Arrows in the gale

-r

ARROWS IN THE GALE

BY

ARTURO GIOVANNITTI

Introduction by

HELEN KELLER

H1LLACRE BOOKHOUSE

RIVERSIDE, CONNECTICUT

MCMXIV

OL

Copyright, 1914

By Frederick C. Bursch

Printed at Hillacre

TO CAROLINA

CONTENTS

Page
Introduction by Helen Keller ------ 9

Ex Voto --- ___-_- - 17

Proem - ------- 18

The Prisoners' Bench --------20

The Walker - - -------- 2i

The Thinker— On Rodin's Statue - - - - 28

The Stranger at the Gate ------31

To a Bench in Mulberry Park ----- 35

Out of the Mouth of Babes ------ 38

The B.um -- --------- 40

The Magdalene ---------44

The Praise of Spring -------- 46

"Sing Me to Sleep _"-------- 55

Utopia -------------56

The Well of the Gods - ------ 58

The Last Nickel ---------61

The Republic ----------65

The Funeral -----------68

To Joseph J. Ettor --------- 70

The Sermon on the Common ----- 73

The Peaceful Hour --------80

Samnite Cradle-Song --------82

The Cage - -------- 88

The Last Oracle --------- gg

To the One Who Waits ------- 108

INTRODUCTION

I am glad of this opportunity to commend to
the public the poems of my dear friend and com
rade, Arturo Giovannitti.

No one who loves poetry can fail to recognize
the greatness of Giovannitti's expression or to
be glad of any force that has produced such noble
verse. He has tried to render his ideas of the
world he lives in. As a poet he is to be judged
by his success in rendering these ideas in verse,
and not by his relations to Syndicalism or Social
ism or any other movement in which he happens
to be active. The laws of poetic beauty and
power, not one's beliefs about the economic
world, determine the excellence of his work.

Giovannitti's poetry has been called "rashly
materialistic. " So is Homer. So is Virgil. So is
Dante. So is Shakespeare. So is Shelley. So are
allegories and parables. So are the prophecies of
Isaiah. So is the description of the New Jerusalem
descending out of Heaven, at once most spirit-
illumined and most closely linked with the nat
ural needs, the sensuous pleasures and desires of
man! When a poet speaks he covers the bare
facts of life with a shimmering cloth of gold.
He spiritualizes all that men see, feel, think, suf
fer, learn of life's heights and depths. Giovan
nitti's poetry is the spiritualization of a lofty
dream that he seeks to realize — the establish-

mcnt of love and brotherhood and social justice
for every man and woman upon earth. If you
insist on finding in his glorious imaginings some
thing definite, something translatable into prose,
it is there; it is the struggle of a new world
against the old world, of ideas against customs
blindly obeyed, of young truth against the an
tiquity of outworn creeds and musty traditions.
Giovannitti is, like Shelley, a poet of revolt
against the cruelty, the poverty, the ignorance
which too many of us accept in blind content.
His is the poetry of humane humanity, of exul
tation in everything new, vigorous, wholesome,
manly, and of uncompromising hatred of what
is bestial, mean, sordid and degrading. It is an
outgrowth of noble ideals, aspirations and hopes
for a true democracy that are being proclaimed
from one end of the world to the other. Rashly
materialistic, indeed!

Behind Arturo Giovannitti stand the poets,
prophets, wise men and patriots of Italy. Into
him have been poured the fire and courage of a
proud, energetic people.

He was born January 7, 1884, at Ripabottoni
f in Southern Italy. He was educated at the lycee
\ in Campobasso. At the age of seventeen he came
j to America, which he had been taught to regard
as a better, freer country than his own. As he
said in his address before the jury in Salem, he
had "learned upon the knees of his mother and
his father to reverence with tears in his eyes the
name of a republic." Jrlis first, years in America
were years of, disillusion and failure. Heuworked
in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, where he saw
the misery and degradation of many of the for
eigners who come here, animated by the same^

10

love for democracy and hope for opportunity
that Had filled his heart. He studied for a while
in several theological schools. Then he took up
'journalistic work in New York. About nine
-^ears ago he joined the Socialist movement and
later became the editor of the Italian revolu
tionary journal, II Proletario. Pent in by cold
and poverty and still colder tradition, he caught
the glow of the radiance of a redeemed humanity;
he bulwarked himself in his enthusiasm and in the
determination that all men shall have their share
in the bounty of the earth, shall know the splen
dors and ecstasies of life.

His poetry is inspired by this consecration to
a glorious cause. It is "only living aloud his
work, a singing with his hand." Many readers
of it will find themselves face to face with a baf
fling personality, with a poet quite unlike any
Bother. His subjects will puzzle them, and they
cannot be fully understood without some knowl
edge of the forces which have given rise to it.
Giovannitti's main theme is the class war, the im
mediate battleground of which is what we call
labor troubles, the strike, the lock-out, the visible
clash between employer and employed. That
battlefield has recently produced a new type of
militant workman, the revolutionary unionist, the
Syndicalist as he is called in most countries, the
member of the Industrial Workers of the World
as we have come to know him in America. Their
business to-day is to help the workers to win
strikes, that is, to force one and another conces
sion from the masters. Their aim to-morrow is
that of the Socialists, to overthrow the master
class completely and win for all men the heritage
of the earth. They are crusaders, preachers of a

11

new morality whose cardinal virtue is Solidarity,
a word scarcely comprehended by those who have
no intimate knowledge of the militant proleta
riat. Among the heralds who bear the banner
with this strange new device, Solidarity, is
Arturo Giovannitti.

Jrle is a poet, a better poet than has come out
of the privileged classes of America in our day.
He is also a practical strike-leader and organizer.
For his activities during the Lawrence strike he.
spent several months in jail. The crime with
which he was charged was, of course, a legal
fiction devised by the mill owners and their
agents. Giovannitti's real crime was helping the
strikers in their assault on the pocketbooks of
the owners. Of that crime Giovannitti and all
Syndicalists, Industrial Workers and militant
Socialists are proudly guilty. For it they will be
punished, and they expect to be punished, until
the day when they are stronger than the powers
that administer the punishment. They ask no
quarter and they give none. They respect the law
only as a soldier respects an enemy. In the pres
ence of any law they ask only whether it is ex
pedient — good tactics — to obey it or break it.
They know that the laws are for the most part
made by and for the possessing classes, and that
in a contest with the workers the bosses do not
respect the laws, but quite shamelessly break
them. When workers go on strike for better
conditions, the police disperse their meetings,
club and imprison them and even drive the lead
ers out of town. It is natural that they should
do this, for a strike is not a legal game; it is a
war, and both sides use any weapon that they
can lay their hands on. The difference is that the

12

employers keep up the hypocritical fiction of law
and order; while the revolutionary unionists, who
are either more honest or more clear-sighted,
point out that law and order do not exist in a
world which is at war. From every platform and
in every pamphlet they boldly declare that capi
talist morality is hostile to the interests of the
workers and is therefore from the worker's point
of view immoral. They preach a new morality
according to which the basest crime is "scab
bing," and that, as we know, is regarded as a
virtue by the upper classes. They make their
own laws in accordance with the needs of their
class, just as throughout history other classes
have done; and they treat statutes, ordinances
and injunctions as so many orders from the
enemy.

No one has ever given me a good reason why
we should obey unjust laws. But the reason why
we should resist them is obvious. Our resistance
proves our manhood and our womanhood. The
dignity of human nature compels us to resist
what we believe to be wrong and a stumbling-
block to our fellowmen. When a government
puts forth its strength on the side of injustice it
is foredoomed to fail. When it depends for "law
and order" upon the militia and the police, its
mission in the world is nearly finished. We be
lieve, at least we hope, that our capitalist govern
ment is near its end; we wish to hasten its end;
the only question is how. The various answers
to that question constitute the differences be
tween the several types or groups of socialists.
The capitalist press is anxious to prove how in
significant is this group of agitators — a handful
of discontents, mostly ignorant foreigners.

13

A handful of discontents? When in the his
tory of the world has the vanguard been in the
majority? Never. People who are ready to de
vote their lives to the oppressed, hoping for no
return but a good conscience, are never found in
large numbers at a given time and place. Most
men have other affairs to attend to than their
fellowmen's prosperity and happiness. It is not
a question of numbers at first, but the spirit
which animates the "handful." But why so per
sistently dodge the truth? Why not at least face
the fact that a million of the people of the United
States would like to see the present government
changed? Why not admit frankly that the creed
of Socialism is held by thirty million people in
the civilized world, and is preached and written
\Jn sixty languages? The foe — if so you regard
the emancipation of man from cruel conditions —
is in your midst. Scarcely a hamlet, nay, even
a house, will be found where he does not lurk.
Socialism is here to stay. That is, the idea is
here; socialist society has not yet arrived. Let
anyone who will take the trouble to investigate,
and he will find that this idea is a very vigorous
plant, rooted securely in the hearts of men, where
it does not depend upon the press for watering
and cultivating. Ideas so planted will bear fruit
inevitably. At this very hour the seeds are being
scattered far and wide, and the power does not
exist in the world which can prevent their ger
mination. It is a plant which it has taken ages
to bring to flower. To its nourishment have gone
the best, the finest, the noblest aspirations of
humanity.

Such is the wonderful world movement out of
which Arturo Giovannitti is flashing his message

14

of hope to the human race. It is a movement
great in its material and spiritual possibilities.
It is great, very great in the diversity and sweep
|of its issues. It is supremely great in the sym
pathy, mutual helpfulness and limitless energy
|of those who are pushing it forward. It is ap
pealing, it is beautiful in the whole-hearted ef-
iforts to redeem to light, hope, strength and joy
the millions upon whom all the world's burden
of anguish and toil has fallen so pitilessly through
Ithe centuries.

Giovannitti's poetry is an effort to express!
la multitude of men who are lost in an immensity
of silence, swallowed up in meaningless dark-
[ness. With burning words he makes us feel the
presence of the toilers hidden behind tenement
walls, behind the machinery they guide. He
turns the full light of his intense, vivid intelli
gence upon the worn face of the workers who
put every breath and nerve into the struggle for
existence, who give every hour and exhaust
|every faculty that others may live. He finds
voice for his message in the sighs, the dumb
loves and hopes, the agonies and thwartings of
|tnen who are bowed beneath burdens and broken
•y the monster hands of machines, men who spin
nd weave and cause the earth to yield its glad
increase, men from whose unheeded stroke up-
roll domes and spires, till the eyes of men and
ngels behold among the clouds the work of their
patient hands! But the sense of divine things
to be goes thrilling through all his verses. It
jis as unmistakable as the smell of spring in April
jair, and just as pervasive, just as elemental. He
elcomes the combat — not a combat that shall
[rend the world apart, but one which shall bring

15

it together in a universal sunshine of peace. "The
battle has gone up on to higher ground and into
higher light; the battle is above the clouds." In
the irregular lines of such poems as "The Cage"
there is the tramp of a vast, onrushing host. It
is the high-tide of the Revolution. Onward it
sweeps through the rent temples of the past,
flooding the courts of dethroned state, thunder
ing through the market-place where men buy
and sell the lives and souls of their fellow men.
Face the wreckage, you who can, and behold
upon the tumultuous waves a new ship of state.
Fast through the night of our ignorance and
our fear it speeds on to the calm, sunlit shores
of the desired land.

I am sure this book will go on its way thrill
ing to new courage those who fight for freedom.
It will set human hearts beating for something
better. It will move some to think and keep them
glad that they thought. Its echoes caught from
a noble life, a noble fight will

"roll from soul to soul
And grow forever and forever."

HELEN KELLER.

16

EX VOTO

Hail, full of grace, with Thee my love abides !
For thy faith which in me doth live and rest,
Blest be thy name forevermore and blest
Be Thou amongst the maidens and the brides.

Athwart the chasm that hope and fear divides
'Twas Thou, the dream unseen, that I caressed,
Farther than Thee I have no goal to quest
But what thy will for thine own joy provides.

Bid me, then, gather in thy whispered name,
As in a conjured charm, all my war cries
And slay the monster that our pinions grips.

