At the door of a great man I waited on one foot and then on the other.
The files passed in and out before me to the antechamber, for at that
door I was not favored:
(O costly preferment!)
Yet I watched them coming and going,
And I learned the great man by heart from the stories on their faces.
When presently the retainers arrived, one above the other in a row,
saying:
“The great man is ready,”
I had long been a greater than he.
This is the reason for myself:
When I used to go in the races, I had but one prayer,
And I went first before the judges, saying;
“Give everyone a distance, such as you consider best;
I will run scratch.”
II—VIRGINS
I have had one fear in my life—
When I was young I feared virgins;
But I do not any more....
By contact with them I learn that each is a center,
And has a period of brightness,
And stands epitome in that brief space
Of the Universe!
Ah, the ephemeral eternal!
In virgins’ eyes I would live reflected as in a globe,
And know myself purer than crystal.
III—NO PREY AM I
No prey am I of poor thoughts.
I leave all of my followers; I tire quickly of them;
I send them away from me when they ask too much; for though I live alone
Still will I live, night and day ...
There is not anything in me save mutation and laughter;
My laughter is like a sword,
Like the piston-rod that defies oceans and grades.
When I labor it is a song of battle in the broad noon;
For behold the muscles of a man—
They are piston-rods; they are cranes, hydraulic presses,
powder-magazines:
But though my body be as beautiful as a hill crowned with flowers
I will despise it and make it obey me ...
Is the old love dead?
Then I shall await the new,
To embrace it more sturdily and passionately than ever the old;
And break it under the white force of my laughter
Until it lies passive in my arms.
There is nothing in me but renewal;
If my friend bow his head over me I soon surprise him with shouts of
joy:
For in an instant I am again what I was,
Only with a few moments more of the infusion of earth;
I tell him, the griever, to follow me and he is a griever no more;
He raises his head and must follow.
Yet it is my battle, not his battle,
For in me I absorb others ...
I hail parties and partisans from afar;
Not men but parties are my comrades,
Not persons but nations are my associates.
I shake the hand of nations;
For I am a nation and a party, and majorities do not elect me—
I elect myself.
I swam in the sea, and lo!
The continents assembled like islands off my coast.
My talk is with Homer and Bonaparte, with David and Garibaldi, with
China and Pharaoh and Texas;
When I laugh it is with Lucifer and Rabelais.
A pathfinder is my mistress, one hard to keep and unbridled—
I have no respect for tame women.
My friends and I do not meet every day,
For we are centuries apart, our salutations girdle the globe.
I have eaten locusts with Jeremiah;
I invite all hatreds and the stings of little creatures—
They enrich me, I glory in my parasites.
No man shall ever read me,
For I bring about in a gesture what they cannot fathom in a life;
Yet I tell Bob and Harry and Bill—
It costs me nothing to be kind;
If I am a generous adversary, be not deceived, neither be devoted—
It is because I despise you.
Yet if any man claim to be my peer I shall meet him,
For that man has an insolence that I like;
I am beholden to him.
I know the lightning when I see it,
And the toad when I see it...
I warn all pretenders.
Yet before I came it was known of me to the chosen, all that I should
do.
Every tree knew it;
Every lion and every leech knew it—
And called out to meet the new enemy,
The new friend...
What power can deny me?
It was known that I should do not one thing but hundreds,
For I despise my works and make them obey me.
I have my time and I bide it...
It was known that I should turn no whit from my end, until I had
attained it.
Nothing has scathed me,
Nothing ever, nor ever will.
I have touched pitch, I have revelled in it and rolled in it;
Buried in mire and filth, I laughed long,
And sprang up.
I have loved lust and vain deviltries.
And taken them into my heart—
Their dirt and their lies—and my heart was aflame
With a new fancy...
Not me can pitch defile!
For the Spring, my sister, rose under my feet
And I was again naked and white,
Ready to dive into the deep pool, green and bottomless,
The medium for heroes, since it is dangerous and beautiful—
The pool of Tomorrow!
