raining from her Soul As Autumn haze in the golden Indian Summer Fills through the woodlands, and the world is lost. THE LINCOLN-CHILD CLEARING in the forest, In the wild Kentucky forest, And the stars, wintry stars strewn above 1 O Night that is the starriest Since Earth began to roll — For a Soul Is born out of Love ! Mother love, father love, love of Eternal God — Stars have pushed aside to let him through — Through heaven's sun-sown deeps One sparkling ray of God Strikes the clod — (And while an angel-host through wood and clear- ing sweeps!) Born in the Wild The Child- Naked, ruddy, new, Wakes with the piteous human cry and at the mother-heart sleeps. To the mother wild berries and honey, To the father awe without end, 12 The Lincoln- Child 13 To the child a swaddling of flannel — And a dawn rolls sharp and sunny And the skies of winter bend To see the first sweet word penned In the godliest human annal. Frail Mother of the Wilderness — - How strange the world shines in And the cabin becomes chapel And the baby reveals God — Sweet Mother of the Wilderness, New worlds for you begin, You have tasted of the apple That giveth wisdom starred. Do you dream, as all Mothers dream, That the child at your heart Is a marvel apart, A frail star-beam Unearthly splendid? Ah, you are the one mother Whose dream shall come true, Though another, not you, Shall see it ended. 14 The Lincoln-Child Soon In the wide wilderness, On a branch blown over a creek, Up a trail of the wild coon, In a lair of the wild bee. The wildling boy, by Danger's stress. Learnt the speech the wild things speak. Learnt the Earth's eternal tune Of God and starred Eternity — Went to school where God Himself was master, Went to church where Earth was minister — And in Danger and Disaster Felt his future manhood stir ! All about him lay the landj Eastern cities. Western prairie, Wild, immeasurable, grand, But he was lost where blossomy boughs make airy Bowers in the forest, and the sand Makes brook-water a clear mirror that gives back Green branches and trunks black And clouds across the heavens lightly fanned. Yet all the Future dreams, eager to waken, Within that woodland soul — The Lincoln-Child 15 And the bough of boy has only to be shaken That the fruit drop whereby this Earth shall roll A little nearer God than ever before. Little recks he of war, Of national millions waiting on his word — Dreams still the Event unstirred In the heart of the boy, the little babe of the wild — But the years hurry and the tide of the sea Of Time flows fast and ebbs, and he, even he, Must leave the wilderness, the wood-haunts wild — Soon shall the cyclone of Humanity Tearing through Earth suck up this little child And whirl him to the top, where he shall be Riding the storm-column in the lightning-stroke. Calm at the peak, while down below worlds rage. And Earth goes out In blood and battle-smoke, And leaves him with the sun — an epoch and an age! Hushed be our hearts, and veneration Steep us in joy. Hushed be our mills, while a saved nation Reveres this boy! Hushed be our homes, while a holy elation i6 The Lincoln-Child Makes the heart mild — Each home has a child And we worship a race of Lincolns in each that we love ! No, they may not stand above The storm and steer the States, These little children that are born from us — - No, they may not Lincolns prove In the grandeur of their fates — But Lincolns let them be in the heart and in the soul — Even thus Shall our Earth again toward God a little swifter, nearer roll. Even thus Shall our children touch the stars where we have only glimpsed the Goal. Even thus and only thus Through the Future's arch-like span May they go American! In his spirit shall they grow. To his law they shall be bound. With his light of God shall glow. With his love of Man be crowned 1 The Lincoln-Child 17 Think of the miracle! A child so like our child, A babe born in the wild, A little clod of clay, sweet blossoming and beau- tiful. Earth that is dumb and dead, Earth risen in child-shape, And suddenly agape Are the eyes and lips, and spread Is the heart and coiled the brain — And lo, the Silences are slain — In our Wilderness of Silence where we were only two, Man and Wife, Comes this third and like the voice of God breaks through With his life — And he answers back our Silence with his babbling, wordy strife — Born of woman. Born of man. He is human And he can Grow beyond us in the grandeur we began I 1 8 The Lincoln-Child And none greater than this boy Whom this day We revere with holy joy, And we thank the stars the clay In Kentucky took on human shape and spoke, In the Wilderness awoke. In the woodlands grew a creature of the wild, This February child! And lo, as he grew ugly, gaunt, And gnarled his way into a man. What wisdom came to feed his want. What worlds came near to let him scan — And as he fathomed through and through Our dark and sorry human scheme, He knew what Shakespeare never knew, What Dante never dared to dream — That Men are one Beneath the sun, And before God are equal souls — This truth was his. And this it is That round him such a glory rolh For not alone he knew it as a truth, The Lincoln-Child 19 He made it of his blood, and of his brain — He crowned It on the day when piteous Booth Sent a whole land to weeping with world-pain — When a black cloud blotted the sun And men stopped In the streets to sob, To think Old Abe was dead — Dead, and the day's work still undone, Dead, and war's ruining heart athrob. And earth with fields of carnage freshly spread — Millions died fighting. But In this man we mourned Those millions, and one other — And the States today uniting. North and South, East and West, Speak with a people's mouth A rhapsody of rest To him our beloved best. Our big, gaunt, homely brother — Our huge Atlantic coast-storm in a shawl, Our cyclone In a smile — our President, Who knew and loved us all With love more eloquent 20 The Lincoln-Child Than his own words — with Love that in real deeds was spent. Shelley's was a world of Love, Carlyle's was a world of Work, But Lincoln's was a world above That of a dreamer or a clerk — Lincoln wed the one to the other — Made his a world where love gets into deeds — Where man was more than merely brother, Where the high Love was meeting human needs ! And lo, he made this plan Memorably American! Through all his life this mighty Faith unfurled! O let us see, and let us know That if our hearts could catch his glow A faith like Lincoln's would transform the world ! Oh, to pour love through deeds — To be as Lincoln was! — That all the land might fill its daily needs Glorified by a human Cause! Then were America a vast World-Torch Flaming a faith across the dying Earth, The Lincoln-Child 2i Proclaiming from the Atlantic's rocky porch That a New World was struggling at the Birth 1 Ah, is this not the day That rolls the Earth back to that mighty hour When the sweet babe in the log-cabin lay And God was in the room, a Presence and a Power ? — When all was sacred — even the father's heart — And the stirred Wilderness stood still, And roaring flume and shining hill Felt the working of God's Will? O living God, O Thou who living art. And real, and near, draw, as at that babe's birth, Into our souls and sanctify our Earth — Let down Thy strength that we endure Mighty and pure As mothers and fathers of our own Lincoln-child — Make us more wise, more true, more strong, more mild. That we may day by day Rear this wild blossom through its soft petals of clay, That hour by hour 22 The Lincoln-Child We may endow It with more human power Than is our own — That it may reach the goal Our Lincoln long has shown ! — O Child — flesh of our flesh, bone of our bone, Soul torn from out our Soul! May you be great, and pure, and beautiful — A Soul to search this world To be a father, brother, comrade, son, A toller powerful, A man with strength unfurled, A man whose toil is done One with God's Law above, Work wrought through Love! FIRST GLIMPSES OF THE HILLS THE pasture from the gray stone-wall Lifts with gray stones and briers and boulders Slanting toward Western skies; a shawl Of clouds upon her chilly shoulders! Moss-bearded are the pasture-bars, A pool beyond holds the tossed skies, A ripple breaks the sun in stars, A splendor smites the pool and dies! Then brooding on tremendousness. Immersed and lost on solid Earth, Far, far from the World's press and stress That brings almighty deeds to birth. Washed far away like a swept wreck Foundered where vast seas empty and fill, A man is but a restless fleck Of thinking dust in sky and hill. How little is he after all — Loosed from the city's life-packed pod He blows, a seed, o'er a gray stone-wall Lost in the fastnesses of God. 23 THE HAUNTED WORLD YONDER fall of the leaf, yonder splashing of water, Have all one meaning to me. Under the mute wet rocks, over the breathing tree- tops, A voice speaks breathlessly, Ushered into the woods mid the still slim trunks of the pine, Waving the reddened boughs and tearing the tangled vine, A voice from the world Is shuddering down through the woodland's spine. The wild world's misery ! Far have I sped from men, far from the steel- stone city To meet with God In the woods. To see the beauty of earth as it spins with the flaming planets. And steep myself in Its moods. But O not far enough to escape the anguish of man. On every leaf it Is stamped, on every blade is Its ban — Into the wind it swung, Into the stream It ran, And lo ! In the sky it broods ! 24 FAR IN VIRGINIA HILLS FAR in Virginia hills A father and mother have buried their little child, And the news so tragic-wild Breaks through my heart where the sea breaks about me and fills My being with passions — brother- and father-pas- sions And the sun grows dim in the day. What can I say, For our own little child is the age of the boy that is dead — And our own little child has haunted our hours with bliss — Our lives seem woven in his, wondrous star-girdled head! 1 must wander afar and alone and afoot by the many-changing and million-tinted Cradle of song and spirit of motion, My outdoor Father, my Ocean — I must brood on his face till I see on his lips im- printed 25 26 Far in Virginia Hills Solace and tender love, for the sea Is a living being to me. here let my spirit reach out from Its troubled earth-narrow home Far on the undulant foam And vaster and deeper and higher In sea-air and sky-space and sun-fire I Let me with Death foregather, Ocean, my Father! The sea Is haunted with news of the child that Is gone— The cry of the tide on the sand Is the cry of the mother, The tears of the wave-wet moss drip on — Far is Virginia, far, but my heart is a brother, A mourning brother of those that mourn, — My heart with grief Is torn. 1 know, I know ! Is not our glorious boy Touched with things greater than we, and wrought of the laughter, The Immense loveliness gleaming through nature*s rind? Far in Virginia Hills zj Has he not sunnied our mornings with joy, And starred our evenings with glory, till our here- after Is dreamed about his opening heart and mind? O sea, O wistful sky. If he should die ! If he of our flesh born Out of our hearts were torn I If nowhere in this space We saw his face ! If from life's blinding storm We could not clutch and warm That child upon our knee ! What then? Answer, O sea. How would it be ? And then as I watched the far gray yearning of ocean, And how he was striving for words with each new wave on the beach, It was my faith that he lived and Earth and the stars in their motion And I knew that each to each We were living brother and brother I 28 Far in Virginia Hills And I longed that my faith be sped To that far Virginia mother, There where she mourned her dead! Mother — so would I say — a creature so glorious- wild Struck from the chaos of nature and shaped so personal-sweet, Is more than frolic and laughter, and face and fingers and feet. And more than your own child — So precious is he to a struggling world, A dreaming and toiling God, He cannot be re-furled And merged again with the sod — No more the child will come With the love that enthralled and bewitched. He has taken something out of your home. But Nature he has enriched — Nature he has enriched — the sea. The air, the soil, are filled with victorious Music of immortality — There is something personal, near, new-glorious In all of the world : it is he ! Far in Virginia Hills 29 And now the sea shouts — look, how the long bil- lows heighten — See how the swallow skims in a glory of gale — O plunging glorious seas, O combers that whiten Like a tumble of naked boys in the long green swale — What IS there now about me haunting the air With the cooing lovely laughter that children use ? What makes the vista'd horizons gleam so fair? What news, Ocean, what news? Is it the child abroad in the cradle-motion Of singing deeps, is it the child, my Ocean? NEW YORK, FROM A SKYSCRAPER . UP In the heights of the evening skies I see my City of Cities float In sunset's golden and crimson dyes: I look, and a great joy clutches my throat ! Plateau of roofs by canyons crossed: windows by thousands fire-unfurled — O gazing, how the heart Is lost in the Deepest City of the World I Red rolls the Hudson, golden the Bay: Brooklyn melts through horizons tall: Deep In Broadway's starry gray I see the black man-Insects crawl: Chimneys smoke and glittering cars groan with tons of the homeward rush : New York goes Home beneath Its stars: what psalms of Joy float up this hush ! O sprawling City! Worlds In a world! Hous- ing each strange type that Is human — Yonder a Little Italy curled — here the haunt of the Scarlet Woman — 30 New York, From a Skyscraper 31 The night's white Bacchanals of Broadway — the Ghetto pushcarts ringed with faces — Wall Street's roar and the Plaza's play — O welter- ing focus of all Earth's races! Walking your Night's many-natloned byways — brushing Sicilians and Jews and Greeks — Meeting gaunt Bread Lines on your highways — watching night-clerks In your flaming peaks — Marking your Theaters' outpour of splendor — pausing on doorsteps with resting Mothers — I have marveled at Christs with their messages tender, their daring dream of a World of Brothers ! Brothers? What means Irish to Greek? What the Ghetto to Morningside? How shall we weld the strong and the weak while millions struggle with light denied? Yet, but to follow these Souls where they roam — ripping off housetops, the city's mask — At Night I should find each one In a Home, at Morn I should find each one at a Task! Labor and Love, four-million divided — surely the millions at last are a-move — 32 New York, From a Skyscraper Surely the brotherhood-slant is decided — the Social Labor, the Social Love I Surely four millions of Souls close-gathered in this one spot must stagger the world — O City, Earth's Future is Mothered and Fathered where your great streets feel the Man-tides hurled ! For the Souls in one car where they hang on the straps could send this City a-wing from the sod — Each man is a tiny Faucet that taps the infinite reservoir of God! — What if they turned the Faucet full stream? What if our millions to-night were aware? What if to-morrow they built to their Dream the City of Brothers in laughter and prayer? THE ICE-CREAM SALOON HAVING considered, like David, the heavens, the stars in their infinite courses. With the Inner Vision, with the outer Skies, dream- ing the suns to their sources, I thought what a wild Sahara sandstorm the stars in their whirling swarm, And how the Earth blows, lost and half-dark, with Its sun, in the infinite storm. Blows even to-night — prairied and seaM, citied, a-swarm with its millions Of souls, its billions of life, swept vast from a Past of souls in decilllons — The black choked teeming Past! When lo, sud- den a flood of light Here on Eighth Avenue (Earth, stars a-roU!) O flame in the black-souled Night! Behind plate-glass, at a marble bar, sat shapes In the image of me, — Without were the stars, and thoughts of the stars — Earth in Eternity — 3 33 34 The Ice-Cream Saloon Within, a twenty-foot mirror flashed back twenty faces tired-white, Hair fan-swirled, eyes in star-glare of strong golden electric light. Dry throats and the foam of the sparkling drink — night and the stars and Earth rolling — They with a glass, I with a sky, each to his draught consoling — They, I, between two Eternities caught on curious errands this night — Each seeking out for our golden Vision, our mo- ment of Love and of Light. Such are the changes of the earth-moored Soul, such is the life named human ! All of us dream-led, all but at heart merely a man or a woman. Seeking our Vision in a Sky or a Glass, finding the strength that shall hurl us On the morrow back to the huge World- Riot — the blows that bruise, but unfurl us Ever more human, more perfect Workers, ever more like that God, The Ice-Cream Saloon 35 The Master-Worker, the World-Creator — who fashioned us out of the sod, As we too create, yea, sweat out our worlds, even .thus made Godlike, thus Reaching (ways small, ways large) to God, that at Death He find God In us ! A TENEMENT ROOM AS a nest where the rooks bow down the branches, deep in the shattered street, this room — Black is the way and broken the steps that climb through the filthy gloom — Six dark strata of Souls lift up from the torrent of Souls that sweeps the street, The atmosphere is of human breathing, the noise, of vast hearts' beat ! As a lamp in the Deeps, the storm-deeps rolling, this room is a flame in the human storm. And I sit me down with Father and Mother and Children — cheery and warm! Under, far under, stupendous and still, the Earth rolls on with the million suns. Over, far over, stampeded through space, the herd of the wild stars runs. Under, but near, O near, touch-near, the roaring sea of Humanity rolls. Over, but near, O near, spirit-near, leaps the wild wave of Souls — 36 A Tenement Room 37 And here, right here, the bright faces shine of these human beings, these Souls, these forms — I am nested deep in the human Deeps — aye, swirled in the Human storms! And I belong here by right of birth — I am even as these, I am one with these — How well their words and their glances and touch — each flush that flickers and flees — Are doors to their Souls where I enter in, and live five lives in the place of one, Are gates of common Man where we mingle like five blent rays of the sun ! O People! O human, human beings! I thank my stars that I too am human ! That I may share the up-struggle of the World with you, O Man, O Woman ! That I may taste your miraculous glories of Love and Gladness — deepest, of Pain! — That I may be of your shining faces in the World- rush, the labor and strain 1 38 A Tenement Room That I may feel the lift and the thrill of hands that lock and of lips that meet, That I may sit in a little warm room with souls and hearts replete — That I may know, beyond grandeur of Earth, O Man, even here in the pitiful gloom Of these shattered walls, God's grandeur sweeps, yea, in a little room I MORNING IN CENTRAL PARK WHEN the morning sun Spills his red lights among the naked trees And one by one The hills awaken — and like wind-played seas Give back the music of the breeze, When among film and tracery of boughs Stripped by the winter's teeth, Green glow the sun-filled pines — O Man, unhouse Your head of human walls — get from beneath Shut ceilings — let the skies take off the roof Of your small room — and Into the Park at seven Go with tremendous stride — Earth there is open wide To the sun and the wind and the amplitude of heaven ! That Child, the World, from out the infinite night Draws through the dark Into the light — And all the sacred mystery of Birth Hovers on the Earth — Even in the pale of the man-gardened Park 39 40 Morning in Central Park The mystery of Morn, the beauty and the splendor Through the groves are slipping, from the boughs are dripping, A miracle without us, That yet the heart's core owns ! — Chant then the pebble-tripped waters shut in stones. Sparrows are over the turf chirping and tripping. And Man's World sings in a swinging circle about us! O film of ice skimming the crystal pool ! See, how it flashes in the wintry sun! And hear the water splash ! — how clean ! how cool ! And behold how visible, yea, on every one. The Silences of enormous centuries Brood on the rocks and the unstlrring trees ! Hushed be the heart ! for with the common Dawns A music, not of Earth or Sky, repeats — The hymns that Milton heard on singing morns, The songs the winter sunrise sang to Keats ! Gray reeling mufiled mist-voice lifted soft Into deep Shakespeare's brain — these may we hear In memory of English verse that oft Sings to the unforgetting ear. Morning in Central Park 41 To him whose ear is tuned To Nature's harmonies, the mighty morn Has glories in it — glories slowly torn Out of the heart of the World-Presence, God — Mysteries, many-sunned and myriad-starred — Glories like balm To heal the wound Of hurtful life — glories that wind an arm Of many green fields about the tired head — Glories that from the dead rocks leap and spread The heart so wide, the very Earth we tread Rolls through with a mighty shout witnessing God— The skies themselves find room within us then — And all the stars, We absorb suns — and comets pulse their fires Along the blood — and like a tide through bars Of closing sand, out of the infinite sea Into the bay of our being rolleth the Lord! Lo, to our primal strength we are restored, Lo, we are Men ! Lo, we are strong again ! This Is the secret which the unblooded clerks Roofed all the hours of waking and of sleeping 42 Morning in Central Park Miss — the true secret of Man's mightiest works — Go, till through you — body and brain — is sweep- ing Strength of the open skies and the open Earth — Make all that strength your own — Set suns a-roll in your veins, bring worlds to birth In the vast brain, drink up with your spirit, wealth Of sunrise health. Till to the stature of Man suddenly grown You feel the power of Earth fused with your own. Cities are wildernesses sculptured in stone — Man only there is living — in the death Of rocks Souls crowd, chanting a monotone Of many works — go you and get the breath Of living Creation in an enormous Earth — An Earth roofed only by Eternity — Feel the World-Presence, share the tumultuous birth Of Morning — learn, not toil, but how to be — To live, to enjoy, to divide with God the world — To drink that strength whereby the Soul unfurled To all her vastness, grows into a god — Then, O come back, come back to where men plod. Morning in Central Park 43 Come back and bring the Earth you have annexed, Replenish the waste city with your wealth Of sunrise health — Soothe the poor brains toil-troubled and perplext, And do mighty Works — you have drawn from the sloping hill Strength of strong crops — from sun-enflooded branches Light, from morn music — now your heartstrings thrill With power — strength from the brain ava- lanches— You do the work of ten — You are a Man mighty among Men — And so God lowered in you and heart-released Liveth, that love subdues your human labor Even to the want and hunger of your neighbor — You are to the City a ray of the Dawn In the East! HYMN BEFORE MARRIAGE O NIGHT be clear, O stars be bright, O hearts be pure, O hands unite In tender love, in human love Upon our heavenly marriage night ! O let there roll, O sound and roll Grand music singing of the goal, The goal and godhood, goal and godhood Of the two-hearted human soul. Let every eye behold us two. Let every eye see deep and true God in us that creates new life From you and me, from me and you. O let them feel the undefiled Great passion that in brutes is wild : In us, Man's purest angelhood. The marriage that desires the child. We build our home, we start our race, To the far future, heavenly face, 44 Hymn Before Marriage 45 O mother-wife, thine eyes are set And on them God has left His trace. O holy music of low speech As round us love's arms greatly reach And from pure passion brings the child That makes us blood-kin each to each. O marriage, thou art God in man, O we creators are, and can Bring forth our living universe, Our world within the Heavenly Plan. THE SWEAT-SHOP WORKERS WHEN the streets whiten through dawn's huge Silence, you are first of the morn- ing tide, You have kissed your children asleep : they stirred not; but your wife was there at your side — The old eyes still gazed, the old lips still spoke, the old Cause still drove you to toil — You are staggering down Canyons where soon the dead bed with a roaring river will boil. And as if the City a monster were, and you her morning food, You are swallowed Into her black-rlbb'd heart and whirled In her cyclone of blood. Round, round, round with the dizzy machines, the drowning storm of the Shop, With the rasping Boss-voice lightning about, and the Speed that cannot stop ! You are held to your task by the grip of the Soul, not the hope of the gain you shall glean. The Sweat-Shop Workers 47 You are thrown, whole-man, into whirling work till you are the shop's machine. And then when the crumbling hours are worn, when at last to the stars they creep. Blinded with toil you shamble back home, and you kiss your children asleep. O labor-blasted and dreamless Man — have you breathed the health of the Sea, Have you sunn'd your Soul in the open skies, have you felt Eternity, Is Shakespeare yours? Have you sunk your cares in Broadway's dazzle and foam? You, of the two-roomM tenement-cliff, do you know the meaning of Home? Yea, surely, your wife ! But your Soul is blinded; you tumble into your bed : What shall the wild years do with your Soul? You have given your blood for bread ! But we that might gaze on your sleeping face with our modern uptown pity Would be dumbed with the revelation you are, O Galahad of the City! 48 The Sweat-Shop Workers O sacrifice to your heart-loved children, you whose whole self is hurled Away, that their Souls may reach beyond yours and climb to a starry New World, That they may walk with the larger Souls, free from the stain of the sod, Let us back to our uptown houses, dumbed: for you have walked with your God! THE WOMEN WAGE-SLAVES O LOVELIEST of the loneliest of the Earth's loneliest miles, The interminable streets, the interminable crowds, the interminable granite piles, O loneliest in the lonely millions, hedged in by toil's cold bars. You, who have only a hall-room skylight to open out to the stars I World-peopled our city roars with labor, and rolls with a tide gigantic. Seas of humanity, oceans more fierce, more huge than the storm-led Atlantic, And you, you are flakes of the flying foam, breast bare to the bitter wind — Yet loveliest in the sloughs of the Deeps: you have starved, but you have not sinned ! You have starved : you are women of Joan's great heart, splendidly independent — Down the Great White Way of the New World City, ablaze with her sparkle resplendent, 4 49 ^O The Women Wage-Slaves Your feet were firm, where others faltered: your Vision led beyond The crowd, to the peak of the Noble Woman: your Mother's ancient bond. Dreaming above your aching hands In the roaring factories, Dreaming through the undying hours and alien to all ease, Your cheeks go white, your blood throbs dim — life stales and the brain fags, You could cry when you think of your unused hopes, you could cry when you look at your rags. But oh, you have kept soul and flesh together, in- tact, and womanly pure. You have won the oldest fight of the world — 'gainst Doom you shall endure — And what can we others grant you of good, O women miraculous? We might give you the ease of the flesh, but you — you bring new gods to us! UP LONG ISLAND SOUND WAREHOUSE and wharf sea-weathered, smoke and the 'longshore grime, TwiHght on two great cities whose rugged skylines climb Horizons, to the gray glimmer of the first faint star-sprinkle, With lights in a thousand windows that in the soft tides twinkle — And swaying and swashing and sliding in a rhythm up the gray River Into the twilight, over the waters — sweeping, for- ever Rocked m a rhythm, the mland steamer ripples the tide — And we glide away from the roaring World: to the hills we glide. Lo, now, meadows of fading green, and far gray highlands Twinkling with lights, and sweet little hilly droves of green islands 52 up Long Island Sound Close at our side, and sudden flung far, loosed from their ties, Boundless horizons — Earth's ends ! — and enor- mous skies ! Deep is the breath of the cool June breeze that we drink while the tender Twilight thickens in black and the far-spaced starry splendor Travels forever above us; while lost on the dark promontory Lights wheel, laying across our hearts tumults of glory ! Great is the swell of the open country and travel- ing skies — Sweet is the rhythm and roll of the boat as it foamingly flies — But even with morning as our stray'd feet the new cities enter, We shall yearn for the roar, the stir, the cyclone of the World's Storm-Center ! WIRELESS THE seas are deep and the seas are wide, and or ever the days of creatures were, By sun and moon was pulled the tide and all the Earth was ocean-stir — Then came land and then came beast and then came Man, and five feet high Blinked his eyes on the churning yeast of a sea that melted in the sky. Laughing the five-foot creature stood against the leagues on leagues of the deep — Laughing he knotted a raft of wood and paddled his craft through hollow and steep — But the seas are deep and the seas are wide and^ they swallowed him down — and a host there- after — Till nations came like a vast ebb-tide and went down cured of insolent laughter. Nation by nation the daring came, with ribs of oak and with ribs of steel. 53 54 Wireless With wing of sail or heart of flame but the great sea sucked them keel by keel — Till, some escaped and some flew free, and mam- moth greyhounds skimmed the deep — Yet still the salt and dreadful sea was like a mastodon asleep. But now Earth rolls into newer ages — a new ally is leagued with man — His ship is torn when the tempest rages, his keel Is bound with the ancient ban. But out through the big and blinding weather and the thick black fog that chokes and smothers Man sends his cry through the infinite ether and calls to him his coursing Brothers. Lo, at his call the mighty steamers turn them about with a word of love. And deeds in the brains of ancient dreamers come real In flesh and live and move — The Brotherhood gathers on gliding foam and with sandal-seas are their frail feet shod — Man is making of Earth a Home, man is making of man a god. Wireless 55 Lo, we have taken the Earth's rough features and builded cities and civilizations — Lo, we tiny sky-lost creatures are shadowed by our own creations — Earth, that was but rough seas and sands becomes a being with soul and heart — Man Is the Power of God with hands to build of Chaos an ordered Art ! Earth and the teeming fulness thereof is Man's: and In five feet of clay There Is light of Dream and fire of Love enough to burn the skies away — With every Labor the Soul enlarges — Its depths are vaster than the sea — We have not touched its starry marges, nor guessed how godlike we may be. Vast Eternities are before us with dreams and labors no soul may shirk: Pure with the Glory divine that bore us we shall loosen God in us : set Him to work : Unborn glories and grandeurs wait the releasing touch of a new creator: The Immense Creation of God is great but the human spirit shall make It greater. THE NEW KNIGHTHOOD IN the dust of the noon-day's Realness our newer Knights go out, No moons to lend bewitchment, no love-blazed forest-route — Glitters on wall and gutter the searching sordid sun — Real people with realest troubles! — Earth's War that is never won ! Of old did they tumble the villain to the smiles of the very young woman, Of old with clatter of armor they hunted the Superhuman, Love and song and enchantments lured them to secret lairs — But these — these trail for a Microbe up at the head of the stairs. They are swift In the filth of the hallway, and swift In the thick dust-motes That swirl through the street with the people, and settle In breathing throats, 56 The New Knighthood 57 They are there where the Unfed hunger, and there where the Unclothed shake; With the dead they watch; with the weak they walk; with the sick they wake! Or, In the white-walled schoolroom their patient labor draws Slowly Thought from the thoughtless, out of child-chaos. Laws! Yea, they shape as the sculptor the soft wax-clay of the child, They lead young souls to the Clearing out of the waste of the Wild! Or, on the sheets of the Paper shot thousandfold through the street They pour such Light as they harbor, that the breakfast of Man be sweet, That the morning bring him his Planet to inspect from his door to Japan, That Man may walk million-hearted in the mil- lion-thick Earth of Man! Little of Fame and of Flowers, and less of Gold and of Ease, 58 The New Knighthood The music that leads them is Service to the limit- less Needs of these, The reward is heart-touch with the Human — O Knights of the Silent Strife Have you seen the Grail where it hovers, have you drunk the fulness of Life? AN ITALIAN FUNERAL HUMBLY, O humbly, in slow procession, the hearse and horses, the drivers and mourners Trail between tenements hung with dark faces and eddying crowds at the gray street corners — Clouds hold the skies in, the gutter is muddy, workmen are ripping the street for a sewer, And lo, to a drum-throb musicians are leading the dead, the dead to a Church of the poor. A drum-throb! Hark, like a sob of a mother heart-reft at midnight, music is soaring. Cry from the deeps of the heart of the human, cry that breaks weird through the world's wild roaring — Blasts of the Law that strikes without pity, wails of the Love that Is bowed to the Law, Voice of all mortals blessing God's giving, God's taking : harking, I shiver with awe ! 