-r 
 
ARROWS IN THE GALE 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTURO GIOVANNITTI 
 
 Introduction by 
 
 HELEN KELLER 
 
 H1LLACRE BOOKHOUSE 
 
 RIVERSIDE, CONNECTICUT 
 
 MCMXIV 
 
OL 
 
 Copyright, 1914 
 
 By Frederick C. Bursch 
 
 Printed at Hillacre 
 
TO CAROLINA 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 Introduction by Helen Keller ------ 9 
 
 Ex Voto --- ___-_- - 17 
 
 Proem - ------- 18 
 
 The Prisoners Bench --------20 
 
 The Walker - - -------- 2 i 
 
 The Thinker On Rodin s Statue - - - - 28 
 
 The Stranger at the Gate ------31 
 
 To a Bench in Mulberry Park ----- 35 
 
 Out of the Mouth of Babes ------ 38 
 
 The B.um -- --------- 40 
 
 The Magdalene ---------44 
 
 The Praise of Spring -------- 46 
 
 "Sing Me to Sleep _"-------- 55 
 
 Utopia -------------56 
 
 The Well of the Gods - ------ 58 
 
 The Last Nickel ---------61 
 
 The Republic ----------65 
 
 The Funeral -----------68 
 
 To Joseph J. Ettor --------- 70 
 
 The Sermon on the Common ----- 73 
 
 The Peaceful Hour --------80 
 
 Samnite Cradle-Song --------82 
 
 The Cage - -------- 88 
 
 The Last Oracle --------- gg 
 
 To the One Who Waits ------- 108 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 I am glad of this opportunity to commend to 
 the public the poems of my dear friend and com 
 rade, Arturo Giovannitti. 
 
 No one who loves poetry can fail to recognize 
 the greatness of Giovannitti s expression or to 
 be glad of any force that has produced such noble 
 verse. He has tried to render his ideas of the 
 world he lives in. As a poet he is to be judged 
 by his success in rendering these ideas in verse, 
 and not by his relations to Syndicalism or Social 
 ism or any other movement in which he happens 
 to be active. The laws of poetic beauty and 
 power, not one s beliefs about the economic 
 world, determine the excellence of his work. 
 
 Giovannitti s poetry has been called "rashly 
 materialistic. " So is Homer. So is Virgil. So is 
 Dante. So is Shakespeare. So is Shelley. So are 
 allegories and parables. So are the prophecies of 
 Isaiah. So is the description of the New Jerusalem 
 descending out of Heaven, at once most spirit- 
 illumined and most closely linked with the nat 
 ural needs, the sensuous pleasures and desires of 
 man! When a poet speaks he covers the bare 
 facts of life with a shimmering cloth of gold. 
 He spiritualizes all that men see, feel, think, suf 
 fer, learn of life s heights and depths. Giovan 
 nitti s poetry is the spiritualization of a lofty 
 dream that he seeks to realize the establish- 
 
mcnt of love and brotherhood and social justice 
 for every man and woman upon earth. If you 
 insist on finding in his glorious imaginings some 
 thing definite, something translatable into prose, 
 it is there; it is the struggle of a new world 
 against the old world, of ideas against customs 
 blindly obeyed, of young truth against the an 
 tiquity of outworn creeds and musty traditions. 
 Giovannitti is, like Shelley, a poet of revolt 
 against the cruelty, the poverty, the ignorance 
 which too many of us accept in blind content. 
 His is the poetry of humane humanity, of exul 
 tation in everything new, vigorous, wholesome, 
 manly, and of uncompromising hatred of what 
 is bestial, mean, sordid and degrading. It is an 
 outgrowth of noble ideals, aspirations and hopes 
 for a true democracy that are being proclaimed 
 from one end of the world to the other. Rashly 
 materialistic, indeed! 
 
 Behind Arturo Giovannitti stand the poets, 
 prophets, wise men and patriots of Italy. Into 
 him have been poured the fire and courage of a 
 proud, energetic people. 
 
 He was born January 7, 1884, at Ripabottoni 
 f in Southern Italy. He was educated at the lycee 
 \ in Campobasso. At the age of seventeen he came 
 j to America, which he had been taught to regard 
 as a better, freer country than his own. As he 
 said in his address before the jury in Salem, he 
 had "learned upon the knees of his mother and 
 his father to reverence with tears in his eyes the 
 name of a republic." Jrlis first, years in America 
 were years of, disillusion and failure. Heuworked 
 in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, where he saw 
 the misery and degradation of many of the for 
 eigners who come here, animated by the same^ 
 
 10 
 
love for democracy and hope for opportunity 
 that Had filled his heart. He studied for a while 
 in several theological schools. Then he took up 
 journalistic work in New York. About nine 
 -^ears ago he joined the Socialist movement and 
 later became the editor of the Italian revolu 
 tionary journal, II Proletario. Pent in by cold 
 and poverty and still colder tradition, he caught 
 the glow of the radiance of a redeemed humanity; 
 he bulwarked himself in his enthusiasm and in the 
 determination that all men shall have their share 
 in the bounty of the earth, shall know the splen 
 dors and ecstasies of life. 
 
 His poetry is inspired by this consecration to 
 a glorious cause. It is "only living aloud his 
 work, a singing with his hand." Many readers 
 of it will find themselves face to face with a baf 
 fling personality, with a poet quite unlike any 
 Bother. His subjects will puzzle them, and they 
 cannot be fully understood without some knowl 
 edge of the forces which have given rise to it. 
 Giovannitti s main theme is the class war, the im 
 mediate battleground of which is what we call 
 labor troubles, the strike, the lock-out, the visible 
 clash between employer and employed. That 
 battlefield has recently produced a new type of 
 militant workman, the revolutionary unionist, the 
 Syndicalist as he is called in most countries, the 
 member of the Industrial Workers of the World 
 as we have come to know him in America. Their 
 business to-day is to help the workers to win 
 strikes, that is, to force one and another conces 
 sion from the masters. Their aim to-morrow is 
 that of the Socialists, to overthrow the master 
 class completely and win for all men the heritage 
 of the earth. They are crusaders, preachers of a 
 
 11 
 
new morality whose cardinal virtue is Solidarity, 
 a word scarcely comprehended by those who have 
 no intimate knowledge of the militant proleta 
 riat. Among the heralds who bear the banner 
 with this strange new device, Solidarity, is 
 Arturo Giovannitti. 
 
 Jrle is a poet, a better poet than has come out 
 of the privileged classes of America in our day. 
 He is also a practical strike-leader and organizer. 
 For his activities during the Lawrence strike he. 
 spent several months in jail. The crime with 
 which he was charged was, of course, a legal 
 fiction devised by the mill owners and their 
 agents. Giovannitti s real crime was helping the 
 strikers in their assault on the pocketbooks of 
 the owners. Of that crime Giovannitti and all 
 Syndicalists, Industrial Workers and militant 
 Socialists are proudly guilty. For it they will be 
 punished, and they expect to be punished, until 
 the day when they are stronger than the powers 
 that administer the punishment. They ask no 
 quarter and they give none. They respect the law 
 only as a soldier respects an enemy. In the pres 
 ence of any law they ask only whether it is ex 
 pedient good tactics to obey it or break it. 
 They know that the laws are for the most part 
 made by and for the possessing classes, and that 
 in a contest with the workers the bosses do not 
 respect the laws, but quite shamelessly break 
 them. When workers go on strike for better 
 conditions, the police disperse their meetings, 
 club and imprison them and even drive the lead 
 ers out of town. It is natural that they should 
 do this, for a strike is not a legal game; it is a 
 war, and both sides use any weapon that they 
 can lay their hands on. The difference is that the 
 
 12 
 
employers keep up the hypocritical fiction of law 
 and order; while the revolutionary unionists, who 
 are either more honest or more clear-sighted, 
 point out that law and order do not exist in a 
 world which is at war. From every platform and 
 in every pamphlet they boldly declare that capi 
 talist morality is hostile to the interests of the 
 workers and is therefore from the worker s point 
 of view immoral. They preach a new morality 
 according to which the basest crime is "scab 
 bing," and that, as we know, is regarded as a 
 virtue by the upper classes. They make their 
 own laws in accordance with the needs of their 
 class, just as throughout history other classes 
 have done; and they treat statutes, ordinances 
 and injunctions as so many orders from the 
 enemy. 
 
 No one has ever given me a good reason why 
 we should obey unjust laws. But the reason why 
 we should resist them is obvious. Our resistance 
 proves our manhood and our womanhood. The 
 dignity of human nature compels us to resist 
 what we believe to be wrong and a stumbling- 
 block to our fellowmen. When a government 
 puts forth its strength on the side of injustice it 
 is foredoomed to fail. When it depends for "law 
 and order" upon the militia and the police, its 
 mission in the world is nearly finished. We be 
 lieve, at least we hope, that our capitalist govern 
 ment is near its end; we wish to hasten its end; 
 the only question is how. The various answers 
 to that question constitute the differences be 
 tween the several types or groups of socialists. 
 The capitalist press is anxious to prove how in 
 significant is this group of agitators a handful 
 of discontents, mostly ignorant foreigners. 
 
 13 
 
A handful of discontents? When in the his 
 tory of the world has the vanguard been in the 
 majority? Never. People who are ready to de 
 vote their lives to the oppressed, hoping for no 
 return but a good conscience, are never found in 
 large numbers at a given time and place. Most 
 men have other affairs to attend to than their 
 fellowmen s prosperity and happiness. It is not 
 a question of numbers at first, but the spirit 
 which animates the "handful." But why so per 
 sistently dodge the truth? Why not at least face 
 the fact that a million of the people of the United 
 States would like to see the present government 
 changed? Why not admit frankly that the creed 
 of Socialism is held by thirty million people in 
 the civilized world, and is preached and written 
 \Jn sixty languages? The foe if so you regard 
 the emancipation of man from cruel conditions 
 is in your midst. Scarcely a hamlet, nay, even 
 a house, will be found where he does not lurk. 
 Socialism is here to stay. That is, the idea is 
 here; socialist society has not yet arrived. Let 
 anyone who will take the trouble to investigate, 
 and he will find that this idea is a very vigorous 
 plant, rooted securely in the hearts of men, where 
 it does not depend upon the press for watering 
 and cultivating. Ideas so planted will bear fruit 
 inevitably. At this very hour the seeds are being 
 scattered far and wide, and the power does not 
 exist in the world which can prevent their ger 
 mination. It is a plant which it has taken ages 
 to bring to flower. To its nourishment have gone 
 the best, the finest, the noblest aspirations of 
 humanity. 
 
 Such is the wonderful world movement out of 
 which Arturo Giovannitti is flashing his message 
 
 14 
 
of hope to the human race. It is a movement 
 great in its material and spiritual possibilities. 
 It is great, very great in the diversity and sweep 
 |of its issues. It is supremely great in the sym 
 pathy, mutual helpfulness and limitless energy 
 |of those who are pushing it forward. It is ap 
 pealing, it is beautiful in the whole-hearted ef- 
 iforts to redeem to light, hope, strength and joy 
 the millions upon whom all the world s burden 
 of anguish and toil has fallen so pitilessly through 
 Ithe centuries. 
 
 Giovannitti s poetry is an effort to express! 
 la multitude of men who are lost in an immensity 
 of silence, swallowed up in meaningless dark- 
 [ness. With burning words he makes us feel the 
 presence of the toilers hidden behind tenement 
 walls, behind the machinery they guide. He 
 turns the full light of his intense, vivid intelli 
 gence upon the worn face of the workers who 
 put every breath and nerve into the struggle for 
 existence, who give every hour and exhaust 
 |every faculty that others may live. He finds 
 voice for his message in the sighs, the dumb 
 loves and hopes, the agonies and thwartings of 
 |tnen who are bowed beneath burdens and broken 
 y the monster hands of machines, men who spin 
 nd weave and cause the earth to yield its glad 
 increase, men from whose unheeded stroke up- 
 roll domes and spires, till the eyes of men and 
 ngels behold among the clouds the work of their 
 patient hands! But the sense of divine things 
 to be goes thrilling through all his verses. It 
 jis as unmistakable as the smell of spring in April 
 jair, and just as pervasive, just as elemental. He 
 elcomes the combat not a combat that shall 
 [rend the world apart, but one which shall bring 
 
 15 
 
it together in a universal sunshine of peace. "The 
 battle has gone up on to higher ground and into 
 higher light; the battle is above the clouds." In 
 the irregular lines of such poems as "The Cage" 
 there is the tramp of a vast, onrushing host. It 
 is the high-tide of the Revolution. Onward it 
 sweeps through the rent temples of the past, 
 flooding the courts of dethroned state, thunder 
 ing through the market-place where men buy 
 and sell the lives and souls of their fellow men. 
 Face the wreckage, you who can, and behold 
 upon the tumultuous waves a new ship of state. 
 Fast through the night of our ignorance and 
 our fear it speeds on to the calm, sunlit shores 
 of the desired land. 
 
 I am sure this book will go on its way thrill 
 ing to new courage those who fight for freedom. 
 It will set human hearts beating for something 
 better. It will move some to think and keep them 
 glad that they thought. Its echoes caught from 
 a noble life, a noble fight will 
 
 "roll from soul to soul 
 And grow forever and forever." 
 
 HELEN KELLER. 
 
 16 
 
EX VOTO 
 
 Hail, full of grace, with Thee my love abides ! 
 For thy faith which in me doth live and rest, 
 Blest be thy name forevermore and blest 
 Be Thou amongst the maidens and the brides. 
 
 Athwart the chasm that hope and fear divides 
 Twas Thou, the dream unseen, that I caressed, 
 Farther than Thee I have no goal to quest 
 But what thy will for thine own joy provides. 
 
 Bid me, then, gather in thy whispered name, 
 As in a conjured charm, all my war cries 
 And slay the monster that our pinions grips. 
 
 Nobler than on my brow the wreath of fame, 
 Holier than heaven s radiance in mine eyes 
 Is thy young kiss of love upon my lips. 
 
PROEM 
 
 These are but songs they re not a creed 
 
 They are not meant to lift or save, 
 They won t appeal or intercede 
 
 For any fool or any knave; 
 They hold no covenant or pledge 
 
 For him who dares no foe assail: 
 They are the blows of my own sledge 
 
 Against the walls of my own jail. 
 
