We have been comrades, journeying all roads together, near and far,
And rough and smooth; all the winds that blow hail us as brothers,
And the stars of every land speak us in common tongue as kin:
Right gladly have we dared all chance and found it good--if won or
lost;
But there must come a day when thou and I loose hands, divide the
pack,
And fare us each alone on widening trails that nevermore shall meet.
Friend, when we know that hour face to face; in hall or tent, on road
or waste or plain;
Or, as I pray, where some great, silent peak fronts solemn, fearless,
to eternity;
Say thou “Godspeed!” and lift the stirrup cup right gaily to the lips
that cry “Farewell!”
Grip thou my hand, as one who sees his long-tried friend go forth
On some great quest he would, but may not, share--where danger jostles
honor on the road.
When that stern call no mortal may gainsay rings in my ears,
Do thou make generous haste; nor grudge my going, nor cling doggedly
Till flesh and soul are riven with mighty pain, or worn with slow
decay;
But as thou love me, as I have been true to thee and to thy service,
Give me swift release, and lift our love up as a lifted torch to light
my going.
I have no quarrel that we two must part; nor fear of that still,
wondrous mystery
Beyond the parting: but spare thou my human weakness; I would go out
undismayed;
Unshrinking; shadowed with no vain regret for done or undone;--
As we could we wrought; let who comes after better us in deed, but not
in will:
Now Hope, and Courage, and my comrade Life, shoulder to shoulder for
the final stand!
Till from beyond those farthest heights of all my cheer rings down to
meet your parting cheer,
As some path seeker on untrodden peaks shouts backward to his fellows
and goes on.
COMPANIONED
At daybreak when the sunrise lay
Along the desert sand,
I buckled girth and tightened rein,
And rode to win the land;
I rode as rides a careless youth
Who fears no evil tide;
But from the dark a phantom stark
Pressed out to gain my side.
Gray-cowled and still he nearer drew,
The morning air grew chill;
The wind wailed low the while I turned
And bade him name his will:
“My will it is to ride with thee,
Whatever chance betide;
For good or ill to follow still,
More close than friend or bride.”
My heart turned cold, my arm grew weak;
I struck a stinging spur
And strove at maddest pace to lose
That ghostly follower.
We reeled upon the desert’s verge,
My hard-pressed steed and I,--
And full beside through that wild ride
The wraith smiled silently.
He clasped my hand, he touched my brow
With lips that froze and burned;
“Now art thou mine to have and hold
Till all the tale be learned.
Put by the whip and ringing spur;
Put by the brave array;
For thou with me shall presently
Go forth in hodden gray.
“I lay my chrism upon thine eyes
That thy blind soul may see
The grandeur rife in human life,
Its joy and misery.”--
So fare we softly side by side,
Nor ever turn again;
And now I hail the presence “Friend,”
Who once had called him “Pain.”
ALONE
Oh! arms that ache with weary emptiness,
Yet knew Love’s fullness ere your day was old,
How shall I turn with comforting to you
Who have the burden’s tender memory still?
Hands that but clasp each other, wet with tears
Yet tingling with the pressure of a touch
Scarce now withdrawn, I give you no regret--
Whose “has been” gladdens all the long “to be.”
What know you, though you grieve, of loneliness,
Who count the days back sure of smiles that were,
And eyes that looked and loved and understood?
Empty the arms, companioned still the soul--
For souls once met blend all futurity
Into that meeting.
But one I knew whose empty heart had ne’er
Beat faster to the sound of kindred step;
Whose hand no other hand had reached to grasp
In brotherhood of purpose; in whose ear
No voice spoke greeting in a mother tongue:
A soul that from the Chaos back of Time
Passed out alone, and through the Then and Now
Walked alien past the homes of happy men.
E’en stars bend to each other through the blue,
And earth calls upward to her sister spheres;
But seeking, seeking, still in ceaseless quest,
This soul went outward to Eternity.
