Author ****> v> O z: Title *<**** ID £S. jL2. Imprint /9/v5" ALittleBgdk ^LoolVerse HOWAFLD MUMFORD UONES^) A Little Book of Local Verse BY HOWARD MUMFORD JONES if With an Introduction b}? DAVID ORLAND CO ATE La Crosse, Wisconsin 19 15 0* \M Copyright, 1915 By Howard Mumford Jones t ©CI.A411624 SEP -7 1915 Jl Little tBook of Local 'Verse To Mp Mother IWWe INTRODUCTION WHY should anyone write or publish verse in these times of the moving picture, rag time and the new dances, when any article to be sold must have practical writ large all over it? We are told that only the novelet, the short-story or the one-act play — provided it be a "problem play" — are read. Why in the Middle West should verse, local in interest and flavor, be written ? The answer is, for the reason that it is local. The author of "A Little Book of Local Verse" believes that too much poetry is so general as to have special interest for nobody. There are natural features, or traditions and practices so characteristic of every section, that once cele- brated in song or limned on canvas, the people of that community must read — or see — and relish them. That is why Howard Jones has written of local things. There is true poetry in the commonest sights and sounds, as Carlyle long ago pointed out. The only reason poetry is lacking to any place is that the seeing eye is lacking. To see and feel, and to report this knowledge faithfully and sincerely, remains still the highest work of poet and artist. Such work always gets a reading public. He is the true poet who opens the eyes of the less alert to the beauties around them. This is the true mission of art, be it that of the poet or that of the painter. As Brown- ing wrote, "For don't you mark ? we're made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see." Because the author of "Jl Little Book of Local Verse" is a poet, because he has seen and sung what no one can sing who has not felt the rythmic sweep of the majestic Missis- sippi bluffs, who has not heard the message of the marsh lands, and loved the blue which nestles in the distant hills — for this reason he has given us this booklet of verse. That he has thrilled to nature's varied symphony no one can doubt after reading "June" ox "When Shall We Together" or "Certain Reflections at Midway." Imagination of a high order is evidenced in such poems as "At Eagle Bluff, " "A Red Leaf" and "Old Men." Felicity of phrasing makes "Rain on the River" a dainty piece of word-music. "Railway Sketches" are bits of vivid portrayal, and so are "An Aban- doned Cemetery" and "From Trempealeau," which show deep feeling and reflection upon the meanings of life. Howard Jones is doing for La Crosse and its environ- ment what Vachel Lindsay is doing for Springfield, what Arthur Upson and Richard Burton are doing for Minnesota, and what Madison Cawein did for Kentucky. That is why I am glad to write this introductory word. I am sure that we in this town shall make this booklet a success. DAVID ORLAND COATE. La Crosse, Wisconsin. mummmrrmmmnrMmtammmmmmmmmmMm AN ABANDONED CEMETERY HPHIS is their immortality — to lie * Among these fields of ripening corn and rye, Here where the tangled shadows of old trees Stain the rank grass, and nodding down the breeze, Huge growths of fireweed swarm around the graves. Below their little hill the slow creek laves Its heap of pebbly gravel by the scar Of raw, red clay above, and with a jar Like bells of music breaking, in the turn Shivers against the boulders. Did they learn The permanency of all impermanent things Because the brook flows and the blackbird sings And weeds grow tall — tansy and cockle-burr And burdock — where the spire and altar were ? For look — that shameless woodbine climbs and sprawls Along the broken stones that once were walls, And sapling birches quiver in the shade Where once the choir sang and the organ played. Did they not care enough, those loving ones Who came with passionate tears and orisons And left them here with pageantry of grief ? Eternal sorrow, was it, then, so brief That they forget? Or was it God forgot Whom they adored in this forsaken spot, Since