Beautiful,
I am quite exhausted by it.
Your phrases turn about my heart,
And stifle me to swooning.
Open the window, I beg.
Lord! What a strumming of fiddles and mandolins!
’Tis really a shame to stop indoors.
Call my maid, or I will make you lace me yourself.
Fie, how hot it is, not a breath of air!
See how straight the leaves are falling.
Marianna, I will have the yellow satin caught up with silver fringe,
It peeps out delightfully from under a mantle.
Am I well painted to-day, _caro Abate mio_?
You will be proud of me at the Ridotto, hey?
Proud of being _cavalier servente_ to such a lady?”
“Can you doubt it, _bellissima Contessa_?
A pinch more rouge on the right cheek,
And Venus herself shines less ...”
“You bore me, Abate;
I vow I must change you!
A letter, Achmet?
Run and look out of the window, Abate.
I will read my letter in peace.”
The little black slave with the yellow satin turban
Gazes at his mistress with strained eyes.
His yellow turban and black skin
Are gorgeous—barbaric.
The yellow satin dress with its silver flashings
Lies on a chair,
Beside a black mantle and a black mask.
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous—barbaric.
The lady reads her letter,
And the leaves drift slowly
Past the long windows.
“How silly you look, my dear Abate,
With that great brown leaf in your wig.
Pluck it off, I beg you,
Or I shall die of laughing.”
A yellow wall,
Aflare in the sunlight,
Chequered with shadows,
Shadows of vine-leaves,
Shadows of masks.
Masks coming, printing themselves for an instant,
Then passing on,
More masks always replacing them.
Masks with tricorns and rapiers sticking out behind,
Pursuing masks with veils and high heels,
The sunlight shining under their insteps.
One,
One, two,
One, two, three—
There is a thronging of shadows on the hot wall,
Filigreed at the top with moving leaves.
Yellow sunlight and black shadows,
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous—barbaric.
Two masks stand together,
And the shadow of a leaf falls through them,
Marking the wall where they are not.
From hat-tip to shoulder-tip,
From elbow to sword-hilt,
The leaf falls.
The shadows mingle,
Blur together,
Slide along the wall and disappear.
Gold of mosaics and candles,
And night-blackness lurking in the ceiling beams.
Saint Mark’s glitters with flames and reflections.
A cloak brushes aside,
And the yellow of satin
Licks out over the colored inlays of the pavement.
Under the gold crucifixes
There is a meeting of hands
Reaching from black mantles.
Sighing embraces, bold investigations,
Hide in confessionals,
Sheltered by the shuffling of feet.
Gorgeous—barbaric
In its mail of jewels and gold,
Saint Mark’s looks down at the swarm of black masks;
And outside in the palace gardens brown leaves fall,
Flutter,
Fall.
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.
Blue-black the sky over Venice,
With a pricking of yellow stars.
There is no moon,
And the waves push darkly against the prow
Of the gondola,
Coming from Malamocco
And streaming toward Venice.
It is black under the gondola hood,
But the yellow of a satin dress
Glares out like the eye of a watching tiger.
Yellow compassed about with darkness,
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous—barbaric.
The boatman sings,
It is Tasso that he sings;
The lovers seek each other beneath their mantles,
And the gondola drifts over the lagoon, aslant to the coming dawn.
But at Malamocco in front,
In Venice behind,
Fall the leaves,
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.
They fall,
Flutter,
Fall.
VENUS TRANSIENS
Tell me,
Was Venus more beautiful
Than you are,
When she stopped
The crinkled waves,
Drifting shoreward
On her plaited shell?
Was Botticelli’s vision
Fairer than mine;
And were the painted rosebuds
He tossed his lady
Of better worth
Than the words I blow about you
To cover your too great loveliness
As with a gauze
Of misted silver?
For me,
You stand poised
In the blue and buoyant air,
Cinctured by bright winds,
Treading the sunlight.
And the waves which precede you
Ripple and stir
The sands at my feet.
