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Title: Freedom, Truth and Beauty
Author: Doyle, Edward, 1854-
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Freedom, Truth and Beauty" ***
FREEDOM, TRUTH AND BEAUTY
SONNETS BY EDWARD DOYLE
Author of Cagliostro, Moody Moments, the American Soldier, the Haunted
Temple and other poems; The Comet, a play of our times and Genevra, a
play of Mediaeval Florence.
"He owns only his mental vision. But this is clear and broad of
range--as broad, indeed, as that of Dante, Milton and Goethe,
sweeping beyond the horizon of eschatology and mounting, like
Francis Thompson's, even to the Throne of Grace itself when the
theme demands reverential daring."
--STANDARD AND TIMES, PHILADELPHIA.
MANHATTAN AND BRONX ADVOCATE
1712 Amsterdam Avenue, New York.
THE SECOND REVISED EDITION
_Copyright, 1921_
BY
EDWARD DOYLE
CONTENTS
PAGE NO.
The Quality of Edward Doyle's Work, by Ella Wheeler Wilcox 7
True Nationalism, by David Klein, Ph.D. 9
Genevra, Review In the Independent 12
Dedication to the Daughters of the American Revolution 13
The Proem 19
The Atlantic 20
Human Freedom 20
The Stars 21
The Genesis of Freedom 21
The Pilgrim Fathers 23
Plymouth Rock 23
The Catholics in Maryland 24
A Forest for the King's Hawks 24
To Arms Shouts Freedom 25
British Soldiery 25
Amphibious Barry 26
Freedom's Triumph 26
Washington's Army and Barry's Navy 27
The Sunken Continent 27
Elisha Brown 28
Evacuation Day 28
Manhatta 29
The Burning of Washington City by the British 29
The Land of the Great Spirit 30
The Blight to Spring 30
The Scorn of Human Rights 31
Not This Our Country's Glory 31
America's Glory No Fugitive 32
Hate Thou Not Any Man 33
The Celtic Soul Cry 34
British Glory in Kipling's Boots 36
To the English People 36
Shakespeare 37
England's Righteousness 37
The Massacre of the Welsh Miners 38
A Dirty Work 38
Human Nature 39
Our Country--Soul and Character 39
Juda and Erin 41
The Easter Rising in Ireland 41
The Fight in Ireland 42
To Erin 42
The Queen of Beauty 43
Liberty the Light to Peace 43
Why Play with Words, England 44
Freedom's Wardens 44
List to Demosthenes, If Not to Hearst 45
Caledonia 45
Canada 47
Dragon Incursions 51
All Stars Merged in One 52
Nemesis 52
Lincoln's Lightening in Wilson's Hands 53
The Cataclysm 54
An Epoch's Angel Fall 54
The America of the Future 55
The Inevitable 56
Reptiles with Wings 57
The Outlaws in Our Country 58
The Press 59
The Truth 59
Our Lord's Last Prayer 60
Thought Is Truth's Echo 60
Heaven 61
Humility 61
The Night of Mysteries 62
What the Poets Show 62
The Soul's Ascension 63
Lyric Transport 63
The Sunrise 64
Two Darknesses 64
The Doom of Hate 65
The Evil in the World 65
The Earth Renewed by Memory 66
In the Dimple of Beauty's Cheek 66
The Camp Fire 67
Mother 67
In Heaven No Heart Still Heaves 68
Saint Peter's Cathedral in Rome 68
My Bugler Boy 69
Kaiser, Beware 69
Woman in Germany 70
O Thou Pale Moon 70
The Tiger 71
To Our Boys "Over There" 71
The Profiteers 72
Why the Stars Laugh 72
Prayer for the World Peace 73
Religion 73
The Golden Jubilee of Sisters of Charity 74
Winifred Holt, the Lifesaver of the Blind 75
A Choice 75
All Luminaires Have One Trend 76
Life Takes Morning Hues with the Arts of Peace 76
U. S. Senator James A. O. Gorman and the Stalwarts 77
Minister of Justice Palmer, A Bastile Builder 77
A Speck, But Not a Stain, Harvard 78
Supreme Court Justice Charles L. Guy 78
Rear Admiral Sims 79
Saint George and the Dragon 79
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE QUALITY OF THE WORKS OF EDWARD DOYLE
The quality of Edward Doyle's work was appraised by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
in the following article by Mrs. Wilcox which appeared in the New York
Evening Journal and the San Francisco _Examiner_, in 1905:
Shut your eyes and bind them with a black cloth and try for one hour to
see how cheerful you can be. Then imagine yourself deprived for life of
the light of day.
Perhaps this experiment will make you less rebellious with your present
lot.
Then take the little book called "The Haunted Temple and Other Poems,"
by Edward Doyle, the blind poet of Harlem, and read and wonder and feel
ashamed of any mood of distrust of God and discontent with life you have
ever indulged.
Mr. Doyle has been blind for the last thirty-seven years; he has lived
a half century.
Therefore he still remembers the privilege of seeing God's world when
a lad, and this must augment rather than ameliorate his sorrow.
He who has never known the use of eyes cannot fully understand the
immensity of the loss of sight.
I hear people in possession of all their senses, and with many
blessings, bewail the fact that they were ever born.
They have missed some aim, failed of some cherished ambition, lost some
special joy or been defeated in some purpose.
A GREAT SOUL
And so they sit in spiritual darkness and curse life and doubt God. But
here is a great soul who has found his divine self in the darkness and
who sends out this wonderful song of joy and gratitude.
Read it, oh, ye weak repiners, and read it again and again. It is
beautiful in thought, perfect in expression and glorious with truth.
CHIME, DARK BELL
My life is in deep darkness; still, I cry,
With joy to my Creator, "It is well!"
Were worlds my words, what firmaments would tell
My transport at the consciousness that I
Who was not, Am! To be--oh, that is why
The awful convex dark in which I dwell
Is tongued with joy, and chimes a temple bell.
Antiphonally to the choirs on high!
Chime cheerily, dark bell! for were no more
Than consciousness my gift, this were to know
The Giver Good--which sums up all the lore
Eternity can possibly bestow.
Chime! for thy metal is the molten ore
Of the great stars, and marks no wreck below.
I know a gifted and brilliant man in New York who is full of charm and
wit in conversation, but the moment he touches a pen he becomes, as a
rule, a melancholy pessimist, crying out at the injustice of the world
and the uselessness of high endeavor in the field of art.
When urged to take a different mental attitude for the sake of the
reading world, which needs strong tonics of hope and courage, rather
than the slow poison of pessimism, however subtly sweet the brew, my
friend responds that "The song and dance of literature is not my special
gift." And he is obliged to "speak of the world as I find it."
He is an able-bodied man, in the prime of life, with splendid years
waiting on his threshold to lead him to any height he may wish to climb.
But to his mental vision, nothing is really "worth while."
What a rebuke this wonderful poem of Edward Doyle's should be to all
such men and women. What an inspiration it should be to every mortal who
reads it, to look within, and find the =Kingdom of God= as this blind
poet has found it.
Mr. Doyle was in St. Francis Xavier's College when his great affliction
fell upon him. He started a local paper, The Advocate, in Harlem
twenty-three years ago and has in the darkness of his physical vision
developed his poetical talent and given the world some great lines.
AN INSPIRATION
Here is a poem which throbs with the keen anguish which must have been
his guest through many silent hours of these thirty-seven years:
TO A CHILD READING
My darling, spell the words out. You may creep
Across the syllables on hands and knees,
And stumble often, yet pass me with ease
And reach the spring upon the summit steep.
Oh, I could lay me down, dear child, and weep
These charr'd orbs out, but that you then might cease
Your upward effort, and with inquiries
Stoop down and probe my heart too deep, too deep!
I thirst for Knowledge. Oh, for an endless drink
Your goblet leaks the whole way from the spring--
No matter, to its rim a few drops cling,
And these refresh me with the joy to think
That you, my darling, have the morning's wing
To cross the mountain at whose base I sink.
But Edward Doyle has not sunk "at the mountain's base." He is far up its
summit, and he will go higher. He has found God, and nothing can hinder
his flight. He is an inspiration to all struggling, toiling souls on
earth.
As I read his book, with its strong clarion cry of faith and joy and
courage, and ponder over the carefully finished thoughts and beautifully
polished lines, I feel ashamed of my own small achievements, and am
inspired to new efforts.
Glory and success to you, Edward Doyle.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
[Illustration]
TRUE NATIONALISM
(_From the "Maccabaein", June, 1920._)
THE JEWS IN RUSSIA
From town and village to a wood, stript bare,
As they of their possessions, see them throng.
Above them grows a cloud; it moves along,
As flee they from the circling wolf pack's glare.
Is it their Brocken-Shadow of despair,
The looming of their life of cruel wrong
For countless ages? No; their faith is strong
In their Jehovah; that huge cloud is prayer.
A flash of light, and black the despot lies.
What thunder round the world! 'Tis transport's strain
Proclaiming loud: "No righteous prayer is vain
No God-imploring tears are lost; they rise
Into a cloud, and in the sky remain
Till they draw lightening from Jehovah's eyes."
The author of this superb little gem, like Homer, is blind; but, like
Homer, his mental vision is clear, and broad, and deep. President
Schurman, of Cornell University, commenting on Doyle once said: "It
is as true today as of yore that the genuine poet, even though blind,
is the Seer and Prophet of his generation." The poem here printed
illustrates the point. Did we not know that it was published some
fifteen years ago in a volume entitled "The Haunted Temple," we should
assume that it was written on the occasion of the fall of the Czar. In
fact, however, it merely foretells this event by some dozen years. And
how terribly applicable are the lines to the facts of today! The
prophecy is one capable of repeated fulfillment.
But it is as a prophet of nationalism that this man compels our
particular attention. The prophecy is embodied in a play entitled "The
Comet, a Play of Our Times," brought out as far back as 1908. The play
is a microcosm of American life. The chief character is a college
president, and he it is that is chosen to expound the true nature of
nationalism and to give voice and utterance to the principle of
self-determination. (Is it merely a coincidence that at that time
Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton, or is it a case of poetic
vision. Wilson, be it remembered, was already a national figure, and
there were already glimmerings that he was destined to usher in a new
era in politics.) According to the protagonist, America is not "a
boiling cauldron in which the elements seethe, but never settle," but
rather a college where every class is taught to translate--
"Into the common speech of daily life
The country's loftiest ideals--"
and any body of citizens form a part of our republic only in so far--
"As they contribute to its character
As leader of the nations unto Right
By thought or deed, in service for mankind."
We must lead the peoples of the world to freedom. And what is freedom?
"'Tis intelligence
Aloof from harm and hamper, grandly circling
Its native sun-lit peaks, the highest hopes
Heaved from the heart of man upon the earth,
In ranges long as time and soul endure."
What, then, is America's duty to the oppressed race or the small nation?
It is to "wake and disabuse it of false hope"--
"and urge it on
To the development of its own powers,
The culmination of its own ideals,
The star seed sown by God,--the only means
By which a tribe can thrive to its perfection."
To make this possible, civilization must be given a more human content.
It is therefore necessary to awake human intelligence, "the godlike
genius," to a realization of the fact--
"--that, on having brought
This world from out the chaos dark
Of waters and of woody wilderness,
And shaped it into hills of hope for man,
Must providence its beautiful creation
With altruistic love and tenderness;
So that all tribes of man, what'er their hue,
Have each a hill where it can touch the star
That it has followed with its mental growth."
Such a program is rendered imperative by the inexorability of the law
of race, which nullifies any attempts to force assimilation:
"It is a foolish, futile thing
To try to shape society by codes,
Vetoed by Nature. Nature trumpets forth
No edict, through the instinct of a race,
Proclaiming certain territory hers
And warning all encroaching powers therefrom,
Without the ordering out of her reserves
To see to it the edict is enforced.
Let politics keep off forbidden shores."
If any powers preserve in a policy of oppression, our duty is plain:
"To teach the barbarous tribes throughout the globe,
Christian or Turk, that all humanity
Is territory sheltered by our flag;
That butchery must cease throughout the world;
That, having ended human slavery,
Old glory has a mission from on high
To stop the slaughter of the smiling babe,
The pale, crazed mother, weak, defenseless sire,
All places on the habitable globe."
Finally to render feasible the ideal development of all peoples, and
put an end to war, America must bring about a league of all nations.
It develops on us--
"To get the races by degrees together
To talk their grievance over, in a voice
As gentle as a woman's....
