PART III LINCOLN MAKES A MEMORANDUM |
(November 23rd, 1864.) “The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present Civil War it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adoption to effect his purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power on the minds of the now contestants he could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun he could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.” WINTER GARDEN THEATRE (New York, November 23rd, 1864.) John Wilkes Booth is speaking behind the scenes to his brother. If you—if you had told me this before,
If I had known of it—if I had known,
I had not played to-night, no, by the gods,
I had not played Marc Antony, nor heard
You speak the words of Brutus. You—my brother,
You nursed in liberty—you nourished upon
Great thoughts and dreams, have soiled me, soiled the name
Of Booth, our father’s name. Yes, you have soiled
All spirits free, all lofty souls, the soul
Of Brutus and of Shakespeare. Why, till now
Conceal from me your vote for Lincoln—why?
Why? In your heart of hearts you are ashamed,
And loose the secret now for penitence!
For you have helped the hand that wrecks and slays
Who will be king and on these ruined States
Erect a throne. He who commenced this war,
And broke the law to do it. He who struck
The liberty of speech and of the press;
He who tore up the ancient writ of freemen,
And filled the jails against the law. Lincoln!
Into whose ears the shrieks of horror rise
From Gettysburg, Manassas—yet who says
The will of God be done, for him you vote!
And walk these boards to-night and live the soul
Of Brutus, speak his words—Oh! “Had you rather
CÆsar were living and die all slaves than
That CÆsar were dead to live all freemen.” God!
You had this secret in your breast the while:
This vote for Lincoln, and these words of Brutus
Blown from the Shakespeare trumpet to our ears,
Hearts, consciences, meant what to you—meant what?
Words for an actor, words for a lisping girl
Repeating them by rote! But why not truth
For men to live by, to be taken into
The beings of men for living? Oh, my God—
I hate you and I leave you. I shall never
Look on your face again!
THE SPARROW HAWK IN THE RAIN (Alexander Stephens hears news.) (Liberty Hall, April 9th, 1865.) That’s done! And well, I’d rather not have gone
To take such news. But now I’m glad you picked me—
I saw and heard him. I was ushered in,
And after hems and haws, I said at last,
“Lee has surrendered.”
What a face he had
When I said that: “Lee has surrendered.” Once,
When I was just a boy, I shot a sparhawk,
Just tore his breast away, and did not kill him.
He hopped up to a twig and perched, I peered
Through bushes for my victim—there he was
His breast shot all away, so I could see
His heart a-beating—but the sparhawk’s eyes
Were bright as dew, with pain! I thought of this
When I saw Alec Stephens, said to him,
“Lee has surrendered.”
There the midget sat
His face as wrinkled as thin cream, as yellow
As squirrel skin—But ah, that piercing eye!
As restless as my sparhawk’s, not with moving
But just with light, such pained uneasiness.
So there he sat, a thin, pale, little man,
Wrapped in a monstrous cloak, as wide and dark
As his own melancholy—I shed tears
For such soul sickness, sorrow and such eyes,
That breast all shot away, that heart exposed
For eyes to see it beat, those burning eyes!
I stood there with my hat within my hand,
Said: “Mr. Stephens, I have come to tell you,
Lee has surrendered.” He just looked at me
Then in a thin, cracked voice he said at once,
“It had to come.” That’s all, “It had to come.”
“Pray have a seat,” he added. For you see
He’s known me for some years, I am his friend.
“It had to come.” He only said that once.
Then, after silence, he chirped up again:
“I knew when I came back from Hampton Roads
It soon would be. Home-coming is the thing
When all is over in the world you’ve loved,
And worked with. And this Liberty Hall is good.
My sleeplessness is not so tiring here,
My pain more tolerable, and as for thought,
That goes on anywhere, and thought is life,
And while I think, I live.”
He paused a minute,
I took a seat, enthralled with what he said,
A sparhawk in the rain, breast torn away,
His beating heart in view, his burning eyes!
“But everyone will see, the North will see,
Our cause was theirs, the South’s cause was the cause
Of everyone both north and south. They’ll see
Their liberties not long survive our own.
There is no difference, and cannot be
Between empire, consolidation, none
Between imperialism, centralism, none!”
I saw he was disposed to talk, let fall
My hat upon the floor. There in that cloak
All huddled like a child he sat and talked
In that thin voice. Bent over, hands on knees,
I listened like a man bewitched.
He said:
“As I am sick, cannot endure the strain
Of practice at the bar, am face to face
With silence after thunder, after war,
This terrifying calm, and after days
Top full of problems, duties in my place
In the South, vice-president, adviser,
Upon insoluble things, now after these
I cannot sit here idle, so I plan
To write a book. For, if I tell the truth,
My book will live, will be a shaft of granite
Which guns can never batter. First, perhaps,
I’ll have to go to prison, let it be.
The North is now a maniac—here I am,
Easy to capture, but I’ll think in prison,
Perhaps they’ll let me write, but anyway
I’ll try to write a book and answer questions.
“A soldier at Manassas shot to death
Asked, as he died, ‘What is it all about?’
Thousands of boys, I fancy, asked the same
Dying at Petersburg and Antietam,
Cold Harbor, Gettysburg. I’ll answer them.
I’ll dedicate the book to all true friends
Of Liberty wherever they may be,
Especially to those with eyes to look
Upon a federation of free states as means
Surest and purest to preserve mankind
Against the monarch principle.”
Just then
A darkey came to bring him broth, he drank
And I arose to go. He waved his hand
And asked me: “Would you like to hear about
The book I plan to write?”
I longed to stay
And hear him talk, but feared to tire him out.
I hinted this, he smiled a little smile
And said: “If I’m alone, I think, and thought
Without you talk it out is like a hopper
That is not emptied and may overflow,
Or choke the grinding stones. Be seated, sir,
If you would please to listen.”
So I stayed.
When he had drunk the broth, he settled back
To talk to me and tell me of his book,
A sparhawk, as I said, with burning eyes!
“First I will show the nature of the league,
The compact, constitution, the republic
Called federative even by Washington.
I only sketch the plan to you. Take this:
States make the Declaration, therefore states
Existed at the time to make it. States
Signed up the Articles of Confederation
In seventeen seventy-eight, and to what end?
Why for ‘perpetual union.’ Was it so?
No, nine years after, states, the very same
Withdrew, seceded from ‘perpetual union’
Under the Articles and acceded to,
Ratified, what you will, the Constitution,
And formed not a ‘perpetual union’ but
`More perfect union.’
“If there is a man
Or ever was more gifted with the power
Of cunning words that reach the heart than Lincoln,
I do not know him. Don’t you see it wins,
Captures the swelling feelings to declare
The Union older than the states?—it’s false,
But Lincoln says it. Here’s another strain
That moves the mob: ‘The Constitution has
No word providing for its own destruction,
The ending of the government thereunder.’
This Lincoln is a sophist, and in truth
With all this moral cry against the curse
Of slavery and these arguments of Lincoln
We were put down, just as a hue and cry
Will stifle Reason; but you can be sure
Reason will have her way and punishment
Will fall for her betrayal.
“Let us see:
‘Was there provisions in the Articles
Of that perpetual union for the end
Of that perpetual union? Not at all!
How did these states then end it? By seceding
To form a better one! Is there provision
For getting out, withdrawing from the Union
Formed by the Constitution? No! Why not?
Could not states do what they had done before,
Leave ‘a more perfect union,’ as they left
‘Perpetual union?’ What’s a state in fact?
A state’s a sovereign, look in Vattell, look
In any great authority. So a sovereign
May take back what it delegated, mark you,
Not what it deeded, parted with, but only
Delegated. In regard to that
All powers not delegated were reserved.
Well, to resume, no word is in the charter
To end the charter. And a contract has
No word to end it by, how do you end it?
You end it by rescinding, when one party
Has broken it. Is this a contract, compact?
Even the mighty Webster said it was.
And further, if the Northern States, he said,
Refuse to carry in effect the part
Respecting restoration of fugitive slaves,
The South would be no longer bound to keep—
What did he say? the compact, that’s the word!
Next then, what caused the war? I’ll show and prove
It was not slavery of the blacks, but slavery
The North would force on us. For seventy years
Fierce, bitter conflict waged between the forces
Of those who would maintain the Federal form,
And those who would absorb in the Federal head
All power of government; between the forces
Of sovereignty in the people and control,
And sovereignty in a central hand. Why, look,
No sooner was the perfect union formed
Than monarchists began to play their arts
Through tariffs, banks, assumption bills, the Act
That made the Federal Courts. And none of these
Had warrant in the charter; yet you see
They overleaped its bounds. And so it was
To make all clear, explicit, when we framed
For these Confederate States our charter, we
Forbade expressly tariffs, meant to foster
Industrial adventures.
“No, my friend,
Our slavery was not the cause of war.
They would have Empire and the slavery
That comes from it: unlicensed power to deal
With fortunes, lives, economies and rights.
We fought them in the Congress seventy years;
We fought them at the hustings, with the ballot;
And when they shouldered guns, we shouldered guns,
And fought them to the last—now we have lost,
And so I write my book.
“What is the difference
Between a mob, an army shouting God,
Fired by a moral erethism fixed
On slaughter for the triumph of its dream,
A riddance of its hate—what is the difference
Between an army like this and a man
Who dreams God moves, inspires him to an act
Of foul assassination? None at all!
Why, there’s your Northern army shouting God,
Your pure New England with its tariff spoils,
Its banks and growing wealth, uplifting hands,
Invoking God against us till they flame
A crazy party and a maddened army,
To war upon us. But if slavery
Be sinful, where’s the word of Christ to say
That slavery is sinful? Not a word
From him who scourged the Scribes and Pharisees
For robbing widows’ houses, but no word
Against the sin of slavery. Yet behold
He found no faith in all of Israel
To equal that—of whom?—a man who owned
Slaves, as we did. I mean the Centurion.
And is this all? St. Paul who speaks for God
With equal inspiration with New England,
As I should judge, enjoins the slaves to count
Their masters worthy of all honor, that
God and his doctrine be not blasphemed.
“But
If it be wrong to hold as property
A service, even a man to keep the service—
Let us be clear and fair—then is it wrong
To hold indentures of apprenticeship?
And if, as Lincoln says, it is a right
Given of God for every man to have,
Eat if he will the bread he earns, then God
Is blasphemed in the North where labor’s paid
Not what it earns, but what it must accept,
Chained by necessity, and so enslaved.
And all these tariff laws are slavery
By which my bread is taken, all the banks
That profit by their issues, special rights,
Enslave us, in the future will enslave
Both North and South, when darkeys shall be free
To choose their masters, but must choose, no less
Take what the master hand consents to pay,
And eat what bread is given. Yes, you know
Our slavery was a gentle thing, belied
As bloody, sullen, selfish—yet you know
It was a gentle thing, a way to keep
A race inferior in a place of work,
Duly controlled. For once that race is freed
It will go forth to mingle, mix and wed
With whites and claim equality, the ballot,
Places of trust and profit, judgment seats.
Lincoln denies he favors this, no less
We’ll come to that. And all the while the mills
And factories in the North will bring to us
The helpless poor of Europe, and enslave them
By pauper wages, and enslave us all
With tariff-favored products. Slavery!
God’s curse is on us for our Slavery!
What do you think?
“They say we broke the law,
Were rebels, insurrectionists; I’ll treat
Those subjects in my book. But let us see,
They did not keep the law; they had their banks,
They had their tariffs, they infracted laws
Respecting slaves who ran away, they joined
Posses and leagues to break those laws, and we
In virtue of these breaches, were released
From this, the compact, just as Webster says.
Did Lincoln keep the law and keep his oath
The Constitution to support, obey?
He did not keep it, and he broke his oath.
Did he have lawful power to call the troops?
Did he have lawful warrant to blockade
Our southern ports? No one pretends he did.
His Congress by a special act made valid
These tyrant usurpations. Had he power
To strike the habeas corpus, gag the press?—
No power at all—he only seized the power
To reach what he conceived was all supreme,
The saving of the Union—more of this.
Well, then, what are these words: You break the law
On those who break it and confess they do?
You have two ideas: Union and Secession,
Or two republics made from one, that’s all.
And those who think secession criminal
Turn criminals themselves to stay the crime,
And shout the Union. To this end I come,
This figment called the Union, which obsessed
The brain of Lincoln.
“For the point is this,
You may take Truth or Liberty or Union
For a battle cry, kill and be killed therefor,
But if our reasons rule, if we are men,
We take them at our peril. We must stake
Our souls upon the choice, be clear of mind
That what we cry as Truth is Truth indeed,
That Liberty is Liberty, that the Union
Is not a noun, a word, a subtlety,
But is a status, substance, living temple
Reared from the bottom up on stones of fate,
Predestined. Yet the truth is only this:
The Union is a noun and nothing more,
And stands for what? A federative thing
Formed of the wills of states, not otherwise.
Existing; and to kill to save the Union
Is but the exercise of a hue and cry,
An arbitrary passion, sophist’s dream.
And Robespierre, who killed for liberty,
And CÆsar, who destroyed the Roman liberties
To have his way, are of the quality
Of Lincoln, whom I know. Take Robespierre,
Was he not by a sense of justice moved,
Pure, and as frigid as a bust of stone?
And CÆsar had devoted friends, and CÆsar,
The accomplished orator, general and scholar,
Charming and gentle in his private walks,
Destroyed the hopes of Rome.
“Now, mark me friend,
I do not think that Lincoln meant to crush
The institutions of his country—no,
His fault was this—the Union, yes the noun,
Rose to religious mysticism, and enthralled
With sentiment his soul. And his ideas
Of its formation, structure in his logic
Rested upon a subtle solecism.
And for this noun, in spite of virtues great
Of head and heart, he used his other self,
His CÆsar self, his self of Robespierre,
In the great office which he exercised,
To bring us Oak Hill, Corinth, Fredericksburg.
Think you, if when he kept the store at Salem
A humble, studious man, he had been told
He would make wails of horror, wake the cries
Of pestilence and famine in the camps,
Bring devastation, rapine, fire and death—
Had he been told this, he had said—‘My soul!
Never,’ and with Hazael said, ‘Behold,
Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?’
Power changes men! And when the people give
Power or surrender it, they scarcely know
The thing they give, surrender.
“But I ask
What is there in the Union, what indeed
In any government’s supremacy
Or maintenance that justifies these acts—
These horrors, slaughters—near a million men
Slaughtered for what? The Union. Treasure spent
Beyond all counting for the Union. When
No life had been destroyed, no dollar spent
If they had let us go, left us alone
To go our way. You see they did to us
What England did; succeeded, where she failed.
And thus you see that human life is cheap,
And suffering a sequence when a dream,
An Idea takes a man, a mob, an army.
Which makes our life a jest, our boasted Reason
An instrument too weak for savagery.
Then for the rest—you see—I think you see.—”
Sleep now was taking him. My little sparhawk
Was worn out, and his eyes began to droop,
His voice to fail him. In a moment then
He sank down in his cloak and fell asleep—
And I arose and left.
ADELAIDE AND JOHN WILKES BOOTH
(At the National Hall, Washington, April 9, 1865.) (He goes out.) BRUTUS LIVES AGAIN IN BOOTH
(Ford’s Theatre, Good Friday, April 14th, 1865.) First Stage Hand
What time is it?
Second Stage Hand
Time for the curtain nearly.