59 6o An Italian Funeral And lo, to that music yon swarthy Italians between them are sawing a pine-beam in half, The dead-march rhythm runs through their labor; they swing, they sweat, they grumble and laugh; Hurrying men greet each other and jostle on er- rands of business: all are alive: But the dead trails through the red storm of the living, and the mourners are dumb in the loud man-hive. Now at the Church a shrunk shawled woman, weird with saint's eyes and prayer-given lips, Swings back the door, and lights the six candles, and bends to the Christ whose breast-gash drips; In creeps the coffin borne by stout drivers, and twenty poor humans pour shadowy after. Dark, dirty, bowed with a Pain more than mourn- ing; yon woman sheds it in ghastly laughter. O Poor, mean-begotten, rag-pickers, fruit-peddlers, refuse and riff-raff washed up a foul street. Stowed in a cellar under tons of great peoples, torn by the trample of millions of feet, An Italian Funeral 6i O Poor, have you too the dead In your rooms? Have you brought him forth for the world to see? Six candles light him ; a priest and a chanter sing- song old Latin to set the soul free. Jesus looks down and Mary beholdeth, incense arises: the dead Is dead! Women, O women weep under head-shawls, bleed, torn hearts, uncomforted ! Dead, he Is dead, that was dead since birth, that never awoke to the music and dream, A dumb forked beast that bred and fed mouths and was drowned at last In the mud of the stream. He Is gone : one mouth less now to be filled : but, oh, one toller less : he Is gone ! A month shall you nearly starve for the burial: you must pay, pay dearly for leave to mourn. And why do you do It? Is there love among shadows. In cellars; have you dreamt of eternal life? Were you led, after all, by the flaming Vision, O son, O brother, O mother, O wife? 62 An Italian Funeral Lives a God In your world — your world where the sands forever sink down through the trusted sieves? I see you stare at the Christ on the wall : my heart Is torn as by hands — God lives! You see his face, you behold his sweetness: he gropes to you through a plaster cast: And lo, to me he gropes through your faces, he gropes, he touches, he thrills at last! LOWER BROADWAY IN thousand-foot shadows between the clijffs a little gray people is shadow-lost — And visions of faces are glimpsed in whiffs and vanish into the torrents tossed — Hardly I think that of a woman each of these mites was crying born, ,And now comes risen in flesh and human, filling with thought and dream the morn, 'With a heart that might hold the passion of Keats, with a soul that might speak with Lincoln's breath, With one great life that through these streets is hurled up-glorying into death — Yea, what toil by these souls is done, what Shakes- peare-vision or Caesar-strife In the twenty thousand times the sun rises and sets on a human life? I look up a thousand-windowed wall — then down on a woman's passing face — I think how the suns by millions fall with the Earth o'errun by a pygmy race — 63 64 Lower Broadway I think of the Past behind the Past: how all the suns have arisen in soul, How the souls have struggled till now at last a little gray crowd through a deep street rolls. But lo, if my flesh had sharper senses this world were as a glory that runs — Were my frail eyes strengthened with mighty lenses these walls were atoms storming in suns — What if my soul through the lens of love beheld these lives that flicker by? . . . Do we not all from one Birth move to one vast Moment when we die? Have we not all had some hour wild when our life was one with the world's love-stories? Have we not seen this world through a child, and thus are children in realms of glories? Have we not swung between bitter and sweet — home and grave and some Vision's breath? — There are unborn babes in this noisy street, and we walk on the very pavement of Death. Lo, the dreamed souls of Shakespeare's stories are but the shadows of any life — Lower Broadway 65 Any woman has touched more glories as child and young girl, mother and wife — Any life, howsoever common, is hunger and love and the Gleam, the Gleam — We toil, we love — and lo, the human is making real some unseen Dream. Dream of the million aeons that rolled suns into worlds, worlds into Man, Till the ages are in our eyes that behold, our hands that labor, our brains that plan — Yea, each in this street is the Lord God risen in flesh to harmonize His works: Unwitting the motorman tracks the Vision and the Gleam is penned by the tired clerks. Though we eat and breed and take our wages as if to shame our spirits sublime We move with Power, we fruit of the ages, we street-lost seeds of all coming time — Lo, each soul has an unseen companion he holds in secret, against all odds — In thousand-foot shadows in the gray canyon a little gray people is hiding gods. THE NICKEL THEATER O SHAKESPEARE come and sit with us! Here are such theater-glories As you, O million-peopled Soul, had loved! For you told stories The crowds could see — yea, though the poems swept over their brains blind. So much were women and men your words you spoke to all mankind. It's a thick black room and a rough rude crowd — the real strong human stuff — A screen's before, a beam of light rules through the air — enough ! Lo, on that beam of light there darts vast hills and men and women. The screen becomes a stage; here's life, blood-red with the hving human ! In but ten minutes how we sweep the Earth, un- baring life. Here in Algiers and there in Rome — a Paris street — the strife 66 The Nickel Theater 67 Of cowboys swinging lariat ropes — the plains, the peaks, the sea — Life cramped in one room or loosed out to all eternity ! Lo, now, behold the dead salt desert, the trail-lost man and wife, A child clutched to her breast ! They toil through sand, they cry for life. They stagger on from hill to hill — now far, now near — their cry Breaks through our hearts, their fight is ours, we love them as they die ! Yea, in ten minutes we drink Life, quintessenced and compact. Earth is our cup, we drain it dry; yea, in ten min- utes act The lives of alien people strange; the Earth grows small; we see The humanness of all souls human: all these are such as we ! 68 The Nickel Theater O at day's end, and after toil that dragged the heart In the street, What utter glory to forget, to feel again the beat Of the warming heart with light and life and love's unearthly gleam, Till Dreams become our Living World, and all the World's a Dream ! Now we have lived the pain of others, now we have drunk their joy! It gives us new heroic grip upon our day's employ ! O Shakespeare, here Earth's dimmest brain can draw strength from great stories ! The millions grasp their heritage of Art, the theater-glories ! THE COMING OF MAY MAGIC Is the Spring — past thinking, past dreaming — it's the oldest and newest story — We smile at the ardent lovers, but share their frail first spoils of glory — Hence to the wildwood, hence to the hills, is our desire and yearning — Hence even to the city's landscape Park when tenuous noon is burning! The naked trees and the soggy lawns and the little hollows and pools, The slips of the golden hyacinth, the breeze that heats and cools, — All Earth seems like a being sublime, stirred the first time with soul — We lounge on a bench and straight we are seized, as a furnace clutches a coal. 69 70 The Coming of May By the flame and fire of awakening Earth, till we ache and blaze with big mood, Till our thoughts yearn out to and through the skies! — Yonder a blackbird, wooed, Half-won, hurtles over the heavens, her mate pur- suing, exultant, daring! Even this breeds heartache — it's the time of love — yea, all creation is pairing! little black ant, O miracle of body and heart and brain ! 1 marvel! For if my hand slapped down, this miracle were slain ! You are life, and I, I am life, and the Earth swarms with thick-millionM life, Life throbs through all, fragile with death — its head laid under the knife! O sun-heat smiting the Earth obliquely and tem- pered with ice at the pole, And cool and hot on my cheek and stirring the city-slow'd floods of the soul, O sun-heat drawing this life from my heart and this life from the heart of the Earth, The Coming of May 71 So that to the blue skies millions of bud-things stir and strain at the birth ! And the little black ant, like the larger black bird, feels the God and he builds and mates, And my heart Is filled with a fire — and a blending of mighty antagonist fates Bears ant and bird and beast and myself and the flowing stream and the Earth And men and women and stars and God through Spring's gigantic birth. ELLIS ISLAND THREE thousand miles of Atlantic seas and a throb that cuts the top, The rushed four-funneled fleeting ship, that, with- out curb or stop, Hurls on, while Earth ten times rolls round till, under morning stars She breasts the mist of a continent and slows at the groaning bars ! And lo, three-layered Humanity in her steerage bunks asleep. Rising at Dawn and crowding aft, and in the infinite sweep Of gray — the sea, the sky — see dim, dream- greatened and gigantic, America, America, uprisen from the Atlantic I Swift on dead centuries of faces a sun flames, ere the Sun Blows the blue bubble of the heavens vast — yea, flaming, one by one, 72 Ellis Island 73 These faces are a psalm to God — a morning hymn — the sea, The sky, the land are a living Temple with a thousand Souls set free. Swing then the uplifted, crowded people in trans- port to our Isle — Morning with strong sun and sweet gales and the Bay's yeasty mile. Like hands holds forth a glorious City — her smoke's sky-swimming shoals. Her flight of cliffs, her range of peaks all honey- combed with Souls! O come through the Ellis Island Gates — O rush the swift routine. Sweep to new birth on a planet new — for lo, at the wire screen Of the waiting cage, the Americans clutch — yea, as starved people stare. Watching your alien faces pass to see if one be there. Yonder old trembling man three hours has stood ! Through the shuffling crowd 74 Ellis Island A pink-shawled withered old woman shambles over her baggage bowed; He pales; he cries her name; she bursts into his arms; the years Melt back into the glory of youth, still seen through blinding tears. Old Woman — strong girls, swart men, soft babes — you hordes across-seas hurled, O pioneers, as one dares Death, you dare a great new World ! You bring strong blood, and Faith and Love, stout hearts and homely traits — What shall our country do with you — deal out what Doohis, what Fates? Shall we judge by your alien ways, and lose the gifts that are all your own? Or shall we rise to grander heights than Earth has ever known? Yea, shall we seize on you with love, far-building on your trust? Are we great enough to swing to God what Europe trailed in dust? Ellis Island 7$ O our America, O Mother, great have you been, our hearts Are yours, our faith and love are yours — great are your trades and arts. Your Men — fail not! Earth looks to you, her vast Experiment-Station To test if souls may be borne to God in the arms of a Mother-Nation! Shun not the Mission! Fearless, fearless mother Earth's mightiest race — Yea, seize your flashing stars and stripes and stamp across the face That word, the strongest in our tongue, that sums the grain of sod. The skies thick-sunned, the Earth, the Soul, our country — the word ''God!" THE HOME COMING July, 1905 TWINNED with our star-splashed, blood- barred flag, born from the same world- womb, Lay them together, America, together in one tomb. So did he swear in the years when his soul saw earth through human eyes — Give him his great wish, give him his wish, be- neath American skies. Bring him back to the hearts that are throbbing because his great heart beat. Bring him back, bring Paul Jones back, and lay him at our feet. (We hear the swift ship, swift ship, pulse along her singing track — And O, heart, throb ! America, Paul Jones is coming back!) His dead form thrills to the engine's pulse, his dead ear harks the salute. And while a land, man-mighty exults, his lips can- not be mute; 76 The Home Coming 77 His old gun-thunder re-echoes round, his bleeding crew stand forth, And the Richard fights the Serapis in the smoke of a sunless North; He walks the deck, he handles the guns, he leads the assault, he bleeds — Through smoke and flame the great ship runs, alive with deathless deeds. (We hear those great deeds, great deeds echo, beneath the shrouds of black — And O, heart, throb! America, Paul Jones is coming back!) Lo, where the great Sea-Captain fought — our fighter who never failed — Lo, on the furious, storming skies our flying colors were nailed, Our free flag followed around the world our first great Captain-Sailor, And it blossomed from mast to mast till it blew from warship, greyhound, and trailer. His was the day of the sailing ship, now bring him back in steam. Let him pulse to a nation that rushes on to live his deepest dream, yS The Home Coming That sits in power and moulds her sons and read- justs the earth, That makes all men as masters free to grow in manly worth, That spines the great globe with those nerves that make of her the Heart, So that the Earth is small and serves as servant to her art. O, bring him back to a great new land, that yet is but the old, And let our flags of joy be flung while funeral bells are tolled. (We hear the slow ship, slow ship, sob along her midnight track — And O, heart, throb! America, Paul Jones is coming back!) O, who loves not his country so deeply and so dear He feels he must be buried in the great, great graves of her? O, pines upon our mountains, O, rocks upon our shore. His dust shall mingle with your dust, forever, ever more. The Home Coming 79 His dust in France, strange-tongued, lay far and far from home, But his Ghost has moved our nation and now his dust shall come, And his dust shall serve as a symbol, and his spirit shall work in our souls Till the whole world is America and one between the poles. (We see the dead dust, dead dust shrouded, deep, deep in black — And O, heart, throb, America, Paul Jones is coming back.) THE EXCURSION BOAT WE split the running seas apart, We storm into the roaring gale — Storm-music shakes the mighty heart, Our fingers tremble on the rail. The long ship pulses to her rods. Her pennants fly, she takes the seas As if she bore a thousand gods To new Hesperides ! The great new skies come up and go, The lurching sun far-flaming rolls, We race the Atlantic's foaming flow, And oh, we are a thousand Souls, A thousand Souls with godlike worth — We own these seas, we own these skies — Our heritage is all the Earth — We seize it with our eyes ! O sad Italian at the 'cello, O dreaming boy with violin, Sea-wind and ship-throb purge and mellow The fingering false, the scrawnv din — 80 The Excursion Boat 8 1 Your music leads us on the seas, A wandering Voice, a flying fire, A Spirit pouring through the breeze All that our hearts desire ! Lo, when we slipped with whistle-shriek Easily from the barren dock. And down the river steamed to seek Ocean's salt surge and roaring shock. And upward in a golden haze The City took her massive flight. Her windows silverM with sun-rays. Her towers, peaks of light — How pitiable the human faces — The worrying lines, the haunted eyes- Earth's street-yoked labor-blasted races. The steel Machine's blood sacrifice — The Mother care-worn with her child. The Father hunted by To-morrow, O boatload groaning with your wild Women and Men of Sorrow! 82 The Excursion Boat But lo, the spindrift lashed and seethed, And lo, the health of sea and earth Like arms snatched up these Souls, and breathed Through them the flame of second birth — And now on board a fire rolls — The boat is as a blast from God Shrilling Man's Resurrection: Souls Burst from the broken clod ! IMMIGRANTS IN THE BAY NEW waked from a night on the seas With bright stars ghttering, New waked by a morning breeze And land-birds twittering Sweet, in the sudden-seen green Of a glorious dawn, We come, freed fresh and hands clean Of the Old World gone ! Out of the myths and the mysteries Age-old, enslaving. Out of the world's bloody histories, — Filled with new craving We have come, pioneers from afar To the New World's gates — Your beacon our fixed North Star, O Union of States ! Our eyes are fresh with bright morning, And blue skies enormous, And the land In the new light adorning In fires that warm us, 83 84 Immigrants in the Bay Flames of fresh foliage and frondage That thrill our sea-eyes — We are freed, freed from blood-bondage In New Earth and New Skies ! And behold, what before unbeholden Slow slipped on our gaze, Yonder city wrought of the golden Sunrise and haze — Her golden hair in the sunward Heavens, and her palms Calling us to her, as onward We rush to her arms! O ramparts raised up colossal, World-promontory ! Our hearts, of the Old Earth fossil. Are broken in glory — Mistress of Continents, Woman Of the New World^s Birth- Beautiful! drawing all human Hearts from all Earth ! Immigrants in the Bay 85 Who could withstand her voice tender With hints of heart's duty — Who could resist her bright splendor, Her alluring beauty? Thanks to the gods that grant us Her sons to be ! — This is the Lost Atlantis, Raised from the sea. HOME, AFTER WORK DYNAMO-MUSIC all day Throbbing its volts through the brain- Throbbing its dirges of Pain, Its music of world-work and strain, Dying and dying away When twilight is gray! Hoofs and voices and wheels, Song of a city in toil, Song of incessant turmoil. Hunt of the golden spoil. Music that sways and reels, Music one hears not, but feels ! O glancing vision of glories. Streets and crowds and the calls, Streets and crowds and the halls, The sun-flashing windowed walls, Man-builded, stories on stories. Sublime promontories! 86 Home, After Work 87 And now at home in my chair The golden day pours Hke a sea Ever and ever on me, Touched with eternity, O, swims in the evening air, Vision and glory rare ! And Peace floats into the heart, — All day in the crowd I was hurled, By the crowd was my Soul unfurled, I helped in the work of the world, I played my part, my part — O power of Peace in the heart, Eternal peace in the heart! PAIN EARTH, with her million swirling whirlwinds of love and passion and lust, Earth, with her storms of billions of faces, souls In a cyclone of dust — What does this Comedy-Tragedy mean? I cross your path, I, man. You, woman, our lives thenceforth entwine — Is It chance, it Is God, Is It plan? I am lost In a column of a human hundred, sucked streaming In the storm. Torrents of Women and Men forever pouring In swarm beyond swarm — Whence Is the drift, whither the flood? Through the millions of years that ran Since Earth was fire, was I borne on the tide that casts me up now, a man? I have brain, I have heart, and I think I have soul : this world never lets me alone — I must love and hate and scheme and sweat blood: I must loose my lusts and atone — am 89 Men, women, sweet children drift round and round, a raging blizzard of life, — How they draw my soul! — it's my son, it's my friend, my mother, my brother, my wife. And my soul craves down through my flesh for food and pleasure and vice and love — Lo, you large stars in the Night's hand, worlds aloft, worlds, worlds above, O suns, suns, suns, like our human storm, pouring through space with Earth — Lusts fade, when I think how among these stars my mother cried at my birth. I have risen from ape on this Earth that is swal- lowed in the whirling storm of stars. Those million-million oceans of fire, that rain through heaven like chars Of kindled sparks. And my ancestry through the million years of man Is bloody-black with crime and hate, with Cain's and Judas' ban. 90 Pain Where's the escape ? Where is there hope ? The midnight sounds me this riddle. How came I here, just now, aHve, writing, yea In the middle Of a rhyme, with ink and pen and paper? Do I know that I do not dream — That I live, that I truly am man — and man?' . . . What driftwood on what stream? you gates of the Lord opened at night, O you merciful gates of the Lord ! 