THE INHERITOR
Look you, ye line of men and women reaching back
Behind my shoulders into Life’s lost dawn--
Ye square-jawed, low-browed, fierce-eyed fighting-man;
Ye fawning slave, cringing before the whip;
Ye strong-souled prophet of diviner things;
Ye praying saint, ye sensuous, sin-steeped fool;
Ye seer, love driven, paying drop by drop
Thy own blood down to buy thy brother’s need;
Ye sleek and shifty plotter, cunning-lipped
Ye pale ascetic, ye the loose-tongued bawd;
Ye weak, and tender, loving, scorning, mad
With glutted pride--abased in misery;
Ye that have measured all the pendulum
Of human passion, chance, and hope, and pain--
I bid ye halt; I am the crucible,
My will the furnace fire; fused here in me
Your motley ore shall take what shape I choose,
To serve what end I order and command.
I’ll make of ye my weapon and my tool,
My sword and plowshare. Ye shall hold or break,
Strike or be idle, at my word. In my hand
Ye shall be gathered as a missile fit
And hurled subservient to seek my goal.
Look in my eyes and know I fear ye not;
Because ye were I am--and rule ye now.
I will not go your road nor seek your end;
I will not pray your prayer nor sing your song;
Ye shall not sear me with the sullen heat
Of your spent passions. My lips shall never writhe
With bitter pleading for your old desires.
Ye shall not shake my soul with your lost fears,
Nor grip my heart with dead regret and pain.
I am your master; if ye live again
Ye take life from my hand at my own terms.
I will bind up the fire that flared in you
To use diverse, and make of it a torch
Clear-flamed and strong to light the road I choose.
Your wrongs shall set me free from kindred wrong;
Your labor and your loss shall be the steps
Beneath my feet on which I stand to rise.
Your hopes undone shall wing my hope for flight;
I will take up the broken dreams that fell
From your spent grasp and weld them into one--
A deathless vision of futurity.
O ye dead hearts that ached; dead hands that clinched
In fear or fury; dead lips that lied or loved;
Dead souls that grovelled or aspired as ye could--
Ye rule me not--I am the master here.
For my swift hour ye serve me as I will--
Till from forgotten dust I serve the men that come.
ON MY OWN PORTRAIT
And yet--the face shall pass
As a shadow ’cross the grass;
As the shadow of a bird-wing
Spread a moment in the sun;
As the light-blown dust that dances
In the wind and whirls and glances
Mote-wise in a passing sunbeam,
When the Sand of Fate is run.
Out of silence--here and hither;
Into silence--whence and whither
Still unanswered; still unmapped
The road the feet have come and gone.
Heart of fire, soul aspiring;
Spirit daring, strong, untiring--
Is the unmapped Road to Silence
All that ye and Life have won?
Ah! but there was still the fight!
Darkness--and the search for light!
Road unmapped--but fearless going
Out upon the journey--knowing
Naught and daring all.
As ye will then, weigh and measure;
Count the gain and hoard the treasure--
But the Fight was more than all.
THE IMMORTAL
King and priest and poet met
In a garden, arbor set,
On a green hill by the sea
Where the waves lapped tenderly,
Crooning to the restless sands
Lullabies of distant lands.
From the stately palace near
Rippling music smote the ear,
Mingled with the solemn bell
Of the monks that matins tell
’Neath the censer swinging slow
In the ancient church below.
Dawn, with rosy fingertips
Reached to Day, her lingering lips
Pressed upon the dead Night’s brow;
As we mortals, too, somehow,
Turn us in the past to grope
Ere we grasp the hand of Hope.
Spake the king, as wistfully
He looked out across the sea
Sparkling in the growing light:
“Ah! the morning-promise bright!
Bright as life, whose morning glow
Shadows but to dusk we know!
Is it then a little striving,
Ending at the last in nothing?
Lieth there a fairer day
Past Death’s night, O poet, say?
Priest, what sayeth your heart’s need,
Standing clear of myth and creed?
Said the priest: “Man is the flower
Of creation’s natal hour;
He earth’s lord--and yet earth’s sorrow
Presseth him, till he must borrow
Joy from some half-guessed tomorrow--
If his making be not jest;
Or a mockery, at best.
