Quinine and potash, peppermint in bars,
And all the oils and essences so keen
That druggists keep in rows of stoppered jars--
Now, blender of strange drugs more volatile,
The master pharmacist of joy and pain
Dispenses sadness tinctured with a smile
And laughter that dissolves in tears again.
O brave apothecary! You who knew
What dark and acid doses life prefers
And yet with friendly face resolved to brew
These sparkling potions for your customers--
In each prescription your Physician writ
You poured your rich compassion and your wit!
FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET (1816)
"On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer."
I knew a scientist, an engineer,
Student of tensile strengths and calculus,
A man who loved a cantilever truss
And always wore a pencil on his ear.
My friend believed that poets all were queer,
And literary folk ridiculous;
But one night, when it chanced that three of us
Were reading Keats aloud, he stopped to hear.
Lo, a new planet swam into his ken!
His eager mind reached for it and took hold.
Ten years are by: I see him now and then,
And at alumni dinners, if cajoled,
He mumbles gravely, to the cheering men:--
_Much have I travelled in the realms of gold._
TWO O'CLOCK
Night after night goes by: and clocks still chime
And stars are changing patterns in the dark,
And watches tick, and over-puissant Time
Benumbs the eager brain. The dogs that bark,
The trains that roar and rattle in the night,
The very cats that prowl, all quiet find
And leave the darkness empty, silent quite:
Sleep comes to chloroform the fretting mind.
So all things end: and what is left at last?
Some scribbled sonnets tossed upon the floor,
A memory of easy days gone past,
A run-down watch, a pipe, some clothes we wore--
And in the darkened room I lean to know
How warm her dreamless breath does pause and flow.
THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER
Ah very sweet! If news should come to you
Some afternoon, while waiting for our eve,
That the great Manager had made me leave
To travel on some territory new;
And that, whatever homeward winds there blew,
I could not touch your hand again, nor heave
The logs upon our hearth and bid you weave
Some wistful tale before the flames that grew....
Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind
Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could
Remember rightly, and forget aright?
Remember just your lad, uncouthly good,
Forgetting when he failed in spleen or spite?
Could you remember him as always kind?
THE WEDDED LOVER
I read in our old journals of the days
When our first love was April-sweet and new,
How fair it blossomed and deep-rooted grew
Despite the adverse time; and our amaze
At moon and stars and beauty beyond praise
That burgeoned all about us: gold and blue
The heaven arched us in, and all we knew
Was gentleness. We walked on happy ways.
They said by now the path would be more steep,
The sunsets paler and less mild the air;
Rightly we heeded not: it was not true.
We will not tell the secret--let it keep.
I know not how I thought those days so fair
These being so much fairer, spent with you.
TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST
When we were parted, sweet, and darkness came,
I used to strike a match, and hold the flame
Before your picture and would breathless mark
The answering glimmer of the tiny spark
That brought to life the magic of your eyes,
Their wistful tenderness, their glad surprise.
Holding that mimic torch before your shrine
I used to light your eyes and make them mine;
Watch them like stars set in a lonely sky,
Whisper my heart out, yearning for reply;
Summon your lips from far across the sea
Bidding them live a twilight hour with me.
Then, when the match was shrivelled into gloom,
Lo--you were with me in the darkened room.
CHARLES AND MARY
(December 27, 1834.)
Lamb died just before I left town, and Mr. Ryle of
the E. India House, one of his extors., notified it to me....
He said Miss L. was resigned and composed at the
event, but it was from her malady, then in mild type, so
that when she saw her brother dead, she observed on his
beauty when asleep and apprehended nothing further.
--Letter of John Rickman, 24 January, 1835.
I hear their voices still: the stammering one
Struggling with some absurdity of jest;
Her quiet words that puzzle and protest
Against the latest outrage of his fun.
So wise, so simple--has she never guessed
That through his laughter, love and terror run?
For when her trouble came, and darkness pressed,
He smiled, and fought her madness with a pun.
Through all those years it was his task to keep
Her gentle heart serenely mystified.
If Fate's an artist, this should be his pride--
When, in that Christmas season, he lay dead,
She innocently looked. "I always said
That Charles is really handsome when asleep."
TO A GRANDMOTHER
At six o'clock in the evening,
The time for lullabies,
My son lay on my mother's lap
With sleepy, sleepy eyes!
(_O drowsy little manny boy,_
_With sleepy, sleepy eyes!_)
I heard her sing, and rock him,
And the creak of the swaying chair,
And the old dear cadence of the words
Came softly down the stair.
And all the years had vanished,
All folly, greed, and stain--
The old, old song, the creaking chair,
The dearest arms again!
