THE FLYING PARLIAMENT
AND OTHER POEMS
_The_
Flying Parliament
_and_
Other Poems
By
EDWINA STANTON BABCOCK
[Illustration: colophon]
NEW YORK
JAMES T. WHITE & CO.
1918
COPYRIGHTED 1918 BY
JAMES T. WHITE & CO
DEDICATED TO
CAROLINE LEXOW BABCOCK
1914-1918
CONTENTS
THE FLYING PARLIAMENT
THE SACRED SHIPS 12
THE FLYING PARLIAMENT 13
“GONE WEST” 63
OTHER POEMS
THE HAPPY PEOPLE 71
FROM TREE CLOISTER 72
FROM A WINDOW 73
BIRTHRIGHT 74
TO A LONELY STAR 75
THE OLD ORDER CHANGETH 75
THE TRAMP 78
IN THE STRANGE COUNTRY 80
RAIN PICTURES 81
WAR POEMS
“WE MUST MAKE THE WORLD SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY, 1917” 87
THE MEANING 88
THE MARCHING FAITH 89
HOME COMING 91
FOR OUR MEN 93
WORLD FLOWER 94
EPOCH, 1914 95
TO AMERICANS 97
PENMARCH--BRITTANY 98
TO AN AMERICAN SOLDIER GOING INTO ACTION 100
RESURGENCE--TO C. L. B. 101
GARDEN ADVENTURES 101
CAMOUFLAGE 107
HOME-SICK 108
THE INTERPRETER 109
KLEPHTIC 111
AT THE FEAST OF LIFE 114
DEATH WITHIN DEATH 115
AT THE FLOWER-SHOW 116
TALISMANS 118
SUBLIMINAL 119
THE WALLED CITY 120
ON LILY STREET, NANTUCKET 122
THE “BLIND” ROAD, NANTUCKET 124
THE END OF THE SEASON--NANTUCKET 125
MOVING MILESTONES--NANTUCKET 126
SOURCE 127
THE FLYING PARLIAMENT
_THE SACRED SHIPS_
_Out past the Highlands’ smoke and Autumn gold,
The great gray ships on secret orders steam;
Battalioned boys their dawn-lit land behold
Drifting astern, like towers in a dream;
They watch the havened harbor lights that gleam
Speechless farewell, too tender to be told--
Until within their breasts austere and bold,
The former days remote and alien seem,
And they, the fathers of a Day supreme.
Thus, visioning their service--to a man--
They grim in their stern blitheness, sail to War.
Yea, while we sleep, in one night’s star-lit span--
Youth leaves our shores--to face the Minotaur._
THE FLYING PARLIAMENT
_Scene. Venice, November, 1917. The piazza of San Marco._
A chill air emphasizes the weather stains on arcade
and collonade. Now and then the pale sunlight glitters
faintly on a bit of mosaic, but the lacy fretwork of St.
Marks and the Palazzo Giustizia are nearly covered by
sandbags and scaffoldings. The statues are all removed
from their pedestals. The four famous bronze horses
are once more removed; also the giants on the famous
clock tower. The winged lion of St. Mark and the little
St. Theodore and his crocodile have been carried to
places of safety. From the bronze flagstaffs in the
Piazza of St. Marks the Italian flags are flying. From
afar off there comes the slow booming of guns. Suddenly
the piazza is a whirl with pigeons. The guns
sound like huge bass chords; the pigeon wings beat a
curious suggestion of delicate pastoral themes. The
canals are deserted except for one gondola slowly approaching
a bridge. An American war correspondent
wields the great oar unaccustomedly. The American
steps out at a bridge; he makes fast the gondola; he
walks slowly into the deserted piazza. Near the bronze
base of the flagstaffs is a single child standing among
the whirling pigeons. The child has a small bit of black
bread in his hand; now and then he breaks off a tiny
bit of the bread and throws it to the birds who come
eagerly to him.
Child looking at pigeons circling in the sky speaks as
though to them:
_Fly--Fly! Where?
In the unlibertied air!
Wings of gray instinct,
All opal tinct,
Pulses of pleasure,
Feathery measure--
Wings of delicate vibrant life,
Cutting blue air with halcyon knife;
Sky-strewn garlands of pleasant days,
No more your turret and tower ways!
Nowhere--nowhere
Do hearers your sweet counsels share!
Nowhere--nowhere
Is your place in the militant air!_
The American advances slowly; he is clad in khaki,
and carries field glasses; his broad brimmed hat is worn
down low over his eyes which, burned out and weary,
are fixed on the Duomo of St. Marks.
As he notices the Italian flags, his lips close firmly
together, and he looks down at the little American flag
set in his button-hole. He stares around the deserted
piazza and shivers. Taking out his notebook he sits
down on the steps of the Duomo and commences writing:
(American, writing)
Here in the Piazza
Where the colonnades
Dripped with globules
Of colored beads,
Where delicate shapes
Of Venetian glass
Expanded like flowers
In cavelike booths;
Here where the band played strains,
Wild and rich and forlorn,
Till the very stars dropped down,
Like gold tears on the night;
And the moon, like an orbèd lyre,
Tried to echo the strain
Through strings of fine-drawn cloud....
Here where the musing crowds
Sat in the coffee stalls
Of Florian’s and drank
Tiny glasses of green
Or golden yellow Chartreuse;
In a sweet dazed waking dream--
Here is emptiness now,
Emptiness like a curse,
Emptiness like a house
With the light and life all gone;
All the loving turned to dread,
The children statues of Fear,
The windows closed and stark,
And the pictures turned to the wall,
The people are fled away
To Padua and the plains,
Because the Prussian comes.
All the men are on the lagoons,
With Latin passion and pride
Fighting the Prussians back;
But here in this empty place,
Thronged once by a brilliant world,
Stands a little Venetian child
Feeding the hungry doves.