1 have toiled, I have suffered, yea, I have known Pain, Pain that has cut the heart's cord! Yea, Pain Is life's sharpest Reality! And even now scorched by the rod Of Pain, truth flashes: this moment bares Soul — and drowning doubt — brings God. THE WORLD-HOME I AM at home In the glorying ocean where the waves put in Hke mighty swimmers — I am at home in the strange sea-motion of streets where no horizon glimmers — And were I plunged in the deepest mine, after a season of blackness blind, There would I find all things divine and be at home with earth and my kind. And were I lifted by aeroplane like a scahng eagle nearing the sun The flowing skies were my domain and I with the upper air were one — For the spirit of man is bone of the bone and soul of the soul of all that there is — Wherever he is he finds his own, his hell of pain, his heaven of bliss ! For living and breathing are sun and earth, sand- grain and soul, and brother and brother They mix and mingle through birth and birth, and pour and change into one another — 91 92 The World-Home All of the powers of all of the skies ebb and flow through the soul of man, And the suns are altered by human cries, sped by our blessing, checked by our ban. In the thick-eddying swim and push of the million- million facts of the world Breathes the glorious — caught in the rush of some- thing wild is my being hurled — Could I but reach to my inner height, could I but use the power in me, I could be as the sun in light and in my might as the heaving sea. A SONG OF LABOR A DREAM Is on the people, A light, not flame light, falls Upon great broken faces. These ruined human walls, And at the master moment Beyond the soul breaks sod, And angels in the heart's core Sing gloriously of God. In deeds that make men brothers. In acts that give us soul, Those destinies are hidden That sweep us to the goal, But we, as gods, are dreamers. And we, as angels, dream. We little apes with visions That are not what we seem ! O heart of Man, what glories Have never come to pass, The dream that never wakened. The love that never was — 93 94 ^ Song of Labor The good, the great, the labor- O save the ways half-trod Our hves flow on corrupted Into the hfe of God. If, gazing on dead faces, Our grief Is too, too wild, If hearts of tender mothers Are broken on a child, O what might be that anguish In God, who sees unfurled Man's evil, for His creature Is child of all the world I O draggled souls, O demons, O human sharks and snakes, Free fight of savage devils, O beast that in us wakes. We, drunk with teeming power. Have shaken the firm earth Until her heart is rotten And lost to love and mirth. A Song of Labor 95 But One has seen our wildness And over us are shed Dreams, that lead forth our labor, Ghosts, that divulge our dead, A pity, that Is saving. The tears, that make us pure. And love, that In great hours To God shall make us sure. O what shall bring the morning Of dreams that rush In deed, The workshop thronged with workmen Handling the living need? O sweat of brow scarce-purposed In a never dreamed of quest I O hearts that never tire ! O hands that never rest I THE HUMAN DEAD OUR human world Deepens into the world divine of death, The human soul deepens and is unfurled At the last gasp of breath. We leave the Earth As if we turned the corner of a street, And there emerging through the dawn of birth Old human souls we meet. And do not these, These souls lean back and whisper through our sky? Human are the dead, human as Socrates, Human even as I. Not In the morn In songs of sunrise come their voices near. But In a heart that humbled is and torn There they sing sweet and clear. For by suns kissed And out of utter Hght they us behold, Knowing we are but strugglers m the mist And sorrowers In the mold. 96 The Human Dead 97 And all the pain And all the groplngs and the loves of Earth Return upon them like wood-smells in rain Calling them to our hearth. For here they wrought, Here they achieved and here was born the child- Nay, they were children here themselves and sought Their Mothers with hearts wild. They knew the bliss Of old Spring nights when in the rainy grove Wet lilacs led them, boy and girl, to kiss The first kiss of first love. They knew divine Autumn-gray wildernesses wild with storm When a great sea-roar goes from pine to pine And the cabin light glows warm. They knew the street Where through the sunset gold a people press Homeward, and in the doorway is the sweet Wife in young loveliness. 7 98 The Human Dead Or household bloom And glory when the mother bathes the child, And laughter leaps in the low darkened room And the world is young and wild. Do the dead dream Of summer nights beside a sea of foam? Or see old morning lift its crimson gleam? Do they remember home ? All little things Come back to them among the million suns And they draw down — their love being touched with wings — To their lost little ones. They see our strife, They see our faces groping from above — They hear our white-hot human cry for life, Our divine cry for love. And they are human And we divine: and so we speak each other, Man unto man and woman unto woman And children unto Mother. MOUNTAINTOP The beauties of the woodland tempt us on To wilder beauties still : but in the night The silver moon rains mellow light upon The forest floor in splashes of dim white: And all seems like a web of dark and bright, Like a dark cell lit with a flickering luster, And through the grating hard, A sight of constellations In a cluster. Dimmed by the flaunting moon, outmastered and outstarred. The path goes winding through this mazy jail Up the wide steep of rocks and gnarled roots, Our lanterns sparkle as we take the trail, And at the blinding sight the wood-owl hoots. But softer than the sound of failing flutes The far off water and the dying wind, — The nation of leaves Dipped in a silver sea, before, behind. Like a great surging ocean, mingles and swells and heaves. 9^ 100 Mountaintop In all the stillness not a lone bird's warble The teeming wilderness with song endows, The tree trunks stand like pillars of white marble Beneath the garland of the tangled boughs, The wind dips deep and murmurs as it soughs Through the thick woodland, and the moving stream Lingers without a tune, And earth and heaven lie as in a dream Silvered and softened by a waning moon. The crumbling hours wear with our toil — It seems forever In this prison dark We are to be pent up : In this thick coil Forever to be aiming at a mark Forever further placed, — when lo, and hark I The roaring gale over the mighty peak, The far-flung snatch of sky, The sheer slant of the weathered rocks, the bleak, PIne-poInted top ahead, — and like a hare we fly. Then through a cut where the wide sky is clear A sudden hint of color: then a shout Mountaintop lOi Anc we go bounding like a man in fear Up the steep rocks and the high peak's re- doubt, And sudden with a leap we all swing out Upon the very peak and promontory, And such a burst of view, And such an exultation and a glory. And such a breath of freedom, as yet, we never drew. Vision afar, untouched, untongueable ! Words are insipid in the face of this. The wild exhilaration makes us able Only to know and feel unbounded bliss, To stand before the gale's intrepid kiss With almost bursting and exultant breast — Here the wild eagle swoops Straight Into space from his cliff-clinging nest — Here the wind blows forever hope In the heart that droops. All of the world unrolls before our eyes, Ranges on ranges of far-flinging peaks Hued with dull purple : In the eastern skies I02 Mountaintop Hugging the hills the pink and ruddy streaks Of early dawn: the stricken-sick moon seeks Its bed: and what a tinted stretch of space, Mountains and silver lakes, Soft sleeping mist upon the foothills' face, As through the sky the day with hosts of color breaks. The dawn is waking like an opening eye Half dazzled by the color that outspreads, The splendid scarlet streamers in the sky Battle the purple the hill-shadow sheds — Between, the silver lakes locked in their beds. And misty hills, Immersed, unreal and strange — When like a flashing gun A snake of golden fire gilds the range, A fringe of running gold, and like a flame, the sun. Oh transformation of the sky and earth ! The undulating gray-green, miles and miles, Blows off its mist as In a burst of mirth. The chilly water down the bald defiles Glitters and sparkles: the huge granite piles Mountaintop 103 Stand In their nudeness, rugged, unconfined, But for close-clinging streaks Of hardy balsams weathering the wind, Above the broadly flung, vast ocean of the peaks. An ocean which shall stand forever off — Yet are the mountains the high billows and waves Rolling forever onward : In their trough Ripples the mighty forest : the wind raves But still the sea stands off, nor ever laves The elemental rock which, solid, rears High up its head sublime. All silent through the mighty wash of years. Swept by the clouds and wind, defying storm and time. Now seem we on the apex of a planet With all the earth's side In Its element. Showing Its bonework of washed, rusty granite, Its mighty gulfs making a yawning rent In the wide green: and In the whole space pent 104 Mountaintop The winds of all the earth, which, with a wail Over the peaks are hurled. And bare trees stripped stark nude by the shrill gale Stand like rude signal towers to speak another world. Here's liberty, here's liberty at last. We've left humanity in chains beneath. Feelings of freedom sweep us like a blast. We shake off custom like a withered wreath. We dance, we sing, we play, we live, we breathe. Even the masters of ourselves are we — Blow on, wild wind, blow on. Shrill courier of boundless liberty. We are alone, and bonds, wrought by man- kind, are gone. Immensity of space forever rolling, Immensity of wind forever roaring. Great universe, whose mighty power controlling Our eager feet, yet frees us — we are pouring Our souls to you, and our wild spirits soaring Mountaintop 105 Seem of the nature of creations glorious — Like a new deity We sing and shout with hearts victorious Upon the wind through space, paeans of liberty ! ROOSEVELT March 4, 1909 MARCH winds blowing all wild — And whirling heavens through blue pools spill Shine of the sun, and a romping child Flies a red kite on a hill — The boy-god's hair Is streaming — He tugs at the string — And the vast landscape dreaming Beats up the heavens a-wing — The young gods of Greece Knew not such ecstasies — You boy, I feel your eager American blood Sweep a reddened flood Glorying through my heart — You boy, I see in you the American nation — The Boy-Land of the Earth Set by the seas apart And laughing over prairies In his mirth — For America Is youth, joy, glory, exultation I Exultation ! The shine of the sun breaks transitory 106 Roosevelt 107 On a glittering people, a gleaming nation — But through this day a glory Glides — But in our heart a glory Abides ! And our wild March joy Is at its topmost span, For we know that this Leader that seems like a Man, This Servant in our employ, Is only our Biggest Boy. "Come down," we say, "a People changes hands — And forty-six young lands Call you down to the common streets of men. And bid you romp in the crowd again ! Have you not flown your red kite night and day? Have we not laughed with you and felt the sway Of Fatherhood to see you have your way? For eight years were you not — America !" O Biggest Boy, We will forget your faults (are they not racy of youth?) And let our American joy io8 Roosevelt Skim off the lies of the Soul and drink of the truth. Why must we to the living Be unforgiving Of faults? Why wait till Death exalts? For this man was uncommon In that he was so human — So like us — variable as human weather — Vast with our wide-horizon'd soil — Merely eighty millions put together In one prank — dream — joy — jubilation — toil! To Motherhood he was a Mother — To Brotherhood a Brother — He was us all — spirit and heart and limb — He could not exhaust his power — he could not tire — Our passions fought in him, our dreams took fire In him, our laughter woke in him ! Brother-Boy, yet you were common! No genius added god to the frail human ! Therefore you turned to your Soul, and called on Power — Roosevelt 109 The Power that connects with every Soul — By stress of divine sweat hour by hour You made the inner Mightiness unroll — You drew strength to your flesh, your heart, your brain And by undreamable pain Became that all that any man may be. The Superman in common humanity ! And now you are America's hope: for you Proved what common man may do. When pansy, daisy and the wild violet In cool of the morning shall be splattered wet, When bluebird, blackbird, redbird so shall sing That flames of love shall shake the blossomy boughs. And the young human baby laugh in the city house, When March with sun and wind leads in the Spring With trailing briers And golden fires — What if the blue heavens arch a happier Earth Because of you? What if all America lies bathed in heaven anew And hallowed with new birth? no Roosevelt Not only babies, birds, and beasts, and buds, And the breaking of the ice-locked floods, And the glory of green on hills that rest and on seas that roll — But a new birth of Freedom and the Soul? Lincoln's work was never done — Slavery to slavery Pendulates Democracy — Forever is our Freedom to be won — Even while the torn war-flags flew victorious On Richmond and the bleeding States assembled, And the gray heart of Lincoln leaped and was glorious. His worn soul trembled For his children's land — He saw the continent-shadow of a hand Steal forth to gild the landscape and the street — He saw the cities dimmed with golden sand, And cyclone on the prairied corn and wheat — Deep down he looked in the dark abysm Of smoking Industrialism ! Wild is March weather ! Mass we together. Roosevelt iii A people once more on the slant that slopes Into the sunrise: for our lariat ropes Have curled about the traitors: they are low: And once again we go Singing together In wild March weather! Up from our hearts roll laughing tributes of joy That in our highest American, That in this jubilant Boy The new Times found their Man ! They found their Man! He met the invasion Of traitorous vices — He did not wait — he made his Occasion — He wrought a Crisis ! He poured his heart out warm Till we arose with his heat And shook the cities with storm And with panic the street! And what if the Future chalk This Fame above Time's flood! "He forced a fight of talk To shun a fight of blood?" Boy-Brother, till our people cease You shall be the Warrior of Peace — 112 Roosevelt No victor of a Gettysburg, no Grant, No Bonaparte crippling the World with craze — But the American who saves, not slays ! So let the March sun slant Into his setting splendors and far-roll This day a glory round this common Soul Until a people see That he eternally shall be One of America's Three ! One with Lincoln, and one With Washington! March winds blowing all wild — And blessings on our eldest child! Boy, how can we help but love you ? You erring, daring, happy Soul! Let our love about you roll And our blessing be above you ! Romp once again! and may your life Be as a dying strife — And may your winter move through golden days In circles of bright praise — A harvest world, a World of Friends — And when the long earth-history ends Roosevelt 113 May you wing out to Lincoln, not apart, But through a mighty People's heart — A living People's heart! We will be great, and to the living Give love And be forgiving — We will be great and rise above The mocking Past, letting no Future claim This Man who knew our people for his Mother: Living, we give him Fame, Living, we hail him Brother. THE MARRIAGE-HYMN SPIRIT of April, spirit of Spring, Spirit of unborn corn on the upland slopes, Spirit of red-birds dreaming on boughs a-swing, Spirit of human hopes ! This is your time of the year — This is your time : and two by two they come. Earth's lovers with their alien hearts drawn near. And lips that now, at last, no longer may be dumb. Love's glory and fire Are on the Earth — And immortal desire Has birth — The man and the woman Toward each other must move, And be divine-human In love — They may laugh under green of the boughs, They may dance over freshening grass — But out of the sun, and out of the meadow, Slowly they come to the shadow — 114 The Marriage -Hymn 115 Softly they creep from their youth's dream-house, Softly into the world they pass — Under the crown of the marriage-bower They step: and Love from this great hour Has no more, nevermore, its April-splendor, And no more, nevermore, its fiery glory — But it becomes a thing more human, tender. That life's low daily deeds may store youth's lost love-story ! This is the sadness of life: But this is the gladness of life: That nothing dies in the heart, save to make ampler room For vaster glories and more glorious bloom ! Then shall she, the woman-wife, Make the four-walls of a dwelling Hallowed with the light of life. And a love, intense, up-welling, Overflowing through her home. Where a man may be content, Where the peace of God may come. Where a lifetime may be spent! Ii6 The Marriage-Hymn And the man, far-toiling through the world, In the sweat and stress of mighty deeds, By life's struggle and life's storm unfurled, Shall return more than a heart that bleeds — Yea, shall bring the breath of the world Into his home — Broadening its depths with currents of knowledge hurled Under the shallow foam! And the two together — may they know, O may they know that love cannot suffice : Deeper than this their daring hearts must go: A perfect marriage is self-sacrifice ! May this sweet marriage lead, if to no goals Of grandeur, to that goal that all may touch : That human goal that means so much : Purer hearts and stronger souls ! And may they look upon each other Even as a perfect mother Looks upon her perfect child : Not as a wood-flower, vagrant-wild, But as a possibility, A bud of immortality. The Marriage -Hymn 117 