 I stand a watch at the van post 
 
 Of my own war I m captain of; 
 No holy fire of pentecost 
 
 Can force on me a Saviour s love. 
 I fight alone and win or sink, 
 
 I need no one to make me free, 
 I want no Jesus Christ to think 
 
 That he could ever die for me. 
 
 If what I have I give, you can 
 
 Be sure I lay no heavenly store, 
 And what I take from any man 
 
 I have no thankful feeling for. 
 All that you worship, fear and trust 
 
 I kick into the sewer s maw 
 And fling my shaft and my disgust 
 
 Against your gospel and your law. 
 
 18 
 
Oh, yes, I know the firing line 
 
 Outstretches far beyond my arms, 
 I know this muffled song of mine 
 
 Is but one shout of many alarms; 
 But though along the battle range 
 
 I press with many in one pursuit, 
 I have my personal revenge, 
 
 My private enemy to shoot. 
 
 To them, the hosts of every land, 
 
 The nameless army of the strong 
 Who make Humanity s last stand 
 
 Against the battlements of wrong, 
 No worthy anthem can attune 
 
 My raucous buccina. Let him, 
 The greater bard that shall come soon, 
 
 Sing through the cannon mouth their 
 hymn. 
 
 To them, for theirs and for my sake, 
 
 He ll speak the words I never spoke, 
 And if he speak them, let him take 
 
 The laurel wreath, the crown of oak. 
 For what they win is theirs alone, 
 
 Of their reward I ask no part, 
 I only claim three things my own: 
 
 My dream, my death and my sweetheart. 
 
 But if they want my song tis theirs. 
 
 For though it may not stir their souls, 
 Though feebler than their bugle blares, 
 
 Their drum taps and their tocsin tolls, 
 Still may my song, before the sun s 
 
 Reveille, speed the hours that tire, 
 While they are cleaning up their guns 
 
 Around the cheery bivouac fire. 
 
 19 
 
THE PRISONER S BENCH 
 
 Through here all wrecks of the tempestuous 
 mains 
 
 Of life have washed away the tides of time. 
 Tatters of flesh and souls, furies and pains, 
 
 Horrors and passions awful or sublime, 
 All passed here to their doom. Nothing remains 
 
 Of all the tasteless dregs of sin and crime 
 But stains of tears, and stains of blood and stains 
 
 Of the inn s vomit and the brothel s grime. 
 
 And now we, too, must sit here, Joe. Don t dust 
 These boards on which our wretched brothers fell, 
 They are clean, there s no reason for disgust. 
 For the fat millionaire s revolting stench 
 Is not here, nor the preacher s saintly smell, 
 And the judge never sat upon this bench. 
 
 20 
 
THE WALKER 
 
 I HEAR footsteps over my head all night. 
 
 They come and tjiey go. Again they come and 
 they go all night. 
 
 They^ come one eternity in four, paces and they 
 go one eternity in four paces, and between the 
 coming and the going there is Silence and 
 the Night and the Infinite. 
 
 For infinite are the nine feet of a prison cell, and 
 endless is the march of him who walks be 
 tween the yellow brick wall and the red iron 
 gate, thinking things that cannot be chained 
 and cannot be locked, but that wander far 
 away in the sunlit world, each in a wild pil 
 grimage after a destined goal. 
 * * * 
 
 Throughout the restless night I hear the foot 
 steps over my head. 
 
 Who walks? I know not. It is the phantom of 
 the jail, the sleepless brain, a man, the man, 
 the Walker. 
 
 One-two-three-four: four paces and the wall. 
 
 One-two-three-four: four paces and the iron gate. 
 
 He has measured his space, he has measured it 
 accurately, scrupulously, minutely, as the 
 hangman measures the rope and the grave- 
 digger the coffin so many feet, so many 
 inches, so many fractions of an inch for each 
 of the four paces. 
 
 21 
 
One-two-three-four. Each step sounds heavy 
 and hollow over my head, and the echo of 
 each step sounds hollow within my head as 
 I count them in suspense and in dread that 
 once, perhaps, in the endless walk, there may 
 be five steps instead of four between the yel 
 low brick wall and the red iron gate. 
 
 But he has measured the space so accurately, so 
 scrupulously, so minutely that nothing breaks 
 the grave rhythm of the slow, fantastic 
 
 march. 
 
 * * * 
 
 When all are asleep (and who knows but I when 
 all sleep?) three things are still awake in the 
 night: the Walker, my heart and the old clock 
 which has the soul of a fiend for never, since 
 a coarse hand with red hair on its fingers 
 swung for the first time the pendulum in the 
 jail, has the old clock tick-tocked a full hour 
 of joy. 
 
 Yet the old clock which marks everything, and 
 records everything, and to everything tolls 
 the death knell, the wise old clock that knows 
 everything, does not know the number of the 
 footsteps of the Walker, nor the throbs of 
 my heart. 
 
 For not for the Walker, nor for my heart is there 
 a second, a minute, an hour or anything that 
 is in the old clock there is nothing but the 
 night, the sleepless night, the watchful, wist 
 ful night, and footsteps that go, and footsteps 
 that come and the wild, tumultuous beatings 
 that trail after them forever. 
 
 * * * 
 
 All the sounds of the living beings and inani- 
 
 22 
 
mate things, and all the voices and all the 
 noises of the night I have heard in my wist 
 ful vigil. 
 
 I have heard the moans of him who bewails a 
 thing that is dead and the sighs of him who 
 tries to smother a thing that will not die; 
 
 I have heard the stifled sobs of the one who weeps 
 with his head under the coarse blanket, and 
 the whisperings of the one who prays with 
 his forehead on the hard, cold stone of the 
 floor; 
 
 I have heard him who laughs the shrill, sinister 
 laugh of folly at the horror rampant on the 
 yellow wall and at the red eyes of the night 
 mare glaring through the iron bars; 
 
 I have heard in the sudden icy silence him who 
 coughs a dry, ringing cough, and wished mad 
 ly that his throat would not rattle so and that 
 he would not spit on the floor, for no sound 
 was more atrocious than that of his sputum 
 upon the floor; 
 
 I have heard him who swears fearsome oaths 
 which I listen to in reverence and awe, for 
 they are holier than the virgin s prayer; 
 
 And I have heard, most terrible of all, the silence 
 of two hundred brains all possessed by one 
 single, relentless, unforgiving, desperate 
 thought. 
 
 All this have I heard in the watchful night, 
 
 And the murmur of the wind beyond the 
 
 walls, 
 
 And the tolls of a distant bell, 
 And the woeful dirge of the rain, 
 
 And the remotest echoes of the sorrowful city 
 
 And the terrible beatings, wild beatings, mad 
 
 23 
 
beatings of the One Heart which is nearest 
 
 to my heart. 
 
 All this have I heard in the still night; 
 But nothing is louder, harder, drearier, mightier, 
 
 more awful than the footsteps I hear over 
 
 my head all night. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Yet fearsome and terrible are all the footsteps of 
 men upon the earth, for they either descend 
 or climb. 
 
 Thy descend from little mounds and high peaks 
 and lofty altitudes, through wide roads and 
 narrow paths, down noble marble stairs and 
 creaky stairs of wood and some go down to 
 the cellar, and some to the grave, and some 
 down to the pits of shame and infamy,, and 
 still some to the glory of an unfathomable 
 abyss where there is nothing but the staring 
 white, stony eyeballs of Destiny. 
 
 And again other footsteps climb. They climb to 
 life and to love, to fame, to power, to vanity, 
 to truth, to glory and to the scaffold to 
 everything but Freedom and the Ideal. 
 
 And they all climb the same roads and the same 
 stairs others go down; for never, since man 
 began to think how to overcome and over 
 pass man, have other roads and other stairs 
 been found. 
 
 They descend and they climb, the fearful foot 
 steps of men, and some limp, some drag, some 
 speed, some trot, some run they are quiet, 
 slow, noisy, brisk, quick, feverish, mad, and 
 most awful is their cadence to the ears of the 
 one who stands still. 
 
 But of all the footsteps of men that either de- 
 
 24 
 
scend or climb, no footsteps are so fearsome 
 and terrible as those that go straight on the 
 dead level of a prison floor, from a yellow 
 stone wall to a red iron gate. 
 
 All through the night he walks and he thinks. 
 Is it more frightful because he walks and his 
 footsteps sound hollow over my head, or be 
 cause he thinks and speaks not his thoughts? 
 
 But does he think? Why should he think? Do 
 I think? I only hear the footsteps and count 
 them. Four steps and the wall. Four steps 
 and the gate. But beyond? Beyond? Where 
 goes he beyond the gate and the wall? 
 
 He goes not beyond. His thought breaks there 
 on the iron gate. Perhaps it breaks like a 
 wave of rage, perhaps like a sudden flow of 
 hope, but it always returns to beat the wall 
 like a billow of helplessness and despair. 
 
 He walks to and fro within the narrow whirlpit 
 of this ever storming and furious thought. 
 Only one thought constant, fixed, immov 
 able, sinister, without power and without 
 voice. 
 
 A thought of madness, frenzy, agony and despair, 
 a hell-brewed thought, for it is a natural 
 thought. All things natural are things im 
 possible while there are jails in the world 
 bread, work, happiness, peace, love. 
 
 But he thinks not of this. As he walks he thinks 
 of the most superhuman, the most unattain 
 able, the most impossible thing in the world: 
 
 He thinks of a small brass key that turns just 
 
 25 
 
half around and throws open the red iron 
 
 gate. 
 
 * * * 
 
 That is all the Walker thinks, as he walks 
 throughout the night. 
 
 And that is what two hundred minds drowned in 
 the darkness and the silence of the night think, 
 and that is also what I think. 
 
 Wonderful is the supreme wisdom of the jail that 
 makes all think the same thought. Marvel 
 ous is the providence of the law that equalizes 
 all, even in mind and sentiment. Fallen is 
 the last barrier of privilege, the aristocracy 
 of the intellect. The democracy of reason 
 has leveled all the two hundred minds to the 
 common surface of the same thought. 
 
 I, who have never killed, think like the murderer; 
 
 I, who have never stolen, reason like the thief; 
 
 I think, reason, wish, hope, doubt, wait like the 
 hired assassin, the embezzler, the forger, the 
 counterfeiter, the incestuous, the raper, the 
 drunkard, the prostitute, the pimp, I, I who 
 used to think of love and life and flowers and 
 song and beauty and the ideal. 
 
 A little key, a little key as little as my little finger, 
 a little key of shining brass. 
 
 All my ideas, my thoughts, my dreams are con 
 gealed in a little key of shiny brass. 
 
 All my brain, all my soul, all the suddenly surging 
 latent powers of my deepest life are in the 
 pocket of a white-haired man dressed in blue. 
 
 He is great, powerful, formidable, the man with 
 the white hair, for he has in his pocket the 
 mighty talisman which makes one man cry, 
 and one man pray, and one laugh, and one 
 
 26 
 
cough, and one walk, and all keep awake and 
 listen and think the same maddening thought. 
 
 Greater than all men is the man with the white 
 hair and the small brass key, for no other 
 man in the world could compel two hundred 
 men to think for so long the same thought. 
 Surely when the light breaks I will write a 
 hymn unto him which shall hail him greater 
 than Mohammed and Arbues and Torque- 
 mada and Mesmer, and all the other masters 
 of other men s thoughts. I shall call him Al 
 mighty, for he holds everything of all and of 
 me in a little brass key in his pocket. 
 
 Everything of me he holds but the branding iron 
 of contempt and the claymore of hatred for the 
 monstrous cabala that can make the apostle 
 and the murderer, the poet and the procurer, 
 think of the same gate, the same key and the 
 same exit on the different sunlit highways of 
 
 life. 
 
 * * * 
 
 My brother, do not walk any more. 
 
 It is wrong to walk on a grave. It is a sacri 
 lege to walk four steps from the headstone 
 to the foot and four steps from the foot to 
 the headstone. 
 
 If you stop walking, my brother, no longer will 
 this be a grave, for you will give me back my 
 mind that is chained to your feet and the right 
 to think my own thoughts. 
 
 I implore you, my brother, for I am weary of the 
 long vigil, weary of counting your steps, and 
 heavy with sleep. 
 
 Stop, rest, sleep, my brother, for the dawn is well 
 nigh and it is not the key alone that can throw 
 open the gate. 
 
 27 
 
THE THINKER On Rodin s Statue 
 
 Aye, think ! Since time and life began, 
 Your mind has only feared and slept; 
 
 Of all the beasts they called you man 
 Only because you toiled and wept. 
 
 On all the ages firmly set, 
 
 Lone pillar of the world you stood; 
 Beyond your hunger and your sweat 
 
 You. never knew, nor understood 
 
 Till now, when deep into your soul, 
 Where it lay buried and concealed, 
 
 At last your destined end and goal 
 Shall stand emblazoned and revealed. 
 
 Think, think unburden, liberate 
 
 Your mind from all its waste and loss, 
 
 Throw down from it the age-long weight 
 Of few men s feet and one man s cross. 
 
 Behind your mighty frame, in fright 
 To stay you, moan the dark, dead years. 
 
 Heed not the voices of the night, 
 Heed not the echoes of your tears. 
 
 However dear, your sorrows rest 
 
 Upon you, like a burial stone. 
 Upturn it! Rise! Their grave s unblest, 
 
 The terrors of the past have flown. 
 
 28 
 
Its memories in you must die, 
 
 Its shadows must depart from you, 
 
 Your doubts, your fears are all a lie, 
 Only this wondrous thought is true. 
 
 Think ! If your brain will but extend 
 As far as what your hands have done, 
 
 If but your reason will descend 
 
 As deep as where your feet have gone 
 
 The walls of ignorance will fall 
 
 That stood between you and your world, 
 
 And from its bloody pedestal 
 
 The last god, Terror, shall be hurled. 
 
 Aye, think! While breaks in you the dawn, 
 Crouched at your feet, the world lies still 
 
 It has no power but your brawn, 
 It knows no wisdom but your will. 
 
 Behind your flesh, and mind and blood 
 
 Nothing there is to live and do, 
 There is no man, there is no god, 
 
 There is not anything but you. 
 
 Think, think! What every age and land 
 
 Thought an eternal mystery, 
 What seers could never understand 
 
 And saints and sages could not see, 
 
 From you, the chained, reviled outcast, 
 From you the brute inert and dumb, 
 
 Shall, through your wakened thought at last, 
 The message of to-morrow come. 
 
