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Title: Chimneysmoke

Author: Christopher Morley

Illustrator: Thomas Fogarty

Release date: October 26, 2011 [eBook #37852]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/37852

Credits: Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Steven Brown and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHIMNEYSMOKE ***

Chimneysmoke

By Christopher Morley

CHIMNEYSMOKE

HIDE AND SEEK

THE ROCKING HORSE

SONGS FOR A LITTLE HOUSE

MINCE PIE

New York: George H. Doran Company

This hearth was built for thy delight,

For thee the logs were sawn,

For thee the largest chair, at night,

Is to the chimney drawn.

For thee, dear lass, the match was lit,

To yield the ruddy blaze—

May Jack Frost give us joy of it

For many, many days.

Chimneysmoke

by

Christopher Morley

Illustrated by

Thomas Fogarty

Garden City, New York

Doubleday, Page & Co.

1927

COPYRIGHT, 1917, 1919, 1920, 1921

BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PRINTED IN

THE UNITED STATES AT THE COUNTRY

LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

"How can I turn from any fire

On any man's hearthstone?

I know the wonder and desire

That went to build my own."

—RUDYARD KIPLING; "The Fires"

Author's Note

There are a number of poems in this collection that have not previously appeared in book form. But, as a few readers may discern, many of the verses are reprinted from Songs for a Little House (1917), The Rocking Horse (1919) and Hide and Seek (1920). There is also one piece revived from the judicious obscurity of an early escapade, The Eighth Sin, published in Oxford in 1912. It is on Mr. Thomas Fogarty's delightful and sympathetic drawings that this book rests its real claim to be considered a new venture. To Mr. Fogarty, and to Mr. George H. Doran, whose constant kindness and generosity contradict all the traditions about publishers and minor poets, the author expresses his permanent gratitude.

Roslyn, Long Island.

Contents

PAGE

TO THE LITTLE HOUSE

19

A GRACE BEFORE WRITING

20

DEDICATION FOR A FIREPLACE

21

TAKING TITLE

22

THE SECRET

25

ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

26

AT THE MERMAID CAFETERIA

28

OUR HOUSE

29

ON NAMING A HOUSE

31

A HALLOWE'EN MEMORY

32

REFUSING YOU IMMORTALITY

35

BAYBERRY CANDLES

36

SECRET LAUGHTER

37

SIX WEEKS OLD

38

A CHARM

41

MY PIPE

42

THE 5:42

44

PETER PAN

48

IN HONOR OF TAFFY TOPAZ

49

THE CEDAR CHEST

50

READING ALOUD

51

ANIMAL CRACKERS

52

THE MILKMAN

55

LIGHT VERSE

56

THE FURNACE

57

WASHING THE DISHES

58

THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES

61

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY COAL-BIN

62

THE OLD SWIMMER

66

THE MOON-SHEEP

70

SMELLS

71

SMELLS (JUNIOR)

72

MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN

75

THE FAT LITTLE PURSE

76

THE REFLECTION

80

THE BALLOON PEDDLER

82

LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S BOOK PLATE

86

TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL

89

THE CRIB

90

THE POET

94

TO A DISCARDED MIRROR

97

TO A CHILD

98

TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN

100

TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET

104

BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING

105

BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER

106

A VALENTINE GAME

107

FOR A BIRTHDAY

108

KEATS

111

TO H. F. M., A SONNET IN SUNLIGHT

113

QUICKENING

114

AT A WINDOW SILL

115

THE RIVER OF LIGHT

116

OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS

118

IN AN AUCTION ROOM

119

EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY

120

SONNET BY A GEOMETER

121

TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER

122

TO AN OLD FRIEND

125

TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE

126

THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK

129

STREETS

130

TO THE ONLY BEGETTER

131

PEDOMETER

133

HOSTAGES

134

ARS DURA

137

O. HENRY—APOTHECARY

138

FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET

139

TWO O'CLOCK

140

THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

141

THE WEDDED LOVER

142

TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST

143

CHARLES AND MARY

144

TO A GRANDMOTHER

145

DIARISTS

146

THE LAST SONNET

147

THE SAVAGE

148

ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH

149

ADVICE TO A CITY

150

THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY

151

GREEN ESCAPE

153

VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS

157

THE ICE WAGON

158

AT A MOVIE THEATRE

161

SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE

163

THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS)

167

DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD?

168

RAPID TRANSIT

170

CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW

171

TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS

172

PEACE

173

SONG, IN DEPRECATION OF PULCHRITUDE

175

MOUNTED POLICE

176

TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT HE IS NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY

179

THE INTRUDER

181

TIT FOR TAT

182

SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE

185

THE PLUMPUPPETS

186

DANDY DANDELION

190

THE HIGH CHAIR

192

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

193

AUTUMN COLORS

197

THE LAST CRICKET

198

TO LOUISE

199

CHRISTMAS EVE

203

EPITAPH ON THE PROOFREADER OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA

204

THE MUSIC BOX

205

TO LUATH

209

THOUGHTS ON REACHING LAND

212

A SYMPOSIUM

214

TO A TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO HAS A BAD COLD

218

NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED

219

THE TWINS

227

A PRINTER'S MADRIGAL

228

THE POET ON THE HEARTH

230

O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY

231

A STONE IN ST. PAUL'S GRAVEYARD

235

THE MADONNA OF THE CURB

236

THE ISLAND

240

SUNDAY NIGHT

242

ENGLAND, JULY, 1913

246

CASUALTY

250

A GRUB STREET RECESSIONAL

251

PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR A FUNERAL SERVICE

253

Illustrations

PAGE

This hearth was built for thy delight—

Frontispiece

And by a friend's bright gift of wine,

I dedicate this house of mine

23

And of all man's felicities—

33

A little world he feels and sees:

His mother's arms, his mother's knees—

39

The 5:42

47

And Daddy once said he would like to be me

Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!

53

But heavy feeding complicates

The task by soiling many plates

59

How ill avail, on such a frosty night

65

The old swimmer

69

But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all—

73

Perhaps it's a ragged child crying

79

The Balloon Peddler

85

If you appreciate it more

Than I—why don't return it!

87

And then one night—

93

The human cadence and the subtle chime

Of little laughters—

95

What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps—

103

A Birthday

109

You must be rigid servant of your art!

123

You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care

Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire

127

Hostages

135

My eyes still pine for the comely line

Of an outbound vessel's hull

155

A man ain't so secretive, never cares

What kind of private papers he leaves lay—

165

Mounted Police

177

Courtesy

183

The Plumpuppets

189

... It's hard to have to tell

How unresponsive I have found her

195

... When you see, this Great First Time,

Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!

201

The music box

207

Solugubrious

217

In the midnight, like yourself,

I explore the pantry shelf!

221

The Twins

227

O praise me not the country

233

The wail of sickly children—

239

Ah, does the butcher—heartless clown—

Beget that shadow on her brow?

245

Chimneysmoke

Chimneysmoke

TO THE LITTLE HOUSE

DEAR little house, dear shabby street,

Dear books and beds and food to eat!

How feeble words are to express

The facets of your tenderness.

How white the sun comes through the pane!

In tinkling music drips the rain!

How burning bright the furnace glows!

What paths to shovel when it snows!

O dearly loved Long Island trains!

O well remembered joys and pains....

How near the housetops Beauty leans

Along that little street in Queens!

Let these poor rhymes abide for proof

Joy dwells beneath a humble roof;

Heaven is not built of country seats

But little queer suburban streets!

March, 1917.

A GRACE BEFORE WRITING

THIS is a sacrament, I think!

Holding the bottle toward the light,

As blue as lupin gleams the ink;

May Truth be with me as I write!

That small dark cistern may afford

Reunion with some vanished friend,—

And with this ink I have just poured

May none but honest words be penned!

DEDICATION FOR A FIREPLACE

THIS hearth was built for thy delight,

For thee the logs were sawn,

For thee the largest chair, at night,

Is to the chimney drawn.

For thee, dear lass, the match was lit

To yield the ruddy blaze—

May Jack Frost give us joy of it

For many, many days

TAKING TITLE

TO make this house my very own

Could not be done by law alone.

Though covenant and deed convey

Absolute fee, as lawyers say,

There are domestic rites beside

By which this house is sanctified.

By kindled fire upon the hearth,

By planted pansies in the garth,

By food, and by the quiet rest

Of those brown eyes that I love best,

And by a friend's bright gift of wine,

I dedicate this house of mine.

When all but I are soft abed

I trail about my quiet stead

A wreath of blue tobacco smoke

(A charm that evil never broke)

And bring my ritual to an end

By giving shelter to a friend.

These done, O dwelling, you become

Not just a house, but truly Home!

And by a friend's bright gift of wine,

I dedicate this house of mine

THE SECRET

IT was the House of Quietness

To which I came at dusk;

The garth was lit with roses

And heavy with their musk.

The tremulous tall poplar trees

Stood whispering around,

The gentle flicker of their plumes

More quiet than no sound.

And as I wondered at the door

What magic might be there,

The Lady of Sweet Silences

Came softly down the stair.

ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

DOWN-SLIPPING Time, sweet, swift, and shallow stream,

Here, like a boulder, lies this afternoon

Across your eager flow. So you shall stay,

Deepened and dammed, to let me breathe and be.

Your troubled fluency, your running gleam

Shall pause, and circle idly, still and clear:

The while I lie and search your glassy pool

Where, gently coiling in their lazy round,

Unseparable minutes drift and swim,

Eddy and rise and brim. And I will see

How many crystal bubbles of slack Time

The mind can hold and cherish in one Now!

Now, for one conscious vacancy of sense,

The stream is gathered in a deepening pond,

Not a mere moving mirror. Through the sharp

Correct reflection of the standing scene

The mind can dip, and cleanse itself with rest,

And see, slow spinning in the lucid gold,

Your liquid motes, imperishable Time.

It cannot be. The runnel slips away:

The clear smooth downward sluice begins again,

More brightly slanting for that trembling pause,

Leaving the sense its conscious vague unease

As when a sonnet flashes on the mind,

Trembles and burns an instant, and is gone.

AT THE MERMAID CAFETERIA

TRUTH is enough for prose:

Calmly it goes

To tell just what it knows.

For verse, skill will suffice—

Delicate, nice

Casting of verbal dice.

Poetry, men attain

By subtler pain

More flagrant in the brain—

An honesty unfeigned,

A heart unchained,

A madness well restrained.

OUR HOUSE

IT should be yours, if I could build

The quaint old dwelling I desire,

With books and pictures bravely filled

And chairs beside an open fire,

White-panelled rooms with candles lit—

I lie awake to think of it!

A dial for the sunny hours,

A garden of old-fashioned flowers—

Say marigolds and lavender

And mignonette and fever-few,

And Judas-tree and maidenhair

And candytuft and thyme and rue—

All these for you to wander in.

A Chinese carp (called Mandarin)

Waving a sluggish silver fin

Deep in the moat: so tame he comes

To lip your fingers offering crumbs.

Tall chimneys, like long listening ears,

White shutters, ivy green and thick,

And walls of ruddy Tudor brick

Grown mellow with the passing years.

And windows with small leaded panes,

Broad window-seats for when it rains;

A big blue bowl of pot pourri

And—yes, a Spanish chestnut tree

To coin the autumn's minted gold.

A summer house for drinking tea—

All these (just think!) for you and me.

A staircase of the old black wood

Cut in the days of Robin Hood,

And banisters worn smooth as glass

Down which your hand will lightly pass;

A piano with pale yellow keys

For wistful twilight melodies,

And dusty bottles in a bin—

All these for you to revel in!

But when? Ah well, until that time

We'll habit in this house of rhyme.

1912

ON NAMING A HOUSE

WHEN I a householder became

I had to give my house a name.

I thought I'd call it "Poplar Trees,"

Or "Widdershins" or "Velvet Bees,"

Or "Just Beneath a Star."