Child, moving over near the American, curiously
watches him at his writing. At last the little one sits
soberly down beside the war correspondent, who smiles
at him but goes on rapidly scribbling his notes:
While up from the Lido’s calm,
Where the yellow sails once sank
Into gold dusted sky;
Where the great green waves crashed on
The lilac shadowed sands,
Grey tides move like a dirge.
Young waters that once lapped
The dream-lanes of canals,
Where marble faces smiled
In shadows green as moss,
Now are wrinkled and old;
The morning-tinted shores
Are now brittle and old;
And here, where on festa days
The banners clasped the breeze,
And the tapestries rolled down
Over the galleries,
And the air-ships, like great beads,
Buoyed them on the sun
Floating over the roofs,
Those days, fanning with sails
And fairy trails of boats,
And somnolent dip of oars--
Those nights, fruited with lights
Spattered with gleam and gold--
All are ended and gone,
Blasted before the guns.
Venetian people are gone,
Fled to Bologna’s plains,
Away from Piave’s floods
To Padua’s pallid walls.
The decadent boom of guns--
Sullen, brutish guns--
Tired, moody guns--
Sick, disillusioned guns--
Is all that comes to the ear.
The child, sitting placidly near the war correspondent,
keeps on throwing the tiny crumbs of bread to the pigeons;
the American looks at him absently, and then bends
again to his writing:
Glutted are all the guns,
Glutted with fiendish drink
Of hot young human blood;
Brutal ennuyeux! Fat
With soft delicious food
Brought them from every land.
Now the very guns are shamed;
The hideous tanks are shamed;
The fields and mountains are shamed;
The Zeppelins are shamed;
The submarines are shamed;
Men’s faces are set and stern
With an solemn awful shame.
The world turns from its trough,
And knows its swinishness;
The guns are glutted now,
Yet, if the flood be passed
On Piave’s fertile plains,
Venice shall come to their maw;
All the delicate high-bred bones
Of the Bride of the Seas will come
To be crunched by the wild-boar guns
Venice the fragile, grey
Queen of the lamped lagoons--
Of slender lily tower--
Of rich dustcovered bronze--
Of history-crusted stone--
Of luminous Christs and saints
And Gods of golden lands--
Of dreaming palace and port--
Of wingèd winy glass
And vine-hung water-gate--
Venice must go to the guns.
The war correspondent closes his book; getting
wearily to his feet he walks around the corner of the
Palazzo Giustizia and gazes out on the Grand Canal
toward the lagoons. He turns and looks sorrowfully
toward the Bridge of Sighs, to the restored Campanile
and the Procurate Nuova. The grey pigeons whirl
around him; the child follows him.
Child looking earnestly at the American, points to the
doves:
(_Child, singing_:)
_There go the doves, the flowers of the water--
Leaves of the steeples and seed of the sea;
They know never our commerce nor barter,
Yet the doves are no longer free.
All of their flight among starry steeples
Fanning of wings over militant peoples,
Brings us no harmony.
Yet the work of the pigeons is not done,
For the work of wings is never done._
American looking down at the child wonderingly:
The work of wings is never done.
That, me-thinks, is a wise small song.
Who gave it you to sing?
The child stands gazing up at the American; he keeps
mysterious dark eyes fixed upon him answering solemnly:
The Woodcarver,--he sings
A song of many lines
And all about the doves.
“Pigeons,” he sings, “are wise
They know their way so well,
For they mark it out by stars
And spiral paths of air;
They know their way so well,
And their way is always home
To quietness and peace--”
The child, keeping his eyes gravely fastened on the
war correspondent, chants with a weird insistence:
_The Woodcarver, he knows
The meaning of everything;
What makes the flowers grow,
What makes the bright stars fall,
What makes the echoes stay
After the priests’ intoning,
And boom around the walls
Of our cathedral there.
He says to keep on watching
The doves with soaring wings,
The peaceful, happy doves,
For they have a message for men--
Feverish, stupid men
Who are caught in a tangling net
Of their own imaginings._
The American looks puzzled, he puts his hand on the
child’s head and searches the large mournful eyes; he
mutters something under his breath, and shakes his head
sadly.
American caressing the child’s hair:
Your city is lonely, Child.
Are you the only thing
That lives--comes out to the sun?
Do the Venetians hide
In cellars and in tombs--
They who were made of sun?
The palaces are closed,
The gondolas are gone,
But your people--all the play
Of their merry liquid eyes,
The white of their perfect teeth,
The olive glow of their skins,
And their saucy ragged ways;
The dark faced coral women,
The laughing lacemakers,
The choruses clamoring
Under the bobbing lanterns
At night on the canals--
Are they sleeping a happy sleep?
A long siesta-hour?
(Ah! that siesta-hour,
It has grown very long
For many Italian youths.)
Where have the people gone?
The child, slipping from under the war correspondent’s
hand, looks away from him up to the pigeons that stream
in circles around them, saying simply:
There is no one left here now
But the Woodcarver and me.
The Woodcarver makes saints
And angels young and sweet;
They poise all over his shop,
They smile at us from the walls,
We sit with the angels there
And eat the bitter bread
The Woodcarver has saved;
Though the guns go snarling on,
We are not much afraid;
We stay to guard the doves.
The Woodcarver has said
They watch over Venice,
So we watch over them.
American to himself:
A child and an old Italian
Who carves his dreams in wood
And “is not much afraid,”
All that is left in Venice,
To stay and guard the doves.
The child regarding the war correspondent curiously:
Stranger, why do you come?
Venice is ugly now;
The strangers come no more--
Only the officers come
With charts and clanging boots;
Their talk is swift and stern,
Their eyes are burned like yours,
And no-one ever smiles.
Signori used to come;
My father rowed them around;
They laughed and sang and threw
Money in the canal,
As the Doges once threw rings.
The kind merry strangers!
They loved the bobbing lanterns,
The songs on the water-ways,
And the black gondolas swaying....