A Soul to be unfurled To its bloom In the deep world ! So may they shape each other, this man and woman, Into pure souls more human. Into diviner souls — That progress may go on through all of life, That at the end of their brief human strife, Still may they cry: **To-morrow, seek new goals!" Ah, that to-night Something might open doors in their deep hearts, And let the light Of God stream in: that their love-story. Sweeter than all human arts, Might be transmuted to eternal glory; That all their life. This husband and his wife Might go on greatening in power of love. Might go on broadening their love, until It overflows their home and sends its thrill Into the crying world where millions move Through ways of darkness, crying for the light ! So might these two be touched with Infinite Ii8 The Marriage -Hymn And everlasting love — So might their marriage be a glory greater Than might or riches; yea, a glory above All, save the white light of the World-Creator ! THE DEEPS THE room Is black, the moon is low, The night is late, and fast asleep Lies she whom all my heart loves so, But I lie open to the Deep. The earth Is rolling us to God, The sandstorm of the stars is swept By His breath : in a small earth's sod I lie soul open, safely kept. Lo, she who lies there fast asleep. Her breathing low, her mind a blank, What is she ? and what currents sweep Her fast away from life's last bank? The moon is gone, the room is black, I lie soul open to the Deep — O never known, yet loved — I lack. Heart, you ! — Awake, you must not sleep. "9 THE CRY OF MAN WHAT roar as of breaking of Oceans, what cry as of seas on the iron-clanging coasts ? Lo, I peer through an acre of factory-sheds, I see in the blackness thin ghosts With white faces a-flutter: a thousand machines throb, thunder and worry and whirl — Only one Soul may I see : a great sunbeam splashes the face of a girl. Not she a mere scarecrow that wags on a cornfield, rag-wrapped, bone-fingered, loose-shod. For I see by the agonized whites of her eyes a ter- rible thirsting for God, I see by her lips a cry for the Life — O God, I could gather her in. Warm her with love, bear her ofF to the hills, and purge her of Pain and of Sin ! Could I bear this, were you mine, O you child? Lo, as mine, are you sacred, as mine, you are Soul! 120 The Cry of Man I2i O, through you I reach out to God again, I see far-flashing the Goal Of the rolling ages, the wild flight of Souls, the ages' vast Millions downtrod With dust in their mouths crying for the Lord, in the search eternal for God! O, Vision of the Ages pouring forth Millions, O Vision of the Ages' Soul Flight, Dropped from God's hand, winging over Earth, till caught by the tides of the Night, Homing to the Lord by quick millions in Death — still, still through the great flight rolls Revelation from God — the pouring of fire — the rush to new heights by all Souls ! For Souls that taste dust thirst for the Lord: in the sand-grain the pent Soul bursts. Is a life-cell; breaks on, it Is sponge; works out higher, is reptile ; sees sunlight, and thirsts More after God up through tiger, through ape; till the Soul through its simian ban Strains for a flight to the stars, the roll'd Heavens, and bursts into glory of man! 122 The Cry of Man But, lo, we are half-Souls, dust-tasters — our cry is the cry eternal for God, So strong that a Christ breaks through, and a Lincoln; and we of the dust, one with sod. Born in an age of dust, lo, through such souls as even you, world-broken Girl, See the Light, thirst anew ; the last Visions of Ages on our eyes like new fight-flags unfurl! Plato foretold it, Dante has sung it, Lincoln has lived it — our Souls Know if they struggled but through a thin film they would burst twenty worlds toward our Goals — A film ! Yet a change as from Caesar to Christ ! The new great upper air Blows all about us — we have but to rise one inch of the Soul to be there ! What new worlds? Oh, our brains, they may feel, but are blind! Our passion for God, that alone Charts the unpioneered Plain — that alone is a Sun on the unblazed Unknown! The Cry of Man 123 O my heart, be content with the fire of God— the fire that staggered and leapt Crying in the Democracies— flames by which worlds of the God-thirsting millions were swept 1 Yea, brain-fragments alone glimmer and vanish but we, we are human, our hands Must build Temples even from the straw, from the stubble, pile-spiked in the sea's rushing sands ! Then how word our Vision? That Christ lived the Real : that we live the Unreal, and must By our thirst, seek Realities: blowing from the world, from our planet, an Age of the Dustl For we know, O you Child, that your Want is our Sin; that the wild Excess that but gluts Our Souls beyond God, is a Sin; either way the Door of Eternity shuts. We are closed in with dust : Excess, yea, Excess is the lie we must meet with world-shock — We must build life anew on the Rock of the Real —the Rock of the Real— the Christ-Rock! 124 T^he Cry of Man O Child, we must train you in godhood, and build a great Home and a Love for your Life — We must give you a Faith; you must labor with joy: real woman, real mother, real wife! — For Earth's but our cradle — there are stars for our feet — world to world cries the flying Ideal— That which prepares us for Death, that alone, O that alone is the Real ! Which having, then shall our tears be dried? No, they shall lay the road's dust on to death I Still lives the ancient strange struggle of the Soul, still walk with us Cain and Macbeth, Still Judas and Nero ! — O God, shall forever drag the great Soul on the Earth Building, with blows of Pain, gods, his young gods, till Death flare, the last Fire-Birth! Neither shall glory sit at our tables and circle us gliding in cars. Neither shall Pleasure be tasted unpaid for — ^but Earth shall roll among stars As of old with the terrible Cry of Man — God's infant cradle-swung The Cry of Man 125 From the Sun and crying he knows not why till Death's sleep-chant has been sung. O vast troubled heart of the human, forever, for- ever shall hunger be yours, David shall brood there, Hamlet shall darken, and Joan, with the Faith that endures The blaze of the fagots, shall lead you on Visions — Visions which found shall half-break. Glass in your grasp, and fingers shall bleed, and the heart eternally ache! One step alone in a thousand years toward God is all we can climb, But oh, at the next step, lo, we shall find an Earth among new skies sublime, Where all men are toiling, where all men are sunned by the Chance of touching the Peak, Of struggling out a Soul, of lifting into God — O, the Chance, the Chance but to Seek ! To Seek ! Not be bound and doomed in the dust ! And the Seekers, the Millions, far-lifting In the dim new ages, we know they shall fail — some crushed, some self-lost, some drifting 126 The Cry of Man Back down the slopes — but the Chance shall be theirs, and ten thousand touching the Sun Shall pull the race upwards to the City of Broth- ers, till on Earth God's will be done! Till our streets shall be sunned with the joy of children, and our shops be busy with men Toiling together great ends of the Earth, and our homes be hallowed again With the Mother, the Child! Till our Schools shape Souls for an Earth-life ending in skies — Till we know that a Soul is a Soul, and as such is holy before our eyes ! Then put off the coward — live with the Vision! Let me go to my work in the morning With fire of God, let me strike in the open, let me cry, cry aloud the Age dawning — Let my life be Real — faith in my heart! My Eternity hangs on this day — God in me dies or leaps godward as I thunder my yea or my nay ! THE JEWS THEY are the pioneering race that have blazed their trail through peoples wild — They have staggered with bloody face but the per- fect trust of a little child — Struck to the ground they up-groped again, and though their intellect soaring thrust Like flame through the fog of alien men, they sweated like God in the dust of dust. With deep hearts breaking with David's glory, with great brains flashing Mosaic law. These eldest sons of man's tragic story — they that have dwelt in the shadow of awe — Stooped to the menial ghetto labor and picked the rags from the ashman's can — And then trudged home and neighbor with neigh- bor rolled to the Lord the psalm of man. The wild mob gathered and shattered the human out of their very souls with pain, The white-haired father was torn and the woman spoiled of the mother by lust insane, X27 128 The Jews Yet In the back street four flights up, after the blood and the flame had passed, They gathered and offered to God a cup of the love that death cannot outlast. Crowded they shared between rich and poor, food and shelter, and touch and speech. Crowded they made their day's joy sure by love that grappled them each to each — Democrats they who loved to roam through crowds and mingle with one another — Yet they were heart and soul of Home with little children and father and mother. Come you now seasoned by pain and sorrow, mighty minions of Israel? Wide are the gates of to-day and to-morrow — where shall you labor? where shall you dwell? Where? In the front. In the struggle and scathe, In the battle's thick, on the firing line — On toward democracy, home and faith to touch earth's billions with love divine. THE SOCIAL WORKERS A MIGHTY God made up of Men is risen in the world — His might is Wisdom warmed with Love and into action hurled — His hands and feet are struggling Souls that toil in shattered streets — His heart is millions merged in one, and through the world it beats ! The God that dwells from star to star and is the path of suns, The God the wild-rose sheds like light, the light- ning flashes once. The God that gropes from drop to drop of all the blood of Man, That God beholds a newer God sun-rising on his Plan! Even among the things he shaped — dim-brained air-breathing forms — Even hid on that planet dashed through his sun- threaded storms, 9 129 130 The Social Workers His frail creations grow like him — they cut from dust, and sweep A million-throbbing God in God — Deep calleth unto Deep! O human God we may not meet without a swifter pulse, Where dwell his feet, where stir his lips, the in- sensate Earth exults — Cities arise and follow him and nations take on wings, The squalid peoples dog his flight out of the dust of things. Dark factories that grind are shocked with earth- less song that steals From the bowed toiler's broken heart into the noise of wheels — In the day's smoke, in the night's flame, and where the foundries flare. Among the belting and the bolts that living God IS there! He heals the sick, he drains the marsh, he scatters joy on pain, The Social Workers 131 He moulds the child into the man, he lives with the insane, He lights the Earth with flaming hearts, he leads with Vision vast Misshapen millions to Love's Goal — Earth's love- liest dream, and last! He fights the fire, he lights the seas, he saves the dead in deeds, This Christ, this low Messiah-man, this meeter of starved needs. Daily he cries the race up steeps, through barriers and bars. And first upon the mountain leaps this challenger of stars. And we, whose need is near ourselves, whose service stays at home, We see him struggling up the storm and laboring through the foam. His pale face at our window shines — swift we unlatch the rod, The Deeps come In out of the night — our visitor Is — God ! THE MAY PARTY O MILLION-SINGING comes the May And whose dumb heart but wakes and thrills ? Now, as of old, the break-of-day Sings through the heart as through the hills — New spirit and new day are born — Yea, in our souls great suns arise With flame more glorious than the morn Lit with sun-centred skies I O we have watched the blossoms slip Through hills of sunniest silent green. And when at morn the bluebirds drip Dew on wet logs, our eyes have seen — Yea, marked the unmowed meadow tremble Through a million blades of grass new-born — Yea, heard the birds of song assemble The beauty of the morn! But there is one thing I have seen That shall be held within the heart. The May Party 133 When all that deepens into green Or blooms in bright blue shall depart — It was a hill that blossomed rich With buds of an all-lovelier hue Than the wild Spring-things that bewitch Each year our souls anew! Lo, in the Park, and up the lawn, And laughing in the leafiness, And fresh with all the fragrant dawn, And dancing in gay gala dress, Our city children loosed to skies, A thousand little souls laid bare To all the gales of Paradise That wandered through their hair. O loveliness more absolute Than bird or bough or beast or bud, pure sweet splendors that transmute May's unsoul'd marvellous full flood Into a something lit with God ! O gazing where they danced and ran 1 knew then why earth's blossoming sod Had given birth to man! MANHATTAN, O MY HOME MANHATTAN, O my Home, far-flash your windowed walls, A tide of vast Atlantics comes crying to your calls, A tide of glorious peoples on the sea-tide rolls, O you are the Home of four-thousand-thousand Souls ! Of Souls, great Souls, until whose life entirely Is lost in Death, is lost to Earth shall never greatly roam From your Streets where there beats every heart with heart that meets Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! Manhattan, O my Home, hands like the hands of mine Set your trillion stones cemented in a City-shape divine. And my toil is building greater your Face I tremble of. You are mine, O you Child of four million mortals' love ! 134 Manhattan, My Home 135 Four millions, four millions, who shaped your body beautiful, To stand on Earth and sun the seas, a light across the foam — Your least clerk cannot shirk your new Gospel- mandate : Work ! Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! Manhattan, O my Home, you are Workshop of the World, O none must gaze upon you save him whose strength is hurled In your giant Workshop labor, ever-rolling toward our Goal: As God, to sweat new Worlds out, as God, to build the Soul ! The Soul, the Soul, which Is won by Man through laboring As God built Worlds, as God wrought Man, and shaped the starry dome : In life's coil and turmoil we get God alone through toll! Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! 136 Manhattan, O My Home Manhattan, O my Home, your wild grandeur Is the booty Spoiled of hills, yet how other than the hills your wondrous beauty — Here Is Man, not the prairies, here are lamps, scarce a star — But than Nature, Human Nature is more beautiful by far! O Nature, Man's Nature ! your streets with Souls are undulant. The two-starred face, the supple limbs, the forms that go and come — Here we steep our hearts deep In the floods of Soul that sweep — Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! Manhattan, O my Home, face Fate with courage high, Go down in no death-melly. In no world-wreckage die. Lead the Earth by the love, by the service that you render — O tenoned be in God, O my City, all your splendor ! Manhattan, O My Home 137 In God, our God ! that deathless in your Destiny ' Your Spirit through Earth's billions like a battle-cry may comb — Labor hard toward the starred rolling glory of the Lord ! — Manhattan, Manhattan, O my Home! CONEY ISLAND LIKE a night of human stars, What a rush of starriest faces, Gliding in on the sparkling cars, Or the boats through dim sea-places ! Oceans of Humanity Break in song on headland shoals — Gathered like the drops of the sea. Here are seas of human souls. Night has emptied out a city On our Isles of joy and beauty, Night has hushed day's trade entreaty. And the hunger-cries of duty — Here are lips of rushing laughter. Here the wild eyes sunned with love- All the crowds, before and after, To one heart's pulse stir and move! Golden is the Atlantic's flow That upon the Island beats, Gold the great Isle's towering glow. Golden are her streaming streets — 138 Coney Island 139 Golden Is the laughing summer Shot with stars and singing sea — You, too, laugh, O travel-worn drummer. Shop girl, clerk ! Come, human be ! Come, be boys and girls together. Dip in nonsense the seared heart — Frisk in silliest fun, and weather Gales of sport that blow apart Brain-stuff stored In strife and scathe — Know that sometimes Falstaff joys Are as human as God-faith ! — Come, O come, be girls and boys ! Gathered like the drops of the sea. Come, you tired man, you woman — Safety-valves of jollity Shall but make you deepller human! Come, and let the gods attend you. All the gods of love and mirth — They shall save you, they shall send you Home with strength to master Earth ! THE SUN-HYMN OF THE CITY WHO marshals the herds of the Deep? He marshals the herds of the human I Who wakes the great rollers from sleep? He wakens the man and the woman ! Who drives the great shore-tide that rolls On the rocks In the dawn's thick murk? He drives the vast millions of Souls To the long day's work ! Of old, when the World was wild, W^hen tribes on Hills of the Morn Were young with the faith of a child, The chanter went forth through the corn, Stole forth, with the tribe at his heels. By waters where red deer run, And floating In birchen keels Sang a hymn to the Sun ! Even so, when the Sun Is arisen Golden on acres of stone That glitter In the sky like a Vision Of a dreamer that dreams alone, 140 The Sun-Hymn of the City 141 Out of the bell of the steeple, Out of the chimney's rim, Out of the hearts of a people Soars a Sun-Hymn! Hymn not of chanters and slayers. Hymn of machines as they beat — Hymn not of indolent prayers. Hymn of the man-tossing street — Hymn of the Laborers moulding A World to their perilous Dream, Hymn of the millions unfolding Their rays of the Gleam ! Who marshals the herds of the human ? He marshals the herds of the Deep ! Unto him every man, every woman. Rolls, wakened like waves from their sleep, Sea-music, far-tidal, victorious Over odds that like rocks are, like shoals, A Hymn that is godlike and glorious, A Sun-Hymn of Souls! MORNING PLACID and pure the glory of morning suf- fuses me — A glory new as the first laugh of a child — Earth underfoot is hushed yet wild With song breaking through, with chantings of love, Woodfolk, and singing skyfolk, and duck and dove. And it seems that the whole world uses me As a wild pipe to blow the glory of morning through ! Far in the up-vanishing spaces of the blue And rolling higher Fire — sun-fire Burns through the treetops sparkling million-eyed dew — Leaves glisten, streams gleam. Between rocks brooks shout with the splendor world-bathing. And winding gales swathing The song-sparrow, press a wild chant from his throat ! 