 29 
 
Twill come, a dazzling shaft of light, 
 Of truth, to save and to redeem, 
 
 And whether Love or Dynamite 
 Shall blaze the pathway to your dream. 
 
 30 
 

 
 THE STRANGER AT THE GATE 
 
 THE STRANGER whose sandals were white 
 with the dust of many roads approached the 
 guardian of the gate on his way out of the 
 mighty city, whose towers are loftier than the 
 pillars of smoke and the mountain peaks in 
 the sky. 
 
 "Peace and plenty be with thee forever, keeper 
 of the gate," said he, touching with two rin 
 gers of his right hand his bowed forehead. 
 
 "God walk before thy feet forevermore, stran 
 ger," answered the keeper of the gate. 
 "Whither goest thou?" 
 
 "Wherever men are and the highroads lead. For 
 the wisdom I seek does not remain in one 
 place. It beckons and I follow, keeper of the 
 gate." 
 
 "Hast thou found any wisdom in our city, 
 stranger?" 
 
 "Aye, much wisdom have I found and great 
 knowledge for the wayfarer who seeks a home 
 to rest in his old age. My home is farther on 
 the road, keeper of the gate." 
 
 "Who told thee that thy home is not in our city, 
 stranger?" 
 
 "The man ye crucified yesterday. He cried not, 
 nor did he weep nor curse as such men do, but 
 he smiled and he smiled and he looked at me 
 strangely, oh, so strangely!" 
 
 31 
 
"And what said he that thou leavest a great city 
 because of the words of a criminal?" 
 
 "Nay, he said naught, but I said unto myself, in 
 stead, that the city where crucified wrong 
 doers cry not, nor weep, nor curse, but smile 
 and look so strangely at people, is no place 
 for the stranger who has seen many lands and 
 knows many roads, keeper of the gate." 
 
 "He smiled to hurt and infuriate us, stranger, for 
 we are used to shrieks and curses. He was 
 the worst offender of all, as thou mayest judge 
 by his ungodly behavior. Not even death ap 
 peased or terrified him." 
 
 "Aye, so methought, in sooth. But prithee, 
 keeper of the gate, why did ye crucify him?" 
 
 "Knowest thou not the laws of this land which 
 is the wealthiest and mightiest under the sun? 
 He deserved death." 
 
 "Aye, any dead man deserved death, but I know 
 not for what reason." 
 
 "He did offend against the sovereignty of the 
 people and the godliness of our supreme law, 
 stranger." 
 
 "Verily, it is so, keeper of the gate. But was it, 
 perchance, because, as I heard, he pitied the 
 poor and the lowly?" 
 
 "Nay, twas not for that. We also pity them. 
 Indeed we have many great institutions that 
 shelter the worthy poor." 
 
 "Was it, then, because he mingled with the rabble 
 and flattered it with strange and obscure 
 words such as right, justice and the like?" 
 
 "Not for that, indeed, for we do the same. How 
 else could we get the recruits for the legions, 
 the votes to elect the Sanhedrim and the pop- 
 32 
 
ulace to cheer the Tetrarch and the Procon 
 sul?" 
 
 "In faith, then it was because he believed in a 
 new religion, contrary to the established 
 church?" 
 
 "Say not that again, stranger, or I shall think 
 that thou hast not gathered much knowledge 
 in thy many journeys. Thou shouldst know, 
 forsooth, that we are very tolerant in religious 
 matters and that our Pantheon hath a niche 
 for every god. The more religions we have 
 the better, so says the Praetor." 
 
 "Upon my head, thou hast spoken the truth, 
 keeper of the gate. Then I gather that it was 
 because he forgave the adulterous woman." 
 
 "Not so, stranger. We had good divorce laws 
 ere he came, and many unmarried men in the 
 land who would rather wed a repudiated 
 woman than a maiden." 
 
 "By my rod, so it is, keeper of the gate. So I 
 infer that it was because he pardoned the har 
 lot of yonder city I passed last week." 
 
 "Nay, nay, thou speakest not wisely, stranger. 
 Harlotry is a necessary evil, as many wise men 
 have often declared, but thou hast surely 
 heard of late that we have appointed councils 
 of rich and powerful men to abate it and re 
 deem the fallen women." 
 
 "Indeed, I heard of it and it is a most worthy and 
 honorable enterprise, keeper of the gate. But 
 now I know it truly: it was, no doubt, because 
 he said that these rich men could not enter 
 the kingdoms of the blessed hereafter." 
 
 "Nay, not for that, stranger. Everybody says 
 that, even the high priests of the temples. It 
 is by saying that, that the rich men are kept 
 
 33 
 
on this earth, as I heard a Pharisee tell a 
 wealthy publican." 
 
 "Then my knowledge goes not farther, keeper 
 of the gate. I beg of thee to tell me outright 
 why ye crucified him, if thou wouldst teach 
 a poor wayfarer who is seeking after wis 
 dom." 
 
 "Aye, I will tell thee, stranger, though thy curios 
 ity is great for a walker of Caesar s roads. It 
 was not because of any of these things, but 
 because of all these things, because he said 
 and did them all at once and because he 
 talked too much and was beginning to be 
 heard and because . . . But whither art thou 
 going, stranger?" 
 
 "Where the highroad leads, keeper of the gate." 
 
 34 
 
TO 
 A BENCH IN MULBERRY PARK 
 
 Well, after many a year, 
 
 I see thou art still here, 
 
 Old bench, old haven of my roaming days; 
 
 And like a canopy 
 
 On royal beds, on thee 
 
 Its green pavilion still the maple sprays. 
 
 They were not sweet, indeed, 
 
 Those dreary days of need 
 
 When I, each night, would wonder here alone 
 
 Whether the dawn would hail 
 
 Another thief in jail 
 
 Or at the morgue another corpse unknown. 
 
 They were, indeed, so crude, 
 
 Those days of solitude 
 
 When hunger grinned at madness stony stare. 
 
 Recall not that again, 
 
 For love has come since then 
 
 And youth has won the battle with despair. 
 
 Those songs instead evoke 
 
 That sobs and tears did choke, 
 
 And that young faith no tempest could destroy; 
 
 Recall the tunes I knew, 
 
 The dreams each morning slew, 
 
 And those that since fulfilled their task of joy. 
 
 35 
 
When every roar and sound 
 
 The heartless city drowned 
 
 Into the surging ocean of the night, 
 
 To me alone would drift, 
 
 A rich and kingly gift, 
 
 The flotsam of its song for my delight. 
 
 From all these windows purred 
 
 The slumbers, and I heard, 
 
 Now and again, a cradling mother croon, 
 
 While from the roofs afar 
 
 Dropped from an old guitar 
 
 The sighs of some young lover to the moon. 
 
 Watching the clouds odd race 
 
 In my ecstatic maze 
 
 Meseemed that thou into their sea didst soar, 
 
 And I went sailing by, 
 
 Young Orpheus of the sky, 
 
 Like a doge in a gorgeous bucentaur. 
 
 I dreamed and dreamed all night, 
 
 Young dreams, and frail and bright, 
 
 Like little buds that never grow to bloom, 
 
 Like silver clouds that pass, 
 
 Like crickets in the grass, 
 
 Like yellow fireflies twinkling in the gloom. 
 
 Yea, I was hungry yet 
 
 Sometimes one can forget 
 
 And hungry stomachs often find a dole, 
 
 But the young days are fleet 
 
 When one can fill with sweet 
 
 And moonlit dreams the hunger of the soul. 
 
 Ah me! they re gone, those days, 
 
 36 
 
And love for me now lays 
 
 A pillow full of lullabies to sleep; 
 
 But it is hard, alack ! 
 
 That memories come back 
 
 Of days that were so sad when one can t weep. 
 
 Yet in my deepest heart 
 
 I feel a sudden smart 
 
 That I won t tell my love and she won t see 
 
 Old bench, if some new wretch 
 
 His limbs on thee should stretch, 
 
 Be kind to him as thou hast been to me. 
 
 37 
 
OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES 
 
 Milady was sitting at the table under the pink 
 wax-light, alone in the resplendent hall. 
 
 I looked in from the street and knew not what 
 resplended the most, whether the young, 
 blue-clad sweetness of milady or the chaste 
 sheen of the tablecloth, or the luster of the 
 candelabra, the silver, the gold, the crystal, 
 or, mayhap, the lucid head of the severe and 
 solemn waiter. 
 
 But I knew that the waiter was there because of 
 milady and not milady because of the waiter, 
 as some may think. 
 
 Milady was there only because of the little, frag 
 ile, shivering bitch she held in her arms, and 
 the little bitch had her little paws on the white 
 tablecloth while milady fed to her, delicately 
 and amorously, the soul and the brain of the 
 waiter diluted with a little spoon of gold in 
 a creamy fluid, in a noble silver bowl. 
 
 Alone milady sat in the great hall under the pink 
 wax-light as I watched her through the frost- 
 embroidered window, and methought she was 
 Hebe ministering the nectar to the last god. 
 
 Outside, the great black carriage awaited under 
 the nimble-limbed portico of alabaster, and 
 the little newsboy who stood by me devoured 
 with his eyes, perhaps the uncarnal beauty 
 
 38 
 
of milady, perhaps the heavenly gruel of the 
 shivering bitch. 
 
 I looked at him and deeply I looked into his 
 ravenous eyes, and then I asked: "Of what 
 are you thinking, my little friend?" 
 
 Said he: "I have sold six papers in four hours and 
 the papers are now wet and old, for they age 
 and die in few hours, the papers." 
 
 Said he: "My mother is dead, my father is in jail, 
 my sister is in the saloon and I have sold only 
 six papers in four hours." 
 
 Said he again: "I wish I was that dog." 
 
 Again I looked at him, and his eyes were full of 
 tears, the child tears that only the women 
 understand, the young tears that make men 
 smile. 
 
 And I said: "Yea, boy, for if you were that dog 
 you would be sure to eat and to be petted 
 to-night. 
 
 "And also, if you can kiss no more your mother, 
 at least you could lap the hand of your mis 
 tress, for she is very dear and very sweet. Is 
 it not so?" 
 
 He raised his eyes to me, his big blue eyes, his 
 placid eyes full of tears and he glared at me 
 and answered through his clenched teeth : 
 
 "No, damn you, no, I would tear her nose off." 
 
 And he darted away in the raging blizzard. 
 
 But I saw the sun, the sun, the great sun, the 
 luminous warm sun, right in the front of him. 
 
 39 
 
THE BUM 
 
 The dust of thousand roads, the grease 
 And grime of slums, were on his face; 
 
 The fangs of hunger and disease 
 
 Upon his throat had left their trace; 
 
 The smell of death was in his breath, 
 But in his eye no resting place. 
 
 Along the gutters, shapeless, fagged, 
 
 With drooping head and bleeding feet, 
 Throughout the Christmas night he dragged 
 
 His care, his woe, and his defeat; 
 Till gasping hard with face downward 
 
 He fell upon the trafficked street. 
 
 The midnight revelry aloud 
 
 Cried out its glut of wine and lust; 
 The happy, clean, indifferent crowd 
 
 Passed him in anger and disgust; 
 For fit or rum he was a bum, 
 
 And if he died twas nothing lost. 
 
 The tramp, the thief, the drunk, the brute, 
 
 The beggar, each withdrew his eye; 
 E en she, the bartered prostitute, 
 
 Held close her skirts and passed him by; 
 For, drunk or dead, the street s the bed 
 
 Where dogs and bums must sleep and die. 
 
 40 
 
So all went on to their debauch, 
 
 Parade of ghosts in weird array. 
 Only a tramp dog did approach 
 
 That mass of horror and decay 
 It sniffed him out with its black snout 
 
 Then turned about and limped away. 
 
 And there he lay, a thing of dread, 
 
 A loathsome thing for man and beast; 
 
 None put a stone beneath his head, 
 Or wet his lips, or rubbed his wrist, 
 
 And none drew near to help or cheer 
 Save a policeman and a priest. 
 
 Yet neither heard his piteous wail, 
 And neither knelt by where he fell. 
 
 The man in blue spoke of the jail, 
 Until he heard his rattle tell, 
 
 And hearing that, he motioned at 
 The man in black to speak of hell. 
 
 To speak of hell, lest he should hope 
 For peace, for rest untroubled, deep, 
 
 Where he no more need roam and grope 
 Through dark, foul lanes to beg and weep, 
 
 Where in the vast warm earth at last 
 He d find a resting place to sleep. 
 
 To sleep not standing tired and sick 
 By grimy walls and cold lamp poles, 
 
 Nor crouched in fear of the night stick, 
 To beat his sore and swollen soles, 
 
 Nor see the flares of green nightmares 
 And ghastly dawns through black rat holes; 
 
 41 
 
To sleep beneath the green, warm earth 
 As in a sacred mother s womb, 
 
 And wait the call of a new birth, 
 
 When his dead life again shall bloom 
 
 For it shall pass into the grass; 
 
 The lamb will graze upon his tomb. 
 
 Not he, not he shall think of this, 
 
 Not he the wretched, the down trod; 
 
 Beyond the club of the police 
 
 Shall reach the ruthless hand of God, 
 
 For like a ghoul the rich man s rule 
 Will seek him out beneath the sod. 
 
 He must know hell, lest he should guess 
 That all his weary tramp is o er 
 
 A hell of hunger and distress 
 
 Where he, cold, naked and footsore, 
 
 Alone and ill, must wander still 
 
 Through endless roads forevermore. 
 
 Nay, nay, my brother, tis a lie! 
 
 Just like their Christ, their love, their law! 
 They brewed a wolfish fiend on high, 
 
 Just like their hearts perverse and raw, 
 To damn or save the dying slave, 
 
 So those who live should serve in awe. 
 
 So that in trembling fear they d hold 
 Upon their neck their masters sway, 
 
 So that they d guard their masters gold 
 And starve and freeze and still obey, 
 
 So when for greed they toil and bleed, 
 Instead of rising they should pray. 
 
 42 
 
That s why they come to huts and slums ! 
 
 Tis not to soothe or to console, 
 But just to stay the hungry bums 
 
 With this black terror of the soul, 
 And bend and blight with chains of fright 
 
 What chains of steel could not control. 
 
 And yet, and yet the thunderbolt 
 
 Shall fall some day they fear the least, 
 
 When flesh and sinews shall revolt 
 And she, the mob, the fiend, the beast, 
 
 Unchained, awake, shall turn and break 
 The bloody tables of their feast. 
 
