Before the living bronze Saint-Gaudens m_Poems of American History

Most fit to thrill the passer's heart with awe,

And set here in the city's talk and trade

To the good memory of Robert Shaw,

This bright March morn I stand

And hear the distant spring come up the land;

Knowing that what I hear is not unheard

Of this boy soldier and his negro band,

For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead,

For all the fatal rhythm of their tread.

The land they died to save from death and shame

Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name,

And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred.

Through street and mall the tides of people go

Heedless; the trees upon the Common show

No hint of green; but to my listening heart

The still earth doth impart

Assurance of her jubilant emprise,

And it is clear to my long-searching eyes

That love at last has might upon the skies.

The ice is runnelled on the little pond;

A telltale patter drips from off the trees;

The air is touched with southland spiceries,

As if but yesterday it tossed the frond

Of pendent mosses where the live oaks grow

Beyond Virginia and the Carolines,

Or had its will among the fruits and vines

Of aromatic isles asleep beyond

Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

III

Soon shall the Cape Ann children laugh in glee,

Spying the arbutus, spring's dear recluse;

Hill lads at dawn shall hearken the wild goose

Go honking northward over Tennessee;

West from Oswego to Sault Saint-Marie,

And on to where the Pictured Rocks are hung,

And yonder where, gigantic, wilful, young,

Chicago sitteth at the northwest gates,

With restless violent hands and casual tongue

Moulding her mighty fates,

The Lakes shall robe them in ethereal sheen;

And like a larger sea, the vital green

Of springing wheat shall vastly be outflung

Over Dakota and the prairie states.

By desert people immemorial

On Arizonan mesas shall be done

Dim rites unto the thunder and the sun;

Nor shall the primal gods lack sacrifice

More splendid, when the white Sierras call

Unto the Rockies straightway to arise

And dance before the unveiled ark of the year,

Clashing their windy cedars as for shawms,

Unrolling rivers clear

For flutter of broad phylacteries;

While Shasta signals to Alaskan seas

That watch old sluggish glaciers downward creep

To fling their icebergs thundering from the steep,

And Mariposa through the purple calms

Gazes at far Hawaii crowned with palms

Where East and West are met,--

A rich seal on the ocean's bosom set

To say that East and West are twain,

With different loss and gain:

The Lord hath sundered them; let them be sundered yet.

Alas! what sounds are these that come

Sullenly over the Pacific seas,--

Sounds of ignoble battle, striking dumb

The season's half-awakened ecstasies?

Must I be humble, then,

Now when my heart hath need of pride?

Wild love falls on me from these sculptured men;

By loving much the land for which they died

I would be justified.

My spirit was away on pinions wide

To soothe in praise of her its passionate mood

And ease it of its ache of gratitude.

Too sorely heavy is the debt they lay

On me and the companions of my day.

I would remember now

My country's goodliness, make sweet her name.

Alas! what shade art thou

Of sorrow or of blame

Liftest the lyric leafage from her brow,

And pointest a slow finger at her shame?

Lies! lies! It cannot be! The wars we wage

Are noble, and our battles still are won

By justice for us, ere we lift the gage.

We have not sold our loftiest heritage.

The proud republic hath not stooped to cheat

And scramble in the market-place of war;

Her forehead weareth yet its solemn star.

Here is her witness: this, her perfect son,

This delicate and proud New England soul

Who leads despisèd men, with just-unshackled feet,

Up the large ways where death and glory meet,

To show all peoples that our shame is done,

That once more we are clean and spirit-whole.

Crouched in the sea fog on the moaning sand

All night he lay, speaking some simple word

From hour to hour to the slow minds that heard,

Holding each poor life gently in his hand

And breathing on the base rejected clay

Till each dark face shone mystical and grand

Against the breaking day;

And lo, the shard the potter cast away

Was grown a fiery chalice, crystal-fine,

Fulfilled of the divine

Great wine of battle wrath by God's ring-finger stirred.

Then upward, where the shadowy bastion loomed

Huge on the mountain in the wet sea light,

Whence now, and now, infernal flowerage bloomed,

Bloomed, burst, and scattered down its deadly seed,--

They swept, and died like freemen on the height,

Like freemen, and like men of noble breed;

And when the battle fell away at night

By hasty and contemptuous hands were thrust

Obscurely in a common grave with him

The fair-haired keeper of their love and trust.

Now limb doth mingle with dissolvèd limb

In nature's busy old democracy

To flush the mountain laurel when she blows

Sweet by the southern sea,

And heart with crumbled heart climbs in the rose:--

The untaught hearts with the high heart that knew

This mountain fortress for no earthly hold

Of temporal quarrel, but the bastion old

Of spiritual wrong,

Built by an unjust nation sheer and strong,

Expugnable but by a nation's rue

And bowing down before that equal shrine

By all men held divine,

Whereof his band and he were the most holy sign.

VII

O bitter, bitter shade!

Wilt thou not put the scorn

And instant tragic question from thine eyes?

Do thy dark brows yet crave

That swift and angry stave--

Unmeet for this desirous morn--

That I have striven, striven to evade?

Gazing on him, must I not deem they err

Whose careless lips in street and shop aver

As common tidings, deeds to make his cheek

Flush from the bronze, and his dead throat to speak?

Surely some elder singer would arise,

Whose harp hath leave to threaten and to mourn

Above this people when they go astray.

Is Whitman, the strong spirit, overworn?

Has Whittier put his yearning wrath away?

I will not and I dare not yet believe!

Though furtively the sunlight seems to grieve,

And the spring-laden breeze

Out of the gladdening west is sinister

With sounds of nameless battle overseas;

Though when we turn and question in suspense

If these things be indeed after these ways,

And what things are to follow after these,

Our fluent men of place and consequence

Fumble and fill their mouths with hollow phrase,

Or for the end-all of deep arguments

Intone their dull commercial liturgies--

I dare not yet believe! My ears are shut!

I will not hear the thin satiric praise

And muffled laughter of our enemies,

Bidding us never sheathe our valiant sword

Till we have changed our birthright for a gourd

Of wild pulse stolen from a barbarian's hut;

Showing how wise it is to cast away

The symbols of our spiritual sway,

That so our hands with better ease

May wield the driver's whip and grasp the jailer's keys.

VIII

Was it for this our fathers kept the law?

This crown shall crown their struggle and their ruth?

Are we the eagle nation Milton saw

Mewing its mighty youth,

Soon to possess the mountain winds of truth,

And be a swift familiar of the sun

Where aye before God's face His trumpets run?

Or have we but the talons and the maw,

And for the abject likeness of our heart

Shall some less lordly bird be set apart?--

Some gross-billed wader where the swamps are fat?

Some gorger in the sun? Some prowler with the bat?

Ah no!

We have not fallen so.

We are our fathers' sons: let those who lead us know!

'Twas only yesterday sick Cuba's cry

Came up the tropic wind, "Now help us, for we die!"

Then Alabama heard,

And rising, pale, to Maine and Idaho

Shouted a burning word;

Proud state with proud impassioned state conferred,

And at the lifting of a hand sprang forth,

East, west, and south, and north,

Beautiful armies. Oh, by the sweet blood and young

Shed on the awful hill slope at San Juan,

By the unforgotten names of eager boys

Who might have tasted girls' love and been stung

With the old mystic joys

And starry griefs, now the spring nights come on,

But that the heart of youth is generous,--

We charge you, ye who lead us,

Breathe on their chivalry no hint of stain!

Turn not their new-world victories to gain!

One least leaf plucked for chaffer from the bays

Of their dear praise,

One jot of their pure conquest put to hire,

The implacable republic will require;

With clamor, in the glare and gaze of noon,

Or subtly, coming as a thief at night,

But surely, very surely, slow or soon

That insult deep we deeply will requite.

Tempt not our weakness, our cupidity!

For save we let the island men go free,

Those baffled and dislaurelled ghosts

Will curse us from the lamentable coasts

Where walk the frustrate dead.

The cup of trembling shall be drainèd quite,

Eaten the sour bread of astonishment,

With ashes of the hearth shall be made white

Our hair, and wailing shall be in the tent:

Then on your guiltier head

Shall our intolerable self-disdain

Wreak suddenly its anger and its pain;

For manifest in that disastrous light

We shall discern the right

And do it, tardily.--O ye who lead,

Take heed!

Blindness we may forgive, but baseness we will smite.

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY.

CHAPTER VI

THE NEW CENTURY

No country in the world entered upon the twentieth century with

brighter prospects of peace, happiness, and prosperity than did

the United States.

A TOAST TO OUR NATIVE LAND

Huge and alert, irascible yet strong,

We make our fitful way 'mid right and wrong.

One time we pour out millions to be free,

Then rashly sweep an empire from the sea!

One time we strike the shackles from the slaves,

And then, quiescent, we are ruled by knaves.

Often we rudely break restraining bars,

And confidently reach out toward the stars.

Yet under all there flows a hidden stream

Sprung from the Rock of Freedom, the great dream

Of Washington and Franklin, men of old

Who knew that freedom is not bought with gold.

This is the Land we love, our heritage,

Strange mixture of the gross and fine, yet sage

And full of promise,--destined to be great.

Drink to Our Native Land! God Bless the State!

ROBERT BRIDGES.

But the very first year, a bolt from the blue fell upon

her. In May, 1901, a great industrial exposition, known as

the "Pan-American," was opened at Buffalo, New York. It was

especially notable for its electrical display and came to be

known as "The Dream City," or "The City of Light."

BUFFALO

[1901]

A transient city, marvellously fair,

Humane, harmonious, yet nobly free,

She built for pure delight and memory.

At her command, by lake and garden rare,

Pylon and tower majestic rose in air,

And sculptured forms of grace and symmetry.

Then came a thought of God, and, reverently,--

"Let there be Light!" she said; and Light was there.

O miracle of splendor! Who could know

That Crime, insensate, egoist and blind,

Destructive, causeless, caring but to smite,

Would in its dull Cimmerian gropings find

A sudden way to fill those courts with woe,

And swallow up that radiance in night?

FLORENCE EARLE COATES.

September 5 was set aside as President's Day. The attendance

was very large, and President William McKinley spoke to an

audience of thirty thousand people. The next afternoon a

reception was held, at which all were invited to pass in line

and shake hands with the President. In the line was a man whose

right hand was bandaged with a handkerchief. The handkerchief

concealed a revolver. As the President stretched out his

hand, the assassin fired twice, one bullet penetrating the

President's abdomen.

McKINLEY

[September 6, 1901]

'Tis not the President alone

Who, stricken by that bullet, fell;

The assassin's shot that laid him prone

Pierced a great nation's heart as well;

And when the baleful tidings sped

From lip to lip throughout the crowd,

Then, as they deemed their ruler dead,

'Twas Liberty that cried aloud.

Ay, Liberty! for where the foam

Of oceans twain marks out the coast

'Tis there, in Freedom's very home,

That anarchy has maimed its host;

There 'tis that it has turned to bite

The hand that fed it; there repaid

A country's welcome with black spite;

There, Judas-like, that land betrayed.

For 'tis no despot that's laid low,

But a free nation's chosen chief;

A free man, stricken by a blow

Base, dastardly, past all belief.

And Tyranny exulting hears

The tidings flashed across the sea;

While stern Repression hugs her fears,

And mouths them in a harsh decree.

Meanwhile the cloud, though black as death,

Is lined with hopes, hopes light as life,

And Liberty that, scant of breath,

Had watched the issue of the strife,

Fills the glad air with grateful cries

To find the sun no more obscured,

And with new yearnings in her eyes

Climbs to her watch-tower--reassured.

London _Truth_.

Surgical aid was at hand. It was found that the bullet had

passed through the stomach; both wounds were sewed up, and five

days later the President was pronounced out of danger. The next

day, he showed signs of a relapse, and sank steadily until

death came early on the morning of Saturday, September 14.

FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH

[September 14, 1901]

His work is done, his toil is o'er;

A martyr for our land he fell--

The land he loved, that loved him well;

Honor his name for evermore!

Let all the world its tribute pay,

For glorious shall be his renown;

Though duty's was his only crown,

Yet duty's path is glory's way.

For he was great without pretence;

A man of whom none whispered shame,

A man who knew nor guile nor blame;

Good in his every influence.

On battle-field, in council-hall,

Long years with sterling service rife

He gave us, and at last his life--

Still unafraid at duty's call.

Let the last solemn pageant move,

The nation's grief to consecrate

To him struck down by maniac hate

Amid a mighty nation's love;

And though the thought it solace gives,

Beside the martyr's grave to-day

We feel 'tis almost hard to say:

"God reigns and the Republic lives!"