You who rule and I who pray,
Shut from common strife away,
Still find in our life’s brief cup
Tears and wormwood welling up;
Vain would our existence be
Without immortality.”
Lightly then the poet laughed
As the ruddy wine he quaffed:
“What is immortality
To the butterfly or bee?
Yet life’s sweetest sweets are theirs,
Summer suns and summer airs;
Skyward still the brown larks climb
And the ring doves in the lime
Wake the roses with their cooing,
Silence into sweetness wooing;
And the grass is glad in growing
For the white flocks hillward going.
“E’en with gifts of sorrow’s giving
There is joy enough in living;
Heart-kept joys in every day
No ill chance can take away.
Truth and beauty are immortal,
And if we tomorrow’s portal
Should not pass, yet men may say:
“He lived kindly yesterday;
Sought no evil, thought no ill;
So we keep his memory still,
As a lamp our feet to guide
Till the ebbing of the tide
Calls us seaward in the dark.”
Look you, brothers, if a spark
Of eternal fire be caught
In these bodies weakly wrought,
Let it flame to noble deeds
For our present, human needs--
So from life itself may we
Build our immortality.”
THE BEDESMAN OF THE YEAR
Stands Time, the gray old bedesman,
And loosely through his hold
Slip down the days like carven beads,
Silver and dusk and gold.
And each day hath its whispered prayer,
Each one its patron saint;
And each its tender memories
Like incense sweet and faint.
O gray old bedesman, when you’ve told
Life’s rosary all through,
Leave us the old life’s memory
To consecrate the new.
THE LONG MARCH
REVEILLE
Ho, comrades, on the mountain top the sun has touched the trees,
Strike camp and march, the ringing bugles call;
Swing lightly to the saddle with the rifle held at ease,--
We may need it, we who ride to win or fall.
What is living but a battle? What is dying but a rest?
If there’s time to snatch a laurel ere we go,
And to leave one hot kiss printed on the lips we love the best
We have garnered all the fullest life can know.
With our faces toward the morning, with her music in our hearts,
And the sunrise on our banners bright with hope,
Lo, our line of march is upward where the snowy summit starts,
Press forward for the rough, untrodden slope.
Through the pines the wind is laughing and the tall trees sway and
swing
Like the swaying crowds that cheer us as we ride;
And our bugles wake the echoes till the far peaks shout and sing--
Ah! but life is youth and love and battle-pride.
THE CAMP
Halt, comrades, here the sun of noon falls straight upon the grass,
And the droning locust drowns the bugle call;
In the valley there below us see the harvesters that pass
Where the gold of ripened grain is over all.
Like a flag of truce the home-smoke waving in the summer wind
Calls the workers from the field for rest and cheer--
When the battle din is over and the glory all behind
It were good to find such welcome kind and near.
Who has clasped the hand of woman in the hour when life was hard,
Who has loved a little child and called him son;
Who has set himself with broken arms the homeland road to guard,
Yearns for friendly board and hearth when all is done.
Coin of peace is price of battle, glory but a rainbow set
In the clearing sky for sign of hope to come;
As the road winds down the valley all the rest we may forget,
Knowing life is work and love and joy of home.
THE BIVOUAC
Look, comrades, through the bending trees a gleam of silver light,
Where the winding river goes to find the sea;
Off-saddle,--here we bivouac the long appointed night,
Till the Great Commander sounds reveille.
All along the trail behind us in the grasses and the pines
Lie the brothers who were weary e’re the night;
And we shoulder close together now to hide the thinning lines,
And there’s more than mist of years to dim our sight.
Old ambitions burned to ashes sift their whiteness through the hair
Of the gayest youth who faced the morning sun;
And it’s more of scars than honors that the bravest comrades wear,
As we count the cost and know the fight is done.
Guidons flutter in the night wind and the campfires flicker low,
We are silent with old memories deep and fond;
Up, comrades, cheer the joy of life once more before we go--
Knowing now ’tis love and service and a mighty hope Beyond.
