FRIENDSHIP AND OTHER POEMS BY B. H. NADAL 1916 ROBERT J. SHORES NEW YORK Copyright, 1916, by ROBERT J. SHORES, PUBLISHER New York MR. SHORES NEW BOOKS. LOVES AND LOSSES OF PIERROT BY WILLIAM GRIFFITH MRS. BOBBLE S TRAINED NURSE BY GEORGE Fox TUCKER THE VALLEY OF LEBANON BY HELEN S. WRIGHT MELINDA AND HER SISTERS BY MRS. O. H. P. BELMONT AND ELSA MAXWELL THE PENNY ANTE CLUB BY ARTHUR J. SHORES EAT YOUR WAY TO HEALTH BY DR. ROBERT HUGH ROSE SHORES PRESS NEW YORK TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE FRIENDSHIP . 1 PEACE 2 PANAMA 4 GRAMERCY PARK THE STATUE SPEAKS 8 THE CENSUS 10 NEXT! 11 A PROTEST 14 A CZAR 1905 15 WHY NOT? 16 BELGIUM 17 WARNING! THE LUSITANIA 19 ARBITRATION 2(1 THE STOCK EXCHANGE 23 To HENRY GEORGE 24 A PORTRAIT. WHO? 25 THE EPITAPH 26 SONG OF THE TIP . . . . . v . . . . . 28 THE THREE OF Us . . . . . .... . . 29 HOOK MOUNTAIN 30 TABLE OF CONTENTS PAGE THE ALBANY Tow .... ........ 81 OLD HUDSON HE SAILED 32 FREE VERSE DEPARTMENT 35 ODE TO VERB LIBRE 37 THE BLIZZARD 39 THE GIANT AND THE PROBLEM 42 HUMOROUS AND SATIRICAL WISE OR OTHERWISE . 49 HORSE SENSE 51 LITTLE Miss TRIP 53 THE LION WHO GOT RELIGION 55 THE AMERICAN SUFFRAGETTE 57 A GREAT PUGILIST S INTERVIEW ON THE CORONATION OF EDWARD VII 59 FRIENDSHIP A PLEASANT ship is Friendship, Laden with tears and smiles, Across the storm-swept ocean It sails from Friendly Isles. Sweet chords hum in its rigging And thrill each straining rope. The wind that fills its canvas Blows from the Cape Good Hope. It enters every harbor To land its precious wares, That he may take who needs them, And he may have who cares. PEACE O ER our wide pastures yet unscarred by war The summer reigns and sweet from near and far Come sounds of pleasant waters, songs of birds And the dumb pathos of the lowing herds. The grain is ripening and the rivers flow, On the broad Hudson ships go to and fro. Rimming the confines of the peaceful land The oceans sleep the misty mountains stand. Verdant and boundless, sunk in ease we lie While golden suns drive through a cloudless sky, A blinded Samson, sprawling, helpless, shorn. As nations whom the wolves of war have torn. Dreaming, we hear vast armies march and wheel Or like two endless Pythons clad in steel, Writhing and roaring with the maddening pain League after league lie deadlocked on the plain. Great God Efficiency ! Fire and Blood and Steel ! You make the women weep, the planets reel, Europe, a factory whose output is ghosts Or human seconds, armless, legless hosts, Blind, maimed and crutched, to grope or limp or crawl Back to the roofless hut or ruined hall. The roof-tree of all Europe s fair domain Writhes like a sapling in a gusty rain. Great God Efficiency! We are mad to dream That you are frightened by an Eagle s scream; That walls of flesh or hearts of steel can save A Belgium or a China from the grave. Peace ! ! Peace ! ! Peace ! ! Peace ! ! Peace do I hear you cry? Peace with dishonor ! Better far to die ! Pour out your treasure! Arm your valiant sons, Nor leave them naked to the Great God s guns. PANAMA MAP pictured, South America floats idly in the ocean Humped not unlike a camel or old Santa Claus s pack, Hair hung upon the Isthmus with an eastward swaying motion, The snow-tipped Corderillas crawling all along its back. A giant cornucopia rich as all the earth can show, Pierced by the fierce Equator and the milder Capricorn, Filled with rivers, lakes and forests, condors, jaguars, ice and snow, Mountains, monkeys and republics from Darien to the Horn. Languid in the tropic sunshine, drenched by Equatorial showers, Prey too oft of venal rulers vexing the unhappy land, Or if peace in Freedom s guise reign where the drowsy jaguar cowers, Tis the opiate of the sword in the tyrant s mailed hand. Not thus her Northern sister clingeth weakly to another. Frost anchored in the Arctic, she struggles for the pole, Her one maimed arm extended to her giant Asian brother, Within her snowy bosom guards stout Hudson s valiant soul. 4 Her cities hum, her harbors teem, her highways are of steel. Both virile and aspiring, she is resolute and strong. While palpitating engines move each busy turning wheel, Electric thrills of power course all her veins along. These Siamese twin Continents held by an Isthmian cord, League after league far reaching toward world wide sundered poles To Colon s rotting caravels, the Westward sea had barred, Nosing like lost leviathans among the vexing shoals. Wise surgeon, you have cut the bond to unite, not to sever, And since despite the adverse fates and all unlucky stars The blue Pacific s placid fields have joined the Gulf for ever, To grazing ships of all the seas let down the pasture bars. Then joyful watch old Neptune s flocks Eastward and Westward going Through Darien s dustless boulevard to distant ports unseen, Brigs, schooners, yachts and battle ships, vast liners hoarsely blowing, The creeping tramp and battered barque and ancient brigantine. GRAMERCY PARK THERE is a garden in a city s heart, A sunken garden where the roaring mart Has shot aloft its many storied towers And one great spire that chimes the passing hours. A fair green island in a sea of stone Where one may come and sit and dream alone Lulled by the city s hum the muffled roar Like distant breakers on a rock bound shore. Sacred the spot is to a Century s past, Hallowed by memories and the shadows cast By pleasant mansions whose dear children roam Far from that garden and the ancient home. Here Hamlet dwelt and dreamed and passed away Building a shrine for love not his dull clay ; Trask, Bigelow, Gilder Tilden too shrewd wilted Spinster statesman whom his country jilted. And where his aged feet in slippered ease Paused on the brink of death s uncharted seas The tide of life from every land and clime Pours through its portals till the midnight chime. Ah, gentle ghost, how fares thy broadcast fame Drowned in the revels of the Mi Careme, Where Art and Music thrive and poets come To tell the world the Muses are