of His temple there remain alone This graveless space and crumbling piles of stone ? God whom they called Eternal — He is gone, And grief has dried between the night and dawn, That seemed eternal. Only transient grass, The brooklet never still, brown birds that pass Like winged moods across the blowing grain, Shadows and clouds and sunlight — these remain PAGE SEVEN Where all things else, imagined without change Of spirit or flesh have vanished. Is it strange These tombstones sag above the graves, or lie Heavy with fruitless immortality ? Look here : " Belove . . wife . . Aet . . Rest with God," And here — "sister . . peace . . her soul . ." The sod Is sunken where they rest, and in the noons The crickets sing among the grass. Our boons Come strangely to us. . . It is better so, Better to sleep as they do, and lie low Beneath the ragged shadows and the rain. Now they are spared the infinite sIom^ pain Of stirring life above them, the loud bell, The quavering hymns, the words of heaven and hell ; Them shall no trampling feet disturb, nor cries Of children playing make them lift their eyes, Vexed that the living take so little care To keep the fret of life away from there. And most of all, the futile trick of flowers Laid on their breasts to wither with the hours And force the dead remember and awaken From their slow sleep — this trouble, too, is taken. Now beyond God or man, they only have To keep the secure quiet of the grave, Here where the rain falls and the tangled leaves Of birch and elm trees shade them. Past the sheaves Beyond the road the distant reapers whir, A grosbeak startles up, a grasshopper Sings from a headstone — sounds that like the stream Are drowsier than voices in a dream. . . . Over them, wild flowers springing in the weeds Where vernal winds have sown the random seeds, Fireweed and golden-rod, and one slow star Large in the vesper east, show where they are. PAGE EIGHT T_TE tramped with me the road that day, * ■■• I knew his heart was good ; He did not gush about the sky, Nor ponder on a butterfly — He smoked his pipe a certain way, I knew he understood. A hill-side blue with spider-wort, Wild mustard by the road, A sudden flight of singing birds, He looked — to my laconic words Vouchsafed an answer more than curt, And ever southward strode. Beneath the old felt hat he wore, His eyes were gray and keen ; The sun and wind had stained his face, He walked with tireless, easy grace — An oriole ! — But I forebore, I knew those eyes had seen. Across the marshland sweet with hay The bluffs and meadows stood Like pictures painted in the sky ; He gabbled even less than I, And smoked his pipe a certain way, I knew his heart was good. PAGE NINE CERTAIN REFLECTIONS AT MIDWAY A T Midway town, at Midway town •**■ The dust-white road goes up and down, And flashing past and to and fro All summer long the autos go. They seldom stop at Midway town, — The place is small and dead and brown, A store, a station and a hall, A dozen houses — that is all. 'Tis true, the meadows are as fair At Midway town as anywhere, And overhead in August skies The clouds careen like argosies. The black-eyed Susans by the way Curtsey and dance there every day, And from the wheatfields joyously I heard the blackbirds mock at me. Surely at Midway one can feel At night the cruising planet reel, And see in heaven the milky wake Of star-dust its propellors make. And yet — and yet — at Midway town The silver road goes up and down, And flashing past and to and fro All summer long the autos go. PAGE TEN RAILWAY SKETCHES I— BUNK CARS A ROW of broken box-cars by the track ^~~*- Below the water-tower ; in the breeze A torn, blue curtain flaps uneasily In one rough window, and along their side A line of garments flutters in the wind. The blue smoke, rising, dances elfin-toed Upon the rusted stove-pipe, and beyond The great white sails of God go slowly by Along the rustling hills. . . . II — THE SECTION CREW In the chill wet dawn of a morning in the fall When a gray mist lies on the river, And the dew drenched lawn is shrouded in a pall And the hooded hills seem to shiver, I hear the squeak and rumble of a door, And voices that swell and echo queerly, The clatter and the creak of a car lifted o'er The tracks and dropped again — nearly. There's a crash of tools and the odor of a pipe Astray on the cool, fresh morning ; Silence — while the pools of the day grow ripe For an overflow of rain ; then a warning Called from the boss, and the tramp of awkward feet, Stiff and chill from the station ; A car rolls across the bridge with rhythmic beat, And the hollow places boom reverberation. PAGE ELEVEN wmmm ^ limmmm g tllm g tta g0^ mm ^^ i ii nu li r . ! . - , ■■ !».