There is no education in the world
Like human contact for mankind's advance;
All differences, then, adjust themselves;
But when two races are estranged by hate,
They grow so deaf to one another's rights,
That it soon comes to pass that either has
To use the trumpet of artillery
In order to be heard at all."
Recently, Doyle wrote the following lines. Their application is obvious:
"Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb
The mountain and the star on trail of thee?
Thy wing-flash beams toward man, and if it be
True inspiration--whether thought sublime,
Or fervor for the truth, or liberty--
Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time."
What wonder that from so lofty an outlook his searching eye should
pierce the tragedy of "The Jews in Russia"--or elsewhere--should pierce
even the revenges that Time would ring in, and rest on a vision of
righteous peace!
DAVID KLEIN, Ph.D.
_AUTHOR OF LITERARY CRITICISM, from the Elizabethian Dramatist._
GENEVRA
(_From the "Independent," May 30, 1912._)
The scene of Mr. Edward Doyle's new play is the Florence of 1400;
the atmosphere that of a plague stricken city in a time when man was
helpless, authorities hopeless, social life in shreds and patches. The
plot of the play founded on this state of affairs is rich in incident,
varied and sufficiently complex in color, passion and character to
furnish material for an exciting spectacular representation. The
tragic element is strong, but supported and shaded by the company of
roysterers, a jester, whose foolery is a compound of bluff of that
period and bluff of modern politics and athletics. The jester, the black
company and the penitents, together with the roysterers, form now the
foreground, now the background, of action, which in itself is never
without the dolorous sound of the death bell. The doomed city is under
a spell comparable to that set forth so vividly in Manzoni's "I Promessi
Sposi." Says the villain of the plot as he listens from his seat at the
festive board:
"It bodes ill for the black Cowled company
To make a visit to a festive house.
'Tis like death looking in and whispering 'Next.'
Fool, call the servants. Bid them fetch the wine--
A cask of it--the best varnaccio!
Here come my friends to help me drown the Plague."
Pictures like this as sharply defined are frequent and throw in shadowed
blackening on shadow. The author defends the use of a meteorological
phenomenon translated in the spirit of the time as supernatural by
quoting Dante as recognizing it, but the authority of Dante was not
necessary to justify the dramatist in introducing the "Crimson Cross."
It was a part of the pyrotechnics of the church propaganda. Though the
advance of scientific discovery has laid a heavy hand on thaumaturgy
of the sort, it would no doubt, have its use when properly handled
on a modern stage. The action of the drama is rapid and natural, the
characters well drawn and individualized, the dialogue spicy, forceful
and varied.
Price $1.00.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
DEDICATION
TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
I
What lineage so noble as from Sires,
Laureled by Freedom? For, who, but the brave
Have glory to transmit? The Hero's grave
Blooms ever. It is there the spring retires
To dream to flowers, her heart and soul desires,
When winter's whitening wind, like wash of wave,
Sweeps mauseleums of the skulk and knave
From mounts of glare off to Oblivion's mires.
The bloom, for which mere wealth lacks length of arm,
And fainting Time takes for reviving scent,
Fame, with bright eyes from heart and soul content,
Forms wreaths for Valor's Daughters--crowns that charm
Not with death-smells from Human welfare rent
But breath of Country's rescue from dire harm.
II
Those crowns, not cold from death sweat on the brow,
At sight of apparitions with fixed stare,
But warm with summer, conjuring beauties rare--
Wilt not. They are dewed daily by your vow,
Daughters of sires who, to no thrall, would bow!
Which, at the alter with raised hands, ye swear,
Cheering the blessed spirits, gathered there,
That, like their Mothers, are their daughters now.
True women--and therefore, craft foilers clever--
With sons for your hearts utterance, ye sue
Not, but like Barry to the British crew,
Ye cry out: "What! we strike our colors? Never!
Fie, shot! fie, Gold! these colors, since they drew
Their first star-breath, are God's, and God's forever."
Ye know the Leopard changes not his spots.
The Prince of Peace, who spake eternal truth,
Confirmed this fact of Nature. He, with ruth
Omniscient, saw afar, the scarlet clots
Of English nature, in profidious plots
For conquest, mangling not alone brave youth
With teeth set, but old age without a tooth,
And Mothers, clutching up their bleeding tots.
Oh, yea, this beast makes his own desert, still;
And Ireland, India and Egypt show
His spots so spread, he is one ghastly glow;
Aye, as your sires saw him from Bunker Hill.
Oh, vain, gold rubs the skin and press shouts, "Lo!
It has not now one spot of threatening ill."
IV
O Daughters of the brave, well ye abjure
The fiend and all his works. Ye know his smiles
Are fire-fly flare at gloaming, lighting miles
Of snake-boughed forests down to swamps, impure
From mind and soul decay; hence are heart-sure
That creed and racial hatreds are his wiles,
For God is Love, and Love draws, reconsiles,
And is the strength that makes our land endure.
O Mothers, as you lift your babes and gaze
Into their eyes, your love runs through their vains
In crimson flushes--oh, your love that pains
At any of God's creatures hurt! that stays;
The heavens may pass away, but that remains,
Being of Christ, who walks earth Mother-ways.
V
Oh, like your sires, you, too, know Freedom's worth
To Human Spirit. For its liberation,
A God unrealmed himself by tribulation,
And was an out-cast on a scornful earth.
Christ is no myth and, since with Human birth
He forms new Heavens for blissful habitation--
There unto is the Freedom of the Nation;
All other trend is down to dark and dearth.
When from the darkness rainbowed birth comes pouring,
Your virtue heeds the voice, Eternity--
Re-echos: "Let them come." 'Tis Nature's plea
For broadening progress; Nay, 'tis God imploring
The Human to take strength for Liberty,
Truth, Honor, to catch up to the stars, a-soaring.
VI
O Daughters of brave sires, what is true glory?
No marsh-ward falling star, however bright.
'Tis inspirational; its upward flight
Lifts generations--such your Father's story,
And also yours, for is not that, too, gory?
You pour out your hearts blood in sons to fight
For honor, and cease not till every right
Has been set down in Triumph's inventory.
Oh, into daughters, too, old noble Mothers!
You pour out your hearts blood that, in your place,
They may fill up the ranks and, as in case
Of Molly Pitcher, man guns for their brothers,
And hearten firm, the trembling human race
To know, though brave men fall, there still comes others.
VII
If Christ's foreshadowing in Juda's haze
Was of his grief, 'tis of His triumph, here,
For, is not His celestrial glory clear
In Freedom for all men? First, gaseous rays
In Maryland, then rounded firm full blaze
In the Republic, it draws every sphere
Of Human welfare, whether far or near,
From depths occult to nights with dawns and days.
The Freedom of the Generation's longing
Reflects Lord Christ in glory, hour by hour,
With more distinctness, as you, with His power,
Free heart and brain from every brother-wronging,
And give your offspring, these, as flesh and dower,
To live and lead the millions, hither thronging.
VIII
Oh, ever Mothers--shaping robust youth
No less than infant, and as perfectly!
There's life blood to their veins from when on knee
To when thy battle, from your broadening ruth
For Human kind and fervent love of truth.
If, like their fathers, they have come to be
The wonder of the world, for liberty,
Your virtue, 'tis, that in their valor greweth.
Oh, as the Roman Mother, when she showed
For jewels, her two sons, saw each of them
In Time's Tiara, glittering there a gem;
So, see your offspring shine. The light, bestowed
Your Fathers, in your sons is diamond flame,
Encircling Freedom's ocean-walled abode.
IX
Is it Apocalyptic Vision, when
White-winged Columbus swoops from Spain's palmed shore
And, from dark depths, lifts at San Salvador,
A continent, adrip with streams which, then,
Become the fountain of the Psalmist's ken,
Where Right the heart, from hoof to horn foam-hoar
From craggy speed, slakes thirst, and, evermore,
Comes Hope's whole clattering herd?--you chant, "Amen."
Aye, for your sires made earth this new creation
Where, from San Salvadore and Plymouth Reef
To Westward Mission Trails, ascends belief
In God and, therefore, in the Soul's Salvation
Through Freedom, in white, spiral spray which grief
Sees, spite earth-mists, or solar obscuration.
[Illustration]
SONNETS
FREEDOM, TRUTH AND BEAUTY
THE PROEM
Soar thou aloft, though thou ascend alone,
O Human Spirit! Thou canst not be lost.
What though yon stars, the azure's nightly frost
Melt dark, or mount round thee an arctic zone!
Thou hast sun-warmth and star-source of thine own.
If thou mount not, how bitter is the cost!
What anguish, when whirled down, or tempest tossed,
To know how high toward God thou mightst have flown!
Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb
The mountain and the star on trail of thee?
Thy wing-flash beams toward Man, and, if it be
True inspiration--whether thought sublime,
Or fervor for the Truth, or Liberty--
Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time.
THE ATLANTIC
Forming the great Atlantic, see God take
The mist from woe's white mountain, spring and stream,
The breath of man in frost, the spiral lean
From roof-cracked caves where, though the heart may break,
The soul will not lie torpid, like the snake,--
And battle smoke. On them He breathes with dream
And, Lo! an Angel with a sword agleam
'Twix the Old World and New for Justice's sake.
What sea so broad, as that from Human weeping?
Or Sun so flaming, as the Angel's sword
Of Human and Devine Wills in accord?
There, with sword-flash of myriad waves, joy-leaping,
Shall loom forever, Freedom's watch and ward,
With the New World in his Seraphic keeping.
HUMAN FREEDOM
This is thy glory, Man, that thou art free.
'Tis in thy freedom, thy resemblance lies
To thy Creator. Nature, which, tide-wise,
Is flood and ebb, bounds not sky flight for thee.
Lo! as the sun arises from the sea,
Startling all beauty God-ward, thou dost rise
With mind to God in heaven, from finite ties,
And there, in freedom, thou art great as He.
Meeting thy God with mind, 'tis thine to choose,
Wheather to follow him with love and soar,
Or dream Him myth and, rather than adore,
Plunge headlong into Nature's whirl and ooze.
Thine is full freedom. Ah! could God do more
To liken thee to Him, and love, infuse?
THE STARS
God loves the stars; else why star-shape the dew
For the unbreathing, shy, heart-hiding rose?
And when earth darkens, and the North wind blows,
Why into stars, flake every cloud's black brew?
What fitter forms for longings high and true,
Man's hopes, ideals, than bright orbs like those
Asbine from Nature's dawn to Nature's close,
In clusters, prisming every dazzling hue?
Nor is the Sun with harvests in its heat,
And that, sky-hidden, makes the moon at night,
An earth-ward cascade for its leaps of light,
More real, or a world force more complete,
Than Faith and Hope, that brake through clouds with sight
Of evil's foil and ultimate defeat.
THE GENESIS OF FREEDOM
I
O Freedom! Born amid resplendent spheres,
And, with God-like creative power, endowed,
Hast thou, to human life's blue depths, not vowed
A splendor, not alone like that which 'pears
At present, where the upper asure clears,
But that the Nebulae will yet unshroud?
I hear thy far off cry where thou art lone,
A John the Baptist: "Lo! one greater nears."
What is this Greater--this which is to meet
The planets and ascend high, high and higher?
The right of human spirit to aspire
And mount, unhampered--and by act, complete
Creations harmony, as by desire,
Proclaimed by brain with throb, by heart with beat.
II
In thy descent through azures, all aglow
With circling spheres, the beauty of each blaze,
And grandeur, then, of all, entrance thy gaze.
Thou thinkest, why not thus all life below?
Perceiving, then that all the breezes blow
Upward and onward, in the skyey maze,
Thou wouldst go back and start with them, to raise
A new creation from chaotic throe.
Thou seest plainly that without that breeze,
The breath of God, all that thou couldst create,
Were lifeless, save to turn on thee with hate,
And chase an age with grim atrocities;
But with that breath, thou couldst raise life to mate
The Planet's splendor, in the azures Peace.
III
O Freedom! as thy sister spirit, Spring,
Pausing above the earth, sees every hue
Of her prismatic crown, reflected true
In forests and in fields, and fledgling's wing,
So thou dost see thy spirit glorying
With faith, that man is more than Nature's spew--
In human spirit that, from beauty drew
First breath to know that soul is more than thing.
O Freedom! fain we follow thee in flight
From chaos to God's glory round and round,
Aloft! how like an elk pursued by hound,
To brinks thou springest toward the distant height
And, on bent knees, then speedest without sound,
Like Faith through Death, till, lo! thou dost alight.
THE PILGRIM FATHERS
"Ye Wreaches, who would lay proud England's head
Upon the block, and raise her features, then,
Bloodless and ghastly, for the scorn of men!