not dumb? 6 Hooking my arm the ghost said, " Let us go Down to the grill where wine and wisdom flow, Where balls are clicked and violet smoke wreaths curled And men may feel the pulse of all the world." " No problem, friend, from Mexico to Van E er touched the hearts or vexed the soul of man But found its echo in this smoke wreathed den Where friend meets friend and men are brother men." Back to our garden! Mark the snowy spire A Wetterhorn of commerce tipped with fire, Reading life s riddle by the chiming hour Or in the flaming beacon of the tower. Thanks, sister island, from whose verdant marge The friendly lighthouse gleams so fair and large, Soaring through mist or in the cloudless blue Hail, sister, hail a " Gramercy to you." Tilden s home is now the National Arts Club. THE STATUE SPEAKS YES I am Liberty at least they call me so ; If to be anchored here in rain and frost and snow, Prey to the tempest and to all the winds that blow If this be liberty then you may call me so. Oh, how my arm does ache with holding up this torch, Task scarce begun through frosts that burn and suns that scorch, A modern vestal stylite where the blizzards swirl, The tide-rip rages and the gentle small seas curl. Yes, it is pleasant here, when through the Summer night The velvet zephyrs soothe and round my torches light The myriad foolish insects weave in and out the glare As if each vainly sought for some lost lover there. So hour by hour I watch, as ebbs and flows the tide, The steady burning stars where ships at anchor ride, Where ghostly vessels flit across the bay s dark floor And transit s monster glow-worms crawl from shore to shore. Northward the city glows each bridge an arch of light, The waters black beneath and all the stars in sight. Expectant of the dawn whispers the strengthening breeze, Lightens the East, and rustling at my feet, the trees Now stir with life, and on the far horizon s rim The new morn redly gleams and all the stars grow dim. From out the bosom of the wide and misty deep Mother of winds and storms where stars and planets sleep 8 Up starts the Sun ! A miracle new born each day The blazing God to whom all living creatures pray. " Good morning, Liberty," the dear god seems to cry, Just as last night his dying brother said, " Good-bye." 9 THE CENSUS New York City A. D. 2000 . . . 15,000,000 By Hendrik Hudson, the Third, of the Borough of Poughkeepsie. AMAZING, huge, colossal, vast, inspiring, Millions on millions to the ocean s marge Add stone to stone add soul to soul untiring, Who cares for units if the sum be large? More palaces whose shuttered fronts are mocking Anaemic, swarming children of the slums, Hell s kitchens myriad tenements where flocking The spawn of all the nations breeds and comes. More churches, temples, towers, tunnels, trolleys, More slimy docks where fetid water flows, More bad, more good, more poverty, more follies, Insatiate still, see how the monster grows. Feeding on farms, on forests, meadows, flowers, Licking up landscapes in three sovereign states, Turning to offal what its greed devours, Rots the Atlantic at old Hudson s gates. Progress, my friends? Ah, yes, but whither tending? Where fruit rots fast pile up the golden spheres? Add stone to stone add soul to soul unending If this be progress, dread the marching years. 10 NEXT! A NIGHTMARE OF EFFICIENCY HANS of round paunch and triple plated fat Lord of ten throne-like chairs an autocrat Who waves his. sceptre of sharp, shining steel, Clips, shaves, anoints you till at last you feel Enthroned and perfumed like a monarch s heir, The while he robs you of your surplus hair, Deftly unfrocks you, bawls the solemn text, The forward march of time the fatal NEXT. But while he droned of war of this and that I drowsed and dreamed I was an autocrat ; An autocrat, alas, upon whose senses stole Black night dream haunted cavern of the soul. A dream within a dream a vision dread While old Hans clipped and snipped my sacred head. To me it seemed that centuries had passed. I found myself within a cavern vast That stretched from Finland to the Caspian Sea. I Emperor King and the Autocracy Sat on a bootblack stand of polished brass In barber chairs all lit with flaring gas. A surly peasant shined each royal boot And stopped to growl, " My Lord, the other foot." Miles, miles away, horned devils stoked a fire That lit that cavern s floor of oozing mire And by that flare was one great pillar shown That held aloft the cavern s awful dome. 11 And round that pillar by a mighty chain A dragon tramped and stirred the boggy plain. His mouth was blood. Swords were his bristling crest, His eyes exploding bombs. He wore a vest, Pink shirt, high collar and a crimson tie All stamped with skulls and horrid things that fly. Choked by the galling limit of his chain And pulled aloft he paws the air in vain, While flaring like great furnaces at night His eyes are black or filled with glowing light. Then from his throttled throat comes pouring hot All things that are and everything that s not. Colons and semi-colons Japs and Finns, Blanks, asterisks and dynamite in tins. All things that end in Ski and Off and Vitch, Jew, Pole and Moslem, peasant, poor and rich. Griffons and giants, monkeys, dogs and cats, Hovels and houses, battleships and flats, Grand Dukes and Kings and palaces and things Out of his maw in cataract he flings. God! How that pillar swayed with groan and strain As Anarch tugged and gnawed his galling chain. The roof tree of all Europe s fair domain Bent like a sapling in a gusty rain. Lord of a dozen realms an Empire s head, King by divine right and sovereign dread, I trembling and forsaken by my power, Am helpless as the meanest things that cower. O er-head I hear vast armies march and wheel Or like two endless pythons clad in steel IS Writhing and roaring with the maddening pain League after league lie deadlocked on the plain. Great God Efficiency!! Fire and Blood and Steel Who makes the women weep the planets reel, Europe a factory whose