Nobler than on my brow the wreath of fame,
Holier than heaven's radiance in mine eyes
Is thy young kiss of love upon my lips.

PROEM

These are but songs — they're not a creed

They are not meant to lift or save,
They won't appeal or intercede

For any fool or any knave;
They hold no covenant or pledge

For him who dares no foe assail:
They are the blows of my own sledge

Against the walls of my own jail.

I stand a watch at the van post

Of my own war I'm captain of;
No holy fire of pentecost

Can force on me a Saviour's love.
I fight alone and win or sink,

I need no one to make me free,
I want no Jesus Christ to think

That he could ever die for me.

If what I have I give, you can

Be sure I lay no heavenly store,
And what I take from any man

I have no thankful feeling for.
All that you worship, fear and trust

I kick into the sewer's maw
And fling my shaft and my disgust

Against your gospel and your law.

18

Oh, yes, I know the firing line

Outstretches far beyond my arms,
I know this muffled song of mine

Is but one shout of many alarms;
But though along the battle range

I press with many in one pursuit,
I have my personal revenge,

My private enemy to shoot.

To them, the hosts of every land,

The nameless army of the strong
Who make Humanity's last stand

Against the battlements of wrong,
No worthy anthem can attune

My raucous buccina. Let him,
The greater bard that shall come soon,

Sing through the cannon mouth their
hymn.

To them, for theirs and for my sake,

He'll speak the words I never spoke,
And if he speak them, let him take

The laurel wreath, the crown of oak.
For what they win is theirs alone,

Of their reward I ask no part,
I only claim three things my own:

My dream, my death and my sweetheart.

But if they want my song — 'tis theirs.

For though it may not stir their souls,
Though feebler than their bugle blares,

Their drum taps and their tocsin tolls,
Still may my song, before the sun's

Reveille, speed the hours that tire,
While they are cleaning up their guns

Around the cheery bivouac fire.

19

THE PRISONER'S BENCH

Through here all wrecks of the tempestuous
mains

Of life have washed away the tides of time.
Tatters of flesh and souls, furies and pains,

Horrors and passions awful or sublime,
All passed here to their doom. Nothing remains

Of all the tasteless dregs of sin and crime
But stains of tears, and stains of blood and stains

Of the inn's vomit and the brothel's grime.

And now we, too, must sit here, Joe. Don't dust
These boards on which our wretched brothers fell,
They are clean, there's no reason for disgust.
For the fat millionaire's revolting stench
Is not here, nor the preacher's saintly smell,
And the judge never sat upon this bench.

20

THE WALKER

I HEAR footsteps over my head all night.

They come and tjiey go. Again they come and
they go all night.

They^ come one eternity in four, paces and they
go one eternity in four paces, and between the
coming and the going there is Silence and
the Night and the Infinite.

For infinite are the nine feet of a prison cell, and
endless is the march of him who walks be
tween the yellow brick wall and the red iron
gate, thinking things that cannot be chained
and cannot be locked, but that wander far
away in the sunlit world, each in a wild pil
grimage after a destined goal.
* * *

Throughout the restless night I hear the foot
steps over my head.

Who walks? I know not. It is the phantom of
the jail, the sleepless brain, a man, the man,
the Walker.

One-two-three-four: four paces and the wall.

One-two-three-four: four paces and the iron gate.

He has measured his space, he has measured it
accurately, scrupulously, minutely, as the
hangman measures the rope and the grave-
digger the coffin — so many feet, so many
inches, so many fractions of an inch for each
of the four paces.

21

One-two-three-four. Each step sounds heavy
and hollow over my head, and the echo of
each step sounds hollow within my head as
I count them in suspense and in dread that
once, perhaps, in the endless walk, there may
be five steps instead of four between the yel
low brick wall and the red iron gate.

But he has measured the space so accurately, so
scrupulously, so minutely that nothing breaks
the grave rhythm of the slow, fantastic

march.

* * *

When all are asleep (and who knows but I when
all sleep?) three things are still awake in the
night: the Walker, my heart and the old clock
which has the soul of a fiend — for never, since
a coarse hand with red hair on its fingers
swung for the first time the pendulum in the
jail, has the old clock tick-tocked a full hour
of joy.

Yet the old clock which marks everything, and
records everything, and to everything tolls
the death knell, the wise old clock that knows
everything, does not know the number of the
footsteps of the Walker, nor the throbs of
my heart.

For not for the Walker, nor for my heart is there
a second, a minute, an hour or anything that
is in the old clock — there is nothing but the
night, the sleepless night, the watchful, wist
ful night, and footsteps that go, and footsteps
that come and the wild, tumultuous beatings
that trail after them forever.

* * *

All the sounds of the living beings and inani-

22

mate things, and all the voices and all the
noises of the night I have heard in my wist
ful vigil.

I have heard the moans of him who bewails a
thing that is dead and the sighs of him who
tries to smother a thing that will not die;

I have heard the stifled sobs of the one who weeps
with his head under the coarse blanket, and
the whisperings of the one who prays with
his forehead on the hard, cold stone of the
floor;

I have heard him who laughs the shrill, sinister
laugh of folly at the horror rampant on the
yellow wall and at the red eyes of the night
mare glaring through the iron bars;

I have heard in the sudden icy silence him who
coughs a dry, ringing cough, and wished mad
ly that his throat would not rattle so and that
he would not spit on the floor, for no sound
was more atrocious than that of his sputum
upon the floor;

I have heard him who swears fearsome oaths
which I listen to in reverence and awe, for
they are holier than the virgin's prayer;

And I have heard, most terrible of all, the silence
of two hundred brains all possessed by one
single, relentless, unforgiving, desperate
thought.

All this have I heard in the watchful night,

And the murmur of the wind beyond the

walls,

And the tolls of a distant bell,
And the woeful dirge of the rain,

And the remotest echoes of the sorrowful city

And the terrible beatings, wild beatings, mad

23

beatings of the One Heart which is nearest

to my heart.

All this have I heard in the still night;
But nothing is louder, harder, drearier, mightier,

more awful than the footsteps I hear over

my head all night.

* * *

Yet fearsome and terrible are all the footsteps of
men upon the earth, for they either descend
or climb.

Thy descend from little mounds and high peaks
and lofty altitudes, through wide roads and
narrow paths, down noble marble stairs and
creaky stairs of wood — and some go down to
the cellar, and some to the grave, and some
down to the pits of shame and infamy,, and
still some to the glory of an unfathomable
abyss where there is nothing but the staring
white, stony eyeballs of Destiny.

And again other footsteps climb. They climb to
life and to love, to fame, to power, to vanity,
to truth, to glory and to the scaffold — to
everything but Freedom and the Ideal.

And they all climb the same roads and the same
stairs others go down; for never, since man
began to think how to overcome and over
pass man, have other roads and other stairs
been found.

They descend and they climb, the fearful foot
steps of men, and some limp, some drag, some
speed, some trot, some run — they are quiet,
slow, noisy, brisk, quick, feverish, mad, and
most awful is their cadence to the ears of the
one who stands still.

But of all the footsteps of men that either de-

24

scend or climb, no footsteps are so fearsome
and terrible as those that go straight on the
dead level of a prison floor, from a yellow
stone wall to a red iron gate.

All through the night he walks and he thinks.
Is it more frightful because he walks and his
footsteps sound hollow over my head, or be
cause he thinks and speaks not his thoughts?

But does he think? Why should he think? Do
I think? I only hear the footsteps and count
them. Four steps and the wall. Four steps
and the gate. But beyond? Beyond? Where
goes he beyond the gate and the wall?

He goes not beyond. His thought breaks there
on the iron gate. Perhaps it breaks like a
wave of rage, perhaps like a sudden flow of
hope, but it always returns to beat the wall
like a billow of helplessness and despair.

He walks to and fro within the narrow whirlpit
of this ever storming and furious thought.
Only one thought — constant, fixed, immov
able, sinister, without power and without
voice.

A thought of madness, frenzy, agony and despair,
a hell-brewed thought, for it is a natural
thought. All things natural are things im
possible while there are jails in the world —
bread, work, happiness, peace, love.

But he thinks not of this. As he walks he thinks
of the most superhuman, the most unattain
able, the most impossible thing in the world:

He thinks of a small brass key that turns just

25

half around and throws open the red iron

gate.

* * *

That is all the Walker thinks, as he walks
throughout the night.

And that is what two hundred minds drowned in
the darkness and the silence of the night think,
and that is also what I think.

Wonderful is the supreme wisdom of the jail that
makes all think the same thought. Marvel
ous is the providence of the law that equalizes
all, even in mind and sentiment. Fallen is
the last barrier of privilege, the aristocracy
of the intellect. The democracy of reason
has leveled all the two hundred minds to the
common surface of the same thought.

I, who have never killed, think like the murderer;

I, who have never stolen, reason like the thief;

I think, reason, wish, hope, doubt, wait like the
hired assassin, the embezzler, the forger, the
counterfeiter, the incestuous, the raper, the
drunkard, the prostitute, the pimp, I, I who
used to think of love and life and flowers and
song and beauty and the ideal.

A little key, a little key as little as my little finger,
a little key of shining brass.

All my ideas, my thoughts, my dreams are con
gealed in a little key of shiny brass.

All my brain, all my soul, all the suddenly surging
latent powers of my deepest life are in the
pocket of a white-haired man dressed in blue.

He is great, powerful, formidable, the man with
the white hair, for he has in his pocket the
mighty talisman which makes one man cry,
and one man pray, and one laugh, and one

26

cough, and one walk, and all keep awake and
listen and think the same maddening thought.

Greater than all men is the man with the white
hair and the small brass key, for no other
man in the world could compel two hundred
men to think for so long the same thought.
Surely when the light breaks I will write a
hymn unto him which shall hail him greater
than Mohammed and Arbues and Torque-
mada and Mesmer, and all the other masters
of other men's thoughts. I shall call him Al
mighty, for he holds everything of all and of
me in a little brass key in his pocket.

Everything of me he holds but the branding iron
of contempt and the claymore of hatred for the
monstrous cabala that can make the apostle
and the murderer, the poet and the procurer,
think of the same gate, the same key and the
same exit on the different sunlit highways of

life.

* * *

My brother, do not walk any more.

It is wrong to walk on a grave. It is a sacri
lege to walk four steps from the headstone
to the foot and four steps from the foot to
the headstone.

If you stop walking, my brother, no longer will
this be a grave, for you will give me back my
mind that is chained to your feet and the right
to think my own thoughts.

I implore you, my brother, for I am weary of the
long vigil, weary of counting your steps, and
heavy with sleep.

Stop, rest, sleep, my brother, for the dawn is well
nigh and it is not the key alone that can throw
open the gate.

27

THE THINKER— On Rodin s Statue

Aye, think ! Since time and life began,
Your mind has only feared and slept;

Of all the beasts they called you man
Only because you toiled and wept.

On all the ages firmly set,

Lone pillar of the world you stood;
Beyond your hunger and your sweat

You. never knew, nor understood —

Till now, when deep into your soul,
Where it lay buried and concealed,

At last your destined end and goal
Shall stand emblazoned and revealed.

Think, think — unburden, liberate

Your mind from all its waste and loss,

Throw down from it the age-long weight
Of few men's feet and one man's cross.

Behind your mighty frame, in fright
To stay you, moan the dark, dead years.

Heed not the voices of the night,
Heed not the echoes of your tears.

However dear, your sorrows rest

Upon you, like a burial stone.
Upturn it! Rise! Their grave's unblest,

The terrors of the past have flown.

28

Its memories in you must die,

Its shadows must depart from you,

Your doubts, your fears are all a lie,
Only this wondrous thought is true.

Think ! If your brain will but extend
As far as what your hands have done,

If but your reason will descend

As deep as where your feet have gone —

The walls of ignorance will fall

That stood between you and your world,

And from its bloody pedestal

The last god, Terror, shall be hurled.

Aye, think! While breaks in you the dawn,
Crouched at your feet, the world lies still —

It has no power but your brawn,
It knows no wisdom but your will.