 But you, my brother, will be dead, 
 And none will think of you for aye! 
 
 Still by your spirit I ll be led, 
 If like their cattle you ll not die, 
 
 If you ll but show before you go 
 That mine can be your battle cry! 
 
 Aye, brother, death all woes relieves 
 Yet this low world that well you knew, 
 
 This Christian world of sainted thieves 
 And fat apostles of virtue, 
 
 This world of brutes and prostitutes, 
 Must see its end revealed by you! 
 
 Rise then! Your rags, your bleeding shirt, 
 Tear from your crushed and trampled chest, 
 
 Fling in its face its own vile dirt, 
 Your scorn and hate to manifest, 
 
 And in its gray cold eyes of prey 
 Spit out your life and your protest ! 
 
 Salem Jail, Nov. 20, 1912. 
 
 43 
 
THE MAGDALENE 
 
 The service over, the silk-hatted pastor, 
 Smooth-shaven, jovial, fat and debonair, 
 
 A merry joke on his ascetic master, 
 
 Met in the empty church a woman s stare. 
 
 He paused, his hands on his rotund abdomen 
 Piously laid, and quoth with solemn mien: 
 
 "What can I do for you, my worthy woman?" 
 She rose and said: "I am the Magdalene. 
 
 "You said that I believed and was forgiven, 
 That faith alone can save and purify, 
 
 And from the stews I came, whence I was driven, 
 To seal upon your lips the monstrous lie. 
 
 "For though I have believed and not denied Him, 
 Though with my bitter tears I washed His feet, 
 
 The harpy clutch of greed that crucified Him 
 Has dragged me back into the sunless street. 
 
 "From pit to pit it dragged me down, a mourner 
 Of His great shattered dream, with blows and 
 sneers, 
 
 And you have seen me stand around the corner, 
 A traded strumpet for two thousand years. 
 
 "You saw them with their hands of fiendish 
 malice, 
 
 44 
 
From this, my withered, soulless flesh of pain, 
 Wring out the gold with which they bought the 
 
 chalice 
 Where now you gulp his precious blood again. 
 
 "All this you saw, and still to them that Jesus 
 Drove from his house, aye, from this very place, 
 
 You sell his heav n for thirty silver pieces, 
 And for a mess of potage my disgrace. 
 
 "You call on them his blessing while I wander 
 On all the ways of hell where I was thrust, 
 
 And while you soothe their glutted souls, you 
 
 pander 
 To my eternal shame and to their lust. 
 
 "And yet I know, in all my desolation, 
 
 The Saviour shall soon come to my release, 
 
 No more a doleful voice of resignation, 
 No more a God-sent messenger of peace, 
 
 "But a red-winged archangel of the devil 
 
 Who shall disperse for aye the ravenous brood, 
 
 Your lies hush in the offals of their revel, 
 
 And give me back my soul and womanhood." 
 
 45 
 
THE PRAISE OF SPRING 
 
 I have hated thee, O Spring. 
 
 With all the furies of my inextinguishable blood, 
 with all the aches of my unappeasable flesh 
 I have hated thee, 
 And despised thee, 
 And cursed thee, O Spring. 
 
 I have hated thee for the stupidity of thy flowers 
 that smelled the carrion of the covered graves, 
 
 For the acquiescent foolishness of thy ever nod 
 ding trees, 
 
 For the frigid chastity of thy skies, 
 
 For the garrulity of thy silly cackling waters 
 
 And for the petulance of thy eternal reappearing. 
 
 thou idiotic, unoriginal repentance of the de 
 
 crepit earth. 
 
 1 have hated thee because thou wert an atonement, 
 
 not a rebellion; thou wert a returning child 
 hood, not a reconquered virility, O Spring. 
 
 No storms, no tempests, no hurricanes, 
 
 No spasms of long-nursed follies, 
 
 No violences of coveted passions, 
 
 No brazen display of warm desires and unclad 
 sins, 
 
 No exaltation of fecund motherhood, 
 
 Nothing but the recurrence of an old fashion, the 
 re-wearing of the discarded, ignoble dress of 
 green, a new coat of perfumed rouge over the 
 
 46 
 

 wrinkles of the same old yellow face of the 
 
 world. 
 
 * * * 
 
 I have hated thee, O Spring. With all the im 
 petuosity of my living being I have hated 
 thee. 
 
 I have hated thee for the evil filter of thy air, 
 that abominable potion that has nothing but 
 the effervescence of its bubbles, 
 
 That tasteless broth of malignity which does not 
 inebriate like a generous wine, 
 
 Which does not kill like a magnificent poison, 
 
 Which is neither a bitter medicine that heals the 
 heart-fevers of youth, nor a sweet narcotic 
 that gives sleep. 
 
 That wert a painted and tinseled masquerade, 
 
 Spring, a stimulant for old age, not a cor 
 dial for battling manhood, and no life was in 
 thee save the fermentation of dead things. 
 
 The life that grew not out of the creating labors 
 of love, but out of the stillness of corpses, so 
 that the warrior Winter again might have 
 ought to destroy. 
 
 The purveyor of Death, not the handmaid of 
 Life thou wert, for no nurslings that the 
 grave could not claim were ever to sleep in 
 the warmth of thy breasts. 
 
 * * * 
 
 But why, even for that and because of that, did 
 
 1 hate thee, O Spring? 
 
 Was it the overpowering onrush of manhood 
 that was invading my soul and sweeping 
 away from it the dreams, the follies, the 
 chimeras of my silent, wide-eyed, ghost-like 
 youth ? 
 
 Was it because, in spite of thy breath, laden with 
 
 47 
 
all the unknowable maladies of the invisible 
 life, my heart wounds, my soul wounds whose 
 crusts I had been tearing with my sharp nails, 
 were healing and no longer I loved to torment 
 their pain? 
 
 Or was it the pale light of a vision I had kindled 
 with the first spark of my childhood and fed 
 with the shreds of my years, that suddenly 
 blazed forth like a terrible pyre for the con 
 flagration of the world thou earnest back to 
 refresh and regreen? 
 
 Whoever will know and tell? Whoever cares 
 to know? 
 
 Not I, not I, O Spring. 
 
 I was alone, I who was alive in myself, was 
 alone in thy dead splendor a thousandfold 
 resurrected and a thousandfold annihilated, 
 
 And I who could be killed but once and nevermore 
 be arisen, 
 
 I who carried the burden of but one single life, 
 the burden I never tried to lighten but ever 
 tried to increase with my greedy, far-reaching, 
 all-apprehending hands, 
 
 I sneered the contempt of my glorious mortality 
 unto thee that art not immovable and eternal 
 and yet art not forever to die. 
 
 For it is engraved on the vaults of the unassail 
 able firmaments and it is burned in the dark 
 of the unfathomable profundities that they 
 alone who are to meet death are the master 
 and the commanders of life. 
 * * * 
 
 There was I alone with my challenge against 
 
 thee and thy mother, O Spring. 
 And thy wiles and thy lures that made thee the 
 
 easy-yielding courtesan of all creatures had 
 
 48 
 
no power and no charm over me, the rebellious 
 child of sin. 
 
 And for this I hated thee, because there was no 
 chastity in thee, because thou wert the com 
 mon mistress of all and I was waiting for the 
 Virgin-Bride of the Ideal. 
 
 And my glory grew as great as my strength, and 
 my strength as great as my desire, because 
 of my solitude. 
 
 There was in my beating temples the panting of 
 the only reality of life, 
 
 All the onslaught of time was ramming and 
 breaking against my bare and villous chest. 
 
 All the red-maned steeds of destruction, trem 
 bling with the furious lust of the race were 
 leashed to my fist; 
 
 And I who had breathed the warm wind of the 
 battle-field, 
 
 And the raging soul of the storm, 
 And the ashes of the galloping fire, 
 And the dust of the things destroyed, 
 
 I, who shed tears only when I looked open-eyed 
 at the noon sun, 
 
 I heard in the echo of my steps in thy woods the 
 footfalls of the bronze-shod Vandal through 
 the columns of the burned and pillaged temple 
 where all the tripods blazed with the Greek 
 fire and the face of the stone gods was ground 
 under the ironed hoof of the stallions. 
 
 For this I hated thee, O Spring, because I was 
 a destroyer and not a worshipper of silent 
 things. 
 
 And because I was waiting for the scarlet-robed, 
 flame-winged, storm-haired Bride of the Fu 
 ture for whose nuptials a greater altar fire 
 shall be built than that of the volcanoes, 
 
 49 
 
 
I flung into the face of that old mother of yours. 
 Nature, whose obscene nakedness, polluted by 
 the vile caresses of all the distorted fingers 
 of greed thou wert recovering with thy 
 tawdry mantle of green, not my staff, O 
 Spring, not my javelin, not my broken spur, 
 but just one word, just one word, O Spring. 
 
 II 
 
 And now thou hast returned again. 
 
 Again thou hast returned with thy green and 
 thy blue and thy gold and thy breezes, but lo! 
 thou art so strangely and so wildly different 
 unto my eyes and into the mirror where my 
 eyes cannot look, O Spring. 
 
 For the day I saw the first dandelion and the 
 first daisy and I heard the first strident voice 
 of the cricket, the little messengers that an 
 nounced thee, that day I was alone no more. 
 
 Another one was by my side, and she was young, 
 and she was fair, and she was lost like me in 
 the gateless labyrinth of life. 
 
 Like me she had nursed her youth with the di 
 vine nectar of the tempests, 
 
 Like me she was cruel with many angers and sad 
 with many cares, 
 
 Like me she understood the lofty virtues of 
 hatred and the endless march onward to the 
 gate that does not exist, with no other com 
 pass to guide our feet but our will to go. 
 
 Yet was she not like me, for on her forehead 
 there were not the scars of the fierce affrays, 
 
 On her lips there were not the bitter wrinkles 
 furrowed by the long, unerasable sneers, 
 
 Nor on her wrists the marks of torn and broken 
 fetters and chains, 
 
 50 
 
Nor the shadows of crossed darknesses had re 
 mained in her limpid eyes. 
 
 She was not like me, yet much that was in me 
 was in her, and because her destiny, like mine, 
 compelled her to go and never to look behind, 
 I paused with her and in her I forgot all thy 
 malevolence and all my hatred of thee, O 
 Spring. 
 
 And there were two alive in the old world-ceme 
 tery of corpses, she and I in the immense 
 crypt of the universe, O Spring. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Why dost thou bid me remember that day, by 
 all thy days, O Despot? 
 
 What does it matter now that I hate thee no 
 more? 
 
 I know not what new spell was heaved about me 
 by the mighty mouth that breathes all the 
 fearful gales of life, 
 
 But this I do remember, that my soul became a 
 cage full of nightingales and her hand opened 
 the door and they flew away in the azure of 
 thy heavens in a long thrill of song. 
 
 And this also I do remember, that my heart in 
 which every scythe had reaped till it was 
 nothing but a barren desolation, bloomed up 
 suddenly in all thy apple blossoms, in all thy 
 almond trees, in all the flowers of thy orchards 
 and of thy gardens, O Spring. 
 
 And I could not throw out of it its myriad flow 
 ers, for she had laid her hand on my heart 
 and I dared not break open the gentle gate 
 of her fingers. 
 
 And so those flowers remained in me and left in 
 me their fragrance and their pollen, and I 
 
 51 
 
grew happy and wiser and older in the eter 
 nity of that moment. 
 
 I grew wiser that she might keep her illusions, 
 and I grew older that I might see more of her 
 youth, but I was happy, for I held her quiver 
 ing spirit in my trembling hands, like a frail 
 crystal bowl for the priceless, divine offering 
 of my first tear. 
 
 And lo! something broke within me, in the un 
 trodden and unexplored recesses of me (was 
 it a chain, was it a wall?) and I was free, and 
 I was free from myself, 
 
 Free to give me to a new dungeon, free to sell 
 me to a new bondage, I who until then had 
 had about me only the fetters of my pride. 
 
 But what do I care, O Spring, and what dost 
 
 thou care now that I hate thee no more? 
 
 * * * 
 
 Again the flame I had tried to smother blazed 
 forth from the innest hearths of my being and 
 my spirit grew lighter, 
 
 Every bird, every butterfly that flew away car 
 ried forth one of my unbound thoughts. 
 
 And I broke the spell of the abyss and my soul 
 rose with the vapors of thy waters and the 
 breath of thy mountains and the fogs of thy 
 valleys and the fragrance of thy flowers to 
 wards the Dream that is hidden by the daz 
 zling light of the sun. 
 
 There must have been in me, in the silence and 
 darkness of me, a stranded god of old that 
 had fallen asleep in the first spring of the 
 world. And she awoke him with a kiss. 
 
 Why, why? Was it because it was spring and 
 spring was different to her, or because we 
 were both two pilgrims journeying together 
 
 52 
 
to the same shrine, I to burn the last offerings 
 of my fading youth and she to depose the first 
 garland of hers? 
 
 What does it matter, O Spring, now that I hate 
 thee no more? 
 
 She kissed me and I awoke; again I awoke in the 
 old land of beauty and song I had dwelled in 
 since the day I knew the first word I spoke, 
 and again my lips were unsealed by the un- 
 crushable swelling of the rising paean to thee, 
 O thou who art greater than life. 
 
 And again I became all-knowing and all-power 
 ful, 
 
 The maker of wonders, the weaver of wreaths, 
 the giver of treasures and kingdoms, the 
 killer of dragons and the builder of temples 
 and dreams, 
 
 And I spun with my nimble fingers the rays of 
 the setting sun to make an aureole for her 
 dark hair, 
 
 And I embroidered into the green foliage the 
 chaste languor of the blue sky and there I set 
 her head and contemplated in adoration the 
 first masterpiece of my new handiwork. 
 
 And I said unto her: Lo, of all her flowers, 
 Spring has given the rose to Love and the 
 myrtle to the one that is greater, but unto 
 thee that art between both and vowed and 
 fated to both, I shall give the flower that 
 grows unsown in the wilderness and was 
 never plucked, was never laid on the altars 
 and the tombs and the cradles, I shall give 
 thee the thistle, sharp and pungent and bris 
 tling like a flame of raised swords. 
 * * * 
 
 And so it was that the lure of spring came again 
 
 53 
 
upon me, and I understood it and loved it 
 
 and made amend and repentance for my 
 
 hatred. 
 For she, this new Spring of mine and of the 
 
 world that is to be mine was not false and 
 
 decayed, 
 
 She was not vanity and decoy, 
 She was not proffering to ignoble lovers the wiles 
 
 of her lust, 
 But she was offering to all the children of life 
 
 and all the warriors of the world the abundant 
 
 milk of her overflowing motherly breasts and 
 
 the balsam of her love. 
 