First Stage Hand
There’s Miss Keene in the wings.
The orchestra starts up; the audience sings: Honor to our soldiers,
Our Nation’s greatest pride,
Who ’neath our Starry Banner’s folds,
Have fought, have bled and died.
They’re Nature’s noblest handiwork,
No king as proud as they.
God bless the heroes of the land,
And cheer them on their way.
Scene II. The White House. Lincoln
This for you, Colfax.
(Hands him a pass)
Come in at nine to-morrow.
I’m off soon for the theatre with my wife—
A little party. Grant was going too;
Has changed his mind, goes north with Mrs. Grant.
There’ll be an audience to see the hero
Of Appomatox.
Oglesby
Well, rather you, I think
Who picked Grant for the work, and brought the war
To end, as it has ended.
Lincoln
Oh, not me.
I am familiar as an old shoe here.
I’d say the war is ending. There may be
Some battle yet.
Colfax
Mere sputterings of the flame.
Lincoln
Well, something’s on. I had my dream last night
Which I have had before, so often, always
Before some great event: I’m in a boat,
And swiftly move toward a shadowy shore.
I had this dream preceding Bull Run, Vicksburg,
Gettysburg, Antietam. It may be
A battle’s on this minute. I think so.
It must relate to Sherman. For I know
No other great event to follow my dream.
Oglesby
Our dreams are made of days lived long ago:
Your boat’s perhaps your flat boat at New Salem.
Colfax
I’m happy to live now, the war is won.
God bless you, Mr. President, keep you too.
Lincoln
You will excuse me, gentlemen. I go,
For Mrs. Lincoln waits.
(He goes out.) Oglesby
The other day
Lincoln was with Charles Sumner down the James,
Was reading Shakespeare, read aloud three times
Those lines which read: “Duncan is in his grave,
After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;
Treason has done his worst: nor steel nor poison,
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing
Can touch him further.”
Colfax
Did you note to-night
He looked those words: “Nothing can touch him further”?
These months before how ghastly gray his face!
What droop of melancholy in his eyes!
What weariness without words, what ultimate woe!
And now to-night he stood transfigured here
Clothed in a great serenity and a joy
As if his life had wrought what he would have it.
Oglesby
Yes, he is changed. Shall we go on?
(They go out.) Scene III. The entrance of Ford’s Theatre. (Passing the doorkeeper without a ticket.) Is this all right?
Doorkeeper
All right for you.
Booth
Can you leave,
Go with me for a brandy?
Doorkeeper
No.
Booth
Why not?
The play’s commenced, and everyone is here.
Doorkeeper
Not everyone—the presidential party!
Booth
They enter without tickets.
Doorkeeper
Yes, I know.
Go in and watch Miss Keene a little, John.
You might get wakened up to play again,
Marc Antony to your brother’s Brutus.
Booth
No!
Never with him again. And as for that
My next part will be Brutus.
(He goes into the theatre.) Scene IV. Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln Driving to the Theatre. Lincoln
Mary, the war is over. We have had
Hard times since we came here. But now, thank God,
The war is over. We may hope for peace,
And happiness for the four years that remain,
While I close up my work as President.
Then back to Illinois to rest and live.
I have some money saved. Wrote recently
To friends to find a house for me in Chicago—
We can live there, or Springfield. Law again,
At least enough to keep us.
Mrs. Lincoln
That’s my dream,
And from this night we start to live, rejoice.
(They drive on.) Scene V. The stage of Ford’s Theatre. (Laura Keene as “Florence Trenchard”; John Dyatt as “Dundreary” in dialogue in Tom Taylor’s “American Cousin.”) Florence
“Can’t you see the point of that joke?”
Dundreary
“No, really.”
Florence
“You can’t see it?”
Dundreary
“No!”
(Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln and party enter the box.) (Making a profound courtesy to Lincoln.) (The audience breaks into great applause. The band plays “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln bows to the audience.) Scene VI. Back of the stage. First Stage Hand
Whose horse is at the door?
Second Stage Hand
Booth’s!
A Voice
Ten twenty-five.
First Stage Hand
Ten twenty-five.
Second Stage Hand
Ten twenty-five.
Scene VII. The Presidential Box. Lincoln
Oh, no! No persecution, bloody work,
How to articulate the states again,
Just how to handle the states that left us—well,
There will be problems up from day to day,
During my term, at least. But no revenge,
No hate, no hanging, killing—rather shoo!
Like Hannah Armstrong used to shoo her chickens.
Let the obstreporous, unreconciled
Go clear to—Halifax—get out! But, Major,
My feeling is to treat the Southern people
As fellow citizens. To be their fellows
And not their masters is my way.
Maj. Rathbone
We need
Your genius, Mr. President, for the work
Of reconstruction more, if that may be,
Then we had need of you to push the war.
Mrs. Lincoln
How do you like the play?
Lincoln
Oh, very good.
Scene VIII. Dress Circle. First Auditor
(Gazing at the Presidential box.)
What’s keeping General Grant? I came to see
The conqueror of Lee.
Second Auditor
He will not come.
Too late now.
First Auditor
(Looking at his watch.)
Yes, ten twenty-five.
Second Auditor
Who’s that?
First Auditor
Who?
Second Auditor
Why, a man as pale as snow
Or ivory, with hair black as a horse’s tail
Passed back of the seats there, and approached the entrance
To Lincoln’s box.
First Auditor
A secret officer,
With message of a battle. Oh, perhaps
Sherman has vanquished Johnston!
Scene IX. In the passageway leading to the Presidential box. Booth
Right or wrong, God judge me—never man.
Liberty is dead—I would not live,
Beyond my country’s life. Oh, Liberty!
Brutus, sustain me!
Scene X. The Presidential box. Major Rathbone
(Observing Lincoln rise.)
Can I get something for you?
Lincoln
I want my coat.
I felt a chill and shudder down my back.
(He gets his coat and is seated.)
Scene XI. Booth at the door of the Presidential box aiming a pistol. Booth
Brutus! (He fires. The President’s head falls upon
his breast. Booth rushes into the box, slashes Major
Rathbone with a dagger, leaps from the box to the stage.
Falls, arises.)
Scene XII. On the stage. Booth
Sic semper Tyrannis! The South is avenged!
(He rushes off. Great confusion.) BOOTH’S PHILIPPI
(Garrett’s Tobacco House, Bowling Green, Virginia, April 26th, 1865. Booth and Harrold.) SCENE I Booth
If this must be, I take it. Be a man.
Don’t whine like that. You suffer only from fear.
But if you had this torturing leg. My God!
If you rode sixty miles as I did, flesh
Prodded at every jump by broken bones ...
Harrold
What’s that?
Booth
A dog there in the yard.
Harrold
Those troopers
We hid from on the way here—Federals—
Did they go on, or follow, hunting us?
Booth
We’re ended likely. Let us stand our ground.
We have our carbines for the ending up ...
But oh, to be thus hunted, like a dog,
Through swamps, woods, thickets, chased by gunboats too,
With every hand against me. And for what?
For doing what brought honor unto Brutus,
And deathless fame to Tell. Who’ll clear my name?
Who’ll print what I have written? There’s the pang
To die and have my spirit and sacrifice
Sealed up in silence, or drowned out in cries
Of “cut-throat” or “assassin.”
I struck down
A greater tyrant than great Brutus slew.
And my act was more pure than his or Tell’s.
One would be great, and one had private wrongs
To heap his country’s up for quick revenge.
But I, what greatness could I hope for this?
What wrongs had I except the common wrong?
I struck for country and for that alone;
I struck for liberty that groaned beneath
A tyrant’s monstrous tyranny—and now look
The cold hand they extend me in the South
For which I struck! Our country bleeding, broken,
Cried to me for relief, and I was made
The instrument of God by God alone.
Harrold
A rooster crows!
Booth
Two hours till morning yet.
It’s only two o’clock.
Harrold
What shall we do?
Booth
To-night we’ll try the river once again ...
Why not return to Washington and end it?
They’d try me and I’d clear my name. Repent?
No, I do not repent. But I’ve a soul
Too great to die a felon’s death. Swift guns
Against a firing wall are honorable.
Before them I can clear my name. O God!
Give me a brave man’s death, for I have wronged,
Nor hated no one. And was this a wrong
To kill a tyrant? God must deem it so,
By making it a curse upon our time,
Our country and our countrymen. My fate
How miserable soever it may be
Proves not I did a wrong.
Great Milton come
And comfort me in this my agony!
You who could write a tyrant forfeits life
To those whom he oppresses, and ’tis just
To take him off. O curse of Cain no less!
Now I must pray again.
(He prays.) Scene II. (At the Garrett House.) (Lieutenant Baker, and a squad, including Boston Corbett.) Baker
(Knocking at the door.) Halloo! halloo!
A Voice
What’s wanted?
Baker
Open the door!
Scene III. (Inside the Tobacco House.) Harrold
They’ve come.
Booth
Yes! rapping at the door. Perhaps
Old Garrett will not tell that we are here.
Hold to your carbine. Do as I command.
Scene IV. (At the Garrett House.) Baker
(Taking Garrett by the throat.)
Where are these fellows? In your house?
Garrett
No! No!
Baker
We’ll search! Men, search the house!
Garrett
They are not here!
Baker
You make yourself accomplice if you hide them.
Last time: where are they?
Garrett
In the Tobacco House.
Scene V. (Inside the Tobacco House.) Harrold
They’re walking toward us.
Booth
Do as I command.
Baker
(Outside.) Come out of there.
Boston Corbett
(Outside.) Lieutenant, they can pick
The whole of us through cracks with their carbines.
Old Garrett says they’re armed.
(He goes back of the tobacco house.)
Baker
Come out of there.
Five minutes to come out, then I set fire
To the tobacco house.
Booth
(Inside.)
Who are you? What do you want?
Baker
(Outside.)
We want you. And we know you. Come, you are
Booth, assassin of the President. Surrender arms.
Come out!
Booth
(Inside.)
I want a little time to think about it.
(A silence.)
Baker
(Outside.)
Well, now come out.
Booth
(Inside.)
You are a brave man, captain, I believe,
Honorable too. I am a cripple, have
One leg, the other broken. Yet no less
If you will take your men a hundred yards
From the door of the tobacco house, I’ll come
Out as you command and fight you all.
Baker
(Outside.)
I have not come to fight, but capture you.
Booth
(Inside.)
Give me a chance for life. I’ll better terms.
If you will take your men off fifty yards
I’ll come out, fight you all, till I am killed,
Or kill you all.
Baker
(Outside.)
No!
Booth
(Inside.)
You are a coward, sir,
Denying to a brave man chance for life.
Harrold
(Inside.)
They’ve set the house afire! Now, let me out!
(The house burns.)
Booth
(Inside.)
You hellish coward, would you leave me now?
Go! Go! and leave me. It would be dishonor
To die with such a coward.
Let this man
Come out of here!
Baker
(Outside.)
All right! Hand out his arms
And come.
Booth
(Inside amid flames.)
A coward goes to cowards.
(The flames are coming up around Booth.)
(He stands on a crutch, pale and defiant.)
Scene VI. (Boston Corbett looking through a crack in the Tobacco House at Booth amid the flames.) Corbett
I hear you God and will obey!
(He points a carbine through a crack and fires at Booth. Booth leaps and falls. The soldiers go in and bring him out on the lawn.) Scene VII. (On the lawn.) Baker
(To Corbett.)
Why did you shoot? You had no orders to?
I’ll take you back to Washington in chains!
Why did you shoot?
Corbett
God told me to.
Baker
It looks it.
You hit him just behind the ear. Same place
Where Lincoln got the mortal wound.
Booth
Tell mother
I died for country, liberty, as Brutus
Did what he did for Rome. I thought it best
To do what I have done. God’s will be done
As I have tried to do it.
(He dies.) THE BURIAL OF BOSTON CORBETT (One warden to another.) (Asylum for the insane, Kansas, 1885.) So this is what we bury? How his face
Seems like a smear of yellow wax. This beard
Grown fine and curly. Something nasty here,
Hermaphroditic, feminine. Like a dog
That has run loose with rabies, yelps and snaps,
And makes a terror for a day, is slain,
And lies where passers-by can foot the corpse,
So he lies here: this steadfast paranoic!
How vanished from these sealed lids dreams of God!
Where are they now? For all this outer world
Of lunatics, care-takers, wardens, world
Of fields and villages, the state and states
Smiles at these lids so neatly sealed, the God
That had his altar in the spectral light
Of his mad eyes!
This is the man who slew
The slayer of the noble Lincoln. First
For the common good was CÆsar slain by Brutus,
And Booth slew Lincoln in a dream of Brutus,
This Corbett slew the slayer in a faith
Of God. Catch up the corner of the sheet.
He gets a grave where many hundreds lie,
Each with his epitaph of “Rest in Peace”;
Who had no peace in living, for the dreams
Of God, or Duty, Terror, Visions Vain.
Some say he came to Kansas, hither drawn
By hope of sympathy, since all are mad
In Kansas; otherwise the true God know,
And keep His ritual of reform. He found
God mocked in Kansas, or he had not tried
To shoot the state assembly to a man,
When he was keeper of the door. Perhaps
’Twas right enough to slay the actor Booth,
Obeying God; we might accept his word
God told him to kill Booth. But was it God
Commanded him to slay so many honorable
Members of the Kansas legislature
For legislating, or not legislating
As God would have them? Well, I have a doubt.
And many doubted his divine appointment
For massacre like that. And so we flung
The lasso round him, gathered him, and quick
We shut him in the pound, dishonored God,
As he conceived it, doing so.
I’ve heard
Brutus at last said, Miserable Virtue, Bawd,
Thou wert a world alone, a cheat at last!
This Boston Corbett never did recant
The faith, or God, the word.
So ends it here.
Mad unto death! This Corbett is the corneous
And upcurved withered calyx of a flower
Rich out of time. His madness is the lisping
Of that same stricken calyx in the wind
Of Infinite Mysteries.
Are you ready now?
Knot fast your corners of the sheet to hold.
All ready, to the field. There in corruption
We’ll sow him, to be raised—but why at all
Should he be raised?
THE NEW APOCRYPHA BUSINESS REVERSES (Mark, Chapter VI.)
THE FIG TREE
(Matthew, Chapter XXI.) With all of the rest of my troubles my fig tree’s withered and gone.
It stood in the road, you know, I haven’t much of a lawn.
I step from my door to a step, and from that right into the street.
Just the same I sat under my tree, as a shade from the noonday heat.
Camels came by and asses, caravans, footmen, too;
Soldiers of CÆsar saw me and ate of my tree, nor drew
Ax nor sword to the branches, nor even a hack on the bole.
Now what had I done or my tree? I call it an evil dole
To a tree that must rest as a man rests. Why last year what a crop!
Figs all over the branches, from lower limb to top.
The tree was resting this year, contenting itself with leaves,
If magic comes of believing, beware the man who believes.
If faith can remove a mountain, then faith, I say, beware.
Some morn I’ll look toward Olivet and find it no longer there.
These fellows can blast our vineyards, level our hills or remove.
And what does it prove but faith, what other good does it prove?
Nothing at all! Just magic, like Egypt’s cunning breed.
And to do such things with faith the size of a mustard seed!