They were Americans
And English; yes, and French--
But always Americans,
Always feeding the doves,
Always caressing the doves,
Always protecting the doves!
War correspondent sombrely:
Yes--we used to feed the doves;
Now we are feeding guns.
The child, his eyes fixed upon the birds, breaks again
into song:
_All on the sunset evening,
In the cortile’s peace,
The soft grey doves came streaming
In ecstasied release;
Doves on my mother’s head
As she walked abroad with her laces,
Doves near the baby’s bed,
Doves in the window places,
Doves fanning the cornices there,
Doves flooding, rippling the square,
Cooing and preening and circling where
The fountain sprayed on its Graces--
Purple breasted graylings that fly
Into the blue tranquillity.
Now it seems they have no sky.
Bombs and smoke and horrors hover....
The day of wings and soaring is over._
The American, half smiling at the child’s fantastic
quality--half angry at his pathos:
Why! Look you, the peace of a dove
Were a witless, silly thing!
Your doves there have their quarrels.
Notice that down-charged wing!
Hear that fretting and quarreling cooing
Trouble among the pigeons brewing!
The war correspondent laughs at his own impatience,
then takes the child’s hand, stroking it tenderly and
saying:
Now the peace of a dove
Is sent into the world
On stronger enduring wings--
The peace of a mighty world,
Rises on sturdier wings.
The doves must rest awhile;
The sky is filling now
With wings of a mightier make.
What of the flying planes,
The noble charging planes,
The squadrons of flying planes,
Sweeping the fields of sky,
Hovering over the earth?
That is the new Parliament.
The wingèd Parliament,
The true Parliament,
Which comes to bring us peace.
Watch in the vault of heaven
Where soaring birdmen fly--
On a splendid errantry,
The Parliament of Peace!
The child smiles doubtfully; but the tenderness in the
war correspondent’s voice gains his confidence; he slips
his hand into the stranger’s, saying almost gayly:
You talk like the Woodcarver,
A wonderful talk of wings.
Oh! come and see the Woodcarver,
And hear his wonderful things,
The way he reads the message
This dreadful war-time brings.
The two cross the deserted piazza toward the cálles
where there are many little shops and booths now all
boarded up; one, however, remains open. It is a small,
dark, dingy cave, with small wooden angels, beautifully
carved, festooned over the doorway. As one peers into
the dimness of the interior, one has the sense of the
fluttering of delicate carved wings. The Woodcarver
comes to the door; he has in one hand his chisel, in the
other a shapeless block of olive wood. The Woodcarver
is old and bowed, but as he lifts his cavernous, dark
eyes he smiles, and his whole face is irradiated with a
look of the genius of simplicity.
Woodcarver to the war correspondent:
Bon Giorno. Ah, Signore!
Welcome forestiere!
Strangers are good to see.
It is like those other days,
When they drifted over the square
Like scattered, unstrung beads,
Or corn flung to the doves--
Or stood in the twilight churches,
Staring through the incense,
Hearing the organ roll,
And priests voice imploring
The Virgin’s intercession.
American, placing his hand on the old man’s arm;
’Tis good to find someone here,
Only officials greet me
Along the shivering streets.
Where are the people of Venice?
The lazy and happy and motley?
The vendors and hawkers and idlers?
The shop keepers and glass blowers?
The courtly bankers and merchants?
Ah! it is lonely in Venice.
Woodcarver, his cracked voice faltering:
All fled to ancient Padua,
To the Good St. Anthony.
And we--we only stay
To watch the doves--and pray.
American, looking wistfully about him:
And when the doves fly off--
Rather than meet Teutons,
In their compelling drive?
Woodcarver fiercely:
The doves will never leave;
St. Mark has willed it so.
’Tis they who must not leave;
If they leave Venice will fall.
’Tis for that I stay behind,
I and the little child,
To feed and sooth the doves.
And you--how come you here?
You must have been in the field--
Glancing up eagerly at the war correspondent:
Tell us--how fare our armies?
American solemnly and reluctantly:
Cadorna has retreated
Before the Teutonic drive.
They have unloosed the Piave;
The Germans cannot cross,
But the sacrifice was dear.
They have unloosed the Piave
To keep the Prussian back.
Cadorna has been routed;
Italians have retreated.
The Woodcarver stand there, looks at the war correspondent
for a dazed moment, then jumps suddenly at
him snarling into his very face:
Retreat--that is a lie!
The old man looks wildly about him, grasping at the
American’s shoulder, and slightly shaking him, sobbing
querelously:
What a silly childish tale
To tell a Venetian ear!
The Colleoni armed,
Astride his savage horse
In the Campello there--
A Mercenary, yet,
Filled with Italian pride,
Would fling you back on your words--
Your coward, lying words.
For Italy, retreat?
For Latin blood--retreat?
Was any retreat for France?
For Belgium any retreat?
Another stand perhaps,
Another flash of the eyes,
Another gritting of teeth,
Another steeling of heart,
Another bracing of flesh,
Another surge of the blood,
Another smell of the fray,
Then hell to the weltering hog
That plunges forth on our land,
Gnashing his filthy tusks!
Gas and fire and cold,
Water and steel and smoke,
Roaring fires of hell,
Vermin, disease and wounds
Against them--Latin blood!
Oh! that I had wells of it,
I, a bloodless man,
Faltering--old, and weak,
But I mind me how once it burned--
Fire, blazing and quick--
Floods, scarlet and hot--
Flowers, passionate sweet--
Spirit, dauntless and bold--
Instinct, sure and keen--
Supremest Latin blood!
The old man paused, breathless and trembling; his
hand drops weakly from the war correspondent’s shoulder;
he draws himself up, saying with gentle dignity:
I lose my manners, Sir;
But you will see the truth.
Our life lies in the folds
Of the sweeping allied flags.