I thought of "House Where Plumbings Freeze,"

Or "As You Like it," "If You Please,"

Or "Nicotine" or "Bread and Cheese,"

"Full Moon" or "Doors Ajar."

But still I sought some subtle charm,

Some rune to guard my roof from harm

And keep the devil far;

I thought of this, and I was saved!

I had my letter-heads engraved

The House Where Brown Eyes Are.

A HALLOWE'EN MEMORY

DO you remember, Heart's Desire,

The night when Hallowe'en first came?

The newly dedicated fire,

The hearth unsanctified by flame?

How anxiously we swept the bricks

(How tragic, were the draught not right!)

And then the blaze enwrapped the sticks

And filled the room with dancing light.

We could not speak, but only gaze,

Nor half believe what we had seen—

Our home, our hearth, our golden blaze,

Our cider mugs, our Hallowe'en!

And then a thought occurred to me—

We ran outside with sudden shout

And looked up at the roof, to see

Our own dear smoke come drifting out.

And of all man's felicities

The very subtlest one, say I,

Is when, for the first time, he sees

His hearthfire smoke against the sky.

And of all man's felicities

The very subtlest one, say I,

Is when, for the first time, he sees

His hearthfire smoke against the sky.

REFUSING YOU IMMORTALITY

IF I should tell, unstinted,

Your beauty and your grace,

All future lads would whisper

Traditions of your face;

If I made public tumult

Your mirth, your queenly state,

Posterity would grumble

That it was born too late.

I will not frame your beauty

In bright undying phrase,

Nor blaze it as a legend

For unborn men to praise—

For why should future lovers

Be saddened and depressed?

Deluded, let them fancy

Their own girls loveliest!

BAYBERRY CANDLES

DEAR sweet, when dusk comes up the hill,

The fire leaps high with golden prongs;

I place along the chimneysill

The tiny candles of my songs.

And though unsteadily they burn,

As evening shades from gray to blue

Like candles they will surely learn

To shine more clear, for love of you.

SECRET LAUGHTER

"I had a secret laughter."

—Walter de la Mare.

THERE is a secret laughter

That often comes to me,

And though I go about my work

As humble as can be,

There is no prince or prelate

I envy—no, not one.

No evil can befall me—

By God, I have a son!

SIX WEEKS OLD

HE is so small, he does not know

The summer sun, the winter snow;

The spring that ebbs and comes again,

All this is far beyond his ken.

A little world he feels and sees:

His mother's arms, his mother's knees;

He hides his face against her breast,

And does not care to learn the rest.

A little world he feels and sees:

His mother's arms, his mother's knees—

A CHARM

For Our New Fireplace,

To Stop Its Smoking

O WOOD, burn bright; O flame, be quick;

O smoke, draw cleanly up the flue—

My lady chose your every brick

And sets her dearest hopes on you!

Logs cannot burn, nor tea be sweet,

Nor white bread turn to crispy toast,

Until the charm be made complete

By love, to lay the sooty ghost.

And then, dear books, dear waiting chairs,

Dear china and mahogany,

Draw close, for on the happy stairs

My brown-eyed girl comes down for tea!

MY PIPE

MY PIPE is old

And caked with soot;

My wife remarks:

"How can you put

That horrid relic,

So unclean,

Inside your mouth?

The nicotine

Is strong enough

To stupefy

A Swedish plumber."

I reply:

"This is the kind

Of pipe I like:

I fill it full

Of Happy Strike,

Or Barking Cat

Or Cabman's Puff,

Or Brooklyn Bridge

(That potent stuff)

Or Chaste Embraces,

Knacker's Twist,

Old Honeycomb

Or Niggerfist.

I clamp my teeth

Upon its stem—

It is my bliss,

My diadem.

Whatever Fate

May do to me,

This is my favorite

B

B B.

For this dear pipe

You feign to scorn

I smoked the night

The boy was born."

THE 5:42

LILAC, violet, and rose

Ardently the city glows;

Sunset glory, purely sweet,

Gilds the dreaming byway-street,

And, above the Avenue,

Winter dusk is deepening blue.

(Then, across Long Island meadows,

Darker, darker, grow the shadows:

Patience, little waiting lass!

Laggard minutes slowly pass;

Patience, laughs the yellow fire:

Homeward bound is heart's desire!)

Hark, adown the canyon street

Flows the merry tide of feet;

High the golden buildings loom

Blazing in the purple gloom;

All the town is set with stars,

Homeward chant the Broadway cars!

All down Thirty-second Street

Homeward, Homeward, say the feet!

Tramping men, uncouth to view,

Footsore, weary, thrill anew;

Gone the ringing telephones,

Blessed nightfall now atones,

Casting brightness on the snow

Golden the train windows go.

Then (how long it seems) at last

All the way is overpast.

Heart that beats your muffled drum,

Lo, your venturer is come!

Wide the door! Leap high, O fire!

Home at length is heart's desire!

Gone is weariness and fret,

At the sill warm lips are met.

Once again may be renewed

The conjoined beatitude.

The 5:42

PETER PAN

"The boy for whom Barrie wrote Peter Pan—the original of Peter Pan—has died in battle."

—New York Times.

AND Peter Pan is dead? Not so!

When mothers turn the lights down low

And tuck their little sons in bed,

They know that Peter is not dead....

That little rounded blanket-hill;

Those prayer-time eyes, so deep and still—

However wise and great a man

He grows, he still is Peter Pan.

And mothers' ways are often queer:

They pause in doorways, just to hear

A tiny breathing; think a prayer;

And then go tiptoe down the stair.

IN HONOR OF TAFFY TOPAZ

TAFFY, the topaz-colored cat,

Thinks now of this and now of that,

But chiefly of his meals.

Asparagus, and cream, and fish,

Are objects of his Freudian wish;

What you don't give, he steals.

His gallant heart is strongly stirred

By clink of plate or flight of bird,

He has a plumy tail;

At night he treads on stealthy pad

As merry as Sir Galahad

A-seeking of the Grail.

His amiable amber eyes

Are very friendly, very wise;

Like Buddha, grave and fat,

He sits, regardless of applause,

And thinking, as he kneads his paws,

What fun to be a cat!

THE CEDAR CHEST

HER mind is like her cedar chest

Wherein in quietness do rest

The wistful dreamings of her heart

In fragrant folds all laid apart.

There, put away in sprigs of rhyme

Until her life's full blossom-time,

Flutter (like tremulous little birds)

Her small and sweet maternal words.

READING ALOUD

ONCE we read Tennyson aloud

In our great fireside chair;

Between the lines, my lips could touch

Her April-scented hair.

How very fond I was, to think

The printed poems fair,

When close within my arms I held

A living lyric there!

ANIMAL CRACKERS

ANIMAL crackers, and cocoa to drink,

That is the finest of suppers, I think;

When I'm grown up and can have what I please

I think I shall always insist upon these.

What do you choose when you're offered a treat?

When Mother says, "What would you like best to eat?"

Is it waffles and syrup, or cinnamon toast?

It's cocoa and animals that I love most!

The kitchen's the cosiest place that I know:

The kettle is singing, the stove is aglow,

And there in the twilight, how jolly to see

The cocoa and animals waiting for me.

Daddy and Mother dine later in state,

With Mary to cook for them, Susan to wait;

But they don't have nearly as much fun as I

Who eat in the kitchen with Nurse standing by;

And Daddy once said, he would like to be me

Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!

And Daddy once said he would like to be me

Having cocoa and animals once more for tea!

THE MILKMAN

EARLY in the morning, when the dawn is on the roofs,

You hear his wheels come rolling, you hear his horse's hoofs;

You hear the bottles clinking, and then he drives away:

You yawn in bed, turn over, and begin another day!

The old-time dairy maids are dear to every poet's heart—

I'd rather be the dairy man and drive a little cart,

And bustle round the village in the early morning blue,

And hang my reins upon a hook, as I've seen Casey do.

LIGHT VERSE

AT night the gas lamps light our street,

Electric bulbs our homes;

The gas is billed in cubic feet,

Electric light in ohms.

But one illumination still

Is brighter far, and sweeter;

It is not figured in a bill,

Nor measured by a meter.

More bright than lights that money buys,

More pleasing to discerners,

The shining lamps of Helen's eyes,

Those lovely double burners!

THE FURNACE

AT night I opened

The furnace door:

The warm glow brightened

The cellar floor.

The fire that sparkled

Blue and red,

Kept small toes cosy

In their bed.

As up the stair

So late I stole,

I said my prayer:

Thank God for coal!

WASHING THE DISHES

WHEN we on simple rations sup

How easy is the washing up!

But heavy feeding complicates

The task by soiling many plates.

And though I grant that I have prayed

That we might find a serving-maid,

I'd scullion all my days, I think,

To see Her smile across the sink!

I wash, She wipes. In water hot

I souse each dish and pan and pot;

While Taffy mutters, purrs, and begs,

And rubs himself against my legs.

The man who never in his life

Has washed the dishes with his wife

Or polished up the silver plate—

He still is largely celibate.

One warning: there is certain ware

That must be handled with all care:

The Lord Himself will give you up

If you should drop a willow cup!

But heavy feeding complicates

The task by soiling many plates.

THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES

AS I went by the church to-day

I heard the organ cry;

And goodly folk were on their knees,

But I went striding by.

My minster hath a roof more vast:

My aisles are oak trees high;

My altar-cloth is on the hills,

My organ is the sky.

I see my rood upon the clouds,

The winds, my chanted choir;

My crystal windows, heaven-glazed,

Are stained with sunset fire.

The stars, the thunder, and the rain,

White sands and purple seas—

These are His pulpit and His pew,

My God of Unbent Knees!

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY COAL-BIN

THE furnace tolls the knell of falling steam,

The coal supply is virtually done,

And at this price, indeed it does not seem

As though we could afford another ton.

Now fades the glossy, cherished anthracite;

The radiators lose their temperature:

How ill avail, on such a frosty night,

The "short and simple flannels of the poor."

Though in the icebox, fresh and newly laid,

The rude forefathers of the omelet sleep,

No eggs for breakfast till the bill is paid:

We cannot cook again till coal is cheap.

Can Morris-chair or papier-mâché bust

Revivify the failing pressure-gauge?

Chop up the grand piano if you must,

And burn the East Aurora parrot-cage!

Full many a can of purest kerosene

The dark unfathomed tanks of Standard Oil

Shall furnish me, and with their aid I mean

To bring my morning coffee to a boil.

How ill avail, on such a frosty night....

THE OLD SWIMMER

I OFTEN wander on the beach

Where once, so brown of limb,

The biting air, the roaring surf

Summoned me to swim.

I see my old abundant youth

Where combers lean and spill,

And though I taste the foam no more

Other swimmers will.

Oh, good exultant strength to meet

The arching wall of green,

To break the crystal, swirl, emerge

Dripping, taut, and clean.

To climb the moving hilly blue,

To dive in ecstasy

And feel the salty chill embrace

Arm and rib and knee.

What brave and vanished laughter then

And tingling thighs to run,

What warm and comfortable sands

Dreaming in the sun.

The crumbling water spreads in snow,

The surf is hissing still,

And though I kiss the salt no more

Other swimmers will.

The Old Swimmer

THE MOON-SHEEP

THE moon seems like a docile sheep,

She pastures while all people sleep;

But sometimes, when she goes astray,

She wanders all alone by day.

Up in the clear blue morning air

We are surprised to see her there,

Grazing in her woolly white,

Waiting the return of night.

When dusk lets down the meadow bars

She greets again her lambs, the stars!

SMELLS

WHY is it that the poets tell

So little of the sense of smell?

These are the odors I love well:

The smell of coffee freshly ground;

Or rich plum pudding, holly crowned;

Or onions fried and deeply browned.

The fragrance of a fumy pipe;

The smell of apples, newly ripe;

And printers' ink on leaden type.