It is because I breathe like fishes and live in the waters of Tomorrow
that Death fears me...
How often I have intercepted thee, O Death!
O windy liar!
Thou canst do nothing against me;
If I command thee to stand back thou art afraid and cowerest,
For I have caught thee often and punished thee...
I am the greatest laugher of all,
Greater than the sun and the oak-tree,
Than the frog and Apollo;
I laugh all day long!
I laugh at Death, I hail Death, I kiss her on the cheek as a lover his
bride,
But the lover goes not to his bride unless he desire her;
I go not to Death until I am ready.
The strong lover goes not to his bride save when he would people his
land with sons;
Then I, too, I go not to Death, save it be for the labor greater than
all others.
I shall break her with my laughter;
I shall complete her...
Only then shall Death be when I die!
Joyce Kilmer
TREES
I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.
A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;
A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;
A tree that may in summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;
Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.
Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
EASTER
The air is like a butterfly
With frail blue wings.
The happy earth looks at the sky
And sings.
Alfred Kreymborg
AMERICA
Up and down he goes
With terrible, reckless strides,
Flaunting great lamps
With joyous swings—
One to the East
And one to the West—
And flaunting two words
In a thunderous call
That thrills the hearts of all enemies:
All, One; All, One; All, One; All, One!
Beware that queer, wild, wonderful boy
And his playground—don’t go near!
All, One; All, One; All, One; All, One;
Up and down he goes.
OLD MANUSCRIPT
The sky
Is that beautiful old parchment
In which the sun
And the moon
Keep their diary.
To read it all,
One must be a linguist
More learned than Father Wisdom;
And a visionary
More clairvoyant than Mother Dream.
But to feel it,
One must be an apostle:
One who is more than intimate
In having been, always,
The only confidant—
Like the earth
Or the sea.
CÉZANNE
Our door was shut to the noon-day heat.
We could not see him.
We might not have heard him either—
Resting, dozing, dreaming pleasantly.
But his step was tremendous—
Are mountains on the march?
He was no man who passed;
But a great faithful horse
Dragging a load
Up the hill.
PARASITE
Good woman:
Don’t love the man.
Love yourself,
As you have done so exquisitely before.
Like that tortoise-shell cat of yours
Washing away the flies; or are they fleas?
You’ve hurt him again?
Good!
Do it often.
No—
He’ll love you the more—
Always.
Remember how he forgave you the last time,
And how he loved you in the forgiving.
Give him an adventure in godhood
And the higher moralities.
Hurt him again.
Fine!
William Laird
TRAÜMEREI AT OSTENDORFF’S
I ate at Ostendorff’s, and saw a dame
With eager golden eyes, paired with a red,
Bald, chilled, old man. Piercing the clatter came
Keen _Traümerei_. On the sound he bowed his head,
Covered his eyes, and looked on things long sped.
Her white fierce fingers strained, but could not stir
His close-locked hands, nor bring him back to her.
Let him alone, bright lady; for he clips
A fairer lass than you, with all your fire:
Let him alone; he touches sweeter lips
Than yours he hired, as others yet shall hire:
Leave him the quickening pang of clean desire,
Even though vain: nor taint those spring winds blown
From banks of perished bloom: let him alone.
Bitter-sweet melody, that call’st to tryst
Love from the hostile dark, would God thy breath
Might break upon him now through thickening mist,
The trumpet-summons of imperial Death;
That now, with fire-clean lips where quivereth
Atoning sorrow, he shall seek the eyes
Long turned towards earth from fields of paradise.
In vain: by virtue of a far-off smile,
Men may be deaf a space to gross behests
Of nearer voices; for some little while
Sharp pains of youth may burn in old men’s breasts.
But—men must eat, though angels be their guests:
The waiter brought spaghetti; he looked up,
Hemmed, blinked, and fiddled with his coffee-cup.