Begone forever. Go where terrors spread
Their sea and forest mouths to crush you dead.
Oh, how the clouds shall crimson from each glen,
A roar with blaze, and flame search out each fen,
If back to us, yea e'er are vomited."
To this Parental blessing and God-speed,
The Pilgrim Fathers gladly made reply:
"These waves are Conscience's wings along the sky;
They carry us to God, whose call we heed.
The further from thy coast of hate and lie,
The nearer God. On! On!--that is our creed."
PLYMOUTH ROCK
O Sun and Stars! bear ye Earth's thanks to God;
For Oh! what waters, slaking every thirst
Of heart, mind, spirit, in long cascades burst
From Plymouth Rock, when struck by Freedom's rod!
No wanderer in the burning sand, unshod,
Plods man with lolling tongue, dog-like, as erst;
For lo! this fountain, deepening from the first,
Floods Earth's old wells and greens Life's sand to sod.
Oh, more those waters than the Font of Youth,
For which, through field and swamp, the Spaniard ran!
For they are clear with God's eternal truth
Of fatherhood, hence brotherhood of man,
And are no dream. They quench all human drouth
And cleanse man's desert dust of sect and clan.
THE CATHOLICS IN MARYLAND
Of Expeditions in the Arctic Past,
All honor to the one that reached the pole
And formed a settlement where every soul
Enjoyed full freedom. There above the blast,
How musical the bell, by Justice cast!
It welcomed all to come. It ceased to toll
After a while, but why? Those, welcomed, stole
And dragged it where the ice formed thick and fast.
Of Arctic Expeditions there is none
So profitable to the human race
As that toward Freedom's pole, and hence men face
All storms to reach it. If they fail, the sun
Has but one joy--to thaw out wrecks, and trace
Man's progress where alone it can be done.
A FOREST FOR THE KING'S HAWKS
Say, what is Ma-jest-y without externals?
Is Burke's analysis not right--"A Jest"?
Ah, but a jest, at which the poor, oft pressed
To their last heart-drop, laugh not, like court journals.
The King needs coin, and, where he sowed no kernels,
Wants the whole forest for his hawks to nest
And breed in, and became an annual pest;
In this the farmers show that they discern ills.
Hark! blares the tyrant's horn and, in a thrice,
The Tories gather. Eagerly they band,
For is the King not greater than the land?
And rows with royalty, a rabble's vice?
Besides, what creeping tribes at his command,
And Spies and Hessians at a ferret's price!
TO ARMS SHOUTS FREEDOM
To Arms! shouts Freedom to her sons. Behold!
How, like Job's war-horse, they gulp down the ground
To battle! What care they how foes surround?
Oh, joy to Celts, nigh half the true and bold!
There, with the roar of all their wrongs uprolled
From ancient depths, they dash with billow-bound
Up rock and summit, and through cave and mound,
Spurning both Tyrants' steel and Treason's gold.
No tide are they to ebb in heart and spirit.
If dashed back, they return with all the force
Of six dark sea's momentum on its course
For vengeance on the vile, who disinherit
The human-being--shut off every source
Of happiness, or let but Serf's draw near it!
BRITISH SOLDIERY
The wounded Sidney, who despite his thirst,
Gave water to his comrade, shines, a lamp
In the Cimerian dark of Britain's camp.
Even the Raleigh, who so finely versed,
Preferred to such a light, the flame accursed
Of sword and torch, to please a royal vamp.
Is British triumph in its world-wide tramp
The Hell, still "lower than lowest"--Milton's worst?
Lord Christ! is British soldiery the swine,
In whose gross forms the fiends, exercised, flew?
Oh! watch them through the ages, they pursue
The noble and devour all things Divine.
Look! they illustrate horrors, which prove true
The Hell, which Milton's glimpse could not outline.
AMPHIBIOUS BARRY
Look! Freedom glares and pallid as a ghost,
Except for gashes on her brow and breast,
And faint from hunger, sits awhile to rest.
Amphibious Barry, bold on sea or coast,
Mounts and spurs darkness to the Tory Host,
And, like an Indian rider with head prest
Down to his steed's hot neck in prowess test,
Plucks from the ground, a prize he well may boast.
Oh, as the sun's smile passing through the rain,
Shines forth a double arch, so, Barry's deed,
Refleshing Freedom's bones made gaunt by need,
Shines through the Ages; aye, and shines forth twain--
Both for America, from Britain Freed,
And Erin, still choked black in Britain's chain!
FREEDOM'S TRIUMPH
With France and Erin heartening Washington,
Prone Freedom rose, with head above the cloud.
Beholding her transfigured, Thrall is cowed.
His minions are bewildered. How they run!
Some follow him against the rising sun;
Others plod north. The Torries' vaster crowd
Hide in dark places, and like Satan, proud,
They hate the glory, that the true have won.
O Milton! Thou beheldest them. Thine ear
Caught their defiance and thy lightening pen,
In shattering the dark in evil's den,
Caught hope amphibious from leer to leer
Of those grim shadows, plotting to regain
Lost Paradise, or bane its atmosphere.
WASHINGTON'S ARMY AND BARRY'S NAVY
Who loosed our land from Britain's numbing hold?
"They who had naught to loose," the Tories say;
That is--not menials in the King's sure pay,
Nor mongrels, chained to guard their master's gold.
They were True Men. Their spirit, young and bold,
With dreams played follow-master, climbing day
From deepest night, to catch the Sun and stay
His glory for the World, then whiteing cold.
Though darkness be far vaster than the lamp,
It is the beams that lead to progress, count.
"To manhood, with the virtues to surmount
Such darknesses as Valley Forge's camp,
And seas, deep hell's sky-reaching, broadening fount,
Honor!" The ages shout on Triumph's tramp.
THE SUNKEN CONTINENT
When hurled from heaven, 'tis thought, the fiends of pride
Caught Earth to brake their fall. The regions gave
And sank with all the hosts beneath the wave!
'Tis in those sunken regions which divide
The new world of the resolute and brave,
From the old world of king and abject slave,
Where Torries, counterfeiting Satan, hide.
Clinging, like lava, to a lifeless limb,
They think the phosphorescence of the bark
Is morning, which the long-belated lark
Is hastening to welcome with his hymn;
Else, they form poisons and breathe from the dark,
Miasma mist to make the sun-rise dim.
ELISHA BROWN
Old Guard of Boston! Halt; Right Face; Attention!
Order One: quell the weeds in rankest riot
Where lies Elisha Brown, in conscience, quiet.
This Brown was John's precursor. Ye, on pension
For ancient glory, now do duty. Mention
Elisha's name for countersign--and why, it?
Because with him, wrong, seen, was to defy it,
And act, else, was beyond his comprehension.
Against his home's invasion this man held
A red-coat regiment for seventeen days,
Which was a spark to help start freedom's blaze
And, therefore, Order Two: the weeds all quelled,
Stand sentries till a statue takes your place
And throngs shout, "Bravo, Brown!" as 'tis unveiled!
EVACUATION DAY
What is it that today we celebrate
With school recital, banquet and parade
Of our achievements, pageanting each trade?
The ousting of the English--train and trait--
And posting, then, sharp-eyed, eternal hate
To watch with Josuah's son above his head,
That night come not to help them re-invade,
However wide, we swing our ocean gate.
If not un-Englishing America in mind
And heart forever, vain the shrieks
Of Freedom, eagling back to dawn's first streaks.
Oh, yea, the sun stands, and the night afar
Holds Thrall, whose craft would swamp our noblest peaks
And leave but bubbling mud show where they are!
MANHATTA
Manhatta! Glory flings his arms round thee
And proudly holds thee in his high caress.
What charms him, Mother, is thy nobleness
Of spirit. How his features beam to see
Thy scorn dash in the bay the tyrant's tea,
And hear thee call to Boston: "Do no less;
Else on sunlight, heart, soul--all we possess--
Will tyrant's next exact their deadly fee."
In thee I glory. Can the world else boast
A harbor, like thy heart, for every sail
In flight from sea-toss, white with horror's gale,
Or icebergs from despondence Polar coast?
Oh, fleets whose throngs, glad Freedom well may hail;
For, landing, they became her staunchest host.
THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON CITY BY THE BRITISH
With what wild glee, the British set on fire
Yon Capital, beholding in its flames,
America, robed in her deeds and fames,
In death throes at the stake of England's ire?
Though that was long ago and, then no pyre,
The stake still stands; 'tis Anglo-Saxon claims,
And Arnolds, bearing infamy's last names,
Tilt schools to raise the stake flames high and higher.
Oh, sight to strike the coming ages dead,
My country, were a cloud, thy mocking crown,
And schools, ignited by Truth's lamps hurled down,
To feed that cloud, like craters, inly red!
What! mock with cloud, Thy land and sea renown
And Washington, God's Holy Spirit--known
By the unerring World Light, that it shed?
THE LAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT
Behold Ye Here the Happy Hunting Grounds,
Where the Great Spirit, called Democracy,
Sets every heart and soul forever free,
An Equity, not royal grant, sets bounds.
No Phaeton attempting Phoebus rounds
And burning up earth's grass and forestry,
Is lust for power; 'tis love for liberty,
With bloom and birds for wheel-sparks, here resounds.
It is the land of Spirit. "Ye who enter,
Abandon first all fratricidal hate,"
Proclaims the edict, blazoned o'er each gate.
There see all tribes chase truth to joy--the center
Convexing broad and broader, as more great
Their numbers from where prejudice is mentor.
THE BLIGHT TO SPRING
Hark, 'tis the sea! How leonine its roar!
But, oh, how more the lion on a height,
As there he glares and listens for the night,
Having devoured day's clouds from shore to shore!
Now grows his mane of billows, high and hoar.
What scents he? Potencies escaping sight,
Till, like the cold, they icily alight
Upon a land where all was spring before.
The sun darts under earth and east again,
What sees he? First the lion at earth's brink
With head down to the stream of stars to drink;
And then, arising to his zenith ken,
Sees that which makes his high, warm spirit sink--
The blight to spring, blown here from England's fen.
THE SCORN OF HUMAN RIGHTS
What is the blight to spring that kills the seed
And raises spectres, so that stars cry "See!"
Aghast at forests, white or shadowy?
The scorn of human rights, that can but lead
The world from doom to doom! and for what mead?
A bronze for rain and rust, or effigy
For nibbling minutes--ah, not hours!--these flee
To life's progression--truth and kindly deed.
Look! How this scorn holds freemen in the dark,
Except for a flare at will that, then, the throng,
Reduced to dust, may rise and whirl along
The lift and drop of glitter, without spark
To set the spring a-crackling with bird song,
Till bud and angel both come out to hark!
NOT THIS OUR COUNTRY'S GLORY
O Country of the Sun's warm plenteous hand
To every germ of virtue, how below
Thy progress, mope Gold Mongers to and fro,
Who think they're vaulting from sunlight so grand,
It forms thy chiefest glory. Closely scanned,
They are gross worms, each with the thought to grow
"The Conqueror," as staged by Edgar Poe
For darking planets and a world, Last Manned.
Those worms that, moving, think they move the earth,
Or, under Growth's equestrian statue, think
They hold the horse and hero from the brink,
Are pitifully not a glance's worth,
As of thy glory; they but foul the chink,
If not of thee in warming Good to birth.
AMERICA'S GLORY NO FUGITIVE
I
How weird a whisper! 'tis from Wallabout.
'Tis glory hoarse with calling: "Raise those hulks
Where writhe my faithful." See! the tory skulks
Behind the sun who, stooping to fill out
Their throats with his god-breath, to swell the shout
Of a free people, finds the brave in bulks,
Strewn and held fast where Darkness, beaten, sulks
That thrall has been forever put to rout.
Those mangled thousands are not dead; they live,
Refashioned men by freedom. Is the tory
Behind the sun, to mock me, who am Glory,
Being the lifted life those martyrs give?
He creeps beneath the sun and, ghastly gory,
Crys out: "Thou yet shall be the fugitive".
II
Oh, weirder grows the whisper into word,
As sharp as lightening, and as broad of reach,
As seas, flung down by God to every beach
Where thirsts a sparrow, or a bleating herd!
There is no soul through out the land, not stirred;
For, oh, to glory God gives his own speech
When darkness, raised by Gold, declares that each,
Hulk-held, is good but for the wolf and bird.