Woods by moonlight in September

Breathe most sweet; and I remember

Many a smoky camp-fire ember.

Camphor, turpentine, and tea,

The balsam of a Christmas tree,

These are whiffs of gramarye ...

A ship smells best of all to me!

SMELLS (JUNIOR)

MY Daddy smells like tobacco and books,

Mother, like lavender and listerine;

Uncle John carries a whiff of cigars,

Nannie smells starchy and soapy and clean.

Shandy, my dog, has a smell of his own

(When he's been out in the rain he smells most);

But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all—

She smells exactly like hot buttered toast!

But Katie, the cook, is more splendid than all—

MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN

I LIKE the Chinese laundryman:

He smokes a pipe that bubbles,

And seems, as far as I can tell,

A man with but few troubles.

He has much to do, no doubt,

But also much to think about.

Most men (for instance I myself)

Are spending, at all times,

All our hard-earned quarters,

Our nickels and our dimes:

With Mar Quong it's the other way—

He takes in small change every day.

Next time you call for collars

In his steamy little shop,

Observe how tight his pigtail

Is coiled and piled on top.

But late at night he lets it hang

And thinks of the Yang-tse-kiang.

THE FAT LITTLE PURSE

ON Saturdays, after the baby

Is bathed, fed, and sleeping serene,

His mother, as quickly as may be,

Arranges the household routine.

She rapidly makes herself pretty

And leaves the young limb with his nurse,

Then gaily she starts for the city,

And with her the fat little purse.

She trips through the crowd at the station,

To the rendezvous spot where we meet,

And keeping her eyes from temptation,

She avoids the most windowy street!

She is off for the Weekly Adventure;

To her comrade for better and worse

She says, "Never mind, when you've spent your

Last bit, here's the fat little purse."

Apart, in her thrifty exchequer,

She has hidden what must not be spent:

Enough for the butcher and baker,

Katie's wages, and milkman, and rent;

But the rest of her brave little treasure

She is gleeful and prompt to disburse—

What a richness of innocent pleasure

Can come from her fat little purse!

But either by giving or buying,

The little purse does not stay fat—

Perhaps it's a ragged child crying,

Perhaps it's a "pert little hat."

And the bonny brown eyes that were brightened

By pleasures so quaint and diverse,

Look up at me, wistful and frightened,

To see such a thin little purse.

The wisest of all financiering

Is that which is done by our wives:

By some little known profiteering

They add twos and twos and make fives;

And, husband, if you would be learning

The secret of thrift, it is terse:

Invest the great part of your earning

In her little, fat little purse.

Perhaps it's a ragged child crying

THE REFLECTION

(To N. B. D.)

I HAVE not heard her voice, nor seen her face,

Nor touched her hand;

And yet some echo of her woman's grace

I understand.

I have no picture of her lovelihood,

Her smile, her tint;

But that she is both beautiful and good

I have true hint.

In all that my friend thinks and says, I see

Her mirror true;

His thought of her is gentle; she must be

All gentle too.

In all his grief or laughter, work or play,

Each mood and whim,

How brave and tender, day by common day,

She speaks through him!

Therefore I say I know her, be her face>

Or dark or fair—

For when he shows his heart's most secret place

I see her there!

THE BALLOON PEDDLER

WHO is the man on Chestnut street

With colored toy balloons?

I see him with his airy freight

On sunny afternoons—

A peddler of such lovely goods!

The heart leaps to behold

His mass of bubbles, red and green

And blue and pink and gold.

For sure that noble peddler man

Hath antic merchandise:

His toys that float and swim in air

Attract my eager eyes.

Perhaps he is a changeling prince

Bewitched through magic moons

To tempt us solemn busy folk

With meaningless balloons.

Beware, oh, valiant merchantman,

Tread cautious on the pave!

Lest some day come some realist,

Some haggard soul and grave,

A puritan efficientist

Who deems thy toys a sin—

He'll stalk thee madly from behind

And prick them with a pin!

The Balloon Peddler

LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S BOOK PLATE

TO use my books all friends are bid:

My shelves are open for 'em;

And in each one, as Grolier did,

I write Et Amicorum.

All lovely things in truth belong

To him who best employs them;

The house, the picture and the song

Are his who most enjoys them.

Perhaps this book holds precious lore,

And you may best discern it.

If you appreciate it more

Than I—why don't return it!

If you appreciate it more Than I—why don't return it!

TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL

HOW many humble hearts have dipped

In you, and scrawled their manuscript!

Have shared their secrets, told their cares,

Their curious and quaint affairs!

Your pool of ink, your scratchy pen,

Have moved the lives of unborn men,

And watched young people, breathing hard,

Put Heaven on a postal card.

THE CRIB

I SOUGHT immortality

Here and there—

I sent my rockets

Into the air:

I gave my name

A hostage to ink;

I dined a critic

And bought him drink.

I spurned the weariness

Of the flesh;

Denied fatigue

And began afresh—

If men knew all,

How they would laugh!

I even planned

My epitaph....

And then one night

When the dusk was thin

I heard the nursery

Rites begin:

I heard the tender

Soothings said

Over a crib, and

A small sweet head.

Then in a flash

It came to me

That there was my

Immortality!

And then one night

When the dusk was thin

I heard the nursery

Rites begin—

THE POET

THE barren music of a word or phrase,

The futile arts of syllable and stress,

He sought. The poetry of common days

He did not guess.

The simplest, sweetest rhythms life affords—

Unselfish love, true effort truly done,

The tender themes that underlie all words—

He knew not one.

The human cadence and the subtle chime

Of little laughters, home and child and wife,

He knew not. Artist merely in his rhyme,

Not in his life.

The human cadence and the subtle chime

Of little laughters—

TO A DISCARDED MIRROR

[TN: Mirror Image Translated below.]

DEAR glass, before your silver pane

My lady used to tend her hair;

And yet I search your disc in vain

To find some shadow of her there.

I thought your magic, deep and bright,

Might still some dear reflection hold:

Some glint of eyes or shoulders white,

Some flash of gowns she wore of old.

Your polished round must still recall

The laughing face, the neck like snow—

Remember, on your lonely wall,

That Helen used you long ago!

TO A CHILD

THE greatest poem ever known

Is one all poets have outgrown:

The poetry, innate, untold,

Of being only four years old.

Still young enough to be a part

Of Nature's great impulsive heart,

Born comrade of bird, beast and tree

And unselfconscious as the bee—

And yet with lovely reason skilled

Each day new paradise to build;

Elate explorer of each sense,

Without dismay, without pretence!

In your unstained transparent eyes

There is no conscience, no surprise:

Life's queer conundrums you accept,

Your strange divinity still kept.

Being, that now absorbs you, all

Harmonious, unit, integral,

Will shred into perplexing bits,—

Oh, contradictions of the wits!

And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,

May make you poet, too, in time—

But there were days, O tender elf,

When you were Poetry itself!

TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN

MY child, what painful vistas are before you!

What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps—

Indignities from aunts who "just adore" you,

And chicken-pox and measles, croup and mumps!

I don't wish to dismay you,—it's not fair to,

Promoted now from bassinet to crib,—

But, O my babe, what troubles flesh is heir to

Since God first made so free with Adam's rib!

Laboriously you will proceed with teething;

When teeth are here, you'll meet the dentist's chair;

They'll teach you ways of walking, eating, breathing,

That stoves are hot, and how to brush your hair;

And so, my poor, undaunted little stripling,

By bruises, tears, and trousers you will grow,

And, borrowing a leaf from Mr. Kipling,

I'll wish you luck, and moralize you so:

If you can think up seven thousand methods

Of giving cooks and parents heart disease;

Can rifle pantry-shelves, and then give death odds

By water, fire, and falling out of trees;

If you can fill your every boyish minute

With sixty seconds' worth of mischief done,

Yours is the house and everything that's in it,

And, which is more, you'll be your father's son!

What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps—

TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET

(Lizette Woodworth Reese)

MOST tender poet, when the gods confer

They save your gracile songs a nook apart,

And bless with Time's untainted lavender

The ageless April of your singing heart.

You, in an age unbridled, ne'er declined

The appointed patience that the Muse decrees,

Until, deep in the flower of the mind

The hovering words alight, like bridegroom bees.

By casual praise or casual blame unstirred

The placid gods grant gifts where they belong:

To you, who understand, the perfect word,

The recompensed necessities of song.

BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING

WHEN withered leaves are lost in flame

Their eddying ghosts, a thin blue haze,

Blow through the thickets whence they came

On amberlucent autumn days.

The cool green woodland heart receives

Their dim, dissolving, phantom breath;

In young hereditary leaves

They see their happy life-in-death.

My minutes perish as they glow—

Time burns my crazy bonfire through;

But ghosts of blackened hours still blow,

Eternal Beauty, back to you!

BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER

THESE are folios of April,

All the library of spring,

Missals gilt and rubricated

With the frost's illumining.

Ruthless, we destroy these treasures,

Set the torch with hand profane—

Gone, like Alexandrian vellums,

Like the books of burnt Louvain!

Yet these classics are immortal:

O collectors, have no fear,

For the publisher will issue

New editions every year.

A VALENTINE GAME

(For Two Players)

THEY have a game, thus played:

He says unto his maid

What are those shining things

So brown, so golden brown?

And she, in doubt, replies

How now, what shining things

So brown?

But then, she coming near,

To see more clear,

He looks again, and cries

(All startled with surprise)

Sweet wretch, they are your eyes,

So brown, so brown!

The climax and the end consist

In kissing, and in being kissed.

FOR A BIRTHDAY

AT TWO years old the world he sees

Must seem expressly made to please!

Such new-found words and games to try,

Such sudden mirth, he knows not why,

So many curiosities!

As life about him, by degrees

Discloses all its pageantries

He watches with approval shy

At two years old.

With wonders tired he takes his ease

At dusk, upon his mother's knees:

A little laugh, a little cry,

Put toys to bed, then "seepy-bye"—

The world is made of such as these

At two years old.

A Birthday

KEATS

(1821-1921)

WHEN sometimes, on a moony night, I've passed

A street-lamp, seen my doubled shadow flee,

I've noticed how much darker, clearer cast,

The full moon poured her silhouette of me.

Just so of spirits. Beauty's silver light

Limns with a ray more pure, and tenderer too:

Men's clumsy gestures, to unearthly sight,

Surpass the shapes they show by human view.

On this brave world, where few such meteors fell,

Her youngest son, to save us, Beauty flung.

He suffered and descended into hell—

And comforts yet the ardent and the young.

Drunken of moonlight, dazed by draughts of sky,

Dizzy with stars, his mortal fever ran:

His utterance a moon-enchanted cry

Not free from folly—for he too was man.

And now and here, a hundred years away,

Where topless towers shadow golden streets,

The young men sit, nooked in a cheap café,

Perfectly happy ... talking about Keats.

TO H. F. M.

A SONNET IN SUNLIGHT

THIS is a day for sonnets: Oh how clear

Our splendid cliffs and summits lift the gaze—

If all the perfect moments of the year

Were poured and gathered in one sudden blaze,

Then, then perhaps, in some endowered phrase

My flat strewn words would rise and come more near

To tell of you. Your beauty and your praise

Would fall like sunlight on this paper here.

Then I would build a sonnet that would stand

Proud and perennial on this pale bright sky;

So tall, so steep, that it might stay the hand

Of Time, the dusty wrecker. He would sigh

To tear my strong words down. And he would say:

"That song he built for her, one summer day."

QUICKENING

SUCH little, puny things are words in rhyme:

Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs;

You see them printed here, and mark their chime,

And turn to your more durable affairs.

Yet on such petty tools the poet dares

To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime,

And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares

To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.

Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in,

This measured emptiness engulfs us all,

And yet he points his paper javelin

And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall,

And feels, between delight and trouble torn,

The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.

AT A WINDOW SILL

TO WRITE a sonnet needs a quiet mind....

I paused and pondered, tried again. To write....