A LADY
You are beautiful and faded,
Like an old opera tune
Played upon a harpsichord;
Or like the sun-flooded silks
Of an eighteenth century boudoir.
In your eyes
Smoulder the fallen roses of outlived minutes,
And the perfume of your soul
Is vague and suffusing,
With the pungence of sealed spice jars.
Your half-tones delight me,
And I grow mad with gazing
At your blent colors.
My vigor is a new-minted penny,
Which I cast at your feet.
Gather it up from the dust,
That its sparkle may amuse you.
CHINOISERIES
REFLECTIONS
When I looked into your eyes,
I saw a garden
With peonies, and tinkling pagodas,
And round-arched bridges
Over still lakes.
A woman sat beside the water
In a rain-blue, silken garment.
She reached through the water
To pluck the crimson peonies
Beneath the surface,
But as she grasped the stems,
They jarred and broke into white-green ripples,
And as she drew out her hand,
The water-drops dripping from it
Stained her rain-blue dress like tears.
FALLING SNOW
The snow whispers about me,
And my wooden clogs
Leave holes behind me in the snow.
But no one will pass this way
Seeking my footsteps,
And when the temple bell rings again
They will be covered and gone.
HOAR-FROST
In the cloud-gray mornings
I heard the herons flying;
And when I came into my garden,
My silken outer-garment
Trailed over withered leaves.
A dried leaf crumbles at a touch,
But I have seen many Autumns
With herons blowing like smoke
Across the sky.
SOLITAIRE
When night drifts along the streets of the city,
And sifts down between the uneven roofs,
My mind begins to peek and peer.
It plays at ball in old, blue Chinese gardens,
And shakes wrought dice-cups in Pagan temples,
Amid the broken flutings of white pillars.
It dances with purple and yellow crocuses in its hair,
And its feet shine as they flutter over drenched grasses.
How light and laughing my mind is,
When all the good folk have put out their bed-room candles,
And the city is still!
A GIFT
See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colors and lustres
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.
When I shall have given you the last one
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.
RED SLIPPERS
Red slippers in a shop-window; and outside in the street, flaws of gray,
windy sleet!
Behind the polished glass the slippers hang in long threads of red,
festooning from the ceiling like stalactites of blood, flooding the eyes
of passers-by with dripping color, jamming their crimson reflections
against the windows of cabs and tram-cars, screaming their claret and
salmon into the teeth of the sleet, plopping their little round maroon
lights upon the tops of umbrellas.
The row of white, sparkling shop-fronts is gashed and bleeding, it
bleeds red slippers. They spout under the electric light, fluid and
fluctuating, a hot rain—and freeze again to red slippers, myriadly
multiplied in the mirror side of the window.
They balance upon arched insteps like springing bridges of crimson
lacquer; they swing up over curved heels like whirling tanagers sucked
in a wind-pocket; they flatten out, heelless, like July ponds, flared
and burnished by red rockets.
Snap, snap, they are cracker sparks of scarlet in the white, monotonous
block of shops.
They plunge the clangor of billions of vermilion trumpets into the crowd
outside, and echo in faint rose over the pavement.
People hurry by, for these are only shoes, and in a window farther down
is a big lotus bud of cardboard, whose petals open every few minutes and
reveal a wax doll, with staring bead eyes and flaxen hair, lolling
awkwardly in its flower chair.
One has often seen shoes, but whoever saw a cardboard lotus bud before?
The flaws of gray, windy sleet beat on the shop-window where there are
only red slippers.
APOLOGY
Be not angry with me that I bear
Your colors everywhere,
All through each crowded street,
And meet
The wonder-light in every eye,
As I go by.
Each plodding wayfarer looks up to gaze,
Blinded by rainbow-haze,
The stuff of happiness,
No less,
Which wraps me in its glad-hued folds
Of peacock golds.
Before my feet the dusty, rough-paved way
Flushes beneath its gray.