THE RACE MOTHER
At sunrise I saw her, the woman eternal, the Race Mother;
She stood upon a great, gray cliff--and behind her the forest;
The dawn was on her face; over the world she looked as one seeking--
As one whose eyes have watched long through shadow,
And are weary still watching for one who comes not.
Her mate she sought--waiting there with the forest behind her,
And the world stretching wide, and the wind singing glory to daybreak.
Strong and pure and clean-limbed and deep-bosomed--
Goddess and woman in one--loving and longing she waited.
Out from the foot of the cliff one crept up to take her;
Huge-muscled, careless--o’er-borne with fierce cravings and hunger.
He saw not her eyes with the passionate longing within them--
Burning holy and tender with infinite love and compassion.
Only the strong, sweet body he grasped--crushed and maimed--bound to
serve him;
Bent at his will, and distorted--till ugly and broken,
Unmeet even to serve, it shambled beside him.
On the breast hung a child, half-divine, half-monstrous--
Maimed too, scarred, deformed--mingling strangely
The holy dawn-dream in the deep, waiting eyes of the woman,
And the careless, fierce face of the man as he fought up to take her.
* * * * *
It was night now, and the dawn-light was dead, and the wide world was
hidden,
And the wind whimpered and wailed like a creature that suffers and
hopes not.
ROAD’S END.
The old wife by the grave-stone stands
And looketh far away;
Her eyes are deep as pools of rain
Twilit at close of day.
“God rest ye, husband of my flesh--
Life-Stranger to my soul--
I pray thy spirit goes to seek
Some dear-desired goal.”
“How long, how long, the way chance willed,
We journeyed side by side,
Yet never met at stile or gate--
I was thy body’s bride!
That far-off day, our wedding day,
I dreamed as women will--
The heart a-hungered and alone
Is lone and hungered still.”
“Four hands won roof and goods and gear
And ploughed and gleaned and spun--
Two stranger hearts the world apart
Sat down when toil was done.
God rest ye now beyond the end;
God light the way ahead--
And that the living eyes were blind,
Lay sight upon the dead.”
THE CHOOSING
“Here is life,” I said to my heart;
“Shall thou and I take part
In his battle and busy mart?
Shall we follow the voices that call
From temple and workshop and hall:
‘Lo, brother, we bid thee come?’”
“There is pleasure in palace and bower;
There is gold for our winning, and power;
And fame--for an idle hour
A bauble to tempt the best.
Shall we make us one with the rest,
And attempt, and achieve--or fail?”
But my heart, grown sudden wise,
Looked out from steadfast eyes
And said: “In myself it lies
To be more than a tool for gain--
Nay, Life, ye must bid again
Ere I answer to your call.”
“What say you of honor, O Life?
Has it room in the bitter strife
With which your service is rife?
Is there room for a soul to be
All the best it can feel and see;
To unfold its wings and arise?”
Then Life, with sphinx-like face,
And smile wherein no trace
Of answering had place;
Said: “Take my gift, or leave it--
But know they that receive it
Can make it what they will.”
WINE OF DREAMS
With wine of dream-land fill the cup
And pledge the past, my soul, with me;
Drink deep, old friend, and summons up
The ghost of all the Used-To-Be.
Here’s to the joys we knew erstwhile;
Look how they troop, a motley crew!
Here’s to the laugh, the jest, the smile,
That cheered our way when life was new.
“Comrades, good cheer! Good luck be yours!
Long may you follow on our track;
Until we pass to farther shores--
Then to our place here turn you back
And laugh with those we leave behind;
Ring merry music in their ears;
Crack joke with joke in merry kind,
Till they shall give no place to tears.”
We crave no grief, my soul and I;
Each life enough of sorrow knows;
Let none mourn darkly when we lie
In silence under rue and rose.
And you, gray wraith in cowl and gown,
Who “Closer than a brother” pressed;
Here on this last couch lay you down--
Together neath Death’s touch we rest.
For you were fashioned of our tears;
You were the shadow which Life’s real,
With broken hopes and bitter fears,
Cast o’er our shining, high ideal.