We are made of Latin blood,
Blood on whose rising tide
Rides the ark of ideals,
Instincts of Liberty--
Freedom’s flowering stars.
Yea--I have Latin blood;
For me there is no retreat.
The American, silent and touched, looks quietly at him;
there is sympathy and understanding in his face, yet he
remains coolly reflective. The old Woodcarver staggers
to his stool, and begins fiercely cutting at the shapeless
block of wood. All about the small cavelike shop the
sun strikes the smooth glistening bodies of wooden angels,
the golden brown nakedness of little cherubs.
The American also sitting down rolls and lights a
cigarette, the child collecting shavings and bits of wood
from the floor, sits in the doorway sorting them and
arranging them in patterns.
The American quietly inhaling his cigarette:
Your city is very drear.
The houses closed and blind;
The opal waters grown dun
With the muddied silt that comes
From the Piave’s plains.
You carve while the cannon booms;
Under your knife there grows
A figure, supple-soft,
Springing from uncouth wood,
And you give it branching wings,
And fashion its gentle face
As though there were angels still....
You go on making angels.
Do the angels know, think you,
Of all the passion and hate,
And waste and cursing and lies,
And pride and fierce world-strife,
Back of the making of wars?
These angels, do they preen
Their wings over it all,
And smile upon us men?
The old Woodcarver for a moment drops his head;
he passes his hand across anguished eyes; then he points
to the child sitting in the doorstep, and puts his finger
on his lip.
Woodcarver, fiercely:
Hush! It is to calm
His timid, childish thought.
The poor Bambino believes
These angels will keep him safe.
It is to keep serene
The thoughts ’neath his innocent curls,
That I go on carving angels.
American, bitterly:
Yes--only I have been
Down in Servia,
On Armenian plains.
In blasted fields of France,
In England’s wooded ways.
Seeing many little forms,
The angels forgot to save.
The Woodcarver stops carving; he drops his head into
his hand; the American bites his lips, and curses himself.
With sombre eyes he stares at the floor. Suddenly he
notices a bit of wood lying in the shavings at his feet.
It is a half-carved cross. The war correspondent, picking
it up holds it loosely in his hand, ruminating. At last
he puts it very gently on the table near the Woodcarver’s
listless arm, and turns to the door, staring out to the
grey vistas of the empty calles. As he smokes in silence
the far-off guns boom steadily, and the whirl of grey
pigeons comes once more past the little shop into the
piazza.
The child, looking up at them, chants dreamily:
_Laws of humanity hold them
Safe for the sunlit feeding,
Protected always, and heeding
Laws of the place that enrolled them;
Spiral their flights, midst the steeples
Pinnacles and Campanile;
Silver fanfare of wings,
Soothing the thoughts of the peoples.
They spell Humanity, Love,
Tenderness, Peace--But the air
Is rent with wild thunder--Despair....
Where is the end of it? Where?_
The Woodcarver, lifting his face from his hands, looks
anxiously at the child; he passes his rough hand swiftly
over his eyes and smiles. Rising he pats the little
shoulder of the child sitting in the doorway, saying
laughingly:
Why their’s is a small Parliament.
Peace to their soaring counsels!
Weaving strange laws,
Making a Cause
For the new born nations.
Note how they fly,
Tieing the sky,
Looping the heavens,
Wreathing the square,
Binding blue air
Into golden-garlanded sheaves!
There are the glad manoeuvres,
The shiftings and the shaping,
The mist and the cloud-escaping.
Higher they fly and higher,
Looping their winged desire,
While we stand down here gaping.
The Woodcarver stands by the child, tapping his shoulder
gently, and with the other hand pointing out the
difference in pigeon flight.
Woodcarver explaining whimsically:
There are the Ones, the Twos and the Threes,
The ablest, sagest counsellors, these....
The Threes soar higher than most,
The Twos have a most responsible post,
And the Ones--Oh! the separate lonely Ones--
Dreamers and Hopers and Prayers, the Ones!
Stretching their wings over the world,
Wavering over Humanity, hurled
Man against man, gun against gun,
Waiting until the madness be done....
Further and Further away from dust,
Higher and Higher and Higher and Higher,
Every separate, keen-eyed flier,
Their’s is the flight of trust!
The Woodcarver turns shamefacedly back to the
American, who smiles understanding his little diversion.
American--You speak quaintly, in childish parlance;
but I like the fancy. What was your drollery about those
who fly singly?
The Woodcarver, his dark eyes lighting with imagination,
stands before the stranger arms akimbo, explaining,--
Woodcarver shyly:
Why! Look you! I am a man
Without kith nor kin;
No wife, nor any child
But this adopted one,
Whose parents fled away,
And left him homeless here.
And it seems to me that I dwell
Closer to mine own heart,
Where many counsels come,
Than if a woman plunged
Her fingers in my brain,
And mixed my reason up.
The war correspondent laughs heartily at this, but the
Woodcarver is quite serious. The old man stands slightly
bent in the centre of the little place, regarding the
stranger intently, and says slowly and gravely:
The lonely people know
Much that is shut away
From those that go in crowds,
Companioned all the time.
And look you--when the mass
Of human beings act,
’Tis on the thought of those
Who sit high up, alone,
Studying the Stars;
Or sit low down, alone,
Studying the Sands;
Or middle way, alone
Studying the Times.
The American, drawing on the last bit of his cigarette,
looks through the light cloud of smoke, and nods smiling.
The Woodcarver:
And the pigeons all alone,
Circling the dreamy domes
Of the Salute, there....
Why! look you! They fly so high,
That earth-eyes cannot see;
They lose all sight of lands;
They feel the boundless air--
Air of the universe;
And the little plans of men,
And the little lands of men,
Like stupid little maps,
Like little colored charts,
Spread out under their wings
So little and so brief....
Each nation for itself,
Each mortal for himself,
All working different ways,
Striving against each other,
Pulling away from each other,
Until some great Snarl comes,
And all are choked to death
By the tangle in their hands,
And the tangle in their minds.