(_O lucky little manny boy,_
_To feel those arms again!_)
DIARISTS
They catalogue their minutes: Now, now, now,
Is Actual, amid the fugitive;
Take ink and pen (they say) for that is how
We snare this flying life, and make it live.
So to their little pictures, and they sieve
Their happinesses: fields turned by the plough,
The afterglow that summer sunsets give,
The razor concave of a great ship's bow.
O gallant instinct, folly for men's mirth!
Type cannot burn and sparkle on the page.
No glittering ink can make this written word
Shine clear enough to speak the noble rage
And instancy of life. All sonnets blurred
The sudden mood of truth that gave them birth.
THE LAST SONNET
Suppose one knew that never more might one
Put pen to sonnet, well loved task; that now
These fourteen lines were all he could allow
To say his message, be forever done;
How he would scan the word, the line, the rhyme,
Intent to sum in dearly chosen phrase
The windy trees, the beauty of his days,
Life's pride and pathos in one verse sublime.
How bitter then would be regret and pang
For former rhymes he dallied to refine,
For every verse that was not crystalline....
And if belike this last one feebly rang,
Honor and pride would cast it to the floor
Facing the judge with what was done before.
THE SAVAGE
Civilization causes me
Alternate fits: disgust and glee.
Buried in piles of glass and stone
My private spirit moves alone,
Where every day from eight to six
I keep alive by hasty tricks.
But I am simple in my soul;
My mind is sullen to control.
At dusk I smell the scent of earth,
And I am dumb--too glad for mirth.
I know the savors night can give,
And then, and then, I live, I live!
No man is wholly pure and free,
For that is not his destiny,
But though I bend, I will not break:
And still be savage, for Truth's sake.
God damns the easily convinced
(Like Pilate, when his hands he rinsed).
ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH
I stood on the pavement
Where I could admire
Behind the brown chapel
The cream and gold spire.
Above, gilded Lightning
Swam high on his ball--
I saw the noon shadow
The church of St. Paul.
And was there a meaning?
(My fancy would run),
Saint Paul in the shadow,
Saint Frank in the sun!
ADVICE TO A CITY
O city, cage your poets! Hem them in
And roof them over from the April sky--
Clatter them round with babble, ceaseless din,
And drown their voices with your thunder cry.
Forbid their free feet on the windy hills,
And harness them to daily ruts of stone--
(In florists' windows lock the daffodils)
And never, never let them be alone!
For they are curst, said poets, curst and lewd,
And freedom gives their tongues uncanny wit,
And granted silence, thought and solitude
They (_absit omen!_) might make Song of it.
So cage them in, and stand about them thick,
And keep them busy with their daily bread;
And should their eyes seem strange, ah, then be quick
To interrupt them ere the word be said....
For, if their hearts burn with sufficient rage,
With wasted sunsets and frustrated youth,
Some day they'll cry, on some disturbing page,
The savage, sweet, unpalatable truth!
THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY
No Malory of old romance,
No Crusoe tale, it seems to me,
Can equal in rich circumstance
This telephone directory.
No ballad of fair ladies' eyes,
No legend of proud knights and dames,
Can fill me with such bright surmise
As this great book of numbered names!
How many hearts and lives unknown,
Rare damsels pining for a squire,
Are waiting for the telephone
To ring, and call them to the wire.
Some wait to hear a loved voice say
The news they will rejoice to know
At Rome 2637 J
Or Marathon 1450!
And some, perhaps, are stung with fear
And answer with reluctant tread:
The message they expect to hear
Means life or death or daily bread.
A million hearts here wait our call,
All naked to our distant speech--
I wish that I could ring them all
And have some welcome news for each!
GREEN ESCAPE
At three o'clock in the afternoon
On a hot September day,
I began to dream of a highland stream
And a frostbit russet tree;
Of the swashing dip of a clipper ship
(White canvas wet with spray)
And the swirling green and milk-foam clean
Along her canted lee.
I heard the quick staccato click
Of the typist's pounding keys,
And I had to brood of a wind more rude
Than that by a motor fanned--
And I lay inert in a flannel shirt
To watch the rhyming seas
Deploy and fall in a silver sprawl
On a beach of sun-blanched sand.
There is no desk shall tame my lust
For hills and windy skies;
My secret hope of the sea's blue slope
No clerkly task shall dull;
And though I print no echoed hint
Of adventures I devise,
My eyes still pine for the comely line
Of an outbound vessel's hull.
When I elope with an autumn day
And make my green escape,
I'll leave my pen to tamer men
Who have more docile souls;
For forest aisles and office files
Have a very different shape,
And it's hard to woo the ocean blue
In a row of pigeon holes!