A VERY OLD SONG
“Daughter, thou art come to die:
Sound be thy sleeping, lass.”
“Well: without lament or cry,
Mother, let me pass.”
“What things on mould were best of all?
(Soft be thy sleeping, lass.)”
“The apples reddening till they fall
In the sun beside the convent wall.
Let me pass.”
“Whom on earth hast thou loved best?
(Sound be thy sleeping, lass.)”
“Him that shared with me thy breast;
Thee; and a knight last year our guest.
He hath an heron to his crest.
Let me pass.”
“What leavest thou of fame or hoard?
(Soft be thy sleeping, lass.)”
“My far-blown shame for thy reward;
To my brother, gold to get him a sword.
Let me pass.”
“But what wilt leave thy lover, Grim?
(Sound be thy sleeping, lass.)”
“The hair he kissed to strangle him.
Mother, let me pass.”
D. H. Lawrence
A WOMAN AND HER DEAD HUSBAND
Ah stern cold man,
How can you lie so relentless hard
While I wash you with weeping water!
Ah face, carved hard and cold,
You have been like this, on your guard
Against me, since death began.
You masquerader!
How can you shame to act this part
Of unswerving indifference to me?
It is not you; why disguise yourself
Against me, to break my heart,
You evader?
You’ve a warm mouth,
A good warm mouth always sooner to soften
Even than your sudden eyes.
Ah cruel, to keep your mouth
Relentless, however often
I kiss it in drouth.
You are not he.
Who are you, lying in his place on the bed
And rigid and indifferent to me?
His mouth, though he laughed or sulked,
Was always warm and red
And good to me.
And his eyes could see
The white moon hang like a breast revealed
By the slipping shawl of stars,
Could see the small stars tremble
As the heart beneath did wield
Systole, diastole.
And he showed it me
So, when he made his love to me;
And his brows like rocks on the sea jut out,
And his eyes were deep like the sea
With shadow, and he looked at me,
Till I sank in him like the sea,
Awfully.
Oh, he was multiform—
Which then was he among the manifold?
The gay, the sorrowful, the seer?
I have loved a rich race of men in one—
But not this, this never-warm
Metal-cold—!
Ah masquerader!
With your steel face white-enamelled,
Were you he, after all, and I never
Saw you or felt you in kissing?
—Yet sometimes my heart was trammelled
With fear, evader!
Then was it you
After all, this cold, hard man?
—Ah no, look up at me,
Tell me it isn’t true,
That you’re only frightening me!
You will not stir,
Nor hear me, not a sound.
—Then it was you—
And all this time you were
Like this when I lived with you.
It is not true,
I am frightened, I am frightened of you
And of everything.
O God!—God too
Has deceived me in everything,
In everything.
FIREFLIES IN THE CORN
_A woman taunts her lover_:
Look at the little darlings in the corn!
The rye is taller than you, who think yourself
So high and mighty: look how its heads are borne
Dark and proud on the sky, like a number of knights
Passing with spears and pennants and manly scorn.
And always likely!—Oh, if I could ride
With my head held high-serene against the sky
Do you think I’d have a creature like you at my side
With your gloom and your doubt that you love me?
O darling rye,
How I adore you for your simple pride!
And those bright fireflies wafting in between
And over the swaying cornstalks, just above
All their dark-feathered helmets, like little green
Stars come low and wandering here for love
Of this dark earth, and wandering all serene—!
How I adore you, you happy things, you dears,
Riding the air and carrying all the time
Your little lanterns behind you: it cheers
My heart to see you settling and trying to climb
The corn-stalks, tipping with fire their spears.
All over the corn’s dim motion, against the blue
Dark sky of night, the wandering glitter, the swarm
Of questing brilliant things:—you joy, you true
Spirit of careless joy: ah, how I warm
My poor and perished soul at the joy of you!
_The man answers and she mocks_:
You’re a fool, woman. I love you, and you know I do!
—Lord, take his love away, it makes him whine.
