The fountain from His side;
O Calvary, O Calvary,
Behold the Crucified!
Yet not the cruel thorns are worst
Nor blood of anguish spilt,
But that the sinless One is curst
For all the race’s guilt;
And as His pleading face I scan
All history cries--“Behold the Man!”
Yet as I on His visage marred
With guilt and sorrow gaze
It changes from the beauty scarred
To time’s most wondrous face.
A glory as of Heaven breaks
Upon the crown of thorn
And every tortured feature takes
A love by passion born;
For as His pleading face I scan
All history cries--“Behold the Man!”
THE LOVE THAT WASHED HIS FEET
She came as at supper the Lord reclined,
She came with purpose sweet;
Not of the host’s or servant’s kind
Withheld from Him at meat;
For she came to wash His feet.
She watered them with tears of grief,
She wiped them with her hair,
She kissed them till she found relief
And words of pardon there
As she knelt to wash His feet.
She loved the most because she knew
Forgiveness so great;
She loved, and nothing else could do
To prove her love complete
But to wash her Savior’s feet.
No goodly laver did she own,
No costly perfume bring;
But hers was the truest service shown
Whose faith the world will sing
As the love which washed His feet.
O sinner, the Savior’s present still
Beside Compassion’s seat
To pardon whosoever will
The woman’s trust repeat
And kiss the Savior’s feet!
Let contrite tears be mercy’s plea
And love its passion press
Upon the feet of ministry
That came to save and bless
The hands which clasp His feet!
MISCELLANEOUS
THE SHUT AND OPEN HAND
THE FIST
I shut my eyes and opened them,
And while they were shut I saw
All the dread things that happen to men
In the name of cause and law.
I saw the tortured toil and travail
As the cost of bread and birth;
I saw the skein of fate unravel
Around the helpless earth;
A million who had nobly striven
Go down to grim defeat,
A million who their heart-blood given
Spurned from proud Honor’s seat;
Hope mocked and dear ideals shattered,
Truth crushed and crucified,
The fruits of love and labor scattered
And Greed o’er Goodness ride;
Curse like a ghoul despair and sorrow
Leave at the race’s door,
Pledging to-morrow and to-morrow
Cursing the world still more.
And as men were broken and stricken
I saw the darkness loom
To a frown of Hate and slowly thicken
To a spectral shape of Doom.
Shadows, thunders, griefs and grossness
Gathered in a blacker mass,
Life’s calamities and crosses
Wrapped the midnight of all space
Into--God! What awful likeness
Of a giant arm and wrist
Bulking blacker still to smite us
As a clenched terrific FIST!
THE OPEN HAND
I shut my eyes and opened them,
And when they were open I saw
All the glad things that happen to men
By a more benignant law.
I saw the smiling heaven bending
Above the fruitful land,
The beauty and the bounty blending,
The kiss of sea on strand;
The love in labor and the guerdon
Of home and wrought ideal,
The benison behind the burden,
The worth which works the weal;
The glory of the sacrificial,
The sanctity and song
Of Nature’s benedictive missal
O’er suffering and wrong.
I saw the good and grace of seasons
Aglow with golden yield,
And giving trust a thousand reasons
In flowerfest and field;
Until a misty plexus trembled
In midair and anon
A presence as of Love resembled
Diaphanous at dawn,
With morning vestments all a-shimmer,
Yet from whose potent charm
Of godlike gloriole and glimmer
There stretched a Titan ARM.
Earth and sky seemed coalescing
By filmy fingers spanned
And became as if in blessing
A mighty, OPEN HAND.
THE MAN-BIRD
The man-bird harnessed on his wings,
Empowered the impatient heart
And mounted into space as springs
Some captive eagle when released
From durance; but though human art
Might imitate, its genius ceased
Too short to force one secret of
The wild, fierce mastery of flight
In spiral sweeps away, above
The dizziest pinnacle of sight.
Man could but follow as he dared
With plane and engine, chance and nerve,
Yet like a Jove who boldly fared
Across the firmament supreme;
O’er vortexes with plunge and swerve,
O’er air-abysses where the scream
Of harpies echoed mocking forth
On ears too tense--yet ever on
O’er blinding South and blasting North,
Triumphant up or headlong down!
Ten thousand feet on high, ye gods,
Man tries conclusions for your realm
And gambles life at daring odds
To ride above the storm-strewn fleece;
A modern Jason at the helm
By siren lured like him of Greece
To desperate hazard; yet to fail
One pulse-beat for a thrilling glance--
Ah, well the boldest might turn pale
And choose ’twixt glory and mischance!
A moment poised the avian,
Then earthward swooped as never Jove
Rode down the vault of superman.
Wind-surges roared and clouds fled by,
Death raced beside and demons strove
To wrench one slender part or ply;
But flawless-sinewed, man and steed
Came flashing, wheeling down and down
With thrice a Roman courser’s speed
To earth and conqueror’s renown.
THE PHANTOM CAVALRY
What knows the world of battles? History writes
The deeds of men with blood and triumph hails
As trophy of their valor, armament
Or better fortune, thinking he who fights
With surer odds or tactics seldom fails
In the last holocaust of war’s event.
Impassioned eyes see not the shadow-shapes
That hover on the flank of charging hosts,
Ready to launch themselves as chance array;
Not one of all the mustered lines escapes
When mockery’s phantom centauri the boasts
Of martial pride downtrample and dismay.