What is there need of more? If you gave them faith as a pear
They would set Orion dancing around the paws of the Bear;
Make the heavens fall on our heads, the whole world ruin and wreck;
Slay us and our children, slave us, put the yoke on our neck;
Smash cities to strengthen the village, have life just as they would.
And make that evil which is not, make evil into a good.
Anyway he came, he was hungry, and it was break of dawn.
He ran to my tree expectant, saw nothing but leaves thereon.
Then raged for the lack of figs, no grace for the years that it bore.
And he said may no fruit grow hereon forevermore.
With that my tree curled up like a leaf in a windy blaze.
I was standing here on my step half blind in a sudden maze.
Then he said: have faith and do what I have done to this tree,
Or say to the mountains move and be cast into the sea.
So now I have no shade at noon under leafy boughs,
Why the tree was good for resting, cooler than in the house,
If it never bore again, if the life is more than meat
Why not this tree for my dreams, though he found no figs to eat.
But I swear it had borne next year, it was only taking a rest.
There’s too many saints who are straining the world to a dream in the breast.
Next year no figs for CÆsar, and none for myself, what’s worse,
If this be the work of faith, then faith itself is a curse.
TRIBUTE MONEY
(Matthew, Chapter XXII: 24-27.) This is all of the story
Capernaum stood in the way,
The takers of tribute came:
“Does your master tribute pay?”
And Peter ran to Jesus,
And Jesus answered him: “Nay!
Do the kings of the earth have tribute
From their own children, pray?
“Or do they get it of strangers?”
And Peter answered him: “Yea.”
Then Jesus said: “This is Galilee,
Should Galileans pay?
“But yet lest we offend them
There’s a fish out there in the bay
With a silver coin in his mouth—
Go catch the fish and pay.”
Did Jesus mean to mock
The tariff laws of the day:
That Peter could catch the fish
As likely as he would pay?
Did he mean to resist or yield
If Peter was lucky that day?
I, Matthew, tell you no more,
And Mark and Luke don’t say.
Did we enter the gate, or sit
Where the rocks and olives are gray?
Right then there was better matter
For a follower to portray.
The multitude gathered. He called
A child to him from its play,
And set the child in our midst;
And then he began to say:—
“This is the kingdom of heaven.”
And he took its hand and smiled.
“The kingdom of heaven,” he said,
“Is like the heart of a child.”
And I say, if this be true,
The Kingdom is surely defiled
By laws, and tariffs and kings
Unknown to the heart of a child.
THE GREAT MERGER
(Exodus, Chapter XX.) Philo, the worst has come,
All we foresaw and feared:
Delphos will soon be dumb,
Eleusis felled and cleared.
Not only Marduk and Bel
Shamash, Nana, and Sin
Are doomed to be swallowed. Rebel?
It is too late to begin.
They have worked for this merger for years;
They have bullied, lied and coerced.
They have played with curses and tears.
And now at last is the worst:
For Zeus goes into the bowl
Of Cyclops, thoroughly blended.
The brew is Jehovah, a Soul
Envious, sour, commended
And forced to our lips. His son
And another, the Holy Ghost,
Are mixed with him, there is none
Not stirred in the mixture and lost
Of the gods we loved. They say
There is only one god, not many.
Well, who knows, we of clay,
If there be a thousand, or any?
They say there is one—all right!
They take over all the rest.
And so there is one, we can fight,
Argue, pray and protest;
Set up a booth to Apollo,
Athene; bawl and persuade.
The crowds no longer follow—
Jehovah has got the trade.
For the Jews have used the scheme
Of commerce for making a god:
A harbor where no trireme
But their own can dock or load.
Now who will come to dissolve
This theo-monopoly?
And the power they took devolve
On a mightier deity?
It will come. But as for Zeus,
Osiris, Ptah, Zoroaster,
They are stewed in the dominant juice
Of Jehovah, lord and master.
We accept the fate. We laugh.
The earth, the sea and the sky
Are at last the cenotaph
Of gods, who always die.
AT DECAPOLIS
(Mark, Chapter V.) 1
THE ACCUSATION I am a farmer and live
Two miles from Decapolis.
Where is the magistrate? Tell me
Where the magistrate is!
Here I had made provision
For children and wife,
And now I have lost my all;
I am ruined for life.
I, a believer, too,
In the synagogues,—
What is the faith to me?
I have lost my hogs.
Two thousand hogs as fine
As ever you saw,
Drowned and choked in the sea—
I want the law!
They were feeding upon a hill
When a strolling teacher
Came by and scared my hogs—
They say he’s a preacher,
And cures the possessed who haunt
The tombs and bogs.
All right; but why send devils
Into my hogs?
They squealed and grunted and ran
And plunged in the sea.
And the lunatic laughed who was healed,
Of the devils free.
Devils or fright, no matter
A fig or a straw.
Where is the magistrate, tell me—
I want the law!
2
JESUS BEFORE MAGISTRATE AHAZ Ahaz, there in the seat of judgment, hear,
If you have wit to understand my plea.
Swine-devils are too much for swine, that’s clear.
Poor man possessed of such is partly free.
Is neither drowned, destroyed at once, his chains
May pluck while running, howling through the mire
And take a little gladness for his pains,
Some fury for unsatisfied desire.
But hogs go mad at once. All this I knew,—
But then this lunatic had rights. You grant
Swine-devils had him in their clutch and drew
His baffled spirit. How significant,
As they were legion and so named! The point
Is, life bewildered, torn in greed and wrath;—
Desire puts a spirit out of joint.
Swine-devils are for swine who have no path.
But man with many lusts, what is his way,
Save in confusion, through accustomed rooms?
He prays for night to come, and for the day
Amid the miry places and the tombs.
But hogs run to the sea. And there’s an end.
Would I might cast the swinish demons out
From man forever. Yet the word attend.
The lesson of the thing what soul can doubt?
What is the loss of hogs, if man be saved?
What loss of lands and houses, man being free?
Clothed in his reason sits the man who raved,
Clean and at peace, your honor. Come and see.
Your honor shakes a frowning head. Not loth,
Speaking more plainly, deeper truth to draw;
Do your judicial duty, yet I clothe
Free souls with courage to transgress the law.
By casting demons out from self, or those
Like this poor lunatic whom your synagogues
Would leave to battle singly with his woes—
What is a man’s soul to a drove of hogs?
Which being lost, men play the hypocrite
And make the owner chief in the affair.
You banish me for witchcraft. I submit.
Work of this kind awaits me everywhere.
And into swine where better they belong,
Casting the swinish devils out of men,
The devils have their place at last, and then
The man is healed who had them—where’s the wrong,
Save to the owner? Well, your synagogues
Make the split hoof and chewing of the cud
The test of lawful flesh. Not so are hogs.
This rule has been the statute since the flood.
Ahaz, your judgment has a fatal flaw.
Is it not so with judges first and last—
You break the law to specialize the law?—
This is the devil that from you I cast.
THE SINGLE STANDARD
(St. John, Chapter VIII.) It was known through Judea, we knew it:—
That Joseph beguiled
By mercy for Mary espoused,
And already with child,
Before they had come to each other,
Would put her away
In secret, before the Sanhedrin
Could summon, array,
The witnesses, judge her and make her
A noise and a shame—
We knew this, and what would he do
If the case were the same
As his father believed was the case
With his mother? would he,
A prophet, fulfill all the law,
Or let her go free?—
This Sarah, you know, that I caught,
Was a witness and saw.
Now what would he do, shade away,
Or judge by the law?
For Moses decreed if a woman
Who is married shall lie
With a man, whether wedded or not,
The woman shall die
With the man in a volley of stones;
And Moses decreed
If a virgin already betrothed
Shall lust in the deed
With a man not the bridegroom, and whether
The man shall be wed,
The people shall stone them with stones
Until they be dead.
Now mark you, how equal the law
Of weight and of span:
One law for the woman in sin,
The same for the man.
If Moses be still the law-giver,
By nothing dethroned,
And this be the law, then this Sarah
Was fit to be stoned.
And if it be true, as he says,
That he came to fulfill
The law, nor destroy it, why then
We thought he would will
The death of this woman we took
In adultery, yes in the act,
So we argued together beforehand
The law and the fact.
Now the case was this way: this Josiah
Late journeyed from Tyre,
Three wives to his household already,
Yet alive with desire,
And free by our custom and law
To add to his hearth
A fourth for the heirs to his house,
And for comfort and mirth,
Came back in the cause of a field
He had bought; as it chanced
Met up with this Sarah, a wife,
They feasted and danced,
Her spouse being absent, what’s more
In Egypt for good.
So Josiah and Sarah were found
In the act in the wood.
We brought her before him, accused,
And told him the case.
He stooped, as it seemed, to conceal
A blush on his face,
And wrote in the sand, as we stood
And pressed him he wrote:
“Anise” and “cummin” and “gnat”
And “Moses” and “mote.”
We cried all the more, he uplifted
Himself, said: “Begin
Your throwing of stones, let the first
Be him without sin.”
So there I was caught, for he knew—
Like wheat from the scythe
We shrank—I was guilty of sin,
I had failed in my tithe
Of anise. But why have clean hands
To work at our smudges?
And how will you ever stop sin
If you ask of the judges
To be without sin ere they punish
A matter of lust?
I call this a ruling where morals
Fall down in the dust.
The most of us left then. He asked her:
“Does no man condemn?
Nor do I.” And so he made one
With me and with them.
So here in a sense was the world
Spiritual, civil,
Prophet and Pharisee, judge
Leagued up with the devil.
For what did it matter to say
To go and no more
Sin as she had, if the sin
Would fare as before?
It followed that Sarah went free,
And Josiah the man.
One standard for both is the rule,
And the modern plan.
What’s that? Why to sin if you wish—
For what is a sin
If no stones are hurled for the lack
Of a man to begin?
And so it all ended. This Sarah
Was given a bill.
She married Josiah, they say,
And lives with him still.
FIRST ENTRANTS
(St. Matthew, Chapter XXII: 31.) We know the game of lawyer and priest;
We know the cunning of Pharisee, Scribe;
We know the malice of soldier, jailer;—
Hearts of those who abstain, imbibe.
And when we saw a God-mad fool
Like John the Baptist who cursed and grieved
For the hate of the elders, the harlot’s sorrow
We listened to him and we believed.
We know we are wronged, he voiced it for us;
We know we are mocked, he gave us place
With the children of grief, the simple hearted,
The broken spirits deserving grace.
He knew men use us and throw us away.
He knew we give and the gift is loathed.
We are the givers to men who scourge us,
Drive us to darkness, cold, unclothed.
And when he said: “Behold he is there
Whose latchet I am unworthy to loose,”
Jesus took us, the humble hearted,
The broken vessels that none will use.
And we believed again, and saw
A youth who loved us without desire;
Feasting, drinking with us the harlots,
Outcasts, sinners, wrecks of the fire.
These were our brothers: John the Baptist,
Jesus of Nazareth. Brothers I say.
Brothers and sisters bound in the service
Of giving comfort and pity away.
Pity and solace and hope of heaven,
Healing and tenderness came of Christ.
And we, the harlots, have given pity
And given delight to men who enticed
This little gift, so easy to give;
This wonder gift to them, as they said.
That is the passion that moves a woman
Before it becomes a matter of bread.
Before the lashes of scorn and the chains,
The dungeons, before the scowls and sneers;
Before the wrath of the priest, the temple’s
Bolted door for our hunger, tears.
Before the delight we sell is stale
As the steps of a dancer, growing old.
All is delight, kisses and dancing—
Men can buy, for they have the gold.
And we, he says, shall enter heaven
Before the priests and the elders do.
Why do we enter? Because as sorrow,
Poverty, humbleness, we are true.
Without pretense or pride. We are children
Who have shirked the task, but repent the sin.
But they, the elders and priests have promised
To work for heaven and never begin.
Why do we enter, save spite of our craft
To wheedle with lies we all stand forth
Known to the world as painted harlots,
Taken by no one over our worth?
And it’s good to enter, if we can be
With Jesus and John, and given reprieve
From priests and elders who run the city
And hound the harlots who see and believe.
JOHN IN PRISON
(St. Luke, Chapter XVI. St. Matthew, Chapter XI.) John said to the jailer: “Where are my disciples? Befriend
My grief and my doubt, and entreat them to come, to the end
That they ask him for me if we look for another, or deem,
As I did, that this prophet shall save and fulfill and redeem.”
And the jailer replied: “Since the wrath of King Herod a dish
Your head shall contain by to-morrow, I give you your wish.”
So he brought the disciples to John and the two of them led
To the cell where he sat, and John to the two of them said:—
“At this end of my life and my hopes, at the door of my doom
Go ask him for me and report: is it he that should come,
Or shall we yet look for another?” Amazed were the two
And one of them spoke to the Baptist and said: “Is it true
That you preached in the wilderness saying repent and prepare
The way of the Lord, whose shoes I am worthless to bear;
Who will fan out the chaff, gather wheat, purge the floor
With fire and the Spirit baptize you, bring down and restore
The kingdom of heaven? And are we abused in the word
That as he came out of the waters of Jordan you heard
A voice call from heaven which thundered: ‘This son of my love
With whom I am pleased you shall hear,’ and a dove
For the Spirit descended upon him—and yet can you ask
If he be the one that should come? Yet we take up the
task
And go at your bidding.” And John said: “I suffer without
You seek him and ask, for this is the cause of my doubt:—
I have heard of his works and rejoice. But why does he feast
When I fasted myself? And how have the rumors increased
That he fellows with publicans, sinners and drinkers of wine,
A bibber himself, when the springs of the desert were mine?
And how is the ax, as I said, laid close to the root of the tree,
And my curses fulfilled of the Pharisees, if this must be?
And if, as they say, he is preaching the word that we make
Of the unrighteous mammon a friend for the day when we break
With the lords of the riches of truth, as he put it, for then
The unrighteous mammon shall take us, console us again:—
I have wasted the goods of my lord! I am caught and accused!
Shall I make good the theft from my lord in a trust I abused?
Why, no! I go out to the debtors, my master to foil,
How much do you owe him? Why, so many measures of oil!
Sit down then, I say, make the bill but a half, quickly write:—
I am wiser in this, so he says, than the children of light—
As I make for myself by the trick of a thief, and a theft,
The confederates’ home for my own for my honor bereft.
Go! learn if he said this. Return ere the rise of the sun:—
Shall we look for another to save us, or is he the one?”
ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA Who is that coming? Look! They are bearing a body again.
It’s a woman now, I think. And the very same young men
Who brought Ananias’ body we buried a moment ago.
Pat down the earth a little, the grass will sooner grow.
Yes, now I see it’s Sapphira. What did she do to win
Death at the hands of Peter, or was it her husband’s sin?
To which she agreed, or kept her husband’s secret in faith.
They sold a sheep, as I hear it, and suffered sudden death
For hiding part of the price, for a thing commendable:
Their boy is sick, and they needed money to get him well.
Just look how things are going: CÆsar the despot rules,
The state is his. For the rest, we are run by a pack of fools;
Zealots and mystics who say that the end of the world is near.
Tyranny around us, on top, under us dullness and fear.
Songs and the wine-cup banished, freedom throttled blue.
It’s the same here being a Greek, Persian, Median, Jew.
Roman sovereignty over us, merciless, cold and bright.
Fogs over the land of dust, day no different than night.
Listless we labor or idle, creep into an early bed.