Is Gold grown conscious, now the Country's King
That, at his beck, the blood for Freedom spilt
Shall be accursed, and I, then, for the guilt
Of dropping not with thud, as he with ring
At Darkness' feet, be shut in mud and silt
Forever and with stars, cease, beaconing?
III
Oh, as the earth in discord and in dark,
When struck by Love on high with will for mace,
Keeps rattling till each mote finds its true place,
And mountain, fledged with groves, vies with the lark
To reach the sunrise; so the madness stark
Of gold, dethroning blood as God's best grace,
When struck by Glory's voice drops Nadir-base,
And blood for Freedom spilt, forms heaven's blue arc.
The shouts of millions shake Oblivion's mire
And raise Thrall's Hulks. Look! Justice's stooping sun,
Seeing in agony's each, a Washington,
Breaths life in them, and, over Brooklyn's spire
And New York's Babel Tower, they, one by one,
Hold Liberty's broading Torch of quenchless fire.
HATE THOU NOT ANY MAN
Hate thou not any man, for at the worst,
He still is brother. Will a glance not find
Whole peoples alchemied from heart and mind
To steal projectiles by a craft, accursed
By Human Nature? Aye, for, as they burst
At dusk, or midnight, slamming Heaven behind
And crashing Hell wide open, 'tis mankind
Is shattered and quick-gulping grave slake thirst.
Hate thou no man, but scorn all crafts, that smelt
The heart and mind for huge projectiles, shattered
When bursting grandly that some pride be flattered.
Nature beholds not Saxon, Slav, nor Celt;
She only sees the Human fragments scattered,
And, covering them, her eyes to rivers melt.
THE CELTIC SOUL CRY
I
O Freedom! Have I ever been untrue?
When, to thy moan of hunger anywhere,
Have I been deaf? Was I not quick to share
My little, nay, give all! for oh! I knew
Thy beauty, and my love such passion grew
At thy distresses,--What would I not dare!
So, though the bellow, like a grizzly bear,
Reared up before me, on to thee I flew.
O Freedom! Is thy beauty without heart,
Or sense of justice? Unto whom art thou
Indebted for thine arm, encircling now
The world, sun-like, more than to me? My part
I glory in, for I have kept my vow.
I hold thee now to thine, if true thou art.
II
Speak Freedom! When a haggard fugitive,
Thy dwelling was a swamp, who first to trace
Thy crimson footprints to thy hiding place?
With signs thou hadst not many days to live,
I found thee. Had the sun more heart to give
To warm thee, than I gave? Ah, then and there
Thy heart said to my heart; "Ill would I fare
Without thee. I give love for love, believe".
Thy silence, when in glory, troubles me.
Oh! warm blood dashed back cold, chills to the bone!
What do I ask for? Only Erin's own,
That which God gave her, and, if true it be,
Thou art the minister of justice grown,
Thy gratitude should thunder God's decree.
III
What! Why bemoan one island in the sea,
When I can range like mountains, or, the sun,
Above all clouds, and, rosy from my run
To God, like morn, chant praise, since flesh of thee?
Oh, yea, my pride and transport, verily,
Is, thou and I eternally are one;
And this god-passion which no power can stun,
I owe to her, who gave her soul to me.
Oh, when I see her golden hair, adrift
On sorrow's sea, like weeds rent from their reef,
And know she breathes with her sublime belief,
It crazes me that thou, when thou mightst lift
Her saintly features, and dry them of grief,
Wads't not, but waitest for the tide to shift.
IV
America! 'Tis not thy mines of gold,
Nor streams from mounts to meadows, like God's hand
From out the heavens, a-flash across the land
In long, deep sweeps to quicken winter's mould
To reaps of ripeness,--that mine eyes behold,
Invoking thee; for these are mere shore-sand
To the broad ocean of thy spirit grand,
Forming for man a new world for the old.
'Tis Liberty, to whose most blessed birth
The stars all lead, rejoicing, which souls thee
With God's compassion for humanity,--
That I invoke; and, now, when all the earth
Bears palms and chants hosannas--what! shall she,
The most devout, be shut from Freedom's mirth?
BRITISH GLORY IN KIPLING'S "BOOTS"
All English glory is in "Kipling's Boots."
O English People! read that poem true,
And answer,--are those maddening men not you?
Oh, not yea few, who gather all the loots,
But yea vast legions, lured to be recruits
To march, march, march and march with naught in view
But boots, boots, boots with blood and mud soaked through,--
And, after ages, with out rest, or fruits!
"Boots, boots, boots, and no discharge from war,"--
That is the Empire's anthem. Brass it out,
Ye Orchestras! But oh, leave not in doubt
Its import, Kipling,--that 'tis maelstrom roar--
'Tis England's streams of home-life, world about
And down a gulf, for Greed and Pride on shore!
TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
If deaf to Shelley's loudest sky-lark strain,
His rage at tyrants, and to Byron's thong,
Nerve-proof, how wake the English to the wrong
Done their true selves, no less than to the slain,
When willing weapons for Ambition's gain?
Aye, weapons only; for, to whom belong
The minds of England, and treed fields of song--
Nay, all but grave-ground, grudged by hill and plain?
O English People, whom the crafty class
Has huddled into graves from sight and sound
Of what God hands you, and, with pence, or pound,
Lids down your wild dead stare,--wake! why so crass?
See in the Celts spring-burst from underground,
The Human Resurrection come to pass.
SHAKESPEARE
Oh, what are England's lines of lords and kings,
Shakespeare, to thine, a-throb with thought and feeling?
In thine, imagination shines, revealing
The soul's convictions, swift on dawn-ward wings
From beastly life and such Hell-smelling things,
As wealth and pomp from church and abbey stealing,--
And hearts in hopes high Belfries, Heavenward pealing,
As Time, his Sun and Starry censor, swings.
Would thou wert England's Nature, Bard Supreme,
To fashion kings and lordlings fit to rule;
They would be flesh and blood, not fiend and ghoul;
And would thou wert her Sun, that every beam
Might not, for tally, show a youth's blood-pool,
Choking blithe Spring, as, now, to earth's extreme.
ENGLAND'S RIGHTEOUSNESS
The righteousness of England! "Tis to kneel
Full weight on weaker nations, and entone
Hosannas louder than the victims groan;
Then, stooping, drink their blood with gulps of zeal."
What right have wounds, though wide, to throb, or feel?
'Tis blasphemy to England's crimson throne.
Knee-deep in Erin's blood, she mocks Christ's moan:
Forgive them, Lord! they know not their true weal.
"Whose is the fault? Tis not my arrogance,
But candor, Lord, that puts the blame on Thee.
What right hadst Thou to make these people free
And let all nature prompt them to advance?--
Oh, no such blunder, Lord, hadst Thou called me,
Instead of Wisdom, to approve Thy plans!"
THE MASSACRE OF THE WELSH MINERS
The Bard's curse: "Ruin seize thee Ruthless King,"
Took bat-like form for hollow echo-flight.
Though stoned and lanced at, when, at fall of night,
It darted forth with ghastly--spreading wing,
It found in fresh, wide, royal ravishing,
New hollows, dark with horror and sad plight,
To dash in and live on. Oh, to my sight,
How grows its grimness, while eternaling!
Deep are the minds of Wales, but far more deep
The horror, gulfed out by McCreedy, firing
On men defenseless and, through want, expiring.
Oh, from that gulf the Bard's curse makes a sweep
Up to the Sun and, from its long desiring,
Grown eagle, shrieks to heaven from steep to step!
A DIRTY WORK
"A dirty work," said Dyer, rebuked for spilling
Hundreds of lives to irrigate new lands.
A dirty work, but not for British hands,
Dabbling in blood to earn each day their shilling.
Hark! Mohawk Valley and Wyoming, chilling
With thought of Tarleton's King-serving bands,
And Canada red-clayed, though high snow stands,
Cry: Work for which the British are too willing!
Invaded lands need terror irrigation
To make them fruitful. Better flood the field,
Then let the native bloom become the yield;
And, so, this Dyer submerged a small whole nation
With crimson death, that England might, deep-keeled,
Have for display, new seas of desolation.
HUMAN NATURE
The ocean, holding pure the azure's blue,
Laughs at the tempests, with one empire's dust
After an other, to round out Earth's crust.
Ah, so does Human Nature hold the hue
It takes from heaven, its conscience, and laughs, too,
At madness, wrecking life and with its gust
Forming new islands, where Pride, Greed, or Lust,
Welcomes the crater's glare, in sun-light's lieu.
Look in the sea and deep, what scattered rock,
The islands which at dusk, the tempest piled!
Ere rose a star, they sank with crews, beguiled.
O Tempests that with world formations, mock
The good Creator, how, as ye grow wild,
Earth quakes and no live thing survives the shock.
OUR COUNTRY--SOUL AND CHARACTER
I
Our country is not rock and wood and stream,
But soul transfusing them. What is the soul?
The substance, born of God, above control
And, when one, with God's love, called "Will," supreme;
And Freedom is the soul in thought, and dream
That Nature's beauty and harmonious whole--
God's foot-steps--followed, life attains its Goal;
And soul is purpose to achieve God's scheme.
The soul, then,--our true country,--is the brave
Who fought and bled for Freedom, or will fight
To their last pulse, last breath, for Human Right.----
Great soul! oh, how like bubbles in the wave,
Are the Sierras in cerulean flight,
To thy true grandeur, letting nought enslave!
II
O thou art Character--art only those
Who formed the good and great by thought, or deed.
All others are not worth a moment's heed,--
Mere prairie dogs, who raise gold hills in rows--
When gazing at thy glory; for that grows
With Freedom from all foul untruths; with lead
In art for weal; with science for all woes;
With hate of thrall and help for all unfreed.
No mere foot-shadow, on time's wall, art thou,
Without eye-sparkle, swing of arm, warm flow
From heart to vain, and cheeks with health of glow.
Oh, 'tis eternal heights reflect thy brow
And shoulders, that avert man's overthrow,
Threatened all times, and never more than now.
III
Oh, what if lone and long thy lofty flight,
My country? Is thy vision not as clear
As that of Vesper, dauntless pioneer
On Twilight's altitude? As from that height,
He sees plain through the thick black walls of night,
The stars all massing; so dost thou, his peer,
Behold all peoples gathering, year by year,
To scale the clouds to thy White Range of Right.
How thy lone loftness, aloof from wrong,
Refracting man-ward, God's enrapturing smile
Of fruitful fields, leads legions! On they file
And phalanx, and the vision makes thee strong:
What, though God's searchlight flares the sky the while?
It nears not thee, ear-close to heaven's high song.
JUDAH AND ERIN
From out a desert where the trails run red,
Judah and Erin speed their camel pace,
Sighting green palms. The flush on either face
Is from the fissure where each wedged her head
From sandstorms, that hurled heavens down, as they sped;
It is no blush for thought, or conduct, base
To the high trust to bring the Human Race,
Truths, without which Time's offspring are born dead.
In spirit, they are sisters; for, beyond
The desert, where the vision, like a dove,
Soars round the palace of Almighty Love,
God hails them as "My Daughters, true and fond,
Who show man, through Noon blaze, my star above,
And to my will, fail never to respond."
THE EASTER RISING IN IRELAND
Who, in descent from Heaven's ecstatic throng,
Was twin to light, and ranged from source to sea,
And shore to peak, and God, drew up to thee
The generations happy, pure and strong?
Freedom, as Erin's was, ere ruthless wrong
Caught, scourged and hanged it on the out-law's tree;
And is; for lo! it proves Divinity,
Transfiguring from anguish, ages long.
True, they have strangled Freedom on the cross
Of every Right's suppression--nay, have barred
His body's tomb, and placed a host on guard!
Still, He is risen; His faithful mourn no loss.
He shines forth in their midst. No bolts retard
His entrance, where grand aims for life engross.
THE FIGHT IN IRELAND
The fight in Ireland is 'twixt Man and Brute.
A lion with the sea-surge for his mane,
Is there hurled back by Man with proud disdain,
Although heart-drained with gash from head to foot.
Oh, in that Eden of Forbidden Fruit,
How Satan, searching for a snake in vain,
Fumed forth a monster from his heart and brain--
The Lion--as the serpent's substitute!
Oh, all ye peoples of the World draw nigh!
Stand on the bodies of eight centuries,
Struck dead with horror; for, raised thus, one sees
In Erin, torn, a soul that cannot die,
And that its struggle is Humanity's
Against the fiend, who would give God the lie.
TO ERIN
How help take pride in thee, whose golden hair
Of culture trailed the earth for centuries;
Whose throne was freedom and whose realm was peace;
And, in strange lands, whose joy and only care
Were to spread light, and who, not anywhere
Thy charm made headway, planting liberties,
Didst, then, by stealthy step, or creep on knees,
Sow with the lilies, faster-growing tare!