The birds feel boundless air--
Air of the Universe,
Air of unbounded Life,
Freedom and liberty;
They see the first faint dawn
Of a Boundless Peoples’ soul,
Freed for a mighty world--
World-Race, World-Life, World-God.
And on the sun-pathed clouds,
That toss like high white seas,
The dauntless birds fly out,
Out to a rimless Space,
Out to the path of Worlds,
And the solemn ways of stars,
Where they glimpse God himself;
And like a precious message,
Heaven-indicated sign
Under their small sweet wings,
They hold our dream for us.
Then we take to the air....
Battalioned aeroplanes,
Squadrons of flying men,
Winged holy priests,
Winged lawyers and doctors,
Winged men and women,
Flying up from the earth
Into pure unmeasured air,
Where not a house can pry
With narrow stupid eyes,
And cramping stifling roof;
Where not a printed word
Sprays poison of old thought
Over the sky-cleansed Mind.
Where the clean squadrons fly,
Like soaring splendid birds,
Comes knowledge and buoyancy.
There is the liberty,
The freedom and the power,
Prescience and omniscience,
The Vision and the gift
And the prophecy of birds.
The American, tossing away the stub of cigarette,
reflectively surveys the speaker.
American:
Strange how he talks,
This old Venetian man,
This Carver of Wood-angels,
Seeing the glorious planes
Charging over the world!
A child-like, passionate theme.
Strange how the Carver talks!--
So talked the flying men,
Victor Chapman himself,
Dark as a gypsy prince,
With mind so just and stern,
Exact and science-full;
Chapman, adventurer,
Into the enemy lines,
Gallant plane-fighter,
Bronze plume-spreader,
Wild wing-worker--
Once said a thing like that.
Pegoud, though such a man
Through all his fighting fame,
And such a soldier, too,
With duty in his eyes,
France alight in his face,
His body like a tool,
The spirit used and kept
Light and sharp as steel
To be used for the piercing of air,
Like lance darting at fate--
In one of his laughing moods
Pegoud said things like that....
Like eagles in their hoods,
Poised on their swooping planes,
The aviators know
Things not far off from that.
The solemn flying men,
The spear-eyed avions,
Whose radiant, soaring wings
Gild the blue summer air,
Who take the surf of clouds,
And thread the net of stars,
Emerging into Space,
Keen for new reckonings--
New delicate balancings,
Keen for new sciences
And new far beckonings.
They break all barriers,
Sweep all boundaries,
Surmount all mountains,
And soaring over seas
That have for countless years
Ensnared the minds of men
To barter and piracy--
They give the new air-path
To Peace and the interchange
Of mutual benefits.
Chapman, Pegoud, Gunymener--
They all said things like that,
They were too busy killing,
To make the thing come true;
(And others were busy killing
Chapman and Pegoud,)
So their soarings ended soon,
They folded their wings and slept....
But from their Grand Parliament,
Their high and scatheless Parliament,
Their steep-ascending Parliament,
Senate of silver wings,
Pageant of balanced Thought,
Aerial conference,
Congress of flying men,
And forward flying minds--
Come many, many thoughts
And many many dreams
And thrilling glorious hopes....
Thus, all that battle now,
All that struggle now,
And all that are dying now,
All that are starving now,
Do so smiling and strong,
Do so happy and sure,
Knowing that this age stands
On supremest level of all--
Highest peak of man’s mind,
That dares his nature down,
Fastens his blood in leash,
Refines his passion, until
It calms under his hand,
And goes to _war with War_.
There is a sudden tremendous sound of guns. The
child flings himself on the floor in fear; he crosses himself
and lies there looking pitifully up to the walls where
the wooden angels poise. The Woodcarver stops his
work, and regards the child with a drawn white face.
Woodcarver, shuddering:
Christos!--A bitter sea,
That booming sea of guns.
Yet men dare to swim through
The Surf of mittrailleuse,
The solemn tides of blood,
The still, white foam of fear,
The cold blank sands of death....
Yea, men dive into it,
Men swim into it,
Forging beyond its depths
To Something seen ahead,
Until their feet touch shore.
Oh! that the shore they touch
Would be the coasts of Peace!
American bitterly:
Still the guns boom and boom
Over the minds of men,
Drowning the wills of men,
The thinking powers of men.
So they boomed in the days
When the Fallieri fought,
When Colleoni took
The desperate cities’ pay,
When the Hohenstauffen clutched
Italy’s throbbing heart,
When wily Metternich
Closed up the mouths of men
And universities.
The black glutted guns
Boomed for Garibaldi,
And for Gambetta’s cause.
For that Napoleon,
Who dickered in big wars--
With the great solemn head
And little pompous frame
And cold and martial eye
And strange abnormal dream.
The whole world loathed the sound
Of the sea of Mittrailleuse,
The roaring cannon-waves.
Yet on the swimmers came,
And dove through the frightful Surf,
Until whole millions lay
Like dead fish in that sea,
That broke in barren waves
Upon posterity.
So shall the millions die
In this chartless blasting Sea,
Till someone finds its Source--
The Power in Berlin,
And binds his pilfering hands,
And heals his crazy brain,
And ends his Mania....
Till someone leads the world
In a new solemn Vow
And endless chanting hymn,
A vow such as this--
A vow that every race
And every blood shall sign
And seal with the memory
Of children who have died,
Of torment and of fright;
Of Women who have died,
Bearing the children of rape;
Of Men who gave their lives,
Fighting the filthy wars,
Of commerce and of greed;
Under so high a word,
So clean and pure a word
As Patriotic faith!
A vow that shall be sealed
By the whole world, rising
Requiring this one Thing,
Saying--“And with Him go
The marshalled powers of killing.
With him go out the Guns,
With us come in the Wings;
Bearing us on our Thought
The kingdoms of our Mind
And wisdoms of our Soul!”