« ■ » Ill — THE DEPOT It nestles underneath the dark green hills, A doll-house painted red, and past it flies The lean, swift limited whose whistle shrills In one long sobbing shriek and slowly dies. A straw-like arm above the chimney shifts, Staccato clicking puncture the still air, A thin bell jingles faintly, and in rifts Of echoing rock two crows summon to prayer. IV — AN EPISODE Drunken, blear-eyed, shambling, sodden, Clothed in rags and greasy-hatted Comes a gray old man with dirty Iron-gray hair into the depot. At the door he stands a moment Staring dazedly at the wood-stove ; To the nearest bench he lurches Where he sprawls in spineless comfort. On the wall a flyspecked placard, Loafing Not Aeeowed ; the agent Leaves his key and swearing softly, Kicks the fellow from the station. PAGE TWELVE "\X7"HEN shall we together * * Tramp beneath the sky, Thrusting through the weather As swimmers strive together, You and I ? How we ranged the valleys, Panted up the road, Sang in sudden sallies Of mirth that woke the valleys Where we strode ! Glad and free as birds are, Laughter in your eyes, Wild as poets' words are, You were as the birds are, Very wise. Not for you the prison Of the stupid town, When the winds were risen, You went forth from prison, You went down, Down along the river, Dimpling in the rain Where the poplars shiver By the dancing river, And again Climbed the hills behind you When the rains were done ; Only God could find you With the town behind you In the sun ! PAGE THIRTEEN -i—ttMnn-nr-i-n-v — r — 11— -~rr-r"'ii - 1 iimmiBWiil— ITi Don't you hear them calling, Blackbirds in the grain, Silver raindrops falling Where the larks are calling You in vain ? Comrade, when together Shall we tramp again In the summer weather, You and I together, Now as then ? PAGE FOURTEEN 3MMMPW^ wt-' j r j11 '* ■"*-'■> ■ ; -■'■ --- " ' ■ ' ■■ " - ~*-~~ — •■* — ---" GRANDAD A TITAN, in mute agony he stands, ■**■ Solemn and motionless and still ; the winds Toss his sparse hair upon their restless arms, And he does not complain ; the sun beats down Upon his hoary head and deep-scarred brow That saw the centuries march across the plain With feet of haste and fire, and yet he keeps Eternal silence ; and the wild-footed rain Tramples him, and the pitiless hail descends, And fierce snows freeze him and the lightning digs Their trenches in his antique limbs, and still Rebuke nor plaint he utters, still he holds An awful silence, as the Lord Christ stood And spake no word to Pilate. Does he dream Gigantic visions of an elder world Before the years were loosened, and the deep Spawned forth its monsters in primeval slime, While the great river rolled in majesty, Brimming from bluff to bluff? Or does he hear The thunder of the rushing buffalo And the wild war-drum of the Indian Booming across the plain or ever we, Following the golden pathway of the sun, Appeared to bruise his side ? Is this the stuff To cut and carve for worthless paving stone? Out of a hundred hills we could have spared, Is this ihe bluff ye choose to tear away And dump upon your streets? Shall his bones lie Naked upon your roadways, and no man Nor woman cry against it ? Shame, O shame, Thrice shame upon ye who have cut him down And thrust his sides with spears ! A poor old man, Page fifteen Tottering and stumbling in his feeble age Would have more reverence from ye than this hill, Moulded with God's own finger-tips ! The voice Of the great bluffs, his comrades, council-wise Seated along the river, should have risen, Spake, and rebuked ye ! What, is there no soul In all your city that dare reverence This sandstone Samson, bruised and stunned and still, That talked of old with God ? How long, O Lord, In the deep wisdom of Thy hidden ways, The foolish ways of men, how long, how long? PAGE SIXTEEN ■■■■■■■^■■■■■■■MHBHBMBBaHNHMMaMMMNIHHHMIMMMNMI SUNDAY "X/DUR Hell and Heaven, what are they ? * I tramp the yellow road today, And deep among the grass I see The harebells' fairy blasphemy. They blow on Sunday as they blow On any day in all the row. Your Hell and Heaven, what are they ? / tramp the yellow road today. PAGE SEVENTEEN ANENT THE STREETCAR STREETCARS? Yah !