RICHARD HANDFIELD TITHERINGTON.

THE COMFORT OF THE TREES

Gentle and generous, brave-hearted, kind,

And full of love and trust was he, our chief;

He never harmed a soul! Oh, dull and blind

And cruel, the hand that smote, beyond belief!

Strike him? It could not be! Soon should we find

'Twas but a torturing dream--our sudden grief!

Then sobs and wailings down the northern wind

Like the wild voice of shipwreck from a reef!

By false hope lulled (his courage gave us hope!)

By day, by night we watched,--until unfurled

At last the word of fate!--Our memories

Cherish one tender thought in their sad scope:

He, looking from the window on this world,

Found comfort in the moving green of trees.

RICHARD WATSON GILDER.

OUTWARD BOUND

Farewell! for now a stormy morn and dark

The hour of greeting and of parting brings;

Already on the rising wind yon bark

Spreads her impatient wings.

Too hasty keel, a little while delay!

A moment tarry, O thou hurrying dawn!

For long and sad will be the mourners' day

When their beloved is gone.

But vain the hands that beckon from the shore:

Alike our passion and our grief are vain.

Behind him lies our little world: before

The illimitable main.

Yet, none the less, about his moving bed

Immortal eyes a tireless vigil keep--

An angel at the feet and at the head

Guard his untroubled sleep.

Two nations bowed above a common bier,

Made one forever by a martyred son--

One in their agony of hope and fear,

And in their sorrow one.

And thou, lone traveller, of a waste so wide,

The uncharted seas that all must pass in turn,

May the same star that was so long thy guide

O'er thy last voyage burn.

No eye can reach where through yon sombre veil

That bark to its eternal haven fares;

No earthly breezes swell its shadowy sail:

Only our love and prayers.

EDWARD SYDNEY TYLEE.

Theodore Roosevelt, Vice-President, succeeded to the

Presidency. The greatest project which the new administration

undertook was the construction of a ship canal across the

Isthmus of Panama. This enterprise had been agitated as early

as 1826, and in 1879 a French company under Ferdinand de

Lesseps had secured a concession from Colombia and started to

work. At the end of ten years, the company had exhausted its

resources and work ceased.

PANAMA

Here the oceans twain have waited

All the ages to be mated,--

Waited long and waited vainly,

Though the script was written plainly:

"This, the portal of the sea,

Opes for him who holds the key;

Here the empire of the earth

Waits in patience for its birth."

But the Spanish monarch, dimly

Seeing little, answered grimly:

"North and South the land is Spain's;

As God gave it, it remains.

He who seeks to break the tie,

By mine honor, he shall die!"

So the centuries rollèd on,

And the gift of great Colon,

Like a spendthrift's heritage,

Dwindled slowly, age by age,

Till the flag of red and gold

Fell from hands unnerved and old,

And the granite-pillared gate

Waited still the key of fate.

Who shall hold that magic key

But the child of destiny,

In whose veins has mingled long

All the best blood of the strong?

He who takes his place by grace

Of no single tribe or race,

But by many a rich bequest

From the bravest and the best.

Sentinel of duty, here

Must he guard a hemisphere.

Let the old world keep its ways;

Naught to him its blame or praise;

Naught its greed, or hate, or fear;

For all swords be sheathèd here.

Yea, the gateway shall be free

Unto all, from sea to sea;

And no fratricidal slaughter

Shall defile its sacred water;

But--the hand that ope'd the gate shall forever hold the key!

JAMES JEFFREY ROCHE.

The United States was naturally looked to to carry on the

project. The matter was brought before Congress, and in 1902

the French company was bought out for the sum of forty million

dollars. The Republic of Panama was organized, when Colombia

hesitated over the concession, and control of the canal route

was thus secured.

DARIEN

A.D. 1513-A.D. 1901

[The American Senate has ratified the isthmus

treaty.--WASHINGTON TELEGRAM.]

"Silent upon a peak in Darien,"

The Spanish steel red in his conquering hand,

While golden, green and gracious the vast land

Of that new world comes sudden into ken--

Stands Nuñez da Balboa. North and south

He sees at last the full Pacific roll

In blue and silver on each shelf and shoal,

And the white bar of the broad river's mouth,

And the long, ranked palm-trees. "Queen of Heaven," he cried,

"To-day thou giv'st me this for all my pain,

And I the glorious guerdon give to Spain,

A new earth and new sea to be her pride,

War ground and treasure-house." And while he spoke

The world's heart knew a mightier dawn was broke.

"Silent, upon a peak in Darien"--

Four hundred years being fled, a Greater stood

On that same height; and did behold the flood

Of blue waves leaping; Mother of all men!

Wise Nature! And she spake, "The gift I gave

To Nuñez da Balboa could not keep

Spain from her sins; now must the ages sweep

To larger legend, tho' her own was brave.

Here on this ridge I do foresee fresh birth.

That which departed shall bring side by side,

The sea shall sever what hills did divide;

Shall link in love." And there was joy on earth;

Whilst England and Columbia, quitting fear,

Kissed--and let in the eager waters there.

EDWIN ARNOLD.

PANAMA

HOME OF THE DOVE-PLANT OR HOLY GHOST FLOWER

What time the Lord drew back the sea

And gave thee room, slight Panama,

"I will not have thee great," said he,

"But thou shalt bear the slender key

Of both the gates I builded me,

And all the great shall come to thee

For leave to pass, O Panama!"

(Flower of the Holy Ghost, white dove,

Breathe sweetness where he wrought in love.)

His oceans call across the land:

"How long, how long, fair Panama,

Wilt thou the shock of tides withstand,

Nor heed us sobbing by the strand?

Set wide thy gates on either hand,

That we may search through saltless sand--

May clasp and kiss, O Panama!"

(Flower of the deep-embosomed dove,

So should his mighty nations love.)

III

Out-peal his holy temple-clocks:

It is thine hour, glad Panama.

Now shall thy key undo the locks;

The strong shall cleave thy sunken rocks;

Swung loose and floating from their docks,

The world's white fleets shall come in flocks

To thread thy straits, O Panama!

(Flower of the tropics, snowy dove,

Forbid, unless they come in love.)

How beautiful is thy demesne!

Search out thy wealth, proud Panama:

Thy gold, thy pearls of silver sheen,

Thy fruitful palms, thy thickets green;

Load thou the ships that ride between;

Attire thee as becomes a queen:

The great ones greet thee, Panama!

(Flower of the white and peaceful dove,

Let all men pass who come in love.)

AMANDA T. JONES.

A working organization was perfected, improved machinery got

into place, and when, in the fall of 1906, President Roosevelt

visited the Isthmus, he found the dirt flying in a most

satisfactory way. The canal was finally opened to commerce in

April, 1916.

A SONG OF PANAMA

[1906]

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" An' a mountain-bluff

Is moved by the shovel's song;

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough

A liftin' the landscape along!

We are ants upon a mountain, but we're leavin' of our dent,

An' our teeth-marks bitin' scenery they will show the way we went;

We're a liftin' half creation, an' we're changin' it around,

Just to suit our playful purpose when we're diggin' in the ground.

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough,

An' the way to the sea is long;

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' the engines puff

In tune to the shovel's song!

We're a shiftin' miles like inches, and we grab a forest here

Just to switch it over yonder so's to leave an angle clear;

We're a pushin' leagues o' swamps aside so's we can hurry by--

An' if we had to do it we would probably switch the sky!

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, it's hard enough

When you're changin' a job gone wrong;

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' there's no rebuff

To the shovel a singin' its song!

You hears it in the mornin' an' you hears it late at night--

It's our battery keepin' action with support o' dynamite;

Oh, you gets it for your dinner, an' the scenery skips along

In a movin' panorama to the chargin' shovel's song!

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' it grabs the scruff

Of a hill an' boosts it along;

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough,

But it gives to the shovel's song!

This is a fight that's fightin', an' the battle's to the death;

There ain't no stoppin' here to rest or even catch your breath;

You ain't no noble hero, an' you leave no gallant name--

You're a fightin' Nature's army, an' it ain't no easy game!

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" Oh, the grade is rough,

An' the way to the end is long,

"Chuff! chuff! chuff!" an' the engines puff

As we lift the landscape along!

ALFRED DAMON RUNYON.

In 1904 an industrial exposition to commemorate the one

hundredth anniversary of the purchase of Louisiana from France

was held at St. Louis, and was attended by millions of people.

The official hymn was written by Edmund Clarence Stedman, and

was sung on the opening day by a chorus of five hundred voices.

HYMN OF THE WEST

O Thou, whose glorious orbs on high

Engird the earth with splendor round,

From out thy secret place draw nigh

The courts and temples of this ground;

Eternal Light,

Fill with thy might

These domes that in thy purpose grew,

And lift a nation's heart anew!

Illumine Thou each pathway here,

To show the marvels God hath wrought!

Since first thy people's chief and seer

Looked up with that prophetic thought,

Bade Time unroll

The fateful scroll,

And empire unto Freedom gave

From cloudland height to tropic wave.

Poured through the gateways of the North

Thy mighty rivers join their tide,

And, on the wings of morn sent forth,

Their mists the far-off peaks divide.

By Thee unsealed,

The mountains yield

Ores that the wealth of Ophir shame,

And gems enwrought of seven-hued flame.

Lo, through what years the soil hath lain

At thine own time to give increase--

The greater and the lesser grain,

The ripening boll, the myriad fleece!

Thy creatures graze

Appointed ways;

League after league across the land

The ceaseless herds obey thy hand.

Thou, whose high archways shine most clear

Above the plenteous Western plain,

Thine ancient tribes from round the sphere

To breathe its quickening air are fain:

And smiles the sun

To see made one

Their brood throughout Earth's greenest space,

Land of the new and lordlier race!

EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.

Particularly noteworthy was the growing sentiment of friendship

between England and America. Not so many years before, the two

countries had seemed on the verge of war, but all such clouds

had long since been swept away.

BRITANNIA TO COLUMBIA

What is the voice I hear

On the wind of the Western Sea?

Sentinel, listen from out Cape Clear,

And say what the voice may be.

"'Tis a proud, free people calling aloud to a people proud and free.

"And it says to them, 'Kinsmen, hail!

We severed have been too long;

Now let us have done with a wornout tale,

The tale of an ancient wrong,

And our friendship last long as love doth last, and be stronger than

death is strong!'"

Answer them, sons of the selfsame race,

And blood of the selfsame clan,

Let us speak with each other, face to face,

And answer as man to man,

And loyally love and trust each other as none but free men can.

Now fling them out to the breeze,

Shamrock, thistle, and rose,

And the Star-Spangled Banner unfurl with these,

A message to friends and foes,

Wherever the sails of peace are seen and wherever the war wind blows.

A message to bond and thrall to wake,

For wherever we come, we twain,

The throne of the tyrant shall rock and quake

And his menace be void and vain,

For you are lords of a strong young land and we are lords of the main.

Yes, this is the voice on the bluff March gale,

"We severed have been too long;

But now we have done with a wornout tale,

The tale of an ancient wrong,

And our friendship shall last long as love doth last and be stronger than

death is strong."

ALFRED AUSTIN.

Within the United States a similar change was taking place. The

old sectional lines of North and South were being forgotten,

as a new generation arose, and the proposal to return to the

South her captured battle flags--a proposal which, a few

years before, had met with frenzied protest from fire-alarm

patriots--received general and hearty approval.

THOSE REBEL FLAGS

DISCUSSED BY "ONE OF THE YANKS"

Shall we send back the Johnnies their bunting,

In token, from Blue to the Gray,

That "Brothers-in-blood" and "Good Hunting"

Shall be our new watchword to-day?

In olden times knights held it knightly

To return to brave foemen the sword;

Will the Stars and the Stripes gleam less brightly

If the old Rebel flags are restored?

Call it sentiment, call it misguided

To fight to the death for "a rag";

Yet, trailed in the dust, derided,

The true soldier still loves his flag!

Does love die, and must honor perish

When colors and causes are lost?

Lives the soldier who ceases to cherish

The blood-stains and valor they cost?

Our battle-fields, safe in the keeping

Of Nature's kind, fostering care,

Are blooming,--our heroes are sleeping,--

And peace broods perennial there.

All over our land rings the story

Of loyalty, fervent and true;

"One flag," and that flag is "Old Glory,"

Alike for the Gray and the Blue.

Why cling to those moth-eaten banners?

What glory or honor to gain

While the nation is shouting hosannas,

Uniting her sons to fight Spain?

Time is ripe, and the harvest worth reaping,

Send the Johnnies their flags f. o. b.,

Address to the care and safe-keeping

Of that loyal "old Reb," Fitzhugh Lee!