output is ghosts Or human seconds, armless, legless hosts, Blind, maimed and crutched, to grope or limp or crawl Back to the roofless hut or ruined hall Great God Efficiency ! ! you to whom we pray, Is this the outcome of your splendid sway? Song Art Invention all that time has wrought, All things that soar the Zeppelins of thought Fair Hope and Pity bi-planes of the soul, Are these chimeras war the final goal ? Peace but the beast that licks his wounds and scars, Sharpens his fangs and dreams of endless wars? 13 A PROTEST IF you were he and in your poet hands Fortune had placed the crown and marching from afar Came struggling hosts to parley with their Czar, While dread clouds like a pall, o er his wide lands Hung, shrouding him where, he, unhappy, stands What would you do, oh, crimson ink pots Czar, Lord of the lexicon, of words that burn and scar? Weak may we be or strong, yet bound by bands Of circumstance and custom stronger far than we. Weep for the slaughtered yes, and curse if curses fly To where all wrongs are righted and the angels lie. Pity the Czar few men need more than he, Born to an unsought throne, perchance to die By the flung bomb while ruin fills the sky. In 1905 a great mob marched to interview the Czar of Russia. It is said that Father Gapon, a priest, who led them was afterward exe cuted for treachery by his own comrades. No great capital in the world would allow a vast mob to march upon its Governors. Mobs have been repeatedly fired upon in our cities. Deplorable as the in cident was, Swinburne s splendid but bloodthirsty sonnet seemed hardly just. This protest was in part cabled to England as a reply by the New York Times and was widely copied. 14 A CZAR 1905 A PASTEBOARD autocrat, a despot out of date, A fading planet in the glare of day, A flickering candle in the sun s bright ray, Burnt to the socket. Fruit left too late High on a barren bough, ripe till it s rotten, By God forsaken and by time forgotten. Watching the crumbling edges of his lands; A spineless God to whom dumb millions pray, From Finland in the North to far Cathay, Lord of a frost-bound continent he stands. Her seeming ruin his dim mind appals And in the frozen stupor of his sleep He hears dull thunders pealing as she falls And mighty fragments dropping in the deep. This sonnet was written when Russia was harassed by both internal agitation and a victorious foe. The Czar, if nothing more, seems an amiable and well intentioned man. " Your Maj esty ! " The Councillor had found him reclining on a lounge in a remote chamber. " I am not Your Majesty I am tired," wearily replied the Czar. A general who said rats were gnawing at his stomach and who used to sleep curled up on the floor of his tent with a campstool held to the pit of his stomach, was heard to groan : " Oh, why did President Davis make me a general?" The Son of Heaven, aged three, at his coronation in China, eluded his nurse in a careless moment and was discovered rapidly backing down the steps of the throne on all fours to liberty and happiness. Authentic or not, these incidents are significant. 15 WHY NOT? SILENT tonight the snow sifts slowly down O er steppe and mountain, city, lake and town, While in the sky gleams not a single star Where sleep the bearded children of the Czar. Respite till dawn ! Alas ! Alas ! who knows ? Wolves in her folds and on her confines, foes. Hear you no voices calling from afar Unhappy Anarchs, most unhappy Czar? We from those heights by your dumb millions sought, We for whose gain the centuries have wrought, Stretch to your aid our mute appealing hands, Unhappiest of all unhappy lands. You on whose life has set the star of hope, You with whose task what man would dare to cope, Last of a famous line, the heir of fate, Friends, friends to help, we are not foes to hate Dynastic pride? Pride of your country s past? Add to that pride the noblest and the last That Russia is too great to hold in thrall Her valiant sons when they for freedom call. This appeared a short time before the United States Government was asked to arbitrate the Russian-Japanese War. The last verse was intended as an appeal to the Czar not to let pride stand in the way of peace or the granting of self-government to his people. 16 BELGIUM Oh, Germany! Mother of song home of the arts, Whose seers have taught us at whose breast we ve fed, Flesh of our flesh, though you had won our hearts, Your brow is awful and your hands are red. Talk not of treaties nor whose blame the strife. These were not foes whose blood is on your hands. Nations can die. Honor is more than life. So Belgium said. Heroic there she stands. You were not Huns nor they a savage race; A sister nation, skilled in all the arts. What madness seized you? Hide your burning face As we hide ours to ease our aching hearts. Did she ask pity ? plead the desperate strife ? God knows she had ten reasons for your one. Nations can die. Honor is more than life. So Belgium stands resplendent in the sun. To hear her story, oh you peaceful lands, Dull stones could weep and from the burning sands Well up great fountains at whose thirsty brink A hundred blazing suns might vainly drink. 17 Vine clad and castled flowed the river Rhine, Her verdant banks drowsed in the summer haze, While Belgium s plains you drenched with awful wine Wrung from her heart on those same golden days. Oh, Germany! Mother of song home of the arts, Whose seers have taught us. At whose breast we ve fed; Flesh of our flesh, though you have won our hearts Your crime is damning and your hands are red. 18 WARNING! THE LUSITANIA Not a plea for war nor an indictment of the Germans as a people, but a satire on their warning and an indictment of her rulers. I GIVE warning, warning, warning, to all babes and maids and mothers That I have no creed but slaughter leave shame, honor, peace to others. I give warning, warning, warning; I give warning to all nations I m the one efficient slaughterer of all God s brute creations. The road hog of all Europe and the wild beast of the world, I make war on peaceful hamlets where the smoke of hearth fires curled, Ask dishonor of my sister ravage all her teeming plain Strike you back you maddened victim See the charnel of Louvain. I give warning, warning, warning that life is more than honor, That the world shall be my victim with the brand of Cain upon her, I give warning, warning, warning that I ve taught my splendid people That the shambles is an altar and the cannon is a steeple. 