Behind your flesh, and mind and blood

Nothing there is to live and do,
There is no man, there is no god,

There is not anything but you.

Think, think! What every age and land

Thought an eternal mystery,
What seers could never understand

And saints and sages could not see,

From you, the chained, reviled outcast,
From you the brute inert and dumb,

Shall, through your wakened thought at last,
The message of to-morrow come.

29

'Twill come, a dazzling shaft of light,
Of truth, to save and to redeem,

And — whether Love or Dynamite —
Shall blaze the pathway to your dream.

30

THE STRANGER AT THE GATE

THE STRANGER whose sandals were white
with the dust of many roads approached the
guardian of the gate on his way out of the
mighty city, whose towers are loftier than the
pillars of smoke and the mountain peaks in
the sky.

"Peace and plenty be with thee forever, keeper
of the gate," said he, touching with two rin
gers of his right hand his bowed forehead.

"God walk before thy feet forevermore, stran
ger," answered the keeper of the gate.
"Whither goest thou?"

"Wherever men are and the highroads lead. For
the wisdom I seek does not remain in one
place. It beckons and I follow, keeper of the
gate."

"Hast thou found any wisdom in our city,
stranger?"

"Aye, much wisdom have I found and great
knowledge for the wayfarer who seeks a home
to rest in his old age. My home is farther on
the road, keeper of the gate."

"Who told thee that thy home is not in our city,
stranger?"

"The man ye crucified yesterday. He cried not,
nor did he weep nor curse as such men do, but
he smiled and he smiled and he looked at me
strangely, oh, so strangely!"

31

"And what said he that thou leavest a great city
because of the words of a criminal?"

"Nay, he said naught, but I said unto myself, in
stead, that the city where crucified wrong
doers cry not, nor weep, nor curse, but smile
and look so strangely at people, is no place
for the stranger who has seen many lands and
knows many roads, keeper of the gate."

"He smiled to hurt and infuriate us, stranger, for
we are used to shrieks and curses. He was
the worst offender of all, as thou mayest judge
by his ungodly behavior. Not even death ap
peased or terrified him."

"Aye, so methought, in sooth. But prithee,
keeper of the gate, why did ye crucify him?"

"Knowest thou not the laws of this land which
is the wealthiest and mightiest under the sun?
He deserved death."

"Aye, any dead man deserved death, but I know
not for what reason."

"He did offend against the sovereignty of the
people and the godliness of our supreme law,
stranger."

"Verily, it is so, keeper of the gate. But was it,
perchance, because, as I heard, he pitied the
poor and the lowly?"

"Nay, 'twas not for that. We also pity them.
Indeed we have many great institutions that
shelter the worthy poor."

"Was it, then, because he mingled with the rabble
and flattered it with strange and obscure
words such as right, justice and the like?"

"Not for that, indeed, for we do the same. How
else could we get the recruits for the legions,
the votes to elect the Sanhedrim and the pop-
32

ulace to cheer the Tetrarch and the Procon
sul?"

"In faith, then it was because he believed in a
new religion, contrary to the established
church?"

"Say not that again, stranger, or I shall think
that thou hast not gathered much knowledge
in thy many journeys. Thou shouldst know,
forsooth, that we are very tolerant in religious
matters and that our Pantheon hath a niche
for every god. The more religions we have
the better, so says the Praetor."

"Upon my head, thou hast spoken the truth,
keeper of the gate. Then I gather that it was
because he forgave the adulterous woman."

"Not so, stranger. We had good divorce laws
ere he came, and many unmarried men in the
land who would rather wed a repudiated
woman than a maiden."

"By my rod, so it is, keeper of the gate. So I
infer that it was because he pardoned the har
lot of yonder city I passed last week."

"Nay, nay, thou speakest not wisely, stranger.
Harlotry is a necessary evil, as many wise men
have often declared, but thou hast surely
heard of late that we have appointed councils
of rich and powerful men to abate it and re
deem the fallen women."

"Indeed, I heard of it and it is a most worthy and
honorable enterprise, keeper of the gate. But
now I know it truly: it was, no doubt, because
he said that these rich men could not enter
the kingdoms of the blessed hereafter."

"Nay, not for that, stranger. Everybody says
that, even the high priests of the temples. It
is by saying that, that the rich men are kept

33

on this earth, as I heard a Pharisee tell a
wealthy publican."

"Then my knowledge goes not farther, keeper
of the gate. I beg of thee to tell me outright
why ye crucified him, if thou wouldst teach
a poor wayfarer who is seeking after wis
dom."

"Aye, I will tell thee, stranger, though thy curios
ity is great for a walker of Caesar's roads. It
was not because of any of these things, but
because of all these things, because he said
and did them all at once and because he
talked too much and was beginning to be
heard and because . . . But whither art thou
going, stranger?"

"Where the highroad leads, keeper of the gate."

34

TO
A BENCH IN MULBERRY PARK

Well, after many a year,

I see thou art still here,

Old bench, old haven of my roaming days;

And like a canopy

On royal beds, on thee

Its green pavilion still the maple sprays.

They were not sweet, indeed,

Those dreary days of need

When I, each night, would wonder here alone

Whether the dawn would hail

Another thief in jail

Or at the morgue another corpse unknown.

They were, indeed, so crude,

Those days of solitude

When hunger grinned at madness' stony stare. —

Recall not that again,

For love has come since then

And youth has won the battle with despair.

Those songs instead evoke

That sobs and tears did choke,

And that young faith no tempest could destroy;

Recall the tunes I knew,

The dreams each morning slew,

And those that since fulfilled their task of joy.

35

When every roar and sound

The heartless city drowned

Into the surging ocean of the night,

To me alone would drift,

A rich and kingly gift,

The flotsam of its song for my delight.

From all these windows purred

The slumbers, and I heard,

Now and again, a cradling mother croon,

While from the roofs afar

Dropped from an old guitar

The sighs of some young lover to the moon.

Watching the clouds' odd race

In my ecstatic maze

Meseemed that thou into their sea didst soar,

And I went sailing by,

Young Orpheus of the sky,

Like a doge in a gorgeous bucentaur.

I dreamed and dreamed all night,

Young dreams, and frail and bright,

Like little buds that never grow to bloom,

Like silver clouds that pass,

Like crickets in the grass,

Like yellow fireflies twinkling'in the gloom.

Yea, I was hungry — yet

Sometimes one can forget

And hungry stomachs often find a dole,

But the young days are fleet

When one can fill with sweet

And moonlit dreams the hunger of the soul.

Ah me! they're gone, those days,

36

And love for me now lays

A pillow full of lullabies to sleep;

But it is hard, alack !

That memories come back

Of days that were so sad when one can't weep.

Yet in my deepest heart

I feel a sudden smart

That I won't tell my love and she won't see —

Old bench, if some new wretch

His limbs on thee should stretch,

Be kind to him as thou hast been to me.

37

OUT OF THE MOUTH OF BABES

Milady was sitting at the table under the pink
wax-light, alone in the resplendent hall.

I looked in from the street and knew not what
resplended the most, whether the young,
blue-clad sweetness of milady or the chaste
sheen of the tablecloth, or the luster of the
candelabra, the silver, the gold, the crystal,
or, mayhap, the lucid head of the severe and
solemn waiter.

But I knew that the waiter was there because of
milady and not milady because of the waiter,
as some may think.

Milady was there only because of the little, frag
ile, shivering bitch she held in her arms, and
the little bitch had her little paws on the white
tablecloth while milady fed to her, delicately
and amorously, the soul and the brain of the
waiter diluted with a little spoon of gold in
a creamy fluid, in a noble silver bowl.

Alone milady sat in the great hall under the pink
wax-light as I watched her through the frost-
embroidered window, and methought she was
Hebe ministering the nectar to the last god.

Outside, the great black carriage awaited under
the nimble-limbed portico of alabaster, and
the little newsboy who stood by me devoured
with his eyes, perhaps the uncarnal beauty

38

of milady, perhaps the heavenly gruel of the
shivering bitch.

I looked at him and deeply I looked into his
ravenous eyes, and then I asked: "Of what
are you thinking, my little friend?"

Said he: "I have sold six papers in four hours and
the papers are now wet and old, for they age
and die in few hours, the papers."

Said he: "My mother is dead, my father is in jail,
my sister is in the saloon and I have sold only
six papers in four hours."

Said he again: "I wish I was that dog."

Again I looked at him, and his eyes were full of
tears, the child tears that only the women
understand, the young tears that make men
smile.

And I said: "Yea, boy, for if you were that dog
you would be sure to eat and to be petted
to-night.

"And also, if you can kiss no more your mother,
at least you could lap the hand of your mis
tress, for she is very dear and very sweet. Is
it not so?"

He raised his eyes to me, his big blue eyes, his
placid eyes full of tears and he glared at me
and answered through his clenched teeth :

"No, damn you, no, I would tear her nose off."

And he darted away in the raging blizzard.

But I saw the sun, the sun, the great sun, the
luminous warm sun, right in the front of him.

39

THE BUM

The dust of thousand roads, the grease
And grime of slums, were on his face;

The fangs of hunger and disease

Upon his throat had left their trace;

The smell of death was in his breath,
But in his eye no resting place.

Along the gutters, shapeless, fagged,

With drooping head and bleeding feet,
Throughout the Christmas night he dragged

His care, his woe, and his defeat;
Till gasping hard with face downward

He fell upon the trafficked street.

The midnight revelry aloud

Cried out its glut of wine and lust;
The happy, clean, indifferent crowd

Passed him in anger and disgust;
For — fit or rum — he was a bum,

And if he died 'twas nothing lost.

The tramp, the thief, the drunk, the brute,

The beggar, each withdrew his eye;
E'en she, the bartered prostitute,

Held close her skirts and passed him by;
For, drunk or dead, the street's the bed

Where dogs and bums must sleep and die.

40

So all went on to their debauch,

Parade of ghosts in weird array.
Only a tramp dog did approach

That mass of horror and decay —
It sniffed him out with its black snout

Then turned about and limped away.

And there he lay, a thing of dread,

A loathsome thing for man and beast;

None put a stone beneath his head,
Or wet his lips, or rubbed his wrist,

And none drew near to help or cheer —
Save a policeman and a priest.

Yet neither heard his piteous wail,
And neither knelt by where he fell.

The man in blue spoke of the jail,
Until he heard his rattle tell,

And hearing that, he motioned at
The man in black to speak of hell.

To speak of hell, lest he should hope
For peace, for rest untroubled, deep,

Where he no more need roam and grope
Through dark, foul lanes to beg and weep,

Where in the vast warm earth at last
He'd find a resting place to sleep.

To sleep — not standing tired and sick
By grimy walls and cold lamp poles,

Nor crouched in fear of the night stick,
To beat his sore and swollen soles,

Nor see the flares of green nightmares
And ghastly dawns through black rat holes;

41

To sleep beneath the green, warm earth
As in a sacred mother's womb,

And wait the call of a new birth,

When his dead life again shall bloom —

For it shall pass into the grass;

The lamb will graze upon his tomb.

Not he, not he shall think of this,

Not he the wretched, the down trod;

Beyond the club of the police

Shall reach the ruthless hand of God,

For like a ghoul the rich man's rule
Will seek him out beneath the sod.

He must know hell, lest he should guess
That all his weary tramp is o'er

A hell of hunger and distress

Where he, cold, naked and footsore,

Alone and ill, must wander still

Through endless roads forevermore.

Nay, nay, my brother, 'tis a lie!

Just like their Christ, their love, their law!
They brewed a wolfish fiend on high,

Just like their hearts perverse and raw,
To damn or save the dying slave,

So those who live should serve in awe.

So that in trembling fear they'd hold
Upon their neck their masters' sway,

So that they'd guard their masters' gold
And starve and freeze and still obey,

So when for greed they toil and bleed,
Instead of rising they should pray.

42

That's why they come to huts and slums !

Tis not to soothe or to console,
But just to stay the hungry bums

With this black terror of the soul,
And bend and blight with chains of fright

What chains of steel could not control.