And I give you everything that you want me to.
—Lord, dear Lord, do you think he ever _can_ shine?
GREEN
The dawn was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.
She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone
For the first time, now for the first time seen.
GRIEF
The darkness steals the forms of all the queens.
But oh, the palms of her two black hands are red!
It is Death I fear so much, it is not the dead—
Not this gray book, but the red and bloody scenes.
The lamps are white like snowdrops in the grass;
The town is like a churchyard, all so still
And gray, now night is here: nor will
Another torn red sunset come to pass.
And so I sit and turn the book of gray,
Feeling the shadows like a blind man reading,
All fearful lest I find some next word bleeding.
Nay, take my painted missal book away.
SERVICE OF ALL THE DEAD
Between the avenue of cypresses
All in their scarlet capes and surplices
Of linen, go the chaunting choristers,
The priests in gold and black, the villagers.
And all along the path to the cemetery
The round dark heads of men crowd silently;
And black-scarfed faces of women-folk wistfully
Watch at the banner of death, and the mystery.
And at the foot of a grave a father stands
With sunken head and forgotten, folded hands;
And at the foot of a grave a mother kneels
With pale shut face, nor neither hears nor feels
The coming of the chaunting choristers
Between the avenue of cypresses,
The silence of the many villagers,
The candle-flames beside the surplices.
Agnes Lee
MOTHERHOOD
Mary, the Christ long slain, passed silently,
Following the children joyously astir
Under the cedrus and the olive-tree,
Pausing to let their laughter float to her.
Each voice an echo of a voice more dear,
She saw a little Christ in every face;
When lo, another woman, gliding near,
Yearned o’er the tender life that filled the place.
And Mary sought the woman’s hand, and spoke:
“I know thee not, yet know thy memory tossed
With all a thousand dreams their eyes evoke
Who bring to thee a child beloved and lost.
“I, too, have rocked my little one.
Oh, He was fair!
Yea, fairer than the fairest sun,
And like its rays through amber spun
His sun-bright hair.
Still I can see it shine and shine.”
“Even so,” the woman said, “was mine.”
“His ways were ever darling ways”—
And Mary smiled—
“So soft, so clinging! Glad relays
Of love were all His precious days.
My little child!
My infinite star! My music fled!”
“Even so was mine,” the woman said.
Then whispered Mary: “Tell me, thou,
Of thine.” And she:
“Oh, mine was rosy as a bough
Blooming with roses, sent, somehow,
To bloom for me!
His balmy fingers left a thrill
Within my breast that warms me still.”
Then gazed she down some wilder, darker hour,
And said—when Mary questioned, knowing not:
“Who art thou, mother of so sweet a flower?”—
“I am the mother of Iscariot.”
A STATUE IN A GARDEN
I was a goddess ere the marble found me.
Wind, wind, delay not!
Waft my spirit where the laurel crowned me!
Will the wind stay not?
Then tarry, tarry, listen, little swallow!
An old glory feeds me—
I lay upon the bosom of Apollo!
Not a bird heeds me.
For here the days are alien. Oh, to waken
Mine, mine, with calling!
But on my shoulders bare, like hopes forsaken,
The dead leaves are falling.
The sky is gray and full of unshed weeping
As dim down the garden
I wait and watch the early autumn sweeping.
The stalks fade and harden.
The souls of all the flowers afar have rallied.
The trees, gaunt, appalling,
Attest the gloom, and on my shoulders pallid
The dead leaves are falling.
ON THE JAIL STEPS
I’ve won the race.
Young man, I’m new!
_Old Sallow-face
Good luck to you!_
I’ve turned about,
And paid for sin.
_And you come out,
As I go in._
Ten years! but mark,
I am free, free!
_Ten years of dark
Shall gather me._
My wife—long-while
She wept her pain.
_She cannot smile;
She weeps again._
My little one
Shall know my call.
_Child is there none
For sin grows tall._
Now who are you,
Spar of hell’s flood?