As the American finished, the Woodcarver looks
shrewdly up from his work:
Is that how America talks?
How is it in your land?
Your people bright and gay
And full of sprightliness.
The keenness of their face,
The quickness of their mind,
And their slowness to all passion....
Their big ambitions, and
Their proud impulsiveness....
America, fine and free,
What does she think of guns
And working out a thought
With a massed artillery?
The American, lighting another cigarette, ruminatingly
regards it, and the old Italian smiling shakes his head
and poises a half shaped figure of Christ in his hand,
saying:
Nay, Nay! She does not know
Your land of tapering towers
And groves of shining lights,
The women light of foot,
Men white-haired but young-faced.
Your land knows not the guns,
Your land sends ships and men
Fuel, clothes, machines
And gold, and curing
Of medicines, and stuffs;
Every device of strength,
All scientific ways,
To heal and mend and save.
Yet your land does not know
The devastating hell
Of war, and war for War--
The hells that took the bloom
From off the women’s faces,
And blasted children’s minds
In every other land.
Your country does not know
Pray heaven she shall not know!
With a groan, the Woodcarver once more takes up
the Christ, he runs his skilful sensitive fingers and supple
wrist along the thin side of the young crucified figure.
The American lost in thought staring at him. At last
the latter as if speaking to himself thinks aloud, says
softly:
“Our land sends ships and men,
The youth of the country’s loins,
The precious toll of her towns,
The noble gift of her hills;
Men who were born to peace,
Who curse vile trickeries
Of hateful modern war;
Who trusted with smiling face,
A certain honesty,
And could not fathom hate,
And could not relish greed.
Ship after ship has sailed
To carry them to their graves,
The smiling sacrifice
Of this despairing age.”
The Woodcarver looks up, in a kind of awe, as the
American relates:
They sail out on the night,
The young unhardened boys,
Whispering goodbye
To headlands and to Home,
To sweetheart and to wife,
With lips of passionate youth--
Set to a priestly task
Of waging _war on War_.
On stranger foreign soil
They laugh in sordid tents,
Go down into the trench,
Or Sail the gallant air,
Making their _war on War_.
Yea, the world might once have said
That we were long in peace.
No longer can it say
America knows not war.
The American, after brooding upon the idea, takes up
his argument more earnestly, continuing:
America does not know?
I think we know too well,
I think we know at last.
Not with the passion that bursts
From the brave tormented heart
At sight of French fields torn
And orchards murdered down;
Not with the doomed despair
Of Servia, race-extinct,
Watching the women and girls,
Packed like frightened beasts
Herded, in slavish fear
Of many shames and deaths,
Looking back to the hills
Where the bodies of murdered men
Spell the End of the Race.
Not with the frightful sense
Of tangled pride and lies,
And great undisciplines
Of Russia’s wolving hordes.
Not with that English heart
That bears its burden dumb,
And puts its sorrow by,
And keeps its firm face fixed
Toward its solemn duty, dumb
Against outside attacks,
Dumb under awful grief,
Dumb under bitter trial,
But with a knowledge strong
Of the Faith that comes with death
And with the Duty born
Of a perfect fearlessness....
Not with passions like these
America goes to the Test,
But with new Law in her eyes
And a new Dream in her heart--
Dying into her birth.
The Woodcarver drops his work. He folds his arms
among the shavings on the table, and leans his head
on them staring at the war correspondent, who sits
shoulder dropped, knees wide apart, smoking thoughtfully,
continuing:
America knows not War,
As a lasting principle.
But knows that War must be,
Till the Germ of War be killed.
Now that the way is seen,
America comes forth,
Makes that her battle-cry.
We care for that, as we care
For honesty in the eyes
Of the children of our race,
For fairness, squareness, right;
The way we care for a road,
That loops up through the hills
Of our Rocky Mountain peaks,
For a finely poised machine,
For a finely written tale,
For a deed done with despatch
And sureness and brevity.
We care for it, as we care
For a plunge in a mountain lake,
The smell of the woodland trail,
The secret of purple tides,
The science of charted stars.
My country has a dream,
The dream of equal rights,
The dream of a greater self,
Merging of Bignesses,
Of Progress, Land and Men.
The conquest of all fear
For ourselves and for other men.
My country cares for Peace;
My country dies for Peace.
But we care like the surgeon, who
Hand steady and eyes set stern,
Cuts without thought of shame
Or pity or silly fears,
Till the gangrene is excised;
Cuts the dead flesh away
And sees new healing powers
New vigors and new healths.
My country comes to yours,
To all the ailing lands,
And stands with face strong set,
Jaws firm, eyes straight ahead,
To do this surgery,
And keep itself more clean
To operate success,
And know no poisoning.
And, as the surgeon holds
His body and muscles hard,
His hands firm and true,
As a mother’s with a child,
And his eyes clear and kind--
So must we keep ourselves
Strong for our mighty work;
No poison of Greed and Self,
No poisons of class and caste,
But our hands tender and strong,
Our eyes tender and cool,
Our words humble and true,
Our hearts--God help us!--pure.
As the American finishes, the child rushes, in wild
excitement, crying:
“Master--O Master, there is a soldier come down from
the front--one of the Bersagliere--from the floods of the
Piave. He found a boat, and, with his one poor hand,
he has rowed it down the lagoons. The boat is full of
blood. His side--his eyes are bleeding--O Master--Master!”
There is a startled whir of the pigeons flying
past, as a man’s steps are heard dragging themselves
over the stone pavement of the Calla. The child stands
petrified at sight of the wounded soldier, covered with
mud and blood, yet still wearing the draggled beaver hat
with coque feathers, the long yellow gaiters and torn
blue coat. He staggers in, makes the sign of the cross
to the winged figures all about him, and sinks coughing
on a bench. His head drops forward. The old Woodcarver
falls on his knees before him, takes off his hat,
and peers into his face. The American bends over him,
takes a flask from his hip pocket, and pouring some of
the contents on his handkerchief, puts it between the
man’s shaking lips.