19 I give warning, warning, warning to all you who sail the main You must scotch me like a viper or bind me with a chain For I have no code but slaughter behold me, oh, you nations, The most efficient slaughterer of all God s brute creations. Oh you million, million Germans in the land where men are free, Save! Oh, save me from this madness, flay me, scourge me, till I see, Lest like the fabled monster ringed by a world afire I strike my own fangs inward and in my shame expire. WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!! ARBITRATION Oh, Germany! Although the red fires shot athwart the sky And the wild Heavens flamed from sea to sea At that mad stroke, to see our children die, We must not hate you we are sane and free. Oh, Germany! Don t you hear us calling, calling from the sea For the sake of all our brothers in the strife? Don t you hear the wireless humming o er the sea Call you back to honor, hope and peace and life? All pride of race, achievement, fame and power Lay on the altar of the common good, Then for all races may have come the hour When men are brothers and not cannon s food. No nation asked your life or wished you harm. Believe us you are wrong. It was not so. It was not sane to grasp in wild alarm The sword, and stake all on a gambler s throw. Tis false to say that all men are not brothers. Twas ours to prove that thought a specious lie Where millions of your race can meet all others Year after year, work, love and live and die. Oh, Germany ! Hark to the sighs of children, maids and mothers. Think of the ravaged fields and hearts and homes. Then say " Where am I right or wrong, my brothers ? " Hark to the cry Peace ! Peace ! At last it comes. THE STOCK EXCHANGE WHAT S the broth the brokers brew, The seeming maddened reckless crew? Stocks and bonds are juiceless things, The cards and chips of money kings. Stand but at the cauldron s brim And tell me what you see within? Horny hands and sweat of toil Bended backs that dig the soil, Cotton, sugar, oil and grain, What runs on land or ploughs the main. Hovels, palaces and flats With autos, horses, dogs and cats ; Fortunes wrecked by fate s stern laws, Hands uptossed that grasp at straws ; All that s merry, gay or glad, Whatever s desperate, lost or sad, Boils madly in the bubbling stew The kind of broth the brokers brew. TO HENRY GEORGE On the 25th Anniversary of the Publication of "Progress and Poverty" THOUGH to a dim uncharted land our thoughts to night are borne, Oh, Captain of a gallant band, we do not come to mourn. Among the nobler wiser shades who haunt that viewless space Your genius like a glowing star shines in its firm fixed place. You, dreamer of a splendid dream, a time still far away, Battering monopoly s brazen gates, hoping that in your day Justice might reign through all the Earth because you led the way, Prone on the Century s threshold fell, a martyr in the fray. Now in this new born, pregnant time we watch earth s warring hosts What of the future? Can you say, great company of ghosts ? We do not know. We can not tell. We may not read aright. We wait. We watch. We guard the flame his spirit set alight. A PORTRAIT. WHO? Written at the Starting of the Panama Canal and not Inapplicable Now SKELETON at a monopolist s feast A radical in the enemy s camp Subtle but honest, one with Nature s stamp, A politician, soldier, author, priest. Bold to conceive yet wary to attain The ground from which a distant height he ll gain. Born to the wise control of man and beast, Chafes at the barriers of his fenced domain. The Centaur charges, stops short in his way, Reined to his quivering haunches at the chasm s edge, Then takes the leap, lands safely on a ledge, His sole support perhaps a wisp of HAY. Cowboy, statesman, skilled in Jiu Jitsu, Wrestling with fate, is one of fortune s few. THE EPITAPH ON A SCRAP OF TIN NAILED ON A BOARD II I Kit RUHT IN GOTT MARIA OTT GEBOREN ZOGG SCHLAFE WOHL IN ALLER EWIGKEIT DEIN BILD STEHT VOR UNS LICHT UND REIN VERGESSEN SOLLST DU NIEMALS SEIN. SLEEP peacefully, Maria Ott, Whose maiden name was Zogg While this pathetic scrap of tin Time s memory may jog. The poet says your image stands Forever pure and bright And you a radiant soul have fled Into the Ewigkeit. I never knew you in the flesh If you were young and fair Or if you were a toil-worn soul With scant and silvered hair. Perhaps ere this, Maria Ott, Instead of scrap of tin Affection may have laid your bones A marble tomb within. I know a thousand I ve passed by Whose mortal frames might groan Beneath a solid granite shaft Or ponderous slab of stone. Strange fate indeed, Marie Ott, Whose maiden name was Zogg, You shall not be forgot by me While through this vale I jog. SONG OF THE TIP I UNMAKE men teach them to sue For wage they boldly should demand, Or ask for more than is their due, With servile mien and open hand. I follow at the heels of wealth, To gather largess at me flung, I bully, cringe, and get by stealth Of graft s long ladder, lowest rung. The shadow of that monstrous bulk, Of golden calf I am the bleat, You fill my palm or else I sulk And do my work with leaden feet. Children of those of all men peer, The sturdy men of shore and ship, Of farmer, craftsman, pioneer, We take our graft and crave our tip. THE THREE OF US . The Three of us is all of us. In Memory of a Pleasant and Profitable Evening. AMID the city s surging tide, Grim mother of our human wrecks Your play s a verdant isle espied Whose grassy slopes the sunshine flecks. What we are wont to