My steps fall ringed with light,
So bright
It seems a myriad suns are strown
About the town.
Around me is the sound of steepled bells,
And rich perfumèd smells
Hang like a wind-forgotten cloud,
And shroud
Me from close contact with the world.
I dwell, impearled.
You blazon me with jewelled insignia.
A flaming nebula
Rims in my life. And yet
You set
The word upon me, unconfessed,
To go unguessed.
Percy Mackaye
OLD AGE
Old Age, the irrigator,
Digs our bosoms straighter,
More workable and deeper still
To turn the ever-running mill
Of nights and days. He makes a trough
To drain our passions off,
That used so beautiful to lie
Variegated to the sky,
On waste moorlands of the heart—
Haunts of idleness, and art
Still half-dreaming. All their piedness,
Rank and wild and shallow wideness,
Desultory splendors, he
Straightens conscientiously
To a practicable sluice
Meant for workaday, plain use.
All the mists of early dawn,
Twilit marshes, being gone
With their glamor, and their stench,
There is left—a narrow trench.
SONG FROM “MATER”
Long ago, in the young moonlight,
I lost my heart to a hero;
Strong and tender and stern and right,
Darker than night,
And terribler than Nero.
Heigh, but he was dear, O!
And there, to bind our fellowship,
I laughed at him; and a moment after,
I laughed again till he bit his lip,
For the test of love is laughter.
“Lord and master, look up!” I cried;
“I wreathe your brow with a laurel!
Gloom and wisdom and right and pride
Cast them aside,
And kiss, and cure our quarrel.
Never mind the moral!”
Alas! with strange and saddened eyes
He looked on me; and my mirth grew dafter,
To feel the flush of his dark surprise;
For the zest of love is laughter.
Long ago, in the old moonlight,
I lost my hero and lover;
Strong and tender and stern and right,
Never shall night
Nor day his brow uncover.
Ah, my heart, that is over!
Yet still, for joy of the fellowship
That bound us both through the years long after,
I laugh to think how he bit his lip;
For the test of love—
And the best of love—is laughter.
Frederic Manning
SACRIFICE
Love suffereth all things,
And we,
Out of the travail and pain of our striving,
Bring unto Thee the perfect prayer:
For the lips of no man utter love,
Suffering even for love’s sake.
For us no splendid apparel of pageantry—
Burnished breast-plates, scarlet banners, and trumpets
Sounding exultantly.
But the mean things of the earth Thou hast chosen,
Decked them with suffering;
Made them beautiful with the passion for rightness,
Strong with the pride of love.
Yea, though our praise of Thee slayeth us,
Yet love shall exalt us beside Thee triumphant,
Dying that these live;
And the earth again be beautiful with orchards,
Yellow with wheatfields;
And the lips of others praise Thee, though our lips
Be stopped with earth, and songless.
Yet we shall have brought Thee their praises
Brought unto Thee the perfect prayer:
For the lips of no man utter love,
Suffering even for love’s sake.
O God of sorrows,
Whose feet come softly through the dews,
Stoop Thou unto us,
For we die so Thou livest,
Our hearts the cups of Thy vintage:
And the lips of no man utter love,
Suffering even for love’s sake.
AT EVEN
Hush ye! Hush ye! My babe is sleeping.
Hush, ye winds, that are full of sorrow!
Hush, ye rains, from your weary weeping!
Give him slumber until to-morrow.
Hush ye, yet! In the years hereafter,
Surely sorrow is all his reaping;
Tears shall be in the place of laughter,
Give him peace for a while in sleeping.
Hush ye, hush! he is weak and ailing:
Send his mother his share of weeping.
Hush ye, winds, from your endless wailing;
Hush ye, hush ye, my babe is sleeping!
John Masefield
SHIPS
I cannot tell their wonder nor make known
Magic that once thrilled through me to the bone;
But all men praise some beauty, tell some tale,
Vent a high mood which makes the rest seem pale,
Pour their heart’s blood to flourish one green leaf,
Follow some Helen for her gift of grief,
And fail in what they mean, whate’er they do:
You should have seen, man cannot tell to you
The beauty of the ships of that my city.