_And who, and who,
But your own blood?_
HER GOING
_The Wife_
Child, why do you linger beside her portal?
None shall hear you now if you knock or clamor.
All is dark, hidden in heaviest leafage.
None shall behold you.
_Truth_
Gone, gone, the dear, the beautiful lady!
I, her comrade, tarry but to lament her.
Ah, the day of her vanishing all things lovely
Shared in her fleetness!
Tell me her going.
_The Wife_
You are a child. How tell you?
_Truth_
I am a child, yet old as the earliest sorrow.
Talk to me as you would to an old, old woman.
I own the ages.
_The Wife_
Voices, they say, gossipped around her dwelling.
She awoke, departing, they say, in silence.
I am glad she is gone. The old hurt fastens.
Hate is upon me.
It was hard to live down the day, and wonder,
Wonder why the tears were forever welling,
Wonder if on his lips her kiss I tasted
Turning to claim him.
_Truth_
Jealousy, mad, brooding blind and unfettered,
Takes its terrible leap over lie and malice.
Who shall question her now in the land of shadow?
Who shall uphold her?
_The Wife_
It was hard to know that peace had forsaken
All my house, to greet with a dull endeavor
Babe or book, so to forget a moment
I was forgotten.
_Truth_
Who shall question her now in the land of shadow,
Question the mute pale lips, and the marble fingers,
Eyelids fallen on eyes grown dim as the autumn?
Ah, the beloved!
_The Wife_
Go, go, bringer of ache and discord!
_Truth_
Go I may not. Some, they think to inter me.
Out of the mold and clay my visible raiment
Rises forever.
_The Wife_
Hers the sin that lured the light from our threshold,
Hers the sin that I lost his love and grew bitter.
_Truth_
Lost his love? You never possessed it, woman.
_The Wife_
Sharp tongue, have pity!...
Yes, I knew. But I loved him, hoping for all.
I said in my heart: “Time shall bring buds to blossom.”
I almost saw the flower of the flame descending.
Then—she came toying.
He is mine, mine, by the laws of the ages!
Mine, mine, mine—yes, body and spirit!
I am glad she has gone her way to the shadow.
Hate is upon me.
Oh, the bar over which my soul would see
All that eludes my soul, while he remembers!
You, dispel if you can my avenging passion—
Clouds are before me!
William Ellery Leonard
INDIAN SUMMER
_After completing a book for one now dead._
(_O Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun,
She is not by, to know my task is done!_)
In the brown grasses slanting with the wind,
Lone as a lad whose dog’s no longer near,
Lone as a mother whose only child has sinned,
Lone on the loved hill.... And below me here
The thistle-down in tremulous atmosphere
Along red clusters of the sumach streams;
The shrivelled stalks of goldenrod are sere,
And crisp and white their flashing old racemes.
(... forever ... forever ... forever ...)
This is the lonely season of the year,
This is the season of our lonely dreams.
(_O Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun
She is not by, to know my task is done!_)
The corn-shocks westward on the stubble plain
Show like an Indian village of dead days;
The long smoke trails behind the crawling train,
And floats atop the distant woods ablaze
With orange, crimson, purple. The low haze
Dims the scarped bluffs above the inland sea,
Whose wide and slaty waters in cold glaze
Await yon full-moon of the night-to-be.
(.... far ... and far ... and far ...)
These are the solemn horizons of man’s ways,
These the horizons of solemn thought to me.
(_O Earth-and-Autumn of the Setting Sun,
She is not by, to know my task is done!_)
And this the hill she visited, as friend;
And this the hill she lingered on, as bride—
Down in the yellow valley is the end:
They laid her ... in no evening autumn tide ...
Under fresh flowers of that May morn, beside
The queens and cave-women of ancient earth.
This is the hill ... and over my city’s towers
Across the world from sunset, yonder in air,
Shines, through its scaffoldings, a civic dome
Of piled masonry, which shall be ours
To give, completed, to our children there ...