142 Morning 143 Living things float In a realness pure as a dream. I enter among the hills, By a pool I stand, Wet treetrunks gather about me in the tingling weather. And treetops sing together, And a wild bird spills A flaming melody over the woody land ! And suddenly human folk are seen under trees. All standing in the glory strong, that stills The street-storm in the heart. I see the laborer stand beside his cart. His shovel under dead leaves; and at ease On a low bench a dreaming couple brood : A teacher muses in the wood: A bowed old man leans on his cane : A sick clerk stares with glory-haunted pain : And somehow in silent waves of the wind and the sun. Knit by the live Earth underfoot. Each living one Is bound with me into a brotherhood mute. 144 Morning We speak nor glance at one another, But squirrel and bird and tree and Earth and soul Are one : Yonder sun Is my brother: Yonder robins that run, Yonder couple that pause In their stroll, Yonder laborer there at his cart. Each one Is my brother And walks with glory In my heart. IN THE FOREST COVER me over, forest wild, Wind me about with windy boughs, Make me, O Mother, your broken child Who strayed from the beautiful house — Who strayed from the path with pine-needles brown. From pool and clearing, wild-rose and brier, And in the stone-kiln of the Terrible Town Was burnt in the Human Fire ! Take me ! my torn heart fitfully beats Even at your touch, with its ancient pity — Hush in the Brain the crowded streets, The million eyes of the city! But dream not now, O Mother of me, Your child will bide in your strange wild beauty — No, he has tasted Eternity, Whose awful tide is Duty! lO 145 146 In the Forest He knows the Sorrow of Man; he Knows His Is the World where the Man-tides drift- — But, oh, to-night, with wind and wild rose, Mother, he Is uplift! But oh, to-night, with the brown wild duck, Bluebird and chipmunk, dusk dimmed, night starred. Let his shattered hands your glories pluck, Mother, till he sees God! THE EAST RIVER BRIDGE MARKET THE riveted rafters drip the rain and the twi- light pave is puddle and mud, But the peddler's carts are huddled again and the crowd jams past in a woolen flood— They weave a pattern of reds and blacks, women in shawls and men in coats. Women who trudge with broken backs and wisps of men with bearded throats. From jets cart-held the wind-tossed gas flames a shadowy fire that traces Poverty's stamp on the forms that pass, misery s blight on the world-old faces — Pain, that sculptor of men, has creased many a hne in many a brow. Till he, with love divine, released a splendor which is shining now. For under the grays and the saffrons daubed on the ancient faces, life looks through, Every atom of soul absorbed in the human stir and the struggle new — H7 148 The East River Bridge Market These as by red-hot rivets are clutched to the nerve- hve business thrilling the hour — Here where the strings of the purse are touched the brain becomes a working power. Where have I mixed in this scene before? In what strange world, in what strange age? Lo, in the flesh of life's uproar these people float from a printed page, Rises Isaiah, Rizpah, Ruth, prophet, and woman- in-love, and mother, See where Isaiah is visioning Truth as he peddles fish to Abel's brother. Worlds away and worlds behind all living worlds these souls assemble, Rizpah there with her dead to mind, Ruth with her yearning heart a-tremble ! What to these are Wall Street's currents of elec- tricity circling Earth? What to these are Broadway's torrents of roaring work and rippling mirth? By what nerve do these souls connect with the huge skyscraping towers of steel The East River Bridge Market 149 That girdle Earth with their intellect, a might that world-end millions feel? What place have these in the world we sense and glimpse in the morning paper's print? Lost, they are lost in a world immense, and who is aware of their strife and stint? And yet America's mightiest age shall be child of these wonderful mothers of men — Each in her realm is queen and sage, and shall re- make the world again — Her babes are the masters of dim To-morrows, her daughters the wives and teachers to come. Out of her woes and her infinite sorrows she breeds the Lincolns of the slum. Out of the simple and common clay, out of the very earth of Earth, Now, as ever, there break away spirits that feed the world's great dearth — Take the startling gas-fire glow, stand, stand still, let me see your face ! Mother, that your strange heart might know you are the fount of a future race! THE TROLLEY LOVERS MOON of the wild Italian girl! five hundred years have fled And still you shine, O Juliet's moon, and Juliet is dead. Swinging around the rolling Earth, you and the Earth are hurled, One with ever-born lovers young, one with the dusk of the World — Love, O frail young sweet first love, that clothes the world with magic. Whose tiniest smile is Rosalind-glad, whose frown is Hamlet-tragic, That lifts our Souls until we step from star to star down skies, That makes one glance. Eternity, one hand's touch. Paradise — Love has not fled, love is not dead ! O Juliet gone to dust, O sweet girl-soul whose flight from world to world beyond our lust 150 The Trolley Lovers 151 Is (so we dream) with Romeo, the very pangs you knew Pulse on the rolling Earth this hour, and young hearts are pierced through. Lo, from the sea's moon-road and lips foaming with song, we ride Through the moon half-light of the flowing fields — down shining tracks we glide In the glow of the golden clanging trolley: sweet breezes fan our cheeks: We seem to hurtle among the stars: all's sacred: no one speaks. The lights flash past, the window-lights, the damp scents of the field. We race the rolling Earth beneath till new skies are revealed — And I on the last seat looking ahead, pulse with the pulsing cars To see the lovers, the sad young lovers whose souls are in the stars. No Capulet-gardens may they have as screen from prying eyes — 152 The Trolley Lovers Only the Earth, only the stars, only the car that flies — They lose themselves in each other's love — head lowered close to head — O candid love among the poor ! Not Juliet's far love fled Down the rolling years, more tender is, more true, more young, more pure — Here are the earthly marriages made that through all life endure — Here is a sight to purge my soul, to put my heart in tune — O love, young live American girls, under dead Juliet's moon! PREPARE YE THE WAY! THE voice of the Lord Is on the Deeps — the hidden human Deeps are moving, Through the world a wildfire sweeps — it is man's terrible strength of loving; He loosens the molten streams of the heart; he pours the hoarded love of the ages — Vaults of steel are blown apart— shriveled in flame are saints and sages. Swift on the Earth is the face of Heaven and every soul is sister and brother— A new commandment has been given: that men of Earth love one another — Through rings of fire and dark disasters with might of soul we overwhelm clod — Yea, we have ceased to serve two Masters — we have dropped Mammon, and we love God. From tent and tenement and pavilion the people pour for the new ablution — Race by race, and million by million are caught in the swing of a revolution — 153 154 Prepare Ye the Way! Creeds are crushed and rituals killed, but over the Earth a flood is poured, Every spirit is stirred and stilled by the living fire of a living Lord ! Lift up your eyes and look on the fields for they are white already with harvest — One there cometh to stack the yields and feed thee, thou in the street that starvest — One there cometh whose gift is this: that by his touch is the Light restored: The hour is coming — and now is — when the dead shall hear the voice of the Lord! He, where the smoke of factories rolls, he, where the mud of the street is trod. Shall call his brothers immortal souls, shall call his fellows the Sons of God — He shall say we shall pluck out rather the erring eye than cast away soul — He shall say that Son and Father are one: that Man in the Lord is whole. He shall shed the love of the sun on the rejected and the abhorred — Prepare Ye the Way! 155 He shall gather together in one the children of God that are scattered abroad — He shall bring to the people youth, the joy and glory of well-spent breath He shall be the way and the truth, the light and the life and the path to Death! He shall come eating and drinking among us, a common man in village and town — We may perceive a Luther that stung us, a pitying Christ or a plain John Brown — But in our sins and our wild bread-strife, but In the streets where we sweat and plod. He shall give us the bread of life, he shall work us the works of God! We shall make stable our sea's wild foam that the ends of Earth may evenly move — We shall make Earth a Workshop and Home where men must toil and where men may love — And we with a hallowedness transitory shall build a World that is new and good — We shall go out to utter glory — God and flashes of Brotherhood! THE NIGHT OF SOULS A SOUL Is born into the world, A soul is born into the world, From out of heaven, from out of heaven, A soul, a soul is, crying, hurled — A soul into a world of pain, A soul is born, — O heavenly rain Of stars, of wintry stars, a soul Blots your wild glories once again. Sing with the morning, sing with the stars, A woman worketh with God, and bars Of music shudder in human hearts, — A woman maketh what living mars. O stars of winter, skies of the night, A soul is born, flame-pure and white, God walketh in these human parts, Vast revolutions reach to light. Over the face of the waters shine Lights of the wild stars, over the brine 156 The Night of Souls 157 Music is tumbling, — God is God, And the basest man is an angel divine. A rhythm runneth through all things, A rhythm runneth, a great song sings Up through our hearts, a rhythm soars, And we feel the brush of angel wings. The wintry streets are by angels trod, A rhythm runneth through stone and clod, Born is the babe, born is the babe, Born is the human babe from God. Sing, heart, a psalm to sterile skies. Roll out God's glory till it dies In music shuddering through wild stars, — God's works be praised to Paradise. Glory and hearts to God, sing we, Hearts and glory to God, O He Who rolled the stars and planted the heavens, And gives and takes Eternity. OCEAN SUN on the ocean, winds of the forenoon, Tumbhng of sun-tides, music gigantic, — Soft the Earth's epic was sung to the shore-dune By the great Singer, the gray Atlantic — Legends of Brittany, lore of dead bridals. Songs of old oceans by wanderers channeled — Norsewomen stolen in strange sea-idylls, Loves long lost and battles unannaled — Psalm of souls who have sealed the indenture To push horizons through worlds unwon — Sunrise chanteys of sea-adventure In silences of sea and sun — Saga of ages that washed Earth's granite With millions of creatures born of the sea — Hymn of the Powers that shaped this planet And from year-millions created me. So the epic in sun-tides pouring — But sang the sea this? I listened and heard is8 Ocean 159 Shoreward rolling and shoreward roaring Tons of water in sunlight stirred — I was the thinker, and I the singer, I fitted my words to the music of ocean, I to the sea was a soul and the bringer Of dream that gave meaning to ages of motion. Up my man-nerves came a-pulse the serrate Surface of seas with music and gleam — Ocean all morn was my flesh, I his spirit, — Touched with my brain he arose into dream. THE FIGHT OF PEACE HER face Is Lincoln's white with pain and burdened with the world — Like Lincoln's? No. O world-forlorn, forlorn lost spirit furled Like an unborn child within the skull! — No Hell that Dante dreamed Holds this dumb face of ruined hopes, with world- woe seared and seamed. Not that no sweets have thrilled her lips, no kiss of joy her soul, Not that her flesh is fanged with Pain, not that the smoke of coal Cloaks her eternal toil with night through which no faith can see — But that the flesh born of her flesh must taste her agony ! She sees her fruit withered in the bud, she sees those souls that dawned Like five suns in her sunless skies, that, even while she mourned, 1 60 The Fight of Peace i6i Answered the Silence of her life, with smile, with love, with word — Half-fed, half-clothed, half-lit with brain— and Man and God unstirred! Unstirred! And I — am I unstirred? O Justice, Mercy, Love! O Faith ! O words our glad lips shed! O Peace, like an Innocent Dove Brooding afar on an Innocent World! — Cease! shut the lips, and see The vast lost millions of mankind, millions In misery ! Am I more human than this Soul? Then why should I waste joy In loud excess of wealth and power. In pleasures sweet that cloy, In Hfe's gilt Superfluities, while this poor woman bleeds In a wild mad hunt for mere existence, this beast with godlike needs? O, before God, I nail my heart to the agony of the poor, IX l62 The Fight of Peace I shun excess, I seek the Real; so long as these endure In Hell, I suffer with the millions, not waste joy with the few — Planting a grain of Love in Earth, that World- Love come anew. Henceforth I seek Realities: henceforth I live at Home, With wife and child in quiet joy; far-nooked from lips afoam With lust: henceforth I live by Faith, get God into my days, Henceforth plain fare and thoughts divine, and simple, honest ways ! And lo ! now I enlist, with oath, in the great Fight of Peace ! O Vision of Earth, where all two billions, sharing the Earth's increase, Labor, and live out simple lives, in God, with spirits pure — In silent four-walled battles for God ! O Republic of the Poor! LEAVING NEW YORK AS out of the pier with waving of white and roar of whistle the steamer drew, That skyhne rose in the evening height with a splendor piercing the spirit through — West was the sun and east those towers, those towers glorious and serene — The mightiest hint of human powers that ever the groping world has seen. Round the lower city we steamed and up and under the bridges rolled — Over the city's shoulder streamed the sunset in a glory of gold — The nran-black ferry, the smoke-plumes curled over the chimneys, the tugs a-steal, All were rich in a human world vast and busy and marvelous real. Backs of tenements flaunted a trimming of wash- lines, babies and homes bared blunt. Naked boys were diving and swimming along the blackened waterfront, 163 164 Leaving New York Mighty factories stood in a splendor of chimneying smoke and golden river, Streets went by and in twilight tender the air with humans was all a-quiver. And seeing life rich and a millionfold the great tears started, the deep heart beat With love of people and longings old, for earth was divine and life was sweet — And when was I more alive than then, so really living, a pulsing part Of the life of stars and earth and men, folded in nature's world-warm heart? EARLY APRIL TO a bird's high-piped preamble, Hark! a glory through the Park, Through the saplings and the bramble Sparkling over the dripping bark, Sunlight fell, golden-hued, Fall'n without a warning, Kissing the caverns of the wood On an April morning. Robin, Robin Redbreast Danced upon the turf, In the lake the ripple's crest Mimic'd Ocean's surf. And the branches splattered the dew Over the lush, wet ground — Dawn only lacked of you To have its glory crowned. In the ample stretch of heaven There was not a fleck, a streamer, All the perfect air was given, Delicious food, to me, the dreamer; 165 J 66 Early April Loaf, laze and idle The delicate dawn away, With thoughts of the bridal On a rare June day. I sat all alone, Squirrels tufted their tails, And silver fancies, shower-strown, I beat, as with a flail, Shaping them now to the fluty Lyric of a bird. Now to the rose-bud beauty Of a golden word. Oh, what is a pleasure If It is not shared? What the sweetest leisure When a heart's unpaired? It is as If a ring Lacked Its perfect stone — • On that dancing morning of Spring I sat there alone. THE REASON OHi\RK, the pulses of the night, The crickets hidden in the field, That beat out music of delight Till summoned dawn stands half-revealed! O mark, above the bearded corn And the green wheat and bending rye, Tuned to the earth, and calling morn, The stars vibrating in the sky! And know, divided soul of me. Here in the hay-field, sweet in speech. This perfect night could never be Were we not mated, each to each. 167 REVELATION O EARTH, I feel you move to-night With throbbing music, dark to day, With throbbing veins and pulsing might. Impelled by universal sway. I feel your bare veins breast the flood Of Springtide with its kiss divine. Exquisite love leaps through your blood, Exquisite happiness is mine. happiness that makes me feel With some new sense, beneath, above. The universal system reel Through music — O the gift of love! 1 am aware of all the world, Huge vastness failing in the mind, A trillion singing sums forth hurled — A trifling atom, frail mankind. But, earth, what matter if you are With trillion singing suns hurled forth- i68 Revelation 169 O you are still that happy star From whose sweet bosom she drew birth. O mighty earth, now I am one With all your music as you move, Rolling your millions round the sun — I have accomplished life, I love! A BIT OF SPRING MUSIC AH, with enchantments dreamy Apollo and Aladdin Trip in with billows creamy To madden and to sadden — Ah, with a witchery olden