And yet, and yet the thunderbolt

Shall fall some day they fear the least,

When flesh and sinews shall revolt
And she, the mob, the fiend, the beast,

Unchained, awake, shall turn and break
The bloody tables of their feast.

But you, my brother, will be dead,
And none will think of you for aye!

Still by your spirit I'll be led,
If like their cattle you'll not die,

If you'll but show before you go
That mine can be your battle cry!

Aye, brother, death all woes relieves —
Yet this low world that well you knew,

This Christian world of sainted thieves
And fat apostles of virtue,

This world of brutes and prostitutes,
Must see its end revealed by you!

Rise then! Your rags, your bleeding shirt,
Tear from your crushed and trampled chest,

Fling in its face its own vile dirt,
Your scorn and hate to manifest,

And in its gray cold eyes of prey
Spit out your life and your protest !

Salem Jail, Nov. 20, 1912.

43

THE MAGDALENE

The service over, the silk-hatted pastor,
Smooth-shaven, jovial, fat and debonair,

A merry joke on his ascetic master,

Met in the empty church a woman's stare.

He paused, his hands on his rotund abdomen
Piously laid, and quoth with solemn mien:

"What can I do for you, my worthy woman?"
She rose and said: "I am the Magdalene.

"You said that I believed and was forgiven,
That faith alone can save and purify,

And from the stews I came, whence I was driven,
To seal upon your lips the monstrous lie.

"For though I have believed and not denied Him,
Though with my bitter tears I washed His feet,

The harpy clutch of greed that crucified Him
Has dragged me back into the sunless street.

"From pit to pit it dragged me down, a mourner
Of His great shattered dream, with blows and
sneers,

And you have seen me stand around the corner,
A traded strumpet for two thousand years.

"You saw them with their hands of fiendish
malice,

44

From this, my withered, soulless flesh of pain,
Wring out the gold with which they bought the

chalice
Where now you gulp his precious blood again.

"All this you saw, and still to them that Jesus
Drove from his house, aye, from this very place,

You sell his heav'n for thirty silver pieces,
And for a mess of potage my disgrace.

"You call on them his blessing while I wander
On all the ways of hell where I was thrust,

And while you soothe their glutted souls, you

pander
To my eternal shame and to their lust.

"And yet I know, in all my desolation,

The Saviour shall soon come to my release,

No more a doleful voice of resignation,
No more a God-sent messenger of peace,

"But a red-winged archangel of the devil

Who shall disperse for aye the ravenous brood,

Your lies hush in the offals of their revel,

And give me back my soul and womanhood."

45

THE PRAISE OF SPRING

I have hated thee, O Spring.

With all the furies of my inextinguishable blood,
with all the aches of my unappeasable flesh
I have hated thee,
And despised thee,
And cursed thee, O Spring.

I have hated thee for the stupidity of thy flowers
that smelled the carrion of the covered graves,

For the acquiescent foolishness of thy ever nod
ding trees,

For the frigid chastity of thy skies,

For the garrulity of thy silly cackling waters

And for the petulance of thy eternal reappearing.

0 thou idiotic, unoriginal repentance of the de

crepit earth.

1 have hated thee because thou wert an atonement,

not a rebellion; thou wert a returning child
hood, not a reconquered virility, O Spring.

No storms, no tempests, no hurricanes,

No spasms of long-nursed follies,

No violences of coveted passions,

No brazen display of warm desires and unclad
sins,

No exaltation of fecund motherhood,

Nothing but the recurrence of an old fashion, the
re-wearing of the discarded, ignoble dress of
green, a new coat of perfumed rouge over the

46

wrinkles of the same old yellow face of the

world.

* * *

I have hated thee, O Spring. With all the im
petuosity of my living being I have hated
thee.

I have hated thee for the evil filter of thy air,
that abominable potion that has nothing but
the effervescence of its bubbles,

That tasteless broth of malignity which does not
inebriate like a generous wine,

Which does not kill like a magnificent poison,

Which is neither a bitter medicine that heals the
heart-fevers of youth, nor a sweet narcotic
that gives sleep.

That wert a painted and tinseled masquerade,

0 Spring, a stimulant for old age, not a cor
dial for battling manhood, and no life was in
thee save the fermentation of dead things.

The life that grew not out of the creating labors
of love, but out of the stillness of corpses, so
that the warrior Winter again might have
ought to destroy.

The purveyor of Death, not the handmaid of
Life thou wert, for no nurslings that the
grave could not claim were ever to sleep in
the warmth of thy breasts.

* * *

But why, even for that and because of that, did

1 hate thee, O Spring?

Was it the overpowering onrush of manhood
that was invading my soul and sweeping
away from it the dreams, the follies, the
chimeras of my silent, wide-eyed, ghost-like
youth ?

Was it because, in spite of thy breath, laden with

47

all the unknowable maladies of the invisible
life, my heart wounds, my soul wounds whose
crusts I had been tearing with my sharp nails,
were healing and no longer I loved to torment
their pain?

Or was it the pale light of a vision I had kindled
with the first spark of my childhood and fed
with the shreds of my years, that suddenly
blazed forth like a terrible pyre for the con
flagration of the world thou earnest back to
refresh and regreen?

Whoever will know and tell? Whoever cares
to know?

Not I, not I, O Spring.

I was alone, I who was alive in myself, was
alone in thy dead splendor a thousandfold
resurrected and a thousandfold annihilated,

And I who could be killed but once and nevermore
be arisen,

I who carried the burden of but one single life,
the burden I never tried to lighten but ever
tried to increase with my greedy, far-reaching,
all-apprehending hands,

I sneered the contempt of my glorious mortality
unto thee that art not immovable and eternal
and yet art not forever to die.

For it is engraved on the vaults of the unassail
able firmaments and it is burned in the dark
of the unfathomable profundities that they
alone who are to meet death are the master
and the commanders of life.
* * *

There was I alone with my challenge against

thee and thy mother, O Spring.
And thy wiles and thy lures that made thee the

easy-yielding courtesan of all creatures had

48

no power and no charm over me, the rebellious
child of sin.

And for this I hated thee, because there was no
chastity in thee, because thou wert the com
mon mistress of all and I was waiting for the
Virgin-Bride of the Ideal.

And my glory grew as great as my strength, and
my strength as great as my desire, because
of my solitude.

There was in my beating temples the panting of
the only reality of life,

All the onslaught of time was ramming and
breaking against my bare and villous chest.

All the red-maned steeds of destruction, trem
bling with the furious lust of the race were
leashed to my fist;

And I who had breathed the warm wind of the
battle-field,

And the raging soul of the storm,
And the ashes of the galloping fire,
And the dust of the things destroyed,

I, who shed tears only when I looked open-eyed
at the noon sun,

I heard in the echo of my steps in thy woods the
footfalls of the bronze-shod Vandal through
the columns of the burned and pillaged temple
where all the tripods blazed with the Greek
fire and the face of the stone gods was ground
under the ironed hoof of the stallions.

For this I hated thee, O Spring, because I was
a destroyer and not a worshipper of silent
things.

And because I was waiting for the scarlet-robed,
flame-winged, storm-haired Bride of the Fu
ture for whose nuptials a greater altar fire
shall be built than that of the volcanoes,

49

I flung into the face of that old mother of yours.
Nature, whose obscene nakedness, polluted by
the vile caresses of all the distorted fingers
of greed thou wert recovering with thy
tawdry mantle of green, not my staff, O
Spring, not my javelin, not my broken spur,
but just one word, just one word, O Spring.

II

And now thou hast returned again.

Again thou hast returned with thy green and
thy blue and thy gold and thy breezes, but lo!
thou art so strangely and so wildly different
unto my eyes and into the mirror where my
eyes cannot look, O Spring.

For the day I saw the first dandelion and the
first daisy and I heard the first strident voice
of the cricket, the little messengers that an
nounced thee, that day I was alone no more.

Another one was by my side, and she was young,
and she was fair, and she was lost like me in
the gateless labyrinth of life.

Like me she had nursed her youth with the di
vine nectar of the tempests,

Like me she was cruel with many angers and sad
with many cares,

Like me she understood the lofty virtues of
hatred and the endless march onward to the
gate that does not exist, with no other com
pass to guide our feet but our will to go.

Yet was she not like me, for on her forehead
there were not the scars of the fierce affrays,

On her lips there were not the bitter wrinkles
furrowed by the long, unerasable sneers,

Nor on her wrists the marks of torn and broken
fetters and chains,

50

Nor the shadows of crossed darknesses had re
mained in her limpid eyes.

She was not like me, yet much that was in me
was in her, and because her destiny, like mine,
compelled her to go and never to look behind,
I paused with her and in her I forgot all thy
malevolence and all my hatred of thee, O
Spring.

And there were two alive in the old world-ceme
tery of corpses, she and I in the immense
crypt of the universe, O Spring.

* * *

Why dost thou bid me remember that day, by
all thy days, O Despot?

What does it matter now that I hate thee no
more?

I know not what new spell was heaved about me
by the mighty mouth that breathes all the
fearful gales of life,

But this I do remember, that my soul became a
cage full of nightingales and her hand opened
the door and they flew away in the azure of
thy heavens in a long thrill of song.

And this also I do remember, that my heart in
which every scythe had reaped till it was
nothing but a barren desolation, bloomed up
suddenly in all thy apple blossoms, in all thy
almond trees, in all the flowers of thy orchards
and of thy gardens, O Spring.

And I could not throw out of it its myriad flow
ers, for she had laid her hand on my heart
and I dared not break open the gentle gate
of her fingers.

And so those flowers remained in me and left in
me their fragrance and their pollen, and I

51

grew happy and wiser and older in the eter
nity of that moment.

I grew wiser that she might keep her illusions,
and I grew older that I might see more of her
youth, but I was happy, for I held her quiver
ing spirit in my trembling hands, like a frail
crystal bowl for the priceless, divine offering
of my first tear.

And lo! something broke within me, in the un
trodden and unexplored recesses of me (was
it a chain, was it a wall?) and I was free, and
I was free from myself,

Free to give me to a new dungeon, free to sell
me to a new bondage, I who until then had
had about me only the fetters of my pride.

But what do I care, O Spring, and what dost

thou care now that I hate thee no more?

* * *

Again the flame I had tried to smother blazed
forth from the innest hearths of my being and
my spirit grew lighter,

Every bird, every butterfly that flew away car
ried forth one of my unbound thoughts.

And I broke the spell of the abyss and my soul
rose with the vapors of thy waters and the
breath of thy mountains and the fogs of thy
valleys and the fragrance of thy flowers to
wards the Dream that is hidden by the daz
zling light of the sun.

There must have been in me, in the silence and
darkness of me, a stranded god of old that
had fallen asleep in the first spring of the
world. And she awoke him with a kiss.

Why, why? Was it because it was spring and
spring was different to her, or because we
were both two pilgrims journeying together

52

to the same shrine, I to burn the last offerings
of my fading youth and she to depose the first
garland of hers?

What does it matter, O Spring, now that I hate
thee no more?

She kissed me and I awoke; again I awoke in the
old land of beauty and song I had dwelled in
since the day I knew the first word I spoke,
and again my lips were unsealed by the un-
crushable swelling of the rising paean to thee,
O thou who art greater than life.

And again I became all-knowing and all-power
ful,

The maker of wonders, the weaver of wreaths,
the giver of treasures and kingdoms, the
killer of dragons and the builder of temples
and dreams,

And I spun with my nimble fingers the rays of
the setting sun to make an aureole for her
dark hair,

And I embroidered into the green foliage the
chaste languor of the blue sky and there I set
her head and contemplated in adoration the
first masterpiece of my new handiwork.

And I said unto her: Lo, of all her flowers,
Spring has given the rose to Love and the
myrtle to the one that is greater, but unto
thee that art between both and vowed and
fated to both, I shall give the flower that
grows unsown in the wilderness and was
never plucked, was never laid on the altars
and the tombs and the cradles, I shall give
thee the thistle, sharp and pungent and bris
tling like a flame of raised swords.
* * *

And so it was that the lure of spring came again

53

upon me, and I understood it and loved it

and made amend and repentance for my

hatred.
For she, this new Spring of mine and of the

world that is to be mine was not false and

decayed,

She was not vanity and decoy,
She was not proffering to ignoble lovers the wiles

of her lust,
But she was offering to all the children of life

and all the warriors of the world the abundant

milk of her overflowing motherly breasts and

the balsam of her love.