* * * * *
Woodcarver with horror:
“Holy Virgin, protect us!
’Tis Pietro! the Gondolier,
Whose song was merriest
On all the moving canals;
Whose cry soared over the housetops
And dreaming palaces
Like a chain of golden moons.
He was a supple figure,
Leaning upon his oar,
With his scarlet sash and his cap,
And the saucy black on his lip,
A merry scalawag.
Virgin! but he has grown
Older than any world;
Older than anything
Dug out of a month’s old grave,
And set to live again.”
The Bersagliere sits panting, his eyes roll around the
shop vacantly and wildly. Suddenly his glance falls on
the half finished wooden Christ lying on the table. He
struggles up, clutches it, and presses it to his lips. His
hands close over it, his bleeding face breaks into pitiful
sobs, and he moans like an animal.
The American, turning his head away, bites his lips
muttering:
“Their Christ--Their Christ.
They will all die for him;
But Ah! it takes anguish,
Anguish of many kinds,
To make us humble enough
To make us wise enough
To try to _live_ for him.”
The war correspondent leaves the flask in the hands
of the Woodcarver, who hangs over his friend like a
woman, taking off the hat, smoothing the battered coque
feathers, stroking the hair back from the bleeding brow.
He pours water out of a flask, and bathes the grey
shaking face; he finally draws a very small fragment
of his black bread from his breast, and, with a strange
passionate gesture of renunciation, offers it to the soldier,
who wolfishly snatches, and quickly devours it. He
groans with his eyes closed, then looks appealing up at
the Christ in the Woodcarver’s hand, and crosses himself.
The Woodcarver in a low tone to the American:
_It is like the Sacrament._
The American: It is like---- It is like---- The war
correspondent breaks off suddenly; he flings himself to
the door clenching his hand. The child runs to him,
beckoning and pointing to sky.
Overhead, far above the buildings, flies a squadron of
airplanes. They are bronze, gold and silver in the sunlight.
The correspondent looking at them with his field
glasses, can distinguish them as Austrian planes. They
drop no bombs. As they pass the war correspondent
looks back over his shoulder at the Woodcarver--
War correspondent:
They drop no bombs on Venice,
Do they treasure beauty still?
So that they are loath to crush?
The Woodcarver:
They fly superbly and strong.
The American:
’Tis a short, glancing, fatal life, yet imperial as a God’s.
The Bersagliere, savagely:
“Well? Do they attack? Hell to their insolence!”
The child:
Oh! but see our pigeons fly with them!
The American:
Like the shadows of their souls.
The Woodcarver, somberly with mystic emphasis:
The planes are companied always
By the souls of the young dead fliers,
The air-men who have died,
Not knowing victory,
Who cannot rest in graves,
But still ride on the air,
Asking, How will it end?
The Woodcarver is still staring up into the sky. The
child steals up to him, and slips his hand in his.
Woodcarver in a sort of chant to the child:
Yea, in the fair blue air,
In the silken glass-blown air,
Full of its flowery forms,
Or un-embodied souls,
These disembodied fly--
Asking, _How will it end?_
Myriad wonders soar,
Fly with our flying hordes,
The flying hordes of our foe,
Asking, _How will it end?_
Youth with a smile on its lips,
Youth with untired powers,
Youth with its gallant need
Of dying for a belief.
Now Youth flies forward,
Softly on lucid air,
Lifting our earth-faces,
Guiding our feet that walk
In the old stubborn ways,
Calling us to the air,
Asking, How does it end?
What is the gain, asks Youth,
That we died and never grudged
Our generous young death,
Unless you learn the Word,
And learn that Nothing is,
Nothing can ever be,
Until men turn them to
Their labors for a thing
That shall be greater far
Than any gain of war?
Dead youth with untired powers--
Defeated of its life,
And life it could have given--
Hangs on surrounding air,
And tries to speak the Word,
The new, all-languaged Word
By which shall come release
From the Torture of the World,
The Battle cry of ... Peace!
They all cluster around the doorway watching the
marvelous evolutions of the airplanes. The pigeons soar
under them, and the child for the first time smiles--
The child, quaintly:
The birds taught them to fly.
Will the sweet birds teach them peace?
American smiling, rumpling the child’s hair tenderly:
The scientists say, little one,
That a bird develops far
Beyond man’s imperfection.
Who knows what we can learn,
Now that we, too, have wings?
He turns to the Woodcarver pointing to the pigeons:
I mind me of one spring morning,
When first I saw them whirl
In their Winged Parliament;
’Twas May, and Venice was bridal.
Bridal she always was,
The fragile, aged city
That keeps beauty within
Her shadowy tragic heart.
’Twas May and Venice was bridal.
Golden light on the housetops,
Limpid green on the water;
Palaces gleamed and thrilled,
Pallidly swimming and breaking
Into a lovely destruction,
At every passing of oars
Along their circling mirror.
The American, a look of ineffable regret on his face,
recapitulates the beauty of Venice:
Ripples on white steps breaking,
Wistaria over the doorways,
A bright bird high in a window,
Carved heads on colonnades,
Musing statues smiling
Through the tangles of a vine.
In a hundred broken trances,
A thousand flickering candles,
In glooms of the sanctuary
And burst of the priests strong song,
In processions of Corpus Christi;
A thousand broken reflections,
Sweet cries of melon vendors,
Swish of oars and of barges;
A scented warmth with the plashing
Of sinuous gondolas,
Black and gold on the color,
Fastened at the traghetti
Lolling on freshening tides,
White was the Della Salute,
Bubbling with many towers.
On the fluttering Giudecca,
Bright with its tatters and patches,
The solemn Redentore.
On the ancient hooded Rialto
Merchants clamoring still;
On the shifting Schiavoni,
Fluttering tourists and children,
Eager, impressed and caught
In enchantment older than love.