Raising the sash, I breathed the winter night:

Papers and small hot room were left behind.

Against the gusty purple, ribbed and spined

With golden slots and vertebræ of light

Men's cages loomed. Down sliding from a height

An elevator winked as it declined.

Coward! There is no quiet in the brain—

If pity burns it not, then beauty will:

Tinder it is for every blowing spark.

Uncertain whether this is bliss or pain

The unresting mind will gaze across the sill

From high apartment windows, in the dark.

THE RIVER OF LIGHT

I. Broadway, 103rd to 96th.

LIGHTS foam and bubble down the gentle grade:

Bright shine chop sueys and rôtisseries;

In pink translucence glowingly displayed

See camisole and stocking and chemise.

Delicatessen windows full of cheese—

Above, the chimes of church-bells toll and fade—

And then, from off some distant Palisade

That gluey savor on the Jersey breeze!

The burning bulbs, in green and white and red,

Spell out a Change of Program Sun., Wed., Fri.,

A clicking taxi spins with ruby spark.

There is a sense of poising near the head

Of some great flume of brightness, flowing by

To pour in gathering torrent through the dark.

II. Below 96th

THE current quickens, and in golden flow

Hurries its flotsam downward through the night—

Here are the rapids where the undertow

Whirls endless motors in a gleaming flight.

From blazing tributaries, left and right,

Influent streams of blue and amber grow.

Columbus Circle eddies: all below

Is pouring flame, a gorge of broken light.

See how the burning river boils in spate,

Channeled by cliffs of insane jewelry,

Painting a rosy roof on cloudy air—

And just about ten minutes after eight,

Tossing a surf of color to the sky

It bursts in cataracts upon Times Square!

OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS

THE city's mad: through her prodigious veins

What errant, strange, eccentric humors thrill:

Day, when her cataracts of sunlight spill—

Night, golden-panelled with her window panes;

The toss of wind-blown skirts; and who can drill

Forever his fierce heart with checking reins?

Cruel and mad, my statisticians say—

Ah, but she raves in such a gallant way!

Brave madness, built for beauty and the sun—

In such a town who can be sane? Not I.

Of clashing colors all her moods are spun—

A scarlet anger and a golden cry.

This frantic town where madcap mischiefs run

They ask to take the veil, and be a nun!

IN AN AUCTION ROOM

(Letter of John Keats to Fanny Browne, Anderson Galleries, March 15, 1920.)

To Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach.

H OW about this lot? said the auctioneer;

One hundred, may I say, just for a start?

Between the plum-red curtains, drawn apart,

A written sheet was held.... And strange to hear

(Dealer, would I were steadfast as thou art)

The cold quick bids. (Against you in the rear!)

The crimson salon, in a glow more clear

Burned bloodlike purple as the poet's heart.

Song that outgrew the singer! Bitter Love

That broke the proud hot heart it held in thrall;

Poor script, where still those tragic passions move—

Eight hundred bid: fair warning: the last call:

The soul of Adonais, like a star....

Sold for eight hundred dollars—Doctor R.!

EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY

"It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid."—Robert Louis Stevenson.

WHAT was the service of this poet? He Who blinked the blinding dazzle-rays that run

Where life profiles its edges to the sun,

And still suspected much he could not see.

Clay-stopped, yet in his taciturnity

There lay the vein of glory, known to none;

And moods of secret smiling, only won

When peace and passion, time and sense, agree.

Fighting the world he loved for chance to brood,

Ignorant when to embrace, when to avoid

His loves that held him in their vital clutch—

This was his service, his beatitude;

This was the inward trouble he enjoyed

Who knew so little, and who felt so much.

SONNET BY A GEOMETER

THE CIRCLE

FEW things are perfect: we bear Eden's scar;

Yet faulty man was godlike in design

That day when first, with stick and length of twine,

He drew me on the sand. Then what could mar

His joy in that obedient mystic line;

And then, computing with a zeal divine,

He called π 3-point-14159

And knew my lovely circuit 2 π r!

A circle is a happy thing to be—

Think how the joyful perpendicular

Erected at the kiss of tangency

Must meet my central point, my avatar!

They talk of 14 points: yet only 3

Determine every circle: Q. E. D.

TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER SEEN ON A LEASH, IN THE PARK

THREE times a day—at two, at seven, at nine—

O terrier, you play your little part:

Absurd in coat and skirt you push a cart,

With inner anguish walk a tight-rope line.

Up there, before the hot and dazzling shine

You must be rigid servant of your art,

Nor watch those fluffy cats—your doggish heart

Might leap and then betray you with a whine!

But sometimes, when you've faithfully rehearsed,

Your trainer takes you walking in the park,

Straining to sniff the grass, to chase a frog.

The leash is slipped, and then your joy will burst—

Adorable it is to run and bark,

To be—alas, how seldom—just a dog!

You must be rigid servant of your art!

TO AN OLD FRIEND

(For Lloyd Williams.)

I LIKE to dream of some established spot

Where you and I, old friend, an evening through

Under tobacco's fog, streaked gray and blue,

Might reconsider laughters unforgot.

Beside a hearth-glow, golden-clear and hot,

I'd hear you tell the oddities men do.

The clock would tick, and we would sit, we two—

Life holds such meetings for us, does it not?

Happy are men when they have learned to prize

The sure unvarnished virtue of their friends,

The unchanged kindness of a well-known face:

On old fidelities our world depends,

And runs a simple course in honest wise,

Not a mere taxicab shot wild through space!

TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE

UPSTAGE the great high-shafted beefy choir

Squawked in 2000 watts of orange glare—

You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care

Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire.

Flung from the roof, spots red and yellow burned

And followed you. The blatant brassy clang

Of instruments drowned out the words you sang,

But goldenly you capered, twirled and turned.

Boyish and slender, child-limbed, quick and proud,

A sprite of irresistible disdain,

Fair as a jonquil in an April rain,

You seemed too sweet an imp for that dull crowd....

And then, behind the scenes, I heard you say,

"O Gawd, I got a hellish cold to-day!"

You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care

Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire.

THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK

THE sonnet is a trunk, and you must pack

With care, to ship frail baggage far away;

The octet is the trunk; sestet, the tray;

Tight, but not overloaded, is the knack.

First, at the bottom, heavy thoughts you stack,

And in the chinks your adjectives you lay—

Your phrases, folded neatly as you may,

Stowing a syllable in every crack.

Then, in the tray, your daintier stuff is hid:

The tender quatrain where your moral sings—

Be careful, though, lest as you close the lid

You crush and crumple all these fragile things.

Your couplet snaps the hasps and turns the key—

Ship to The Editor, marked C. O. D.

STREETS

I HAVE seen streets where strange enchantment broods:

Old ruddy houses where the morning shone

In seemly quiet on their tranquil moods,

Across the sills white curtains outward blown.

Their marble steps were scoured as white as bone

Where scrubbing housemaids toiled on wounded knee—

And yet, among all streets that I have known

These placid byways give least peace to me.

In such a house, where green light shining through

(From some back garden) framed her silhouette

I saw a girl, heard music blithely sung.

She stood there laughing, in a dress of blue,

And as I went on, slowly, there I met

An old, old woman, who had once been young.

TO THE ONLY BEGETTER

I

I HAVE no hope to make you live in rhyme

Or with your beauty to enrich the years—

Enough for me this now, this present time;

The greater claim for greater sonneteers.

But O how covetous I am of NOW—

Dear human minutes, marred by human pains—

I want to know your lips, your cheek, your brow,

And all the miracles your heart contains,

I wish to study all your changing face,

Your eyes, divinely hurt with tenderness;

I hope to win your dear unstinted grace

For these blunt rhymes and what they would express.

Then may you say, when others better prove:—

"Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love."

II

WHEN all my trivial rhymes are blotted out,

Vanished our days, so precious and so few,

If some should wonder what we were about

And what the little happenings we knew:

I wish that they might know how, night by night,

My pencil, heavy in the sleepy hours,

Sought vainly for some gracious way to write

How much this love is ours, and only ours.

How many evenings, as you drowsed to sleep,

I read to you by tawny candle-glow,

And watched you down the valley dim and deep

Where poppies and the April flowers grow.

Then knelt beside your pillow with a prayer,

And loved the breath of pansies in your hair.

PEDOMETER

MY thoughts beat out in sonnets while I walk,

And every evening on the homeward street

I find the rhythm of my marching feet

Throbs into verses (though the rhyme may balk).

I think the sonneteers were walking men:

The form is dour and rigid, like a clamp,

But with the swing of legs the tramp, tramp, tramp

Of syllables begins to thud, and then—

Lo! while you seek a rhyme for hook or crook

shed your shabby coat, and you are kith

To all great walk-and-singers—Meredith,

And Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Rupert Brooke!

Free verse is poor for walking, but a sonnet—

O marvellous to stride and brood upon it!

HOSTAGES

"He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune."—BACON.

AYE, Fortune, thou hast hostage of my best!

I, that was once so heedless of thy frown,

Have armed thee cap-à-pie to strike me down,

Have given thee blades to hold against my breast.

My virtue, that was once all self-possessed,

Is parceled out in little hands, and brown

Bright eyes, and in a sleeping baby's gown:

To threaten these will put me to the test.

Sure, since there are these pitiful poor chinks

Upon the makeshift armor of my heart,

For thee no honor lies in such a fight!

And thou wouldst shame to vanquish one, me-thinks,

Who came awake with such a painful start

To hear the coughing of a child at night.

Hostages.

ARS DURA

HOW many evenings, walking soberly

Along our street all dappled with rich sun,

I please myself with words, and happily

Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run;

And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies

Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask,

Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes

And traitor hand that fails the well loved task!

Who ever learned the sonnet's bitter craft

But he had put away his sleep, his ease,

The wine he loved, the men with whom he laughed

To brood upon such thankless tricks as these?

And yet, such joy does in that craft abide

He greets the paper as the groom the bride!

O. HENRY—APOTHECARY

("O. Henry" once worked in a drug-store in Greensboro, N. C.)

WHERE once he measured camphor, glycerine,

Quinine and potash, peppermint in bars,

And all the oils and essences so keen

That druggists keep in rows of stoppered jars—

Now, blender of strange drugs more volatile,

The master pharmacist of joy and pain

Dispenses sadness tinctured with a smile

And laughter that dissolves in tears again.

O brave apothecary! You who knew

What dark and acid doses life prefers

And yet with friendly face resolved to brew

These sparkling potions for your customers—

In each prescription your Physician writ

You poured your rich compassion and your wit!

FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET

(1816)

"On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer."

I KNEW a scientist, an engineer,

Student of tensile strengths and calculus,

A man who loved a cantilever truss

And always wore a pencil on his ear.

My friend believed that poets all were queer,

And literary folk ridiculous;

But one night, when it chanced that three of us

Were reading Keats aloud, he stopped to hear.

Lo, a new planet swam into his ken!

His eager mind reached for it and took hold.

Ten years are by: I see him now and then,

And at alumni dinners, if cajoled,

He mumbles gravely, to the cheering men:—

Much have I travelled in the realms of gold.

TWO O'CLOCK

NIGHT after night goes by: and clocks still chime

And stars are changing patterns in the dark,

And watches tick, and over-puissant Time

Benumbs the eager brain. The dogs that bark,

The trains that roar and rattle in the night,

The very cats that prowl, all quiet find

And leave the darkness empty, silent quite:

Sleep comes to chloroform the fretting mind.

So all things end: and what is left at last?

Some scribbled sonnets tossed upon the floor,

A memory of easy days gone past,

A run-down watch, a pipe, some clothes we wore—

And in the darkened room I lean to know

How warm her dreamless breath does pause and flow.

THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

AH very sweet! If news should come to you

Some afternoon, while waiting for our eve,

That the great Manager had made me leave

To travel on some territory new;

And that, whatever homeward winds there blew,

I could not touch your hand again, nor heave

The logs upon our hearth and bid you weave

Some wistful tale before the flames that grew....

Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind

Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could

Remember rightly, and forget aright?

Remember just your lad, uncouthly good,

Forgetting when he failed in spleen or spite?

Could you remember him as always kind?

THE WEDDED LOVER

I READ in our old journals of the days

When our first love was April-sweet and new,

How fair it blossomed and deep-rooted grew

Despite the adverse time; and our amaze

At moon and stars and beauty beyond praise

That burgeoned all about us: gold and blue

The heaven arched us in, and all we knew

Was gentleness. We walked on happy ways.

They said by now the path would be more steep,

The sunsets paler and less mild the air;

Rightly we heeded not: it was not true.

We will not tell the secret—let it keep.

I know not how I thought those days so fair

These being so much fairer, spent with you.

TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST

WHEN we were parted, sweet, and darkness came,

I used to strike a match, and hold the flame

Before your picture and would breathless mark

The answering glimmer of the tiny spark

That brought to life the magic of your eyes,

Their wistful tenderness, their glad surprise.

Holding that mimic torch before your shrine

I used to light your eyes and make them mine;

Watch them like stars set in a lonely sky,

Whisper my heart out, yearning for reply;

Summon your lips from far across the sea

Bidding them live a twilight hour with me.

Then, when the match was shrivelled into gloom,

Lo—you were with me in the darkened room.

CHARLES AND MARY

(December 27, 1834.)

Lamb died just before I left town, and Mr. Ryle of the E. India House, one of his extors., notified it to me.... He said Miss L. was resigned and composed at the event, but it was from her malady, then in mild type, so that when she saw her brother dead, she observed on his beauty when asleep and apprehended nothing further.

—Letter of John Rickman, 24 January, 1835.

I HEAR their voices still: the stammering one

Struggling with some absurdity of jest;

Her quiet words that puzzle and protest

Against the latest outrage of his fun.

So wise, so simple—has she never guessed

That through his laughter, love and terror run?

For when her trouble came, and darkness pressed,

He smiled, and fought her madness with a pun.

Through all those years it was his task to keep

Her gentle heart serenely mystified.

If Fate's an artist, this should be his pride—

When, in that Christmas season, he lay dead,

She innocently looked. "I always said

That Charles is really handsome when asleep."

TO A GRANDMOTHER

AT six o'clock in the evening,

The time for lullabies,

My son lay on my mother's lap

With sleepy, sleepy eyes!

(O drowsy little manny boy,

With sleepy, sleepy eyes!)

I heard her sing, and rock him,

And the creak of the swaying chair,

And the old dear cadence of the words

Came softly down the stair.

And all the years had vanished,

All folly, greed, and stain—

The old, old song, the creaking chair,

The dearest arms again!

(O lucky little manny boy,

To feel those arms again!)

DIARISTS

THEY catalogue their minutes: Now, now, now,

Is Actual, amid the fugitive;

Take ink and pen (they say) for that is how

We snare this flying life, and make it live.

So to their little pictures, and they sieve

Their happinesses: fields turned by the plough,

The afterglow that summer sunsets give,

The razor concave of a great ship's bow.

O gallant instinct, folly for men's mirth!

Type cannot burn and sparkle on the page.

No glittering ink can make this written word

Shine clear enough to speak the noble rage

And instancy of life. All sonnets blurred

The sudden mood of truth that gave them birth.

THE LAST SONNET

SUPPOSE one knew that never more might one

Put pen to sonnet, well loved task; that now

These fourteen lines were all he could allow

To say his message, be forever done;

How he would scan the word, the line, the rhyme,

Intent to sum in dearly chosen phrase

The windy trees, the beauty of his days,

Life's pride and pathos in one verse sublime.

How bitter then would be regret and pang

For former rhymes he dallied to refine,

For every verse that was not crystalline....

And if belike this last one feebly rang,

Honor and pride would cast it to the floor

Facing the judge with what was done before.

THE SAVAGE

CIVILIZATION causes me

Alternate fits: disgust and glee.

Buried in piles of glass and stone

My private spirit moves alone,

Where every day from eight to six

I keep alive by hasty tricks.

But I am simple in my soul;

My mind is sullen to control.

At dusk I smell the scent of earth,

And I am dumb—too glad for mirth.

I know the savors night can give,

And then, and then, I live, I live!

No man is wholly pure and free,

For that is not his destiny,

But though I bend, I will not break:

And still be savage, for Truth's sake.

God damns the easily convinced

(Like Pilate, when his hands he rinsed).

ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH

I STOOD on the pavement

Where I could admire

Behind the brown chapel

The cream and gold spire.

Above, gilded Lightning

Swam high on his ball—

I saw the noon shadow

The church of St. Paul.

And was there a meaning?

(My fancy would run),

Saint Paul in the shadow,

Saint Frank in the sun!

ADVICE TO A CITY

O CITY, cage your poets! Hem them in

And roof them over from the April sky—

Clatter them round with babble, ceaseless din,

And drown their voices with your thunder cry.

Forbid their free feet on the windy hills,

And harness them to daily ruts of stone—

(In florists' windows lock the daffodils)

And never, never let them be alone!

For they are curst, said poets, curst and lewd,

And freedom gives their tongues uncanny wit,

And granted silence, thought and solitude

They (absit omen!) might make Song of it.

So cage them in, and stand about them thick,

And keep them busy with their daily bread;

And should their eyes seem strange, ah, then be quick

To interrupt them ere the word be said....

For, if their hearts burn with sufficient rage,

With wasted sunsets and frustrated youth,

Some day they'll cry, on some disturbing page,

The savage, sweet, unpalatable truth!

THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY

NO MALORY of old romance,

No Crusoe tale, it seems to me,

Can equal in rich circumstance

This telephone directory.

No ballad of fair ladies' eyes,

No legend of proud knights and dames,

Can fill me with such bright surmise

As this great book of numbered names!

How many hearts and lives unknown,

Rare damsels pining for a squire,

Are waiting for the telephone

To ring, and call them to the wire.

Some wait to hear a loved voice say

The news they will rejoice to know

At Rome 2637 J

Or Marathon 1450!

And some, perhaps, are stung with fear

And answer with reluctant tread:

The message they expect to hear

Means life or death or daily bread.

A million hearts here wait our call,

All naked to our distant speech—

I wish that I could ring them all

And have some welcome news for each!

GREEN ESCAPE

AT three o'clock in the afternoon

On a hot September day,

I began to dream of a highland stream

And a frostbit russet tree;

Of the swashing dip of a clipper ship

(White canvas wet with spray)

And the swirling green and milk-foam clean

Along her canted lee.

I heard the quick staccato click

Of the typist's pounding keys,

And I had to brood of a wind more rude

Than that by a motor fanned—

And I lay inert in a flannel shirt

To watch the rhyming seas

Deploy and fall in a silver sprawl

On a beach of sun-blanched sand.

There is no desk shall tame my lust

For hills and windy skies;

My secret hope of the sea's blue slope

No clerkly task shall dull;

And though I print no echoed hint

Of adventures I devise,

My eyes still pine for the comely line

Of an outbound vessel's hull.

When I elope with an autumn day

And make my green escape,

I'll leave my pen to tamer men

Who have more docile souls;

For forest aisles and office files

Have a very different shape,

And it's hard to woo the ocean blue

In a row of pigeon holes!

My eyes still pine for the comely line

Of an outbound vessel's hull.

VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS

(Instead of "Marathon" the commuter may substitute the name of his favorite suburb)

THE stars are kind to Marathon,

How low, how close, they lean!

They jostle one another

And do their best to please—

Indeed, they are so neighborly

That in the twilight green

One reaches out to pick them

Behind the poplar trees.

The stars are kind to Marathon,

And one particular

Bright planet (which is Vesper)

Most lucid and serene,

Is waiting by the railway bridge,

The Good Commuter's Star,

The Star of Wise Men coming home

On time, at 6:15!

THE ICE WAGON

I'D like to split the sky that roofs us down,

Break through the crystal lid of upper air,

And tap the cool still reservoirs of heaven.

I'd empty all those unseen lakes of freshness

Down some vast funnel, through our stifled streets.

I'd like to pump away the grit, the dust,

Raw dazzle of the sun on garbage piles,

The droning troops of flies, sharp bitter smells,

And gush that bright sweet flood of unused air

Down every alley where the children gasp.

And then I'd take a fleet of ice wagons—

Big yellow creaking carts, drawn by wet horses,—

And drive them rumbling through the blazing slums.

In every wagon would be blocks of coldness,

Pale, gleaming cubes of ice, all green and silver,

With inner veins and patterns, white and frosty;

Great lumps of chill would drip and steam and shimmer,

And spark like rainbows in their little fractures.

And where my wagons stood there would be puddles,

A wetness and a sparkle and a coolness.

My friends and I would chop and splinter open

The blocks of ice. Bare feet would soon come pattering,

And some would wrap it up in Sunday papers,

And some would stagger home with it in baskets,

And some would be too gay for aught but sucking,

Licking, crunching those fast melting pebbles,

Gulping as they slipped down unexpected—

Laughing to perceive that secret numbness

Amid their small hot persons!

At every stop would be at least one urchin

Would take a piece to cool the sweating horses

And hold it up against their silky noses—

And they would start, and then decide they liked it.

Down all the sun-cursed byways of the town

Our wagons would be trailed by grimy tots,

Their ragged shirts half off them with excitement!

Dabbling toes and fingers in our leakage,

A lucky few up sitting with the driver,

All clambering and stretching grey-pink palms.

And by the time the wagons were all empty

Our arms and shoulders would be lame with chopping,

Our backs and thighs pain-shot, our fingers frozen.

But how we would recall those eager faces,

Red thirsty tongues with ice-chips sliding on them,

The pinched white cheeks, and their pathetic gladness.

Then we would know that arms were made for aching—

I wish to God that I could go tomorrow!

AT A MOVIE THEATRE

HOW well he spoke who coined the phrase

The picture palace! Aye, in sooth

A palace, where men's weary days

Are crowned with kingliness of youth.

Strange palace! Crowded, airless, dim,

Where toes are trod and strained eyes smart,

We watch a wand of brightness limn

The old heroics of the heart.

Romance again hath us in thrall

And Love is sweet and always true,

And in the darkness of the hall

Hands clasp—as they were meant to do.

Remote from peevish joys and ills

Our souls, pro tem, are purged and free:

We see the sun on western hills,

The crumbling tumult of the sea.

We are the blond that maidens crave,

Well balanced at a dozen banks;

By sleight of hand we haste to save

A brown-eyed life, nor stay for thanks!

Alas, perhaps our instinct feels

Life is not all it might have been,

So we applaud fantastic reels

Of shadow, cast upon a screen!

SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE

I

EACH morn she crackles upward, tread by tread,

All apprehensive of some hideous sight:

Perhaps the Fourth Floor Back, who reads in bed,

Forgot his gas and let it burn all night—

The Sweet Young Thing who has the middle room,

She much suspects: for once some ink was spilled,

And then the plumber, in an hour of gloom,

Found all the bathroom pipes with tea-leaves filled.

II

No League of Nations scheme can make her gay—

She knows the rank duplicity of man;

Some folks expect clean towels every day,

They'll get away with murder if they can!

She tacks a card (alas, few roomers mind it)

Please leave the tub as you would wish to find it!

III

Men lodgers are the best, the Mrs. said:

They don't use my gas jets to fry sardines,

They don't leave red-hot irons on the spread,

They're out all morning, when a body cleans.

A man ain't so secretive, never cares

What kind of private papers he leaves lay,

So I can get a line on his affairs

And dope out whether he is likely pay.

But women! Say, they surely get my bug!

They stop their keyholes up with chewing gum,

Spill grease, and hide the damage with the rug,

And fry marshmallows when their callers come.

They always are behindhand with their rents—

Take my advice and let your rooms to gents!