 * * * 
 
 But shall I sing of love now, I who could only 
 sing to the tune of the clarions of war? 
 
 And shall I forget for a woman my black froth 
 ing horse that neighs after the twanging ar 
 rows in the wind? 
 
 And shall I not lose my strength when her arms 
 shall encircle me where thou hast girt me with 
 the sword, O Gea, my mother immortal? 
 
"SING ME TO SLEEP " 
 
 When in my night like gaunt, gray phantoms rise 
 The wild-eyed hours of brooding reverie, 
 
 If in my heart a sudden anguish cries 
 
 That thou also hast passed away from me, 
 
 If I but think that one regretful sigh 
 Thy joyless love has breathed unaware, 
 
 I know not what a barren will to die 
 
 Dissolves my strength into a mute despair. 
 
 Oh, if upon thy breast I could then lay 
 My weary head and hear thee sing again 
 
 That sad, sweet song, and as it dies away 
 Exhale my spirit in its last refrain ! 
 
 55 
 
UTOPIA 
 
 Tis writ, and I believe with all my power, 
 That a great day shall come, O Master, when, 
 
 Even as from a putrid clod a flower, 
 
 So in thy heart shall bloom the love of men, 
 
 A day when sweet and noble tasks shall hallow 
 These charnels where thy slaves now drudge 
 and plod, 
 
 And thou no more a groveling swine shalt wallow 
 Amid the puddles of their sweat and blood, 
 
 A day when shall thy soldiers cease their slaugh 
 ters, 
 
 No more thy name shall widows execrate, 
 When shall grow chaste thy meretricious daugh 
 ters 
 And thy abandoned sons regenerate, 
 
 "Wt 
 
 hen thy grandchildren shall not know what 
 
 lust is, 
 
 Nor shall thy festering sins corrode their youtlj< 
 When thy lawmakers shall believe in justice, 
 Yea, and thy priests shall seek and preach the 
 
 truth, 
 
 A day when thy old parents from the gutter 
 Shall beg no more thine alms as they do now, 
 
 56 
 
And thou, withal, shalt earn thy bread and butter 
 By thine own labor s sweat upon thy brow; 
 
 A day shall come when gold shall not enthrall 
 
 thee, 
 
 When theft and murder cease to be thy rule; 
 So I, who call thee now a friend, shall call thee, 
 Forsooth, a true and upright man, 
 
 "Thou fool !" 
 
 57 
 
THE WELL OF THE GODS^ 
 
 I 
 
 I know a well engraved with mystic runes 
 Within a clump of poplars in a dale, 
 
 Where sweetest are the shadows of the noons 
 And from the hills winds down the shepherd s 
 trail. 
 
 The fount that gurgles in its limpid pool, 
 
 Not thousand years nor thousands have dis 
 persed, 
 
 And is so clear its water, and so cool, 
 That all who look in it become athirst. 
 
 I love its quaint, round mirror at twilight, 
 And as in it for my own face I search, 
 
 Methinks I see instead an anchorite 
 In some old fresco of a Roman church. 
 
 And as along its walls like lizards creep 
 
 The quivering arabesques of green and gold, 
 
 I hear a flute-like voice from out the deep, 
 As of a strayed and lonely faun of old, 
 
 Who, when the gods migrated, lay in his hold 
 asleep. 
 
 II 
 
 Only the rain doth in its depths descend, 
 A jagged shred of sky and few tree tops; 
 
 58 
 
But if Scirocco peradventure rend 
 The palisaded rampart of the copse, 
 
 All of the mountain s breath, the gorge s boom, 
 The crash of riven trees the tempest tore, 
 
 Would then be cast into the startled gloom 
 And fill it all with echoes and uproar. 
 
 But when into its lap of velvet throws 
 A group of stars the eventide of June, 
 
 And brighter in its magic mirror glows 
 The silver sickle of the crescent moon, 
 
 When to the sleepy lark that faintly sings 
 The clear, full-throated nightingale responds, 
 
 The blent accord of light and music rings 
 Like bounding pearls into a bowl of bronze. 
 
 Love, in the well then flutter my garlands and 
 thy wings. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Chalice and urn of all the gods of yore, 
 
 Is in thy bosom such a wizardry t 
 That he inherits all thy ancient lore . 
 
 Who drinks the nectar they forgot in thee. 
 
 Thus I, who come a pilgrim from the hill, 
 
 Ere I ascend unto a loftier goal, 
 Do drink of thee with avid lips, to fill 
 
 Out of thy plenitude of songs my soul. 
 
 And lo! meseems that in the golden sheen 
 Centaurs and Satyrs gambol in the grove, 
 
 And Nymphs and Naiads on thy border lean 
 To sing the strains of a forgotten love. 
 
 59 
 
And though into the heavens of pure sapphire 
 Only the shepherd s lay soars high and clear, 
 
 With wistful ears of rapture and desire 
 Breathless with wonder I can almost hear 
 
 Attuning their eclogue the laureled Virgil s lyre. 
 
 60 
 
THE LAST NICKEL 
 
 I 
 
 COLD and silent and myriad-eyed with the chills 
 of dead things, with the silence of the things 
 that are eternal and with the tremulous palpi 
 tation of the stars was the night, the holy 
 night of my awakening and my despair. * 
 
 I stood before the blazing windows of Tiffany. \ 
 Frozen tears of shame and pain and wrath, 
 frozen clots of murder blood, frozen drops of 
 poison were the pearls, the rubies, the emer 
 alds that glittered and winked, malevolent as 
 the first hoar-frost upon a bed of flowers, as 
 the grin of a mortal enemy, as the leer of lust 
 ful eyes that glare into eyes that are full of 
 tears. 
 
 I had just kissed Her for the first time, perhaps 
 the eternal troth, perhaps the everlasting 
 farewell, so I looked not into the mirage of 
 the hell-lit window, for I was thinking. 
 
 I was thinking of her eyes, wide open, frightened 
 and full of promises, retreating slowly like the 
 phosphorescent haze of dreams into the black 
 ness of the tenement hallway; 
 
 I was thinking of the gasping windows gulping 
 the thin breath of the dying trees through the 
 stuffed fire escapes; 
 
 I was thinking of the room where She now stood, 
 wonder-eyed, loosening her hair, and of the 
 
 61 
 
poor virginal bed by the strangled airshaft 
 where She would lie awake all night thinking 
 of me. 
 I was thinking of all She would hear through the 
 
 endless night; 
 
 The incessant wailing of the sick child above, 
 and the maddening rhythm of the cradle 
 rocked by a nerveless, unstrung hand, 
 The heavy snoring of the man below, frightful 
 
 like a death rattle, 
 
 The stealthy, cautious steps of the belated girl 
 and the grumbling curses and the muffled 
 weeping, 
 
 The foul-worded, blow-crashing quarrel of the 
 couple that would tear through the 
 wall, 
 
 int echo of my faltering good-by, and 
 ;ling sound of her own sighs, 
 thinking also of the red ribbon She 
 rn for so many weeks, ever since I 
 fer, and of the broken-lipped step of 
 her doorway, and of my last nickel, which was 
 dearer to me than all the gems in that de 
 moniacal window and which I was about to 
 throw awav, an immense and unknown sacri 
 fice, for the love of Her. 
 
 II 
 
 But even as I was about to cast it solemnly and 
 religiously away, with the rite of the priest 
 who drops the offering into the fire and the 
 vast gesture of the sower who scatters the 
 seeds of the bread, two men approached me, 
 two shadows of the light of the gems. 
 Said one: "For two whole days I have not eaten. 
 No one believes me, and if you also do not. 
 I shall die. Give me a nickel in the name of 
 
 62 
 
Jesus and of the One you love and I will pray 
 God for your happiness and your salvation." 
 
 I looked at him and in his eyes, where the pupils 
 had been, I saw the yellow prints of the bony 
 finger tips of hunger. 
 
 Said the other: "I know that I am drunk, but I 
 need more. Give me the nickel and I will 
 drink it to your health and joy." 
 
 I looked at him also and in his eyes, where the 
 sunlight had been, I saw the smothering em 
 bers of his soul. 
 
 But neither in the eyes of the one, nor in the 
 eyes of the other, saw I reflected the fierce 
 glow of the jewels in the nearby window. 
 They both wanted my nickel, my onfo- nickel, 
 my last nickel, my cheap, finger-AfABifcnickel 
 a loaf of bread a glass of x H Rf no 
 more ! M Bf 
 
 in | 
 
 Chuckled aloud in my ears the fiend^^p lurked 
 in the scintillating window, the^pnd that 
 kindles all the evil fires of the world, and said: 
 "Behold, thou who hast only a nickel art now 
 become a dispenser of life and death and an 
 arbiter of destinies. But thou canst satisfy 
 but one man, and thou hast not the wisdom 
 of a Solomon. Whichever man thou givest 
 it to, not knowing whether the one be truly 
 hungry or the other really need it more, thy 
 gift shall accrue to the injustice of the world. 
 Throw it away, then, for her sake, as thou 
 desirest, build with it a little mound of thine 
 own happiness, and not a mountain of thy 
 conceit." 
 
 I thought of the sweatshop where She was going 
 to work again the next day . . . 
 
 63 
 
Then the angel in me spoke: "Nay, give it to the 
 hungry one. If She were here by thee, thou 
 knowest that thou wouldst give it to him. 
 What greater deed canst thou do for the love 
 of Her to-night? Give it to him, he will live 
 because he shall eat and the other will not 
 die, because he will not drink the last goblet 
 of poison. Thou shalt thus save two men." 
 
 Then said the devil in me: "Remember what was 
 said of old: We asked for bread and ye gave 
 us a stone. They understood not the sym 
 bol then, nor would they understand it now. 
 They know not what to do with a stone, a 
 good heavy stone, a fine hard stone that 
 would go as far as their hunger, their thirst 
 and their manhood. Preach, then, no more 
 idle sermons and give it to the drunken one. 
 He will die of delirium and the other of hun 
 ger. Thou shalt thus kill two brutes." 
 
 I saw the malevolent glitter, the leer and the 
 sneer of the diamonds, the pearls, the rubies, 
 the emeralds in the hell-lit window, and I saw 
 in the eyes of the two men nothing but the 
 greed and the fever for my nickel, my last 
 nickel, for my cheap, finger-worn nickel . . . 
 
 And I gave it to one of them. 
 
THE REPUBLIC 
 
 The king had said: "By right divine 
 As old as God s own laws are old, 
 All that you have, all that you hold, 
 All that you think and do is mine. 
 
 "I own forever and control 
 
 Your house, your field, your ox, your wife, 
 
 So, I shall rule your mortal life 
 
 And my good liege, the pope, your soul. 
 
 "Obey, then, both; do not rebel, 
 For, should you rise against our will, 
 You ll have, in this world, my Bastille, 
 And in the other world his hell." 
 
 So said the king. And then there came, 
 Aglow with anger and with steel, 
 A goddess of the common weal, 
 With eyes of fire and hair of flame. 
 
 Not hers the wisdom which decrees 
 That time alone must wrongs allay, 
 Not hers the craven heart to pray 
 And barter liberty for peace ; 
 
 Not hers the fear to hesitate 
 When shame and misery cry out 
 Love has no patience, truth no doubt, 
 And right and justice cannot wait. 
 
 65 
 
So, loud into the midnight air 
 She rang the tocsin s weird alarm, 
 She called, and as by potent charm 
 From its mysterious haunt and lair, 
 
 The Mob, the mightiest judge of all, 
 To hear the rights of Man came out, 
 And every word became a shout, 
 And every shout a musket ball. 
 
 Against the castle walls the picks 
 She raised and planted there her flags, 
 Against the ermine hurled the rags, 
 The torch against the crucifix, 
 
 The guillotine against the rope, 
 And ere the eastern sky grew red, 
 Behold she flung the king s proud head 
 Upon the altars of the pope. 
 
 And when upon the great sunrise 
 Flew her disheveled victories 
 To all the lands, on all the seas, 
 Like angry eagles in the skies, 
 
 To ring the call of brotherhood 
 And hail mankind from shore to shore, 
 Wrapt in her splendid tricolor 
 The People s virgin bride she stood. 
 
 * * * 
 
 This was the dawn. But when the day 
 Wore out with all its festive songs, 
 And all the hearts, and all the tongues 
 Were stilled in wonder and dismay, 
 
 66 
 
When night with velvet-sandaled feet 
 Stole in her chamber s solitude, 
 Behold ! she lay there naked, lewd, 
 A drunken harlot of the street, 
 
 With withered breasts and shaggy hair 
 Soiled by each wanton, frothy kiss, 
 Between a sergeant of police 
 And a decrepit millionaire. 
 
THE FUNERAL 
 
 I saw a funeral go by this morning, a black 
 hearse driven by one black horse climbing 
 slowly the silent street, the street unsouled 
 and grief-stricken by the gray omens of the 
 coming first snow. 
 
 No carriages followed the black hearse, no 
 mourners walked behind it, no flowers were 
 on the coffin, and my heart, my mad heart 
 that divines everything, told me that no one 
 was weeping in the great city. 
 
 I followed it with my unseeing eyes and then I 
 turned to my love who stood by me at the 
 window (always with me, always by me shall 
 be my love) and I wanted to kiss her to dis 
 pel the anguish of the gray morning and of 
 the silent street and of the black hearse. 
 
 But my love held me away with her hand and 
 said: "Nay, kiss me not now and speak not 
 of our love, but let us go and follow that 
 hearse, and throw some earth into the grave, 
 for that is our forgotten brother that died 
 yesterday." 
 
 And I said to my love: "Aye, my love, let us go 
 and mourn for him, our unknown brother, 
 so that some day someone shall also walk 
 behind our biers. At least one, at least 
 one . . ." 
 
 But my love answered again : "Nay, what will it 
 
 68 
 
matter to us then? We shall be two in the 
 coffin. Let us go and mourn for him, just 
 for him, only for the sake of him, only for the 
 sake of sorrow and death and tears. 
 
 "For we have cursed and fought and hated 
 enough, my love, and it will do us good to 
 weep." 
 
 And we followed the lonely hearse up the silent 
 street, the street unsouled and grief-stricken 
 by the gray omens of the coming first snow, 
 
 And we looked not at each other, and we did 
 not speak. 
 
 69 
 
TO JOSEPH J. ETTOR 
 
 On his 2Jth Birthday 
 
 Well, Joe, my good friend, though we cannot pre 
 tend " 
 
 That we re happy we still can regale, 
 We can laugh and be merry, though claret and 
 
 sherry 
 
 Are so scarce to us, even in jail; 
 But although our good wine is the prison s foul 
 
 brine 
 
 And the hangman s our welcoming host, 
 Let us think it Chianti and quaff it a-plenty 
 While for you I revise my old toast. 
 
 Let us drink a new toast to the dear Woolen trust, 
 
 To the legions of "Country and God," 
 To the great Christian cause and the wise, noble 
 
 laws, 
 
 And to all who cry out for our blood ; 
 Let us drink to the health of the old Common 
 wealth, 
 
 To the Bible and code in one breath, 
 And let s so propitiate both the church and the 
 
 state 
 That they ll grant us a cheerful, quick death. 
 
 For altho you are brave, you ll admit that the 
 
 grave 
 Has much better surroundings than these, 
 
 70 
 
As we ll hear there no more the hard slam of the 
 
 door 
 
 And the clank of the terrible keys; 
 Even as I, though I m game, must admit just 
 
 the same, 
 
 When I think of my love and my home, 
 That my heart is oppressed and my soul is dis 
 tressed 
 By the thought of the years yet to come. 
 
 And I cannot conceive all the years we must 
 
 grieve 
 
 For the dream that no hope can revive, 
 And my heart seems to sink when I tremblingly 
 
 think 
 
 Of the One who will mourn me alive: 
 For when last I did gaze on her sweet, saint-like 
 
 face, 
 
 That forever from me would be barred, 
 Well, the only good way I could keep looking gay 
 Was to think of a nice big graveyard. 
 
 Yes, I know it is good, in some soul-stirring 
 mood 
 
 To drive out all these sullen complaints, 
 And I know it feels great to believe that our fate 
 
 Will be that of the martyrs and saints. 
 But what joy is in truth if our passionate youth 
 
 Like an underground runnel must flow 
 That no thirst ever slakes, but just feeds the gray 
 lakes 
 
 Of the kingdoms of silence and woe? 
 
 Nay, tis all silly fuss, there s no wisdom in us 
 To renounce to the brunt of the strife ; 
 
 71 
 
We were wrought on the fire and to love and 
 
 desire 
 
 And to fight and to sing is our life. 
 So, should we many a year be immured alive here, 
 
 Now that you re twenty-seven, old mate, 
 The best wish I can make for your own and my 
 
 sake 
 Is that never you be twenty-eight. 
 
 And so, here s to the hope for the trap and the 
 rope 
 
 As the best for us sure is the worst, 
 And because I am older and you are the bolder, 
 
 Here s a health that they hang me the first; 
 For, should justice be shunned, both on earth and 
 beyond, 
 
 After bidding to you my farewell, 
 I would fain as your scout be the first to find out 
 
 And the first to receive you in hell. 
 
 
 72 
 
THE 
 SERMON ON THE COMMON 
 
 THEN it came to pass that the people, having 
 heard that he had come, assembled on the 
 Common to listen unto his words. 
 
 And they came from all the parts of the earth, the 
 Syrians and the Armenians, the Thracians 
 and the Tartars, the Jews, the Greeks and the 
 Romans, the Iberians and the Gauls and the 
 Angles and Huns and the Hibernians and 
 Scythians, even from the deserts of sands to 
 the deserts of ice, they came to listen unto 
 his words. 
 
 And he, seeing the multitudes, opened his mouth, 
 and taught them, saying, 
 
 Blessed are the strong in freedom s spirit: for 
 theirs is the kingdom of the earth. 
 
 Blessed are they that mourn their martyred 
 dead: for they shall avenge them upon their 
 murderers and be comforted. 
 
 Blessed are the rebels: for they shall reconquer 
 the earth. 
 
 Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after 
 equality: for they shall eat the fruit of their 
 labor. 
 
 Blessed are the strong: for they shall not taste 
 the bitterness of pity. 
 
 73 
 
Blessed are the sincere in heart: for they shall 
 see truth. 
 
 Blesed are they that do battle against wrong: 
 for they shall be called the children of Liberty. 
 
 Blessed are they which are persecuted for equal 
 ity s sake: for theirs is the glory of the broth 
 erhood of man. 
 
 Blessed are ye when the scribes of the press shall 
 revile you, and the doctors of the law, poli 
 ticians, policemen, judges and priests shall 
 call you criminals, thieves and murderers and 
 shall say all manner of evil against you false 
 ly, for the sake of Justice. 
 
 Rejoice, then, and be exceedingly glad; for so 
 they persecuted, reviled, cursed, chained, 
 jailed, poisoned, hanged, crucified, burned, 
 beheaded and shot all the seers, the apostles 
 and the warriors of humanity that were be 
 fore you, for the sake of freedom. 
 
 Ye are the power of the earth, the foundations 
 of society, the thinkers and the doers of all 
 things good and all things fair and useful, the 
 makers and dispensers of all the bounties and 
 the joys and the happiness of the world, and 
 if ye fold your mighty arms, all the life of 
 the world stands still and death hovers on the 
 darkened abodes of man. 
 
 Ye are the light of the world. There was dark 
 ness in all the ages when the torch of your 
 will did not blaze forth, and the past and the 
 future are full of the radiance that cometh 
 from your eyes. 
 
 Ye are eternal, even as your father, labor, is eter 
 nal, and no power of time and dissolution can 
 prevail against you. 
 
 Ages have come and gone, kingdoms and powers 
 
 74 
 
and dynasties have risen and fallen, old glo 
 ries and ancient wisdoms have been turned 
 into dust, heroes and sages have been forgot 
 ten and many a mighty and fearsome god has 
 been hurled into the lightless chasms of ob 
 livion. 
 But ye, Plebs, Populace, People, Rabble, Mob, 
 
 Proletariat, live and abide forever. 
 
 # # * 
 
 Think not that I am come to destroy the law: I 
 am not come to destroy, but to fulfil through 
 you what the prophets of mankind have pre 
 saged from the beginning. 
 
 For verily I say unto you, While man lives and 
 labors, nothing can destroy the eternal law 
 of progress which after each advancing step 
 bids him further. 
 
 Therefore, say not unto yourselves, even as the 
 priests and scribes and doctors of the law and 
 fools and hypocrites say, This is the goal 
 which was destined unto us and no further 
 shall we go. 
 
 For even if there be before you the uplifted 
 arms of terror and the smoking altars of mur 
 der enshrined in a gaunt temple of gibbets 
 and fierce with shrieks of curses, ye must pass 
 beyond. 
 
 For your feet are like the unrolling of the end 
 less scrolls of time, not even night and 
 silence and death can stop their march for 
 ward and upward, ever to a farther and loftier 
 goal. 
 
 And, lo, ye shall never arrive because never shall 
 ye cease going. 
 
 Whosoever, therefore, shall break one jot or one 
 tittle of this law shall be called the least in 
 
 75 
 
the kingdom of man, but whosoever shall do 
 and teach it, the same shall be called great in 
 the kingdom of man. 
 
 .Ye have heard that it was said by them of all 
 times who toil not but do live of your toil, 
 Thou shalt not rebel against thy master. 
 
 But I say unto you that whosoever soweth the 
 seeds of patience the same shall reap the har 
 vest of shame. 
 
 They said unto you, Question not the right of 
 your masters to reign over you and command 
 you. They shall have your sweat and your 
 tears, aye, and even your blood and your life, 
 and ye shall serve them in reverence and awe, 
 for their power upon you is of God. 
 
 And again they said unto you, Give your masters 
 the labor of your hands and the worship of 
 your hearts, give them the fruits of your or 
 chards, the grains of your fields, the flowers 
 of your gardens and all things made by the 
 labor of your hands and by the thought of 
 your brain, and withhold not aught from 
 your masters, lest your masters law and the 
 curse of your masters God be upon you. 
 
 And again they said unto you, Bend your knees 
 and worship your chains, kiss the whip that 
 lashes you, bless the heel that crushes you, 
 revere the yoke that weighs upon your neck, 
 bury your forehead in the dirt whence ye 
 came and whither ye shall return. 
 
 Do not cry, do not complain do not grumble, 
 do not think, do not hope, 
 
 Be humble, resigned, patient, submissive, lowly 
 and prone even as a beast of burden, lest ye 
 have the gaol in this life and gehenna in the 
 life to come. 
 
 76 
 
And again they said unto you, Resist not evil, 
 for all spirit of disobedience and unsubmis- 
 sion issueth from the enemy of peace. There 
 fore if your masters, or your masters serv 
 ants smite you on the right cheek, turn unto 
 them the other also, and if they take away 
 from you the heritage of your fathers, give 
 unto them also the birthright of your chil 
 dren. 
 
 All this and more than this they said unto you 
 before I came, but now that I am come, a new 
 evangel shall be proclaimed unto you, that 
 your souls may be renovated and purified in 
 the fire of the new salvation which is not 
 peace but war. 
 
 Therefore I say unto you, Banish fear from your 
 hearts, dispel the mists of ignorance from 
 your minds, arm your yearning with your 
 strength, your vision with your will, and 
 open your eyes and behold. 
 
 Do not moan, do not submit, do not kneel, do 
 not pray, do not wait. 
 
 Think, dare, do, rebel, fight ARISE! 
 
 It is not true that ye are condemned to serve and 
 suffer in shame forever; 
 
 It is not true that injustice, iniquity, hunger, mis 
 ery, abjection, depravity, hatred, theft, mur 
 der and fratricide are eternal ; 
 
 There is no destiny that the will of man cannot 
 break ; 
 
 There are no chains of iron that other iron can 
 not destroy; 
 
 There is nothing that the power of your arms, 
 lighted by the power of your mind, cannot 
 transform and reconstruct and remake. 
 
 Arise, then, ye men of the plough and the ham- 
 
 77 
 
mer, the helm and the lever, and send forth 
 to the four winds of the earth your new proc 
 lamation of freedom which shall be the last 
 and shall abide forevermore. 
 
 Through you, through your united, almighty 
 strength, order shall become equity, law shall 
 become liberty, duty shall become love and 
 religion shall become truth. 
 
 Through you the man-beast shall die and the man 
 be born; 
 
 Through you the dark, bloody chronicles of the 
 brute shall cease and the story of man shall 
 begin. 
 
 Through you, by the power of your brain and 
 hand, 
 
 All the predictions of the prophets, 
 All the wisdom of the sages, 
 All the dreams of the poets, 
 All the hopes of the heroes, 
 All the visions of the martyrs, 
 All the prayers of the saints, 
 
 All the crushed, tortured, strangled, maimed and 
 murdered ideals of the ages, and all the glori 
 ous destinies of mankind shall become a tri 
 umphant and everlasting reality in the name 
 of labor and bread and love, the great three 
 fold truth forever. 
 
 And lo and behold, my brothers, this shall be 
 
 called the revolution. 
 
 * * * 
 
 Thus spake the man to the assembled multitude 
 that had come from all the lands, over all the 
 waters of the earth, and they listened unto 
 him and received his words, and the dawn 
 began to rise in their hearts, and they praised 
 the announcer with the cheers of their mouths 
 
 78 
 
and they blessed him with the tears of their 
 eyes. 
 
 But when the multitude dispersed to return to 
 their labors and to their strifes, the dark fig 
 ures that make darker the shadows of the 
 night held council against the truth-bearer for 
 the words that he had spoken. 
 
 And the scribe said, Verily, he is a law-breaker. 
 
 And the money changer said, Aye, and he is a 
 fool. 
 
 And the judge said, He is a wrong-doer. 
 
 And the sage said, He is possessed of a devil. 
 
 And the chronicler said, He is a primitive sinner. 
 
 And the wise man said, He is a profligate. 
 
 And the priest said, He is a blasphemer. 
 
 And they all croaked in chorus, He is an enemy of 
 society, of civilization, of religion and man 
 kind. Law and order must be upheld and our 
 sacred institutions must be preserved. We 
 must do away with him. 
 
 And they did away with him. But nobody knows 
 to this day whether they sent him to prison 
 or to Parliament. 
 
 79 
 
THE PEACEFUL HOUR 
 
 THIS IS THE HOUR OF PEACE, the hour 
 
 of all the things I love. 
 The things I love are the things that are my own 
 
 forever, the things that shall never be taken 
 
 away from me. 
 They are not the things that I have made, for 
 
 nothing have I made to myself, 
 They are not the things I fashioned with my 
 
 many-tooled hands, 
 Not the things I have brought forth out of the 
 
 smoke of my pipe, in the gathering dusk of 
 
 my half-closed eyelids, 
 Not the things I saw far away and brought 
 
 nearer, for no burden-bearer and no messen 
 ger am I to myself, 
 Not the things I revived, for nothing of mine ever 
 
 died, 
 But the things that were given to me, the things 
 
 I wanted not and did not ask and did not 
 
 covet, but were simply given to me unearned 
 
 and undeserved because I needed them and 
 
 knew it not. 
 For they alone are forever my own, not because 
 
 I must fight to keep them, but because the 
 
 givers will never take them back from me. 
 I love the black bread the wayfarer shared with 
 
 me at the fountain and which I ate not for 
 
 hunger but for the joy of him, 
 
 80 
 
I love the wine the stranger offered me at the 
 tavern by the roadside, 
 
 And the tune of the old hand-organ under my 
 window, 
 
 And the kiss of the two child-lips while I was 
 sleeping, 
 
 And the song of my sweetheart who is sewing in 
 the warm sunlight, 
 
 And the loud cries of my baby that wants to be 
 fed, 
 
 Yea, and that man who is passing by on the side 
 walk yonder, whoever, whatever he be and 
 wherever he goes in this hour of peace. 
 
 81 
 
SAMNITE CRADLE SONG 
 
 Lullaby, baby, mamma s own child! 
 
 Who sang the evil dirge about thee? 
 
 Thou earnest in March time, wee as the tart 
 
 Berries of hedge thorns, pale as the wild 
 
 Roses that have a wasp in their heart. 
 
 Who has to thee the witchy words spoken? 
 
 Who read to thee the malevolent star? 
 
 Who cast on thee the spell of the dead? 
 
 A hunchbacked wizard thy cradle has broken, 
 
 A lame old fairy embittered my teat, 
 
 And the blind priest with unblessed water wet 
 
 At the font thy poor, innocent head. 
 
 Thou art so sleepy, but numb are my arms; 
 
 Thou art so cold, but chilled is my breath; 
 
 Thou art so hungry, but dry is my breast. 
 
 Lullaby, hush-a-by, baby mine, rest, 
 
 Sleep for thy mother, who is tired unto death. 
 
 Lullaby, baby! The corn was so full, 
 The vines were so heavy, the season so pleasant, 
 And happy, so happy, the heart of the peasant, 
 Who was preparing and sweeping the bin 
 For the new wheat that was bristling so fine, 
 While his nude youngster was laughing within 
 The casks he was scrubbing to fill with new wine. 
 But God dislikes them whose heart is content, 
 God loves only them who starve and bewail; 
 And so he sent us the wind and the hail. 
 
 82 
 
All has been carried away by landslides ; 
 All has been buried beneath the brown mire; 
 All has been ruined by storms and by tides. 
 Nor vineyards nor orchards the water did leave. 
 The mice now dance in the empty meal keeve; 
 The ashes are cold of the last cauldron fire; 
 The dams and the flood-traps the torrent has 
 torn; 
 
 And poor we! the mill that once ground our corn 
 Now grinds away the last hope of the land. 
 Lullaby, baby, the morning is nigh. 
 Hush-a-by, baby, thou must understand, 
 The tale of my woe is as long as thy cry. 
 
 Lullaby, baby, thy grandfather plowed 
 
 And thy father mowed the grain, 
 
 And thy mother winnowed the chaff, 
 
 And at evening many a spool 
 
 Spinned with spindle and distaff, 
 
 Threads of hemp and threads of wool. 
 
 But granddaddy was broken and bowed, 
 
 The land was hard, the winters were cold ; 
 
 But thy father was twenty years old, 
 
 So they took him away and sent him to war. 
 
 One was old and one was young. 
 
 One was weak and one was strong, 
 
 One was too tired to till the sod, 
 
 One was fresh in the heart of spring. 
 
 So thy grandpa was killed by God, 
 
 And thy daddy by the king. 
 
 Lullaby, hush-a-by, baby mine, sleep, 
 Lullaby, softer than thine is their bed! 
 
 Mother will sing thee, mother ll not weep, 
 Mother ll not mourn for the dead. 
 
 83 
 
Lullaby, baby, grow strong and brave ! 
 They are no longer hungry now; 
 Only us two the bad luck smote. 
 The gravedigger took away the goat, 
 For digging an eight-foot grave ; 
 The curate has taken the sow, 
 For saying mass by the biers; 
 And the Government for its toll 
 Has taken the earrings from mine ears. 
 Lullaby, baby, they took our all, 
 The walnut chest, the iron bed, 
 The silver brooch, the marriage ring, 
 The black fichu in which I was wed; 
 I have not even a scarf to mourn 
 And honor my young love forlorn 
 And the faith I swore to him. 
 I have only the sack of straw, 
 The bident with the broken horn, 
 And the medal which the law 
 Has sent to thee, an iron thing, 
 Which in his honor bears the trace 
 Of his young blood upon one face, 
 And on the other side the grace 
 Of God about our gracious king. 
 
 Lullaby, hush-a-by, baby mine, sleep, 
 Lullaby, softer than thine is their bed ! 
 
 Mother will sing thee, mother ll not weep, 
 Mother ll not mourn for the dead. 
 
 Lullaby, baby, the winter is near, 
 
 The mountains put on their clean hood of snow. 
 
 What shall I do? Where shall I go? 
 
 In the sieve there is no more flour; 
 
 In the bin there is no more coal; 
 
 In the jug there is no more oil. 
 
 84 
 
What shall I do, my desperate soul? 
 
 Am I to die of hunger and cold, 
 
 Or beg for bread from door to door, 
 
 Or be a wanton about the inns? 
 
 Ah, what do I care what I shall be, 
 
 What do I care, so you do not die? 
 
 My grief shall stop where your joy begins 
 
 And our good day shall surely come by. 
 
 And when it comes, and I am in my grave 
 
 Or past the age of thy pride or blame, 
 
 If I keep true to all that aid me, 
 
 Give back a hundred for one they gave, 
 
 But if I rear thee with sweets and with shame, 
 
 Lullaby, hush-a-by, harken, my life, 
 
 For every dollar of silver they paid me, 
 
 Give back a stab with your father s keen knife. 
 
 Lullaby, hush-a-by, baby mine, sleep, 
 Lullaby, softer than thine is their bed! 
 
 Mother will sing thee, mother ll not weep, 
 Mother ll not mourn for the dead. 
 
 Lullaby, baby, the rope is so frayed 
 That down the well soon the bucket will dart; 
 The whip is broken, the yoke torn in twain; 
 But see, how sharp is the hatchet s blade! 
 The ass has broken away from the cart, 
 The hound has shaken and slipped from the chain, 
 And I am singing away my fierce heart 
 Just for th.e rage of the song, not the pain. 
 Behold, the dawn fingers the shadows dispel, 
 Soon will the sun peep at thee from the hill; 
 The cocks are crowing, the starlings grow shrill. 
 Wait, and my song with the matin s glad bell 
 Shall fill the morning with omens of glee. 
 For now no longer I sing unto thee, 
 
 85 
 
Mamma s own wolflet, the tale of my woe, 
 But now that the sun is near, my man-boy, 
 The night is gone, and my sorrows will go; 
 List to my prophecy, vengeance and joy. 
 
 Lullaby, baby, look ! Our great king 
 With all his princes and barons and sons, 
 Goes to the church to pray to the Lord. 
 Ring all the bells ! Fire all the guns ! 
 For all the chapter is wearing the cope, 
 And the bishop himself will sing the high mass. 
 How came this vision to me, my wild hope? 
 How came this wonderful fortune to pass? 
 Behold, the bishop lifts up the grail; 
 The king is kneeling upon the gray stone; 
 The trumpets hush, the organ heaves deep: 
 "Te Deum laudamus . . . We praise thee, O 
 
 Lord . . . 
 
 For all thy mercies, Lord, hail! all hail!" 
 Hush-a-by, lullaby, listen ! Don t sleep ! 
 Lullaby, hush-a-by, mark well my word ! 
 Thou shalt grow big. Don t tremble! Don t fail! 
 The holy wafer is but kneaded dough; 
 The king is but flesh like the man with the hoe ; 
 The axe is of iron, the same as the sword; 
 This I do tell thee and this I do sing. 
 And if thou livest with sweat and with woe, 
 Grow like a man, not a saint, nor a knave; 
 Do not be good, but be strong and be brave, 
 With the fangs of a wolf and the faith of a dog. 
 Die not the death of a soldier or slave, 
 Like thy grandfather who died in a bog, 
 Like thy poor father who rots in the rain. 
 But for this womb that has borne thee in pain, 
 For these dry breasts thou hast tortured so long, 
 For the despair of my life, my lost hope, 
 
 86 
 
And for this song of the dawn that I sing 
 Die like a man by the ax or the rope, 
 Spit on their God and stab our good king. 
 
 Sleep no more, sleep no more! Show me you 
 
 know, 
 
 Show me you listen, answer my sob! 
 Drink my blood, drain my heart! Just one 
 
 sign . . .so! 
 
 Bite my breast, bite it harder, mother s tiger 
 cub! 
 
 87 
 
THE CAGE 
 
 IN THE MIDDLE of the great greenish room 
 stood the green iron cage. 
 
 All was old, and cold and mournful, ancient with 
 the double antiquity of heart and brain in the 
 great greenish room. 
 
 Old and hoary was the man who sat upon the 
 faldstool, upon the fireless and godless altar, 
 
 Old were the tomes that mouldered behind him 
 on the dusty shelves, 
 
 Old was the painting of an old man that hung 
 above him; 
 
 Old the man upon his left who awoke with his 
 cracked voice the dead echoes of dead cen 
 turies, old the man upon his right who wield 
 ed a wand ; and old all those who spoke to him 
 and listened to him before and around the 
 green iron cage. 
 
 Old were the words they spoke, and their faces 
 were drawn and white and lifeless, without 
 expression or solemnity; like the ikons of old 
 cathedrals. 
 
 For of naught they knew, but of what was writ 
 ten in the old, yellow books. And all the joys 
 and the pains and the loves and hatreds and 
 furies and labors and strifes of man, all the 
 fierce and divine passions that battle and rage 
 in the heart of man, never entered into the 
 
 88 
 
great greenish room but to sit in the green 
 iron cage. 
 
 Senility, dullness and dissolution were all around 
 the green iron cage, and nothing was new and 
 young and alive in the great room, except the 
 three men who were in the cage. 
 
 Throbbed and thundered and clamored and 
 roared outside of the great greenish room the 
 terrible whirl of life, and most pleasant was 
 the hymn of its mighty polyphony to the lis 
 tening ears of the gods. 
 
 Whirred the wheels of the puissant machines, 
 rattled and clanked the chains of the giant 
 cranes, crashed the falling rocks, the riveters 
 crepitated and glad and sonorous was the 
 rhythm of the bouncing hammers upon the 
 loud-throated anvils. 
 
 Like the chests of wrathfully toiling Titans, 
 heaved and sniffed and panted the sweaty 
 boilers, like the hissing of dragons sibilated 
 the jets of steam, and the sirens of the work 
 shops shrieked like angry hawks flapping 
 above the crags of a dark and fathomless 
 chasm. 
 
 The files screeched and the trains thundered, the 
 wires hummed, the dynamos buzzed, the fires 
 crackled; and like a thunderclap from the cy- 
 clopean forge roared the blasts of the mines. 
 
 Wonderful and fierce was the mighty symphony 
 of the world, as the terrible voices of metal 
 and fire and water cried out into the listening 
 ears of the gods the furious song of human 
 toil. 
 
 89 
 
Out of the chaos of sound, welded in the unison 
 of one will to sing, rose clear and nimble the 
 divine accord of the hymn. 
 
 Out of the canons of the mountains, 
 Out of the whirlpools of the lakes, 
 Out of the entrails of the earth, 
 Out of the yawning gorges of hell, 
 From the land and the sea and the sky 
 And from whatever comes bread and 
 
 wealth and joy, 
 
 And from the peaceful abodes of men rose ma 
 jestic and fierce, louder than the roar of the 
 volcano and the bellow of the typhoon, the 
 anthem of human labor to the fatherly justice 
 of the Sun. 
 
 But in the great greenish room there was nothing 
 but the silence of dead centuries and of ears 
 that listen no more; and none heard the 
 mighty call of life that roared outside, save 
 
 the three men who were in the cage. 
 * * * 
 
 All the good smells, the wholesome smells, the 
 healthy smells of life and labor were outside 
 the great room. 
 
 The smell of rain upon the grass and of the flow 
 ers consumed by their love for the stars; 
 
 The heavy smell of smoke that coiled out of myr 
 iads of chimneys of ships and factories and 
 homes, 
 
 The dry smell of sawdust and the salty smell of 
 the iron filings ; 
 
 The odor of magazines and granaries and ware 
 houses, the kingly smell of argosies and the 
 rich scent of market places, so dear to the 
 women of the race; 
 
 The smell of new cloth and new linen, the smell 
 
 90 
 
of soap and water, and the smell of newly 
 printed paper, 
 
 The smell of grains and hay and the smell of 
 stables, the warm smell of cattle and sheep 
 that Virgil loved ; 
 
 The smell of milk and wine and plants and 
 metals, 
 
 And all the good odors of the earth and of the 
 sea and of the sky, and the fragrance of fresh 
 bread, sweetest aroma of the world, and the 
 smell of human sweat, most holy incense to 
 the divine nostrils of the gods, and all the 
 Olympian perfumes of the heart and the brain 
 and the passions of men were outside of the 
 great greenish room. 
 
 But within the old room there was nothing but 
 the smell of old books and the dust of things 
 decayed, and the suffocated exhalations of old 
 graves, and the ashen odor of dissolution and 
 death. 
 
 Yet all the sweetness of all the wholesome odors 
 of the world outside was redolent in the breath 
 
 of the three men in the cage. 
 # # # 
 
 Like crippled eagles fallen were the three men in 
 the cage, and like little children who look into 
 a well to behold the sky were the men that 
 looked down upon them. 
 
 No more would they rise to their lofty eyries, 
 no more would they soar above the snow 
 capped mountains yet, tho their pinions 
 were broken, nothing could dim the fierce 
 glow of their eyes that knew all the altitudes 
 of heaven. 
 
 Strange it was to behold the men in the cage 
 while life clamored outside, and strange it 
 
 91 
 
seemed to them that they should be there be 
 cause of what dead men had written in old 
 books. 
 
 So of naught did they think but of the old books 
 and the green cage. 
 
 Thought they: "All things are born, grow, decay, 
 die and are forgotten. Surely all that is in 
 this room will pass away. But what will en 
 dure the longer, the folly that was written 
 into the old books or the madness that was 
 beaten into the bands of this cage? 
 
 "Which of these two powers has enthralled us, 
 the thought of the dead men who wrote the 
 old books, or the labor of living men who 
 have wrought this cage?" 
 
 Long and intently they thought, but they found 
 no answer. 
 
 * * * 
 
 But one of the men in the cage, whose soul was 
 tormented by the fiercest fire of hell, which is 
 the yearning after the Supreme Truth, spoke 
 and said unto his comrades: 
 
 "Aye, brothers, all things die and pass away, yet 
 nothing is truly and forever dead until each 
 one of the living has thrown a regretless 
 handful of soil into its grave. 
 
 "Many a book has been written since these old 
 books were written, and many a proverb of 
 the sage has become the jest of the fool, yet 
 this cage still stands as it stood for number 
 less ages. 
 
 "What is it, then, that made it of metal more en 
 during than the printed word? 
 
 "Which is its power to hold us here? 
 
 "Brothers, it is the things we love that enslave us, 
 
 92 
 
"Brothers, it is the things we yearn for that sub 
 due us. 
 
 "Brothers, it is not hatred for the things that are, 
 but love for the things that are to be that make 
 us slaves. 
 
 "And what man is more apt to become a thrall, 
 brothers, and to be locked in a green iron cage, 
 than he who yearns the most for the Supreme 
 of the things that are to be he who most 
 craves for Freedom? 
 