* * *

But shall I sing of love now, I who could only
sing to the tune of the clarions of war?

And shall I forget for a woman my black froth
ing horse that neighs after the twanging ar
rows in the wind?

And shall I not lose my strength when her arms
shall encircle me where thou hast girt me with
the sword, O Gea, my mother immortal?

"SING ME TO SLEEP "

When in my night like gaunt, gray phantoms rise
The wild-eyed hours of brooding reverie,

If in my heart a sudden anguish cries

That thou also hast passed away from me,

If I but think that one regretful sigh
Thy joyless love has breathed unaware,

I know not what a barren will to die

Dissolves my strength into a mute despair.

Oh, if upon thy breast I could then lay
My weary head and hear thee sing again

That sad, sweet song, and as it dies away
Exhale my spirit in its last refrain !

55

UTOPIA

'Tis writ, and I believe with all my power,
That a great day shall come, O Master, when,

Even as from a putrid clod a flower,

So in thy heart shall bloom the love of men, —

A day when sweet and noble tasks shall hallow
These charnels where thy slaves now drudge
and plod,

And thou no more a groveling swine shalt wallow
Amid the puddles of their sweat and blood, —

A day when shall thy soldiers cease their slaugh
ters,

No more thy name shall widows execrate,
When shall grow chaste thy meretricious daugh
ters
And thy abandoned sons regenerate,

"Wt

hen thy grandchildren shall not know what

lust is,

Nor shall thy festering sins corrode their youtlj<
When thy lawmakers shall believe in justice,
Yea, and thy priests shall seek and preach the

truth,—

A day when thy old parents from the gutter
Shall beg no more thine alms as they do now,

56

And thou, withal, shalt earn thy bread and butter
By thine own labor's sweat upon thy brow; —

A day shall come when gold shall not enthrall

thee,

When theft and murder cease to be thy rule;
So I, who call thee now a friend, shall call thee,
Forsooth, a true and upright man,

"Thou fool !"

57

THE WELL OF THE GODS^

I

I know a well engraved with mystic runes
Within a clump of poplars in a dale,

Where sweetest are the shadows of the noons
And from the hills winds down the shepherd's
trail.

The fount that gurgles in its limpid pool,

Not thousand years nor thousands have dis
persed,

And is so clear its water, and so cool,
That all who look in it become athirst.

I love its quaint, round mirror at twilight,
And as in it for my own face I search,

Methinks I see instead an anchorite
In some old fresco of a Roman church.

And as along its walls like lizards creep

The quivering arabesques of green and gold,

I hear a flute-like voice from out the deep,
As of a strayed and lonely faun of old,

Who, when the gods migrated, lay in his hold
asleep.

II

Only the rain doth in its depths descend,
A jagged shred of sky and few tree tops;

58

But if Scirocco peradventure rend
The palisaded rampart of the copse,

All of the mountain's breath, the gorge's boom,
The crash of riven trees the tempest tore,

Would then be cast into the startled gloom
And fill it all with echoes and uproar.

But when into its lap of velvet throws
A group of stars the eventide of June,

And brighter in its magic mirror glows
The silver sickle of the crescent moon,

When to the sleepy lark that faintly sings
The clear, full-throated nightingale responds,

The blent accord of light and music rings
Like bounding pearls into a bowl of bronze.

Love, in the well then flutter my garlands and
thy wings.

Ill

Chalice and urn of all the gods of yore,

Is in thy bosom such a wizardryt
That he inherits all thy ancient lore .

Who drinks the nectar they forgot in thee.

Thus I, who come a pilgrim from the hill,

Ere I ascend unto a loftier goal,
Do drink of thee with avid lips, to fill

Out of thy plenitude of songs my soul.

And lo! meseems that in the golden sheen
Centaurs and Satyrs gambol in the grove,

And Nymphs and Naiads on thy border lean
To sing the strains of a forgotten love.

59

And though into the heavens of pure sapphire
Only the shepherd's lay soars high and clear,

With wistful ears of rapture and desire
Breathless with wonder I can almost hear

Attuning their eclogue the laureled Virgil's lyre.

60

THE LAST NICKEL

I

COLD and silent and myriad-eyed with the chills
of dead things, with the silence of the things
that are eternal and with the tremulous palpi
tation of the stars was the night, the holy
night of my awakening and my despair. *

I stood before the blazing windows of Tiffany. \
Frozen tears of shame and pain and wrath,
frozen clots of murder blood, frozen drops of
poison were the pearls, the rubies, the emer
alds that glittered and winked, malevolent as
the first hoar-frost upon a bed of flowers, as
the grin of a mortal enemy, as the leer of lust
ful eyes that glare into eyes that are full of
tears.

I had just kissed Her for the first time, perhaps
the eternal troth, perhaps the everlasting
farewell, so I looked not into the mirage of
the hell-lit window, for I was thinking.

I was thinking of her eyes, wide open, frightened
and full of promises, retreating slowly like the
phosphorescent haze of dreams into the black
ness of the tenement hallway;

I was thinking of the gasping windows gulping
the thin breath of the dying trees through the
stuffed fire escapes;

I was thinking of the room where She now stood,
wonder-eyed, loosening her hair, and of the

61

poor virginal bed by the strangled airshaft
where She would lie awake all night thinking
of me.
I was thinking of all She would hear through the

endless night;

The incessant wailing of the sick child above,
and the maddening rhythm of the cradle
rocked by a nerveless, unstrung hand,
The heavy snoring of the man below, frightful

like a death rattle,

The stealthy, cautious steps of the belated girl
and the grumbling curses and the muffled
weeping,

The foul-worded, blow-crashing quarrel of the
couple that would tear through the
wall,

int echo of my faltering good-by, and
;ling sound of her own sighs,
thinking also of the red ribbon She
rn for so many weeks, ever since I
fer, and of the broken-lipped step of
her doorway, and of my last nickel, which was
dearer to me than all the gems in that de
moniacal window and which I was about to
throw awav, an immense and unknown sacri
fice, for the love of Her.

II

But even as I was about to cast it solemnly and
religiously away, with the rite of the priest
who drops the offering into the fire and the
vast gesture of the sower who scatters the
seeds of the bread, two men approached me,
two shadows of the light of the gems.
Said one: "For two whole days I have not eaten.
No one believes me, and if you also do not.
I shall die. Give me a nickel in the name of

62

Jesus and of the One you love and I will pray
God for your happiness and your salvation."

I looked at him and in his eyes, where the pupils
had been, I saw the yellow prints of the bony
finger tips of hunger.

Said the other: "I know that I am drunk, but I
need more. Give me the nickel and I will
drink it to your health and joy."

I looked at him also and in his eyes, where the
sunlight had been, I saw the smothering em
bers of his soul.

But neither in the eyes of the one, nor in the
eyes of the other, saw I reflected the fierce
glow of the jewels in the nearby window.
They both wanted my nickel, my onfo- nickel,
my last nickel, my cheap, finger-AfABifcnickel
— a loaf of bread — a glass of x H Rf — no
more ! M Bf

in |

Chuckled aloud in my ears the fiend^^p lurked
in the scintillating window, the^pnd that
kindles all the evil fires of the world, and said:
"Behold, thou who hast only a nickel art now
become a dispenser of life and death and an
arbiter of destinies. But thou canst satisfy
but one man, and thou hast not the wisdom
of a Solomon. Whichever man thou givest
it to, not knowing whether the one be truly
hungry or the other really need it more, thy
gift shall accrue to the injustice of the world.
Throw it away, then, for her sake, as thou
desirest, build with it a little mound of thine
own happiness, and not a mountain of thy
conceit."

I thought of the sweatshop where She was going
to work again the next day . . .

63

Then the angel in me spoke: "Nay, give it to the
hungry one. If She were here by thee, thou
knowest that thou wouldst give it to him.
What greater deed canst thou do for the love
of Her to-night? Give it to him, he will live
because he shall eat and the other will not
die, because he will not drink the last goblet
of poison. Thou shalt thus save two men."

Then said the devil in me: "Remember what was
said of old: 'We asked for bread and ye gave
us a stone.' They understood not the sym
bol then, nor would they understand it now.
They know not what to do with a stone, a
good heavy stone, a fine hard stone that
would go as far as their hunger, their thirst
and their manhood. Preach, then, no more
idle sermons and give it to the drunken one.
He will die of delirium and the other of hun
ger. Thou shalt thus kill two brutes."

I saw the malevolent glitter, the leer and the
sneer of the diamonds, the pearls, the rubies,
the emeralds in the hell-lit window, and I saw
in the eyes of the two men nothing but the
greed and the fever for my nickel, my last
nickel, for my cheap, finger-worn nickel . . .

And I gave it to one of them.

THE REPUBLIC

The king had said: "By right divine
As old as God's own laws are old,
All that you have, all that you hold,
All that you think and do is mine.

"I own forever and control

Your house, your field, your ox, your wife,

So, I shall rule your mortal life

And my good liege, the pope, your soul.

"Obey, then, both; do not rebel,
For, should you rise against our will,
You'll have, in this world, my Bastille,
And in the other world his hell."

So said the king. And then there came,
Aglow with anger and with steel,
A goddess of the common weal,
With eyes of fire and hair of flame.

Not hers the wisdom which decrees
That time alone must wrongs allay,
Not hers the craven heart to pray
And barter liberty for peace ;

Not hers the fear to hesitate
When shame and misery cry out —
Love has no patience, truth no doubt,
And right and justice cannot wait.

65

So, loud into the midnight air
She rang the tocsin's weird alarm,
She called, and as by potent charm
From its mysterious haunt and lair,

The Mob, the mightiest judge of all,
To hear the rights of Man came out,
And every word became a shout,
And every shout a musket ball.

Against the castle walls the picks
She raised and planted there her flags,
Against the ermine hurled the rags,
The torch against the crucifix,

The guillotine against the rope,
And ere the eastern sky grew red,
Behold she flung the king's proud head
Upon the altars of the pope.

And when upon the great sunrise
Flew her disheveled victories
To all the lands, on all the seas,
Like angry eagles in the skies,

To ring the call of brotherhood
And hail mankind from shore to shore,
Wrapt in her splendid tricolor
The People's virgin bride she stood.

* * *

This was the dawn. But when the day
Wore out with all its festive songs,
And all the hearts, and all the tongues
Were stilled in wonder and dismay, —

66

When night with velvet-sandaled feet
Stole in her chamber's solitude,
Behold ! she lay there naked, lewd,
A drunken harlot of the street,

With withered breasts and shaggy hair
Soiled by each wanton, frothy kiss,
Between a sergeant of police
And a decrepit millionaire.

THE FUNERAL

I saw a funeral go by this morning, a black
hearse driven by one black horse climbing
slowly the silent street, the street unsouled
and grief-stricken by the gray omens of the
coming first snow.

No carriages followed the black hearse, no
mourners walked behind it, no flowers were
on the coffin, and my heart, my mad heart
that divines everything, told me that no one
was weeping in the great city.

I followed it with my unseeing eyes and then I
turned to my love who stood by me at the
window (always with me, always by me shall
be my love) and I wanted to kiss her to dis
pel the anguish of the gray morning and of
the silent street and of the black hearse.

But my love held me away with her hand and
said: "Nay, kiss me not now and speak not
of our love, but let us go and follow that
hearse, and throw some earth into the grave,
for that is our forgotten brother that died
yesterday."

And I said to my love: "Aye, my love, let us go
and mourn for him, our unknown brother,
so that some day someone shall also walk
behind our biers. At least one, at least
one . . ."

But my love answered again : "Nay, what will it

68

matter to us then? We shall be two in the
coffin. Let us go and mourn for him, just
for him, only for the sake of him, only for the
sake of sorrow and death and tears.