— Yellow box on wheels That bumps and reels From Farnam street to Main and back On a (sporadic) double track, Dusty or chilly — it depends, On the time of year, and say, They're always late — Lord ! Anyway, Don't talk streetcars here, my friends ! Perhaps .... You ought to sit on peoples' laps, Or kneel against the pane, your nose The farthest angle from your toes. Streetcars ? Chariots that run From Zanzibar to Babylon Past New York and the sapphire bay Whereby the sultan's daughters play ; Magic steeds of gold that fly Where polar bears and lions lie Hid in the wild Somewhat too neatly for a child ; Enchanted yellow boats that swim A hundred miles or maybe ten The oceans dim, Where funny little cities stand Just on the edges of the land, All ready to fall in, (They don't !) And full of funny little men Who look as if they'd bite — and won't ; PAGE EIGHTEEN And each man has a tiny shop Beneath the tinkly trees, All full of gingerbread and pop And drums and elephants and carts And dolls and candy hearts, And 0, such shiny, shiny seas ! Streetcars ? Stop ! Your brains need dusting — try to sneeze ! THE MOVIES r T" v HEY sit like shadows in the playhouse dim *■ Through half an hour's film of smiles and tears ; They watch life like a shadow flow, That cannot speak, but only walks and feels ; One thing they do not know : Within the darkened playhouse of the years, Themselves like moving pictures come and go Upon the film of Time in seven reels For entertainment of the seraphim. PAGE NINETEEN mmtmm FROM TREMPEALEAU HERE where the Indian Prayed to his Manitou, Here where the Jossakeed Made strong his medicine, Stand with me. . . . Below, The slumbrous flow Of waters laden down with sleep Beneath their immortality. . . The stream goes by Indifferently To seek the deep- Men, cities, channels, hills, like April rains Vanish — the stream remains. These solid walls that seem so strong Were not, and ere long Will not be, and this citadel Of rock, once rightly known, More evanescent than a song, More fluid than the brooks that swell, More wraith-like than Time flown. . . OGod, What hope, what hope ? Behold, The little scope, The life less durable than sod The fingers that too soon grow cold ! . . . The stream remains, Full'breasted and inscrutable, Indifferent to mortal pains, Uncognizant of man who strains Conquered, and yet unconquerable, And it is well. PAGE TWENTY He can not stop His ways remote And bow Because an ant is crushed beneath your feet ; His ways are other ways than ours Of ampler planets, stranger powers. Trouble Him not now With talk of pain Endured, the stricken throat, Lovers that part, A heart With unintended sorrow bittersweet. Vex not the Infinite with prattle of the dust ! He must Be busy otherwhere ; when we are slain, He and the stream remain. PAGE TWENTY -ONE JUNE BETWEEN the sun-down and the moon's slow rise There came a spirit down the vesper skies Full of glad sound and music, and with feet Wild and sweet Upon the hushed meadows, and her hair Darker than midnight air. She came with singing, and her voice was wild With the joy-hearted laughter of a child, Inmixed with tears and sudden prophecies Of lovelier eyes Than ever yet looked meekly on this earth At love's eternal birth. She sang, if singing be to give full throat To all shy woodland things that have no note Made vocal else — quaint whispers in the grass, Moods that pass Strangely across the leaves, and old, wise words Gossiped among the birds. Her eyes were deep and dear and very