A man ain't so secretive, never cares

What kind of private papers he leaves lay—

THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS)

ABOUT these roaring cylinders

Where leaping words and paper mate,

A sudden glory moves and stirs—

An inky cataract in spate!

What voice for falsehood or for truth,

What hearts attentive to be stirred—

How dimly understood, in sooth,

The power of the printed word!

These flashing webs and cogs of steel

Have shaken empires, routed kings,

Yet never turn too fast to feel

The tragedies of humble things.

O words, be strict in honesty,

Be just and simple and serene;

O rhymes, sing true, or you will be

Unworthy of this great machine!

DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD?

ACROSS the court there rises the back wall

Of the Magna Carta Apartments.

The other evening the people in the apartment opposite

Had forgotten to draw their curtains.

I could see them dining: the well-blanched cloth,

The silver and glass, the crystal water jug,

The meat and vegetables; and their clean pink hands

Outstretched in busy gesture.

It was pleasant to watch them, they were so human;

So gay, innocent, unconscious of scrutiny.

They were four: an elderly couple,

A young man, and a girl—with lovely shoulders

Mellow in the glow of the lamp.

They were sitting over coffee, and I could see their hands talking.

At last the older two left the room.

The boy and girl looked at each other....

Like a flash, they leaned and kissed.

Good old human race that keeps on multiplying!

A little later I went down the street to the movies,

And there I saw all four, laughing and joking together.

And as I watched them I felt like God—

Benevolent, all-knowing, and tender.

RAPID TRANSIT

(To Stephen Vincent Benét.)

CLIMBING is easy and swift on Parnassus!

Knocking my pipe out, I entered a bookshop;

There found a book of verse by a young poet.

Comrades at once, how I saw his mind glowing!

Saw in his soul its magnificent rioting—

Then I ran with him on hills that were windy,

Basked and laughed with him on sun-dazzled beaches,

Glutted myself on his green and blue twilights,

Watched him disposing his planets in patterns,

Tumbling his colors and toys all before him.

I questioned life with him, his pulses my pulses;

Doubted his doubts, too, and grieved for his anguishes.

Salted long kinship and knew him from boy-hood—

Pulled out my own sun and stars from my knapsack,

Trying my trinkets with those of his finding—

And as I left the bookshop

My pipe was still warm in my hand.

CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW

COLIN, worshipping some frail,

By self-deprecation sways her:

Calls himself unworthy male,

Hardly even fit to praise her.

But this tactic insincere

In the upshot greatly grieves him

When he finds the lovely dear

Quite implicitly believes him.

TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS

Who Rallied Him for Praising Blue Eyes in His Verses

IF SOMETIMES, in a random phrase

(For variation in my ditty),

I chance blue eyes, or gray, to praise

And seem to intimate them pretty—

It is because I do not dare

With too unmixed reiteration

To sing the browner eyes and hair

That are my true intoxication.

Know, then, that I consider brown

For ladies' eyes, the only color;

And deem all other orbs in town

(Compared to yours), opaquer, duller.

I pray, perpend, my dearest dear;

While blue-eyed maids the praise were drinking,

How insubstantial was their cheer—

It was of yours that I was thinking!

PEACE

WHAT is this Peace

That statesmen sign?

How I have sought

To make it mine.

Where groaning cities

Clang and glow

I hunted, hunted,

Peace to know.

And still I saw

Where I passed by

Discarded hearts,—

Heard children cry.

By willowed waters

Brimmed with rain

I thought to capture

Peace again.

I sat me down

My Peace to hoard,

But Beauty pricked me

With a sword.

For in the stillness

Something stirred,

And I was crippled

For a word.

There is no peace

A man can find;

The anguish sits

His heart behind.

The eyes he loves,

The perfect breast,

Too exquisite

To give him rest.

This is his curse

Since brain began.

His penalty

For being man.

May, 1919

SONG, IN DEPRECATION OF PULCHRITUDE

BEAUTY (so the poets say),

Thou art joy and solace great;

Long ago, and far away

Thou art safe to contemplate,

Beauty. But when now and here,

Visible and close to touch,

All too perilously near,

Thou tormentest us too much!

In a picture, in a song,

In a novel's conjured scenes,

Beauty, that's where you belong,

Where perspective intervenes.

But, my dear, in rosy fact

Your appeal I have to shirk—

You disturb me, and distract

My attention from my work!

MOUNTED POLICE

WATCHFUL, grave, he sits astride his horse,

Draped with his rubber poncho, in the rain;

He speaks the pungent lingo of "The Force,"

And those who try to bluff him, try in vain.

Inured to every mood of fool and crank,

Shrewdly and sternly all the crowd he cons:

The rain drips down his horse's shining flank,

A figure nobly fit for sculptor's bronze.

O knight commander of our city stress,

Little you know how picturesque you are!

We hear you cry to drivers who transgress:

"Say, that's a helva place to park your car!"

Mounted Police.

TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT HE IS NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY

WHY did not Fate to me bequeath an Utterance Elizabethan?

It would have been delight to me

If natus ante 1603.

My stuff would not be soon forgotten

If I could write like Harry Wotton.

I wish that I could wield the pen

Like William Drummond of Hawthornden.

I would not fear the ticking clock

If I were Browne of Tavistock.

For blithe conceits I would not worry

If I were Raleigh, or the Earl of Surrey.

I wish (I hope I am not silly?)

That I could juggle words like Lyly.

I envy many a lyric champion,

I. e., viz., e. g., Thomas Campion.

I creak my rhymes up like a derrick,

I ne'er will be a Robin Herrick.

My wits are dull as an old Barlow—

I wish that I were Christopher Marlowe.

In short, I'd like to be Philip Sidney,

Or some one else of that same kidney.

For if I were, my lady's looks

And all my lyric special pleading

Would be in all the future books,

And called, at college, Required Reading.

THE INTRUDER

AS I sat, to sift my dreaming

To the meet and needed word,

Came a merry Interruption

With insistence to be heard.

Smiling stood a maid beside me,

Half alluring and half shy;

Soft the white hint of her bosom—

Escapade was in her eye.

"I must not be so invaded,"

(In an anger then I cried)—

"Can't you see that I am busy?

Tempting creature, stay outside!

"Pearly rascal, I am writing:

I am now composing verse—

Fie on antic invitation:

Wanton, vanish—fly—disperse!

"Baggage, in my godlike moment

What have I to do with thee?"

And she laughed as she departed—

"I am Poetry," said she.

TIT FOR TAT

I OFTEN pass a gracious tree

Whose name I can't identify,

But still I bow, in courtesy

It waves a bough, in kind reply.

I do not know your name, O tree

(Are you a hemlock or a pine?)

But why should that embarrass me?

Quite probably you don't know mine.

Courtesy

SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE

I'M glad our house is a little house,

Not too tall nor too wide:

I'm glad the hovering butterflies

Feel free to come inside.

Our little house is a friendly house.

It is not shy or vain;

It gossips with the talking trees,

And makes friends with the rain.

And quick leaves cast a shimmer of green

Against our whited walls,

And in the phlox, the courteous bees

Are paying duty calls.

THE PLUMPUPPETS

WHEN little heads weary have gone to their bed,

When all the good nights and the prayers have been said,

Of all the good fairies that send bairns to rest

The little Plumpuppets are those I love best.

If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat,

The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at;

They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat—

The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!

The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds:

They have nothing to do but to watch sleepy heads;

They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight,

And they dance on your pillow to wish you good night!

No matter what troubles have bothered the day,

Though your doll broke her arm or the pup ran away;

Though your handies are black with the ink that was spilt—

Plumpuppets are waiting in blanket and quilt.

If your pillow is lumpy, or hot, thin and flat,

The little Plumpuppets know just what they're at;

They plump up the pillow, all soft, cool and fat—

The little Plumpuppets plump-up it!

The Plumpuppets

DANDY DANDELION

WHEN Dandy Dandelion wakes

And combs his yellow hair,

The ant his cup of dewdrop takes

And sets his bed to air;

The worm hides in a quilt of dirt

To keep the thrush away,

The beetle dons his pansy shirt—

They know that it is day!

And caterpillars haste to milk

The cowslips in the grass;

The spider, in his web of silk,

Looks out for flies that pass.

These humble people leap from bed,

They know the night is done:

When Dandy spreads his golden head

They think he is the sun!

Dear Dandy truly does not smell

As sweet as some bouquets;

No florist gathers him to sell,

He withers in a vase;

Yet in the grass he's emperor,

And lord of high renown;

And grateful little folk adore

His bright and shining crown.

THE HIGH CHAIR

GRIMLY the parent matches wit and will:

Now, Weesy, three more spoons! See Tom the cat,

He'd drink it. You want to be big and fat

Like Daddy, don't you? (Careful now, don't spill!)

Yes, Daddy'll dance, and blow smoke through his nose,

But you must finish first. Come, drink it up—

(Splash!) Oh, you must keep both hands on the cup.

All gone? Now for the prunes....

And so it goes.

This is the battlefield that parents know,

Where one small splinter of old Adam's rib

Withstands an entire household offering spoons.

No use to gnash your teeth. For she will go

Radiant to bed, glossy from crown to bib

With milk and cereal and a surf of prunes.

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

NOT long ago I fell in love,

But unreturned is my affection—

The girl that I'm enamored of

Pays little heed in my direction.

I thought I knew her fairly well:

In fact, I'd had my arm around her;

And so it's hard to have to tell

How unresponsive I have found her.

For, though she is not frankly rude,

Her manners quite the wrong way rub me:

It seems to me ingratitude

To let me love her—and then snub me!

Though I'm considerate and fond,

She shows no gladness when she spies me—

She gazes off somewhere beyond

And doesn't even recognize me.

Her eyes, so candid, calm and blue,

Seem asking if I can support her

In the style appropriate to

A lady like her father's daughter.

Well, if I can't then no one can—

And let me add that I intend to:

She'll never know another man

So fit for her to be a friend to.

Not love me, eh? She better had!

By Jove, I'll make her love me one day;

For, don't you see, I am her Dad,

And she'll be three weeks old on Sunday!

... It's hard to have to tell

How unresponsive I have found her.

AUTUMN COLORS

THE chestnut trees turned yellow,

The oak like sherry browned,

The fir, the stubborn fellow,

Stayed green the whole year round.

But O the bonny maple

How richly he does shine!

He glows against the sunset

Like ruddy old port wine.

THE LAST CRICKET

WHEN the bulb of the moon with white fire fills

And dead leaves crackle under the feet,

When men roll kegs to the cider mills

And chestnuts roast on every street;

When the night sky glows like a hollow shell

Of lustered emerald and pearl,

The kilted cricket knows too well

His doom. His tiny bagpipes skirl.

Quavering under the polished stars

In stubble, thicket, and frosty copse

The cricket blows a few choked bars,

And puts away his pipe—and stops.

TO LOUISE

(A Christmas Baby, Now One Year Old.)

UNDAUNTED by a world of grief

You came upon perplexing days,

And cynics doubt their disbelief

To see the sky-stains in your gaze.

Your sudden and inclusive smile

And your emphatic tears, admit

That you must find this life worth while,

So eagerly you clutch at it!

Your face of triumph says, brave mite,

That life is full of love and luck—

Of blankets to kick off at night,

And two soft rose-pink thumbs to suck.

O loveliest of pioneers

Upon this trail of long surprise,

May all the stages of the years

Show such enchantment in your eyes!

By parents' patient buttonings,

And endless safety pins, you'll grow

To ribbons, garters, hooks and things,

Up to the Ultimate Trousseau—

But never, in your dainty prime,

Will you be more adored by me

Than when you see, this Great First Time,

Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!

December, 1919.

... When you see, this Great First Time,

Lit candles on a Christmas Tree!

CHRISTMAS EVE

OUR hearts to-night are open wide,

The grudge, the grief, are laid aside:

The path and porch are swept of snow,

The doors unlatched; the hearthstones glow—

No visitor can be denied.