Yes, send back the Johnnies their bunting,

With greetings from Blue to the Gray;

We are "Brothers-in-blood," and "Good Hunting"

Is America's watchword to-day.

JOHN H. JEWETT.

On February 24, 1905, Congress directed that the flags be

returned, and they now rest in the capitols of the various

Southern States.

THE SONG OF THE FLAGS

ON THEIR RETURN TO THE STATES OF THE CONFEDERACY

[February 24, 1905]

We loved the wild clamor of battle,

The crash of the musketry's rattle,

The bugle and drum;

We have drooped in the dust, long and lonely;

The blades that flashed joy are rust only,

The far-rolling war music dumb.

God rest the true souls in death lying,

For whom overhead proudly flying

We challenged the foe.

The storm of the charge we have breasted,

On the hearts of our dead we have rested,

In the pride of a day, long ago.

Ah, surely the good of God's making

Shall answer both those past awaking

And life's cry of pain;

But we nevermore shall be tossing

On surges of battle where crossing

The swift-flying death bearers rain.

Again in the wind we are streaming,

Again with the war lust are dreaming

The call of the shell.

What gray heads look up at us sadly?

Are these the stern troopers who madly

Rode straight at the battery's hell?

Nay, more than the living have found us,

Pale spectres of battle around us;

The gray line is dressed.

Ye hear not, but they who are bringing

Your symbols of honor are singing

The song of death's bivouac rest.

Blow forth on the south wind to greet us,

O star flag! once eager to meet us

When war lines were set.

Go carry to far fields of glory

The soul-stirring thrill of the story,

Of days when in anger we met.

Ah, well that we hung in the churches

In quiet, where God the heart searches,

That under us met

Men heard through the murmur of praying

The voice of the torn banners saying,

"Forgive, but ah, never forget."

S. WEIR MITCHELL.

The territories of the West were clamoring for admission to

statehood, and finally, in the summer of 1906, Oklahoma and the

Indian Territory were admitted as one state. Arizona and New

Mexico were offered joint statehood, but the former refused to

link her destinies with her sister territory.

ARIZONA

No beggar she in the mighty hall where her bay-crowned sisters wait,

No empty-handed pleader for the right of a free-born state,

No child, with a child's insistence, demanding a gilded toy,

But a fair-browed, queenly woman, strong to create or destroy--

Wise for the need of the sons she has bred in the school where weaklings

fail,

Where cunning is less than manhood, and deeds, not words, avail--

With the high, unswerving purpose that measures and overcomes,

And the faith in the Farthest Vision that builded her hard-won homes.

Link her, in her clean-proved fitness, in her right to stand alone--

Secure for whatever future in the strength that her past has won--

Link her, in her morning beauty, with another, however fair?

And open your jealous portal and bid her enter there

With shackles on wrist and ankle, and dust on her stately head,

And her proud eyes dim with weeping? No! Bar your doors instead

And seal them fast forever! but let her go her way--

Uncrowned if you will, but unshackled, to wait for a larger day.

Ay! Let her go bare-handed, bound with no grudging gift,

Back to her own free spaces where her rock-ribbed mountains lift

Their walls like a sheltering fortress--back to her house and blood.

And we of her blood will go our way and reckon your judgment good.

We will wait outside your sullen door till the stars you wear grow dim

As the pale dawn-stars that swim and fade o'er our mighty Cañon's rim.

We will lift no hand for the bays ye wear, nor covet your robes of

state--

But ah! by the skies above us all, we will shame ye while we wait!

We will make ye the mold of an empire here in the land ye scorn,

While ye drowse and dream in your well-housed ease that States at your

nod are born.

Ye have blotted your own beginnings, and taught your sons to forget

That ye did not spring fat-fed and old from the powers that bear and

beget.

But the while ye follow your smooth-made roads to a fireside safe of

fears,

Shall come a voice from a land still young, to sing in your age-dulled

ears

The hero song of a strife as fine as your fathers' fathers knew,

When they dared the rivers of unmapped wilds at the will of a bark

canoe--

The song of the deed in the doing, of the work still hot from the hand;

Of the yoke of man laid friendly-wise on the neck of a tameless land.

While your merchandise is weighing, we will bit and bridle and rein

The floods of the storm-rocked mountains and lead them down to the plain;

And the foam-ribbed, dark-hued waters, tired from that mighty race,

Shall lie at the feet of palm and vine and know their appointed place;

And out of that subtle union, desert and mountain-flood,

Shall be homes for a nation's choosing, where no home else had stood.

We will match the gold of your minting, with its mint-stamp dulled and

marred

By the tears and blood that have stained it and the hands that have

clutched too hard,

With the gold that no man has lied for--the gold no woman has made

The price of her truth and honor, plying a shameless trade--

The clean, pure gold of the mountains, straight from the strong, dark

earth,

With no tang or taint upon it from the hour of its primal birth.

The trick of the money-changer, shifting his coins as he wills,

Ye may keep--no Christ was bartered for the wealth of our lavish hills.

"Yet we are a little people--too weak for the cares of state!"

Let us go our way! When ye look again, ye shall find us, mayhap, too

great.

Cities we lack--and gutters where children snatch for bread;

Numbers--and hordes of starvelings, toiling but never fed.

Spare pains that would make us greater in the pattern that ye have set;

We hold to the larger measure of the men that ye forget--

The men who, from trackless forests and prairies lone and far,

Hewed out the land where ye sit at ease and grudge us our fair-won star.

"There yet be men, my masters," though the net that the trickster flings

Lies wide on the land to its bitter shame, and his cunning parleyings

Have deafened the ears of Justice, that was blind and slow of old.

Yet time, the last Great Judge, is not bought, or bribed, or sold;

And Time and the Race shall judge us--not a league of trafficking men,

Selling the trust of the people, to barter it back again;

Palming the lives of millions as a handful of easy coin,

With a single heart to the narrow verge where craft and statecraft join.

SHARLOT M. HALL.

On the morning of Wednesday, April 18, 1906, an appalling

calamity visited California, and especially the great city of

San Francisco. At a few minutes past five o'clock a severe

earthquake shock desolated the cities of the central coast

region, snuffed out hundreds of lives, and destroyed millions

of dollars' worth of property.

SAN FRANCISCO

[April 18, 1906]

Such darkness as when Jesus died!

Then sudden dawn drave all before.

Two wee brown tomtits, terrified,

Flashed through my open cottage door;

Then instant out and off again

And left a stillness like to pain--

Such stillness, darkness, sudden dawn

I never knew or looked upon!

This ardent, Occidental dawn

Dashed San Francisco's streets with gold,

Just gold and gold to walk upon,

As he of Patmos sang of old.

And still, so still, her streets, her steeps,

As when some great soul silent weeps;

And oh, that gold, that gold that lay

Beyond, above the tarn, brown bay!

And then a bolt, a jolt, a chill,

And Mother Earth seemed as afraid;

Then instant all again was still,

Save that my cattle from the shade

Where they had sought firm, rooted clay,

Came forth loud lowing, glad and gay,

Knee-deep in grasses to rejoice

That all was well, with trumpet voice.

Not so yon city--darkness, dust,

Then martial men in swift array,

Then smoke, then flames, then great guns thrust

To heaven, as if pots of clay--

Cathedral, temple, palace, tower--

An hundred wars in one wild hour!

And still the smoke, the flame, the guns

The piteous wail of little ones!

The mad flame climbed the costly steep,

But man, defiant, climbed the flame.

What battles where the torn clouds keep!

What deeds of glory in God's name!

What sons of giants--giants, yea--

Or beardless lad or veteran gray.

Not Marathon nor Waterloo

Knew men so daring, dauntless, true.

Three days, three nights, three fearful days

Of death, of flame, of dynamite,

Of God's house thrown a thousand ways;

Blown east by day, blown west by night--

By night? There was no night. Nay, nay,

The ghoulish flame lit nights that lay

Crouched down between this first, last day.

I say those nights were burned away!

And jealousies were burned away,

And burned were city rivalries,

Till all, white crescenting the bay,

Were one harmonious hive of bees.

Behold the bravest battle won!

The City Beautiful begun:

One solid San Francisco, one,

The fairest sight beneath the sun.

JOAQUIN MILLER.

In San Francisco, fire followed the shock; the water-mains had

been broken, and the flames were soon utterly beyond control,

and raged for two days, destroying the business and principal

residence portions of the city--an area of four square miles.

The loss of life reached a thousand, the property loss three

hundred million dollars.

SAN FRANCISCO

Who now dare longer trust thy mother hand?

So like thee thou hadst not another child;

The favorite flower of all thy Western sand,

She looked up, Nature, in thy face and smiled,

Trustful of thee, all-happy in thy care.

She was thine own, not to be lured away

Down joyless paths of men. Happy as fair,

Held to thy heart--that was she yesterday.

To-day the sea is sobbing her sweet name;

She cannot answer--she that loved thee best,

That clung to thee till Hell's own shock and flame

Wrenched her, swept her, from thy forgetting breast.

Day's darling, playmate of thy wind and sun--

Mother, what hast thou done, what hast thou done!

JOHN VANCE CHENEY.

The whole country rushed to the relief of the stricken state;

the Californians met their losses bravely, and started at once

to build a greater San Francisco.

TO SAN FRANCISCO

If we dreamed that we loved Her aforetime, 'twas the ghost of a dream;

for I vow

By the splendor of God in the highest, we never have loved Her till now.

When Love bears the trumpet of Honor, oh, highest and clearest he calls,

With the light of the flaming of towers, and the sound of the rending of

walls.

When Love wears the purple of Sorrow, and kneels at the altar of Grief,

Of the flowers that spring in his footsteps, the white flower of Service

is chief.

And as snow on the snow of Her bosom, as a star in the night of Her hair,

We bring to our Mother such token as the time and the elements spare.

If we dreamed that we loved Her aforetime, adoring we kneel to Her now,

When the golden fruit of the ages falls, swept by the wind from the

bough.

The beautiful dwelling is shattered, wherein, as a queen at the feast,

In gems of the barbaric tropics and silks of the ultimate East,

Our Mother sat throned and triumphant, with the wise and the great in

their day.

They were captains, and princes, and rulers; but She, She was greater

than they.

We are sprung from the builders of nations; by the souls of our fathers

we swear,

By the depths of the deeps that surround Her, by the height of the

heights she may dare,

Though the Twelve league in compact against Her, though the sea gods cry

out in their wrath,

Though the earth gods, grown drunk of their fury, fling the hilltops

abroad in Her path,

Our Mother of masterful children shall sit on Her throne as of yore,

With Her old robes of purple about Her, and crowned with the crowns that

She wore.

She shall sit at the gates of the world, where the nations shall gather

and meet,

And the East and the West at Her bidding shall lie in a leash at Her

feet.

S. J. ALEXANDER.

The regeneration was moral as wall as physical, for not only

was the town rebuilt, but it was rescued from the corrupt ring

which, for years, had kept control of the city government.

RESURGE SAN FRANCISCO

Behold her Seven Hills loom white

Once more as marble-builded Rome.

Her marts teem with a touch of home

And music fills her halls at night;

Her streets flow populous, and light

Floods every happy, hopeful face;

The wheel of fortune whirls apace

And old-time fare and dare hold sway.

Farewell the blackened, toppling wall,

The bent steel gird, the sombre pall--

Farewell forever, let us pray;

Farewell, forever and a day!

JOAQUIN MILLER.

On June 24, 1908, Grover Cleveland, twice President of the

United States, died at his home in Princeton, N. J., at the age

of seventy-one. His death called forth a remarkable tribute

from men of all parties and in all walks of life--a tribute to

his stainless service of the state, to his honesty, courage,

and fidelity. Lowell had called him "the most typical American

since Lincoln."

GROVER CLEVELAND

[1837-1908]

Bring cypress, rosemary and rue

For him who kept his rudder true;

Who held to right the people's will,

And for whose foes we love him still.

A man of Plutarch's marble mold,

Of virtues strong and manifold,

Who spurned the incense of the hour,

And made the nation's weal his dower.

His sturdy, rugged sense of right

Put selfish purpose out of sight;

Slowly he thought, but long and well,

With temper imperturbable.

Bring cypress, rosemary and rue

For him who kept his rudder true;

Who went at dawn to that high star

Where Washington and Lincoln are.

JOEL BENTON.

One feature of the country's growth has awakened great

uneasiness. Over a million emigrants have been landing every

year upon her shores, and the feeling has grown that America

must cease to be an asylum for the ignorance and vice of Europe.

UNGUARDED GATES

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,

Named of the four winds, North, South, East, and West;

Portals that lead to an enchanted land

Of cities, forests, fields of living gold,

Vast prairies, lordly summits touched with snow,

Majestic rivers sweeping proudly past

The Arab's date-palm and the Norseman's pine--

A realm wherein are fruits of every zone,

Airs of all climes, for lo! throughout the year

The red rose blossoms somewhere--a rich land,

A later Eden planted in the wilds,

With not an inch of earth within its bound

But if a slave's foot press it sets him free.

Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage,

And Honor honor, and the humblest man

Stand level with the highest in the law.

Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed,

And with the vision brightening in their eyes

Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword.

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,

And through them presses a wild motley throng--

Men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes,

Featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho,

Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav,

Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn;

These bringing with them unknown gods and rites,

Those, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws.

In street and alley what strange tongues are loud,

Accents of menace alien to our air,

Voices that once the Tower of Babel knew!

O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well

To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast

Fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of fate,

Lift the down-trodden, but with hands of steel

Stay those who to thy sacred portals come

To waste the gifts of freedom. Have a care

Lest from thy brow the clustered stars be torn

And trampled in the dust. For so of old

The thronging Goth and Vandal trampled Rome,

And where the temples of the Cæsars stood

The lean wolf unmolested made her lair.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH.

The first decade of the new century has witnessed a long

stride forward toward better government. State and Nation have

asserted the right to regulate railroad rates, to abolish

gambling, to supervise the sale of poisons and intoxicants,

to protect the people from impure food, from quackery and

swindling, and to break up combinations in restraint of trade.

NATIONAL SONG

America, my own!

Thy spacious grandeurs rise

Faming the proudest zone

Pavilioned by the skies;

Day's flying glory breaks

Thy vales and mountains o'er,

And gilds thy streams and lakes

From ocean shore to shore.

Praised be thy wood and wold,

Thy corn and wine and flocks,

The yellow blood of gold

Drained from thy cañon rocks;

Thy trains that shake the land,

Thy ships that plough the main,

Triumphant cities grand

Roaring with noise of gain.

Earth's races look to Thee:

The peoples of the world

Thy risen splendors see

And thy wide flag unfurled;

Thy sons, in peace or war,

That emblem who behold,

Bless every shining star,

Cheer every streaming fold!

Float high, O gallant flag,

O'er Carib Isles of palm,

O'er bleak Alaskan crag,

O'er far-off lone Guam;

Where Mauna Loa pours

Black thunder from the deeps;

O'er Mindanao's shores,

O'er Luzon's coral steeps.

Float high, and be the sign

Of love and brotherhood,--

The pledge, by right divine

Of Power, to do good;

For aye and everywhere,

On continent and wave,

Armipotent to dare,

Imperial to save!

WILLIAM HENRY VENABLE.

Especially significant has been the awakening of the public

conscience, the growing intolerance of corruption in office,

the demand for honesty in public as in private life, and

the realization of the fact that the great public service

corporations are accountable to the people and amenable to law.

AD PATRIAM

To deities of gauds and gold,

Land of our Fathers, do not bow!

But unto those beloved of old

Bend thou the brow!

Austere they were of front and form;

Rigid as iron in their aim;

Yet in them pulsed a blood as warm

And pure as flame;--

Honor, whose foster-child is Truth;

Unselfishness in place and plan;

Justice, with melting heart of ruth;

And Faith in man.

Give these our worship; then no fears

Of future foes need fright thy soul;

Triumphant thou shalt mount the years

Toward thy high goal!

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

O LAND BELOVED

From "My Country"

O Land beloved!

My Country, dear, my own!

May the young heart that moved

For the weak words atone;

The mighty lyre not mine, nor the full breath of song!

To happier sons shall these belong.

Yet doth the first and lonely voice

Of the dark dawn the heart rejoice,

While still the loud choir sleeps upon the bough;

And never greater love salutes thy brow

Than his, who seeks thee now.

Alien the sea and salt the foam

Where'er it bears him from his home;

And when he leaps to land,

A lover treads the strand;

Precious is every stone;

No little inch of all the broad domain

But he would stoop to kiss, and end his pain,

Feeling thy lips make merry with his own;

But oh, his trembling reed too frail

To bear thee Time's All-Hail!

Faint is my heart, and ebbing with the passion of thy praise!

The poets come who cannot fail;

Happy are they who sing thy perfect days!

Happy am I who see the long night ended.

In the shadows of the age that bore me,

All the hopes of mankind blending,

Earth awaking, heaven descending,

While the new day steadfastly

Domes the blue deeps over thee!

Happy am I who see the Vision splendid

In the glowing of the dawn before me,

All the grace of heaven blending,

Man arising, Christ descending,

While God's hand in secrecy

Builds thy bright eternity.

GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY.

So America faces the future unafraid,--confident that her

problems will be wisely solved, that a splendid destiny awaits

her, and that "government of the people, by the people, for the

people, shall not perish from the earth."

THE REPUBLIC

From "The Building of the Ship"

Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State!

Sail on, O Union, strong and great!

Humanity with all its fears,

With all the hopes of future years,

Is hanging breathless on thy fate!

We know what Master laid thy keel,

What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel,

Who made each mast, and sail, and rope,

What anvils rang, what hammers beat,

In what a forge and what a heat

Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!

Fear not each sudden sound and shock,

'Tis of the wave and not the rock;

'Tis but the flapping of the sail,

And not a rent made by the gale!

In spite of rock and tempest's roar,

In spite of false lights on the shore,

Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!

Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,

Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,

Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee,--are all with thee!

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW.

CHAPTER VII

THE WORLD WAR

For generations Americans had been taught by the provincially

minded to glory in their "splendid isolation," but the more

discerning perceived that steam and electricity were making

the world smaller and smaller, and that economic causes were

drawing its nations more and more closely together. They

perceived, too, that the democratic theory of government to

which America was consecrated had two staunch champions in

western Europe, France and England, and two implacable enemies,

Germany and Austria; and when, on August 1, 1914, the rulers

of these two empires decreed the war which they hoped would

lead to world power, many Americans felt most keenly that their

country's place was by the side of France and England in their

battle for human freedom.

SONNETS WRITTEN IN THE FALL OF 1914

Awake, ye nations, slumbering supine,

Who round enring the European fray!

Heard ye the trumpet sound? "The Day! the Day!

The last that shall on England's empire shine!

The Parliament that broke the Right Divine

Shall see her realm of reason swept away,

And lesser nations shall the sword obey--

The sword o'er all carve the great world's design!"

So on the English Channel boasts the foe

On whose imperial brow death's helmet nods.

Look where his hosts o'er bloody Belgium go,

And mix a nation's past with blazing sods!

A kingdom's waste! a people's homeless woe!

Man's broken Word, and violated gods!

Far fall the day when England's realm shall see

The sunset of dominion! Her increase

Abolishes the man-dividing seas,

And frames the brotherhood on earth to be!

She, in free peoples planting sovereignty,

Orbs half the civil world in British peace;

And though time dispossess her, and she cease,

Rome-like she greatens in man's memory.

Oh, many a crown shall sink in war's turmoil,

And many a new republic light the sky,

Fleets sweep the ocean, nations till the soil,

Genius be born and generations die,

Orient and Occident together toil,

Ere such a mighty work man rears on high!

Hearken, the feet of the Destroyer tread

The wine-press of the nations; fast the blood

Pours from the side of Europe; in full flood

On the Septentrional watershed

The rivers of fair France are running red!

England, the mother-eyrie of our brood,

That on the summit of dominion stood,

Shakes in the blast: heaven battles overhead!

Lift up thy head, O Rheims, of ages heir

That treasured up in thee their glorious sum;

Upon whose brow, prophetically fair,

Flamed the great morrow of the world to come;

Haunt with thy beauty this volcanic air

Ere yet thou close, O Flower of Christendom!

As when the shadow of the sun's eclipse

Sweeps on the earth, and spreads a spectral air,

As if the universe were dying there,

On continent and isle the darkness dips,

Unwonted gloom, and on the Atlantic slips;

So in the night the Belgian cities flare

Horizon-wide; the wandering people fare

Along the roads, and load the fleeing ships.

And westward borne that planetary sweep,

Darkening o'er England and her times to be,

Already steps upon the ocean-deep!

Watch well, my country, that unearthly sea,

Lest when thou thinkest not, and in thy sleep,

Unapt for war, that gloom enshadow thee!

GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY.

American opinion was especially aroused by Germany's cynical

disregard of her pledge to preserve the neutrality of Belgium,

and by the outrages which crimsoned every step of the invasion

of that little kingdom.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN WALKS AT MIDNIGHT

[In Springfield, Illinois]

It is portentous, and a thing of state

That here at midnight, in our little town,

A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,

Near the old court-house pacing up and down.

Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards

He lingers where his children used to play;

Or through the market, on the well-worn stones

He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.

A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,

A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl

Make him the quaint great figure that men love,

The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.

He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.

He is among us:--as in times before!

And we who toss and lie awake for long

Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.

His head is bowed. He thinks on men and kings.

Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?

Too many peasants fight, they know not why,

Too many homesteads in black terror weep.

The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.

He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.

He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now

The bitterness, the folly and the pain.

He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn

Shall come;--the shining hope of Europe free:

The league of sober folk, the Workers' Earth

Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp, and Sea.

It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,

That all his hours of travail here for men

Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace

That he may sleep upon his hill again?

VACHEL LINDSAY.

On sea, as well as on land, the same policy of "frightfulness"

was followed, and German submarines and raiders, finding

it dangerous to attack British battleships, turned their

attention to unarmed merchantmen. On February 28, 1915, an

American vessel, the William P. Frye, carrying wheat from

Seattle to Queenstown, was sunk by a German raider in the South

Atlantic.

THE "WILLIAM P. FRYE"

[February 28, 1915]

I saw her first abreast the Boston Light

At anchor; she had just come in, turned head,

And sent her hawsers creaking, clattering down.

I was so near to where the hawse-pipes fed

The cable out from her careening bow,

I moved up on the swell, shut steam and lay

Hove to in my old launch to look at her.

She'd come in light, a-skimming up the Bay

Like a white ghost with topsails bellying full;

And all her noble lines from bow to stern

Made music in the wind; it seemed she rode

The morning air like those thin clouds that turn

Into tall ships when sunrise lifts the clouds

From calm sea-courses.

There, in smoke-smudged coats,

Lay funnelled liners, dirty fishing craft,

Blunt cargo-luggers, tugs, and ferry-boats.

Oh, it was good in that black-scuttled lot

To see the Frye come lording on her way

Like some old queen that we had half forgot

Come to her own. A little up the Bay

The Fort lay green, for it was springtime then;

The wind was fresh, rich with the spicy bloom

Of the New England coast that tardily

Escapes, late April, from an icy tomb.

The State-House glittered on old Beacon Hill,

Gold in the sun.... 'Twas all so fair awhile;

But she was fairest--this great square-rigged ship

That had blown in from some far happy isle

Or from the shores of the Hesperides.

They caught her in a South Atlantic road

Becalmed, and found her hold brimmed up with wheat;

"Wheat's contraband," they said, and blew her hull

To pieces, murdered one of our staunch fleet,

Fast dwindling, of the big old sailing ships

That carry trade for us on the high sea

And warped out of each harbor in the States.

It wasn't law, so it seems strange to me--

A big mistake. Her keel's struck bottom now

And her four masts sunk fathoms, fathoms deep

To Davy Jones. The dank seaweed will root

On her oozed decks, and the cross-surges sweep

Through the set sails; but never, never more

Her crew will stand away to brace and trim,

Nor sea-blown petrels meet her thrashing up

To windward on the Gulf Stream's stormy rim;

Never again she'll head a no'theast gale,

Or like a spirit loom up, sliding dumb,

And ride in safe beyond the Boston Light,

To make the harbor glad because she's come.

JEANNE ROBERT FOSTER.

The crowning outrage came on May 7, 1915, when the great Cunard

steamship Lusitania was torpedoed without warning off the coast

of Ireland, and 1153 men, women, and children drowned. Of

these, 114 were Americans.

THE WHITE SHIPS AND THE RED

[May 7, 1915]

With drooping sail and pennant

That never a wind may reach,

They float in sunless waters

Beside a sunless beach.

Their mighty masts and funnels

Are white as driven snow,

And with a pallid radiance

Their ghostly bulwarks glow.

Here is a Spanish galleon

That once with gold was gay,

Here is a Roman trireme

Whose hues outshone the day.

But Tyrian dyes have faded,

And prows that once were bright

With rainbow stains wear only

Death's livid, dreadful white.

White as the ice that clove her

That unforgotten day,

Among her pallid sisters

The grim Titanic lay.

And through the leagues above her

She looked aghast, and said:

"What is this living ship that comes

Where every ship is dead?"

The ghostly vessels trembled

From ruined stern to prow;

What was this thing of terror

That broke their vigil now?

Down through the startled ocean

A mighty vessel came,

Not white, as all dead ships must be,

But red, like living flame!

The pale green waves about her

Were swiftly, strangely dyed,

By the great scarlet stream that flowed

From out her wounded side.

And all her decks were scarlet

And all her shattered crew.

She sank among the white ghost ships

And stained them through and through.

The grim Titanic greeted her.

"And who art thou?" she said;

"Why dost thou join our ghostly fleet

Arrayed in living red?

We are the ships of sorrow

Who spend the weary night,

Until the dawn of Judgment Day,

Obscure and still and white."

"Nay," said the scarlet visitor,

"Though I sink through the sea,

A ruined thing that was a ship,

I sink not as did ye.

For ye met with your destiny

By storm or rock or fight,

So through the lagging centuries

Ye wear your robes of white.

"But never crashing iceberg

Nor honest shot of foe,

Nor hidden reef has sent me

The way that I must go.

My wound that stains the waters,

My blood that is like flame,

Bear witness to a loathly deed,

A deed without a name.

"I went not forth to battle,

I carried friendly men,

The children played about my decks,

The women sang--and then--

And then--the sun blushed scarlet

And Heaven hid its face,

The world that God created

Became a shameful place!

"My wrong cries out for vengeance,

The blow that sent me here

Was aimed in hell. My dying scream

Has reached Jehovah's ear.

Not all the seven oceans

Shall wash away that stain;

Upon a brow that wears a crown

I am the brand of Cain."

When God's great voice assembles

The fleet on Judgment Day,

The ghosts of ruined ships will rise

In sea and strait and bay.

Though they have lain for ages

Beneath the changeless flood,

They shall be white as silver,

But one--shall be like blood.

JOYCE KILMER.

No event since the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor had so

stirred the country with rage and horror. The contention of the

Germans that they were fighting for the freedom of the seas was

indignantly scouted.

MARE LIBERUM

You dare to say with perjured lips,

"We fight to make the ocean free"?

_You_, whose black trail of butchered ships

Bestrews the bed of every sea

Where German submarines have wrought

Their horrors! Have you never thought,--

What you call freedom, men call piracy!

Unnumbered ghosts that haunt the wave

Where you have murdered, cry you down;

And seamen whom you would not save

Weave now in weed-grown depths a crown

Of shame for your imperious head,--

A dark memorial of the dead,--

Women and children whom you sent to drown.

Nay, not till thieves are set to guard

The gold, and corsairs called to keep

O'er peaceful commerce watch and ward,

And wolves to herd the helpless sheep,

Shall men and women look to thee,

Thou ruthless Old Man of the Sea,

To safeguard law and freedom on the deep!

In nobler breeds we put our trust:

The nations in whose sacred lore

The "Ought" stands out above the "Must,"

And honor rules in peace and war.

With these we hold in soul and heart,

With these we choose our lot and part,

Till liberty is safe on sea and shore.

HENRY VAN DYKE.

President Woodrow Wilson warned Germany that the United States

could not stand idly by in the event of further contemptuous

disregard of American rights, and Germany promised to restrict

her submarine warfare; but a great portion of the country felt

there was already more than sufficient cause for war, and many

Americans entered the French aviation corps and Foreign Legion,

or went to Canada and enlisted there, in order to take their

stand at once beside the nations which were battling for human

liberty.

ODE IN MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN VOLUNTEERS FALLEN FOR FRANCE

[To have been read before the statue of Lafayette and Washington in

Paris, on Decoration Day, May 30, 1916]

Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,

Commemorative of our soldier dead,

When--with sweet flowers of our New England May

Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray--

Their graves in every town are garlanded,

That pious tribute should be given too

To our intrepid few

Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas.

Those to preserve their country's greatness died;

But by the death of these

Something that we can look upon with pride

Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied

Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make

That from a war where Freedom was at stake

America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.

Be they remembered here with each reviving spring,

Not only that in May, when life is loveliest,

Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the disputed crest

Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering,

In that fine onslaught that no fire could halt,

Parted impetuous to their first assault;

But that they brought fresh hearts and springlike too

To that high mission, and 'tis meet to strew

With twigs of lilac and spring's earliest rose

The cenotaph of those

Who in the cause that history most endears

Fell in the sunny morn and flower of their young years.

III

Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise,

Nor to be mentioned in another breath

Than their blue-coated comrades whose great days

It was their pride to share--ay, share even to the death!

Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks

(Seeing they came for honor, not for gain),

Who, opening to them your glorious ranks,

Gave them that grand occasion to excel,

That chance to live the life most free from stain

And that rare privilege of dying well.

O friends! I know not since that war began

From which no people nobly stands aloof

If in all moments we have given proof

Of virtues that were thought American.

I know not if in all things done and said

All has been well and good,

Or if each one of us can hold his head

As proudly as he should,

Or, from the pattern of those mighty dead

Whose shades our country venerates to-day,

If we've not somewhat fallen and somewhat gone astray.

But you to whom our land's good name is dear,

If there be any here

Who wonder if her manhood be decreased,

Relaxed its sinews and its blood less red

Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed,

Be proud of these, have joy in this at least,

And cry: "Now, heaven be praised

That in that hour that most imperilled her,

Menaced her liberty who foremost raised

Europe's bright flag of freedom, some there were

Who, not unmindful of the antique debt,

Came back the generous path of Lafayette;

And when of a most formidable foe

She checked each onset, arduous to stem--

Foiled and frustrated them--

On these red fields where blow with furious blow

Was countered, whether the gigantic fray

Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot,

Accents of ours were in the fierce mêlée;

And on that furthest rim of hallowed ground

Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires,

When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound,

And on the tangled wires

The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops,

Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers:--

Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops;

Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours."

There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness,

Their bayonets toward the beckoning frontiers,

They lie--our comrades--lie among their peers,

Clad in the glory of fallen warriors,

Grim clusters under thorny trellises,

Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores,

Leaves that made last year beautiful, still strewn

Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath the changing moon;

And earth in her divine indifference

Rolls on, and many paltry things and mean

Prate to be heard and caper to be seen.

But they are silent, calm; their eloquence

Is that incomparable attitude;

No human presences their witness are,

But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued,

And showers and night winds and the northern star.

Nay, even our salutations seem profane,

Opposed to their Elysian quietude;

Our salutations coming from afar,

From our ignobler plane

And undistinction of our lesser parts:

Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts.

Double your glory is who perished thus,

For you have died for France and vindicated us.

ALAN SEEGER.

Germany lived up to her agreement only in partial and grudging

fashion, and the climax came on January 31, 1917, when the

German Government announced that an unrestricted submarine

warfare against all ships encountered on the seas would begin

next day. President Wilson at once handed the German Ambassador

his passports, and on April 2, after the sinking of three

American ships without warning, appeared before Congress and

asked that war be declared. After thirteen hours of debate, the

Senate passed the necessary resolution; the House concurred on

April 5, and the next day the President issued a proclamation

declaring that "a state of war exists between the United States

and the Imperial German Government."

REPUBLIC TO REPUBLIC

1776-1917

France!

It is I answering.

America!

And it shall be remembered not only in our lips but in our hearts

And shall awaken forever familiar and new as the morning

That we were the first of all lands

To be lovers,

To run to each other with the incredible cry

Of recognition.

Bound by no ties of nearness or of knowledge

But of the nearness of the heart,

You chose me then--

And so I choose you now

By the same nearness--

And the name you called me then

I call you now--

O Liberty, my Love!

WITTER BYNNER.

The Entente Powers welcomed their new ally with bursting

hearts, for a decisive victory, which was becoming more and

more hopeless, now seemed assured.

TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Brothers in blood! They who this wrong began

To wreck our commonwealth, will rue the day

When first they challenged freemen to the fray,

And with the Briton dared the American.

Now are we pledged to win the Rights of man;

Labor and Justice now shall have their way,

And in a League of Peace--God grant we may--

Transform the earth, not patch up the old plan.

Sure is our hope since he who led your nation

Spake for mankind, and ye arose in awe

Of that high call to work the world's salvation;

Clearing your minds of all estranging blindness

In the vision of Beauty and the Spirit's law,

Freedom and Honor and sweet Loving-kindness.

ROBERT BRIDGES.

One of the first acts of the government was to seize all enemy

ships in American ports--which, of course, included Hawaii,

Porto Rico and the Philippines. These were at once overhauled

and put into service under American command.

THE CAPTIVE SHIPS AT MANILA

Our keels are furred with tropic weed that clogs the crawling tides

And scarred with crust of salt and rust that gnaws our idle sides;

And little junks they come and go, and ships they sail at dawn;

And all the outbound winds that blow they call us to be gone,

As yearning to the lifting seas our gaunt flotilla rides,

Drifting aimless to and fro,

Sport of every wind a-blow,

Swinging to the ebb and flow

Of lazy tropic tides.

And once we knew the clean seaways to sail them pridefully;

And once we met the clean sea winds and gave them greeting free;

And honest craft, they spoke us fair, who'd scorn to speak us now;

And little craft, they'd not beware to cross a German bow

When yet the flag of Germany had honor on the sea.

And now, of all that seaward fare,

What ship of any port is there

But would dip her flag to a black corsair

Ere she'd signal such as we!

Yet we are ribbed with Norseland steel and fleshed with Viking pine,

That's fashioned of the soil which bred the hosts of Charlemagne;

And clad we are with rusting pride of stays and links and plates

That lay within the mountain side where Barbarossa waits--

The mighty Frederick thralled in sleep, held by the ancient sign,

While yet the ravens circle wide

Above that guarded mountain side,

Full fed with carrion from the tide

Of swinish, red rapine!

Oh, we have known the German men when German men were true,

And we have borne the German flag when honor was her due;

But sick we are of honest scorn from honest merchant-men--

The winds they call us to be gone down to the seas again--

Down to the seas where waves lift white and gulls they sheer in the blue,

Shriven clean of our blood-bought scorn

By a foeman's flag--ay, proudly borne!

Cleaving out in the good red dawn--

Out again to the blue!

DOROTHY PAUL.

Every effort was bent toward getting an army into the field

in the shortest possible time. General John J. Pershing was

appointed to command the American Expeditionary Forces,

and started for France. The National Guard was mobilized,

volunteers called for, and the First Division of regulars was

loaded on transports and, on June 14, headed out to sea.

THE ROAD TO FRANCE

Thank God our liberating lance

Goes flaming on the way to France!

To France--the trail the Gurkhas found!

To France--old England's rallying ground!

To France--the path the Russians strode!

To France--the Anzac's glory road!

To France--where our Lost Legion ran

To fight and die for God and man!

To France--with every race and breed

That hates Oppression's brutal creed!

Ah France--how could our hearts forget

The path by which came Lafayette?

How could the haze of doubt hang low

Upon the road of Rochambeau?

At last, thank God! At last we see

There is no tribal Liberty!

No beacon lighting just our shores!

No Freedom guarding but our doors!

The flame she kindled for our sires

Burns now in Europe's battle fires!

The soul that led our fathers west

Turns back to free the world's oppressed!

Allies, you have not called in vain;

We share your conflict and your pain.

"Old Glory," through new stains and rents,

Partakes of Freedom's sacraments.

Into that hell his will creates

We drive the foe--his lusts, his hates.

Last come, we will be last to stay,

Till Right has had her crowning day.

Replenish, comrades, from our veins,

The blood the sword of despot drains,

And make our eager sacrifice

Part of the freely-rendered price

You pay to lift humanity--

You pay to make our brothers free!

See, with what proud hearts we advance

To France!

DANIEL HENDERSON.

General Pershing, with his staff, reached England early in

June, and crossed to France a few days later. On the Fourth

of July, a parade of American troops took place in Paris,

proceeding to the Picpus cemetery, where General Pershing

placed a wreath on the tomb of Lafayette. Legend has it that he

said simply, "Lafayette, we are here."

PERSHING AT THE TOMB OF LAFAYETTE

[July 4, 1917]

They knew they were fighting our war. As the months grew to years

Their men and their women had watched through their blood and their tears

For a sign that we knew, we who could not have come to be free

Without France, long ago. And at last from the threatening sea

The stars of our strength on the eyes of their weariness rose,

And he stood among them, the sorrow-strong hero we chose

To carry our flag to the tomb of that Frenchman whose name

A man of our country could once more pronounce without shame.

What crown of rich words would he set for all time on this day?

The past and the future were listening what he would say--

Only this, from the white-flaming heart of a passion austere,

Only this--ah, but France understood! "Lafayette, we are here!"

AMELIA JOSEPHINE BURR.

An army of at least 2,000,000 men was needed at once; to

secure it with the least possible disturbance of the country's

economic life, Congress passed a bill providing for a selective

draft of all men between twenty-one and thirty. Great

training-camps were built, and by September, the training of

the National Army was in full swing, while the National Guard

regiments, which had already had some training, were started on

their way to France.

YOUR LAD, AND MY LAD

Down toward the deep-blue water, marching to throb of drum,

From city street and country lane the lines of khaki come;

The rumbling guns, the sturdy tread, are full of grim appeal,

While rays of western sunshine flash back from burnished steel.

With eager eyes and cheeks aflame the serried ranks advance;

And your dear lad, and my dear lad, are on their way to France.

A sob clings choking in the throat, as file on file sweep by,

Between those cheering multitudes, to where the great ships lie;

The batteries halt, the columns wheel, to clear-toned bugle-call,

With shoulders squared and faces front they stand a khaki wall.

Tears shine on every watcher's cheek, love speaks in every glance;

For your dear lad, and my dear lad, are on their way to France.

Before them, through a mist of years, in soldier buff or blue,

Brave comrades from a thousand fields watch now in proud review;

The same old Flag, the same old Faith--the Freedom of the World--

Spells Duty in those flapping folds above long ranks unfurled.

Strong are the hearts which bear along Democracy's advance,

As your dear lad, and my dear lad, go on their way to France.

The word rings out; a million feet tramp forward on the road,

Along that path of sacrifice o'er which their fathers strode.

With eager eyes and cheeks aflame, with cheers on smiling lips,

These fighting men of '17 move onward to their ships.

Nor even love may hold them back, or halt that stern advance,

As your dear lad, and my dear lad, go on their way to France.

RANDALL PARRISH.

Germany had boasted that we could never get an army to

Europe past her submarines, but so efficient was the system

of protection worked out by the navy, that only one loaded

transport was sunk. Early in February, 1918, the Tuscania,

carrying 2179 American soldiers, was torpedoed off the north

coast of Ireland. British destroyers rescued all but about two

hundred before the ship sank. Nearly all the bodies were washed

ashore and were tenderly buried.

A CALL TO ARMS

[February 5, 1918]

It is I, America, calling!

Above the sound of rivers falling,

Above the whir of the wheels and the chime of bells in the steeple

--Wheels, rolling gold into the palms of the people--

Bells ringing silverly clear and slow

To church-going, leisurely steps on pavements below.

Above all familiar sounds of the life of a nation

I shout to you a name.

And the flame of that name is sped

Like fire into hearts where blood runs red--

The hearts of the land burn hot to the land's salvation

As I call across the long miles, as I, America, call to my nation

_Tuscania! Tuscania!_

Americans, remember the _Tuscania_!

Shall we not remember how they died

In their young courage and loyalty and pride,

Our boys--bright-eyed, clean lads of America's breed,

Hearts of gold, limbs of steel, flower of the nation indeed?

How they tossed their years to be

Into icy waters of a winter sea

That we whom they loved--that the world which they loved should be free?

Ready, ungrudging, they died, each one thinking, likely, as the moment

was come

Of the dear, starry flag, worth dying for, and then of dear faces at

home;

Going down in good order, with a song on their lips of the land of the

free and the brave

Till each young, deep voice stopped--under the rush of a wave.

Was it like that? And shall their memory ever grow pale?

Not ever, till the stars in the flag of America fail.

It is I, America, who swear it, calling

Over the sound of that deep ocean's falling,

_Tuscania! Tuscania!_

Arm, arm, Americans! Remember the _Tuscania_!

Very peacefully they are sleeping

In friendly earth, unmindful of a nation's weeping,

And the kindly, strange folk that honored the long, full graves, we know;

And the mothers know that their boys are safe, now, from the hurts of a

savage foe;

It is for us who are left to make sure and plain

That these dead, our precious dead, shall not have died in vain;

So that I, America, young and strong and not afraid,

I set my face across that sea which swallowed the bodies of the sons I

made,

I set my eyes on the still faces of boys washed up on a distant shore

And I call with a shout to my own to end this horror forevermore!

In the boys' names I call a name,

And the nation leaps to fire in its flame

And my sons and my daughters crowd, eager to end the shame--

It is I, America, calling,

Hoarse with the roar of that ocean falling,

_Tuscania! Tuscania!_

Arm, arm, Americans! And remember, remember, the _Tuscania_!

MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS.

Meanwhile, in France, the Americans were already taking part

in the war. About the middle of October, the First division

had been sent into a heretofore quiet sector of the trenches

beyond Einville, in Lorraine. On October 25, we took our first

prisoner; a few days later, we had our first wounded; and

finally before dawn on the morning of November 3, came a swift

German raid in which three Americans were killed, five wounded

and eleven taken prisoner. The three, whose names were Corporal

James D. Gresham, Private Thomas F. Enright, and Private Merle

D. Hay, were buried at Bathlemont next day, with touching

ceremonies.

THE FIRST THREE

[November 3, 1917]

"Somewhere in France," upon a brown hillside,

They lie, the first of our brave soldiers slain;

Above them flowers, now beaten by the rain,

Yet emblematic of the youths who died

In their fresh promise. They who, valiant-eyed,

Met death unfaltering have not fallen in vain;

Remembrance hallows those who thus attain

The final goal; their names are glorified.

Read then the roster!--Gresham! Enright! Hay!--

No bugle call shall rouse them when the flower

Of morning breaks above the hills and dells,

For they have grown immortal in an hour,

And we who grieve and cherish them would lay

Upon their hillside graves our immortelles!

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

TO AMERICA, ON HER FIRST SONS FALLEN IN THE GREAT WAR

Now you are one with us, you know our tears,

Those tears of pride and pain so fast to flow;

You too have sipped the first strange draught of woe;

You too have tasted of our hopes and fears;

Sister across the ocean, stretch your hand,

Must we not love you more, who learn to understand?

There are new graves in France, new quiet graves;

The first-fruit of a Nation great and free,

Full of rich fire of life and chivalry.

Lie quietly, though tide of battle laves

Above them; sister, sister, see our tears,

We mourn with you, who know so well the bitter years.

Now do you watch with us; your pain of loss

Lit by a wondrous glow of love and power

That flowers, star-like at the darkest hour

Lighting the eternal message of the Cross;

They gain their life who lose it, earth shall rise

Anew and cleansed, because of life's great sacrifice.

And that great band of souls your dead have met,

Who saved the world in centuries past and gone,

Shall find new comrades in their valiant throng;

O, Nation's heart that cannot e'er forget,

Is not death but the door to life begun

To those who hear far Heaven cry, "Well done!"

E. M. WALKER.

Training proceeded rapidly, and the sectors where its final

stages took place became more and more lively as the Americans

were gradually given a freer and freer hand.

ROUGE BOUQUET

[March 7, 1918]

In a wood they call the Rouge Bouquet

There is a new-made grave to-day,

Built by never a spade nor pick

Yet covered with earth ten metres thick.

There lie many fighting men,

Dead in their youthful prime,

Never to laugh nor love again

Nor taste the Summertime.

For Death came flying through the air

And stopped his flight at the dugout stair.

Touched his prey and left them there,

Clay to clay.

He hid their bodies stealthily

In the soil of the land they fought to free

And fled away.

Now over the grave abrupt and clear

Three volleys ring;

And perhaps their brave young spirits hear

The bugle sing:

"Go to sleep!

Go to sleep!

Slumber well where the shell screamed and fell

Let your rifles rest on the muddy floor,

You will not need them any more.

Danger's past;

Now at last,

Go to sleep!"

There is on earth no worthier grave

To hold the bodies of the brave

Than this place of pain and pride

Where they nobly fought and nobly died.

Never fear but in the skies

Saints and angels stand

Smiling with their holy eyes

On this new-come band.

St. Michael's sword darts through the air

And touches the aureole on his hair

As he sees them stand saluting there,

His stalwart sons:

And Patrick, Brigid, Columkill

Rejoice that in veins of warriors still

The Gael's blood runs.

And up to Heaven's doorway floats,

From the wood called Rouge Bouquet,

A delicate cloud of bugle notes

That softly say:

"Farewell!

Farewell!

Comrades true, born anew, peace to you!

Your souls shall be where the heroes are

And your memory shine like the morning-star.

Brave and dear,

Shield us here.

Farewell!"

JOYCE KILMER.

The great summons came in the spring of 1918, for on March

21 the Germans began a series of terrific attacks which they

believed would end the war. On March 31 an official note

announced that "the Star-Spangled Banner will float beside the

French and English flags in the plains of Picardy." On April 17

the order came for the First Division to move into the battle

area.

MARCHING SONG

[April 17, 1918]

When Pershing's men go marching into Picardy.

Marching, marching into Picardy--

With their steel aslant in the sunlight and their great gray hawks a-wing

And their wagons rumbling after them like thunder in the Spring--

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp

Till the earth is shaken--

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp

Till the dead towns waken!

And flowers fall and shouts arise from Chaumont to the sea--

When Pershing's men go marching, marching into Picardy.

Women of France, do you see them pass to the battle in the North?

And do you stand in the doorways now as when your own went forth?

Then smile to them and call to them, and mark how brave they fare

Upon the road to Picardy that only youth may dare!

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

Foot and horse and caisson--

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

Such is Freedom's passion--

And oh, take heart, ye weary souls that stand along the Lys,

For the New World is marching, marching into Picardy!

April's sun is in the sky and April's in the grass--

And I doubt not that Pershing's men are singing as they pass--

For they are very young men, and brave men, and free,

And they know why they are marching, marching into Picardy.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

Rank and file together--

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

Through the April weather.

And never Spring has thrust such blades against the light of dawn

As yonder waving stalks of steel that move so shining on!

I have seen the wooden crosses at Ypres and Verdun,

I have marked the graves of such as lie where the Marne waters run,

And I know their dust is stirring by hill and vale and lea,

And their souls shall be our captains who march to Picardy.

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

Hope shall fail us never--

Tramp, tramp, tramp, tramp,

Forward, and forever!

And God is in His judgment seat, and Christ is on His tree--

And Pershing's men are marching, marching into Picardy.

DANA BURNET.

On June 2, the Second and Third Divisions met and checked the

enemy at Château-Thierry. The Marne offensive was followed

sharply by another on the part of the British, with whom our

Twenty-Seventh Division was fighting, and on August 8 the

Twenty-Seventh broke through the famous Hindenburg line.

OUR MODEST DOUGHBOYS

[August 8, 1918]

Said the Captain: "There was wire

A mile deep in No Man's Land,

And the concentrated fire

Was all mortal nerve could stand;

But these huskies craved the chance

To go out and leave their bones!"

_"The climate's quite some damp in France,"

Said Private Thomas Jones._

Said the Major: "What is more,

At the point where we attacked,

Tough old veterans loudly swore

Hindy's line could not be cracked.

But the 27th said,

'Hindenburg! That guy's a myth!'"

_"I slept last night in a reg'lar bed,"

Said Private Johnny Smith._

Said the Colonel: "They had placed

Pillboxes on the crests.

I can safely say we faced

Maybe thousands of those nests.

But our doughboys took one height

Seven times in that hell's hail."

_"And were the cooties thick? Good night!"

Said Private William Dale._

Said the General: "We were told

Anything we'd start they'd stop--

That the Boche would knock us cold

When we slid across the top.

But the 7th with a yell

Made the Prussian Guards back down."

_"You oughta lamped the smile on Nell!"

Said Private Henry Brown._

Said the Sergeant: "Every shell

Seemed to whine, 'Old scout, you're dead!'

And I thought I'd gone to hell

In a blizzard of hot lead.

But each bloomin' gunner stuck

At his post by his machine."

_"Our orders said to hold it, Buck!"

Said Private Peter Green._

Said the Chaplain: "Talk of pep!

They were there! And, may I add,

When we clambered up the step

That last fight, we only had

Eighty men of Company D--

Every one, I'll say, a man!"

_"And am I glad I'm home? Ah, oui!"

Said Private Mike McCann._

CHARLTON ANDREWS.

Early in September eight American divisions were concentrated

on the Lorraine front and organized into the First American

Army. On September 12 an assault in force was made against the

St. Mihiel salient, which had threatened France for four years.

Twenty-four hours later the salient was ours, together with

15,000 prisoners.

SEICHEPREY

[September 12, 1918]

A handful came to Seicheprey

When winter woods were bare,

When ice was in the trenches

And snow was in the air.

The foe looked down on Seicheprey

And laughed to see them there.

The months crept by at Seicheprey

The growing handful stayed,

With growling guns at midnight,

At dawn, the lightning raid,

And learned, in Seicheprey trenches,

How war's red game is played.

September came to Seicheprey;

A slow-wrought host arose

And rolled across the trenches

And whelmed its sneering foes,

And left to shattered Seicheprey

Unending, sweet repose.

Two weeks later we began our greatest battle in an attack on

the strong German positions running from the Meuse westward

through the Argonne forest. It was in this battle that perhaps

the most remarkable single exploit of the war was performed,

when Corporal Alvin C. York, a young giant from the mountains

of Tennessee, who had been sent forward with a small squad

to clean up some machine-gun nests, killed single-handed

twenty-eight Germans, and came back with 132 prisoners.

A BALLAD OF REDHEAD'S DAY

[October 8, 1918]

Talk of the Greeks at Thermopylæ!

They fought like mad till the last was dead;

But Alvin C. York, of Tennessee,

Stayed cool to the end though his hair was red,

Stayed mountain cool, yet blazed that gray

October the Eighth as Redhead's Day.

With rifle and pistol and redhead nerve

He captured one hundred and thirty-two;

A battalion against him, he did not swerve

From the Titans' task they were sent to do--

Fourteen men under Sergeant Early

And York, the blacksmith, big and burly.

Sixteen only, but fighters all,

They dared the brood of a devil's nest,

And three of those that did not fall

Were wounded and out of the scrap; the rest

Were guarding a bunch of Boche they'd caught,

When both were trapped by a fresh onslaught.

Excepting York, who smiled "Amen,"

And, spotting the nests of spitting guns,

Potted some twenty birds, and then

Did with his pistol for eight more Huns

Who thought they could crush a Yankee alive

In each red pound of two hundred and five.

That was enough for kill-babe Fritz:

Ninety in all threw up their hands,

Suddenly tender as lamb at the Ritz,

Milder than sheep to a York's commands;

And back to his line he drove the herd,

Gathering more on the way--Absurd!

Absurd, but true--ay, gospel fact;

For here was a man with a level head,

Who, scorning to fail for the help he lacked,

Helped himself till he won instead;

An elder was he in the Church of Christ,

Immortal at thirty; his faith sufficed.

RICHARD BUTLER GLAENZER.

While our Argonne offensive was in progress, the French and

English had been striking mighty blows at other portions of the

German line, and everywhere the enemy was in retreat. Realizing

that their power was broken and to save themselves from

imminent disaster, the Germans asked for an armistice. It was

offered on terms so drastic that many thought the Germans would

not sign, but they did, and at eleven o'clock on the morning of

November 11, 1918, firing ceased all along the front.

VICTORY BELLS

I heard the bells across the trees,

I heard them ride the plunging breeze

Above the roofs from tower and spire,

And they were leaping like a fire,

And they were shining like a stream

With sun to make its music gleam.

Deep tones as though the thunder tolled,

Cool voices thin as tinkling gold,

They shook the spangled autumn down

From out the tree-tops of the town;

They left great furrows in the air

And made a clangor everywhere

As of metallic wings. They flew

Aloft in spirals to the blue

Tall tent of heaven and disappeared.

And others, swift as though they feared

The people might not heed their cry

Went shouting VICTORY up the sky.

They did not say that war is done,

Only that glory has begun

Like sunrise, and the coming day

Will burn the clouds of war away.

There will be time for dreams again,

And home-coming for weary men.

GRACE HAZARD CONKLING.

America had lost nearly fifty thousand men killed in battle,

and immediately after the armistice, work was begun gathering

together their bodies, scattered over many battlefields, and

re-interring them in beautiful cemeteries, where their graves

would be perpetually cared for and honored.

EPICEDIUM

IN MEMORY OF AMERICA'S DEAD IN THE GREAT WAR

No more for them shall Evening's rose unclose,

Nor Dawn's emblazoned panoplies be spread;

Alike, the Rain's warm kiss, and stabbing snows,

Unminded, fall upon each hallowed head.

But the Bugles as they leap and wildly sing,

Rejoice, ... remembering.

The guns' mad music their young years have known--

War's lullabies that moaned on Flanders Plain;

To-night the wind walks on them, still as stone,

Where they lie huddled close as riven grain.

But the Drums, reverberating, proudly roll--

They love a Soldier's soul!

With arms outflung, and eyes that laughed at Death,

They drank the wine of sacrifice and loss;

For them a life-time spanned a burning breath,

And Truth they visioned, clean of earthly dross.

But the Fifes--can ye not hear their lusty shriek?

They know, and now they speak!

The lazy drift of cloud, the noon-day hum

Of vagrant bees, the lark's untrammeled song

Shall gladden them no more, who now lie dumb

In Death's strange sleep, yet once were swift and strong.

But the Bells that to all living listeners peal,

With joy their deeds reveal!

They have given their lives, with bodies bruised and broken,

Upon their Country's altar they have bled;

They have left, as priceless heritage, a token

That Honor lives forever with the dead.

And the Bugles, as their rich notes rise and fall--

They answer, knowing all.

J. CORSON MILLER.

THE DEAD

Think you the dead are lonely in that place?

They are companioned by the leaves and grass,

By many a beautiful and vanished face,

By all the strange and lovely things that pass.

Sunsets and dawnings and the starry vast,

The swinging moon, the tracery of trees--

These they shall know more perfectly at last,

They shall be intimate with such as these.

'Tis only for the living Beauty dies,

Fades and drifts from us with too brief a grace,

Beyond the changing tapestry of skies

Where dwells her perfect and immortal face.

For us the passage brief;--the happy dead

Are ever by great beauty visited.

DAVID MORTON.

THE UNRETURNING

For us, the dead, though young,

For us, who fought and bled,

Let a last song be sung,

And a last word be said!

Dreams, hopes, and high desires,

That leaven and uplift,

On sacrificial fires

We offered as a gift.

We gave, and gave our all,

In gladness, though in pain;

Let not a whisper fall

That we have died in vain!

CLINTON SCOLLARD.

To America's soldier dead was added, on January 6, 1919, a

valiant and righteous warrior, Theodore Roosevelt, whose sudden

death at the age of sixty-one was a shock to the whole country.

THE STAR

[January 6, 1919]

Great soul, to all brave souls akin,

High bearer of the torch of truth,

Have you not gone to marshal in

Those eager hosts of youth?

Flung outward by the battle's tide,

They met in regions dim and far;

And you--in whom youth never died--

Shall lead them, as a star!

MARION COUTHOUY SMITH.

Arrangements for sending home the American army were begun

immediately after the armistice, and within a few months a

steady stream of khaki-clad troops was flowing through the port

of Brest, bound for America.

BREST LEFT BEHIND

The sun strikes gold the dirty street,

The band blares, the drums insist,

And brown legs twinkle and muscles twist--

Pound!--Pound!--the rhythmic feet.

The laughing street-boys shout,

And a couple of hags come out

To grin and bob and clap.

Stiff rusty black their dresses,

And crispy white their Breton cap,

Prim on white, smooth tresses.

Wait!... Wait!... While dun clouds droop

Over the sunlit docks,

Over the wet gray rocks

And mast of steamer and sloop,

And the old squat towers,

Damp gray and mossy brown,

Where lovely Ann looked down

And dreamed rich dreams through long luxurious hours.

Sudden and swift, it rains!

Familiar, fogging, gray;

It blots the sky away

And cuts the face with biting little pains.

We grunt and poke shoes free of muddy cakes,

Watching them messing out

Upon the dock in thick brown lakes--

"No more French mud!" the sergeant cries,

And someone swears, and someone sighs,

And the neat squads swing about.

Silent the looming hulk above--

No camouflage this time--

She's white and tan and black!

Hurry, bend, climb,

Push forward, stagger back!

How clean the wide deck seems,

The bunks, how trim;

And, oh, the musty smell of ships!

Faces are set and grim,

Thinking of months, this hope was pain;

And eyes are full of dreams,

And gay little tunes come springing to the lips--

Home, home, again, again!

She's moving now,

Across the prow

The dusk-soft harbor bursts

Into a shivering bloom of light

From warehouse, warship, transport, tramp,

And countless little bobbing masts

Each flouts the night

With eager boastful lamp--

Bright now, now dimmer, dimmer,

Fewer and fewer glimmer.

Only the lights that mark the passing shore,

Lofty and lonely star the gray--

Then are no more.

We are alone with dusk and creamy spray.

The captain coughs, remembering the rain.

The major coughs remembering the mud.

Some shudder at the horror of dark blood,

Or wine-wet kisses, lewd.

Some sigh, remembering new loves and farewell pain.

Some smile, remembering old loves to be renewed.

Silent, we stare across the deepening night.

France vanishing!--Swift, swift, the curling waves--

Fights and despair,

And faces fair;

Proud heads held high

For Victory;

And flags above friends' graves.

The group buzzes, rustles, hums,

Then stiffens as the colonel comes,

A burly figure in the mellow light,

With haughty, kingly ways.

He does not scan the night,

Nor hissing spray that flies,

But his cold old glance plays

Along the level of our eyes.

"I don't see very many tears," he says.

JOHN CHIPMAN FARRAR.

America went wild in welcoming them, as they arrived division

after division. There were parades and celebrations; but with

surprising swiftness the divisions were demobilized and the men

returned to civil life.

TO THE RETURNING BRAVE

Victorious knights without reproach or fear--

As close as man is ever to the stars!--

Our welcome met you on the ocean drear

In loud, free winds and sunset's golden bars.

Here, at our bannered gate

Love, honor, laurels wait.

Though you be humble, we are proud, and, in your stead, elate.

Fame shall not tire to tell, no sordid stain

Lies on your purpose, on your record none.

No broken word, no violated fane,

No winning one could wish had ne'er been won.

You were our message sent

To the torn Continent:

That with its hope and faith henceforth our faith and hope are blent.

You of our new, our homespun chivalry,

Here is your welcome--in all women's eyes,

The envious handclasp, romping children's glee,

Music, and color, and glad tears that rise.

Here every voice of Peace

Shall bruit our joy, nor cease

To vie with shotless guns to shout your blameless victories.

But, though you are a part of all men's pride,

And from your fortitude new nations date,

Oh, lay not yet your sacred steel aside,

But save it for the still-imperiled State.

You who have bound a girth

Of new hope round the Earth,

Should its firm bond be loosened here, what were your struggle worth?

A redder peril dogs the path of war;

With fire and poison wanton children play;

And fickle crowds toward new pretenders pour

Who summon demons they can never lay.

Already we can hear,

Importunately near,

The snarling of the savage crew, half fury and half jeer.

Then hang not up your arms till you have taught

The ungrateful guests about our hearth and board

That in your swift encounter has been wrought

A keener edge to our reluctant sword.

You who know well the price

Of the great sacrifice,

Your courage saved us once; pray Heaven, it need not save us twice.

And those who come not back, who mutely lie

By Marne or Meuse or tangled Argonne wood:

_Were it to lose the gain_, (let them reply!)

_Would we recall their spirits if we could?_

Open your ranks and save

Their places with the brave,

That Liberty may greet you all, her shields of land and wave.

ROBERT UNDERWOOD JOHNSON.

Amid all the celebrations, there was always the consciousness

of those who would not return, in body, at least, but whose

spirits would never be severed from America's.

THE RETURN

Golden through the golden morning,

Who is this that comes

With the pride of banners lifted,

With the roll of drums?

With the self-same triumph shining

In the ardent glance,

That divine, bright fate defiance

That you bore to France.

You! But o'er your grave in Flanders

Blow the winter gales;

Still for sorrow of your going

All life's laughter fails.

Borne on flutes of dawn the answer:

"O'er the foam's white track,

God's work done, so to our homeland

Comes her hosting back.

"Come the dead men with the live men

From the marshes far,

From the mounds in no man's valley,

Lit by cross nor star.

"Come to blend with hers the essence

Of their strength and pride,

All the radiance of the dreaming

For whose truth they died."

So the dead men with the live men

Pass, an hosting fair,

And the stone is rolled forever

From the soul's despair.

ELEANOR ROGERS COX.

One distinguished visitor was welcomed by the American people

as they welcomed their own sons--King Albert, of Belgium, who

made an extensive tour of the United States in the summer of

1919.

KING OF THE BELGIANS

How spoke the King, in his crucial hour victorious?

The words of a high decision, few, but glorious.

What was the choice he made, that all fear surmounted?

The choice of a man--that leaves not the soul uncounted.

What did the King, in bitter defeat and sorrow?

He stood as a god, foreseeing a great to-morrow.

How fought the King? In silent and stern persistence;

Patience and power within, and hope in the distance.

What was the gift he won, in the fire that tried him?

The deathless love of his own, who fought beside him.

What is his crown, the noblest of all for wearing?

The homage of hearts that beat for his splendid bearing.

Robe and sceptre and crown--what are these for holding?

Vesture and sign for his spirit's royal moulding.

What speaks he now, in the hour of faith victorious?

Words of a quiet gladness, few, but glorious.

Then, as we greet him, what shall be ours to render?

Silence that shines, and speech that is proud and tender!

MARION COUTHOUY SMITH.

Meanwhile, at Paris, the Peace Conference, under the leadership

of President Woodrow Wilson, who had broken all precedents by

going to Europe, was struggling with the peace treaty. For

America, the great conflict had been a war to end war, and the

President insisted that provisions to establish a League of

Nations should be made an integral part of the treaty.

THE FAMILY OF NATIONS

With that pathetic impudence of youth,

America, half-formed, gigantic and uncouth,

Stretching great limbs, in something of surprise

Beholds new meaning written on the skies.

Out of the granite, Time has reared a State

Haughty and fearless, awkward, passionate--

For all his dreaming and his reckless boast,

Betrayed by those whom he has trusted most.

Years of stern peril knit that welded frame,

Banded those arms and set that heart aflame,

Burdened those loins with vigor of increase,

Gave to his hand a weapon forged to peace.

He cannot turn the discovering hour aside,

He feels the stir that will not be denied,

And in the family the Nations plan

Forgets the boy and finds himself a man!

WILLARD WATTLES.

After months of struggle and negotiation, this purpose was

achieved, and on July 10, 1919, the President laid the treaty

before the Senate for confirmation. Strong opposition to the

League of Nations developed immediately, on the ground that it

interfered with America's independence and freedom of action,

and various "reservations" were proposed, limiting America's

participation. These the President refused to accept, and

finally, after eight months of bitter debate, largely partisan

and personal, the Senate rejected the treaty March 19, 1920.

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Lo, Joseph dreams his dream again,

And Joan leads her armies in the night,

And somewhere near, the Master from His cross

Lifts his hurt hands and heals the world again!

For from the great red welter of the world,

Out from the tides of its red suffering

Comes the slow sunrise of the ancient dream--

Is flung the glory of its bright imagining.

See how it breaks in beauty on the world,

Shivers and shudders on its trembling way--

Shivers and waits and trembles to be born!

America, young daughter of the gods, swing out,

Strong in the beauty of virginity,

Fearless in thine unquestioned leadership,

And hold the taper to the nations' torch,

And light the hearthfires of the halls of home.

Thine must it be to break an unpathed way,

To lift the torch for world's in-brothering--

To bring to birth this child of all the earth,

Formed of the marriage of all nations;

Else shall we go, the head upon the breast,

A Cain without a country, a Judas at the board!

MARY SIEGRIST.

BEYOND WARS

FOR THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

Then will a quiet gather round the door,

And settle on those evening fields again,

Where women watch the slow, home-coming men

Across brown acres hoofed and hurt no more,

The sound of children's feet be on the floor,

When lamps are lit, and stillness deeper falls,

Unbroken, save where cattle in their stalls

Keep munching patiently upon their store.

Only a scar beside the pasture gate,

A torn and naked tree upon the hill,

What times remembered, will remind them still

Of long disastrous days they knew of late;

Till these, too, yield for sweet, accustomed things,--

And a man ploughs, a woman sews and sings.

DAVID MORTON.

It was a revival of the old idea of "splendid isolation" on

the part of men whose gaze was backward and who had learned

nothing from the war. To all others, however, it is evident

that America must take her place with the other peoples of the

earth at the council-table of the League of Nations, and do her

part toward the establishment of peace and liberty throughout

the world.

"WHEN THERE IS PEACE"

"When there is Peace, our land no more

Will be the land we knew of yore."

Thus do our facile seers foretell

The truth that none can buy or sell

And e'en the wisest must ignore.

When we have bled at every pore,

Shall we still strive for gear and store?

Will it be heaven? Will it be hell?

When there is Peace?

This let us pray for, this implore:

That, all base dreams thrust out at door,

We may in loftier aims excel

And, like men waking from a spell,

Grow stronger, nobler, than before,

When there is Peace.

AUSTIN DOBSON.

AFTER THE WAR

After the war--I hear men ask--what then?

As though this rock-ribbed world, sculptured with fire,

And bastioned deep in the ethereal plan,

Can never be its morning self again

Because of this brief madness, man with man;

As though the laughing elements should tire,

The very seasons in their order reel;

As though indeed yon ghostly golden wheel

Of stars should cease from turning, or the moon

Befriend the night no more, or the wild rose

Forget the world, and June be no more June.

How many wars and long-forgotten woes

Unnumbered, nameless, made a like despair

In hearts long stilled; how many suns have set

On burning cities blackening the air,--

Yet dawn came dreaming back, her lashes wet

With dew, and daisies in her innocent hair.

Nor shall, for this, the soul's ascension pause,

Nor the sure evolution of the laws

That out of foulness lift the flower to sun,

And out of fury forge the evening star.

Deem not Love's building of the world undone--

Far Love's beginning was, her end is far;

By paths of fire and blood her feet must climb,

Seeking a loveliness she scarcely knows,

Whose meaning is beyond the reach of Time.

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.

NOTES AND INDEXES

NOTES

Page 3. THE STORY OF VINLAND. The discovery of America by the

Norsemen is as well authenticated as any other fact of tenth-century

history, and much better authenticated than most. There can be no

doubt of the substantial accuracy of the Icelandic chronicle, and Mr.

Lanier has followed it very closely.

Page 3. _Stout Are Marson._ Are Marsson. The stories concerning

him and "Huitramannaland" are believed to be purely fanciful,

an embroidery of fiction upon the historical background of the

chronicles. There is no evidence that the Norsemen ever got farther

south than Cape Cod, or, at most, Point Judith.

Page 7. _Mid-ships with iron keel._ The Norse boats had neither "iron

keel" nor "ribs of steel." Keel and ribs were made of oak, and no

evidence has been found of metallic sheathing. The size of these

ships is usually underestimated. They were larger, stronger, and

more seaworthy than those of Columbus. There is one in the museum at

Christiania seventy-eight feet long, seventeen feet beam, and nearly

six feet in depth. She carried a crew of at least thirty-five men.

Henry Hudson's Half Moon carried a crew of only sixteen.

Page 7. _The lofty tower._ The old stone tower at Newport, around

whose origin controversy raged for many years, but which is now

believed to have been built by Benedict Arnold, governor of Newport,

about 1676, for a windmill. The reader is referred to Palfrey's

"History of New England," i, 57; Fiske's "Discovery of America," i,

214; and Drake's "New England Legends and Folk-lore," 393.

Page 7. _Beyond the limits he had vainly set._ The Pillars of

Hercules, Gibraltar and Cape Serra.

Page 9. _St. Stephen's cloistered hall._ The conference was held at

the Dominican convent of St. Stephen, at Salamanca.

Page 10. _Cordova's sage._ Seneca.

Page 12. _The far-seeing Marchioness._ Beatriz de Bobadilla,

Marchioness of Moya, the bosom friend of the Queen, and a devoted

admirer of Columbus. She happened to be with the Queen when Santangel

rushed in demanding audience and told of Columbus's departure, and

added her eloquence to his.

Page 14. _Pedro Gutierrez._ Pilot of the Santa Maria.

Page 14. _Sanchez of Segovia._ Roderigo Sanchez, inspector-general of

the armament.

Page 16. _A Castilla y á Leon._ "To Castile and Leon Columbus gave a

new world." This was the motto annexed to the coat of arms granted to

Columbus.

Page 21. _The shining Cèpango._ Cipango was the name given by Marco

Polo to an island east of Asia, supposed to be the modern Japan. It

was Cipango which Columbus and all the voyagers for half a century

after him were seeking.

Page 25. _Old Las Casas._ Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566), a

Spanish Dominican, celebrated as a defender of the Indians against

their Spanish conquerors.

Page 30. _Moscoso._ Luis de Moscoso, who took charge of the

expedition after De Soto's death.

Page 30. _Six thousand of our foemen._ The native loss was greatly

exaggerated. It probably did not exceed five hundred.

Page 30. _And eighty-two of Spain._ The Spanish loss was 170. The

scene of the battle is supposed to have been what is now known as

Choctaw Bluff, in Clarke County, Alabama.

Page 31. _The cities of the Zuñi._ Coronado's expedition reached

Cibola early in July, 1540, and a few days later carried it by storm

and subdued the whole district, but found no treasure. A detailed

account of the expedition will be found in Winsor's "Narrative and

Critical History of America," ii, 473-503.

Page 34. _Good Bernard._ Bernard of Cluny, a French Benedictine monk

of the twelfth century, author of "De Contemptu Mundi," popularly

known through Neale's translation, "Jerusalem the Golden."

Page 34. _Do not fear._ The last words Gilbert is known to have

spoken were the famous "We are as near to heaven by sea as by land."

These are said to have been heard on board the companion ship, the

Hind, a short time before the Squirrel disappeared.

Page 38. POCAHONTAS. This imaginative tale, from which all other

narratives of the event are derived, appears in the second chapter

of the third book of Smith's "The Generall Historie of Virginia, New

England, and the Summer Isles" (London, 1622), and is as follows:--

"At last they brought him to _Meronoco moco_, where was Powhatan,

their emperor. Here more than two hundred of these grim courtiers

stood wondering at him as he had been a monster, till Powhatan and

his train had put themselves in their greatest braveries. Before a

fire, upon a seat like a bedstead, he sat covered with a great robe,

made of Rarowcun skins, and all the tails hanging by. On either hand

did sit a young wench of 16 or 18 years, and along on each side of

the house, two rows of men, and behind them as many women, with all

their heads and shoulders painted red; many of their heads bedecked

with the white down of birds; but every one with something: and

a great chain of white beads about their necks. At his entrance

before the King, all the people gave a great shout. The queen of

_Appamatuck_ was appointed to bring him water to wash his hands,

and another brought him a bunch of feathers, instead of a towel to

dry them: having feasted him after their best barbarous manner they

could, a long consultation was held, but the conclusion was, two

great stones were brought before Powhatan; then as many as could

laid hand on him, dragged him to them, and thereon laid his head,

and being ready with their clubs to beat out his brains, Pocahontas,

the king's dearest daughter, when no entreaty could prevail, got

his head in her arms, and laid her own upon his to save him from

death: whereat the emperor was contented he should live to make him

hatchets, and her bells, beads, and copper: for they thought him as

well of all occupations as themselves. For the king himself will make

his own robes, shoes, bows, arrows, pots; plant, hunt, or do anything

so well as the rest.

"They say he bore a pleasant show,

But sure his heart was sad,

For who can pleasant be, and rest,

That lives in fear and dread:

And having life suspected, doth

It still suspected lead."

In spite of which, it is generally agreed among historians that no

such incident ever occurred. One can only remark that Smith seems to

have had a genius for imaginative detail worthy of Defoe.

Page 40. _Richard Rich_ was a soldier and adventurer who accompanied

Captain Newport in the Sea Venture, and experienced all the dangers

and hardships of that remarkable voyage. He finally got back

to England in 1610, and on the first day of October, published

this poem, his object being, as he says in a brief and broadly

humorous preface, to "spread the truth" about the new colony, whose

attractions had so impressed him that he was resolved to return

thither with Captain Newport in the following year. He speaks of

another book of his soon to be issued, also devoted to a description

of the colony, but no copy of it has ever been discovered, nor is

anything known concerning Rich's subsequent adventures. A copy of

his "Newes from Virginia" was found in 1864 in Lord Charlemont's

collection, and is now in the Huth Library.

Page 40. _Gates._ Sir Thomas Gates, lieutenant-general of the new

company.

Page 40. _Newport._ Christopher Newport (1565?-1617) had had an

adventurous career as a corsair in the West Indies, where he sacked

four Spanish towns, and destroyed no less than twenty Spanish vessels.

Page 40. _Eleaven months._ June 2, 1609-May 24, 1610.

Page 40. _Inhabited by hogges._ The descendants, presumably, of those

left by the Spaniards.

Page 40. _Two only._ Six of the company died on the island.

Page 40. _A son and daughter._ These details are confirmed in "A

True Repertory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates

upon and from the Islands of the Bermudas," or from Silas Jourdan's

"Discovery of the Barmudas ... by Sir T. Gates ... with divers

others" (1610); to both of which Shakespeare is said to have been

indebted for the groundwork of "The Tempest."

Before the living bronze Saint-Gaudens made