That beauty now is spoiled by the sea’s pity;
For one may haunt the pier a score of times,
Hearing St. Nicholas bells ring out the chimes,
Yet never see those proud ones swaying home
With mainyards backed and bows a cream of foam,
Those bows so lovely-curving, cut so fine,
Those coulters of the many-bubbled brine,
As once, long since, when all the docks were filled
With that sea-beauty man has ceased to build.
Yet, though their splendor may have ceased to be
Each played her sovereign part in making me;
Now I return my thanks with heart and lips
For the great queenliness of all those ships.
And first the first bright memory, still so clear,
An autumn evening in a golden year,
When in the last lit moments before dark
The _Chepica_, a steel-gray lovely barque,
Came to an anchor near us on the flood,
Her trucks aloft in sun-glow red as blood.
Then come so many ships that I could fill
Three docks with their fair hulls remembered still,
Each with her special memory’s special grace,
Riding the sea, making the waves give place
To delicate high beauty; man’s best strength,
Noble in every line in all their length.
_Ailsa_, _Genista_, ships, with long jibbooms,
The _Wanderer_ with great beauty and strange dooms,
_Liverpool_ (mightiest then) superb, sublime,
The _California_ huge, as slow as time.
The _Copley_ swift, the perfect _J. T. North_,
The loveliest barque my city has sent forth,
Dainty _John Lockett_ well remembered yet,
The splendid _Argus_ with her skysail set,
Stalwart _Drumcliff_, white-blocked, majestic _Sierras_,
Divine bright ships, the water’s standard-bearers;
_Melpomene_, _Euphrosyne_, and their sweet
Sea-troubling sisters of the Fernie fleet;
_Corunna_ (in whom my friend died) and the old
Long since loved _Esmeralda_ long since sold.
_Centurion_ passed in Rio, _Glaucus_ spoken,
_Aladdin_ burnt, the _Bidston_ water-broken,
_Yola_, in whom my friend sailed, _Dawpool_ trim,
Fierce-bowed _Egeria_ plunging to the swim,
_Stanmore_ wide-sterned, sweet _Cupica_, tall _Bard_,
Queen in all harbors with her moon-sail yard.
Though I tell many, there must still be others,
McVickar Marshall’s ships and Fernie Brothers’,
_Lochs_, _Counties_, _Shires_, _Drums_, the countless lines
Whose house-flags all were once familiar signs
At high main-trucks on Mersey’s windy ways
When sunlight made the wind-white water blaze.
Their names bring back old mornings, when the docks
Shone with their house-flags and their painted blocks,
Their raking masts below the Custom House
And all the marvellous beauty of their bows.
Familiar steamers, too, majestic steamers,
Shearing Atlantic roller-tops to streamers,
_Umbria_, _Etruria_, noble, still at sea,
The grandest, then, that man had brought to be.
_Majestic_, _City of Paris_, _City of Rome_,
Forever jealous racers, out and home.
The _Alfred Holt’s_ blue smoke-stacks down the stream,
The fair _Loanda_ with her bows a-cream.
Booth liners, Anchor liners, Red Star liners,
The marks and styles of countless ship-designers,
The _Magdalena_, _Puno_, _Potosi_,
Lost _Cotopaxi_, all well known to me.
These splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory,
Her memory of old song or comrade’s story,
Still in my mind the image of life’s need,
Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed.
“They built great ships and sailed them,” sounds most brave,
Whatever arts we have or fail to have.
I touch my country’s mind, I come to grips
With half her purpose, thinking of these ships:
That art untouched by softness, all that line
Drawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine;
That nobleness and grandeur, all that beauty
Born of a manly life and bitter duty;
That splendor of fine bows which yet could stand
The shock of rollers never checked by land;
That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break,
Yet stayed to strength and backstayed into rake;
The life demanded by that art, the keen
Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean.