Sleep is the best thing now, and the best is the sleep of the dead.
Prepare for the end of the world! Build up the church, the throne,
Sell all your goods and give, have nothing to call your own;
Put everything in common. That’s one cry. What remains?
Taxes, soldiers, prisons, edicts, laws and chains.
There never was such a time! What man is lord of his soul?
Someone entered my barn and took my ass with foal
For the prophet to ride on in triumph. I was there and saw him ride,
Crowds crying hallelujah pressing on every side.
They would have all things in common. They kill a man and his wife,
And CÆsar rules as always, and yet they call this life!
Wars forever and ever, manned by hovels and huts;
And what is it all about? lands, and gold and guts;
And baptists stirring the dreamers, and bankers that thrive thereby.
Why kill off Ananias when the whole of life is a lie?
All right, young men, put her down. Go to it now with the spade.
We’ll bury the woman Sapphira here where her husband’s laid.
They’re out of it. Neither CÆsar nor Peter can wake their sleep.
I lost my ass, and they lost their lives for the price of a sheep.
And CÆsar will rule forever! And Peter if he grows strong
Will make a pact with CÆsar, and Israel’s woe and wrong
Will spread all over the earth. It takes no prophet to see
That while there is Gold and Fear man will never be free—
Until the world is fed, and hunger steals like a wraith
With the ghost of CÆsar’s lust, and the mist of Peter’s faith.
THE TWO MALEFACTORS Ask Matthew, or ask Mark, and get the truth.
I know myself, was there and heard them both—
Both railed at him. No! one did not rebuke
The other for his railing; did not ask
To be remembered when into his Kingdom
Jesus should come. What kingdom? David’s?—pah!
That had gone whirling with the desert’s dust.
What kingdom? That within you? A fool’s kingdom!
“To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise,”
He never said that. I was there. I know.
And if he did, where is that paradise?
Where is he? And where is the man they say
He said this to? Ask Matthew, learn the truth:
Both railed at him. Both died, nerved to the last
By bitter disappointment.
Listen, friend,
These malefactors were my brothers! Well,
I saw them grow up lusty. I beheld
Their course from hope to action, till defeat
And prison took them.
For we are the sons,
We Jews, of those who went to Babylon;
Returned to fall by Alexander’s sword;
Were snatched by Syria, then Egypt came,
Put heels upon our necks. Rome sailed to us,
And took us over. And these bitter years
Made poets, prophets of us, spurred us on
To inflate the dream Jehovah with our breath
Of threats and curses; yet these bitter years
Kept at white heat the hope of David’s throne,
Restored, triumphant, and our prophecies
Were from Jehovah of a king to come
Who would free Israel, drive the oppressor off,
And let us live as men.
Now it may be
A certain Jacob was his grandfather,
As Matthew says; or it may be that Heli
Was his grandfather, as Luke says, but still
Both say he was of David. And Luke says
The angel Gabriel came to Mary, his mother,
And said he shall be great and shall be called
The Son of the Most High, and God shall give him
The throne of his father David. He shall reign
Over the house of Jacob, and his kingdom
Shall have no end. We looked for such a one
To free us and with portents such as stars,
And Gabriel descending, Bethlehem
Become his birth-place, and the prophecies
Of old fulfilled, we looked for Israel freed,
And for a king of Jewish blood to rule us—
No CÆsar any more. For it was prophesied
Of Bethlehem: For out of thee shall come
A governor, a shepherd of my people!
And look, he’s born in Bethlehem! And why not
Our hope re-kindled?
And now look at us;
These centuries bruised, imprisoned and made poor,
Jerusalem a city of wails and woes,
The whole of Israel slaved! And look at him!
How does he start his work, whatever it be?
By reading from Isaiah at Nazareth:—
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
He anointed me to preach good tidings to
The poor, hath sent me to proclaim release
To captives and to set at liberty
Them that are bruised.”
What doctrine may this be,
But change, or revolution, and the ferment
Of new wine bursting bottles frail and old,
This tyranny of CÆsar, this dependence
On alien rulership? You know yourself
Barabbas was not single in the crime
Of insurrection, ask the fellow Mark.
He’ll tell you this Barabbas lay in bonds
With many who rose up, committed murder.
Of these were my two brothers, crucified
With Jesus on that day.
Well, so it was
He preached, was followed by the poor, the weak,
The slaved, despoiled until ’twas noised abroad
Through all the hill country and in the cities
That he stirred up the people everywhere,
Devising revolution, overthrow
Of CÆsar’s rule. But there was murmuring too:
For some said he was good, and others said
He deceived the people. For upon a day
When he was asked directly of our tribute,
Whether to pay to CÆsar, not to pay,
He dodged and said: “Give CÆsar his due and God
His due”; but what we wished to know, was what
Was CÆsar’s due, and give it him, and if
No tribute was his due, but rather casting
The yoke of CÆsar, then give CÆsar that.
He did not answer what the Pharisees asked,
That which we wished to hear him answer, though
The Pharisees had asked him. For we poor,
Enslaved and disinherited had followed
His leadership thus far.
Behold the change:
Passing from work unfinished he becomes
The Son of God and God himself, becomes
A mystery, the Word that lived and wrought
Before John who announced him. Tidings preached,
I grant you, to the poor, but who remain
Poor as before, but worn for broken hope
Of words that changed no thing. And no release
To captives, and no liberty to those
Bruised and in chains. And so I say his work
Is left unfinished, nothing done in truth.
And quickly, like a sun-rise on the hills,
He flashes forth his God-head, and we’re left
To CÆsar’s will, and end up with the words:—
His kingdom is of heaven, not of earth;
Refines the point: this kingdom is within us.
And he will die and rise again from death,
Ascend to heaven, and return again
Before this generation passes to take up
His own to heaven, and will rule forever
In heaven, not in Israel. For the world
Is to be burnt, with all its disbelievers.
And when it’s burnt, sitting at God’s right hand
He’ll rule forever with his own! You see
What we expected vanished in such words,
Such madness, idle dreams.
But, as I said,
His lineage was David’s; Matthew, Mark
Will tell you so. But David said of Christ,
Calling him Lord; sit thou on my right hand
Till I make enemies of thine thy foot-stool.
“How is Christ son of David, being his Lord?”
Asked Jesus of the Pharisees, closed their mouths
With asking that. The common people heard
Him gladly when he said this—true enough!
But I, my brothers, did not hear him gladly.
For if he were the son of God, yet equal
In being and in time with God, why not
The son and lord of David? Both perplex
The spirit of man; one mystery is as dark
As another mystery, and if one be so, then
Another may be also. Pass the point....
They crucified my brothers with him! Both
Railed on him for deliverance from the cross.
If he were God, he could have plucked the nails
And let them down, escape. And listen now:
My brothers kept their faith in him to the last,
And since they were condemned and had to pay
For insurrection on the cross, chose out
His day of crucifixion for their own;
Believed that he would save them, and so make
This choosing of his time of penalty
An hour of luck. And so I tell you truth:
Though both were railing it was rather pain
Than lack of hope that made them rail at him.
Nor was it mockery that made them rail.
They hoped to stir him by their words, evoke
His greatest strength to help them that they railed.
They even smiled a little when the nails
Were driven through their hands, as if to say:
“You cannot harm us when this god is here;
Go, do your butcher business, for at last
He’ll save himself and us.” And just as men
Refuse to think death near, and still believe
They will escape it somehow, when no aid,
But human hands is near, my brothers thought
This god would surely save them. So they talked,
Hunched up their legs and shoulders to ease up
The strain of hanging on the nails, and waited,
Joked with the lookers on, and smiled and begged,
And sweated agony and railed at last.
But when the voices in the crowd called out:
“If you trust God, let God deliver you,
If you are God’s son, let Him save you now;
Save thou thyself!” my older brother said:
“If I were off this cross I’d break your heads,
You crooked priests, you whited sepulchers,
You carrion Scribes and Pharisees.”
And such noise
As they cast lots to get his garments, shouts
When they were won and parted! In a silence
He asked his Father to forgive them, saying
They knew not what they did. My brother bawled:
“They know what they are doing, they have killed
The prophets in all ages! Don’t say that!
Don’t end up soft, you cursed them hitherto,
These are the vipers that you cursed before;
These are the vultures that you said you’d shut
The gates of heaven against; these are the wolves
That thirst for blood and lap it, unrepentant
Blasphemers against you and the Holy Ghost;
Committers of unpardonable sins, the band
You drove with knotted cords from out the temple.
And what is usury or selling doves
To killing you? Why ask your Father this?
Why now this softness? Change of mood, why prayers
Instead of curses? If you’re dying, sire,
Be what you were when you were flush with life,
And curse them into hell. Hold to your strength,
And curse them into hell.” And so it went
With talking back and forth, mixed in with groans,
And curses, railings, while my brothers twisted
Their bodies, and hunched up their thighs and backs
To ease the strain of hanging on the nails,
And dribbled at the mouth, and babbled things
And laughed like devils in a soul possessed.
But when he thirsted and they took a sponge
And gave him vinegar, and he sucked it in,
They looked at him with eyes that bulged with fear:—
They saw him drooping, fainting, losing strength,
They struggled then and shouted: “Keep on breathing!
Breathe deep! Call on your Father! Don’t give up!
Fight for your life, your god-head and ourselves!
We’re here because you came and preached, and stirred
The people! Don’t desert us now! Great Lord,
Messiah, Son of God, are we first martyrs
To what you failed to do? We cannot die,
You must not die. Let David’s throne be lost
As lost it is, but not our lives! Great Lord!”
Thus as they chattered, chattered, bawled and shouted
Jesus threw back his head and cried so loud
That all the valleys echoed it: “My God,
My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And then
His head dropped on his chest—and he was dead....
They looked at him—my brothers looked at him,
And whimpered—they were beaten, but fought on.
Tears stained with blood went coursing down their cheeks.
And then the soldiers came to break their legs.
And one had fainted, but the other one
Was fighting still and said: “Have mercy friend,
CÆsar would save me, what does CÆsar care
For one poor rebel?”
Then they broke their legs,
And all were dead. So ended up another
Chapter in this poor world’s hopeless hope.
BERENICE (Paul is brought in.) He has a speech that he has often made
How first he persecuted, for in truth Agrippa
He is a catapult that has sprung up
As far as he was pulled the other way.
And he will tell you how he stoned this Stephen,
And hunted Nazarenes: and how he went
With writs of persecution from the priests
Up to Damascus, on the way saw light
From heaven, heard the voice of Jesus cry
That he should be a minister to the faith,
And preach as he had persecuted. You see
The rebound of nature, mind.
Berenice
How thin,
How pale he is, how bright his eyes! Agrippa
Confine him to the matter of this god
Who died, and from the dead arose. O Death,
You are man’s horror, and we brood upon you,
Our altars are placations to your wrath.
This Paul is mad for thinking of you, mad
With faith that he has conquered you. Look there!
See how his eyes are staring bright as fire—
I am afraid. And yet if it were true
Jesus arose, nay if the world could be
Persuaded that he rose, the faith would sweep
The world with fire, and crumble every temple
And altar of our gods in almighty Rome.
Look how he stares!
Agrippa
There is a noble madness,
A madness which has slaved nobility
And energy and eloquence. Say now
Who saw this Jesus after he arose?
Did Paul? Who saw him?
Festus
No one that I know.
Not Paul. He says a multitude. Some disciples,
Some women, and one Peter.
Agrippa
Where are they?
Bring one to me. Bring Peter; bring a woman.
This is the cause I’d hear. And if this Paul
Can bring me witness, though his crime were great
As Hannibal’s on Rome, I’ll set him free.
Why look at him! Is this new matter to me?
Is he the first who for the gods went mad?
Or for the mystery of life went mad?
Or madness took for what we are and why,
And what this life means? For this world has seen
A perfect harmony and working thought
And inspiration in a thousand minds
Of madness on some matter. Fellow, come
Close here before me. Look at me. Yes, well,
There is the light of rising suns, and stars
That burn immortally, in your eyes. Now speak.
Did Jesus die?
Paul
He died.
Agrippa
Did he arise?
Paul
He arose.
Agrippa
How long being dead?
Paul
Three days.
Agrippa
Saw you him in life?
Paul
No.
Agrippa
In death?
Paul
No.
Agrippa
After he rose?
Paul
No! I only heard his voice.
Agrippa
Where?
Paul
On the way to Damascus.
Agrippa
What did he say?
Paul
“It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”
Agrippa
What else?
Paul
I asked, “Who art thou Lord?”
Agrippa
And then?
Paul
“I am Jesus,” he said, “whom thou persecutest.
To thee have I come to make of thee a witness
And a minister.”
Agrippa
Since then you have preached,
For which the Jews have persecuted you
As you stoned Stephen?
Paul
Yes.
Agrippa
And you affirm
That Jesus from the dead arose?
Paul
Thou hast said.
But also I affirm that all shall rise
From death who in the Christ believe, save those
Who live now, and shall die not ere he come.
Agrippa
He comes again?
Paul
Quickly, even before
This generation passes.
Agrippa
You are mad.
Do you appeal to CÆsar?
Paul
I appeal.
Agrippa
Why not be stoned as Stephen was and rise?
If you believe in Jesus, you believe
They cannot kill you.
Paul
As you will, O King.
I must finish my course, whatever time I die.
Agrippa
I could have set you free, if you had taken
To CÆsar no appeal. Being as it is
I send you up to Rome. Who can find out
The workings of a mind? Yet true it is
He saves himself out of a cunning thought
Of this appeal to CÆsar. Turn him over
To the Centurion Julius—on to Rome.
We have conferred together. He has done
No thing deserving death. Take him to Rome.
He’ll find a house and hire it, in Rome
Live unmolested, preach, hear Mithra preached
Who cheated death, they say, as Jesus did.
Now let us rise and to the banquet room.
Come Sister, Festus, to the banquet room.
NEBUCHADNEZZAR: OR EATING GRASS Nebuchadnezzar the King, called Ha-Rashang,
Which is to say, the wicked, by the Jews;
I, King of Babylon, the beautiful,
The mighty who have spread the prospering code
Of Hammumrapi, and the obelisk
Of diorite whereon the code is stamped,
Kept in the Temple of Marduk, myself
The lover of progress, beauty, breathe this prayer:
Peace to all peoples, nations, languages
That dwell in all the earth, and also peace
Be multiplied to you; this I record
Upon these bricks of Babylon, and as well
My glory and my madness.
First attend:
What would the gods, the god Jehovah even
Have me to do, me gifted with this strength,
This wisdom, skill in arms? Sit in a hut
Of mud beside the Tigris, be a marsh
Of spirit, sleeping, oozing, grown with flags?
Or be Euphrates rushing, giving life
And drink of life to fields? What should I do?
Suffer this Syra to dream and drool?
Jerusalem to boast, dispute and trade,
And vaunt its favoring heaven, or go forth
And smite Jerusalem and Tyre and take them,
And lead their peoples back to Babylon,
And make them work and serve me, build canals,
Great reservoirs, my palace, city walls,
The Hanging Gardens, till my Babylon
In all this would become a wonder, terror
And worthy of my spirit, hope and dream;
A city and a kingdom in the world
Become the external substance, form and beauty,
Administration, order of a soul
Lordly and gifted—mine, my Babylon,
My dream expressed!
