(_On the Morning of the Russian Revolution_)
To those who drink the golden mist
Whereon the world’s horizons rest,
Who teach the peoples to resist
The terrors of the human breast:—
By burning stake and prison-camp
They lead the march of man divine,
Above whose head the sacred lamp
Of liberty doth blaze and shine;
O’er blood and tears and nameless woe
They hail far off the dawning light;
Through faith in them the nations go,
Sun-smitten in the deepest night:—
Honor to them from East to West
Be on the shouting earth to-day!
Holy their memory! Sweet their rest!
Who fill the skies with freedom’s ray!
_H. C. Bunner_
Henry Cuyler Bunner, one of our most delightful writers of light
verse, was born at Oswego, New York, in 1855. At twenty-two he was
appointed editor of _Puck_ (then the most prominent of comic
weeklies), a position which he held until his death. For more than
ten years he wrote almost all the rhymed contributions to that
journal—to say nothing of quantities of short stories (his _Short
Sixes_, first published in 1890, are still well-known), prose
paragraphs, topical parodies, editorials, etc. Like Field, the
artist was finally buried in the journalist; but, unlike him, Bunner
kept the work of the serious poet separate from that of the
manufacturer of satiric trifles. Yet, in spite of certain exquisite
fragments in _Airs from Arcady_ (1884) and _Rowen: Second Crop
Songs_ (1892), Bunner is likely to be remembered chiefly for his
flippant _vers de société_, his skilful and grave absurdities.
“Behold the Deeds!” is a splendid example of Bunner’s wit and
technical ingenuity. It is a burlesque of the old ballads in the
guise of a Chant-Royal, one of the strictest and most difficult of
the French forms. Another of his uncollected comic pieces (“Shake,
Mulleary and Go-ethe”) owes its origin to the fact that a certain
Western poet (Joaquin Miller) had composed a poem in which the name
of the author of “Faust” was made to rhyme with “teeth.” Bunner not
only adopted this rhyme, but carried the broad satire further by
mispronouncing Molière, achieving one of his happiest compositions.
Bunner’s was, at best, an artificial world, a world of graceful
compliments, polite evasions, rhymed _billets doux_, with light
sighs and lighter laughter tinkling among the tea-cups. Bunner died,
in New Jersey, in 1896.