Ah, Waterloo! where scarred battalions strove
And overwhelmed each other, blood-imbrued,
Hurling their troops with savage impotence--
The conquering cavalry which o’er thee drove
Was not the one the Corsican reviewed,
Nor yet the Iron Duke with grimmer sense.
Ah, Gettysburg! whose murderous brigades
Met in the shambles of a horror-hell
Or rushed like demons in the jaws of death--
Thy most resistless riders were the shades
Of other erstwhile terribles who fell
Drawing the sword from its envenomed sheath.
In vain each other’s throats the blue and grey
Sprang at like wolves of Winter mad for flesh,
And yet unsated till the kill-lust leaped
In exultation’s shout of victory!
Not all thy columns veteran or fresh
Could save the field by grisly corpses heaped
Against the spectral squadron which outrode
Both Fighting Phil and Morgan’s Men alike,
As on the Battle’s flank it weirdly hung
Or where the Dragon’s Teeth of Hate were sowed
Sprang up as Headless Horsemen armed to strike
And crumple back the charge by fury flung.
They loomed like apparitions, terror-born,
Yet ghastly real and dreadly sinister,
Abreast of every vanguard and redoubt;
O’er trench and belching gun they swept in scorn
Or carried panic to the broken rear
Till all was carnage, cowardice and rout.
Invincible formations, onsets’ surge
Of vengeance’ boldest fiends, manœuvres dire
With compassing destruction--all before
The grewsome legionaries’ mounted charge
Were swept like chaff by maelstrom wind and fire
And rose again in prowess nevermore.
But on the ghost-troop galloped as of old
In every bloody battle, never dead
And never yet defeated; phantoms still
That gallop, gallop o’er the mortal mould
Of every tragic battlefield once red
With madmen’s life-blood at their country’s will!
THOU CALLEST ME BROTHER
Thou callest me thy human brother; well,
Am I less flesh and spirit than thyself
Or less entitled so to humbly dwell
In honest peace and plenty that to delve
Is equally as noble as to draw
From the rich depths digged up? Or is the law
Of brotherhood pretense?--Our separate lots
But differ as our make, not as our meed.
Do brothers share according to their thoughts
Or in the rough according to their need?
If thou dost think thee finer in the end
Than him thou flatterest, thou art no friend.
Thou callest me thy brother and dost praise
My struggle to get even, holding fast
Thyself the odds of vantage, so the race
Is to the swift and strong--and he is last
Whose toiling body forged the chariot-wheel
That rolls thee on to fortune. It were base
To make the difference one of feast and fast,
Of full and empty measure of our weal;
For I am he who’s spent--the spender thou;
Yet thou dost call me brother! Heaven, how?
THE SINGING DEATH
Men whisper low of spectres, calibans
And curses almost devilish with doom,
Mysterious fiends like hellhounds, werwolves, ghouls
And other nameless shapes as jinns and janns
That spring from demon-haunts and skulk or loom
To terror-stricken fancy of weak souls.
But none have named the scourge of Singing Death,
The dread reality which out of hell
Comes forth as often as the blood-lust burns;
Foulness and fury volcanize its breath
As, ravening for flesh insatiate, fell
It swoops, devours and bloodier returns.
An army gathers flushed with high resolve
And there is martial music and display
Of glory ominous with human fate;
For ere the dial shall again revolve
The Singing Death exultantly will prey
Upon the host till horror outdoes hate.
A floating citadel superbly steers
Her ocean-course with victory-flags unfurled,
Alike to sea and foe invincible;
Yet somewhere from the blue as she careers
The Singing Death by Titan forces hurled
Will scream above her decks with damning knell.
Hark! Hear you it like vomit from the throat
Of Hades hurtling through the sulphurous air,
With cross between the moan of Manes’ wraith,
The torture of Inferno and the note
Of vulture-torn Prometheus’ despair?
Ah! ’Tis the cannon missile’s Singing Death!
It plays no diapason as the roar
It leaves behind where thunders loud intone,
Nor as the mighty swell of organ-reeds;
But all the stops of battle rising o’er,
It shrieks its way to finish with the groan
Of mortal agony where valor bleeds.
It sings not as a master for applause,
With perfect-voiced-and-chested range of gift
Till song becomes the triumph of all time;
But, rather, ’tis a dirge which discord flaws
With time’s infernal arts lest God uplift
The world by love to Peace’s choir sublime.
THE OLD MOON IN THE ARMS OF THE NEW
The young moon rises low
Just where the passing earth
Has stood aside to help it grow,
Once it has come to birth.
Yet on the old moon’s back
The image of the new
Reflected is with lustre-lack
From earth it kindled to.
In gleaming arms of youth
The sire is embraced;
The silver edge of ancient truth
In younger truth is traced.
The clasp of morning love
Embosoms that of eve;
And memory’s in the crescent of
Old age’s child-reprieve.
A sickly sickle frames
The lusty one that reaps;
So power, pleasure, fortune, fame’s
Pale as the keener sweeps.
Our latest wish infolds
The hope that’s almost spent,
And every rim of promise holds
The past to future bent.
But not so feebly say
Youth hastens on the heels
Of age, but that ’tis nature’s way
Our myriad orb reveals.
Transcriber’s Notes
All poetry spacing and minor errors in the original have been
maintained.