The Arab and the Greek Along the morning golden Sing in the inlet creek — And my heart that all night was a fever Is stirred, is stirred And It sings with the quick bluebird His song of "Forever" — For he in a bough of a birch at the river These words has tossed: "Forever and forever and forever and forever Something Is lost!" Aladdin is Spring that bulldeth the Vision o'er- nlght, And we wake In a World that Is magic and woven of light, And the pane of the window that's lost Is our heartache's might! A Bit of spring Music 171 Apollo is Dawn so buoyant above and bearing us on Into the realms of the lonely Sun and the Ocean wan, Into the saddest of music — O whisper that haunt- eth the Dawn! And ever at morning, ever in Spring, Ever here at the edge of the sea where the song- swallows sing, Ever here on the coast where the gulls toward the sun are a-wing. Up the soft billows creamy O to madden and to sadden, Trip with enchantments dreamy Apollo and Aladdin — Trip with enchantments dreamy till the blue-bird o'er the river — Till the bluebird lost in branches his world-sad song has tossed: "Forever and forever and forever and forever Something is lost !" O what is Spring that it hearkens back Through crowded worlds, through ages gone, 172 A Bit of Spring Music To an ancient sun that on his track Dropped a planet, a lesser sun, That grew to a Garden, a wild new world. Where in the morning, and in the Spring, Like two babe-blossoms, and wind-unfurled. Woke Adam and Eve, and on the wing Of Morn were borne, sweet blossoming? Where quick on the star of the fresh-washed Earth God saw the miracle ages dreamed, A man and a woman that searched for each other Till two souls groped to a single birth And in the world Love sunlike streamed. And hearts were lost in one another! O came they to the Ocean When the sun was on the sea And the waves were silver motion. And in blue Eternity Pulses of the wings of swallows Flaked a fire on the soul — And as far as eye could see The Deeps slid in the shallows With a musical loud roll? And were their hearts a blank On the diamond Ocean-bank A Bit of Spring Music 173 When the bluebird, O the bluebird, in the bough that shades the river. These words, of all words, tossed: "Forever and forever and forever and forever Something is lost?" I awake in the morning of Spring, I arise and go out. My heart bears me forth like the pulse of a wing Where the wild seas shout — I come to the brink of worlds — to the rocks I come — When lo ! the vast Deep ! And I and the rocks and the sands are a crumb Dropped in the sea's world-sweep ! And breathless with wonder, my ears with wave- thunder Filled, my heart thrilled. Ah, with enchantments magic To madden and to sadden Come Apollo and Aladdin Ah, with a breath that blows the breast all hollow Come Aladdin and Apollo, 174 A Bit of Spring Music And the bluebird, O the bluebird, in the curve of the dark river, Sings till my heart with these magic words is tossed : "Forever and forever and forever and forever Something is lost!" YOU MEAN SO MUCH TO ME YOU mean so much to me, so much — How futile are these words of mine ! — O you must know that your least touch Blends with my days a strain divine. O you must know that now my life Is living yours : I cannot think Of breathing without you as wife — 'Twixt death and men this is my link, 'Twixt death and men you stand, my star, My full-fledged thought, my strong ideal, Know you what strength to me you are And that my passion Is so real? So real, so real! I see your face. The rapt Madonna, and I feel The passion of the human race. Like sudden music, through me steal. 175 MAY O GARLANDED with flowers Is May, O washed In rain the radiant day Lifts up her utter loveliness, And smites the earth with splendid ray. The grasses are blading through the sod, The blossoms are bursting through the pod; Earth Is a new-born babe again. Laughing In the vast arms of God. 176 HOME IN THE STORM HEART, find In my heart, home — The wild rain is on the roof. Heart, heart, my heartling, come. For the bright stars stand aloof, And the night is smashed and torn And the wind howls down the wall. And black blasts trample the corn. Earth rocks, winds roar, skies fall. But oh, the golden room. And oh, the glorious head, And oh, the cheek's half-bloom, And two spirits, kin and wed. O come to my large warm grasp, Heart, my heartling, come, O come to my heart, to my clasp. Heart, find in my heart, home. Home of the golden glow. The golden hour secure, 12 177 178 Home in the Storm Heart, my heartling, know Warm love, serene and pure. The storm Is even a tie Binding us in our home. We are our world, you and I, Heart, my heartling, come. ECSTATIC MAY RUSHES of song over the hills, Bursts of wild birds from the green brush — Mightily the morning stills The heart's red rush ! Sweeps of wind, winey, intense, Shouts where the rock-rolled rillet sings — Splendidly and sky-immense My soul spreads wings! Strike me, O Spring's reorient stroke ! Drench me, you wild, delirious floods! Oriole song, orchards that smoke Storms of white buds ! Spring is Earth's time. Spring is Truth's time, New worlds, new souls, fresh from God pour. Spring is lover's time, joy's time, youth's time, Forevermore ! 179 MOTHER AND FATHER IT was a night of wind and rain that swept The windows, and the shining streets lay bare, And the storm's hair over the glaring lamps Lashed in light silver — but within that house, Within that shattered house, one room was dim With turned-low gas-flame, and two silent souls Crouched on a coflin — and the dead was their child ! Bare was the lonely room, and the floor creaked. And the pane rattled, and the flamelet flickered, — A numb gray chill lay on the silent air. But that white-blossomed baby born of woman Slept like a dreaming flower In summer dusk So steeped in sun the petals could not tremble. O bud of face, smiling at tender lips! O half-shut eyes, and little hands like foam Blown from a breaker by a skimming breeze ! That black-haired Mother from her creaking chair Leaned, and touched lips to the sweet icy lips. Leaned, and with fingers strove to enclasp the foam, i8o Mother and Father i8l Leaned, and with glazed eyes drank to her soul her dead! But the rough father fingered his own rough hair And eyed the cheerless floor heart-hesitant. That towering tenement wherein the room Was but a cell, shook down through airshaft tube Gusts of wild mirth, and men and women danced Like careless Furies over the face of the dead. Child of the poor ! oh, first-born of their flesh ! Wind and wild mirth and the night's rain rolled round it, And the far stars that fill the heavens with fire. Then swift, with hair flung tossing back, and hands Toward the far dancers and the farther stars. The woman, a bent bough loosed, leaped up and cried Harshly above the storm and the dim laughter: *'0 God my God, Thou hast forsaken us ! Dead is my child ! Were we not poor enough ? O dead! Now all is gone!" And the rough husband Made moan: '*We have each other — " 1 82 Mother and Father But her voice Wild with lamenting, shrilled: "Each other! God I No lies! We have lied too long! Too long! Too long! You have a day-end wife whose brain is blind With toil and trouble, and I a day-end husband Wrung by his labor dry — dry ! Have each other !" And she hurried to him, and she seized his hands In icy clasp, and she muttered as if crazed: ^'We have thrown our lives to our masters ! Why should we live? We have sold our brains packed with the glories of Earth For leave to live ! O you and I, John, you. Who have studied so long, and have taught, and shaped little children Toward excellent Manhood, and I who have labored and wrought To live — as you wish — our heart's ideals — you and I, What has life paid in return? What has life paid? All's emptied out! We have lost our fight!" Mother and Father 183 She stooped, And her shrill small whisper cut through his heart like a knife: "Kill me — then kill yourself: let us seek Peace! Peace! oh, this Peace our wild hearts hunger for!" And he rose, and his heart beat wild: "Oh, Helen, Helen, Strive to be calm ! Be sane!" "Be sane!" she laughed, "Sane In the wildest hour of a crazy life! But what know you? Oh, the long months and months I made a sweetness in our bitterness By stitching, stitching darling baby clothes — And every stitch created the wild joy A little nearer to Its birth. I dreamed Of wild little hands against my breathless mouth. Of wee sweet lips draining my breast of milk. Of low wails hushed with kisses, and soft laughter Shared In the sudden glory of early morning! — My darling, oh, my darling little boy 184 Mother and Father Clutched in my arms, his heart on my heart, his arms At my neck — my darling whose wee filmiest touch Warmed me all over — oh three walls have fallen down From our heart's house — dream you to-night we'll sleep? And then you prattle on of sanity! Kill me— or— " "Hush !" he cried, and his cheeks went white, "All will be well— my Helen—" "Your Helen?" Again Harshly her laughter broke, "Am I yours? Then kill! I'll nevermore be slave to anyone ! Talk! talk! and ever talk! I am a Mother, Christ was less — nailed to His Crucifix What dreamt he in the pangs of his wild passing Of pain such as the woman in the street Knows on the night of birth? I stood with God, I was clutched at the throat, and seized by the hair, and swung Mother and Father 185 Choking between wild drifts of suns — I rose, Seized Vega, and smashed down upon my head That ocean of sun-fire and went up through flame ! It was the Creation-moment of the World ! Wild through the streets went singing angels, hosts Swept on the winds, and the wild Universe reeled With the strain and sweat of birthing a human soul! Think you that God's pain equals that, when He Creates a planet? For the planet is dead, And the soul lives ! Lo, in the early morning, When like a dazzled girl opening her heart To love, to the enchanting glory of love, Gray stealing dawn glimmered half-timid in the room, I, with the Peace that passeth understanding. Cradled in arms my incarnated dream. My little Christ fast-sleeping in my arms — " And her bitter cry went forth, and she tore her hair. And her body shuddered — "Day, and day and night i86 Mother and Father Moaning with pain, to his God — to his God, to me, His heart cried, and his agonized baby eyes Begged as a soul in torture ! What right has God To lay on a helpless inarticulate child A torture that it cannot name ? O my child ! How I wildly sang hushing his moans with music, How I kissed the sweet lips shut and sealed the eyes, How I offered years of agony to God, Prayed that the child's pain but be given me To bear for the child! Did God hear? Yes, he heard — O well enough he heard!" she shrilly laughed, ''Through ghastly nights my darling baby moaned. And moaned until I clutched his tiny hand. And smiled, and slept, and then he slept and slept — O God my God, Thou hast forsaken us!" He moaned: "Helen, Helen, listen — " "Listen!" She leaped From his arms, she drew a vial from out her breast, Mother and Father 187 She, held It high, and with a laugh, cried : ' "Here— I, too, shall go — I drink this to the boy I" Glitteringly poised It swayed, and the ringed skies Waited for a soul to pass, but with a cry As of the life, he snaked to her side, and snatched The glass in his hand, crying "For God's sake, Helen! O for God's sake!" And she clutched his arms And beat, and cried, both hands quivering upon him: "Give me the drink! Give me the drink, I say! I'll have the drink!" And to and fro they fought Under the flickering flame and beside the dead, The vial held on high, and the floor creaked, And the pane rattled, and the dim mirth gusted. 1 88 Mother and Father But at the last, with one wild downward swoop He felled the glass, and crushed it with his heel: "Oh, Helen!" he moaned, "that you and I — that you—" And could no further, for his heart so shook, His hand so trembled and his head so throbbed ! With one last struggle he brought her down on the couch And tightly grasped her hands and held her there ! But crouching in his arms she muttered : "Fool 1 You fool! Our life henceforth Is hving death!" Then he bowed low upon her struggling hands And all his heart broke, and hot drops of tears Fell scalding on her fingers, and his head With all the roughened hair lay in her lap, And the great shoulders heaved with unwonted sobs, Terrible man-sobs cracking his huge frame. And In the silence rattled the blown window And the wild laughter gusted, and the light Mother and Father 189 Blew, and the dead was as the untrodden daisy Smihng to God In the loud battlefield, Fresh sun-white petals at peace In man's weird carnage. And then across the woman's heart a light Was laid, and with the blinding light a heat Went through her blood — that head upon her lap, Those shoulders heaving sobs, that stricken man, Seemed even as another babe to her — Love smote, and among heart-strings, something snapped. And she shook with a chill that shriveled her breast, and clutched At her throat, and she gasped, and cried out, and trembled, And cried out, and her heart broke, and her eyes went blind, And she burled sudden her face In the roughened hair, And wept. The two throbbing bodies trembled together And the two spirits shook through the quivering flesh 190 Mother and Father And were one Pain, one Thought, one passion of Love — Marriage ! But softly from her huddhng head He drew, and straightened, and his storm-face shone With many lightnings, and he raised her up Into his arms, and cried: "Helen, my wife! My own own darling Helen! Helen, my wife!'' "Oh, John" from her heart breathed she, and sobbed in his arms. "Helen, my Helen, life has broken our hearts, But broken only to open the still chambers That love, that holiest love, may enter in ! Take, heart, this comfort — the sweet prayer for the Dead: 'The Lord giveth : the Lord taketh away : Blessed be the Lord's name !' True ! For great God loaned us A little child, and now In pitying tender Releases him from our wild human pain!" Mother and Father 191 "Ah, I had suffered for him—" "No, my love! The heart's pain is a lonely pain ! But, hark ! Not ever would the child be as a child; We had had the terrible pangs of mother and father Marking the boy that drifted from our arms Into the sea-bottom tides of the human Deeps ! Yea, we had seen this being that we wrought. Even as God wrought us, reach up above us Perchance to smite us down — to be our shame ! These little creatures we call up from God, These little things our very hands create, Oft turn on the creators — " "Talk! talk! talk!" She wailed: "He could have killed me when a man — My boy ! he could have torn me limb from limb ! But then my death had had some glory in it ! I had died for him ! Oh, words, and yet more words !" Then, stricken at heart, with one hand stroking her. 192 Mother and Father Through his vast cloud of Sorrow he strove to think, But the poor brain blunt with unusual grief Went blind, and lips were sealed, and his dumb heart Hungered to comfort her; and as he sat Silent, she slipped away, and left a space Of coldness In his arms — bent on the babe. Kissed It, and clutched the tiny hands, and wailed Of "darling," "little baby," "broken heart." And as he gazed at her he thought that never Since the first hour she lifted lips to him — Lips to be kissed for frail first love that smote A tremor of quivering oat-fields through their hearts, A music of Earth soaring like a singing thrush In the blue heavens, while fire, fire, wild flame Went like a sheet along the slant of skies — Had he beheld such glory of womanhood. He loved her that wild moment with a love Grown pure and deep and purged away of self. She seemed too beautiful to be his wife. Too sacred to be touched by hands like his, Too like an angel to be linked with a man. Yearning, revering, barely daring forth, Mother and Father 193 Breathless, and like a child, he stole to her, Stole softly, and on fire with sacred love, Bent, took her chilly fingers in his clasp, And kissed them. "Helen — all of God I know Is in you : all of God and all of woman : And all of love, and all of hfe and death: I never loved you as I love to-night — So pure, so deep." And she turned slowly, saw — While a pale wonder weakened all her flesh. And a wild glory stole into her heart — Through blinded eyes, his mute awe-stricken face. *'Helen," he murmured, "like a meteorite Dropped from a sun that swims the Milky Way, And smiting the passing Earth with a dart of flame, A splinter of Revelation smites me : I — I see — see God ! Let this dead child bear witness To the Lord's might and glory, His love and wisdom, «3 194 Mother and Father For the child has worked the miracle of Souls ! O miracle, that of the brainy dust Makes the eternal spirit — that of the flesh Creates the Infinite soul ! For the woman touched With child, becomes that miracle, the Mother — That being of Soul that the God shaped her toward, That human highest that her whole heart is aimed at, That God within God, being God's earth-hands. Earth-mind, earth-heart to create from little chil- dren Souls ! So the dead child has fulfilled you ! Better A woman be the mother of the dead Than be no mother; better to lose in death The exquisite wilding child, than have no child: Better to know the nine-months' blossoming And that night lowered deep in the flames of Hell, And bear dead fruit in fire, than live long life Only by half — no mother. To be a mother Is woman's mission ! Is not her flesh framed for it? Is not her heart a blood-red hearth that a child May warm in the flame until the wild-fire. Love, Mother and Father 195 Loosen the infolded petals and the Soul blossom? Is not her soul as the far skies, tremendous, That children may be snatched through it on wings Up through the starry ether into God? Oh, are not her huge still skies and the vast orbit Circling through Deeps, which she, like a swim- ming planet, Takes at the Mother-moment, hers by birth-right? Is not her being shaped for this sacrijfice. Service, these wild child-glories? Oh, the child Fulfils the woman ! She that lives a life Of childlessness, is as a little child Who, toiling in a factory of hell. Blowing soft glass in the white glare of fires, Knows old age, and the ague of old joints. Wrinkles of wintry years, and withering heart, And blighted soul, and never is a child — Never a wild fairy haunting the sun-lit daisies. Never a flash of feet In the twilight house, Never a ripple of laughter where wild cheeks laugh. Never the joy of meadowland and upland. Earth's magic! Such a poor and bleak half- woman Is but a broken purpose, and a vision 196 Mother and Father Glimpsed at and then withdrawn, and a sweet dream Waked from before fulfilment! All through life She sweeps, a mockery of womanhood!" "I thlnk,'^ she breathed, "O John, I think I see!'' Her eyes were wide, her breathing fast. "My Helen, The child has brought you to fiulfilment : made Glories where there were none, and you to me Are God — and the Eternal — the forever — I worship at the fringes of your skirt." Faster she breathed, and her eyes lit with light As from some far-off world unseen of men — Then gazed upon the worship of his eyes. *'Oh, true," she murmured, breathless, ''God came down And at the birth, stood with me, and I saw Truth ! And I am fulfiled !