"For we have cursed and fought and hated
enough, my love, and it will do us good to
weep."

And we followed the lonely hearse up the silent
street, the street unsouled and grief-stricken
by the gray omens of the coming first snow,

And we looked not at each other, and we did
not speak.

69

TO JOSEPH J. ETTOR

On his 2Jth Birthday

Well, Joe, my good friend, though we cannot pre
tend "

That we're happy we still can regale,
We can laugh and be merry, though claret and

sherry

Are so scarce to us, even in jail;
But although our good wine is the prison's foul

brine

And the hangman's our welcoming host,
Let us think it Chianti and quaff it a-plenty
While for you I revise my old toast.

Let us drink a new toast to the dear Woolen trust,

To the legions of "Country and God,"
To the great Christian cause and the wise, noble

laws,

And to all who cry out for our blood ;
Let us drink to the health of the old Common
wealth,

To the Bible and code in one breath,
And let's so propitiate both the church and the

state
That they'll grant us a cheerful, quick death.

For altho' you are brave, you'll admit that the

grave
Has much better surroundings than these,

70

As we'll hear there no more the hard slam of the

door

And the clank of the terrible keys;
Even as I, though I'm game, must admit just

the same,

When I think of my love and my home,
That my heart is oppressed and my soul is dis
tressed
By the thought of the years yet to come.

And I cannot conceive all the years we must

grieve

For the dream that no hope can revive,
And my heart seems to sink when I tremblingly

think

Of the One who will mourn me alive:
For when last I did gaze on her sweet, saint-like

face,

That forever from me would be barred,
Well, the only good way I could keep looking gay
Was to think of a nice big graveyard.

Yes, I know it is good, in some soul-stirring
mood

To drive out all these sullen complaints,
And I know it feels great to believe that our fate

Will be that of the martyrs and saints.
But what joy is in truth if our passionate youth

Like an underground runnel must flow
That no thirst ever slakes, but just feeds the gray
lakes

Of the kingdoms of silence and woe?

Nay, 'tis all silly fuss, there's no wisdom in us
To renounce to the brunt of the strife ;

71

We were wrought on the fire and to love and

desire

And to fight and to sing is our life.
So, should we many a year be immured alive here,

Now that you're twenty-seven, old mate,
The best wish I can make for your own and my

sake
Is that never you be twenty-eight.

And so, here's to the hope for the trap and the
rope

As the best for us sure is the worst,
And because I am older and you are the bolder,

Here's a health that they hang me the first;
For, should justice be shunned, both on earth and
beyond,

After bidding to you my farewell,
I would fain as your scout be the first to find out

And the first to receive you in hell.

72

THE
SERMON ON THE COMMON

THEN it came to pass that the people, having
heard that he had come, assembled on the
Common to listen unto his words.

And they came from all the parts of the earth, the
Syrians and the Armenians, the Thracians
and the Tartars, the Jews, the Greeks and the
Romans, the Iberians and the Gauls and the
Angles and Huns and the Hibernians and
Scythians, even from the deserts of sands to
the deserts of ice, they came to listen unto
his words.

And he, seeing the multitudes, opened his mouth,
and taught them, saying,

Blessed are the strong in freedom's spirit: for
theirs is the kingdom of the earth.

Blessed are they that mourn their martyred
dead: for they shall avenge them upon their
murderers and be comforted.

Blessed are the rebels: for they shall reconquer
the earth.

Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
equality: for they shall eat the fruit of their
labor.

Blessed are the strong: for they shall not taste
the bitterness of pity.

73

Blessed are the sincere in heart: for they shall
see truth.

Blesed are they that do battle against wrong:
for they shall be called the children of Liberty.

Blessed are they which are persecuted for equal
ity's sake: for theirs is the glory of the broth
erhood of man.

Blessed are ye when the scribes of the press shall
revile you, and the doctors of the law, poli
ticians, policemen, judges and priests shall
call you criminals, thieves and murderers and
shall say all manner of evil against you false
ly, for the sake of Justice.

Rejoice, then, and be exceedingly glad; for so
they persecuted, reviled, cursed, chained,
jailed, poisoned, hanged, crucified, burned,
beheaded and shot all the seers, the apostles
and the warriors of humanity that were be
fore you, for the sake of freedom.

Ye are the power of the earth, the foundations
of society, the thinkers and the doers of all
things good and all things fair and useful, the
makers and dispensers of all the bounties and
the joys and the happiness of the world, and
if ye fold your mighty arms, all the life of
the world stands still and death hovers on the
darkened abodes of man.

Ye are the light of the world. There was dark
ness in all the ages when the torch of your
will did not blaze forth, and the past and the
future are full of the radiance that cometh
from your eyes.

Ye are eternal, even as your father, labor, is eter
nal, and no power of time and dissolution can
prevail against you.

Ages have come and gone, kingdoms and powers

74

and dynasties have risen and fallen, old glo
ries and ancient wisdoms have been turned
into dust, heroes and sages have been forgot
ten and many a mighty and fearsome god has
been hurled into the lightless chasms of ob
livion.
But ye, Plebs, Populace, People, Rabble, Mob,

Proletariat, live and abide forever.

# # *

Think not that I am come to destroy the law: I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil through
you what the prophets of mankind have pre
saged from the beginning.

For verily I say unto you, While man lives and
labors, nothing can destroy the eternal law
of progress which after each advancing step
bids him further.

Therefore, say not unto yourselves, even as the
priests and scribes and doctors of the law and
fools and hypocrites say, This is the goal
which was destined unto us and no further
shall we go.

For even if there be before you the uplifted
arms of terror and the smoking altars of mur
der enshrined in a gaunt temple of gibbets
and fierce with shrieks of curses, ye must pass
beyond.

For your feet are like the unrolling of the end
less scrolls of time, — not even night and
silence and death can stop their march for
ward and upward, ever to a farther and loftier
goal.

And, lo, ye shall never arrive because never shall
ye cease going.

Whosoever, therefore, shall break one jot or one
tittle of this law shall be called the least in

75

the kingdom of man, but whosoever shall do
and teach it, the same shall be called great in
the kingdom of man.

.Ye have heard that it was said by them of all
times who toil not but do live of your toil,
Thou shalt not rebel against thy master.

But I say unto you that whosoever soweth the
seeds of patience the same shall reap the har
vest of shame.

They said unto you, Question not the right of
your masters to reign over you and command
you. They shall have your sweat and your
tears, aye, and even your blood and your life,
and ye shall serve them in reverence and awe,
for their power upon you is of God.

And again they said unto you, Give your masters
the labor of your hands and the worship of
your hearts, give them the fruits of your or
chards, the grains of your fields, the flowers
of your gardens and all things made by the
labor of your hands and by the thought of
your brain, and withhold not aught from
your masters, lest your masters' law and the
curse of your masters' God be upon you.

And again they said unto you, Bend your knees
and worship your chains, kiss the whip that
lashes you, bless the heel that crushes you,
revere the yoke that weighs upon your neck,
bury your forehead in the dirt whence ye
came and whither ye shall return.

Do not cry, do not complain do not grumble,
do not think, do not hope,

Be humble, resigned, patient, submissive, lowly
and prone even as a beast of burden, lest ye
have the gaol in this life and gehenna in the
life to come.

76

And again they said unto you, Resist not evil,
for all spirit of disobedience and unsubmis-
sion issueth from the enemy of peace. There
fore if your masters, or your masters' serv
ants smite you on the right cheek, turn unto
them the other also, and if they take away
from you the heritage of your fathers, give
unto them also the birthright of your chil
dren.

All this and more than this they said unto you
before I came, but now that I am come, a new
evangel shall be proclaimed unto you, that
your souls may be renovated and purified in
the fire of the new salvation which is not
peace but war.

Therefore I say unto you, Banish fear from your
hearts, dispel the mists of ignorance from
your minds, arm your yearning with your
strength, your vision with your will, and
open your eyes and behold.

Do not moan, do not submit, do not kneel, do
not pray, do not wait.

Think, dare, do, rebel, fight— ARISE!

It is not true that ye are condemned to serve and
suffer in shame forever;

It is not true that injustice, iniquity, hunger, mis
ery, abjection, depravity, hatred, theft, mur
der and fratricide are eternal ;

There is no destiny that the will of man cannot
break ;

There are no chains of iron that other iron can
not destroy;

There is nothing that the power of your arms,
lighted by the power of your mind, cannot
transform and reconstruct and remake.

Arise, then, ye men of the plough and the ham-

77

mer, the helm and the lever, and send forth
to the four winds of the earth your new proc
lamation of freedom which shall be the last
and shall abide forevermore.

Through you, through your united, almighty
strength, order shall become equity, law shall
become liberty, duty shall become love and
religion shall become truth.

Through you the man-beast shall die and the man
be born;

Through you the dark, bloody chronicles of the
brute shall cease and the story of man shall
begin.

Through you, by the power of your brain and
hand,

All the predictions of the prophets,
All the wisdom of the sages,
All the dreams of the poets,
All the hopes of the heroes,
All the visions of the martyrs,
All the prayers of the saints,

All the crushed, tortured, strangled, maimed and
murdered ideals of the ages, and all the glori
ous destinies of mankind shall become a tri
umphant and everlasting reality in the name
of labor and bread and love, the great three
fold truth forever.

And lo and behold, my brothers, this shall be

called the revolution.

* * *

Thus spake the man to the assembled multitude
that had come from all the lands, over all the
waters of the earth, and they listened unto
him and received his words, and the dawn
began to rise in their hearts, and they praised
the announcer with the cheers of their mouths

78

and they blessed him with the tears of their
eyes.

But when the multitude dispersed to return to
their labors and to their strifes, the dark fig
ures that make darker the shadows of the
night held council against the truth-bearer for
the words that he had spoken.

And the scribe said, Verily, he is a law-breaker.

And the money changer said, Aye, and he is a
fool.

And the judge said, He is a wrong-doer.

And the sage said, He is possessed of a devil.

And the chronicler said, He is a primitive sinner.

And the wise man said, He is a profligate.

And the priest said, He is a blasphemer.

And they all croaked in chorus, He is an enemy of
society, of civilization, of religion and man
kind. Law and order must be upheld and our
sacred institutions must be preserved. We
must do away with him.

And they did away with him. But nobody knows
to this day whether they sent him to prison
or to Parliament.

79

THE PEACEFUL HOUR

THIS IS THE HOUR OF PEACE, the hour

of all the things I love.
The things I love are the things that are my own

forever, the things that shall never be taken

away from me.
They are not the things that I have made, for

nothing have I made to myself,
They are not the things I fashioned with my

many-tooled hands,
Not the things I have brought forth out of the

smoke of my pipe, in the gathering dusk of

my half-closed eyelids,
Not the things I saw far away and brought

nearer, for no burden-bearer and no messen
ger am I to myself,
Not the things I revived, for nothing of mine ever

died,
But the things that were given to me, the things

I wanted not and did not ask and did not

covet, but were simply given to me unearned

and undeserved because I needed them and

knew it not.
For they alone are forever my own, not because

I must fight to keep them, but because the

givers will never take them back from me.
I love the black bread the wayfarer shared with

me at the fountain and which I ate not for

hunger but for the joy of him,

80

I love the wine the stranger offered me at the
tavern by the roadside,

And the tune of the old hand-organ under my
window,

And the kiss of the two child-lips while I was
sleeping,

And the song of my sweetheart who is sewing in
the warm sunlight,

And the loud cries of my baby that wants to be
fed,

Yea, and that man who is passing by on the side
walk yonder, whoever, whatever he be and
wherever he goes in this hour of peace.

81

SAMNITE CRADLE SONG

Lullaby, baby, mamma's own child!

Who sang the evil dirge about thee?

Thou earnest in March time, wee as the tart

Berries of hedge thorns, pale as the wild

Roses that have a wasp in their heart.

Who has to thee the witchy words spoken?

Who read to thee the malevolent star?

Who cast on thee the spell of the dead?

A hunchbacked wizard thy cradle has broken,

A lame old fairy embittered my teat,

And the blind priest with unblessed water wet

At the font thy poor, innocent head.