call unreal The painted scene the acted part The deeper things of life reveal By virtue of your truthful art. You reach the source of happy tears, Of simple joys, the common fate, And cheerful sunshine now appears Where fogs had dimmed the mind of late. And so we thank you from the heart You who conceived and you who act Twin souls in love sisters in art Your happy isle is solid fact. For though the centuries roll away And this old world sink neath time s tide When we have spent our little day Somehow we know these things abide. HOOK MOUNTAIN HILDREN we are of the great God Pan Who marvel much by the river How ruthless man can mar the plan Of the wise and bounteous giver. We hear afar the sound of war As the rocks they rend and shiver. They blast and mine and rudely scar The pleasant banks of the river. i What if your city storms the sky Your streets creep on and multiply? Can puny might rear cliffs on high? Can you give us back our river? Hook Mountain is the most striking example of the destruction of the Hudson s banks, which still goes on. It is most insidious and as stupid as it is wasteful of one of the great assets of the State. The rock and clay are soon exhausted. The damage can not be repaired in thousands of years. 30 THE ALBANY TOW friend, it s durned monotonous This lazy creeping tow," Drawled he, as swirling round his barge, Old Hudson s waters flow. The floating village forged ahead Majestic, steady, slow, The wind-etched bay, the sky, the hills Flushed with the afterglow. Let night s great glow worms churn the tide While tugs and motors hum And down the rails with frantic shriek The Western flyers come. While vineyards, farms and towns glide by Where fading sunsets glow, I somehow in this hustling age Am glad some things are slow. Though like the Half Moon we may fare, Northward and Southward slow, Old man, I rather think I like This lazy creeping tow. OLD HUDSON HE SAILED Ballad from the play of Hendrik Hudson the Third. Margaret Tell me about old Hudson, Uncle Jim. OLD Hudson he sailed and he sailed and he sailed In the quaint and the queer Half Moon And the river was bare, Not a sail anywhere, But the sail of the old Half Moon. Not a house or a barn or a steeple he saw As he gazed from the old Half Moon, Not a steamer was there Not a tow anywhere, As he stood on the old Half Moon. No shriek of an engine or rumble of freight Nor toot of a tug was heard But the Half Moon sailed, And it sailed and it sailed Like a quaint and a queer old bird. If a dainty white cloud had sprouted with wings And silver oars shot from its side You would think it was queer My dear, mighty queer And open your eyes very wide. 32 So the Indians thought the Great Spirit had come From the land where the good people go, And the very tough crew Were white angels too From the land where the good people go. From yonder and yonder from bay and from cove They flocked to the great vessel s side And found that the crew Were people like you And white only out, not inside. Now fancy I m Hudson and on the Half Moon: Shut your eyes as tight as you can Are you ready? Now Go! They start races so And Hendrik Hudson I am. 33 FREE VERSE DEPARTMENT If a writer can give value to his thought, poetical or otherwise, by launching it upon a sea of white paper who needs to object? But the exponents of Free Verse claim to have risen from a lower to a higher plane of expression to be brilliant winged creatures who have escaped from the cramped chrysalis and are flashing in the sun light of freedom. James Oppenheim, the most gifted of them, com pares Free Verse to an aeroplane which can go anywhere while other poets are engines crawling upon a track. This logic is as inverted as many of their sentences. An aeroplane can not turn angles. In the hands of a master the restraint and limitations of the vehicle seems to project the thought with power and clothe it with beauty. In his hands it becomes an aeroplane that soars and mounts to every quarter of the heavens. Free Verse is rather an aeroplane bumping along the ground and making desperate efforts to get up and stay up. Carlyle says the only excuse for writing poetry in poetical form he means is that you have something to say and can say it better in that way than any other. A great poet in thought and feeling, the expansion of Carlyle s works into Free Verse would alone suffice to blow up every Carnegie library in the country. ODE TO VEES LIBRE OH, careless muse, uncombed if nothing worse, A kitchen maid the Mary Ann of verse, Pounding raw steak, rattling each pot and pan And beating tattoos on the garbage can. So seldom sweet or fair, you say you sing While jangling discords make the welkin ring; Virile at times poetical by chance, A rhythmic rival of St. Vitus dance. Oh, Liberty, thou motherest many a crime And now would wring the neck or knell of rhyme. Oh, yes, we know that you can answer back That rhyme s oft trivial Pegasus a hack Traveling a highway through a dreary bog, His burden doggerel and his pace a jog. But let some Keats appear upon the scene How gay his welcome and how changed his mien. Responsive to his master s least desire, Old Pegasus a stallion shod with fire Trots, paces, ambles, jumps and runs at will A thing all impulse, power, grace and thrill. Heavenward he springs, and scorning to alight, Bursts like a rocket on the blackest night Into a thousand bright, unfading stars, The deathless songs that wait at Heaven s bars. 37 If poetry be but the soul in flight If we have read birds, worlds and stars aright, If they must soar in circling rhythmic curve And from those lines of beauty only swerve, When some harsh fate has sought them as they fly And, mangled, torn them from the azure sky, Why then, Vers Libre, stick close to Mother Earth, Mishapen, crude and broken-winged at birth. Be angular. Chop lines off anywhere Or be the nude descending of the stair. While she is sleeping, steal the Muse s clothes And snatch the jewels from the brow of prose. Hop on one foot, or like the centipede Crawl through four lines of type at wriggling speed. Be occult, mystic, cryptic if you like Oh, Hobo of the soul! Oh, tramp upon life s hike! Be graphic, bold, be free, be anything, But don t, oh, slattern Muse, attempt to sing. 38 THE BLIZZARD SEPTEMBER 13, 1916 FROM SHARK RIVER ANTHOLOGY A Horrible Example a Long Way After Whitman and Masters. I SING the exploit of Ladan Ladan Nossirrah Dranreb, The guest of Wallace Sawyer of Passyunk Avenue. Bards of Asbury Park and Avon, New Jersey, aid me. I sing the myriad branches Upon which were strung like translucent beads The crystalline jewels of the Ice King. I sing the blizzard the level driven sleet, The ice encrusted roads and sidewalks; And so where motors honk and walkers plod Ladan of 1 East Seventeenth Street, Manhattan; Ladan, lover of the winged skate, The flashing blade and the swallow flight, Glided swiftly toward the much sounding sea. But alas, some miscreant, some strewer of ashes, lost to all the finer feelings that ennoble and dignify our com mon humanity, had sullied the crystalline purity of the ice encrusted sidewalk and down he came like some tall pine before the woodman s ax, busting his bifocals and proceeding onward for many inches upon a much too prominent proboscis. Nothing daunted he arose and broom in hand to sweep the snow drift from his path, plunged onward, waving his domestic excalibur, to the board walk and the much sounding sea. 39 Then on ever onward, undaunted, undismayed, he sped Through swirling wind borne snow spume, Through blinding sleet and treacherous hidden pitfalls, His flashing blades crunching the ice encrusted planks. Onward through Asbury Park, Onward through Ocean Grove Home of the saints, Onward through Bradley Beach To the deserted village of Avon, To the shores of the Shark River And the desolate mansion of the Sawyers where we once held high carnival with wine and jest and song with noble hospitality, But now alas, forlorn, untenanted, Save by the memories of those feasts and joyous jests. And there high upon a white pillar While the blizzard swept and swirled In wreathed mists of snow Ladan Nosirrah Dranreb Wrote the chronicle of his deed. Homeward sped Ladan in the blizzard s teeth Wind nor nor west, but what cared he, Gliding ever onward while the envious ocean gnashed its snow white teeth upon the supine beach thunder ing curses, Envious because rage as it might it could never forget its thousand crimes nor the myriad skeleton ships that lay in its dank and oozing depths. And thus Ladan, the stormy petrel of Manhattan, fought his way To the haven of Passyunk Avenue. His journey done, 40 The victory won, And another record broken in the history of Monmouth County. I sing I sing but Ghosts of Whitman is this singing ? i Time to Shark River and back and time of composition, one hour and five minutes. But, as Byron said, "Easy writing may be hard reading." "The Giant and the Problem," which follows, is an ex periment in expansion. It is about one-third of a prose phantasy which occupied six pages in The Single Tax Review, translated into Vers Libre with little alteration of phraseology. 4*1 THE GIANT AND THE PROBLEM A PROSE POEM ONE foot planted in the Atlantic The other in the Pacific His cerulean coat tails flapping in the Gulf And dyeing it a still deeper blue, Stands a colossal figure. One hand is upon the Hawaiian Islands, The other grasps the far distant Philippines And the fur on his bell crowned hat Scrapes Orion and the Milky Way. Placing his hands upon his knees, and forgetting his out lying possessions he bends over the hill wrinkled map beneath him with an intent and perplexed look upon his shrewd and kindly face. Over his submerged feet like the handle of a fan Converge the liquid highways from every quarter of the globe. Now he looks upon the fertile cotton fields, The red clay hills of the South, Now upon the lake besprinkled and deer haunted forests of the North; Now his eyes traverse the continent To the store house of the blizzard, Or milder Oregon, Or sweeping Southward, he studies The arid sun-baked plains of the Southwest, But most intently, most anxiously does he look upon that great region extending far Westward from the Atlantic. Crowded with cities, great and small With rivers, lakes and mountains, Fertile with grain and fruits, Where the millions toil unceasingly And thread their way restlessly from city to city. The gravity and perplexity upon his face deepens As he studies the mass of humanity beneath him, Mining, farming, toiling in huge factories Or thronging in and out the revolving doors Of the Babel towers so lofty that the very spires Built to soar and point the way to Heaven Are buried amid the Alpine cliffs of Mammon. The giant s thoughts revert to the past to the new born nation. Great wealth and great poverty were little known. Ah! one could live the Simple Life then. But the young Republic grew rapidly Wave after wave of immigration swept Westward Seizing upon new lands, Consuming the forests And driving back the red man, Until intoxicated with the wine of success, Its rapid growth and its boundless opportunities, It became vainglorious and boastful. But a great civil war rended it And shook it to its very foundations 43 Until at last, matured by this colossal strife, It started upon its course An Empire and a world power At whose youthful boastings the older nations had ceased to smile. Oh, yes, there was much to make the giant happy. The giant could smile. He could laugh till the continent shook. Prosperous, his people, yes, Fertile in invention, Boundless in energy and achievement. But ever the perplexed look returned As he thought of the vast fortunes, of the poverty and crime As he looked upon the great cities, Upon miles of palaces untenanted half the year, Upon reeking tenements, swarming with humanity, Upon asylums and jails springing up like toadstools over night, Upon bits of human pulp holding in their feeble grasp, made strong by the