That which I did they tried
To do and failed in doing, even themselves
Would rule as I have ruled, build as I builded,
Win glory as I won it; to that end
Did they invoke their gods, and in the mouths
Of gods and of Jehovah put the curses
And wails of failure. I have triumphed, now
My gods are full of song; I have maintained
My kingdom and my spirit, driving out
The aggressor Necho, who came forth from Egypt,
Syria and Palestine to take from me,
Him I destroyed at Carchemish—my spirit
Have I regained and healed. And now in age,
These eighty years of life gone over me,
And rulership of forty years, I sit
Within the level sun-light of my age,
And at this close of day upon my roof
And view my Babylon; but without fear
Madness will come upon me ever again.
The glory of my kingdom has returned,
My honor and my brightness have returned;
My counselors and lords have come to me;
I am established in my age, and excellent
Majesty is added unto me.
All this
Though here upon this roof, upon this spot,
My madness came upon me, when I looked
Over the roofs and temples of my city
And said: Is not this Babylon, the great,
That I have builded for my kingdom’s house
By the might of my power and for the honor
Of my great majesty? Why was it so?
First genius and the dream, then toil and pain
While hands lay stone on stone, and as the stones
Rise from the earth, where naked slaves cry out,
Wheel, lift and grunt; and mortar, scaffolding,
Pillars of cedar strewn confusedly,
Your dream is blurred, even while your city rises
Out of the dream. I was like to a woman
In the pain of travail, who is mad with pain,
Scarce knows her friends or what is being done,
Nor needs to know, since nature orders all,
Delivers her, but lets the mid-wife lift
The infant to her breast. Even so with me,
I had conceived this Babylon, nourished it
In the womb of my genius where it grew, came forth
Whole like a child at last from scaffoldings,
Confusion, waste of mortar, stone and bronze.
And when it was accomplished, then my madness
Came on me in a moment of clear seeing
That this which was within me, was without me;
Was substance and reality before me;
Was even myself gone out of me, as the child
Goes from the mother—then my madness came
Not when I saw it first, for I had seen it
Both from this roof and from the Hanging Gardens,
And from the temple of Bel, and in the streets;
But seen it without knowing, as the mother
Exhausted, dulled with agony may know
The child is born, without the consciousness,
The wonder and the rapture of the child,
As the miracle that was of her, but now
Is a miracle external and a life,
A beauty separate, that walks from her
And has its life and way, herself and hers,
But different and its own.
And so it was
When I beheld my Babylon, saw my dream
Spread out before me, clear and definite,
A beauty separate, my very soul
Torn out of me and fashioned into stone,
Having its life and way, myself and mine,
Yet being itself, its own. If I had seen
Myself divided and become two men,
My other self come toward me, stand, extend
His hand to me, my terror were not more
Than this to see my Babylon. In that moment
My madness came upon me.
But before,
Some nights and days before this I had lain
In troubled dreams upon my couch, had dreamed
Of images and trees, for daily cares
Of empire and the fears of change and loss
Had entered in my dreams. Cyaxeres
Dreamed that a vine grew from his daughter’s womb
And overshadowed Asia, which denoted
Her offspring should be clothed with majesty
And rulership of Asia. As for me,
My tree was felled, only the stump was left,
Bound to the earth with brass and iron—this
Foretold what I am now, as Daniel said,
Interpreting my dream. These dreams had come
Which shook me for the thought of human life—
How frail and fleeting! But again to hear
Curses about me for my work and genius
Called by these Jews Ha-Rashang; and to feel
Though I had chosen Daniel, Hananiah,
Michael, Azariah for mine own,
And to be taught to help me in the task
Of my administration; even though
I chose all men for duty, wisest use
And in my great humanity and strength
Had placed my subjects where they best could serve
The beauty and the progress of my city—
Though, as I said, to feel that I had done
All things for good and with no thought but good,
Yet still to hear these curses and to see
The worthlessness of human kind, the crowd,
I bowed my head and prayed to Ishtar saying:
Make me an animal and let me feed
With beasts instead of these: So had I prayed
Before my madness in that moment came.
Then as to that, my madness: it was sunset,
I walked upon my palace’s level roof,
And looked upon my Babylon; then I thought
Of all my labors, how I had restored
The temples of Borsippa, Uruk, Ur,
Sippar and Larsa, Dilbat; made the plains
Below the great Euphrates rich in corn;
Brought plenty to my people, bread and wine
To all my people; laughter, as it may be,
Between our fated tears to all my people,
And then I looked on Babylon lying there
Beneath the evening’s sunlight, safe behind
Its sixty miles of walls unscalable,
Rising four hundred feet, impregnable
For near a hundred feet of width in stone.
I saw its hundred gates of durable bronze;
My eyes were lifted to the terraces
Up, up above the river to the temple
Of Bel who blessed my city, and I saw
The temples built to Nebo, Sin and Nana,
Marduk and Shamash, saw my aqueducts,
The houses of my people, in between
The palm grooves and the gardens bearing food
Enough to feed the city if besieged;
Beheld the Hanging Gardens which I built
To soothe Amytis, who had memories
Of mountainous Media, gazing on
The Babylonian plains.
So as I stood
And looked upon my city, voices passed
Below me muttering Ha-Rashang, and then
This Babylon, my Babylon, lay before me
As my genius realized, grown out of me,
Myself become another, and a being
Which once was me, but now no more was me,
Was mine and was not mine; and with that thought
Rising like Enlil, god of storm and thunder,
Over my terrored spirit, I grew mad
And fled among the beasts, where for a season
I ate grass with the oxen, let the dew
Fall on my body, till my hairs were grown
Like eagle’s feathers and my nails were grown
Like claws of birds. In madness and in hate
Of men and life, in loathing of my glory,
My genius and my labors did I live;
In loathing of these tribes who hate the mother
Goddess of our ritual and belief;
Tribes who have made religion of the hate
Of procreative nature, curse the flame
Of beauty, and of love wherewith I built
This Babylon of glory, lust of life;
Till nature cured me and I came again
To rule my Babylon, my excellence
Of majesty returned.
What am I now,
Bowed with these eighty years? My Babylon,
What is it now to me? I am a father
Whose son is aging, even has made his place
And lived to see it fade, diminish. A son
So old his sonship is a memory,
Has almost ceased to be—that’s Babylon.
And I, the father, know this Babylon
As creature of my loins, yet indeed
This city scarcely differs from the cities
That lie afar, as aging sons are men
Among the men of earth, but scarcely more
To a father bent with time than other men.
For in my riotous genius, like a vine
I did put forth this branch, the vine decays,
The branch will live a season. Out of genius
And lust of life to madness, out of madness
To this tranquillity, and this setting sun,
This peace with heaven.
HIP LUNG ON YUAN CHANG You like store? You like Chinese tea? You like me?
You like silk, fan, screen, dragon, pearl chair, jade;
You like Chinese tobacco, picture, Budda too,
Well, as Geesu Klist? All light Lee,
You Chinaman, maybe. I like Chicago too.
I like you, and Hinky Dink, lots I like.
Good city here, much friends. I make some money,
Go back to China sometime. Keep store here,
Come back to store.
China old country, vely old country,
Wise country, much wise men long time ago.
Here book Shu Ching, about old time,
More’n tree tousand year ago. Here Lun Yu book
About Confucius, live long time ago, much time
Before live Geesu; taught love one another,
Be good to good men; bad men be fair to; speak truth.
Where sun and moon shine, all place, love and honor
Come to Confucius, brother of God.
More yet:
Lao Tzu great man, too, who say be good
To bad men; Chinaman read; close book and speak
What book says; to be wise, Chinese learn to speak
What book say closed, on shelf, burned up, or lost.
Chicago good town, Amelika good country, England,
Europe good country too, but China good country,
Wise long time ago, when no Amelika was,
No town in England, and no book in Europe,
Two tousand year before Geesu Kliste came.
Some say Budda greater than Kliste;
Chinee say Confucius greater than Budda.
I say all gods; leave alone—what you care?
Kill Chinaman if you wish, golden rule is golden rule
In Pekin, or Jerusalem.
Geesu Kliste people,
Salvation Army come and say: “Hip Lung,
Be saved, love Geesu Kliste, be baptized.”
I know the Four Books, I say the Four Books
And never look; but when I say Confucius
Taught Golden Rule and love, they say, not clear
Like Geesu Kliste, Confucius heathen man,
Not good like Geesu Kliste. All light! All light!
I sing about the Dragon Boats, go round
The store till they go on. They no read
The Four Books, no care. Sometime I ask
Why China not hear about Geesu Kliste for years.
Why? Eh? We hear of Budda, why
No hear of Kliste?
Kliste people say
Tree hundred year they know Kliste comin’—
China no hear. China hear ’bout Budda
Tree hundred year after Budda die.
Ming Ti, great king, sent down India
To hear ’bout God Budda.
China no hear of Kliste then ...
Tousand year after God Budda die,
Great man come to China; Fa Hsien,
Kliste dead now four hundred year,
But China no hear. Why?
Fa Hsien go to India to get books about Budda.
Go trou Gobi desert—no birds, tigers,
But much dragons and devils.
Fa Hsien go to Benares, Budda, Gaya, Ceylon
Come back with books about light way;
See light, hope light, speak light,
Do light, live light, try light; light mind,
Light happiness. And China hear
And love Budda!...
Kliste dead four hundred year—
Alle time much people in China, temples, cities,
Much books, many wise men.
And Kliste dead now six hundred year,
And China no hear. Kliste!
Same time god Budda grow in China.
Kliste dead more’n six hundred year,
And Arabs come from Medina to Canton,
Tell about prophet of God Muhammed—Allah!
But no Kliste much.
Next year, Kliste dead now ’bout 630 year.
Salvation Army come from Persia, and China hear
’Bout Kliste, too late; god Budda worshipped now
By much China people.
Year before Salvation Army from Persia
Great man come again: Yuan Chang.
He go to India to get books
’Bout god Budda, and see holy place.
You no hear ’bout Yuan Chang? No?
Greek men, great men, and Cheeser,
Napoleon great men and popes, and Roosevelt—
All light! Yuan Chang great man too.
Like Fa Hsien he go trou Gobi desert,
Fight robbers, dragons, no water, no food;
See much broken cities;
Go from Samarkand to Nepal;
Gone fourteen years;
Come back to Singor,
Tai-tsung emperor now,
And vely glad to see Yuan Chang,
Who bring tousands of books by god Budda,
Gold, silver, crystal images of god Budda,
And bones of god Budda, hair, nails, leaves of Bo tree,
All like that. Where is Kliste now? I don’t know.
China hear not much....
Tai-tsung great emperor! Know much too!
Know about Allah, know about Budda,
Know about Kliste, and Salvation Army.
But Tai-tsung no give a damn,
Only say to Yuan Chang:
Write Budda books in China language.
And write Lao Tzu in Indian language.
Trade gods that way! We no lose.
Maybe India see more in Lao Tzu
Than China, who knows? All time
Kliste dead more’n six hundred year,
And no body say much bout Kliste,
And China goin’ to hell, as Salvation Army say,
Alle time.
Kliste dead six hundred year,
Salvation Army come to England,
And baptize everybody; but China no hear.
Kliste dead eighteen hundred year,
England come to China for Kliste and opium—
Make nice dreams—what you care
’Bout Budda, Kliste—Smoke? Eh?
ULYSSES Settled to evenings before the doorway
With Telemachus, who sat at his knee,
“Why did you stay so long from Ithaca,
Leaving my mother Penelope?”
The eyes of the hero rolled and wandered,
Thinking of Scylla and Sicily.
“That’s a hard question,” answered Ulysses,
“Harder, if answered, for you to see.
“There was the Cyclops, there was Æolus,
There were the Sirens, and Hades for me;
Apollo’s oxen, Hades’ horrors,
Circe, and then Ogygia.
“All these after the war, Telemachus—
Too long a tale, as you will agree.
The bards must write it, when you are older
Read till the gray hairs give you the key
“Of the wonder and richness that were your father’s
Life in the war, the long way home.
No man has lived, as I, Telemachus,
None ever will live in the days to come
“A life that followed the paths and hollows
Of Time, the wayward ways of the streams
That flow round earth, the winds and waters
Of passion, wisdom, thought and dreams.
“There are two things, my boy, and only
Two in the world, remember this:
One thing is men, the other women,
And after the two of them nothing is.
“I have known men as king and warrior,
Known them as liegmen, spears of the line.
Good enough lamps for workaday darkness—
They are not food, they are not wine;
“They are not heat that stir the secret
Core of the seed of a man, be sure.
And I, Ulysses, needed the planets,
And suns of the spring to live, mature.”
“What do you mean?” asked Telemachus,
“And, say is it true you lost eight years
Away from Ithaca, me and my mother
Because of a certain Calypso’s tears?”
The eyes of the hero rolled and wandered.
“There now, my boy, you have the truth.
I’ll try to tell you perhaps you’ll get it
In spite of your filial love and your youth.
“First, understand there are two things only;—
One is women, the other men.
And men I knew before and at Troyland,
And searched their hearts again and again.
“What do you get? Secrets of cunning,
Cruelty, strength, and much that you use
In the battle with them; but what’s a woman?
She is the mother, she is the Muse
“That leads and lifts to life—Telemachus
How can I tell you?—have a care!
Young men seize on the words of wisdom,
And find their hands in a silken snare,
“Hearing blindly, seeing literally,
What is a sword, a lamp, a shield?
Touch and learn, the name is only
The shell wherein the thing is concealed.”
“What do you mean?” asked Telemachus.
“What do I mean? Attend to me!
I’ll try to tell you, telling a story
Of the island called Ogygia.
“I know women—how shall I tell you?
Women are good, and good is wine.
Yet how to tell the wine and women
That turn her adorers into swine.
“You must have aid of Hermes, swiftness
Of spirit and sense to tell them apart;
How to be strong, how to be tender,
How to surrender and keep your heart.
“Easy for me to baffle Circe,
Easy the Sirens to slip—just wax!
I steered for Ithaca, you and your mother,
Isle to isle on the ocean’s tracks,
“Until I came and saw Calypso.
Son you would be with Calypso yet.
It takes a hero suppled in flame
To see Calypso, and leave, forget
Face and voice enough to leave her,
Spurn her promises, turn from her tears,
Come to Ithaca with this doorway,
Age that hovers, the little years.”
“What do you mean?” asked Telemachus.
“Live and learn,” Ulysses replied.
“Calypso promised me youth eternal
If I would stay and make her my bride.”
“And why not stay?” asked Telemachus
“To have her for wife, if not a youth
Eternal given you?” “Boy of me listen
Now for the core of the deepest truth:
“We dined in grottoes of blooming ivy;
We supped in halls of cedar and gold;
We slept on balconies, sapphire tented—
But even I found this growing old.
“I saw her beauty bare by star light,
And by the sea in the sun, and stoled
In silk as white as snow on Parnassus—
But even I found this growing old.
“Her tresses smelt of the blooms of Hymettus,
Her breasts were cymbals sweet to behold;
Her voice was a harp of pearl and silver—
But even I found this growing old.
“Her Lips were like the flame of a taper
Scented and musical, as she would fold
White arms over the brawn of my shoulders—
But even I found this growing old.
“She promised me this and youth forever,
So long as the sun and the planets rolled.
I knew they were gifts she could not give me,
Empty promises too grow old.
“And even if given, why forever
Live the things that have grown enough?