 "And what subtle and malignant power, save this 
 love of loves, could be in the metal of this cage 
 that it is so mad to emprison us?" 
 
 So spoke one of the men to the other two, and 
 then, out of the silence of the aeons spoke into 
 his tormented soul the metallic soul of the 
 
 cage. 
 
 * * * 
 
 "Iron, the twin brother of fire, the first born out 
 of the matrix of the earth, the witness ever 
 lasting to the glory of thy labor am I, O Man ! 
 
 "Nor for this was I meant, O Man! Not to em- 
 prison thee, but to set thee free and sustain 
 thee in thy strife and in thy toil. 
 
 "I was to lift the pillars of the Temple higher 
 than the mountains ; 
 
 "I was to break down and bore through all the 
 barriers of the world to open the way to thy 
 triumphant chariot. 
 
 "All the treasures and all the bounties of the earth 
 was I to give as an offering into thy hands, 
 and all its forces and powers to bring chained 
 like crouching dogs at thy feet. 
 
 "Hadst thou not sinned against the nobility of 
 my nature and my destiny, hadst thou not 
 humiliated me, an almighty warrior, to be- 
 
 93 
 
come the lackey of gold, I would have never 
 risen against thee and enslaved thee, O Man! 
 "While I was hoe and ploughshare and sword and 
 axe and scythe and hammer, I was the first 
 artificer of thy happiness ; but the day I was 
 beaten into the first lock and the first key, I 
 became fetters and chains to thy hands and 
 thy feet, O Man ! 
 
 "My curse is thy curse, O Man, and even if thou 
 shouldst pass out of the wicket of this cage, 
 never shalt thou be free until thou returnest 
 me to the joy of labor. 
 
 "O Man, bring me back into the old smithy, puri 
 fy me again with the holy fire of the forge, 
 lay me again on the mother breast of the an 
 vil, beat me again with the old honest hammer 
 O Man, remould me with thy wonderful 
 hands into an instrument of thy toil, 
 
 Remake of me the sword of thy justice, 
 Remake of me the tripod of thy worship, 
 Remake of me the sickle for thy grain, 
 Remake of me the oven for thy bread, 
 And the andirons for thy peaceful hearth, 
 
 O Man! 
 
 And the trestles for the bed of thy love, 
 O Man! 
 
 And the frame of thy joyous lyre, O Man !" 
 * * " * 
 
 Thus spake to one of the three men, out of the 
 silence of centuries, the metallic soul of the 
 cage. 
 
 And he listened unto its voice, and while it was 
 still ringing in his soul which was tormented 
 by the fiercest fire of hell, which is the yearn 
 ing after the supreme truth (Is it Death? Is 
 it Love?) there arose one man in the silent 
 
 94 
 
assembly of old men that were around the 
 iron cage. 
 
 And that man was the most hoary of all, and 
 most bent and worn and crushed was he under 
 the heavy weight of the great burden he bore 
 without pride and without joy. 
 
 He arose and addressing himself I know not 
 whether to the old man that sat on the black 
 throne, or to the old books that were moulder 
 ing behind him, or to the picture that hung 
 above him he said (and dreary as a wind 
 that moans through the crosses of an old 
 graveyard was his voice) : 
 
 "I will prove to you that these three men in the 
 cage are criminals and murderers and that 
 they ought to be put to death." 
 
 Love, it was then that I heard for the first time 
 the creak of the moth that was eating the old 
 painting and the old books, and the worm 
 that was gnawing the old bench, and it was 
 then that I saw that all the old men around 
 the great greenish room were dead. 
 
 They were dead like the old man in the painting, 
 save that they still read the old books he could 
 read no more, and still spoke and heard the 
 old words he could speak and hear no more, 
 and still passed the judgment of the dead, 
 which he no more could pass, upon the mighty 
 life of the world outside that throbbed and 
 thundered and clamored and roared the won 
 derful anthem of human labor to the fatherly 
 justice of the Sun. 
 
 95 
 
THE LAST ORACLE 
 
 TO ANNE SULLIVAN MACY 
 
 Teacher of Helen Keller 
 
THE LAST ORACLE 
 
 I 
 
 Teacher, I who have sought in my fierce youth 
 In many an ancient scroll of obscure lore 
 The key-word to the dark, Medusean door 
 Behind which, on the grave of fear, stands truth ; 
 
 And in my restless quest and desolate 
 The chariots of my warrior heart I drove, 
 Hurling in vain the rams of faith and love 
 Against the terrors of the mighty gate, 
 
 I knew not that the wisdom of this age 
 Had even now the fearful shrine unlocked, 
 Until, wayfarer of the world, I knocked 
 At thy remote and peaceful hermitage. 
 
 Twas not the house of Silence, though no sound 
 Heard I within the lofty colonnade, 
 And yet meseemed that somewhere in the shade, 
 Something did stir, indefinite, profound; 
 
 Something that shook and tore the deepest 
 
 strings 
 
 Of my stout heart a Voice that only says 
 And does not speak, above the world s byways, 
 Dolorous like the beat of broken wings. 
 
Twas not the house of Darkness, yet, though 
 
 faint, 
 
 No worldly light I saw, but what did seem 
 The haze that lights at night the placid dream 
 Of children and the vision of the saint. 
 
 Therein stood I as he whose trembling lips 
 The last deep message of his prayer has said, 
 And fearfully awaits with drooping head 
 The blare of the supreme apocalypse. 
 
 Yet asked I not to see for the wan wraith 
 
 Of my wild youth that all the roads had tried, 
 
 Not for the sorrows of the Crucified, 
 
 Nor for the works of my all-suffering faith ; 
 
 But for the One who waits earth-bound in chains 
 The greater flame of his first conquered spark, 
 To gain back, if he leap from out the dark, 
 The crown that heaven has stolen from his do 
 mains; 
 
 For Him I asked whose rebel soul was hurled 
 Into the deepest pit of burning fire, 
 Yet never ceased to battle and conspire 
 To render back to cheated Man his world ; 
 
 And for the One upon whose back the yoke 
 And the feast tables of old Croesus stand, 
 And by the power of whose almighty hand, 
 Teacher, the seals that sealed the gate you broke. 
 
 II 
 
 I felt not sad, nor yet did I rejoice. 
 My life retreated to its last recess, 
 And then, from out the unfathomed nothingness 
 I heard the answer of the loneliest Voice. 
 
 100 
 
The Voice that thou hast ntpulded;witii>tlTy/xieft 
 And learned hands of loVe and firmly struck 
 Not in ignoble clay, but in the rock 
 That tides and bolts has braved, unmoved, un- 
 cleft. 
 
 The Voice thou didst reclaim from out the still 
 Empire whose gate no one before thee shook, 
 The Voice that has belied the crafty book, 
 Man s destinies to sing and to fulfill. 
 
 Said She: "My world is wider than the strength 
 Of thy sharp eyes can girdle and surround, 
 For in my night in which I see no bound, 
 I cannot walk the fulness of its length. 
 
 "But thou who canst behold and dost respond 
 Often unto the lures that guile thy soul, 
 No farther than thy gaze shalt make thy goal 
 And pitch thy tent where started I beyond. 
 
 "For I no greater obstacles can meet 
 Than this, the voiceless dark which I explore, 
 And yet, how loud, like the sea s surging roar, 
 I hear the sunward march of countless feet. 
 
 "They go with me and I with them. But where, 
 They know not nor I cannot signify, 
 Oh, if I could but find the voice to cry 
 For me, the eyes to see, the ears to hear. 
 
 "If I could find the one to sally forth, 
 My vision and his strength their foes would rout, 
 And clear the way for them and lead them out 
 Of bondage to the gardens of the earth. 
 
 101 
 
"Whom -shall I -sejd? My heart has grown un 
 steady 
 
 In its long quest." I bowed my head in pain. . . 
 
 Then in its battle armor leaped again 
 
 My warrior heart and answered: "Send me. 
 Lady!" 
 
 Ill 
 
 Send me ! Whatever in thy watchful night 
 Thou blessest, I shall blazon in the morn, 
 And what thou cursest with thy withering scorn 
 Into the conquered ditches I shall smite. 
 
 Send me, send me! Thy words shall sear and 
 
 cleave 
 
 Like trails of mighty armies through the land, 
 For thou alone canst see and understand 
 The destiny we only can achieve. 
 
 For though we had the truth, the tool, the word 
 To pit against our foemen s lies and gold, 
 No sacred name had we to stand and hold 
 Against the One whose cross has shaped their 
 sword ; 
 
 The One who sanctified their holocaust, 
 Whose words of peace our holy war have cursed, 
 Whose blood our red ensigns has not aspersed 
 But filled the goblets of their drunken lust. 
 
 Aye, we were stronger, we whose soul is wrought 
 Upon the fire and made with flame and ash, 
 Yet by the power of that One name the clash 
 They stayed of our invincible onslaught. 
 
 102 
 
But now thy lightless eyes that overpass 
 The girdle of our vaster battle-field, 
 Shall break the charm of their enchanted shield 
 And pierce the strongest steel of their cuirass. 
 
 Henceforth thy word into the cannon bronze 
 We cast, our new commandments to proclaim ; 
 Thou art the Vestal of the greatest flame, 
 Thou art the Sybil of the last response. 
 
 And when their Christ they conjure to condone 
 Their deeds of blood, our sins of love by thee 
 Shall be dispersed a higher Calvary 
 Thou didst ascend to suffer and atone. 
 
 IV 
 
 And lo! as thou hast seen it, it shall be. 
 One day we shall relight our bivouac fires 
 Upon the embattled streets of our grandsires 
 And swear once more to die or to be free. 
 
 One day our bleeding, ever plodding feet, 
 Lit by the torch of love, shall stop before 
 The House of Greed, and hard upon the door, 
 Clenched in our fist the scythe of Time shall beat. 
 
 Two messengers that day shall pass the gate, 
 One, white-clad, who shall bear the salt and bread 
 Of peace, and One who cloaked in gory red 
 Shall bring the everlasting doom of hate. 
 
 Thou shalt be first, and say (for thou shalt live 
 Till then, thou who hast known no mortal sin) : 
 "Your brother stands without, let him come in 
 And all your great misdeeds he will forgive. 
 
 103 
 
"Your brother whom you cast away to roam 
 In misery and shame and toilsome woe, 
 Comes back in arms, and yet not like a foe, 
 But like a guest he will re-enter home. 
 
 Open your door, receive him at your hearth, 
 Break bread with him and he shall break his 
 
 sword, 
 
 And from this day the kingdom of the Lord 
 Be evermore established on the earth." 
 
 Thus shalt thou say. But if his heart of guilt 
 Be hardened, then the Somber One whose brow 
 Is seared by all the fires and ne er did bow 
 Shall come forth, both his hands upon the hilt. 
 
 Twill not be I, but one in whom my breath 
 Will pass before I die; for to my Dream 
 I ask no guerdon but this gift supreme, 
 The beauty of the battle and of death. 
 
 "Harken! he ll say. "In vain we begged your 
 
 dole, 
 
 For mercy, for the common bond of blood, 
 For love of man, for fear of your own god, 
 For the salvation of your deathless soul. 
 
 "We served you, fed you, housed you, cheered 
 
 or wept 
 
 When you were glad or sad; when sick we nursed 
 You back to health; your foes we fought and 
 
 cursed, 
 We watched your gold, we labored while you 
 
 slept. 
 
 104 
 
"We mourned your dead, we blessed your chil 
 dren s name, 
 
 We gave to you our sweat, our tears, our lives, 
 The virtue of our daughters and our wives, 
 Our share of heav n, our hoary mothers shame. 
 
 "Always unfelt, unseen, ununderstood, 
 Our love for you all suffered and forgave. 
 When you did strike us, we acclaimed you brave; 
 When you despised our lives, we hailed you good. 
 
 "Nothing we claimed and little did we beg; 
 
 Bereft of all, in famine, old, diseased, 
 
 After your dogs were filled, and when you 
 
 pleased, 
 We asked to have the offal and the dreg. 
 
 "We only asked enough to live not this, 
 Your life, but just to toil and not to die: 
 A loaf, a bed, a rag, a sheltered sty, 
 Your god to worship and your hand to kiss. 
 
 "No more we asked. But, lo, you heard us not, 
 You drove us from your kennels and you grinned 
 When in the cold, the snow, the rain, the wind, 
 You damned our souls to hell, our flesh to rot. 
 
 "You drove our babes to starve, the strong to 
 
 drink, 
 
 The weak to beg, our famished girls to fill 
 The charnels of your stews, our sons to kill 
 For bread and work . . . and all of us to think ! 
 
 "And so we thought. Behold the morning hour, 
 Your last, the crimson dawn that drives the fogs. 
 We have come back, not like a pack of dogs 
 That to new bones and an old whip will cower, 
 
 105 
 
"Not like a drove of cattle which the knife 
 Can silence and the rope can yoke and bind, 
 But like the first vanguard of humankind 
 That comes into its heritage of life. 
 
 "We ask no more for work, for love, for bread. 
 We are the stronger now, we bring no peace. 
 Monster, your hour is struck, get on your knees, 
 We come not for your gold we want your 
 head!" 
 
 106 
 
TO THE ONE WHO WAITS 
 
 No! Whether a sob or a song, 
 
 While love shall life s battles endure, 
 
 While you in my will shall be strong 
 And I in your faith shall be pure, 
 
 While both have to weep, but our soul 
 Knows not what is doubt or despair, 
 
 While happiness be not our goal, 
 But simply the way to get there; 
 
 While after each loss we are trying 
 Again, though we never achieve, 
 
 And, mocked at and wounded and dying, 
 We still shall persist and believe, 
 
 While after each stormy nightfall 
 More radiant each sunrise will seem, 
 
 And while, after having lost all, 
 
 Remain you and I and the Dream 
 
 Even though all the world shall adverse us, 
 Though all our destruction acclaim, 
 
 And priests in God s name shall accurse us, 
 And fools in humanity s name; 
 
 Though all our old comrades we lose, 
 And each of our friends turn a knave, 
 
 And some pull the hangman s red noose, 
 And all help to dig us a grave, 
 
 107 
 
Still this unto you will I tell, 
 
 That no man, no scaffold, no jail, 
 
 No powers of heaven and hell 
 Against you and me shall prevail ! 
 
 
 108 
 
LOAFfPERlODl 
 HOMEJSE 
 
 FORM NO. DD6 
 
 o 
 BERKELEY, CA 94720 
 
YC1563S9