Thou art so sleepy, but numb are my arms;

Thou art so cold, but chilled is my breath;

Thou art so hungry, but dry is my breast.

Lullaby, hush-a-by, baby mine, rest,

Sleep for thy mother, who is tired unto death.

Lullaby, baby! The corn was so full,
The vines were so heavy, the season so pleasant,
And happy, so happy, the heart of the peasant,
Who was preparing and sweeping the bin
For the new wheat that was bristling so fine,
While his nude youngster was laughing within
The casks he was scrubbing to fill with new wine.
But God dislikes them whose heart is content,
God loves only them who starve and bewail;
And so he sent us the wind and the hail.

82

All has been carried away by landslides ;
All has been buried beneath the brown mire;
All has been ruined by storms and by tides.
Nor vineyards nor orchards the water did leave.
The mice now dance in the empty meal keeve;
The ashes are cold of the last cauldron fire;
The dams and the flood-traps the torrent has
torn;

And poor we! the mill that once ground our corn
Now grinds away the last hope of the land.
Lullaby, baby, the morning is nigh.
Hush-a-by, baby, thou must understand,
The tale of my woe is as long as thy cry.

Lullaby, baby, thy grandfather plowed

And thy father mowed the grain,

And thy mother winnowed the chaff,

And at evening many a spool

Spinned with spindle and distaff,

Threads of hemp and threads of wool.

But granddaddy was broken and bowed,

The land was hard, the winters were cold ;

But thy father was twenty years old,

So they took him away and sent him to war.

One was old and one was young.

One was weak and one was strong,

One was too tired to till the sod,

One was fresh in the heart of spring.

So thy grandpa was killed by God,

And thy daddy by the king.

Lullaby, hush-a-by, baby mine, sleep,
Lullaby, softer than thine is their bed!

Mother will sing thee, mother'll not weep,
Mother'll not mourn for the dead.

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Lullaby, baby, grow strong and brave !
They are no longer hungry now;
Only us two the bad luck smote.
The gravedigger took away the goat,
For digging an eight-foot grave ;
The curate has taken the sow,
For saying mass by the biers;
And the Government for its toll
Has taken the earrings from mine ears.
Lullaby, baby, they took our all,
The walnut chest, the iron bed,
The silver brooch, the marriage ring,
The black fichu in which I was wed;
I have not even a scarf to mourn
And honor my young love forlorn
And the faith I swore to him.
I have only the sack of straw,
The bident with the broken horn,
And the medal which the law
Has sent to thee, an iron thing,
Which in his honor bears the trace
Of his young blood upon one face,
And on the other side the grace
Of God about our gracious king.

Lullaby, hush-a-by, baby mine, sleep,
Lullaby, softer than thine is their bed !

Mother will sing thee, mother'll not weep,
Mother'll not mourn for the dead.

Lullaby, baby, the winter is near,

The mountains put on their clean hood of snow.

What shall I do? Where shall I go?

In the sieve there is no more flour;

In the bin there is no more coal;

In the jug there is no more oil.

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What shall I do, my desperate soul?

Am I to die of hunger and cold,

Or beg for bread from door to door,

Or be a wanton about the inns?

Ah, what do I care what I shall be,

What do I care, so you do not die?

My grief shall stop where your joy begins

And our good day shall surely come by.

And when it comes, and I am in my grave

Or past the age of thy pride or blame,

If I keep true to all that aid me,

Give back a hundred for one they gave,

But if I rear thee with sweets and with shame,

Lullaby, hush-a-by, harken, my life,

For every dollar of silver they paid me,

Give back a stab with your father's keen knife.

Lullaby, hush-a-by, baby mine, sleep,
Lullaby, softer than thine is their bed!

Mother will sing thee, mother'll not weep,
Mother'll not mourn for the dead.

Lullaby, baby, the rope is so frayed
That down the well soon the bucket will dart;
The whip is broken, the yoke torn in twain;
But see, how sharp is the hatchet's blade!
The ass has broken away from the cart,
The hound has shaken and slipped from the chain,
And I am singing away my fierce heart
Just for th.e rage of the song, not the pain.
Behold, the dawn fingers the shadows dispel,
Soon will the sun peep at thee from the hill;
The cocks are crowing, the starlings grow shrill.
Wait, and my song with the matin's glad bell
Shall fill the morning with omens of glee.
For now no longer I sing unto thee,

85

Mamma's own wolflet, the tale of my woe,
But now that the sun is near, my man-boy,
The night is gone, and my sorrows will go;
List to my prophecy, vengeance and joy.

Lullaby, baby, look ! Our great king
With all his princes and barons and sons,
Goes to the church to pray to the Lord.
Ring all the bells ! Fire all the guns !
For all the chapter is wearing the cope,
And the bishop himself will sing the high mass.
How came this vision to me, my wild hope?
How came this wonderful fortune to pass?
Behold, the bishop lifts up the grail;
The king is kneeling upon the gray stone;
The trumpets hush, the organ heaves deep:
' "Te Deum laudamus . . . We praise thee, O

Lord . . .

For all thy mercies, Lord, hail! all hail!"
Hush-a-by, lullaby, listen ! Don't sleep !
Lullaby, hush-a-by, mark well my word !
Thou shalt grow big. Don't tremble! Don't fail!
The holy wafer is but kneaded dough;
The king is but flesh like the man with the hoe ;
The axe is of iron, the same as the sword;
This I do tell thee and this I do sing.
And if thou livest with sweat and with woe,
Grow like a man, not a saint, nor a knave;
Do not be good, but be strong and be brave,
With the fangs of a wolf and the faith of a dog.
Die not the death of a soldier or slave,
Like thy grandfather who died in a bog,
Like thy poor father who rots in the rain.
But for this womb that has borne thee in pain,
For these dry breasts thou hast tortured so long,
For the despair of my life, my lost hope,

86

And for this song of the dawn that I sing
Die like a man by the ax or the rope,
Spit on their God and stab our good king.

Sleep no more, sleep no more! Show me you

know,

Show me you listen, answer my sob!
Drink my blood, drain my heart! Just one

sign . . .so!

Bite my breast, bite it harder, mother's tiger
cub!

87

THE CAGE

IN THE MIDDLE of the great greenish room
stood the green iron cage.

All was old, and cold and mournful, ancient with
the double antiquity of heart and brain in the
great greenish room.

Old and hoary was the man who sat upon the
faldstool, upon the fireless and godless altar,

Old were the tomes that mouldered behind him
on the dusty shelves,

Old was the painting of an old man that hung
above him;

Old the man upon his left who awoke with his
cracked voice the dead echoes of dead cen
turies, old the man upon his right who wield
ed a wand ; and old all those who spoke to him
and listened to him before and around the
green iron cage.

Old were the words they spoke, and their faces
were drawn and white and lifeless, without
expression or solemnity; like the ikons of old
cathedrals.

For of naught they knew, but of what was writ
ten in the old, yellow books. And all the joys
and the pains and the loves and hatreds and
furies and labors and strifes of man, all the
fierce and divine passions that battle and rage
in the heart of man, never entered into the

88

great greenish room but to sit in the green
iron cage.

Senility, dullness and dissolution were all around
the green iron cage, and nothing was new and
young and alive in the great room, except the
three men who were in the cage.

Throbbed and thundered and clamored and
roared outside of the great greenish room the
terrible whirl of life, and most pleasant was
the hymn of its mighty polyphony to the lis
tening ears of the gods.

Whirred the wheels of the puissant machines,
rattled and clanked the chains of the giant
cranes, crashed the falling rocks, the riveters
crepitated and glad and sonorous was the
rhythm of the bouncing hammers upon the
loud-throated anvils.

Like the chests of wrathfully toiling Titans,
heaved and sniffed and panted the sweaty
boilers, like the hissing of dragons sibilated
the jets of steam, and the sirens of the work
shops shrieked like angry hawks flapping
above the crags of a dark and fathomless
chasm.

The files screeched and the trains thundered, the
wires hummed, the dynamos buzzed, the fires
crackled; and like a thunderclap from the cy-
clopean forge roared the blasts of the mines.

Wonderful and fierce was the mighty symphony
of the world, as the terrible voices of metal
and fire and water cried out into the listening
ears of the gods the furious song of human
toil.

89

Out of the chaos of sound, welded in the unison
of one will to sing, rose clear and nimble the
divine accord of the hymn.

Out of the canons of the mountains,
Out of the whirlpools of the lakes,
Out of the entrails of the earth,
Out of the yawning gorges of hell,
From the land and the sea and the sky
And from whatever comes bread and

wealth and joy,

And from the peaceful abodes of men rose ma
jestic and fierce, louder than the roar of the
volcano and the bellow of the typhoon, the
anthem of human labor to the fatherly justice
of the Sun.

But in the great greenish room there was nothing
but the silence of dead centuries and of ears
that listen no more; and none heard the
mighty call of life that roared outside, save

the three men who were in the cage.
* * *

All the good smells, the wholesome smells, the
healthy smells of life and labor were outside
the great room.

The smell of rain upon the grass and of the flow
ers consumed by their love for the stars;

The heavy smell of smoke that coiled out of myr
iads of chimneys of ships and factories and
homes,

The dry smell of sawdust and the salty smell of
the iron filings ;

The odor of magazines and granaries and ware
houses, the kingly smell of argosies and the
rich scent of market places, so dear to the
women of the race;

The smell of new cloth and new linen, the smell

90

of soap and water, and the smell of newly
printed paper,

The smell of grains and hay and the smell of
stables, the warm smell of cattle and sheep
that Virgil loved ;

The smell of milk and wine and plants and
metals,

And all the good odors of the earth and of the
sea and of the sky, and the fragrance of fresh
bread, sweetest aroma of the world, and the
smell of human sweat, most holy incense to
the divine nostrils of the gods, and all the
Olympian perfumes of the heart and the brain
and the passions of men were outside of the
great greenish room.

But within the old room there was nothing but
the smell of old books and the dust of things
decayed, and the suffocated exhalations of old
graves, and the ashen odor of dissolution and
death.

Yet all the sweetness of all the wholesome odors
of the world outside was redolent in the breath

of the three men in the cage.
# # #

Like crippled eagles fallen were the three men in
the cage, and like little children who look into
a well to behold the sky were the men that
looked down upon them.

No more would they rise to their lofty eyries,
no more would they soar above the snow
capped mountains — yet, tho' their pinions
were broken, nothing could dim the fierce
glow of their eyes that knew all the altitudes
of heaven.

Strange it was to behold the men in the cage
while life clamored outside, and strange it

91

seemed to them that they should be there be
cause of what dead men had written in old
books.

So of naught did they think but of the old books
and the green cage.

Thought they: "All things are born, grow, decay,
die and are forgotten. Surely all that is in
this room will pass away. But what will en
dure the longer, the folly that was written
into the old books or the madness that was
beaten into the bands of this cage?

"Which of these two powers has enthralled us,
the thought of the dead men who wrote the
old books, or the labor of living men who
have wrought this cage?"

Long and intently they thought, but they found
no answer.

* * *

But one of the men in the cage, whose soul was
tormented by the fiercest fire of hell, which is
the yearning after the Supreme Truth, spoke
and said unto his comrades:

"Aye, brothers, all things die and pass away, yet
nothing is truly and forever dead until each
one of the living has thrown a regretless
handful of soil into its grave.

"Many a book has been written since these old
books were written, and many a proverb of
the sage has become the jest of the fool, yet
this cage still stands as it stood for number
less ages.

"What is it, then, that made it of metal more en
during than the printed word?

"Which is its power to hold us here?

"Brothers, it is the things we love that enslave us,

92

"Brothers, it is the things we yearn for that sub
due us.

"Brothers, it is not hatred for the things that are,
but love for the things that are to be that make
us slaves.

"And what man is more apt to become a thrall,
brothers, and to be locked in a green iron cage,
than he who yearns the most for the Supreme
of the things that are to be — he who most
craves for Freedom?

"And what subtle and malignant power, save this
love of loves, could be in the metal of this cage
that it is so mad to emprison us?"