Venice the aged queen,
Took them upon her knees,
And showed them her fabulous book
Of melting picture-dreams,
Of saints and gods and kings,
Of martyrs, Doges, and Popes,
Of painters and architects;
Told them her amorous tales
Of adventure and emprise,
Of sea-fogs covering deeds,
Strange and wicked and old,
Of gallants in muffling cloaks,
Of the lions’ mouths in the square;
Told them her amorous tales,
Saying, “All ends in Beauty,”
And sent them out from her courts--
Whispering, “All ends in Beauty.”
Venice in delicate age,
Beauty in power and age,
Age like frost on the grass,
Age like the age of the tree,
Like a fountain that never dries--
Such was Venice that morn--
And the doves over it all!
The American suddenly turns, and shakes his fist in
the direction of the booming of the guns. He faces the
other two men demanding tensely:
Rheims had beauty like that.
France had beauty like that.
Belgium had beauty like that.
What is the doom of the world?
What must our science teach?
What must religion work?
What is it men need to know,
Before beauty like this
Can be spared to the hungry world,
That needs to drink of the cup
Of Beauty for its life?
The Bersagliere looks up; the cut on his forehead
bleeds less freely but he holds his ragged handkerchief
to it. As he speaks, he motions toward the unfinished
Christ lying on the table--his voice a gutteral whisper.
The Bersagliere:
Never the hungry world,
The desperate childish world,
The feeble stupid world,
Caught in its horrible webs,
Of stupid desires and needs,
Of pamperings and sloth,
Of pride and avarice,
Of class and snobbery;
Never the world can be saved
Until we look on this.
He reaches over, seizes the cross and embraces it, passionately
continuing between moans:
In the trenches they say it,
In the hospitals know it.
Men have talked to each other,
Lying sobbing with pain
Under the misery
Of stabbing knives of cold.
Out under the stars,
Where the broken bodies lie
Of young men scattered stiff
In terrible postures of death;
Or sweet boys broken up
In ghastly pieces of death.
The broken whispers sob:
_The body and blood of Christ._
“The body and blood of Christ,”
It has been broken again,
By all the simple people
The patient humble people;
A long communion table,
Stretching out through all lands.
The body and blood of Christ,
Given to us again
By these his ignorant men,
Who when they crashed to death
On mountain or on plain
Resigned their souls to Him.
The Bersagliere raises his arm to heaven as if registering
a vow:
Nevermore will I take
The holy sacrament
But that my lips will say,
The bodies and blood of _men_,
Never will I receive
The wafer on my lips
But after Christ’s sweet name,
“Bodies and blood of _men_!”
Bitter will be the wine
Unless I murmur soft
“The bodies and blood of men
Who die, that He might live.”
Woodcarver regarding the stricken soldier. Ah! what
does this chaos mean?
The American bites his lips and clenches his hand.
Finally he turns to where the cross lies on the table,
takes it up reverently and curiously, and looks at it as
at some new thing.
The American, reverently:
It means, a new-raised cross;
The simple things Christ knew,
And a Christ that has not died.
It means a new found self,
And a Soul that trusts itself.
It means a Mind that sees
Beyond race boundaries,
Beyond all Separates
Of race or land or kin;
One People that shall rise
Throughout the nationed globe,
And speak one solemn word
With all their various tongues,
_There shall be no more War!_
One People shall demand,
For the children still to be,
That Self shall be consumed
In the Passion _No more War_.
One Science dedicate
To a solemn World-emprise,
Spreading immortal health
Over the whole of life;
That engines be dedicate
To the good and help of the world;
That crops be dedicate
To the strength and life of the world;
That gold be dedicate
To the power and might of the world;
That Mind be dedicate
To the reverent Law of the World.
They all regard him in wonder, until the Woodcarver
demands,--
And what of race-pride?
Bersagliere:
And what of commerce?
Child:
And what of home and hearth?
The American:
I know not.
I know only,
All else is lost and fails.
I know new forces shape
Illimitable life
Out of infinite Mind.
He looks at the Bersagliere, touching him gently on
the shoulder, saying softly:
’Tis a long communion table;
We all kneel at that table.
It stretches through many lands,
It is spread in many minds.
How do we go from that table?
_The bodies and blood of men_
Must not be given in vain.
The American, turning to the Woodcarver, looks at
him wistfully. He gestures to the winged figures all
about, and says gravely and reverently:
_Go on making angels!_
The American, turning to the child, puts his arm
around him, and together they stand at the door looking
up at the whirling doves.
American gently:
Know’st thou, little one,
They be pigeons,
Who bear all tidings
Under their wings?
Over the borders
Listen, One day,
Winged _men_ shall cross
All the borders
With messages under their wings,
And the Parliaments shall meet
To try their mighty wings
Of fresh and buoyant thought,
And the minds of men shall rise
To the cleanness of the skies,
And the way shall be made clear,
And your world be safe once more.
You shall see clouds of planes,
Soaring over your home
Bringing tidings of hope,
Dropping flowers on the graves
Of the everlasting Young,
Who died to further it.
Flocks of singing planes,
Voyaging over the air,
With singing men and women,
Chanting a paeon of peace.
So that your children’s sons,
Their noble heritage,
Shall register and say
“_The warless days came in
With the winged flying men,
And the flying Parliaments
Brought to us lasting Peace._”
The American turns to the Woodcarver. He looks
long and fixedly at him. At last he smiles wistfully,
and points to the winged figures all about, saying soberly:
_Go on making angels!_
He makes a slight gesture of farewell, steps out of
the door and into the piazza San Marco. Standing there
he looks at the Italian flag, then at the small tricolor in
his own button-hole. Smiling reverently and tenderly
upon them, he stretches out his arms toward the sky,
and with a gesture of passionate hope and appeal,
salutes the Air.
“GONE WEST”