She loved me, wonderful Calypso.
But what is love? It is only love.
“And the salt of a man turns to his doorway,
He makes his will for his blood at the end.
My boy, that’s why I left Calypso
And came to you—do you comprehend?
“To sit unshorn, and clothed as I choose,
Talk with the swineherd, potter or shirk,
Babble at ease, my boy, with your mother
Around the house at rest or at work.
“And you must not forget, Telemachus,
In order to have immortality
It had to be with Calypso—therefore
I came to you and Penelope,
“Who soon will leave me, at best, or else
I’ll leave you for the Isles of the Blest.
I find this doorway good, Telemachus,
As a place to dream and a place to rest.”
“I do not understand, Ulysses,
Father of me. At first the call
Of the blood, I thought, would hasten you homeward.
And now I wonder you came at all
“Here to Ithaca. What, my father,
Is here but my mother growing old;
Aged LÆrtes, Telemachus—
What of Calypso’s hair of gold?
“What of the island, what of the feasting,
What of her kisses, were it I
I’d spurn eternal youth, as a mortal
Live with Calypso until I should die.”
“I have no doubt,” said the many minded
Great Ulysses. “It’s plain to see
You are a boy yet. When is supper?
Go ask your mother Penelope.”
THE PARTY
INVOCATION TO THE GODS I Goddess, born of the mother of all things, the sea,
Goddess of beauty, goddess of rapture,
Goddess whose girdle is life,
Come down to us, O Aphrodite.
We are sunk in the slough of our shame;
We are torn with denials and fears,
Who have turned from thy altar,
And rejected thy worship
And mangled the gift of love
For the ritual of Mary the Virgin.
Come down to us that we may re-make ourselves
In the likeness of thy face—
We have no goddess like thee
O Aphrodite!
II And thou, equal sister, O goddess
Whose temple yet stands enthroned rock-bound above
The grotto of Mary of Galilee,
Eternal symbol!
Come down to us:
Preserver of the state
In peace and war,
With the healing of harmonious thought.
Stern goddess of an equal law,
And ruler of the mind.
Guardian of temples and republics.
Lover and inspirer of the arts,
Come down to us that we may re-make ourselves
In the likeness of thy face.
We have no goddess like thee
Pallas Athena!
III Thou soul of the Sun
And master of fire,
Law-giver, ruler, warder,
Founder of templed cities,
Founder of states invincible and free;
Thou voice of prophecy, wisest friend
Of commonwealths;
Lord of music, lord of words and sounds,
And brother of the muses.
Come down that we may re-make ourselves
In the likeness of thy face.
We have no god like thee
O great Apollo!
IV Of old amid the mountains sat the father
Of gods and men!
Broad souled as nature, being nature.
Human and gracious, laughing, wise as time.
Ruler of earth and heaven—all but fate;
And promising no life that was not fate;
No wonder and no change
Beyond the rule of fate.
Great Zeus whose fruitful loins
Peopled Olympus
With gods and goddesses, well belovÉd.
Not father of one son, but many sons;
Not father of one daughter, but many daughters,
Begotten of thee, immaculately,
Being begotten in nature.
Great father of redeemers who redeemed
Through truth which frees through being known,
Not faith in truth which is not known.
Beauty and not belief,
Mystical waters, curses, flames and death!
Come down, O Father Zeus, while we re-make
Our faces in the likeness of thy face.
We have no god like thee
O sovran Zeus!
V Thou Thunderer, whose mood was wine and love,
Miraculous life, creativeness
Of color and sound,
Out of the lightning, out of the mist,
Out of the beat and urge of the sea,
Out of mountains, sacred groves and streams.
Thou king and father of the virgin daughter
Templed in pure, in deathless stone
In sacred Athens.
Not always striking at the foes of Hellas;
Nor sending fury on her enemies;
Nor bathing swords in heaven
To smite the foes of Hellas;
Nor treading grapes in anger;
Nor sprinkling blood on garments
To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!
Nor breeding worms that die not,
To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!
Nor stirring envy like a man of war
To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!
Nor preaching words of gladness to the meek;
Nor opening prison doors
To sound the day of vengeance,
To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!
Nor saying, eat the riches of thy foes,
And suck their milk;
And make them plowmen;
And take dominion over them and power.
I am the one, the only god, go forth
And make all peoples worship, I am Zeus!
VI The hunted ghost of Delphos steals
From land to land.
Thy lyre has been weighed in the balances
Of the money changers, and rejected.
The Prince of Peace has brought the sword
Even as he prophesied.
All peoples are at strife
Between his ritual and the will to life.
Vengeance, hypocrisy and darkness
Are over us, we are vipers
Coiled in a cistern.
We wait for blood in the moon,
For darkness in the Sun,
For a voice from clouds of glory:
Depart from me, accursed; into fire.
I shut the gates of heaven
And burn the world with wrath!
Thou in Olympus tombed
With all thy sons and daughters,
Palace no more, a footstool
For Jehovah of Judea,
Come back that we may re-make ourselves
In the likeness of thy face.
O, father Zeus,
Wake when Jesus shuts
The gates of heaven,
And take us to Olympus!
PENTHEUS IN THESE STATES I Muse of the meditative hymn, and Muse
Of chronicles and the scroll, to us refuse
No gift to sing the daimon, the divine
God-head of Nature, Freedom and the Vine.
Nor less that Orpheus of the Mysteries:
Stars and the Soul and Heaven, and the Seas
Of tangible streams made light above the dust
Of this bewildering earth of Flesh and Lust.
II First from what Thracian land
Did your attendants come
In coon-skin caps and jeans,
Into this wilderness, spanned
By mountains, to this home
Of the Corn-mother, clothed in variable greens
Of barley, oats and wheat?
Hither hurried your adventurous feet
From England, and from the hills
Above the Rhine, and out of the valleys
Of the populous plain
Of Lombardy, around the Seine,
You came
Like flame that follows flame!
From Galway, Lyons, Bergen, Budapest,
Onward you pressed,
With hearts that sang, and brave,
Like wave that runs to wave!
And from all northlands of new dreams, from ills
That stir the Spring awakening and the quest.
Thence were these swarming sallies
Into New England, and the great Northwest—
Virginia and Kentucky, Tennessee.
Thracians you were, attending Dionyse,
And seeking realms of Nature to be free.
Ciders from orchards would have ease,
And wine from vineyards, to be planted,
Where the roar of mountain torrents haunted
Heights of the pine and slopes of fragrant grasses
From plains to granite passes.
Rocks sealed with frost and ice which prisoned
The secret wine of Life new sensed and newly visioned
Flowed when the Spring of a great Age, and its Herakles,
Fire of the Sun of Liberty, melted the locks
Of ancient and forbidding rocks
Binding the torrent: human and divine
Strength and adventure: MÆnads and Thyiades,
BacchÆ, Bassarides:
Spirits and evangels of new wine.
Mad Ones: armed for war.
And Rushing Ones: defying Strife.
Inspired Ones: trailing the Star
Of larger life.
III And with this swift descent,
To this far occident,
Tracking the gleam, the god, the freer fields;
Rejoicing, but in rites
For the Mystery, the delights
Of living and of thought, which moulds and wields,
These hunters, fur-capped, like the devotees
Out of the Thrace of old, worshipping and defending
The wine-grower, and temple-builder, Dionyse,
Carved from the fire impregnate Earth the sovereignties
Of Maryland, New York, and Tennessee’s
Mountainous realm, to the blending
Of foothills with the meadows of Illinois.
And made initiate in great liberties
The farthest West, until the Orient sea’s
Soft thunder lustrates California, bending
Above green water, clothed in purple and gold.
Carved these with hope their children would uphold,
And no hand would destroy
The altars of States heaped full of grapes and grain:
Births of the Sun and earth, to be adored,
And gathered in high festival and joy
From mountain side and plain;
And drunk from golden kantharoi,
God entering into man, thereby: restored
By the blood and flesh of the god, the lord,
To strength and vision to unveil
Deep mysteries and raptures, worshippings
Of nature, love for man, for deities
Quick intimations, quiverings through the wings
Of larger life, and sweeter music, cities
Of higher fellowships and lovelier ways
Of wisdom, where the phantoms of the Pities,
And the Hatreds, the Agonies
Of Melancholy, Madness, Soul’s Disease
From horrors, and from idiot pieties
Are softened or dispelled in Freedom’s praise.
IV Pentheus in the tree-top spies upon
The wild white women, the dance, the festival.
And Judas spies on Jesus
In the epiphany of Orpheus out of Dionysus.
But the cup is drunk by the lover, the singer John.
Who finding the ecstasy of sorrow, and sounding the deeps
Of love and vision, human and mystical
In the wine cup, oh, beloved guest,
Sinks in a moment of ineffable rest,
And rid of the flesh, half sleeps
Upon the Master’s breast.
Judas alert for treasure and for treason
Dips in the sop his bread—
Judas the founder of the sect which fouls
The feast of Life, lizards and owls.
But where the liknon is borne, the cradle heaped
With fruits and flowers at the bridal feast,
O, Dionysiac Christ, you passed the cup;
And at the supper of parting, O lovely priest,
At the time of the fan, and the purging of the floor,
You served the blood of the grape, and you did sup
With fur-capped fellows, and revealed the lore
Of remembrance for the mysteries you had spoken
Over the purple hills, and by the yellow shore
In wine quaffed and bread broken.
V Thin lips where cruel smiles betray
Envy and frigid spirits, souls of gray
Who will descend upon you, rend and slay?
Unknowers of the cycle of Man’s day:
That nourished flesh grows spirit, and that wine
Is the oil of the lamp of the soul, and feeds the flame
That lights the world with Art! Who will waylay
Your spying and your hatred, limb from limb
Tear you, or drive you to a death of shame,
Like Judas self-hung? As if in paradigm,
Purple but horrible! Cut-throats of the rites
Of amity and dreams, the blossoming,
The release from the flesh to soul’s delights,
Intenser life in soft intoxication—
And from that life, and rapturous elation
Who are you who restrain,
Making a cult of undelivered pain?—
Through which men love and fashion, sing.
You false salvationists and street haranguers,
Self-drunk with soul suppression and perversion,
Who shout the terror of putrescence, never beauty;
You with suspicions of the peasant Persian;
You foul-breathed ranters of Duty
About these states, you vermin-eaten clangers
Of hog-ribs, paper tambourines:—
Degenerate instruments for an imbecile faith,
And mockeries of bright silver (touched by queens,
The Muses), and the ebony crotola.
You scare-crows of the MÆnads and the Muses,
Breastless or babeless women who would vote
For rulership of other homes, not yours.
And you who moralize and gloat
On the refuse of banquets in the sewers.
You preachers of Denial and of Death,
And maniacs of repression which refuses
The cup of life! And in this bacchanalia,
You followers of Orpheus, as reformer,
Plain dressed in alpaca and string ties,
Who bellow forth your prophecies and curses
Not that man lives, but that man dies.
You carriers of umbrellas, not the thyrsos,
Or rifles of the fur-capped pioneers;
Slick spouters who fill fat penurious purses
Out of inevitable tears.
You Judases to Beauty, the sneak, informer,
Blind that all Canas must precede
The soul’s Gethsemanes, that there can be
Save Cana strengthens, no Gethsemane;
And if no living then no heart to bleed
Its blood to make us like the god, the Christ.
No flower of spirit without root and vine,
Nor loveliness for our sakes sacrificed;
No beauty without wine—
You who these mysteries see not, or gainsay
Who will tear limb from limb of you and slay?
VI
COMPARATIVE CRIMINALS Marion Strode, my friend, a chanting voice
For heaven’s kingdom on this earth, a hand
Ready to open prisons, heal the bruised,
Bring liberty to men, was wrought to fire
Over the martyrdom of Ott. He called it
A martyrdom, and said: “Come go with me
And comfort Ott in prison.” So he went.
And on the train I read what Ott had said,
For which he suffered prison. Jail for words
Is older than Saint Paul; as old as cities,
And fear that dreads the change that words may bring.
I also saw a picture of this Ott:
Head like a billiard ball, a little cracked,
Warped egg-like too. A homeless cat made furtive
By missive cans and frightful hoots. A ragged
Gabriel shut from heaven’s bliss. A porter
Of righteousness compelled to open the gate
Of paradise for Mark Hanna, but himself
Debarred an entrance. Asking nothing either,
Yet facing God to sift him, find him pure
As those who enter.
Here’s a man who never
To eighty years loses from brightening eyes
Flames from the stake reflected, or the shadows
Of prison for the sake of conscience. Thinks
No one who has soft raiment ever reads
“The Ancient Lowly,” or the “Martyrdom
Of Labor,” history, science; none are wise
But radicals.
And then I read in full
What Ott had said for which they prisoned him.
They charged him with obstructing the enlistment.
But in his speech there isn’t a single word
Advising a resistance to the draft,
By just so many words concretely. Quite
Adroit this speech, quite foxy. Yet it’s true
If you knew you could get a man to act
On what was in his mind, long brooded on
By giving him a shot of alcohol;
And if you gave it and he did the deed
You would be an inciter, principal
And doer of the deed.
Now take this speech
Which glorifies the socialistic cause;
Lauds divers martyrs tried, already jailed
For words against the draft; denounces Prussia,
Oh, yes! but in such words as hit the home
Of the brave, the free America! Ouch! Quit!
Says that the master class has always made
The wars in which the subject class was used,
Which never had a voice in making war:
Affirmative universal! What’s the answer?
He means this war, this holy war, the traitor!
Denounces capital, exhorts the crowd
To strive for something better than to be
Fodder for cannon. What? The prize of death
In battle called a foddering of the cannon!
What better thing to strive for? Throw him out!
The price of coal is due to plutocrats;
They’re bleeding you, and say it’s for the war.
They lie! What’s treason? Not disloyal
To those you work for, but disloyalty
To truth, your better self.
If you believe this
Would you become a soldier, or say no,
I will not fight for such a cause or country?...
I see, said Voltaire, three times one are one.
A man in heat might flout the trinity;
But when he studies out some persiflage
With which to flout it—well—here’s Ott who has
Contempt aforethought for the war and draft,
And squirts his venom through closed teeth, the better
To shoot it further, make it hit.
I said:
“Your Mr. Ott is guilty of the charge.
No use to talk of constitutions. No.
He loves the Lovejoys, Garrisons and Paines,
The Brunos, martyrs, let him stand his ground.”
And Marion Strode replied: “Yes, Ott is guilty.
But did he speak the truth? Yes? Very well.
It must have been the time and place that made
The penitentiary for twenty years
A fitting penalty. But when’s the time
To talk against war’s horror? When there’s war,
And words are vivid, or when war is not,
And talks against it sound like when you say
‘Look out for bears’ to children?
“War-lords talk
In peace and war to be prepared. May I
Prepare for peace in war time, when my words
Have demonstrations in the events of war?
You think not? The majority has spoken!
Well, has it? Point me out a plebiscite
That asked for war. But take your point at full
The majority has spoken: why forbid
The back-hall, soap-box rostrum; what will come?
The majority will stick and go ahead;
Or else the soap box will persuade it back
And end the war. Is there another term?
The great majority annoyed, obstructed,
Delayed, distracted, harried! Well, you know
The Tories did that to George Washington.