They are grander things than all the art of towns;
Their tests are tempests and the sea that drowns.
They are my country’s line, her great art done
By strong brains laboring on the thought unwon.
They mark our passage as a race of men—
Earth will not see such ships as those again.
CARGOES
Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir,
Rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine,
With a cargo of ivory,
And apes and peacocks,
Sandalwood, cedarwood, and sweet white wine.
Stately Spanish galleon coming from the Isthmus,
Dipping through the Tropics by the palm-green shores,
With a cargo of diamonds,
Emeralds, amethysts,
Topazes, and cinnamon, and gold moidores.
Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke-stack,
Butting through the Channel in the mad March days,
With a cargo of Tyne coal,
Road-rails, pig-lead,
Firewood, iron-ware, and cheap tin trays.
WATCHING BY A SICK-BED
I heard the wind all day,
And what it was trying to say.
I heard the wind all night
Rave as it ran to fight;
After the wind the rain,
And then the wind again
Running across the hill
As it runs still.
And all day long the sea
Would not let the land be,
But all night heaped her sand
On to the land;
I saw her glimmer white
All through the night,
Tossing the horrid hair
Still tossing there.
And all day long the stone
Felt how the wind was blown;
And all night long the rock
Stood the sea’s shock;
While, from the window, I
Looked out, and wondered why,
Why at such length
Such force should fight such strength.
WHAT AM I, LIFE?
What am I, Life? A thing of watery salt
Held in cohesion by unresting cells,
Which work they know not why, which never halt,
Myself unwitting where their Master dwells.
I do not bid them, yet they toil, they spin
A world which uses me as I use them;
Nor do I know which end or which begin
Nor which to praise, which pamper, which condemn.
So, like a marvel in a marvel set,
I answer to the vast, as wave by wave
The sea of air goes over, dry or wet,
Or the full moon comes swimming from her cave,
Or the great sun comes forth: this myriad I
Tingles, not knowing how, yet wondering why.
Edgar Lee Masters
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
THE HILL
_Where are Elmer, Herman, Bert, Tom and Charley,
The weak of will, the strong of arm, the clown, the boozer, the fighter?
All, all, are sleeping on the hill._
_One passed in a fever,
One was burned in a mine,
One was killed in a brawl,
One died in a jail,
One fell from a bridge toiling for children and wife—
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill._
_Where are Ella, Kate, Mag, Lizzie and Edith,
The tender heart, the simple soul, the loud, the proud, the happy one?—
All, all, are sleeping on the hill._
_One died in shameful child-birth,
One of a thwarted love,
One at the hands of a brute in a brothel,
One of a broken pride, in the search for heart’s desire,
One after life in far-away London and Paris
Was brought to her little space by Ella and Kate and Mag—
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill._
_Where are Uncle Isaac and Aunt Emily,
And old Towny Kincaid and Sevigne Houghton,
And Major Walker who had talked
With venerable men of the revolution?—
All, all, are sleeping on the hill._
_They brought them dead sons from the war,
And daughters whom life had crushed,
And their children fatherless, crying—
All, all are sleeping, sleeping, sleeping on the hill._
_Where is Old Fiddler Jones
Who played with life all his ninety years,
Braving the sleet with bared breast,
Drinking, rioting, thinking neither of wife nor kin,
Nor gold, nor love, nor heaven?
Lo! he babbles of the fish-frys of long ago,
Of the horse-races of long ago at Clary’s Grove,
Of what Abe Lincoln said
One time at Springfield._
OLLIE M^cGEE
Have you seen walking through the village
A man with downcast eyes and haggard face?
That is my husband who, by secret cruelty
Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;
Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,
And with broken pride and shameful humility,
I sank into the grave.
But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart?
The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!
These are driving him to the place where I lie.
In death, therefore, I am avenged.
DAISY FRASER
Did you ever hear of Editor Whedon
Giving to the public treasury any of the money he received
For supporting candidates for office?