old, Lucent with starlight and with liquid gold, And yet a shadow brooding there to screen Secrets unseen, Fair promises of womanhood to come, Now sweetly hid and dumb. And she was clad in delicate shades of spring, The tender inward of a rosebud's wing, The timid baby green that early flushes In emerald blushes On swelling larch-leaves, and the faint-breathed pink Anemones do drink. Among the solemn-bearded, counsellor trees I saw her dancing with a summer breeze, PAGE TWENTY-TWO Her slender, snowy feet like flashing stars Across the bars And jetty shadows of the vesper wood, Willful and wild in mood. And through the starlet silences her singing, As though a thousand fairy bells were ringing Like little liquid fountains, to my ear Sweet and clear, Melodiously sweet and clear, outrang And I heard what she sang. I heard, but can not tell you what she sang, Save that the ancient meadows swiftly sprang To melody behind her, and the tongue Of each tree rung In laughter, and each June-time flower that swells Tinkled like elfin bells. And as I sprang to catch her and discover Whether, indeed, some wood god were her lover Who thus made music for her on the lawn, She was gone ! And I alone, and all the woods alone Grew silent as a stone. * Perchance she fled away to the sunbeams, Or in the secret sources of the streams Hides, or in silver fountains of the air, Or anywhere (Who knows?) unsearchable beneath the moon, This spirit that was June ! PAGE TWENTY-TKREE RAIN ON THE RIVER RAIN on the river ! And dance, dance, dance, Bobbing and tripping And sliding and slipping, One little leg dipping Into the stream where a drop of rain With a circular strain Melts on the river, the elf-men prance ! One elf to a drop, One drop to an elf — Will he never stop To recover himself ? Nay! Plop— plop — plop In the early morn The quick rain rattles and patters away ! Who could stop With such an orchestra set to play Music riddles And fugues that chase From top to bottom and back again At a most impossible pace ! If you don't believe me, listen then— To the hundred drums As small as your thumbs Hid just under the river's top, Invisible fiddles, A tiny horn, And a great big bullfrog bass ! And look out there on the ballroom floor Where every eddy has twenty score Of fairy dancers And goblin prancers ! PAGE TWENTY-FOUR Each little elf-man whirls like a top, In a mad, mad dance they jostle and prance, And skip and flop And slip and drop And never stop For rest or breath or a change at all In this incredible carnival, This maddest, Gladdest Kind of a ball !— Let them rest if they possibly can, They've danced on the river since day began ! PAGE TWENTY-FIVE - A RED LEAF A LITTLE child is crying in the wind, Yuhoo she sobs, and Yuhoo I I have seen her many times : On desolate moorlands and bleak, bare hilltops, On the myriad, pouting lips of the river, And in autumn trees, A tiny, red-coated girl, Dancing with rage and crying, It is the little sister of the wind. She has lost her doll and seeks everywhere, Everywhere in the world, Hunting for it, And finds it not. PAGE TVVENTV-SIX OLD MEN HPHE stars are old, old men. •■■ It is very cold in heaven, And they blink and huddle closer to the fire, Each at his separate hearthstone, And mourn for the good old times When peace and friendship Were everywhere found on earth. Their old limbs tremble, And their ancient teeth Chatter and shake in the cold. They draw their ragged blankets over their heads, And shout across the inter stellar space That it is very cold in heaven, Very cold, indeed, Very cold ! It is they who cause the winking of the stars. The old men tremble so By their firesides That their bodies shake like the leaves of the maple in autumn, And the light shakes, too, And they dance before it To keep warm, Or shiver, sitting down, And moan for the good old times That were never cold. PAGE TWENTY-SEVEN CLIMB up with me to Cliffwood and lie down Full-length upon the sunsoaked turf, your eyes Raised to the dazzling blue where August dies, Your head .upon your arm — so ! — and the town Behind you, while its troubled noises drown In that clear gulf of