And Lincoln! Why, the people at the polls
Returned a critical congress. And if trials
Strengthen the character of a man, why not
Obstructions for majorities howling war
To clarify and strengthen them? God works
In ways mysterious, but in every way;
Whatever is is true.
“Ott, as I see it,
Was jailed for twenty years for speaking truth
At the wrong time and place. A heavy fine
For wrong a Æsthetics, etiquette.
“I go deeper,
I pass the law that jailed him, all Æsthetics,
All etiquette, all wrong of time and place.
Let’s enter in a realm of realer things.
What does Ott stand for in a war or peace?
Is it not freedom, equal rights, the end
Of poverty, disease? Has he not held
The torch of science up, the torch of thought
Interpreting the greatest minds to win
Attention to them and adherence to them?
If he did this, has not his life been given
To making America a brighter light,
A sounder realm, her breed a stronger breed?
If he be not a light himself, but only
A humble trimmer of the wick, let’s say
The wick of Socrates, or Franklin, Paine,
Or Jesus as the prophet in the work
Of freeing for the truth, then what of that?
Who gets the judgment in the years to come,
A parlor lamp of yellow flame, that smells
Of coal oil, or your Ott?
“Let’s take a type:
He woos the average man, appeals to him;
The average man whose morals, art and books
Are just victrola records, microscopic
Echoes of small realities of the past.
He sees what he can do with this America
Of the average man, the common people called.
He follows them and gives them vapid stuff
Of morals, laws and politics. His aim?
Talk which will win the very largest nod
Of ignorant assent. Result? Why look,
He is a daily of a million sale,
He coins the money lecturing, uses too
His following to keep America
Upon the level of the common man
In morals, freedom, thought, virility.
He scoffs at science and the noodles giggle.
Music? Why, who’s Beethoven? Let me hear
‘Lead Kindly Light.’ The drama? Well, Ben Hur
Is moral and historical. Sculpture? Look
At those bronze figures by the mantel clock—
That’s Faith and Hope. Freedom of speech and press?
Within the limits of the law! And war?
I loathe it, I opposed it, but when war
Is by the law decreed, I enter too
And howl for what I hissed, for what I called
An evil and a wrong.
“Now hear me out:
Suppose he could persuade America
To take his books, and music, sculpture, ethics—
That is his purpose, to persuade us all
To take them, as it was the aim of Ott
To stay enlistment and so stop the war—
What of our civilization? It would fall.
If so who should be jailed, this orator
Or Ott?
“Now we’ve arrived, can test these souls.
Ott fights the war and sticks, your orator
Opposes the war and quotes the Nazarene.
But does he stick? Why no! The truth remains.
He changes, lifts his nose for noting when
The noses of the majority are lifted.
Our Mr. Ott winters behind the bars.
Our orator retires to Florida;
Emerges slick and strong when April comes
To lecture, get the money.
“Now suppose
Ott by his talk had balked the war, that crime
Is nothing by the side of the other crime
Of keeping common followers commoner;
Corrupting thought. The war is over now.
With Ott in prison and the orator out.
Let’s test them on the whole, and wholly freed
From war tests; Ott’s a trimmer of great wicks;
Your orator a parlor lamp that smells
Of coal oil. And the larger truth would open
The prison doors for Ott, and push the orator
Behind the doors and lock them.”
Marion Strode
Went on till we arrived. And there was Ott
Serene and smiling in his prison clothes.
“We mean
To get a pardon for you,” Marion Strode
Spoke out at once, “and give this prison cell
To a certain orator of the commonplace.”
Ott laughed and said, “What for? You’d break his puerile
And shifty heart. This is a place for men
Who stand their ground. I may not have much brains,
But what I have I use as Socrates
Devoted his. I want to share the greatness
Of the great with what brains I possess. I like
This cell because it helps me do this.”
Then
We shook the hand of Ott and turned away!
THE GREAT RACE PASSES They were the fair-haired AchÆans,
Who won the Trojan war;
They were the Vikings who sailed to Iceland
And America.
They became the bone of England,
And the fire of Normandy,
And the will of Holland and Germany,
And the builders of America.
Their blood flowed into the veins of David,
And the veins of Jesus,
Homer and Æschylos,
Dante and Michael Angelo,
Alexander and CÆsar,
William of Orange and Washington.
They sang the songs,
They won the wars.
They were chosen for might in battle;
For blue eyes and white flesh,
For clean blood, for strength, for class.
They went to the wars
And left the little breeds
To stay with the women,
Trading and plowing.
They perished in battle
All the way along the stretch of centuries,
And left the little breeds to possess the earth—
The Great Race is passing.
They went forth to free peoples,
White and black.
They fought for their own freedom,
And perished.
They founded America,
And perished—
The Great Race is passing.
On State street throngs crowd and push,
Wriggle and writhe like maggots.
Their noses are flat,
Their faces are broad,
Their heads are like gourds,
Their eyes are dull,
Their mouths are open—
The Great Race is passing.
The meek shall inherit the earth:
Crackers and negroes in the South,
Methodists and prohibitionists,
Mongrels and pigmies
Possess the land.
A president sits in a wheel chair
Sick from the fumes of his own idle dreams—
The Great Race is passing.
DEMOS THE DESPOT Not in the circus before your thumbs inverted,
Demos, the despot, do we stand;
But amid the swarming half-born girted,
And amid the idiot millions who command
Have we our freedom re-asserted—
Rule us you cannot, though you rule the land.
Frederick and Charles and Philip the misbegotten
Destroyed the body with fagots and with fetters,
Until the finger magic of movable letters
Choked them out of a world that they made rotten
With blood and corpses. But, O Demos, you
Plague us with dwarfs that trip us, run and hide;
Foul us with frogs that froth our ancient wine;
Scourge us with locusts, and with snakes that twine,
And hiss but do not kill. With lice subdue
Our patience, and our time divide
In seeking the favored hour. And then you say:
Have you not freedom, pray?
Do you not think and print? You do not bleed
For freedom’s sake! You do not die at once.
And if you starve, have you not had your way?
We let you print, but do we have to read?
Or suffer what you print to be displayed?
What you call liberty affronts
Our white-frog breasts, the laws we made.
All rightful rights remain.
Neglect and want shall be your ball and chain
If you trespass our rules—
In other times you would be burned or slain!
Such being the freedom that you grant, O Demos,
Our olden task is this: we fire the rushes
Of yesteryear, and beat with sticks of truth
The little snakes and dwarfs that hide in bushes;
Drain the dead water, set exhilarant youth
With ploughs upon the musty marsh to turn
The scum and green decay, and chase the frogs.
Then after we cut and drain and burn
All will be sweet and clean awhile.
But soon the weeds and crawlers will defile
Our labor. Then the demagogues
Will lead the chorus of the frogs:
This is the land, this is the field
This is the age of freedom, long revealed.
This is the age most blest,
This is the country freest, best,
This is the country that fulfills
Ancient hope and prophecy,
This is the age, this is the land,
The land, the age, the realm most free....
Then in that hour we shall be dancing,
And feasting with new gods upon the hills;
And graving images of lovelier Beauty;
And building altars of a purer Duty;
And singing rituals of a deeper Faith.
And living life, and facing death
As fairer gods would have us. And for you
O frogs, the fated sharers
Of all we dream and do,
We the dreamers, the preparers,
Shall then be gathering strength to burn
Bushes and plow again
The frog marsh and the weedy plain!
A REPUBLIC Her faith abandoned and her place despised,
Her mission lost through ridicule, hooted forth
From the forum she erected, by cat calls,
And tory sneers and schemes. Her basic law
Scoffed out of court, amended at the need
Of stomachology by the judges, or
A majority of States, as it is said—
Rather by drunks and grafters, for the time
The spokesmen of the States, coerced and scared
By Methodists with a fund to hire spies,
And unearth women scrapes, or other sins
With which to say: “Vote dry, or be exposed.”
A marsh Atlantic drifting, towed at last
By pirates into harbor, made a pasture
For alien hatreds, greeds. A shackled press,
And voices gagged, creative spirits frozen,
Obtunded by disgust or fear. War only,
Armies and navies speak the national mind,
And make it move as a man; for other things
Resistance, thought divided, ostracism,
Or jail for their protagonists. At the mast
The cross above the crossbones, in between
The starry banner. A people hatched like chickens:
Of feeble spirit for much intercrossing,
Without vision and without will, incapable
Of lusty revolution whatever right
Is spit upon or taken. A wriggling mass
Bemused and babbling, trampling private right
As a tyrant tramples it, calling it law
Because it speaks the majority of the mob.
A land that breeds the reformer, the infuriate
Will in the shallow mind, the plague of frogs
That hop into our rooms at Pharaoh’s will,
And soil our banquet dishes, hour of joy.
A giantess growing huger, duller of mind,
Her gland pituitary being lost.
THE INN Low windows in the room
That tunnel the darkness with light!
The tick of a clock in the fog that hovers
From the cave and slide of the darkness
Into the tunnels of light.
A cannon stove, a dog at my feet;
Cheap magazines on a table,
Dead flies, an atlas;
A register for guests,
And stillness! Not a voice, a step—
Only the tick of the clock!
Mists of Fear, Mists of Memory, swirl and writhe,
Dive, curl and coil
From the mountain tops.
A stretch of ochre grass by the river;
Bent trees imploring the sun;
And by the inn a road that stretches
Along the river, full of dead dreams, patience,
Weariness long endured!
Second morning of rain.
Second morning of separation, death in loneliness!
The wind rushes to the corner of the porch
And sighs as it hides.
Second morning that I see
The walker of the road:
An opera cloak of blue blows round him,
Flaps out a lining of red.
And an Alpine hat comes down to his little ears.
He is booted, he limps a little.
But he’s a figure compacted of iron,
He’s master of the landscape;
He has cowed it, kicks it about him,
As if to say: “A village, a road,
A river, mountains, rain, an inn,
And a lonely soul in the inn.
Well, what of it? To-morrow Benares,
To-morrow Bactria—who knows?”
And I know as well as I know dead flies,
And the tick of the clock
He wants me, passes the inn to draw me.
Strides to my view, though he never looks in.
The flap of his cloak is a gesture;
His eyes fixed straight ahead allure.
He is passing again, returns and passes.
I can stand no more!
I walk from the room, and haste to his side.
A rusty hand out of the blue of his cloak
Reaches for mine; silken soft in the palm
Like an anthropoid’s, but boned
To the strength of bronze in the fingers.
Red scar on his cheek—a sabre cut!
Or was it an aiguille gashed him
When he fell headlong like a meteor,
And rolled to a valley, got up, shook out,
And dusted himself, set forth to travel
From Ctesiphon to Sarajevo?...
But now the blue and red,
The Alpine hat, the little ears,
Against the ochre of stricken grass
Are shrunk to the rust of jowl and jaw,
And the scar, like lips grown to;
And the smile of Jenghiz Khan....
His voice is the lowest octave
Of riotous thought, conscienceless as nature.
No talk, much thought. The earth’s a treadmill,
And spheres back of us to toes dug in,
Until we come to a mountain lake
Clear and calm as a sky.
Green shadows rich as moss around the shores;
Clouds, clear blues at the centre!
We are bending over, see each other’s faces
In the water.
What was it? Red scar on his cheek,
Or red feather in the Alpine hat?
I thrill! For I see his eyes at last;
They are the fires of burning cities,
Carthage, Athens.
Quick! And we are lying
Looking up into the sky.
When a whiff of rotting men—I turn
But he stays me with his hand.
The scent passes—he talks
To me—the sky!
“I am a soul fancier and catcher,
A catcher and cager of birds,
Whether they be kites, condors, cormorants,
Crows, cow-birds, vultures,
Or martins, mocking-birds, or hawks,
Shrikes, orioles, clarindas, thrushes,
Songsters, or scavengers, I catch them,
And in these mountains, call them of memory
Or bitter reflection,
I cage them.
But to be brief: Your bird of prey I catch
By luring him with carrion;
And your mocking bird with sounds
Sweet as his own soul’s echo, as it were
Unreal made real. But whether bird of prey,
Or songster, it’s to fool them
Always, until my hand cups over so—
Then a cottage, in the mountains of memory!
“I prize the soul called mocking bird
Mimetic of all spirits, would be all,
Self-fooler, and world fooler!
Coos in scourged kingdoms like the dove,
Presaging peace;
Croaks like the eagle where the serfs implore
Omens and leadership.
I caught one lately, big as any crow.
And cooped him—you shall see!
But first as far as Prague, borne over seas,
I heard the eagle, yes, was nearly fooled,
Me, the expert in songsters, souls!
I looked my soul-bird up and found
My eagle was a mocking-bird;
And when he croaked of counsel and debate,
And breathing bracing air of matching minds,
He was the mocking bird embowered and hidden
In scented leaves of dreams,
And sang what he would be, but could not be!
A lyrist who sang down seclusion, still
Could live nowhere but in concealment.
A seeker of sweet notes from rich thesauri,
Slaved to the habit of the lexicon.
I would not catch him yet! Believe me now
There is that in each soul which builds its cage,
Achieves its capture, be it thirst or lust,
A lexicon or rhetoric, singing notes
Which makes the world say: ‘Hear the eagle cry!’
The world is fooled, but not the self is fooled;
It sleeps, submits to singing, but arouses
When soul is highest charmed with its own song,
And at the apex of the life, and treats
The man as mocking bird for what he is!...
The self as mocking bird betrays and leads,
Not eagle-wings, but weak wings to the fray,
And there the realest self is seen at last
Of self and all. To capture them or slay
Is where I come and act.
“Sweet bird of dawning, dreaming of Fourteen,
Who carried Christ across a stream,
And gained the magic sack,
Into the which whatever he wished would come
When saying Artchila and Murtchila.
But, he, this Fourteen, bird of dawning, mock-bird
How could he carry Christ? What magic bag
Would gather in, to words like ‘counsel,’ ‘process’?
So charmed with voice of self he flew alone
To a parley of fowls. And there amid rich crumbs,
Silk vestured falconers, birds of paradise,
Mock eagle fails, but true to song
Utters what self of him destroys him for.
Then I, to end, come in!
“Wouldn’t you think he’d know what had been done
To him, his counsels, processes?
Voice of the eagle sometimes, but the talons
And wings, where were they?
How was he Christopherus, how Fourteen?
I step in here and send him
On a great tour of singing, laugh in my sleeve
To see him start with his empty magic bag—
Empty? Great wars to come and woes,
Hatreds and desolations, blight of unfaith,
And distillate of night-shade: Soul’s despair
Were in the bag now.
But I forget—all could not see these in it,
Though most could see an empty bag. Well, now
My project was to send him forth to chant
The rhetoric of a life-time, tent him to
The repetend and echo, the refrain
That hides a hollow courage, and a brain
Tired of its make-believe, and borrowed moods.
My plan went further: Thus to send him forth,
And in keen lighting have him see himself
As some ten thousand saw him; in one moment
Together by him and them! flash picture
Photographed on a mountain’s wall,
And visible for ages! So it was!
I laughed, but being master I could pity....
My hand goes over him cup-like now, shuts eyes
From sight of how he pecked me peevishly,
Like a stud-sparrow shrilled. Time for the cage
For our mock-eagle, logolyrist, truly!—
You shall know them by their words.”
“How’s this so quick, on a peak?”
I said, for there we were, and the lake lost.
Below us the plum world, pitted with gums: oceans.