Or for writing up the canning factory
To get people to invest?
Or for suppressing the facts about the bank,
When it was rotten and ready to break?
Did you ever hear of the Circuit Judge
Helping anyone except the “Q” railroad,
Or the bankers? Or did Rev. Peet or Rev. Sibley
Give any part of their salary, earned by keeping still,
Or speaking out as the leaders wished them to do,
To the building of the water works?
But I—Daisy Fraser, who always passed
Along the streets through rows of nods and smiles,
And coughs and words such as “there she goes,”
Never was taken before Justice Arnett
Without contributing ten dollars and costs
To the school fund of Spoon River!
HARE DRUMMER
Do the boys and girls still go to Siever’s
For cider, after school, in late September?
Or gather hazel nuts among the thickets
On Aaron Hatfield’s farm when the frosts begin?
For many times with the laughing girls and boys
Played I along the road and over the hills
When the sun was low and the air was cool,
Stopping to club the walnut tree
Standing leafless against a flaming west.
Now, the smell of the autumn smoke,
And the dropping acorns,
And the echoes about the vales
Bring dreams of life. They hover over me.
They question me:
Where are those laughing comrades?
How many are with me, how many
In the old orchards along the way to Siever’s,
And in the woods that overlook
The quiet water?
DOC HILL
I went up and down the streets
Here and there by day and night,
Through all hours of the night caring for the poor who were sick.
Do you know why?
My wife hated me, my son went to the dogs.
And I turned to the people and poured out my love to them.
Sweet it was to see the crowds about the lawns on the day of my funeral,
And hear them murmur their love and sorrow.
But oh, dear God, my soul trembled, scarcely able
To hold to the railing of the new life
When I saw Em Stanton behind the oak tree
At the grave,
Hiding herself, and her grief!
FIDDLER JONES
The earth keeps some vibration going
There in your heart, and that is you.
And if the people find you can fiddle,
Why, fiddle you must, for all your life.
What do you see, a harvest of clover?
Or a meadow to walk through to the river?
The wind’s in the corn; you rub your hands
For beeves hereafter ready for market;
Or else you hear the rustle of skirts
Like the girls when dancing at Little Grove.
To Cooney Potter a pillar of dust
Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth;
They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy
Stepping it off, to “Toor-a-Loor.”
How could I till my forty acres
Not to speak of getting more,
With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos
Stirred in my brain by crows and robins
And the creak of a wind-mill—only these?
And I never started to plow in my life
That some one did not stop in the road
And take me away to a dance or picnic.
I ended up with forty acres;
I ended up with a broken fiddle—
And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories,
And not a single regret.
THOMAS RHODES
Very well, you liberals,
And navigators into realms intellectual,
You sailors through heights imaginative,
Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets,
You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,
And Tennessee Claflin Shopes—
You found with all your boasted wisdom
How hard at the last it is
To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms.
While we, seekers of earth’s treasures,
Getters and hoarders of gold,
Are self-contained, compact, harmonized,
Even to the end.
EDITOR WHEDON
To be able to see every side of every question;
To be on every side, to be everything, to be nothing long;
To pervert truth, to ride it for a purpose,
To use great feelings and passions of the human family
For base designs, for cunning ends,
To wear a mask like the Greek actors—
Your eight-page paper—behind which you huddle,
Bawling through the megaphone of big type:
“This is I, the giant.”
Thereby also living the life of a sneak-thief,
Poisoned with the anonymous words
Of your clandestine soul.
To scratch dirt over scandal for money,
And exhume it to the winds for revenge,
Or to sell papers
Crushing reputations, or bodies, if need be,
To win at any cost, save your own life.
To glory in demoniac power, ditching civilization,
As a paranoiac boy puts a log on the track
And derails the express train.
To be an editor, as I was—
Then to lie here close by the river over the place
Where the sewage flows from the village,
And the empty cans and garbage are dumped,
And abortions are hidden.
SETH COMPTON