All tender human homes must hide

Some wistfulness beneath their pride:

Compassionate and humble grow

Our hearts to-night.

Let empty chair and cup abide!

Who knows? Some well-remembered stride

May come as once so long ago—

Then welcome, be it friend or foe!

There is no anger can divide

Our hearts to-night.

EPITAPH ON THE PROOFREADER OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA

MAJESTIC tomes, you are the tomb

Of Aristides Edward Bloom,

Who labored, from the world aloof,

In reading every page of proof.

From A to And, from Aus to Bis

Enthusiasm still was his;

From Cal to Cha, from Cha to Con

His soft-lead pencil still went on.

But reaching volume Fra to Gib,

He knew at length that he was sib

To Satan; and he sold his soul

To reach the section Pay to Pol.

Then Pol to Ree, and Shu to Sub

He staggered on, and sought a pub.

And just completing Vet to Zym,

The motor hearse came round for him.

He perished, obstinately brave:

They laid the Index on his grave.

THE MUSIC BOX

AT SIX—long ere the wintry dawn—

There sounded through the silent hall

To where I lay, with blankets drawn

Above my ears, a plaintive call.

The Urchin, in the eagerness

Of three years old, could not refrain;

Awake, he straightway yearned to dress

And frolic with his clockwork train.

I heard him with a sullen shock.

His sister, by her usual plan,

Had piped us aft at 3 o'clock—

I vowed to quench the little man.

I leaned above him, somewhat stern,

And spoke, I fear, with emphasis—

Ah, how much better, parents learn,

To seal one's censure with a kiss!

Again the house was dark and still,

Again I lay in slumber's snare,

When down the hall I heard a trill,

A tiny, tinkling, tuneful air—

His music-box! His best-loved toy,

His crib companion every night;

And now he turned to it for joy

While waiting for the lagging light.

How clear, and how absurdly sad

Those tingling pricks of sound unrolled;

They chirped and quavered, as the lad

His lonely little heart consoled.

Columbia, the Ocean's Gem—

(Its only tune) shrilled sweet and faint.

He cranked the chimes, admiring them

In vigil gay, without complaint.

The treble music piped and stirred,

The leaping air that was his bliss;

And, as I most contritely heard,

I thanked the all-unconscious Swiss!

The needled jets of melody

Rang slowlier and died away—

The Urchin slept; and it was I

Who lay and waited for the day.

The Music Box

TO LUATH

(Robert Burns's Dog)

"Darling Jean" was Jean Armour, a "comely country lass" whom Burns met at a penny wedding at Mauchline. They chanced to be dancing in the same quadrille when the poet's dog sprang to his master and almost upset some of the dancers. Burns remarked that he wished he could get any of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did.

Some days afterward, Jean, seeing him pass as she was bleaching clothes on the village green, called to him and asked him if he had yet got any of the lasses to like him as well as his dog did.

That was the beginning of an acquaintance that coloured all of Burns's life. —NATHAN HASKELL DOLE.

WELL, Luath, man, when you came prancing

All glee to see your Robin dancing,

His partner's muslin gown mischancing

You leaped for joy!

And little guessed what sweet romancing

You caused, my boy!

With happy bark, that moment jolly,

You frisked and frolicked, faithful collie;

His other dog, old melancholy,

Was put to flight—

But what a tale of grief and folly

You wagged that night!

Ah, Luath, tyke, your bonny master

Whose lyric pulse beat ever faster

Each time he saw a lass and passed her

His breast went bang!

In many a woful heart's disaster

He felt the pang!

Poor Robin's heart, forever burning,

Forever roving, ranting, yearning,

From you that heart might have been learning

To be less fickle!

Might have been spared so many a turning

And grievous prickle!

Your collie heart held but one notion—

When Robbie jigged in sprightly motion

You ran to show your own devotion

And gambolled too,

And so that tempest on love's ocean

Was due to you!

Well, it is ower late for preaching

And hearts are aye too hot for teaching!

When Robin with his eye beseeching

By greenside came,

Jeanie—poor lass—forgot her bleaching

And yours the blame!

THOUGHTS ON REACHING LAND

I HAD a friend whose path was pain—

Oppressed by all the cares of earth

Life gave him little chance to drain

His secret cisterns of rich mirth.

His work was hasty, harassed, vexed:

His dreams were laid aside, perforce,

Until—in this world, or the next....

(His trade? Newspaper man, of course!)

What funded wealth of tenderness,

What ingots of the heart and mind

He must uneasily repress

Beneath the rasping daily grind.

But now and then, and with my aid,

For fear his soul be wholly lost,

His devoir to the grape he paid

To call soul back, at any cost!

Then, liberate from discipline,

Undrugged by caution and control,

Through all his veins came flooding in

The virtued passion of his soul!

His spirit bared, and felt no shame:

With holy light his eyes would shine—

See Truth her acolyte reclaim

After the second glass of wine!

The self that life had trodden hard

Aspired, was generous and free:

The glowing heart that care had charred

Grew flame, as it was meant to be.

A pox upon the canting lot

Who call the glass the Devil's shape—

A greater pox where'er some sot

Defiles the honor of the grape.

Then look with reverence on wine

That kindles human brains uncouth—

There must be something part divine

In aught that brings us nearer Truth!

So—continently skull your fumes

(Here let our little sermon end)

And bless this X-ray that illumes

The secret bosom of your friend!

A SYMPOSIUM

THERE was a Russian novelist

Whose name was Solugubrious,

The reading circles took him up,

(They'd heard he was salubrious.)

The women's club of Cripple Creek

Soon held a kind of seminar

To learn just what his message was—

You know what bookworms women are.

The tea went round. After five cups

(You should have seen them bury tea)

Dear Mrs. Brown said what she liked

Was the great man's sincerity.

Sweet Mrs. Jones (how free she was

From all besetting vanity)

Declared that she loved even more

His broad and deep humanity.

Good Mrs. Smith, though she disclaimed

All thought of being critical,

Protested that she found his work

A wee bit analytical.

But Mrs. Black, the President,

Of wisdom found the pinnacle:

She said, "Dear me, I always think

Those Russians are so cynical."

Well, poor old Solugubrious,

It's true that they had heard of him;

But neither Brown, Jones, Smith, nor Black

Had ever read a word of him!

Solugubrious

TO A TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO HAS A BAD COLD

HOW hoarse and husky in my ear

Your usually cheerful chirrup:

You have an awful cold, my dear—

Try aspirin or bronchial syrup.

When I put in a call to-day

Compassion stirred my humane blood red

To hear you faintly, sadly, say

The number: Burray Hill dide hudred!

I felt (I say) quick sympathy

To hear you croak in the receiver—

Will you be sorry too for me

A month hence, when I have hay fever?

NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED

(Dedicated to Don Marquis.)

I

SCUTTLE, scuttle, little roach—

How you run when I approach:

Up above the pantry shelf.

Hastening to secrete yourself.

Most adventurous of vermin,

How I wish I could determine

How you spend your hours of ease,

Perhaps reclining on the cheese.

Cook has gone, and all is dark—

Then the kitchen is your park:

In the garbage heap that she leaves

Do you browse among the tea leaves?

How delightful to suspect

All the places you have trekked:

Does your long antenna whisk its

Gentle tip across the biscuits?

Do you linger, little soul,

Drowsing in our sugar bowl?

Or, abandonment most utter,

Shake a shimmy on the butter?

Do you chant your simple tunes

Swimming in the baby's prunes?

Then, when dawn comes, do you slink

Homeward to the kitchen sink?

Timid roach, why be so shy?

We are brothers, thou and I.

In the midnight, like yourself,

I explore the pantry shelf!

In the midnight, like yourself,

I explore the pantry shelf!

II

ROCKABYE, insect, lie low in thy den,

Father's a cockroach, mother's a hen.

And Betty, the maid, doesn't clean up the sink,

So you shall have plenty to eat and to drink.

Hushabye, insect, behind the mince pies:

If the cook sees you her anger will rise;

She'll scatter poison, as bitter as gall,

Death to poor cockroach, hen, baby and all.

III

THERE was a gay henroach, and what do you think,

She lived in a cranny behind the old sink—

Eggshells and grease were the chief of her diet;

She went for a stroll when the kitchen was quiet.

She walked in the pantry and sampled the bread,

But when she came back her old husband was dead:

Long had he lived, for his legs they were fast,

But the kitchen maid caught him and squashed him at last.

IV

I KNEW a black beetle, who lived down a drain,

And friendly he was though his manners were plain;

When I took a bath he would come up the pipe,

And together we'd wash and together we'd wipe.

Though mother would sometimes protest with a sneer

That my choice of a tub-mate was wanton and queer,

A nicer companion I never have seen:

He bathed every night, so he must have been clean.

Whenever he heard the tap splash in the tub

He'd dash up the drain-pipe and wait for a scrub,

And often, so fond of ablution was he,

I'd find him there floating and waiting for me.

But nurse has done something that seems a great shame:

She saw him there, waiting, prepared for a game:

She turned on the hot and she scalded him sore

And he'll never come bathing with me any more.

THE TWINS

C ON was a thorn to brother Pro—

On Pro we often sicked him:

Whatever Pro would claim to know

Old Con would contradict him!

The Twins

A PRINTER'S MADRIGAL

(Extremely technical)

I'D like to have you meet my wife!

I simply cannot keep from hinting

I've never seen, in all my life,

So fine a specimen of printing.

Her type is not some bold-face font,

Set solid. Nay! And I will say out

That no typographer could want

To see a better balanced layout.

A nice proportion of white space

There is for brown eyes to look large in,

And not a feature in her face

Comes anywhere too near the margin.

Locked up with all her sweet display

Her form will never pi. She's like a

Corrected proof marked stet, O. K.—

And yet she loves me, fatface Pica!

She has a fine one-column head,

And like a comma curves each eyebrow—

Her forehead has an extra lead

Which makes her seem a trifle highbrow.

Her nose, italicized brevier,

Too lovely to describe by penpoint;

Her mouth is set in pearl: her ear

And chin are comely Caslon ten-point.

Her cheeks (a pink parenthesis)

Make my pulse beat 14-em measure,

And such typography as this

Would make De Vinne scream with pleasure.

And so, of all typefounder chaps

Her father's best, in my opinion;

She is my NONPAREIL (IN CAPS)

And I (in lower case) her minion.

I hope you will not stand aloof

Because my metaphors are shoppy;

Of her devotion I've a proof—

I tell the urchin, Follow Copy!

THE POET ON THE HEARTH

WHEN fire is kindled on the dogs,

But still the stubborn oak delays,

Small embers laid above the logs

Will draw them into sudden blaze.

Just so the minor poet's part:

(A greater he need not desire)

The charcoals of his burning heart

May light some Master into fire!

O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY

O PRAISE me not the country—

The meadows green and cool,

The solemn glow of sunsets, the hidden silver pool!

The city for my craving,

Her lordship and her slaving,

The hot stones of her paving

For me, a city fool!

O praise me not the leisure

Of gardened country seats,

The fountains on the terrace against the summer heats—

The city for my yearning,

My spending and my earning.

Her winding ways for learning,

Sing hey! the city streets!

O praise me not the country,

Her sycamores and bees,

I had my youthful plenty of sour apple trees!

The city for my wooing,

My dreaming and my doing;

Her beauty for pursuing,

Her deathless mysteries.

O praise me not the country,

Her evenings full of stars,

Her yachts upon the water with the wind among their spars—

The city for my wonder,

Her glory and her blunder,

And O the haunting thunder

Of the Elevated cars!

O praise me not the country

A STONE IN ST. PAUL'S GRAVEYARD

(New York)

Here Lyes the Body of

Iohn Jones the Son of

Iohn Jones Who Departed

This Life December the 13

1768 Aged 4 Years & 4 Months & 2 Days

HERE, where enormous shadows creep,

He casts his childish shadow too:

How small he seems, beneath the steep

Great walls; his tender days, so few,

Lovingly numbered, every one—

John Jones, John Jones's little son.