law, pieces of paper that entitled them to tax the productive power of thousands of strong men. We laugh at the divine right of kings to their thrones ; Isn t it time to laugh at the divine right of babies to their millions? He saw the imported flunkies and grafters that swarmed about the palaces that sprang up everywhere. Graft Tips the bleat of the golden calf, The shadow of that monstrous bulk spread until thousands 44 of the children of his sturdy pioneers fawned for it or impudently demanded it. Surely the causes that piled millions of money in heaps Piled millions of his people in heaps. Humanity is gregarious. But was it sane for millions of men, like a vast herd of his extinct buffalo, to madly mill about one spot of earth? How to lessen poverty and crime, How to abolish asylums and jails, How to draw people from the great cities, How to build more homes and fewer palaces, How to abolish insane luxury, flunkies and grafters. Was it not all the same problem? Oh, yes, he knew all the arguments. It was the freest country on earth, But it wasn t free enough for him. The most prosperous yes, But why should prosperity be a disease, Grow vast goitres of wealth upon one man s neck, Make him a burden to himself and a god to other men? With almost inexhaustible resources with the most en ergetic and ingenious people on earth why should there be recurring hard times WHY POVERTY? The rich were as much victims of the system as the poor. How to give their money away was a problem for the wisest of men. You can t change human nature, the pessimists sang. The giant knew something about human nature. Was it not the most fluid thing on earth? 45 Let little Buttercup mix those babies up, The slum baby would be a little god on wheels, The millionaire baby grow to think itself a worm. Oh no, human nature isn t so bad. Give it a chance. Suddenly the giant springs erect. All Europe is aflame. A fanatic had touched a match to the slumbering pas sions, the racial pride and the insane fear of each other, and the nations had sprung to arms. The greatest military power of the world, the most CIVILIZED (?) nation had crushed under its iron heel a gallant nation like a worm in its path a worm that would not violate its own soul. Home to the bosom of the giant came flocking his own children like doves driven before a storm. Industry was paralyzed. The nation held its breath. My God! What a world? As in a dream he hears afar vast armies march and wheel Or writhing and roaring with the maddening pain like endless pythons lie deadlocked on the plain. The giant sank on his knees and prayed Prayed for preparedness that his own children be not some day ground under the heel of the Great God Efficiency. Preparedness against the time when the warring nations should sink down amid the ashes and the ruins to count the cost. And now the grim spectre of war knocked at his own door. Would the old order cease to exist? 46 Would Kings and Princes and Aristocracies fade away? Would old customs, old ideas, old prejudices be con sumed like a tropic jungle in the path of a prairie fire? And in this new time, fertilized by the sacrifices and the sufferings of those who had perished, would there be created a new world of economic justice, of brother hood and common sense? What is an optimist? Is it you, One of the smiling prosperous few Who smoothing down an ample vest Cries Happy time See me digest. Or he whose keener, brooding sight Beholding spectres of the night Evolved the simplest, clearest plan Directest road to the rights of man? Oh, yes, we know the story s old Of want and vice and greed and gold, But don t, my friend of amplest vest, Declare this world the very best; That vested wrong is vested right, Because it s law that black is white, That feed my lambs means shear my sheep, The golden rule s not made to keep. 47 That bread of some be served on gold Must many starve be bought and sold ? All men must live. All men must toil. Get off men s backs and free the soil. HUMOROUS AND SATIRICAL WISE OR OTHERWISE There is no end of making verses Which some may think the primal curse is, Though I believe that it much worse is To murder men and steal their purses, To slander, lie, or mutter curses, Or laugh at other men s reverses. Or harbor wrath which if one nurses May lead to funerals and hearses. Rhyme is no crime if one immerses A grain of sense in myriad verses. It is a crime if he rehearses Efforts of his midst smothered curses. Since there s so much that so much worse is, Pray pardon me if I make verses. 50 HORSE SENSE By Bill Jones, Carpenter and Builder, Athens on the Hudson WRITE things upon your tombstone but never on your shack For you may fail to heed them and they may answer back. Carved verses on your chimney and WELCOME on the mat Don t make the fire no brighter nor tell you where you re at. The " Canty Hearth Where Cronies Meet " is at Hotel Bon Air, But if you want to warm your toes you ll find no fire there, And as for those poor cronies, in case they ever meet, Cigar stumps and burnt matches must serve to toast their feet. Who was it peppered old New York with Greek and Latin names ? Did they have horse sense gumption or real blood in their veins ? You bet it jolts the system this foreign school book trash, But U. S. must digest it if gets into his hash. 51 We call our village A THENS, the long A as in hay And we propose to call it that whatever schools marms say. We re just plain country farming folk who plough and dig and sweat, And not a grain of Attic Salt is in our grub as yet. Bon Air and Buena Vista are not bad in their way But names to hang your hat on happen or grow I say. Black Rock and Skaggs Corners may not be there for show But they will stand the climate like a stone fence or a crow. Rather than some foreign name though it be smooth as butter, Take the rugged native thing that breaks your jaws to utter; Carved verses on the chimney may serve to show your lack. Your guest will know he s welcome when his hat hangs on the rack. And last don t ask no poet to live up to his verse For that will only rile him and make the poor man curse. For he has legs and arms and woes and troubles just the same As you, my friend, or old Bill Jones no matter what his fame. LITTLE MISS TEIPP LITTLE Miss Tripp, A dainty young slip Of a yellow haired flirtatious maid, Made eyes at me once, And I was a dunce To credit the half that they said. Such wiles and such arts For the bustin of hearts Oh, little maid, I must deplore. You tried them on me Now turned fifty-three, And you why, you are not four! You sit in your chair With a most demure air, Your skirts barely reaching the knee, While your feet from the floor Hang two feet or more, In fact your age is scarce three. What want you of me Who have turned fifty-three, Whose ailments get no reduction, The part on whose skull Is as broad and as dull As the road that leads to destruction. Nancy Hanks l or Directum How ere you perfect em Can t catch up with old Father Time. My three-year-old colt, I m not worth a bolt And I ve fifty years start cross the line. Nancy Hanks and Directum two famous horses. THE LION WHO GOT RELIGION A MUCH BORED lion met, while strayed one night, A trolley dragon dreadful to the sight, Which struck and hurled him roaring through the air Into a crowd who scattered here and there. " Strange," thought the lion, " now there is no fee How little people care to see me free. Another proof that that for which we pay Loses its value when it s given away." So musing, down the dim, deserted street The lion limped until his weary feet Led to a temple all ablaze with light Where Hallelujahs rent the veil of night. Twas New Year s Eve. At midnight stood the clock. Br er Johnson plead and cursed and warned his flock. " Hell ! Hell ! " he roared, " s in store for sinful lyin Onless one gits religion befo dyin ." Head on one side in cute and knowing wise The lion paused while tears bedimmed his eyes. Although from mortal sin as white as snow, He had been playing hookey from the show. The lion crouched, then with a mighty crash He joined that church straight through the window sash. He got religion and the parson too But dined alone in Deacon Jones pew. 55 Returning late from his unwonted frolic He died that night, repentant, of the colic, All that was human of his meal agreed He died of texts and specs and too much creed. We have in order to point a moral taken the usual poetic license. The lion did not die nor go home. But when Deacon Jones had sum moned sufficient courage to apply his eye to the key hole the next morning he discovered the lion asleep on the register of the Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church dreaming of his tropic jungle. So distended was he that if he had been a lioness the indications would have been cubs and not parsons. The Deacon was in favor of shooting the lion and delivering the pastor at once. But the owner of the circus happening along he was so delighted with the advertising value of the incident that he offered to pay oif the mortgage of $49.75 on the Church if they would allow the lion to digest the pastor. The offer was accepted. These are the facts. 56 THE AMERICAN SUFFRAGETTE LEAP YEAR 1912. HIS ANSWER TO HER PROPOSAL I KNOW, my dear, you don t defy the majesty of law, Or smite with all your desperate might its servants on the jaw, Nor wrap your sermons round a brick hurled at the tyrant man, Or kick or scratch or starve or rage upon the British plan. I know how like to milk white doves from out a sky of blue Your snowy ballots flutter down on saint and sinners too ; How crime and graft would disappear beneath that ermine robe And from the infected ship of state you d drive the last microbe. And though when that millennium comes a Senator you may be One hand upon the helm of state, the other rocking baby, Meanwhile you do hurl epithets that sizzle and are heating And will insist on getting up and interrupting meeting. Methought that in that verdant isle, blest mother of our people, Peace brooded o er the smiling land joy chimed from every steeple. 57 But, hark, the battle s on again. There flashes through the waters, Shrieks, groans and sighs, the maddened cries of Albion s fair daughters. In dreams I see the embattled host land on Columbia s shores. What statesmen s shins were sacred then? How slake their thirst for gore? Skirts tempest tossed, eyes flashing fire, real carnage, all that s shocking. And in the van, my own dear wife, with those fierce war riors flocking. So take an ice cream soda, dear. Have a box of Huyler s, For though my answer must be " No," I m not of your revilers. Then to the fray ye Belmonts, Shaws, ye Carrie Chapman Catts. Swarm out from all your palaces, your tenements, your flats. On, Belmont, on ! Charge, Pankhurst, charge ! Were the last words of SUSAN B. ANTHONY. 58 " T WON the belt," said great John L., X " By brain and brawn I won it. On Easy Street I may not dwell, But I m the man what done it. " What in the hell," said great John L., "Has Edward ever done? On Easy Street this king may dwell But where s the belt he won? " King Edward never won no crown Though his high head may don it. On Easy Street fate laid it down And dropped a crown upon it." Most truly said, oh man of might, Our uncrowned Cur de Lion. Much belted knight in many a fight Whose fame shall be undyin . Tis true, most true, oh mighty man, We re all of that opinion To him who can tis Nature s plan To give fame and dominion. 59 But is this all, oh, man of might, Democracy can teach us? Both luck and might can strangle right? Another gospel preach us. Not brain nor brawn, no form of might Vice, virtue, luck nor cunning, Nor legal wrong nor vested right Shall stop that day s sure coming, When frowning on ignoble strife To wrest gain from our brothers We ll scorn to drink the wine of life And throw the dregs to others. THE END UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. FEB Fo 3527 Friendship. Tttlf A 000 925 657