Your power is done--hide in the dust
Of that wild heart which gave you birth--
But all our joys we leave in trust
To cheer some toiling child of earth.
MY GARDEN
My heart is a little garden
Set in a desert waste;
The walls are rough, the door is small,
And high the key is placed.
None guess my hidden riches,
My wealth of leaf and bloom;
The gold of chaliced lilies,
The roses rare perfume.
Here climbs the starry jasmine,
Hope’s ladder to the skies;
And here like thoughts too pure for words
The silken moonflowers rise.
Here falls the plashing fountain
With Fancy’s waters bright;
Here flit Ambition’s butterflies,
Winged jewels in the light.
And all sweet birds are singing
Their happy songs together;
So brings the year whatever cheer
My heart holds summer weather.
SUMMER APPLES
Apples of Hesperides,
Jugglers’ golden balls are these;
Look within them and you’ll see
Many a magic mystery:
Winter snows are prisoned here;
April showers, May sunshine clear;
All the witchery of June,
Rose’s red and robin’s tune;
Wrought by Nature’s alchemy
Into sweet reality.
HER FINGER FATE
“A friend, a foe, a true love, a beau, a journey to go.”
The old superstition of naming the spots on the fingernails still
survives in country places, where some old lady may say gravely: “You
have an enemy; look at the spots on your finger nails,” and young girls
count them for friend or lover. “I knew he would be a wanderer,” said
one woman of an absent son, “there was always a journey on both his
hands.”
Softly she whispered it over,
Knee deep in the scented grass,
Where I and the first wild roses
Lingered to watch her pass.
She kissed her hand to the swallows
Skimming the pond below,
And turned with a face all archness
As she chanted ‘Friend or foe?’
“See, here is my life before me,
All that I keep or fail;”
And she counted the spots that glistened
On each rose-leaf finger nail;
Like baby pearls in the sunshine,
Or wind-rocked, cloudy flecks;
The little white dots that dappled
Her nails with snowy specks.
“A friend--but look, how many!
A foe--” Not one, I said;
“A true love”--Sweet, he is near you--
She blushed as the roses red.
He is waiting, dear, to claim you;
Your truest love and beau--
Ah! why did my eyes turn misty
As she murmured “A journey to go”?
The roses bloom in the meadow
As they bloomed that other day,
And I and the spring and the swallows
Wander the old sweet way;
We call but we cannot wake her,
So still in the vale below;
And my heart and the blossoms whisper,
“A journey, a journey to go.”
DUMB IN JUNE
Written on the fly leaf of Richard Burton’s volume of verse, “Dumb in
June.”
June that floods the earth with sweetness,
Songs and scents and petals bright;
How my heart in your completeness
Loses self with full delight!
Think you if with no lip-greeting
I give welcome warmly told,
That my spirit to this meeting
Springs not as in time of old?
Dearer comer than when child-heart
Sang to greet you from the hill;
Dearer to the captive wild-heart
Where the music now is still.
Should I sing when you are singing
Through my soul’s most shadowed ways,
Jubilant with promise, ringing
Down the drone of common days?
June-time! Spring-time! Hour of growing!
Time with all renewing blest!
Throbbing from a heart o’er-flowing,
Silent songs may praise you best.
MEMORIAM
In memory of our dead! The dead that lie
Near, love-guarded graves, where still our tenderness
Can reach out like a hand across the dark
To touch the still hands folded close in rest.
The near, loved dead that were our own;
That walked with us the busy common ways,
And made life dear, and homely duties sweet.
In memory of our dead! In memory of the memories that go
Forever with us, till we, too, shall lie
With still, white faces turned to meet the stars.
In memory, in hope, in tenderness!
Rest ye, O well-beloved, remembered dead!
Peace with you! Ye that do but keep
The bivouac till we come.
Ye that but wait us till the march is done;
Arms stacked; and guidons fluttering
Above the camp of our eternal rest.
In memory! In memory of the far, forgotten dead,
That lie unheeded in the common dust.
In memory of the daring hearts that sleep
In unmarked graves beside forgotten trails;
The men who set their faces to the West,
And blazed the way for empires yet to come--
Winning at last a width of nameless sod.