So spoke one of the men to the other two, and
then, out of the silence of the aeons spoke into
his tormented soul the metallic soul of the

cage.

* * *

"Iron, the twin brother of fire, the first born out
of the matrix of the earth, the witness ever
lasting to the glory of thy labor am I, O Man !

"Nor for this was I meant, O Man! Not to em-
prison thee, but to set thee free and sustain
thee in thy strife and in thy toil.

"I was to lift the pillars of the Temple higher
than the mountains ;

"I was to break down and bore through all the
barriers of the world to open the way to thy
triumphant chariot.

"All the treasures and all the bounties of the earth
was I to give as an offering into thy hands,
and all its forces and powers to bring chained
like crouching dogs at thy feet.

"Hadst thou not sinned against the nobility of
my nature and my destiny, hadst thou not
humiliated me, an almighty warrior, to be-

93

come the lackey of gold, I would have never
risen against thee and enslaved thee, O Man!
"While I was hoe and ploughshare and sword and
axe and scythe and hammer, I was the first
artificer of thy happiness ; but the day I was
beaten into the first lock and the first key, I
became fetters and chains to thy hands and
thy feet, O Man !

"My curse is thy curse, O Man, and even if thou
shouldst pass out of the wicket of this cage,
never shalt thou be free until thou returnest
me to the joy of labor.

"O Man, bring me back into the old smithy, puri
fy me again with the holy fire of the forge,
lay me again on the mother breast of the an
vil, beat me again with the old honest hammer
— O Man, remould me with thy wonderful
hands into an instrument of thy toil,

Remake of me the sword of thy justice,
Remake of me the tripod of thy worship,
Remake of me the sickle for thy grain,
Remake of me the oven for thy bread,
And the andirons for thy peaceful hearth,

O Man!

And the trestles for the bed of thy love,
O Man!

And the frame of thy joyous lyre, O Man !"
* * " *

Thus spake to one of the three men, out of the
silence of centuries, the metallic soul of the
cage.

And he listened unto its voice, and while it was
still ringing in his soul — which was tormented
by the fiercest fire of hell, which is the yearn
ing after the supreme truth (Is it Death? Is
it Love?) — there arose one man in the silent

94

assembly of old men that were around the
iron cage.

And that man was the most hoary of all, and
most bent and worn and crushed was he under
the heavy weight of the great burden he bore
without pride and without joy.

He arose and addressing himself — I know not
whether to the old man that sat on the black
throne, or to the old books that were moulder
ing behind him, or to the picture that hung
above him — he said (and dreary as a wind
that moans through the crosses of an old
graveyard was his voice) :

"I will prove to you that these three men in the
cage are criminals and murderers and that
they ought to be put to death."

Love, it was then that I heard for the first time
the creak of the moth that was eating the old
painting and the old books, and the worm
that was gnawing the old bench, and it was
then that I saw that all the old men around
the great greenish room were dead.

They were dead like the old man in the painting,
save that they still read the old books he could
read no more, and still spoke and heard the
old words he could speak and hear no more,
and still passed the judgment of the dead,
which he no more could pass, upon the mighty
life of the world outside that throbbed and
thundered and clamored and roared the won
derful anthem of human labor to the fatherly
justice of the Sun.

95

THE LAST ORACLE

TO ANNE SULLIVAN MACY

Teacher of Helen Keller

THE LAST ORACLE

I

Teacher, I who have sought in my fierce youth
In many an ancient scroll of obscure lore
The key-word to the dark, Medusean door
Behind which, on the grave of fear, stands truth ;

And in my restless quest and desolate
The chariots of my warrior heart I drove,
Hurling in vain the rams of faith and love
Against the terrors of the mighty gate,

I knew not that the wisdom of this age
Had even now the fearful shrine unlocked,
Until, wayfarer of the world, I knocked
At thy remote and peaceful hermitage.

'Twas not the house of Silence, though no sound
Heard I within the lofty colonnade,
And yet meseemed that somewhere in the shade,
Something did stir, indefinite, profound;

Something that shook and tore the deepest

strings

Of my stout heart — a Voice that only says
And does not speak, above the world's byways,
Dolorous like the beat of broken wings.

'Twas not the house of Darkness, yet, though

faint,

No worldly light I saw, but what did seem
The haze that lights at night the placid dream
Of children and the vision of the saint.

Therein stood I as he whose trembling lips
The last deep message of his prayer has said,
And fearfully awaits with drooping head
The blare of the supreme apocalypse.

Yet asked I not to see for the wan wraith

Of my wild youth that all the roads had tried,

Not for the sorrows of the Crucified,

Nor for the works of my all-suffering faith ;

But for the One who waits earth-bound in chains
The greater flame of his first conquered spark,
To gain back, if he leap from out the dark,
The crown that heaven has stolen from his do
mains;

For Him I asked whose rebel soul was hurled
Into the deepest pit of burning fire,
Yet never ceased to battle and conspire
To render back to cheated Man his world ;

And for the One upon whose back the yoke
And the feast tables of old Croesus stand,
And by the power of whose almighty hand,
Teacher, the seals that sealed the gate you broke.

II

I felt not sad, nor yet did I rejoice.
My life retreated to its last recess,
And then, from out the unfathomed nothingness
I heard the answer of the loneliest Voice.

100

The Voice that thou hast'ntpulded;witii>tlTy/xieft
And learned hands of loVe and firmly struck •
Not in ignoble clay, but in the rock
That tides and bolts has braved, unmoved, un-
cleft.

The Voice thou didst reclaim from out the still
Empire whose gate no one before thee shook,
The Voice that has belied the crafty book,
Man's destinies to sing and to fulfill.

Said She: "My world is wider than the strength
Of thy sharp eyes can girdle and surround,
For in my night in which I see no bound,
I cannot walk the fulness of its length.

"But thou who canst behold and dost respond
Often unto the lures that guile thy soul,
No farther than thy gaze shalt make thy goal
And pitch thy tent where started I beyond.

"For I no greater obstacles can meet
Than this, the voiceless dark which I explore,
And yet, how loud, like the sea's surging roar,
I hear the sunward march of countless feet.

"They go with me and I with them. But where,
They know not nor I cannot signify,
Oh, if I could but find the voice to cry
For me, the eyes to see, the ears to hear.

"If I could find the one to sally forth,
My vision and his strength their foes would rout,
And clear the way for them and lead them out
Of bondage to the gardens of the earth.

101

"Whom -shall I -sejd? My heart has grown un
steady

In its long quest." — I bowed my head in pain. . .

Then in its battle armor leaped again

My warrior heart and answered: "Send me.
Lady!"

Ill

Send me ! Whatever in thy watchful night
Thou blessest, I shall blazon in the morn,
And what thou cursest with thy withering scorn
Into the conquered ditches I shall smite.

Send me, send me! Thy words shall sear and

cleave

Like trails of mighty armies through the land,
For thou alone canst see and understand
The destiny we only can achieve.

For though we had the truth, the tool, the word
To pit against our foemen's lies and gold,
No sacred name had we to stand and hold
Against the One whose cross has shaped their
sword ;

The One who sanctified their holocaust,
Whose words of peace our holy war have cursed,
Whose blood our red ensigns has not aspersed
But filled the goblets of their drunken lust.

Aye, we were stronger, we whose soul is wrought
Upon the fire and made with flame and ash,
Yet by the power of that One name the clash
They stayed of our invincible onslaught.

102

But now thy lightless eyes that overpass
The girdle of our vaster battle-field,
Shall break the charm of their enchanted shield
And pierce the strongest steel of their cuirass.

Henceforth thy word into the cannon bronze
We cast, our new commandments to proclaim ;
Thou art the Vestal of the greatest flame,
Thou art the Sybil of the last response.

And when their Christ they conjure to condone
Their deeds of blood, our sins of love by thee
Shall be dispersed — a higher Calvary
Thou didst ascend to suffer and atone.

IV

And lo! as thou hast seen it, it shall be.
One day we shall relight our bivouac fires
Upon the embattled streets of our grandsires
And swear once more to die or to be free.

One day our bleeding, ever plodding feet,
Lit by the torch of love, shall stop before
The House of Greed, and hard upon the door,
Clenched in our fist the scythe of Time shall beat.

Two messengers that day shall pass the gate,
One, white-clad, who shall bear the salt and bread
Of peace, and One who cloaked in gory red
Shall bring the everlasting doom of hate.

Thou shalt be first, and say (for thou shalt live
Till then, thou who hast known no mortal sin) :
"Your brother stands without, let him come in
And all your great misdeeds he will forgive.

103

"Your brother whom you cast away to roam
In misery and shame and toilsome woe,
Comes back in arms, and yet not like a foe,
But like a guest he will re-enter home.

''Open your door, receive him at your hearth,
Break bread with him and he shall break his

sword,

And from this day the kingdom of the Lord
Be evermore established on the earth."

Thus shalt thou say. But if his heart of guilt
Be hardened, then the Somber One whose brow
Is seared by all the fires and ne'er did bow
Shall come forth, both his hands upon the hilt.

'Twill not be I, but one in whom my breath
Will pass before I die; for to my Dream
I ask no guerdon but this gift supreme,
The beauty of the battle and of death.

"Harken!'' he'll say. "In vain we begged your

dole,

For mercy, for the common bond of blood,
For love of man, for fear of your own god,
For the salvation of your deathless soul.

"We served you, fed you, housed you, cheered

or wept

When you were glad or sad; when sick we nursed
You back to health; your foes we fought and

cursed,
We watched your gold, we labored while you

slept.

104

"We mourned your dead, we blessed your chil
dren's name,

We gave to you our sweat, our tears, our lives,
The virtue of our daughters and our wives,
Our share of heav'n, our hoary mothers' shame.

"Always unfelt, unseen, ununderstood,
Our love for you all suffered and forgave.
When you did strike us, we acclaimed you brave;
When you despised our lives, we hailed you good.

"Nothing we claimed and little did we beg;

Bereft of all, in famine, old, diseased,

After your dogs were filled, and when you

pleased,
We asked to have the offal and the dreg.

"We only asked enough to live — not this,
Your life, but just to toil and not to die:
A loaf, a bed, a rag, a sheltered sty,
Your god to worship and your hand to kiss.

"No more we asked. But, lo, you heard us not,
You drove us from your kennels and you grinned
When in the cold, the snow, the rain, the wind,
You damned our souls to hell, our flesh to rot.

"You drove our babes to starve, the strong to

drink,

The weak to beg, our famished girls to fill
The charnels of your stews, our sons to kill
For bread and work . . . and all of us to think !

"And so we thought. Behold the morning hour,
Your last, the crimson dawn that drives the fogs.
We have come back, not like a pack of dogs
That to new bones and an old whip will cower,

105

"Not like a drove of cattle which the knife
Can silence and the rope can yoke and bind,
But like the first vanguard of humankind
That comes into its heritage of life.

"We ask no more for work, for love, for bread.
We are the stronger now, we bring no peace.
Monster, your hour is struck, get on your knees,
We come not for your gold — we want your
head!"

106

TO THE ONE WHO WAITS

No! Whether a sob or a song,

While love shall life's battles endure,

While you in my will shall be strong
And I in your faith shall be pure,

While both have to weep, but our soul
Knows not what is doubt or despair,

While happiness be not our goal,
But simply the way to get there;

While after each loss we are trying
Again, though we never achieve,

And, mocked at and wounded and dying,
We still shall persist and believe,

While after each stormy nightfall
More radiant each sunrise will seem,

And while, after having lost all,

Remain you and I and the Dream —

Even though all the world shall adverse us,
Though all our destruction acclaim,

And priests in God's name shall accurse us,
And fools in humanity's name;

Though all our old comrades we lose,
And each of our friends turn a knave,

And some pull the hangman's red noose,
And all help to dig us a grave,

107

Still this unto you will I tell,

That no man, no scaffold, no jail,

No powers of heaven and hell
Against you and me shall prevail !

108

LOAFfPERlODl
HOMEJSE

FORM NO. DD6

o
BERKELEY, CA 94720

YC1563S9