— But life, but life—" Her voice broke, misery came on her again. Mother and Father 197 "No more! no more!" he cried, "Accept God's work ! And lo ! I think that even in the death, As in the birth, the child fulfils us, Helen ! For lo ! its little death has come to us With sanctifying touch: it hallows us: And in our poor and meager human love Comes the vast God : for love is hardly love Until dark Sorrow deepens it forever ! Oh, our love, Helen, is grown so holy I hardly dare, to put my hand in yours. I never loved as I love you to-night. So purely, deeply, chastely! Helen, wife, This dead babe marries us in holier bands Of marriage than we dreamed: forever now Our heartstrings, torn with sorrow out, must bind Each other's heart to each, and every pain And every joy will thrill us both together As if we were one soul." Then in her heart Wild hymns were sung, and her eyes rained love, and her lips Closed with his lips, and softly clasping, kissing, They stood, the holiest lovers among men. 198 Mother and Father *'And love!" he murmured, "as the long years speed, About our knees little wild children shall laugh, Upon our floor little wild children shall play, And swirling on like twin-stars with wild planets Dancing about them, we and our new-born children Shall dance through the long years!" And to his soul She whispered : "You are my husband, you are my husband!" Soft fell the silence of the dying wind And dying mirth, and the bare little room Thrilled with a Presence, and so steeped in it Were they, they spoke not: but she slipped from him. And drew him with her hand to the white coffin, And stooped, and gave the dead a holy kiss, And suddenly murmured with devout full fervor: "The Lord giveth : the Lord taketh away" — And he took up the words, and both sent rolling To God — that cry of Earth that makes Man glorious — "Blessed be the name of the Lord!" EXCERPTS FROM "ADAM AND EVE" Excerpts from Adam and Eve 201 I AM- ROCKED IN THE CRADLE OF LOVE 1AM rocked in the cradle of Love, I shall never escape ! I am rocked In the cradle of Love, I am lost, lost, lost! I am rocked In the cradle of Love, O nevermore free am I ! But, O God, If I could, If I could be free I should cling to the cradle of Love, To the world-holding cradle of Love, And Implore sweet Love to enthrall me, to keep me the babe that I am. I am lulled In Eternity's arms, on her breast am I laid, I am lulled In Eternity's arms, on her heart throb- bing, throbbing, I am lulled In Eternity's arms, new-born, new- born, and a babe! And, O God, If I could, If I could break free I should cling to Eternity's arms. To the world-wide Eternity's arms And Implore my Mother to keep me, to keep me the babe that I am. 202 Excerpts from Adam and Eve WHAT DO I LOVE WTiat do I love? I think this little pebble shining wet Can speak to me. I think the little grasses That drip sweet dew, can utter dear song for me. I think the blue-winged bird in the bending bough Could love me too, as I, as I love him. I think that yonder sun could speak to me, And that his heat is the strong heat of love. O now I think that everything there is Is more than I, yet like me — O is God. Excerpts from Adam and Eve 203 ADAM, WHEN TOLD ABOUT EVE OEVEN now I know that I am lonely ! Lonely In spite of You, God, and the wild morning, the magic woods, The music of Earth, the splendors of heaven, the air! Lonely, longing and insufficient I waste In the air, I droop, Lonely, longing and yearning, yearning, I fail be- neath yonder sun-dazzle, Lonely in splendors and gorgeous slopes, Lonely in God, lonely in God, And I fail, I droop, I die, I wither of longing and longing ! Give me the woman, give me the beauty of woman. Her hair, eyes, lips, cheeks, arms, flushed, flooded with God, God, God! My woman of beauty within that breaks through and Is beauty without — My woman of moods and speeches, of walks, O comrade mine ! She who Is You, God, at last become visible, palpable, real. So near, and so shaped I can gather you up to my heart — My armful of God! 204 Excerpts from Adam and Eve ADAM, ON FIRST SEEING EVE I CANNOT think but that my life ends here — O stung with loveliness, what shall I say, I think ? stung with the bud-bursting Perfect, what is left, what is wished for? 1 strike the skies in this — I stretch my soul out god-length — Nothing is left — all has been done. All the wild beauty I ever beheld, all joys, all love- linesses. All songs I have heard, O freshets of song, O swift swollen creeks gushing and pouring. All dreams that laden with sweet Springtime clouded soft-shimmering through me and through me ! And my God, O God of my Gods, God found around and about me, (Dear living presence In leaf. In bird. In rock. In waters rippling, Voice In skies, rapture of Earth, sweet quick rap- ture of Springtime) Seem all summed up, encased, forever merged In this god-shape, this womanly loveliness. Excerpts from Adam and Eve 205 Ah, here lies Spring on the ground, Ah, here sleep skies and their stars. Ah, here dreams Earth under sun-flame, Ah, here rests God from His labors. 2o6 Excerpts from Adam and Eve O HENCEFORTH I SHALL GO HENCEFORTH I shall go o Strewing the Earth with God! O henceforth I shall leap Down twenty valleys and fly With this woman over the hills — We shall light the woods with music, We shall smite the cliffs with song ! O henceforth I shall burst From my breasts two mighty wings And go soaring over the heavens, Cometing through the cool-hushed blue, Cometing with a flying heart, Singing lips and starry soul! Excerpts from Adam and Eve 207 ADAM'S SONG TO EVE 01 AM voiced with a voice That loveth to sing ! O I am strung with a string That loveth to shudder out music, music ravishing- wild For ears such as yours. O I am souled with a soul, A voice in spaces of light, intensest soft light, Light of the faint dawn, light of the early dusk, lambent light Last seen on the peaks, the peaks when evening has come ! I could sing to you, Eve, till the last star rushed to the sky, I could sing to you. Eve, till the last star fell from the night, I could sing to you, Eve, through morn, through noon, through the night Till the Earth shot out and snapped again to the sun And shriveled away, sun-burning, shriveled away. No use for the mute black rocks that never are tongued, 2o8 Excerpts from Adam and Eve No use for the growling gray wolves that never can sing, No use for the brawling bold brook that sings without soul. I am the singer alone in the sum of the skies And you the sweet listener, listener, darling of me! — Excerpts from Adam and Eve 209 WE MUST LOVE EACH OTHER FOREVER WE must love each other forever — There is nothing else in the wheeling Universe, There is nothing else in the whirled Eternities, In the thundering star-herds stampeding down prairies of space. In the blizzards that flake and shatter through the vast black Black, In the furious fires of flaming suns! — 2IO Excerpts from Adam and Eve EVE'S SONG LYRIC In sun-stricken lawns, Lyric in wayward-wild hollows. Lyric in sky-bursts of splendor surrounding, en- folding, engulfing my heart ! Lyric of God walking soft, O soft in recesses of my soul ! O lyric welled up from all me to my throat, to my throat. Welled up, and burst through with a lovely wild trill of rillets of music Chanting love, throbbing love, scattering love on the earth-ways, O scattering, scattering love, wild love ! scattering love ! O drown me in love, O take me and lead me Through storms of love-passion, O take me and burn me In fires of heaven, take me and crush me In the arms of wild love ! 1 was born to desire, I was born for you, love me ! I was born to desire, beloved, O beloved ! I was born out of God's vast heart and I took his love out with me Into the world — into the unloving world! Excerpts from Adam and Eve 21 1 I PANT WITH THE GLORY OF THE WOODS I PANT with the glory of the woods! We have been wild children — wandering wild children Dancing over the forest floor — pine-needles, pine- needles ! Fresh wet mosses dewing our feet, Sunlight splashing between the boughs, Glistering sweet in Adam's eyes! Through the dim cavernous coolness we flew, we flew, Laughing to the songs of the birds, Singing to the time of our hearts, (O wild hearts! wild throbbing hearts! hearts so pure with morning!) And O the silence intense with the creaking of leaves. And O the still skies intense with the calling eagles, And O the liquid loveliness that gurgled and noz- zled over the wet, wet stones of the fresh- shouting brook. And O the pure, clean thrill of the first dawn of the world, tasted, drunk in from the hush of the rock-shaded spring, And O the clearing, long-grassed, flashing in the streaming sun ! 212 Excerpts from Adam and Eve DAFFODIL-BUDS WAKEN GLORY sings along the blood — Daffodil-buds waken — dripping dew spar- kles — And the liquid, liquid trill of ten thousand little creatures Chorus in one hymn of love! O the frog that croaks ! O the dove that coos ! O the cricket that cries ! O the sparrow that chirps ! And the mocking bird that shoots the rushing cataracts of all song Darting splashing sun on sun of fire of melody over the world Till the woodland's aflame, Till the heart catches fire! Or the little scarlet tanager That grips the topmost bough Bathed in bright sun and lost against the blue And softly swaying in the delicious breeze Trilling blood-red from his throat! O woodland calls to woodland, pine to pine, and oak to oak Excerpts from Adam and Eve 213 Shaking song from each to each, (O wild scattering, O dispersion! O wild weav- ing of voice-splendor!) And hark, where the smooth idle stream spills off down ten stones With little strands of splashes glittering in the sun And a soft melody of the liquidest tone. Down all the grasses, dew glistens. Over the sheet of waters the pink-footed, purple- breast dove beats close, and the stream Mirrors his white underwings, as they flap, as they wave! 214 Excerpts from Adam and Eve THE DEATH-BIRTH DAYS AFTER plenteous harvest days — Golden grain wind-rippled up sunny hills, Crimson apples dropping in grassy orchards, Russet-turned-scarlet boughs of the wind-loud woodlands, (O woodlands riotous, laughter-loud!) And peaks on peaks, and skies on skies Haze-throbbing with a melting floating gold — harvest gold — Acres blooming off toward the skies, Tender green-heaving wave-silvered seas soft slid- ing, soft spilling, O after the sparkling weather of rare divine harvest hours Come the Death-birth Days of Autumn. Excerpts from Adam and Eve 215 ADAM'S PRAYER O TENDER God, ' O God, my Father of Love — I ask but one boon in this prayer; grant that, O Brother Soul, And I am man enough to do the rest ! Give me the rush of your love to get in my heart and life. Give me your pourings of love to get in my brain, my flesh, And with this power within me I shall unswerv- ingly Labor my daily labor, struggle my bitter struggle. And do the deeds for Souls by which I live and grow! O God, my Father of Love — O tender God — That grant me : there is nothing else to ask. Then shall I be a noble Laborer, Then shall I be a noble Father, Then shall I be a noble Husband, Then shall I be a Soul, a God, — and what more is demanded. Lord? My life shall then be lived — Amen. 2i6 Excerpts from Adam and Eve EVE TO HER CHILD AND is It you at last, sweet, And have you come to me? iVnd are you real — and does the pain I am Mean you are live? O dear sweet father, God, I know you now ; I know how you have felt When from your side a planet or a life Sundered and swam and lived and lay in glory, Perfect Creation ! — There are words of glory. There are songs of splendor That struggle to my lips and die in adoration — But here, this babe, this life, this child, this soul, This, this Is the word of glory and this the song of splendor. The purest in the world uttered, the sweetest to your ear! Excerpts from Adam and Eve 217 THE CHILD HIS love's become visible. Lo, it has taken Image from both of us, Culled out our beauties, Drank of our passions, Snatched of our spirits, And stands incarnated. Us, yet so different, Love, yet so human, God, yet so earthly, Man, yet divine! 2l8 Excerpts from Adam and Eve SUNRISE ON THE MOUNTAIN TOP Eve: Dawn, dawn again — Adam: Up through the East, swift skies — Eve : Over the Ocean of Mountains Flow of the ghmmering stars — Adam: Glimmer, sparkle, and darkness — (stars!) Eve : Darkness and dim star-glimmer — Adam : And our hearts surge red — Eve: Red with Spring's maddening blood — Adam: Cascades and freshets of rillets Spring- swollen — Eve: And God — God again — Adam: O fire-sheeted revelation — Eve: My heart's all God's — Adam: Lo, we are on Earth's sky-apex — Eve : A planet unrolls at our feet — Adam: We are held by Earth's arms to the stars, Two babes pure with God, with God — Eve: They snatch us to Eternity — Adam : Mist sleeps in the valleys and rolls — EvE: Rolls, rolls up the forests — Adam: Blows off — shine the locked silver lakes In wild, beautiful gorges — Eve: In the East, lo, streaked scarlet — Excerpts from Adam and Eve 219 Adam: Golden and purple — Eve: The sky's aflame — Adam: The world awakes — Eve: Life shakes out laughter — Adam: Earth scatters mist off and laughs, Pulsing red life — Eve; O horizons — horizons — Fringes of fire — Adam: And lo, lo, flame — Both : The Sun ! the Sun ! the Sun I 220 Excerpts from Adam and Eve MORNING SONG LITTLE sweet child— little wild child- Morning — morning — morning has come ! — Open the eyelids up to the sun — Open the little heart, let God In — Little sweet child — little wild child — The bird's In the broom (the little brown bird) The broom rocks the songs from him, rocks him and cradles him, Shaking song out that God loves to hear ! O so your own mother, little darling baby, Rocks her pink bird, her rosy-white bird, Till the little lips open, till the little lips sing, And God is glad, and the world's made over! Little sweet child — little wild child — Do you dream what the Spring means tossing up roses ? Do you know what the Spring means, scattering wild buds? God's filling up the whole world with wee babies, Beautiful babies, lisping, sweet babies, And so Is your mother, your own fond mother. Your foolish fond mother, tossing up roses. Wild roses — red roses — roses of hearts ! Wild buds — sweet buds — blossoms of souls — Dance with the morning, and sing, heart, with joy! Excerpts from Adam and Eve 221 UNDER THE LEAVES OF THE MAPLE UNDER the leaves of the maple, Last year's leaves in the hollow, In the forest we have burled the dead child ! Kissed the cold brow, smoothed the garments, Laid him tenderly and sweetly Under the leaves of the maple, Last year's leaves in the hollow, And the little body lies in the fresh, the greening woods. Under the stars and the sapphire Heavens of Springtide midnight, Kissing the body we loved. Blessing the soul that had passed. Under the leaves of the maple. Last year's leaves in the hollow. We buried the child and our hearts deep in the deep-green woods. And a mocking bird sang a wild warble, wild warble. Through the soul of the night. And a brook gushed a freshet of trilllng-clear music Over stones, through the midnight. 222 Excerpts from Adam and Eve And the forest tops hymned a low hymn to the sparkling starred skies And the tangles and thickets soft-rustled In child- ish-sweet lisps, And under the leaves of the maple, Last year's leaves in the hollow. We buried our hearts, our hearts, and passed with tears through the woods. Excerpts from Adam and Eve 223 HYMN ON THE MOUNTAIN BLOW my voice, O wind of the mountain, blow my voice, With a song of the glory of our God, the Lord, Till you wash gigantic Earth with one rolling hymn of praise! Over the face of the prairies, the desert, the waste of the waters Undulate the heavenly, the heavenly hallowed grace That streaks my psalm to God. On the peaks of victory I am lifting my voice to my God, the most high, O praised be His name ! Yea, there Is a heart in my breast, and there is a soul in my flesh. They will not down, O God, they rise and bless your name. Your star-bathed wilderness, God, I love it : My feet went through the wild forest softly, ador- ing you, And the music of the brook was your clear-tongued benediction. And the murmur of moved leaves was your bless- ing. Lord, my God. 224 Excerpts from Adam and Eve O hallowed days and nights, O hallowed Earth softsliding through the thick heavens, O rain of passionate light from night's quick sparkles, the stars, O broad and varied World, stirring in the heart of God! What shall the mourner say, singing on peaks God-mighty? O shaken his heart is, for a moving glory glides Down the rain-washed wilderness to the hollows of gorges wild — DEC 18 19f« DEC i ^ ^.'.^"'^"Y Of" CONGRESS !ililllillllillll 018 378 037 2