In memory! Wherever one brave soul goes out
Strong-hearted on that last, lone road all men must take,
He, too, is comrade, and his courage is
A bugle call that rings “Advance, nor fear!”
To every hard-pressed soul upon the way.
Wherever one spent toiler for the common good
Lets fall his tools from weary, calloused hands,
His work is ours,--a trust to further to the fullest end.
No hope that ever warmed a human heart
Was lost when that heart crumbled into dust:
The dreams that woke the sunrise of the world are ours--
Our dead walk with us daily, hand in hand.
But every joy we know to give or keep;
By hearts more gentle, and by eyes more true,
They are our own, and undivided still.
In memory! In memory of the dead!
In tenderness and hope for all who live!
Peace with you, ye that lie at rest!
Hope with you, ye that live and yet must face
The pain of living!
In memory, in hope, in tenderness!
AS A LITTLE SHADOW ON THE GRASS
How all alone we are, despite our striving
For sympathy and love!
How all alone we are in this our living,
With silent skies above!
These stars of ours have shone on Alexander;
Their tender light was old
What time the Roman hills knew lost Evander;
The night winds sweet and cold
Have lingered in the dusk with Omar’s roses;
They keep the fragrance yet!
And all the rare, green earth that round us closes
Whispers a vague regret.
It is not ours; we are not its first lovers;
We do but journey here
Where every little springing grass blade covers
Some heart once held as dear.
We yearn to touch them, stretch our hands in greeting;
To make them all our own.
Mist wraiths and dreams! they vanish at the meeting
And we pass on alone.
DAWN
Once the Dawn among the trees whispered me such words as these:
“There was stillness in the valley, there was darkness on the hill,
Till my spirit came among them, borne upon a minion breeze,
Woke them into light and music and dispelled them with my will.
“Where my fingers touched the tresses of the clouds with swift
caresses,
Burned a splendor like the jewels set to bind a princess’ hair;
Softly from my garment shaken fell the gentle dew that blesses
Every sweet and stately blossom meet to make the morning fair.
“Then the birds with liquid singing set the leafy woodland ringing,
Till the cattle in the meadow waked the joyous songs to mark;
And the great, gold sun leaped upward, all the light of heaven
bringing--
Heart, hast thou a morning also, waiting just beyond the dark?”
A BALLAD OF CHARLIE’S MEN
Duncan and I at the kirk would wed,
And soon should our bridal vows be said;
But a pibroch thrilled through the morning air,
And a white cockade gleamed brightly there;
’Twas Charlie Stuart bowed low at my side:
“O, lend me your lover now,” he cried,
“And when I march homeward adown the glen
You shall wed the bravest of Charlie’s men.”
Duncan my lover was good to see,
Straight and tall as the dark pine tree;
Black was his eye as the deep midnight;
His arm was strong and his step was light;
His words were kind and his laugh rang free,--
And oh! he was all in the world to me!
But he marched away through the narrow glen
To fight for Scotland with Charlie’s men.
The days were long and the nights were drear,
My heart grew sick with its weight of fear;
For the battle was fought and the battle was lost,
And the hearts of the living must count the cost;
And Charlie Stuart’s an outlaw now
With a price in gold on his bonnie brow;
And never the watchers in brae and glen
Shall welcome the coming of Charlie’s men.
And Duncan, my lover, my life, my light,
Was the first to fall in that bitter fight;
With Scotland’s banner clasped close in his hand
They laid him to sleep in that stranger land;
Narrow and lonely and low is his bed,
And the gorse of the Southland blooms thick o’er his head;
But still I roam through the mournful glen
And wait for the marching of Charlie’s men.
The mavis and merle in the thicket pipe clear,
But the wail of the pibroch is all I can hear;
The heather a-bloom takes the tint of his plaid,
And the foam on the burn shows the Stuart cockade;
The moonlight that falls on the rocks of Ben More
Is alive with the gleam of his targe and claymore--
And still in my heart and the haunted glen
There echoes the marching of Charlie’s men.