And yonder far roof of my abandoned home
Shall house new laughter.... Yet I tried ... I tried ...
And, ever wistful of the doom to come,
I built her many a fire for love ... for mirth ...
(When snows were falling on our oaks outside,
Dear, many a winter fire upon the hearth) ...
(... farewell ... farewell ... farewell ...)
We dare not think too long on those who died,
While still so many yet must come to birth.
Vachel Lindsay
GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH ENTERS INTO HEAVEN
_To be sung to the tune of_ THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB _with indicated
instruments_.
Booth led boldly with his big bass drum.
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
The saints smiled gravely, and they said, “He’s come.”
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_ [Sidenote: _Bass drums_]
Walking lepers followed, rank on rank,
Lurching bravos from the ditches dank,
Drabs from the alleyways and drug-fiends pale—
Minds still passion-ridden, soul-powers frail!
Vermin-eaten saints with mouldy breath
Unwashed legions with the ways of death—
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
Every slum had sent its half-a-score
The round world over—Booth had groaned for more.
Every banner that the wide world flies
Bloomed with glory and transcendent dyes.
Big-voiced lasses made their banjos bang! [Sidenote: _Banjos_]
Tranced, fanatical, they shrieked and sang,
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
Hallelujah! It was queer to see
Bull-necked convicts with that land make free!
Loons with bazoos blowing blare, blare, blare—
On, on, upward through the golden air.
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
Booth died blind, and still by faith he trod,
Eyes still dazzled by the ways of God.
Booth led boldly and he looked the chief: [Sidenote: _Bass drums slower
and softer_]
Eagle countenance in sharp relief,
Beard a-flying, air of high command
Unabated in that holy land.
Jesus came from out the Court-House door,
Stretched his hands above the passing poor.
Booth saw not, but led his queer ones there [Sidenote: _Flutes_]
Round and round the mighty Court-House square.
Yet in an instant all that blear review
Marched on spotless, clad in raiment new.
The lame were straightened, withered limbs uncurled
And blind eyes opened on a new sweet world.
Drabs and vixens in a flash made whole! [Sidenote: _Bass drums louder
and faster_]
Gone was the weasel-head, the snout, the jowl;
Sages and sibyls now, and athletes clean,
Rulers of empires, and of forests green!
The hosts were sandalled and their wings were fire—
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
But their noise played havoc with the angel-choir. [Sidenote: _Grand
chorus tambourines—all instruments in full blast_]
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
Oh, shout Salvation! it was good to see
Kings and princes by the Lamb set free.
The banjos rattled and the tambourines blast
Jing-jing-jingled in the hands of queens!
And when Booth halted by the curb for prayer
He saw his Master through the flag-filled air. [Sidenote: _Reverently
sung—no instruments_]
Christ came gently with a robe and crown
For Booth the soldier while the throng knelt down.
He saw King Jesus—they were face to face,
And he knelt a-weeping in that holy place.
_Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?_
THE EAGLE THAT IS FORGOTTEN
_John P. Altgeld: Dec. 30, 1847–March 12, 1902._
Sleep softly ... eagle forgotten ... under the stone.
Time has its way with you there, and the clay has its own.
“We have buried him now,” thought your foes, and in secret rejoiced.
They made a brave show of their mourning, their hatred unvoiced.
They had snarled at you, barked at you, foamed at you day after day;
Now you were ended. They praised you ... and laid you away.
The others that mourned you in silence and terror and truth,
The widow bereft of her crust, and the boy without youth,
The mocked and the scorned and the wounded, the lame and the poor,
That should have remembered forever ... remember no more.
Where are those lovers of yours, on what name do they call—
The lost, that in armies wept over your funeral pall?
They call on the names of a hundred high-valiant ones;
A hundred white eagles have risen, the sons of your sons.
The zeal in their wings is a zeal that your dreaming began,
The valor that wore out your soul in the service of man.