air. The great clouds rise In solemn silence up the summer skies, And autumn somewhere waits in russet brown. Now send your soul through yonder rift of blue Among those drifting islands of the sky, Where all is quietness. Let summer die ! What care we, who are borne on radiant wings Down depthless fields of hollow air and through The stainless splendor which the summer brings. PAGE TWENTY-EIGHT TP\EEP within a coulie *-^ An apple-orchard glows With startling gleams of yellow And little spots of rose. The heavy scent of summer Upon the valley lies, The smell of ripened wheat fields, The warmth of stainless skies. And buried in the clover Beneath the apple -trees A lass awaits her lover, A robin waits a breeze. The breeze will come by sunset, She hopes the lover may. — I know that apple-orchard, He will not come today. PAGE TWENTY-NINE mm* AT EAGLE BLUFF FROM this bold rampart, by eternity Thrown up against the slow assaults of change, The valley seems unending ; stately, slow The labyrinthine river winds along The horned bases of the solemn hills ; Stretches of prairie lie beyond, with wheat And hay and corn in patterns intricate Of some enormous game, the tiny barns And nestled houses for the counters to it. A marsh lies next, a bed of black and green, And far across, the blue Wisconsin hills Rim up the valley's edge. The colors change, Slow-shifting back and forth from dark to light By acres and by miles. It is the clouds — They float like pageants down the shimmering sky, Huge galleons of white that sail and sail An infinite ocean under cloudy capes And walled and misty towns. . . Those are not clouds, Those ponderous shapes of white! They are the gods, Borne on their catafalques of stainless pride To some gigantic grave — they are the gods, The ancient gods, now mercifully dead. They did not think to die as they desired, Weary with all the bitterness of heaven That could not help the waywardness of fools ; Weary, beside, with bitterness of life, Life everlasting, life insatiate, Life like a slow fire unescapable, Burdened with life as men with fear of death. Was there no other end for them, with all Their thunders and their priests and hecatombs, Thus, thus to drift in death before the wind, PAGE THIRTY No other end, O unintelligible And tongueless gulf of air, no other end ? Lo ! The white-armed, the sea-born Aphrodite, Lo ! The curled brow and puzzled frown of Zeus, Dead Pallas on her shield — O Wisdom, where, Where is thy cunning now ? And now Apollo Dead on his bier, and yet the sun still shines. And who are these on strange and carven barges, Gigantic, dim, two-headed, some like dogs And some like eagles — Thoth and Ophois And Isis and Osiris—are they dead, Despite the changeless pyramids, despite Karnak and Elephantis and the sands That blow round Memnon's statue ? Viking ships Bear after them the raven-guarded Odin, Thor with his hammer, Balder and the Norns, Their pyres aflame behind them where the sun Burns like a death-ship. These are almond-eyed And many-armed, or brown and hideous, Wild deities that to our western ears Are named uncouthly — they are dead, and India Knows not nor cares, and Ganges through his leagues Flows yet untroubled, and the Chinese bells Ring, and the lotos blossoms in Japan. And lastly comes a crucifix like snow, And one upon it whiter than his bier. . . The gods are dead. . . Only the wind drives on, Drives them before it as a flock of sheep. The gods are dead ; where are the gods? O seek, Seek in the upper chambers of the world And find them with the never-dying wind. It freshens now — the milk-white barges haste, Pass and dissolve and fall in summer rain. PAGE THIRTY-ONTC W Miwa i n You who have read this book., If you sought for a "message" in it, You were grandly left. I may be a poet — my hair is short, And I don't like afternoon tea — But I'm not a glorified messenger boy In the Celestial Telegraph Office, And I Won't run errands for the gods. The only message I have Is an old and trite one : Fear God, Love beautiful things, And lastly, mind your own business. These things comprise, as I take it, The whole duty of man.