How help love thee, whose hand, raised to the sun,
Glows rosy, and not red with murder's stain?
The angels kiss it. Force can forge no chain
To drag thee false-ward. Like a holy Nun,
Stigmated, how thy faith grows with thy pain--
Aye, till thy Cross, like Constantine's has won.
THE QUEEN OF BEAUTY
In rapt, roused Erin, who does not behold
A Venus, rising from the sea of tears,
Up to her native, Earth-illuming spheres?
Her hair, long matted, is a flow of gold
Which even the Sun might wear and feel not cold;
And, oh, her heavenly smile at doubts and fears,
As when she, at all depths, raised to her ears,
Shells of her Glory, murmuring, "Be bold!"
Lo! where the green and orange morn unfurls,
See Erin rise. How shine her golden tresses!
They form her crown, for trailing rocks down whirls,
And reaching all the under-sea recesses,
They draw about her brow, the rarest pearls--
Love for what frees and hate for what oppresses!
LIBERTY, THE LIGHT TO PEACE
All hail to those who, through the stormy night,
Make Liberty the light on Erin's coast;
Who, ceaseless, send up sparks; who hold their post
On each and every ledge of Human Right,
Forming a beacon blaze from base to height
Where Erin's hope may steer and land its host.
Look, Human Nature! Where else canst thou boast
To the eternal stars, so grand a sight?
Look! How men there ennoble human kind
By making Liberty the light to Peace!
All other lights are false. Oh! who but sees
In the unconquerable Celtic mind
That, even in Time, there are Eternities--
Love, true to Right, and Will no wrong can bind!
WHY PLAY WITH WORDS, ENGLAND?
Why play with words? There never can be peace
Till Ireland is set free. One might as well
Expect the great Arch-angel rest in Hell
And genuflect to Satan's blasphemies,
As Erin's spirit that, for centuries,
Has been aloft with God in virtue, sell,
Like Esaw, her birthright, and not rebel,
But to her home's invaders, bend her knees.
Her spirit is no norbury Banshee--
To wail and, then, to vanish. She will stand
With lifted flambeau, lighted by the hand
That lights the stars, till she again is free,
Inspiring normal man in every land
With love of Freedom, by her scorn of thee.
FREEDOM'S WARDENS
Look! British fury that, barraging, lights
Up Irish skies, like pathways down to hell,
Doubles its fire to reach our land as well,
Where Freedom's Wardens cry from justice' heights:
"'Tis Deicide to murder Human Rights.
Stop foul God-slaughter where to not rebel,
In order to develop and excel,
Were God in man, succumbed to age-longed blights."
Where Heavenward rose the God in man of old,
Staunch stand these Wardens. Sleepless, they behold
Each turn of England's Evil Eye. They call,
When she would form the fulminate of gold,
A thumb and finger-pinch of which, let fall,
Might blast Columbia's peaks to slit of thrall.
LIST TO DEMOSTHENES, IF NOT TO HEARST
Of all the fulminates, gold is the worst,
Which England, aeroplaning, now, lets drop
By day and night, in bank, press, church and shop,
Timed to the minute that it is to burst.
List to Demosthenes, if not to Hearst,
Sublime Republic! Lest thy great heart stop,
Shocked by the blast of Freedom's every prop,
And bats and owls in dwellings, Human's erst.
"Watch Macedon. She drops her gold, in creeping
Beneath free Athens' sky-ascending stair.
Watch her with glance of sword. Oh, watch, for where
She sows her gold, she comes with scythes for reaping!
Is Athens in ascent with sun-light flare,
To come down ashes, not worth history's keeping?"
CALEDONIA
I
In only Wallace and Paul Jones and Burns,
Does Caledonia, child of Erin, show
His mother's features, lit by soul to know
The Right Divine of freedom, when it yearns
For what exalts the human, or, it spurns
What bars its flight to truth--all stars aglow,
That form God's trail to joy for man below?--
Sole trail, as time, who peers through grief, discerns.
O Caledonia, by thy Burn's brave song,
And deeds of Wallace and Paul Jones for Right,
Thy mother knows thee in the dark of night,
And claps thee heart-close. She cries out: "Be strong,
Soul of my soul! though not a Boswell quite,
Still, be whole man! remember Glencoe's wrong."
II
Wake, Caledonia! though Macauley, Whigging,
Would ward the flames from scarring William's face,
So that, then, Cain might shriek,--here, take my place,
A fugitive and outcast, with no digging
To hide in, nor a rest for my fatiguing;
The mark on me, is but God's finger trace;
On you, 'tis God's whole hand!--Still, there's the blaze!
There's England's soul of merciless intriguing!
List! 'tis the bagpipes welcoming the guest.
See the assembly, dance and feast. Oh, watch
The open heart and flow of good old Scotch;
The English come, as friends, must have the best.
There, hospitality is at top notch,--
And so is treachery in Britain's breast.
III
The cock crows.--Is he dreaming? 'Tis dark still.
He crows again and now, from farm to farm,
His fellows echo far his dazed alarm
And flap of wings on fences. He is shrill
Because it is not dawn above the hill,
That wakes him, but the English, as they arm,
And murder sleep, that has no dream of harm,
In couch and crib,--to further England's will.
O Caledonia! with such lamp in hand
As Glencoe's horror, thou hast England true.
Why let Froude fiction haze thy vivid view?
Put not thy light out for sound sleep, but stand
And answer, when the mother, whom thou drew
Thy soul from, cries "Glencoe"! when Black and Taned.
CANADA
I
O Canada, Long red with cottage flame
From Britain's torch! thy blasts milk not the cloud
To nourish hope; instead, they spread the shroud
On Human Spirit answering Freedom's claim.
Whence comes the cold which icicles with shame,
Thy heart's Niagara, that should thunder loud
Unto thy far off soul in sorrow, bowed
O'er Papineau, whom Thraldom could not tame?
Now following the Friends, who grandly led
The slave through tunnels to the Northern Star,
To find, in freedom, richer bloomage far,
Than the Magnolia o'er the cattle shed,--
I reach thy soul,--where now the Crawfords are,
And learn the cold is not from manhood dead.
II
Whence comes this cold to Freedom's claim? we know
Only too well,--from creatures of the King,
Who had dragged Hell of every poisonous thing
And, through our country, had spread waste and woe.
Beaten at last, they flocked like carion crow,
On the dead body of their will to sting,
Which drifting Northward, and enlargening,
Loomed Dante's Nimrod, 'mid the Arctic snow.
There, with the reptile's hate of Man Upright,
As God created him, and reptiles veins,
Aflow with deaths cold blood--for that sustains
The life of tyrant and of parasite--
This monster, though half sunk in Hell, remains
High, still, above the Arctic's shuddering night.
III
The monster's inhalations empty Hell
Of all deterents to Life's flow and flower;
Then, its outbreathings icily devour
The cataract in flight and, down the dell,
The streamlets to delight, and buds, as well,
Of virtue, forming bloom for Freedom's bower;--
Nay, its out breathings,--through Creed hatred's power--
Grow Boreus and face where freeman dwell.
Lo! with Sun-warmth for Truth and Human Right,
Is Boreus met. Who hurles him down the deep?
Look close;--'tis Gladden who, on Freedom's steep,
Is as inspiring, as, on Andes' height,
The great Christ Statue, bidding Rancor sleep
And Life's diverging rays in love, beam Light.
IV
The cataracts wild leap, turned glittering ice
In shame's suspension, and crow souls afeeding
Upon a huge dead body and fast breeding,--
Is, as a scene, not worth the railroad's price;
But, oh, if, with "Excelsior" for device,
Thou climb thy Alpine way, each day exceeding
The other's height, what throngs would watch thy speeding
And, for the thrill thou woulds't give them, come twice!
O Canada! why all this sleigh-bell rhyming?
'Tis on the reindeer, hope, in speed with me
To the grand morning, when thou shalt breathe free
Upon the apex of thine Alpine climbing,
From foulsome, choaking smells of tyranny,
Thick from the Great Sea Serpent's inland sliming.
V
God said to Wrong: "No further shalt thou go."
This, Monroe heard and held, then, in his heart.
It was this he repeated, when on chart
He made his markings, checking Freedom's foe.
God never grants to Wrong the right to grow;
Because He sets its bounds, does not impart
His blessing on its growth, more than its start;
His blessing goes to Right, to overthrow.
Oh, let thine eyes for migratory flight
Speed southward! Passing Prejudice's Lake,
Green-crusted with stagnation which some take
For verdure, they will see from Andes' height,
How Freedom's battle forms the red day-break,
And tides are swells from thrall, hurled deep from sight.
VI
Thine eyes returning from the Southern Cross,
Will, when like Perry, they have reached the Pole,
Search under it to find thy banished soul,
O Canada, and tell it of thy loss
In letting a foul dead body, which the moss
Of the deep sea should hide, loom as thy whole
And rule, as dead things rule, with death for toll,
As pierced by Papineau through Glamor's gloss.
From South to North, no sky is black but thine.
Thy fecund brain, the Borealis, shows
A swaying disc with shades of dark for glows,
With but a faint salt smell of Color's brine,
The pent-up billows in the disc's dark close,
Which might flood midnight with rare, world-wide shine.
VII
We seek no annexation, but of Mind,
Heart, Spirit. True, thy clear, sonorous voice
At Freedom's class-call, would make us rejoice,
For, then, close-coasting thrall would fail to find
In the new world, one truant to mankind,
Swimming out to the foreigners' decoys,
Or fast asleep amid his infant toys,
Instead of at the task, which God assigned.
Oh, let thy spirit come, but it must be
Along the star-way to the rising sun--
The way of love; not down creed hates that run,
Like broken stone-steps, to a roaring sea--
The way thou oft, hast come. Rise, and be one
On the new world's Star-top of Liberty.
VIII
"The Angels come in dreams," says Holy Writ;
And Science says, "No sleep so deep, but dreams."
Devine appearances with brightening gleams
Toward Paradise up from the demon's pit,
Ever rouse virtue; aye, for God redeems
His fire, wherever hid; the tempest teems,
But still his sparks fly, quick as flint is hit.
Wake, Canada! and let thy Papineaus
Be dreams remembered; yea, let them inspire
Thy life to follow Freedom high and higher
Through Rights' whole range of summits, crowned with snows
Sparkling from star-moulds of the Soul's desire,
On earth from Heaven where, clouds from flames, they rose.
DRAGON INCURSIONS
I
O Freedom! whose pure soul and heart embrace
Translates me into heaven, I draw for breath
The joy of angels who have not known death.
Child-like, I look up in thy loving face,
Else gaze around and point, and curious place
My hand on Mottoes, hung on high. One saith:
"Beware, for he not with me scatterith."
Its meaning comes to me with growth, like grace.
Ah, as a youngster, on its mother's arm,
Seeing a hideous thing approaching night,
Will not lay down its head and shut its eye,
But will with look and lung express alarm--
My mind cries out in dread--when sea and sky
Show dragons, tendencies that work thee harm.
II
O Freedom! Up to whose raised hand the seas
Leap, playful lions, or with head and main
Across their paws lie couchant--it is pain
To see thee whose heart beats are God's decrees,
And vital breathings are infinities,
Now check thy heart and hold thy breath to gain
The smile and plaudit of a depths with bane
In finger tips, while fawning on their knees.
What! Think the tyrant, whose great soul is trade,
Whose history, a crater, belching black
And lurid, keeps glad Easter morning back
From half the world--loves thee save to invade,
As blackward planned? loves thee, along whose track
March Human rights up to the stars parade?
NEMESIS
There where the Tyrant long has loomed, wreck-crowned,
Are young and old hurled to the coast and blast.
Frail are their ships; still, Sun, why glare aghast,
Watching the billows monstering around?
The soul of man was not born to be drowned.
It mounts and mounts, till, at God's throne, at last,
And freedom welcomes it with arms, sky-vast,
As down it comes to meet Thrall and confound.
O, deathless spirit, born of hosts sea-hurled,
Who hast out soared night's stars with agony's cry
For justice! Thou hast come down from the sky,
Heralding doom to Thrall, whose flag unfurled
By steel, or craft, shows, as 'tis hoisted high,
The blood of man and ruin of the world.
ALL STARS MERGED IN ONE
What is the Truth? The thought, the act, or cry,
Recasting the Supreme Intelligence;
All else is false. Look! where are stars so dense,
That each has not the freedom of the sky?
And, still, what peace, what glory, reigns on high!
What! with the wisdom of the heavens, dispense?
The Peace, for which our longings grow intense,
Comes through the stars to earth, and but thereby.
What splits dark mid-night and gives earth a thrill?
All stars merged into one--our Country's aim.
It is a lightening, formed by God, to flame
Across the ages and flash bolts to kill
The stranglers, who the heart or spirit, main,
Or choke black in the face, a People's Will.
LINCOLN'S LIGHTENING IN WILSON'S HANDS
I
Who is to rise and hurl God's flame world-wide,
As Lincoln hurled it, setting free a race
From Sphinx-shaped wrong--a beast with human face?
That shattered, how our land rose glorified
And, from the stars last laggard, soared, their guide!
Oh, who can take Promethean Lincoln's place,
To bring light where-so-ever he can trace
A Human, with his rights to soul denied?
He must be one, not only to illume
All ages, and not leave one region dim,
But at no height, allow his senses swim,
Or let mirages lure him with false bloom.
Lo! Here one comes with all the virtues prim
To hurl God's fire and end all human gloom.
II
'Tis Wilson takes God's flame from Lincoln's hand.
This Princeton man,--who has outgrown the prince,
A hundred years, and, in the ocean since,
Seen with delight, Eternity expand
And loom in glory from the despot's strand,--
Shapes fourteen dazzling bolts without a wince.
He pauses. Why not hurl them and convince
The world that, hence-forth, not one thrall shall stand?
What! Wilson's arm lacks strength to hurl the flame,
God gave to Lincoln for the Human race?
Look! Look! it falls. What! Gone? Quenched by dark space?
No; it describes an orbit there, the same
As comets, and regains its heavenly place
For one to hurl it true, and doom Earth's Shame.
THE CATACLYSM
In Wilson we beheld and proudly hailed
The World's Deliverer. In him, we saw
A luminous being rise from earth and draw
All lands above the clouds. We were regaled
With justice cascades flow, long ice impaled
Upon high mountains. Was not Nature's thaw
From his heart heat for truth, Eternal Law?
His was the heat of all the stars, he scaled.
Though his ascension was like Christ's, sublime
With lift of continents and every isle,
He, less than Christ, succumbed to Demon Guile.
Oh, God, that he should drop his mountain climb
Below sea-level, and let earth the while,
Fall back and settle in Primeval Slime!
AN EPOCH'S ANGEL FALL
Judging from Wilson's virile virtue-voice,
Whose whisper hushed Earth's Hum, were we not proud
To have him cross the sea to speak aloud
And, with a finger raised, hush battle noise,
And lift all lands to Justice's equipoise?
Oh, such his truth to God,--so oft avowed,--
A spirit thund'red from a luminous cloud:
"This man crowns Lincoln's work. All Men! Rejoice."
Oh, had he read his bible where St. Paul,
Grown man, put off child things--or, had not smiled,
When told, strong Ego oft, is man grown child!
Look! Who sees not an Epoch's Angel Fall
From hope for earth, in Wilson's truth, beguiled
By second childhood's toys to play with thrall?
THE AMERICA OF THE FUTURE
I
Our Country still is in the womb, dark Time.
It shows life by its brisk and robust turns,
Which thrill the Mother, Liberty, who yearns
To see her man-child born. Oh, how sublime
With genius, not of one, but every climb
Where art forms beauty, or the spirit spurns
The foul and spurious,--her desire, that burns
Prenatally in him, to form him prime!
Oh People, all--Italian, Spanish, French,
Dutch, English, Irish, German, Jew, and Greek--
What see you, as you climb the Future's Peak?
Oh! no illusion. What looms there, shall wrench
From life, all monsters out from Hell, to seek
Dead consciences and plague earth with their stench.
II
Ascend, O Land of every Creed and Race!
Not thy full image, in New England's brook,
Nor in the South's lagoon; though there, a look
Delights us with thy chubby, infant face.
'Tis seas of joy, that shorelessly replace
The Ocean which, in time of old, forsook
The prairies for the cloud, or spring in nook,--
That show thee, Grown, through God's abundant grace.
From East to West, how joy's high seas expand,
Reflecting, not a foolish, mundane pride
That, thinking it does all, sets God aside--
But Virtue which, with heart and head and hand,
Works out God's purpose, with dear Christ for guide,
And holy spirits Light to understand!
III
All Virtues from the longing of the soul;
From wisdom, gained by sorrow through long ages;
From inspiration of the bards, in rages
That inter-marrying maniacs control
A people's life, and drain its sea to shoal,
And from the vision of sky-topping sages,
Gasping for breath from rot in all its stages,--
Aye, these and new-born Genius loom there Whole.
Look, People! Little less than God's own size,
Your virtues merge and, with speed God-ward, burn,
An unconsuming sun, that at no turn
In spiral flight, for still a grander rise,
Lets night advance where human Rights still yearn,
Except with great, new stars and dawning skys!
THE INEVITABLE
I
Behold two fleets, the one with woe for trail,
The other, rapture. As they sight the strait,
Through which but one can pass, Greed, urged by Hate,
Drives Thraldom's crafts with help of steam and gale.
They feel their way. The guns, with which they hale,
Raise jets, that look tall elms from Hope, the gate,
To Peace, the Palace; then, their speed is great,
Manoeuvering fast to head off, or assail.
Drawing the sea up for his driving steam,
Greed breaks all mirrors in his grand state room,
That show him dark inevitable doom,
Close hovering, and exults: "I am Supreme.
When seas lack water for my funnel fume,
I bid life send its every crimson stream."
II
What! in the darkness lowers boat after boat
From Freedom's fleet, and each with lightening oars?
Treasons to God and country are the rowers.
They are the Gold and Hireling Brain, that gloat
On conscience body with face down, afloat.
Why hail they Greed, to run on menial chores
From deck to deck, or to and from all shores?
Why? To ensure the payment of a note.
Meanwhile, brisk Freedom's fleets with justice manned,
And cosmic full momentum for their speed,
Confront the crafts, fired up by fiendish Greed.
A clash and--lo! they pass the strait and land,
Leaving in smoldering heaps, like autumn's weed,
The hulks of thrall along time's vultured strand.
REPTILES WITH WINGS
Are lust for Gold and Power not hideous spawn
Of prehistoric reptiles, that had wings?
Where e'er those crawled, they chawed all greening things
And, when they mounted, how their lengths, full drawn,
Basked barren in the sun before the dawn,
Absorbing all its rays from budding Springs?
These drain life's dawn and by impoverishings,
Draw and reduce to pulp, frail Consciences.
Oh, yea, bewinged with legislative crime,
They bask in sunlight e'er the east sky greys,
And drag the soul of man from God's embrace
Of rights and freedom. Oh, how long a time
Shall reptiles, deadly to the Human race,
Be let grow wings and heavenward trail their slime?
THE OUTLAWS OF OUR COUNTRY
I
The outlaws in our country are the wretches,
Who wreck the legislatures with their gold,
And with the ruins, form a high stronghold
To sally from, to what good nature fetches
From God to man. What though fine graphic sketches
In magazines show them with shoulders bold
Against the nights flood-gates of dark and cold?
All effort is but life in death-throw stretches.
They are the outlaws, who stop Nature's train
And take its corn and coal for selfish use;
Then, put their shoulders to Night's gate, to loose
Its hinges for a forty-day dark rain,
To drown all life, that they, like Noah, may cruise
Through thick drifts of the dead in heart and brain.
II
O heart and brain, who see the father load
His train with food, not for the few, but all,
And hear train-whistlings in March winds, jay call
And ground-hog sniffs! Haste out, for from the road
That leads to every Industry's abode,
The trust that, bat-eyed, comes out at night-fall,
Now moves the tracks inside his private wall,
Claiming all trains from God a debt long owed.
O heart and brain, it rest with you, how long
The legislative wreckers shall prevail.
Ye have the power to balk them. Why then, fail?
Regain your legislatures. Man them strong
And drive thence all sleek hounds, trust-trained to trail
Safe outlaws' paths to fastnesses of wrong.
THE PRESS
Was ever such unblushing harlotry,
Such sale of virtue in the Market place,
As by the Press? The red paint on her face
Is Degradation's mark. Alas, that she,
Born to bring forth the truth, still, is so base,
She kills her child and, then, to hide all trace,
Cracks bone by bone to dust, too fine to see.
O Press, poor harlot of the tyrant, Gold,
What freedom, but from truth, hast thou to boast?
Hark, who now speaks is murdered Truth's pale ghost:
"Conceiving life--oh, bring it forth! aye, hold
Thy child on high with love, as priest, the Host!
Crush not its bones, with smile and eyes set cold."
THE TRUTH
What is the truth? The focus of all rays
Passing through Nature and the soul and mind.
It is the Sun of Suns, around which wind
The Heavens and all the worlds. Such is its blaze,
That had it not, at intervals, a haze,
Grading both Angel and the Human-kind,
The bright Arch-angel would be stricken blind,
To grope in Heaven, a Homer, sighing lays.
What less could fitly crown Omnipotence
Than Truth, the focus of all rays in Good?
Lo! there it shines upon the Holy Rood,
Breaking through clouds, a-massing dark and dense
From countless ages, Cains to Brotherhood--
With rays of pardon for the World's offense.
OUR LORD'S LAST PRAYER
"Forgive them, Sire! They know not what they do."--
Ah, Christ! how at that face to face God-plea,
The Demon and his legions, mocking thee
With every generation, brought to view,
Flashed with dismay, and, boltless lightening through
The ages, thunder down Eternity,
'Till faint as the sound in shells, far from the sea;
For that thy prayer would be vouchsafed, they knew.
All grandeurs, gathered as a dazzling crown
For thee, in barter for thy knee's least bend,
The Demon dashed to fragments to Time's end.
There, born anew in spirit, we look down
And, in the ocean of thy prayer, Amen'd,
See but earth's monsters, with the demons drown.
THOUGHT IS TRUTH'S ECHO
Thought is truth's echo--not her glorious eyes
Beholding God, nor her white arms of light,
Lifted in worship. Following truth, our flight
At highest range is where our echo dies.
Oh all your power and beauty, earth and skys!
And, Soul and Mind! your Beauty and your Might--
Truth gathers in one flash and, catching sight
Of God, lifts high in love's full sacrifice.
Twixt Truth and Thought, what Truth is oft is space
Wherein, with intuition for her wing,
The soul mounts. It is there I hear her sing:
"Lo, Truth, so swift aloft, Thought dies in chase,
Turns earthward, and the gifts her white arms bring,
Are outshone by God's glory in her face!"
HEAVEN
Ah, what is Heaven? Such Glory that Sun-light
Seems darkness, and Mass Music, shell-shut sound.
What we call senses here, there so abound,
The soul appears a broadening heaven in flight,
Feathered and downed with all the stars, whose white
Is all hues mingled. Oh, the awe profound!
For every moment there, new Heavens astound
The myriad senses, with God's Love and Might.
If "Holy, Holy, Holy, Evermore?"
Be the one chant of angel and of Saint
Before the Throne, it is their gaspings faint
Between their transports to high Heavens from lower;
For, what is love's eternal Firmament
But Heaven on Heaven, that we may ceaseless soar?
HUMILITY
Was not humility the Earthward stair
From highest Heaven, by which God came to men,
To show the way aloft to human ken?
Ah, by what other pass, are men to fare
Through mist and cloud, except the path, aflare
With his blest steps from Heaven, and up again?
Steps, not from star to star, but fen to fen,
That all might follow and not one despair!
Oh, steps of Love! Could we reach with our eyes
Their fulgence, we would shrink back with dismay;
For, though 'tis through the world's contempt move they--
Hark! How the hidden choirs of countless skies
Chant at all heights: "Lo, God comes by this way,
And makes world-wide, His stair to Paradise!"
THE NIGHT OF MYSTERIES
A cataract of stars, which, with each fall
Broadens and brightens, rapturing the sight
Of angel hosts, that view it from the height
Of knowledge of God's love for one and all
His creatures--and not darkness to appal
The spirit by the quench of every light,
For which God grants it vision--is the night
Of Life's strange mysteries, both great and small.
Oh cataracts, beyond the angels' count,
Pause and shine pendant over every deep
Of heart, mind, spirit! Lo! how down they sweep
To basic Good where, massing, they remount,
Till, mid God's "Many Mansions," high they leap,
Forming forever, joy's most splendent fount!
WHAT THE POETS SHOW
When, at God's fiat, Light flashed forth, the beam
Evolved a million pigments, as it sped
To every nature. Now, of all its spread,
What shaft so glorious as the poet's dream
Which, mote and mass, reflects the Will Supreme
That life is progress, and by flight, or tread,
It circles God-ward up, till perfected!
For, harboring meaner thought were to blaspheme.
What, if the world be chaos where it sins,
Race feuds, Creed hatreds, falsehoods gross, deceit,
Intrigue and greed, form swirling, blinding sleet?
Honor and Truth, though buried to their chins,
Look up and smile; for, though the storms still beat,
The poets show 'tis Spring, not Winter, wins.
THE SOUL'S ASCENSION
Not mine the night that creeps beneath Life's sea,
Or lurks within Hope's ruins, sunk below
The desert, or the stagnant pool--oh, no!
But night that mounts the heavens, till it is free
Where stars, prefiguring all things that be
Obscure on earth, catch sight of God and glow,
And golden shadows large and larger grow,
Cast by Gift-bearers to Humanity.
Oh, once the cold of all the unsunn'd space
Was in my reptile life of soul, wing-bound;
But now, soul-free, what warmth from stars all round!
'Tis not by strength of mine, Lord, but thy grace,
My soul soars from the depths of sea, or ground,
Till, at star-heights, it meets Thee, face to face!
LYRIC TRANSPORT
What but the spirit's ladder to God's throne
Is beauty? Oh, from rung to rung to climb,
Till faint becomes the azure's anthem chime
Of planets, multitudinous, or lone,
And Inspiration, drunk with fragrance, blown
From God's rare, inmost garden, wall'd from Time,
Sets free the Sonnet with is wings of rhyme
To carry down the transport, upward known!
Mine is no swaying ladder, like he sea's,
Whose rounds of rollers, raised above Sun-rise,
Lean not on Heaven, hence shattered lie at noon;
For 'tis set firmly on the verities,
Which form God's throne. Ah, there, what joy, my prize!
Would that I had a dove for every boon!
THE SUNRISE
The Sun is God's great joy to Human sight.
Oh, up and off in chariots, Sea! and ride,
All generations, up, till mountain-eyed,
To welcome earth-ward, God's Supreme delight.
Imagination swirls in swallow flight,
Giddy with Beauty, deepening--Oh, how glide
From star to star, to the haloes, season-dyed
And countless! Its wings shrivel up like night.
Oh, yea, the Sun in one subliming rise
From Wisdom's infinite mind! This Reason knows.
It has no set. There, Sense, with weals or woes
For beads, or fingers, count our shuts of eyes,
Excluding Knowledge. What! God's joy to close
And all its goodness break and drift cloud-wise?
TWO DARKNESSES
There are two darknesses; one where the Lord
Hides beauty--that by which men know His face.
All, in that darkness, feel His fingers trace
Their features gently, and their hearts record
The feeling, as of one, whose eyes, restored,
Would see, but for the Father's close embrace.
The other is the outer dark--a place
Where hate turns black the light upon it poured.
O God! the only darkness that I dread,
Is where Thou art not--that where Hate's black fire
Surmounts the heavens, to burst with thunder dire
And, in its fall forever, drag the dead
Of heart and spirit--those whom Thy desire
Would fain have made the halo round Thy head.
THE DOOM OF HATE
A spirit passed the Sun, the Moon and Star,
And dwelled and dreamed in darkness all its own.
The music of the spheres, though thither blown,
As faint as fragrance from a flower afar,
Disturbed this spirit's ear, attuned to jar
Of orb with orb; for hate of light, truth known,
Fashions hot worlds which, cooled to clay and stone,
Clash, rising toward calm Heaven, which they would mar.
Ah, if where love was not, he smiled elate,
His smile at God returned, a lightening flash
That shattered him. He saw his planets clash,
Burst and, then, by the downward law of hate,
Sink and leave not a single spark, nor ash,
For the new firmament he would create.
THE EVIL IN THE WORLD
There are two Gods--one, Good, the other, Ill.
They clash in Nature--so the Persian taught,
And long a sect in Europe spread the thought.
Why there is evil is a problem still
To many, who see not in Human Will,
A being that with beauty could have caught
Up to his Maker, had he gladly wrought
With light and warmth, instead of dark and chill.
God said, "Let there be Light," and light was made.
God made not darkness--that is light's exclusion,
Forming a region where, in wild confusion,
Men, Nations, each a ferret, blood-eyed shade,
Worry each other, till, with disillusion
For lamp, comes conscience, crying, "God Betrayed!"
THE EARTH RENEWED BY MEMORY
Ah, in the angel-fall from Heaven, is hope?
The wing-whir discord of the legion's fall
From God forever, mocks my heart's loud call.
Empty of beauty from its base to cope,
The Earth is hollow. Where, then, can I grope
And not be met by echoes that appal?
What! shouts my mind, in wonder that I crawl
And, having skyey wings, in hollows mope.
Does scent from bloom, or warble from the wood,
Not atmosphere the un-aerial void
Twixt thee and beauty, which thy youth enjoyed?
Fly back to earth, by memory renewed;
She fills the hollow, echoing hosts destroyed,--
With Spring, reflecting Heaven's Triumphant Good.
IN THE DIMPLE OF BEAUTY'S CHEEK
O beauty! in the dimple of thy cheek,
My love could live forever and be blest.
There, with the sun, a rose-bud on thy breast,
How thou rejoicest, hastening to speak
To thy fond Father! Oh, how vain to seek
A sweeter refuge for the Spirit's rest,
Than mid thy blushes, when thou marvelest
At His great love, for, oh! thy heart is meek.
Oh beauty! in thy Father's arms, thou art.
Enclose me in thy dimple; for, though this
Were but a bud, or molded seed, what bliss
To watch bloom gather scent, or new life start,
And hear our Father, bending for a kiss,
Whisper to thee, the secrets of His heart!
THE CAMP FIRE
Beauty is love and, hence is heightening fire,
Consuming Nature. All the dark can bring
To quench it, feeds it. Look! how everything
Is caught in the blaze, which mounts up high and higher!
Oh! truly, 'tis a vision to inspire
The soul with transport, more than joy can sing;
For, if not for the blaze, what cold would sting
Poor mortals, who crowd round it, nigh and nigher!
Is beauty not the camp-fire, which one host
Leaves burning for another, close behind?
Yea, yea, the Powers Divine, O Human Kind!
Have left their camp-fire burning on the coast,
Where they embarked from glimpse of Human mind,
To give you warmth and light to hold your post.
MOTHER
All beings, legioning celestial light,
Moved in procession toward a vacant throne.
Their chant was faith and hope, as, now, our own.
At last, it came to pass, their faith grew sight.
They saw One Star in night's down-fall, stay white
And, by the Holy Spirit brighter blown,
Ascend in Heaven, till there, as high and lone,
As over Nature's marveling zenith height.
Reaching the throne, its queen, this star became.
Awed by the Triune's Honor as her crown,
The legions, circling, soared with eyes cast down;
But, when their wonder heard the strange, new name
In Heaven, from Christ's lips, "Mother," how they shone,
Reflecting Christ's child-eyes, with love aflame!
IN HEAVEN NO HEART STILL HEAVES
Lo! God lets drop blue doves which ground the mind
Like clover; then, with drawing to the skies,
His pleasure is to watch the flocks arise.
Here, there, they mount; they show no cloud, no wind,
Can hinder homing; and the angels find
No transport, like the sight, for, to their eyes,
'Tis more souls for the joy, which glorifies
The Father, traced to love by pigeon-kind.
Oh, to his love, how great our spirit's worth!
Each is as all. In heaven, no heart still heaves.
The sun sinks with its last of lingering eves,
And, then, if dearest doves of azure birth,
Wife, parent, child, be missed, off mercy leaves
With stars for eyes, to search the darks of earth.
ST. PETER'S CATHEDRAL IN ROME
This temple is soul-startling. 'Tis to me
A thunder storm in stone, with Sinai flare
Across the Ages. 'Tis the Fiend's despair
And the Arch-angel's Triumph. It sets free
The mind and soul with certitude, Christ's key
Which, like the Sun, opes Heaven--the Good and Fair.
Still, oft, what darkness drowns the sun's noon glare
Within the Temple! 'Tis from Calvary.
Oh, 'tis from Calvary's grief. 'Tis Christ's emotion,
On from the Cross, that from His glory known,
The German should have fled and, frantic, thrown
Away his soul to Strauss or Kant's vague notion,
Unhumaning, till, in the Kaiser, grown
A Neitche whirl-wind in a crimson ocean.
MY BUGLER BOY
With heart pain and with quiver of the lip,
I bid my boy "good bye," with words of cheer.
I hug him to my heart to hide a tear,
And hold him close so long, that no tongue-slip
Could more betray my bodings for his ship,
Or troop, when landed. It is when I hear
My daughters' voices, that I shame off fear
And take my boy's both hands with firmest grip.
Go, son, and, though with thy young life 'tis blown,
Blare thou the Bugle, rousing man to sweep
The monsters back to Hell's profoundest deep,
Where, mocking Spring and Sun-rise, they have grown
On longings for the sea, the world must weep
When, from its heart, the hope of Peace has flown.
KAISER, BEWARE
Dost thou, mad Kaiser, for historic name,
Set fire to Europe? Is it joy to gaze
At blacker smoke than Etna's, and a blaze
That wakes up Chaos, wild to come and claim
The World, since Light, God-bidden though it came,
Has failed to dawn upon our human ways?
O Twin of Chaos! peer thou through the haze!
'Tis Human Beings feed the crackling flame.
Beware, the smoke, like Etna's, is the curse
Of widows on thy people-dooming throne,
And in no country, more than in thine own,
Cry out all mothers: "Wherefore bear and nurse?
To feed war with our sons, our flesh and bone,
That chaos may reclaim the Universe?"
WOMAN, IN GERMANY
The German mother has too long been what
A Chancellor once called the "Kingdom's Cow."
Ah, as she bears the droves for slaughter, how
Her dumb-beast eyes crave pity for her lot!
See, there she smiles, like loving God forgot--
All His supernal patience on her brow.
How long must her grand arch of brain, as now,
Bear up a universe "of what should not"?
There, lies she, crushed by troops in hot pursuit
Of mocking shadows; for be Gain complete,
What is it but twin brother to defeat?
Stand up the dead on any bloody route.
Stoop for no kiss from orphans, at thy feet,
O Triumph! for ash-cord is all thy fruit.
O THOU PALE MOON
O fair, full moon! I look close at thy face.
Thou must be happy, being in the skys;
And, yet, thy flush grows pallor to mine eyes.
Thou art as one, who breathless after chase,
Would rest, but dreads to check her onward pace.
O fugitive from where no fledgling flies,
No bee finds bud, and where red billows rise,
Engulfing down dark years, the Human Race!
O thou pale moon, who hast companioned Man
Through every darkness since the night's first fall!
Hast thou, along thy foot-worn, azure wall,
Ever seen seas so hard for hope to span,
As this red surge, that in a spring so small,
A bird could beak it up, its flood began?
THE TIGER
How glares the tiger in his desert lair--
Now half the world! Beholding with dismay
That Human Freedom is the tiger's prey,
A giant, down whose shoulders, broad and bare,
The long, thick, crimson flow is Sampson's hair,
Makes haste to clutch the beast.
Oh, how the clay beneath their struggle, reddens, night and day,
Till lies the beast, a shapeless carcass there!
Oh! never from the long, thick crimson flow
A down thy shoulders from thy noble brow,
America, came such God's-strength as now,
Comes to thine arm against the world's grim foe--
The beast that, sighting man, devours him, how
The world may end, a wilderness of woe.
TO OUR BOYS "OVER THERE"
Where flies our flag is Freedom's holy ground;
There, it unfurls all benisons to Man.
The twin of Spring, its spread unfolds God's plan
Of human happiness, by setting bound
To greed, lust, powers,--all colds,--that Right be crowned.
Lo! where it leads, ye youth form valor's van,
Mirrored and echoed by the azure's span
For ages, for Man's gain in yours is wound.
Oh, justice's Hot Gulf Stream are ye, who open
The sea, which fiendish craft has frozen hard!
Oh, may your warmth for righteousness transform
The tyrant's artic region, with no hope in,
To Freedom's Temperate Zone, which they, who guard
The planets, save from wreck by quake or storm.
THE PROFITEERS
Now and in life--not Virgil--breaks a storm
Of Harpies, harsh to ear and foul to smell.
It sweeps War's lengthening coast, where each sea-swell
Is Humans, gasping. Hope drags each cold form
From hearth to hearth, to find no ember warm;
Then, their eyes glitter frost, who hear hope yell
As up she climbs the rocks and falls pell-mell
Back from small herbs, where monsters swoop and swarm.
Oh, could the bestial birds, in Virgil's verse,
See Hope's hands redden, as she rends her hair,
They would grow human--would not glut, but share;
Nor, then, shed human semblance for man's curse--
As ye do, who from want, hold warmth and fair,
And gorge your bulks to sleep, as want writhes worse!
WHY THE STARS LAUGH
Hark! 'tis the laughter of the stars at Earth,
And Nature's, too, with every pitch of voice.
Earth's carnival of sheer grotesque and noise,
Where, gagged and manacled, walk Peace and Mirth,
Shows Britain now, a beast of broadening girth,
Set out to crush World Freedom. He destroys,
And thinks his bear-like rearing, planet poise
That is to influence the world's new birth.
The stars are kind, as all the ages know;
The sense of humor twinkles in their eyes,
At Earth's strange follies; but this beast would try
To thrust aside the planets, and make woe,
The fortune of World Freedom! That is why
The stars laugh, and all nature jeers the show.
PRAYER FOR WORLD PEACE
Lord, not Thy work, the World's calamities,
But Man's. If Human Will revolt from Thine,
It flees Thy region, where the stars all shine
With longing to let down the Azure's Peace--
To dash its hosts from summits into seas,
Where Empires are the breakers. There the brine
Is anguish, and there Triumph leaves no sign,
Save wreck on rock, and Plague, adrift on breeze.
When Nations turn from Light, in thought, or life,
Their speed is brink-ward, save Thy Mercy stay;
For all is precipice, except Thy way.
Help, Lord, for here is heightening surge of strife;
Here, clouds turn floods, coasts are wind-whirled, like spray,
And lightenings, hurling back thy light, are rife.
RELIGION
Religion is Ascension. 'Tis the flights
Of souls to summits of the true and wise.
One, witnessing the generations rise,
Sees them a shine at countless, different heights,
Where they, responding to their inner lights,
Glow, like the clouds at morn, with graded dyes.
If summits, there are depths; if virtue, vice;
Hence, 'tis life's rise from falls, that judgment sights.
Witnessed, or not, there is no age, nor climb,
But souls arise as bloom, where earth is treed;
As warm, red rays, where cold from mountaining need;
As burst and spread of planets, where dark crime;
Nay, rise to poise above the star's top speed
To God, like larks, in praise for life and time.
THE GOLDEN JUBILEE OF SISTERS OF CHARITY
I
How thy Half Century shines over head!
'Tis an unfading rain-bow, one whose dyes
Are richer and more numerous to the eyes
Of Angels, than to ours. Its rays, if spread
Above a flood of sin and world of dead,
Give to the drowned, new life, new earth, new skies.
Night counts her stars, but falters, when souls rise
Bright with the Grace which God's annointed shed.
Belov'd Irene, how great our joy to see
Thine arch, aglow with virtue's every hue!
Oh, how much more must they rejoice, who view
From inner Heaven, the arch that is for thee,
Triumphal! for than vows like thine, lived true,
No grander arch from earth to heaven could be.
II
The "Church Triumphant" shines in lives like thine,
Calista! 'Tis the Saints' procession, shown
In Dante's vision, near Lord Jesus' throne,
In greatening splendor, never to decline.
Ah, if our minds grow dark, our hearts repine,
How, from sweet lives, dear Sister, like thine own,
Be-Mothering with mercy all who moan,
A light comes, and a warmth is in its shine.
We shade our eyes, as when we face the Sun
On level with the earth, at lives all love--
The Church Triumphant, as in Heaven above!
Aye, lives all love for Christ, in every one
Who suffers wrong, or any pain thereof,
As on His Throne--such lives as thine, dear Nun.
WINIFRED HOLT, THE LIFESAVER OF THE BLIND
Once, blindness was a burning ship at sea,
With panic-stricken souls on every deck.
The flame blew inward on that awful wreck,
Burning the hopes that make life glad and free.
Ah! then, through thee, it was, Philanthropy,
Who trains her searchlight on the smallest speck
And Speed out boats, like horses, neck to neck,
Reached the dark hulk and thrilled its crew with glee.
The flame is quenched, that burned out heart and brain.
The ship where woe was mute, is loud with joy.
Hark! hear the cheer on board, and cry, "Ahoy!"
As fast the sails are hoisted, and the main
Tides back toward hope for every girl and boy,
Who, else, might reach no star of night's whole train.
A CHOICE
Above and under life, eternally,
A subtle light and dark run parallel.
One prompts men to build Beauty, cell by cell,
In Home, Religion, State, Society;
The other, to destroy the fair they see.
Like Spring, wilt thou roof Earth with bloom and dwell
Thereunder? or, with Scalping Winter's yell,
Scour grove and bush? Choose--how else art thou free?
If Freedom is the gift of the all-wise,
It is because he will not have a slave
To serve Him. Which wilt thou be, base or brave?
With Morn, climb, or, with Night, skulk down the skies
To grope in caverns, or beneath the wave,
Creep, till aghast at monsters that arise?
ALL LUMINARIES HAVE ONE TREND
All luminaries have one source, one trend.
The stars that calm the sailor, long sea-swirled,
And canopy fond lovers from the World,
And those that lead the heart and spirit, blend.
Lo, only in the things and thoughts that tend
Toward Love's High Harmony, is truth unfurled;
All else are lies, whence heart, soul, mind are hurled
Back to the Right--to Progress without end.
The stars all chant as one. My soaring song
Catches their flame and these few sparks reach earth:
"As soon the shells forget their Ocean birth,
As men forget the Right, where they belong
By reason and by soul of deathless worth;
Address the God in man, wouldst thou grow strong."
LIFE TAKES MORNING HUES WITH THE ARTS OF PEACE
America! from out the depths thy coast
Was lifted skyward for Humanity.
Thy Life, once finny circlings in the sea,
Is now the orbits of the starry host,
Encircling God with trust. Be this thy boast,
When the long line of Ages, passing thee,
Lifts each his heart and soul, and shouts with glee,
"That Trust in Him was Sentinel on post."
Night, that once boa-like hung from thy trees,
Gorged with crushed tribes--with pottery, or mound,
Or print of foot for trace--slinks underground;
For lo, the forests, like the mist on seas,
Clears, ere the Sun, at earth's edge, glows half-round,
And life takes cloud-hues with the arts of Peace.
U. S. SENATOR JAMES A. O'GORMAN AND THE STALWARTS
On toward the Senate scuds a thunder-rack--
Nay, cyclone--and the columns--all star-straight--
Of Freedom's Temple sway with the roof's flood-weight.
Ye Stalwarts who scorn off a fate, pitch-black,
Holding the columns, let no sinew slack.
A crash and through the roof, what floods of hate!
Still, ye budge not, for "Freedom," your teeth grate,
"Shall lie no wreck along the cyclone's track."
Oh, not for you was dark the time to slumber,
But to hold Freedom's columns all star-plumb!
Yours was a watery grave, but Martyrdom
And, hence, your resurrection with the number,
Whose greatness greatens, as the Ages come
To know why their pathway, no wrecks encumber.
MINISTER OF JUSTICE PALMER, A BASTILE BUILDER
O Bastile Builder! Nature, when she shaped
Thy soul, was stricken, with a long attack
Of sleeping sickness; nor till wheel and rack
Had rusted, and man spirit had escaped
The bolsted, loathesome tomb where right was raped,
Did she awaken and, alack! alack!
Deliver thee, who, put on Freedom's back,
Would'st grab all things, at which thy Past-eyes gaped.
Freedom would humor thee; so, down he flopped
On Justice's floor to watch thee build with blocks.
Great was thy skill with walls and dungeon locks,
And with the trap, down which poor Freedom dropped
To be steel-masked, or, else, put in the stocks,
To writhe, then, with his tongue and ears, both lopped.
A SPECK, BUT NOT A STAIN, HARVARD
O Harvard of the Norton wreath of gold
And pearled, Longfellow purple! wherefore frown?
If Eliott is a speck upon your gown,
It will wash off; it is no stain to hold,
For you had let him go for being old.
Your wisdom was confirmed when to the crown,
A'gainst good folks who, like Elisha Brown,
Fought for their homes, he gave his name's renown.
Come, Agassiz! for, from the smallest bone,
You reconstruct the creature, tongue to tail.
Tell us what Eliott is. Phew! What! a Whale?
No; tis the prehistoric monster, known
As Tory, that devoured young Nathan Hale
And, where it crawled, spread horror's crimson zone.
SUPREME COURT JUSTICE CHARLES L. GUY
Your heart is not a traitor to your mind.
Who, knowing innocence in danger, dares
Not turn his eye, for fear of smirk, or stares,
By other courts, is Justice's statue blind,
That to the wall, not Bench, should be assigned.
Oft, Precedent is Folly with gray hairs;
So you, recalling Junius, heard the prayers
Of friendless Stilow; then, what did you find?
A fellow man doomed wrongfully to die
A felon's death. If such was Stilow's fate,
You saw, the felon would have been the State;
Hence, turned from Precedent, demanding "Why?"
Justice, asleep in marble, woke and straight
Unroofed the courthouse to let down the sky.
REAR ADMIRAL SIMS
A Dukedom, and not one the worse for wear,
Has Sims well earned by service to the King.
'Tis said at court, Howe's spirit following
The ocean still, found Sims his natural heir
And said: "Swap souls; and, that the swap be fair,
Give me to boot, the bone of Freedom's wing,
To make the skyey bird a hobbling thing
In marshes, where the ignisfatus flare."
The Eagle with his eye and pinion, trained
For mateship with the sun, twitched at a sting.
Amazed to find a "cootie" on his wing,
And that the insect dreamed, it was ordained
By race heredity to serve the King--
He shook his plume and azured, unprofained.
SAINT GEORGE AND THE DRAGON
I
In English nature, did Saint George prevail
Over the Dragon? Maybe in the time
When England knew not poverty, nor crime,
Described by Cobbett, who would not go bail
For falsehood, nor let truth remain in jail.
It must, then, have renewed life from its slime,
For, oh! through deeds, that turn the blood to chyme
And eyes white inward, see him ride the gale.
In English nature--oh, where now the saint--
The spirit, to sublime conceptions, true?
Has good Saint George, too woundful to renew
His conflict with the dragon of base taint,
Been caught up by Elias from earth's view?
How, else, the dragon's rage in irrestraint?
II
The dragon is grim greed. The Saint's long spear,
That once transfixed it, can no longer touch.
No land is safe from its sting, blood-drain, or clutch--
For it takes Protean shapes; 'tis, therefore, clear,
Since good Saint George has failed to re-appear
To mortal sight, save in the King's escutch--
Worn off at edge and blurred with Tudor smudge--
Freedom must drive the Dragon off this sphere.
The Dragon's soarings cause the sun's eclypse.--
Hark! is that thunder, God's collapsing skys?
No; 'tis the Eagle, with un-hooded eyes
And lightening flash from beak to pinion tips,
Seizing the Dragon that, despite its slips
From form to form--craft, gold and false sunrise--
Can not elude his eye and talon grips.
III
A conflict, this, refracted, cloud to cloud!
Where a white summit? Under crimson seas,
And these still hightening. Through far azure, Peace
Listens and, eager, peeps; then, turns headbowed.
The conflict circling earth, all plains are ploughed
New rows of gulches. God! can aught appease
The Dragon with fiend thirst's eternities
For tongue! The sun might, if it were well sloughed.
The Dragon, mounting, draws aloft earth's slime
With which to dim the all-producing Sun
From broadening light and warmth for every one;
But, look! The Eagle, with the thirst sublime
Of Justice, that the right on earth be done--
Flashes and--hark! 'Tis earth's Te-Deum chime!
IV
Oh, yea, the Earth's Te Deums, visibling
As well as voicing forth the joy of Nations,
Fill up the vastest Heaven--that of God's Patience
With Human Will most grossly reptiling
In insincerities, worse than negations;
And for what blessing are the earth's laudations?
The grace to soul to scorn to be mere thing.
Oh, of this grace was born the Eagle's vim
To dash the Dragon down in hell so deep,
It is a maggot there, which can but creep;
And draw Elias' chariot to Earth's rim,
Wherein Saint George stands with his heart a-leap--
As, now, in labor, we catch glimpse of him.
[Illustration]
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Freedom, Truth and Beauty" ***
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