Streaked with streams: white-wash excrement of sparrows;
Pine forests: fuzz on the rind; lice green and brown: men.
I bawl in his ear against the breeze
Whirl-pooled around us:
“No Jesus business, no Budda business,
I wouldn’t give a damn for it all.”
“You lie,” he said. “You’re like the rest
Esophagus, coil of guts, a vent.”
“Man is a spirit.” “Man is a smell.”
Just then up from the world’s valley a breeze
Bearing the stench of ten million corpses—
“Hey! I faint.”
I back away, bump into a cottage wall, a door
Which opens—and there
Is logolyrist caged, in durance,
Twittering to himself the habitual notes,
Impotent, damned, alone!
“Night comes quickly these days,” says the landlady
Lighting the lamp. I stretch out of sleep
And pat the head of an honest dog.
MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM MARION REEDY I Son of the freer Republic, child of a day
More joyous and more vital and more blest
At the feast of Life; great heart, wise and gay,
Forgiving and compassionate, though ever stressed
Between the thorns, seeing afar the flower;
And living from hour to hour
In laughter for your wounds, or with a sigh
For the thickening brambles that around you pressed:—
April has come to me again and May
Since that July
When you sank gladly to a coveted rest,
Almost with your words to me upon your lips:
That immortality
Is not a promise, but a threat; that sleep
However eternal, or however deep
No more the worn out heart equips
For life again; cannot make whole
A liver and a dreamer, and a soul
That climbed, as you did, earth’s precipitous steep.
II You who had lived with books and walked the city
Of statesman and of priest,
Of money changer, theorist,
And knew the human heart thereby,
Saw with clairvoyant eye
Behind my irony and laughter, pity;
Behind indifference desire;
At the core of me unquenchable fire,
Walled with impenetrable ice.
This I confess:
I strewed adversities to your love
With pride, with slow forgiveness
Of the world’s ways. Yet for the strength thereof,
Born of that mystic brotherhood, which can rise
From kindred spirits, none the less
Was your love mine, even to the end.
You were my brother, O my friend!
III The wages of Wisdom is Death:—
Shame, Fear, Want, Hate, Lust, Strife and Enmity,
All these you lived, and living them through
You survived them, but still knew
Their quality. At last from them made free
You stood in blossom, perfecter of bloom
At the touch of the sickle than ever in all your years.
Pure flame had conquered the reek and fume
Of the gross fuel of your nature, feeding
The light that lighted us, but to consume
Itself at last. O soul of eyes and ears
Open and heeding
Signs of all fair and foul in the land, all climes,
Riches of dead epochs, ancient times.
O, human, worldly Augustine, in your tower
Watching the wavering lines of Want or Power,
Hailing and warning, Stilites of the rite
Of Epicurus (that happiness at the last
Is freedom) viewing the misty age
Atop a pillar of Zeus, and holding fast,
Through change and weariness, to work, in spite
Of clear conviction, nothing can assuage
The soul’s desire. Though the flesh has food,
And water, and is satisfied,
Yet the soul must hunger for hope, for explanation
Of this insoluble task of life, defied
By every test of the human soul, still wooed
By flitting lights of faith and intimation.
Yet if soul father us could soul not do
For souls of us what water for our thirst
Accomplishes? Promethean, this you knew:
The restless search with which man’s soul is cursed;
Yet brooding on it, still you dreamed
Of a city for all nations, consecrate
To the creative spirit of God in man;
Guardian angels were to you revealed
In labor with man’s fate,
Uplifting the human spirit, like a flame,
Consoled, redeemed,
Strengthened and purified and healed,
To the silent, eternal life from whence it came.
IV
GOD AND MY COUNTRY He had the bluest eyes I ever saw,
And a smiling face like a bed of yellow daisies,
And a voice around the house like a pet crow.
And he went whistling through the yard and rooms,
His hands grimed up with grease about machines,
Which he could take apart and put together.
And he could run a motor boat or a car.
Or mend a telephone or a dynamo.
And he knew novels, poetry and science.
And he could swim, and box and run a race.
And on a morning I went in his room
And saw his naked body, saw his shoulders
As broad as a great wrestler’s, and his arms
As big as mine. He started to play bear,
And took me in his arms and hugged me so
I felt my ribs crack. Then I wondered when
He had quit wearing stockings and knee breeches,
And when it was he slipped to seventeen,
Became a man.
And so the war came on.
He tried to be a flyer, for he knew
What engines were and all about machines
And he knew trigonometry, and chemistry,
And wireless telegraphy—but his age
Debarred him from the flyers; so he chafed
And did not whistle as he used to do,
But growled a little like a yearling bear.
And then his face grew bright again: he had gone,
Enlisted in the army, came to me,
His face all glowing: “Everything I am
You taught to me,” he said; “to love the truth,
To love democracy and America.
And now we have a war, the very first
When men could fight to bring democracy.
Our country turned against the revolution
In France, which was a democratic cause,
But now we war to bring democracy
To peoples everywhere, and I am off.
God moves among us, and to serve and die
Are blessings, I am happy, and am off.”
He terrified me with his shining face,
His blue eyes, beautiful body, slim and strong.
St. George was not more beautiful. I was awed,
And said to him: “You terrify me, boy.
There are plenty of men to go, await the call;
Go if they call you, but you have your school,
And if you go you’ll never go to school
Again, and that will leave you half prepared
For life, you’ll feel it all the rest of life.”
But he stood up so straight and stern and shining
And said: “I owe this service to you, Dad,
For what you’ve been and taught me, and I owe it
To God and to my country.” So it was
He terrified me, and I said: “My boy,
I am not wise enough, after all, to say
What you should do. Perhaps you have a vision—
You are America come to herself;
A vision and a mission and a glory
Perhaps, perhaps. I step aside. Go on!”
They took him to a camp, and in a week
I went to see him. He was in a pen
Like a prize porker, looked a little down.
He had been shot with vaccines of all sorts.
He didn’t say much. Two weeks after that
I saw him and he had a cold he caught
From doing picket duty in the rain
And sleeping on a mattress soaked with rain.
The food was pretty good, not very good.
He whispered: “All the pin-heads in the world
Have got the jobs of officers. I’m surprised.
I know more mathematics than they do,
And more of everything. I thought an officer
Was educated. Well, I am surprised.”
He said the boys were dying right and left
Because they had no care. And on a day
When he came home to visit for a while
He was stricken with the flu. I telephoned
The officer, who raved and said no trick
Would go with him. He’d send for him. He did,
And took him out with a raging temperature,
And back to camp. He almost died for that.
And, when he got up, wobbled for some weeks.
And about the time he stood up fairly strong
They shipped him off to Europe; and they went
Yelling like tigers smelling blood, and God
Seemed farthest from their thoughts.
Well, so it went.
And after while we had the armistice,
The war was over, but no letter came.
Where was he? Dead? We couldn’t learn a thing.
Until at last this boy who went to fight
For God and for democracy landed up
In Russia fighting democracy, as America
Fought France in eighteen hundred—for a letter
Came to us telling where he was. And there
He stayed some months and fought for covenants
Arrived at in the open, independence
Of little and big peoples, for the sea’s
Freedom, or democracy, I’m not sure,
For one of these or all, I am not sure.
He got through anyway, or they got through
With him, perhaps, for he came back at last,
One eye out and one leg gone, and he’d lost
God, so he said, and didn’t use the word
Democracy at all, and, as for war,
He said to me: “What is it? Everything
Has its own idea, and the idea of war
Is killing people? That’s our job, that’s war!
And everybody yells atrocities,
And everybody does ’em—what the hell
Do people think war is, a Sunday School?
I want some money, Dad, for I am broke;
And I can’t work at much now, and, by God,
I think I’ll write my story. So they’ll know
They use you, and they fool you, and you die
That some one may make money selling stuff,
Or grab off lands or commerce. Hell’s delight!
When I was sick in Russia, had delusions,
I saw a snake so big he wrapped the world
And swallowed it with everybody in it.
You see, the snake’s the money-men, big business,
The schemers, human buzzards, who eat up
Young fellows and the kids, and lay on fat
With fresh young blood that wants to shed itself
For God and truth! I killed a Russian soldier
And said: ‘You bastard,’ as I stuck him through,
You hate yourself, so you just kill to glut
Your hatred of yourself, your cruelty
Which lusts, as it can masquerade behind
The mask of duty. Give me a dollar, Dad,
To get some cigarettes and some shaving blades.”
THE DUNES OF INDIANA Under a sky as green as a juniper berry
The yellow sands of the dunes, in clefts and curves
Run up and down, until the horizon swerves
At Michigan City, twenty miles from Gary.
Scrawls and grotesqueries of giants who laugh
At the storm’s puffed cheeks, the water’s pilfering hands!
Like the beat of a heart traced by a cardiograph,
Their sky-line lifts and lulls,
With the eternal pulse
Of air and the sands.
The dunes are a quilt of yellow, green and gray
Spread to the Calumet River.
Peaked by giant children who play
Circus with feet for poles. Fantastic dunes,
Protean hills, and migratory tents
Of invisible gypsies, changing with the moon’s
Replenished and exhausted valleys of light.
Forests of pine and oak arise
On many a height,
And down the steep descents
Flourish and vanish from sight,
Under the restless feet of the wandering hills.
They trace in sand the changes of the skies
When the sun of evening smelts
Great towers of cloud or battlements,
And levels them, or warps
Their shapes to broken walls,
Or twisted scraps,
Or floors of emerald strewn with lion pelts....
Here there are water-falls;
Lakes bright as mercury, and pools
Green as the mosses, where hepaticas
And asters scurry before the gesturing wind;
Cool hollows, scented brakes
Of bramble, fern and cane;
Great marshes where the flags leap like green snakes,
Bordered with garish gules
Of pye-weed; over whose wastes the crane
Flaps the slow rhythm of extended wings.
And on whose reeds the blackbird sings
A quaver of blue water, March’s fire.
Between the feet of the dunes and the trampling troops
Of waves along the shore the sand is pounded
Into a broad mosaic firm and smooth,
Whereon are strewn old reels, between the groups
Of blackened hut and booth.
Boats lie here where they grounded,
Like skeletons in the desert ribbed and black,
Scaled with the water’s scurf.
The shore is the moat between the ruined rampart
Of the dunes, whose shifting is stayed
By splotches of thickets, trees and turf,
And the invading surf.
Here phantom mists descend, and the wrack
Of autumn clouds fade into the air when storms
Harry the water, and the sand is flayed
By the whip of the wind.
There is forever here the futile fashioning
Of hills, and their leveling;
The growth of forests and their burial;
Pools filled and rivers changed or dried
Between the spoiling winds, and the mystical
Hands of the tide!
Branches as gnarled as an ancient olive tree
Stream cherry blossoms like blown snow
Toward the blue of the lake, a hundred feet below.
They have been sand, now being blossoms drift
With the winds whose spirit cannot be
Quieted or given shrift.
By night they howl or whine
As if they asked for words, or a sign
To tell of the sand and seeds and spores
Which build and root, bear blossoms, seed,
And change the uplands and the shores;
Destroy, make over, mend
Without use, without end
In an endless cycle of sand and seed,
Of wind and the washing of waves;
They would tell why forests grow and find their graves;
And hills glide to their sepulchres,
Even as cities sink and pass away:
Old Memphis, or old Bactria....
NATURE Seas, mountains, rivers, hills, forests and plains,
Our earth that floats in heaven’s translucent sphere,
And keeps us fosterlings, though man attains—
As a spider winds the nerve white gossamer
From its own being, and unwinding sails
The heights—the secrets of the stars, the sheer
Chasms of space, and tears the vaporous veils
From Force and Distance. Nature! At the last
Our breast of consolation! Man exhales
Thereon the spirit which was an him cast
From that same breast at birth. But what you are
Remains, or on the mind of man is glassed
As you, remaining; while the farthest star,
The changing moon, the lessening sun, the sands
Of buried cities toll our calendar
Of dying days. Waters by star light, lands
That slip or climb; leaves, blossoms, fruits contain
The flesh of wonder perished, and the hands
That sought with zeal or laughter, but in pain
To know you and themselves. Still nourishing,
Destroying, but unriddled, you remain!
Immeasurable Arc! To which our brief existence
Is a point, if relative, not understood.
With you endowed with motion and persistence,
Contained within you, is life evil, good?
Is life not of you? Is there aught without
By which to judge this restless brotherhood
Of will and water, and to quiet doubt
That life is good? And may the scheme deny
Itself when it is all, and rules throughout,
Knows no defeat, except as forces vie
Within it, striving? But, O Nature, you
Mother of suns and systems, what can lie
As God beyond you, making you untrue
To larger truth or being? You are all!
And man who moves within you may imbrue
His hands in war, or famine on him fall
Out of your eyeless genius, yet what wrong
Is wrought to your creating, magical
Renewal, scheme? What arbiter more strong
Than you are judges discord for the strife
That stirs upon our earth, wherever throng
Thoughts, forces, fires. What is evil? Life!
Even as life is struggle, whether it smite,
Or lift, as waves to waves in will are rife
With enmity. Whatever is, is right.
Like insects on a drift weed water tossed
The sea of nature moves in man’s despite,
While generations flourish and are lost.
Ether of the ethereal energy
Which whirls the atoms: Will in man. And soul
Which is to light as light to flame: the free
Soaring of man’s thought. This is the dole
And tragedy of man: He has outgrown
His kinship with the beasts that kept him whole,
Through thought, which is not instinct, but would own
The unerring realm of instinct. Like a sun
He flares his thought in storms of fire, has flown
His symmetry and sphere, has wandered, won
No orbit for the beast’s, which he has marred,
Departed from; must finish what’s begun,
Until he be in spirit moved and starred,
Instinct regained to thought, his sun created
As far as flames have leaped; or leave the scarred
Black cavities of his hopes to beings fated
To grow therefrom to what he failed to reach.
Something within him drew the gods, and mated
His spirit to celestial powers. The breach
Between him and the beast is fixed. He sinks
In tangled madness, anger, railing speech,
Below the ape, or else he rises, links
His being to a life to which he climbs,
A realm of thought harmonious, while he thinks.
This is the tragedy of man, and Time’s
Colossal task laid on him: Roll he must
The stone up to the peak against the slimes,
And fasten it, or let it make him dust,
Escaped his hand and crushing, still confess
That you, O Mighty Mother, still are just
Who fling him down to failure, nothingness.
This is the tragedy of man: to learn
Your secret wishes, having learned to press
The heights of life, or ignorant still to burn
With questioning; and on this stage of earth
Live as they lived of old in a return,
Endless of useless labor, madder mirth.
Labor or Mirth! No matter—but to man,
And for an hour! And after that the sleep.
Waking or sleeping man fulfills the plan
Of you, O Mother. Other thought may creep
On man’s defeated spirit, make him say
That you should weep, O Mother, if he weep.
But we are but ephemera in a play
Of tangled sun light, and the universe
Of ages counts the minutes of our day,
And makes them of the ages. And the curse
That man deems his is not upon the far
And infinite existence. It could nurse
No evil in great spaces, sun and star
As great as man’s to man, and not lie down
To death as man does. Hence if you unbar
To us, O Nature, nothing better, crown
Our hour with folly still, you give us rest
Among the mountains, meadows, and unclown
Our idiot brows, and on your infinite breast
Rock us eternally under the infinite sky.
THE END
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