[Illustration:
_My eyes still pine for the comely line_
_Of an outbound vessel's hull._]
VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS
(_Instead of "Marathon" the commuter may substitute_
_the name of his favorite suburb_)
The stars are kind to Marathon,
How low, how close, they lean!
They jostle one another
And do their best to please--
Indeed, they are so neighborly
That in the twilight green
One reaches out to pick them
Behind the poplar trees.
The stars are kind to Marathon,
And one particular
Bright planet (which is Vesper)
Most lucid and serene,
Is waiting by the railway bridge,
The Good Commuter's Star,
The Star of Wise Men coming home
On time, at 6:15!
THE ICE WAGON
I'd like to split the sky that roofs us down,
Break through the crystal lid of upper air,
And tap the cool still reservoirs of heaven.
I'd empty all those unseen lakes of freshness
Down some vast funnel, through our stifled streets.
I'd like to pump away the grit, the dust,
Raw dazzle of the sun on garbage piles,
The droning troops of flies, sharp bitter smells,
And gush that bright sweet flood of unused air
Down every alley where the children gasp.
And then I'd take a fleet of ice wagons--
Big yellow creaking carts, drawn by wet horses,--
And drive them rumbling through the blazing slums.
In every wagon would be blocks of coldness,
Pale, gleaming cubes of ice, all green and silver,
With inner veins and patterns, white and frosty;
Great lumps of chill would drip and steam and shimmer,
And spark like rainbows in their little fractures.
And where my wagons stood there would be puddles,
A wetness and a sparkle and a coolness.
My friends and I would chop and splinter open
The blocks of ice. Bare feet would soon come pattering,
And some would wrap it up in Sunday papers,
And some would stagger home with it in baskets,
And some would be too gay for aught but sucking,
Licking, crunching those fast melting pebbles,
Gulping as they slipped down unexpected--
Laughing to perceive that secret numbness
Amid their small hot persons!
At every stop would be at least one urchin
Would take a piece to cool the sweating horses
And hold it up against their silky noses--
And they would start, and then decide they liked it.
Down all the sun-cursed byways of the town
Our wagons would be trailed by grimy tots,
Their ragged shirts half off them with excitement!
Dabbling toes and fingers in our leakage,
A lucky few up sitting with the driver,
All clambering and stretching grey-pink palms.
And by the time the wagons were all empty
Our arms and shoulders would be lame with chopping,
Our backs and thighs pain-shot, our fingers frozen.
But how we would recall those eager faces,
Red thirsty tongues with ice-chips sliding on them,
The pinched white cheeks, and their pathetic gladness.
Then we would know that arms were made for aching--
I wish to God that I could go tomorrow!
AT A MOVIE THEATRE
How well he spoke who coined the phrase
_The picture palace!_ Aye, in sooth
A palace, where men's weary days
Are crowned with kingliness of youth.
Strange palace! Crowded, airless, dim,
Where toes are trod and strained eyes smart,
We watch a wand of brightness limn
The old heroics of the heart.
Romance again hath us in thrall
And Love is sweet and always true,
And in the darkness of the hall
Hands clasp--as they were meant to do.
Remote from peevish joys and ills
Our souls, _pro tem_, are purged and free:
We see the sun on western hills,
The crumbling tumult of the sea.
We are the blond that maidens crave,
Well balanced at a dozen banks;
By sleight of hand we haste to save
A brown-eyed life, nor stay for thanks!
Alas, perhaps our instinct feels
Life is not all it might have been,
So we applaud fantastic reels
Of shadow, cast upon a screen!
SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE
I
Each morn she crackles upward, tread by tread,
All apprehensive of some hideous sight:
Perhaps the Fourth Floor Back, who reads in bed,
Forgot his gas and let it burn all night--
The Sweet Young Thing who has the middle room,
She much suspects: for once some ink was spilled,
And then the plumber, in an hour of gloom,
Found all the bathroom pipes with tea-leaves filled.
No League of Nations scheme can make her gay--
She knows the rank duplicity of man;
Some folks expect clean towels every day,
They'll get away with murder if they can!
She tacks a card (alas, few roomers mind it)
_Please leave the tub as you would wish to find it!_
II
Men lodgers are the best, the Mrs. said:
They don't use my gas jets to fry sardines,
They don't leave red-hot irons on the spread,
They're out all morning, when a body cleans.
A man ain't so secretive, never cares
What kind of private papers he leaves lay,
So I can get a line on his affairs
And dope out whether he is likely pay.
But women! Say, they surely get my bug!
They stop their keyholes up with chewing gum,
Spill grease, and hide the damage with the rug,
And fry marshmallows when their callers come.
They always are behindhand with their rents--
Take my advice and let your rooms to gents!
[Illustration:
_A man ain't so secretive, never cares_
_What kind of private papers he leaves lay_--]
THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS)
About these roaring cylinders
Where leaping words and paper mate,
A sudden glory moves and stirs--
An inky cataract in spate!
What voice for falsehood or for truth,
What hearts attentive to be stirred--
How dimly understood, in sooth,
The power of the printed word!
These flashing webs and cogs of steel
Have shaken empires, routed kings,
Yet never turn too fast to feel
The tragedies of humble things.
O words, be strict in honesty,
Be just and simple and serene;
O rhymes, sing true, or you will be
Unworthy of this great machine!
DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD?
Across the court there rises the back wall
Of the Magna Carta Apartments.
The other evening the people in the apartment opposite
Had forgotten to draw their curtains.
I could see them dining: the well-blanched cloth,
The silver and glass, the crystal water jug,
The meat and vegetables; and their clean pink hands
Outstretched in busy gesture.
It was pleasant to watch them, they were so human;
So gay, innocent, unconscious of scrutiny.
They were four: an elderly couple,
A young man, and a girl--with lovely shoulders
Mellow in the glow of the lamp.
They were sitting over coffee, and I could see their hands talking.
At last the older two left the room.
The boy and girl looked at each other....
Like a flash, they leaned and kissed.
Good old human race that keeps on multiplying!
A little later I went down the street to the movies,
And there I saw all four, laughing and joking together.
And as I watched them I felt like God--
Benevolent, all-knowing, and tender.
RAPID TRANSIT
(To Stephen Vincent Benét.)
Climbing is easy and swift on Parnassus!
Knocking my pipe out, I entered a bookshop;
There found a book of verse by a young poet.
Comrades at once, how I saw his mind glowing!
Saw in his soul its magnificent rioting--
Then I ran with him on hills that were windy,
Basked and laughed with him on sun-dazzled beaches,
Glutted myself on his green and blue twilights,
Watched him disposing his planets in patterns,
Tumbling his colors and toys all before him.
I questioned life with him, his pulses my pulses;
Doubted his doubts, too, and grieved for his anguishes.
Salted long kinship and knew him from boy-hood--
Pulled out my own sun and stars from my knapsack,
Trying my trinkets with those of his finding--
_And as I left the bookshop_
_My pipe was still warm in my hand._
CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW
Colin, worshipping some frail,
By self-deprecation sways her:
Calls himself unworthy male,
Hardly even fit to praise her.
But this tactic insincere
In the upshot greatly grieves him
When he finds the lovely dear
Quite implicitly believes him.
TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS
_Who Rallied Him for Praising Blue Eyes in His Verses_
If sometimes, in a random phrase
(For variation in my ditty),
I chance blue eyes, or gray, to praise
And seem to intimate them pretty--
It is because I do not dare
With too unmixed reiteration
To sing the browner eyes and hair
That are my true intoxication.
Know, then, that I consider brown
For ladies' eyes, the only color;
And deem all other orbs in town
(Compared to yours), opaquer, duller.
I pray, perpend, my dearest dear;
While blue-eyed maids the praise were drinking,
How insubstantial was their cheer--
It was of yours that I was thinking!
PEACE
What is this Peace
That statesmen sign?
How I have sought
To make it mine.
Where groaning cities
Clang and glow
I hunted, hunted,
Peace to know.
And still I saw
Where I passed by
Discarded hearts,--
Heard children cry.
By willowed waters
Brimmed with rain
I thought to capture
Peace again.
I sat me down
My Peace to hoard,
But Beauty pricked me
With a sword.
For in the stillness
Something stirred,
And I was crippled
For a word.
There is no peace
A man can find;
The anguish sits
His heart behind.
The eyes he loves,
The perfect breast,
Too exquisite
To give him rest.
This is his curse
Since brain began.
His penalty
For being man.
May, 1919
SONG, IN DEPRECATION
OF PULCHRITUDE
Beauty (so the poets say),
Thou art joy and solace great;
Long ago, and far away
Thou art safe to contemplate,
Beauty. But when now and here,
Visible and close to touch,
All too perilously near,
Thou tormentest us too much!
In a picture, in a song,
In a novel's conjured scenes,
Beauty, that's where you belong,
Where perspective intervenes.
But, my dear, in rosy fact
Your appeal I have to shirk--
You disturb me, and distract
My attention from my work!
MOUNTED POLICE
Watchful, grave, he sits astride his horse,
Draped with his rubber poncho, in the rain;
He speaks the pungent lingo of "The Force,"
And those who try to bluff him, try in vain.
Inured to every mood of fool and crank,
Shrewdly and sternly all the crowd he cons:
The rain drips down his horse's shining flank,
A figure nobly fit for sculptor's bronze.
O knight commander of our city stress,
Little you know how picturesque you are!
We hear you cry to drivers who transgress:
"_Say, that's a helva place to park your car!_"
[Illustration: _Mounted Police._]
TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT
HE IS NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY
Why did not Fate to me bequeath an Utterance Elizabethan?
It would have been delight to me
If _natus ante_ 1603.
My stuff would not be soon forgotten
If I could write like Harry Wotton.
I wish that I could wield the pen
Like William Drummond of Hawthornden.
I would not fear the ticking clock
If I were Browne of Tavistock.
For blithe conceits I would not worry
If I were Raleigh, or the Earl of Surrey.
I wish (I hope I am not silly?)
That I could juggle words like Lyly.
I envy many a lyric champion,
I. e., viz., e. g., Thomas Campion.
I creak my rhymes up like a derrick,
I ne'er will be a Robin Herrick.
My wits are dull as an old Barlow--
I wish that I were Christopher Marlowe.
In short, I'd like to be Philip Sidney,
Or some one else of that same kidney.
For if I were, my lady's looks
And all my lyric special pleading
Would be in all the future books,
And called, at college, _Required Reading_.
THE INTRUDER
As I sat, to sift my dreaming
To the meet and needed word,
Came a merry Interruption
With insistence to be heard.
Smiling stood a maid beside me,
Half alluring and half shy;
Soft the white hint of her bosom--
Escapade was in her eye.
"I must not be so invaded,"
(In an anger then I cried)--
"Can't you see that I am busy?
Tempting creature, stay outside!
"Pearly rascal, I am writing:
I am now composing verse--
Fie on antic invitation:
Wanton, vanish--fly--disperse!
"Baggage, in my godlike moment
What have I to do with thee?"
And she laughed as she departed--
"I am Poetry," said she.
TIT FOR TAT
I often pass a gracious tree
Whose name I can't identify,
But still I bow, in courtesy
It waves a bough, in kind reply.
I do not know your name, O tree
(Are you a hemlock or a pine?)
But why should that embarrass me?
Quite probably you don't know mine.
[Illustration: _Courtesy_]
SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE
I'm glad our house is a little house,
Not too tall nor too wide:
I'm glad the hovering butterflies
Feel free to come inside.
Our little house is a friendly house.
It is not shy or vain;
It gossips with the talking trees,
And makes friends with the rain.
And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green
Against our whited walls,
And in the phlox, the courteous bees
Are paying duty calls.
THE PLUMPUPPETS
When little heads weary have gone to their bed,
When all the good nights and the prayers have been said,
Of all the good fairies that send bairns to rest
The little Plumpuppets are those I love best.
_If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat,_
_The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at;_
_They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat--_
_The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!_
The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds:
They have nothing to do but to watch sleepy heads;
They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight,
And they dance on your pillow to wish you good night!
No matter what troubles have bothered the day,
Though your doll broke her arm or the pup ran away;
Though your handies are black with the ink that was spilt--
Plumpuppets are waiting in blanket and quilt.
_If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat,
The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at;
They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat--
The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!_
[Illustration: _The Plumpuppets_]
DANDY DANDELION
When Dandy Dandelion wakes
And combs his yellow hair,
The ant his cup of dewdrop takes
And sets his bed to air;
The worm hides in a quilt of dirt
To keep the thrush away,
The beetle dons his pansy shirt--
They know that it is day!
And caterpillars haste to milk
The cowslips in the grass;
The spider, in his web of silk,
Looks out for flies that pass.
These humble people leap from bed,
They know the night is done:
When Dandy spreads his golden head
They think he is the sun!
Dear Dandy truly does not smell
As sweet as some bouquets;
No florist gathers him to sell,
He withers in a vase;
Yet in the grass he's emperor,
And lord of high renown;
And grateful little folk adore
His bright and shining crown.
THE HIGH CHAIR
Grimly the parent matches wit and will:
Now, Weesy, three more spoons! See Tom the cat,
_He'd_ drink it. You want to be big and fat
Like Daddy, don't you? (Careful now, don't spill!)
Yes, Daddy'll dance, and blow smoke through his nose,
But you must finish first. Come, drink it up--
(_Splash_!) Oh, you _must_ keep both hands on the cup.
All gone? Now for the prunes....
And so it goes.