O sunlight on the Lightning's wings!

Yet though our buildings skyward climb

Our heartbreaks are but little things

In the equality of Time.

The sum of life, for all men's stones:

He was John Jones, son of John Jones.

THE MADONNA OF THE CURB

ON the curb of a city pavement,

By the ash and garbage cans,

In the stench and rolling thunder

Of motor trucks and vans,

There sits my little lady,

With brave but troubled eyes,

And in her arms a baby

That cries and cries and cries.

She cannot be more than seven;

But years go fast in the slums,

And hard on the pains of winter

The pitiless summer comes.

The wail of sickly children

She knows; she understands

The pangs of puny bodies,

The clutch of small hot hands.

In the deadly blaze of August,

That turns men faint and mad,

She quiets the peevish urchins

By telling a dream she had—

A heaven with marble counters,

And ice, and a singing fan;

And a God in white, so friendly,

Just like the drug-store man.

Her ragged dress is dearer

Than the perfect robe of a queen!

Poor little lass, who knows not

The blessing of being clean.

And when you are giving millions

To Belgian, Pole and Serb,

Remember my pitiful lady—

Madonna of the Curb!

The wail of sickly children

She knows; she understands

The pangs of puny bodies,

The clutch of small hot hands.

THE ISLAND

A SONG for England?

Nay, what is a song for England?

Our hearts go by green-cliffed Kinsale

Among the gulls' white wings,

Or where, on Kentish forelands pale

The lighthouse beacon swings:

Our hearts go up the Mersey's tide,

Come in on Suffolk foam—

The blood that will not be denied

Moves fast, and calls us home!

Our hearts now walk a secret round

On many a Cotswold hill,

For we are mixed of island ground,

The island draws us still:

Our hearts may pace a windy turn

Where Sussex downs are high,

Or watch the lights of London burn,

A bonfire in the sky!

What is the virtue of that soil

That flings her strength so wide?

Her ancient courage, patient toil,

Her stubborn wordless pride?

A little land, yet loved therein

As any land may be,

Rejoicing in her discipline,

The salt stress of the sea.

Our hearts shall walk a Sherwood track,

Our lips taste English rain,

We thrill to see the Union Jack

Across some deep-sea lane;

Though all the world be of rich cost

And marvellous with worth,

Yet if that island ground were lost

How empty were the earth!

A song for England?

Lo, every word we speak's a song for England.

SUNDAY NIGHT

TWO grave brown eyes, severely bent

Upon a memorandum book—

A sparkling face, on which are blent

A hopeful and a pensive look;

A pencil, purse, and book of checks

With stubs for varying amounts—

Elaine, the shrewdest of her sex,

Is busy balancing accounts.

Sedately, in the big armchair,

She, all engrossed, the audit scans—

Her pencil hovers here and there

The while she calculates and plans;

What's this? A faintly pensive frown

Upon her forehead gathers now—

Ah, does the butcher—heartless clown—

Beget that shadow on her brow?

A murrain on the tradesman churl

Who caused this fair accountant's gloom!

Just then—a baby's cry—my girl

Arose and swiftly left the room.

Then in her purse by stratagem

I thrust some bills of small amounts—

She'll think she had forgotten them,

And smile again at her accounts!

Ah, does the butcher—heartless clown—

Beget that shadow on her brow?

ENGLAND, JULY 1913

To Rupert Brooke

O ENGLAND, England ... that July

How placidly the days went by!

Two years ago (how long it seems)

In that dear England of my dreams

I loved and smoked and laughed amain

And rode to Cambridge in the rain.

A careless godlike life was there!

To spin the roads with Shotover,

To dream while punting on the Cam,

To lie, and never give a damn

For anything but comradeship

And books to read and ale to sip,

And shandygaff at every inn

When The Gorilla rode to Lynn!

O world of wheel and pipe and oar

In those old days before the War.

O poignant echoes of that time!

I hear the Oxford towers chime,

The throbbing of those mellow bells

And all the sweet old English smells—

The Deben water, quick with salt,

The Woodbridge brew-house and the malt;

The Suffolk villages, serene

With lads at cricket on the green,

And Wytham strawberries, so ripe,

And Murray's Mixture in my pipe!

In those dear days, in those dear days,

All pleasant lay the country ways;

The echoes of our stalwart mirth

Went echoing wide around the earth

And in an endless bliss of sun

We lay and watched the river run.

And you by Cam and I by Isis

Were happy with our own devices.

Ah, can we ever know again

Such friends as were those chosen men,

Such men to drink, to bike, to smoke with,

To worship with, or lie and joke with?

Never again, my lads, we'll see

The life we led at twenty-three.

Never again, perhaps, shall I

Go flashing bravely down the High

To see, in that transcendent hour,

The sunset glow on Magdalen Tower.

Dear Rupert Brooke, your words recall

Those endless afternoons, and all

Your Cambridge—which I loved as one

Who was her grandson, not her son.

O ripples where the river slacks

In greening eddies round the "backs";

Where men have dreamed such gallant things

Under the old stone bridge at King's.

Or leaned to feed the silver swans

By the tennis meads at John's.

O Granta's water, cold and fresh,

Kissing the warm and eager flesh

Under the willow's breathing stir—

The bathing pool at Grantchester....

What words can tell, what words can praise

The burly savor of those days!

Dear singing lad, those days are dead

And gone for aye your golden head;

And many other well-loved men

Will never dine in Hall again.

I too have lived remembered hours

In Cambridge; heard the summer showers

Make music on old Heffer's pane

While I was reading Pepys or Taine.

Through Trumpington and Grantchester

I used to roll on Shotover;

At Hauxton Bridge my lamp would light

And sleep in Royston for the night.

Or to Five Miles from Anywhere

I used to scull; and sit and swear

While wasps attacked my bread and jam

Those summer evenings on the Cam.

(O crispy English cottage-loaves

Baked in ovens, not in stoves!

O white unsalted English butter

O satisfaction none can utter!)...

To think that while those joys I knew

In Cambridge, I did not know you.

July, 1915.

CASUALTY

A WELL-SHARP'D pencil leads one on to write:

When guns are cocked, the shot is guaranteed;

The primed occasion puts the deed in sight:

Who steals a book who knows not how to read?

Seeing a pulpit, who can silence keep?

A maid, who would not dream her ta'en to wife?

Men looking down from some sheer dizzy steep

Have (quite impromptu) leapt, and ended life.

A GRUB STREET RECESSIONAL

O NOBLE gracious English tongue

Whose fibers we so sadly twist,

For caitiff measures he has sung

Have pardon on the journalist.

For mumbled meter, leaden pun,

For slipshod rhyme, and lazy word,

Have pity on this graceless one—

Thy mercy on Thy servant, Lord!

The metaphors and tropes depart,

Our little clippings fade and bleach:

There is no virtue and no art

Save in straightforward Saxon speech.

Yet not in ignorance or spite,

Nor with Thy noble past forgot

We sinned: indeed we had to write

To keep a fire beneath the pot.

Then grant that in the coming time,

With inky hand and polished sleeve,

In lucid prose or honest rhyme

Some worthy task we may achieve—

Some pinnacled and marbled phrase,

Some lyric, breaking like the sea,

That we may learn, not hoping praise,

The gift of Thy simplicity.

PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR A FUNERAL SERVICE: BEING A POEM IN FOUR STANZAS

SAY this poor fool misfeatured all his days,

And could not mend his ways;

And say he trod

Most heavily upon the corns of God.

But also say that in his clabbered brain

There was the essential pain—

The idiot's vow

To tell his troubled Truth, no matter how.

Unhappy fool, you say, with pitiful air:

Who was he, then, and where?

Ah, you divine

He lives in your heart, as he lives in mine.

Transcribers notes

Kept to original format

Page 97 to a discarded mirror - image added and text translated from mirror image

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Table of Contents

Chimneysmoke

Chimneysmoke

Christopher Morley

Illustrated by Thomas Fogarty

Author's Note

Contents

Illustrations

Chimneysmoke

Chimneysmoke

TO THE LITTLE HOUSE

A GRACE BEFORE WRITING

DEDICATION FOR A FIREPLACE

TAKING TITLE

THE SECRET

ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

AT THE MERMAID CAFETERIA

OUR HOUSE

ON NAMING A HOUSE

A HALLOWE'EN MEMORY

REFUSING YOU IMMORTALITY

BAYBERRY CANDLES

SECRET LAUGHTER

SIX WEEKS OLD

A CHARM

MY PIPE

THE 5:42

PETER PAN

IN HONOR OF TAFFY TOPAZ

THE CEDAR CHEST

READING ALOUD

ANIMAL CRACKERS

THE MILKMAN

LIGHT VERSE

THE FURNACE

WASHING THE DISHES

THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES

ELEGY WRITTEN IN A COUNTRY COAL-BIN

THE OLD SWIMMER

THE MOON-SHEEP

SMELLS

SMELLS (JUNIOR)

MAR QUONG, CHINESE LAUNDRYMAN

THE FAT LITTLE PURSE

THE REFLECTION (To N. B. D.)

THE BALLOON PEDDLER

LINES FOR AN ECCENTRIC'S BOOK PLATE

TO A POST-OFFICE INKWELL

THE CRIB

THE POET

TO A DISCARDED MIRROR

TO A CHILD

TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN

TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET

BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING

BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER

A VALENTINE GAME

FOR A BIRTHDAY

KEATS

TO H. F. M. a sonnet in sunlight

QUICKENING

AT A WINDOW SILL

THE RIVER OF LIGHT

OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS

IN AN AUCTION ROOM

EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY

SONNET BY A GEOMETER

TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER SEEN ON A LEASH, IN THE PARK

TO AN OLD FRIEND

TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE

THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK

STREETS

TO THE ONLY BEGETTER

PEDOMETER

HOSTAGES

ARS DURA

O. HENRY—APOTHECARY

FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET

TWO O'CLOCK

THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

THE WEDDED LOVER

TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST

CHARLES AND MARY

TO A GRANDMOTHER

DIARISTS

THE LAST SONNET

THE SAVAGE

ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH

ADVICE TO A CITY

THE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY

GREEN ESCAPE

VESPER SONG FOR COMMUTERS

THE ICE WAGON

AT A MOVIE THEATRE

SONNETS IN A LODGING HOUSE

THE MAN WITH THE HOE (PRESS)

DO YOU EVER FEEL LIKE GOD?

RAPID TRANSIT

CAUGHT IN THE UNDERTOW

TO HIS BROWN-EYED MISTRESS

PEACE

SONG, IN DEPRECATION OF PULCHRITUDE

MOUNTED POLICE

TO HIS MISTRESS, DEPLORING THAT HE IS NOT AN ELIZABETHAN GALAXY

THE INTRUDER

TIT FOR TAT

SONG FOR A LITTLE HOUSE

THE PLUMPUPPETS

DANDY DANDELION

THE HIGH CHAIR

LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

AUTUMN COLORS

THE LAST CRICKET

TO LOUISE

CHRISTMAS EVE

EPITAPH ON THE PROOFREADER OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA

THE MUSIC BOX

TO LUATH

THOUGHTS ON REACHING LAND

A SYMPOSIUM

TO A TELEPHONE OPERATOR WHO HAS A BAD COLD

NURSERY RHYMES FOR THE TENDER-HEARTED

THE TWINS

A PRINTER'S MADRIGAL

THE POET ON THE HEARTH

O PRAISE ME NOT THE COUNTRY

A STONE IN ST. PAUL'S GRAVEYARD

THE MADONNA OF THE CURB

THE ISLAND

SUNDAY NIGHT

ENGLAND, JULY 1913

CASUALTY

A GRUB STREET RECESSIONAL

PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTIONS FOR A FUNERAL SERVICE: BEING A POEM IN FOUR STANZAS

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE