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Sharers of a common country,

They had met in deadly strife;

Men who should have been as brothers

Madly sought each other’s life.

In the silence of the even,

When the cannon’s lips were dumb,

Thoughts of home and all its loved ones

To the soldier’s heart would come.

On the margin of a river,

‘Mid the evening’s dews and damps,

Could be heard the sounds of music

Rising from two hostile camps.

One was singing of its section 

Down in Dixie, Dixie’s land,

And the other of the banner

Waved too long from strand to strand.

In the lawn where Dixie’s ensign

Floated o’er the hopeful slave,

Rose the song that freedom’s banner,

Starry-lighted, long might wave.

From the fields of strife and carnage,

Gentle thoughts began to roam,

And a tender strain of music

Rose with words of “Home, Sweet Home.”

Then the hearts of strong men melted,

For amid our grief and sin

Still remains that “touch of nature,”

Telling us we all are kin.

In one grand but gentle chorus,

Floating to the starry dome,

Came the words that brought them nearer,

Words that told of “Home, Sweet Home.” 

For awhile, all strife forgotten,

They were only brothers then,

Joining in the sweet old chorus,

Not as soldiers, but as men.

Men whose hearts would flow together,

Though apart their feet might roam,

Found a tie they could not sever,

In the mem’ry of each home.

Never may the steps of carnage

Shake our land from shore to shore,

But may mother, home and Heaven,

Be our watchwords evermore. 

     Aspasie, trillistos.

I heard the trailing garments of the Night
     Sweep through her marble halls!
I saw her sable skirts all fringed with light
     From the celestial walls!

I felt her presence, by its spell of might,
     Stoop o’er me from above;
The calm, majestic presence of the Night,
     As of the one I love.

I heard the sounds of sorrow and delight,
     The manifold, soft chimes,
That fill the haunted chambers of the Night,
     Like some old poet’s rhymes.

From the cool cisterns of the midnight air
     My spirit drank repose;
The fountain of perpetual peace flows there,—
     From those deep cisterns flows.

O holy Night! from thee I learn to bear
     What man has borne before!
Thou layest thy finger on the lips of Care
     And they complain no more.

Peace! Peace! Orestes-like I breathe this prayer!
     Descend with broad-winged flight,
The welcome, the thrice-prayed for, the most fair,
     The best-beloved Night!

My Savior, let me hear Thy voice tonight, 
       I’ll follow Thee, I’ll follow Thee; 
The clouds that overhang my way, obscure
    the light, 
       And all is dark to me. 

I’d hear Thy voice above the tempest’s shriek; 
       I’ll follow Thee, I’ll follow Thee; 
And though my sight be dim, my spirit weak, 
       I’ll trust, though naught I see. 

I’d feel Thy arm, supporting in the dark; 
       I’ll follow Thee, I’ll follow Thee; 
For Thou canst fan to flame, faith’s sinking 
    spark, 
       And seal my loyalty.

I shall not sink, dear Lord, when Thou’rt my 
       guide, 
          I’ll follow Thee; I’ll follow Thee; 
Though lashed by heavy waves, on ev’ry side, 
          I’m safe, when Thou’rt with me.

Little scavenger away,

touch not the door,

beat not the portal down,

cross not the sill,

silent until

my song, bright and shrill,

breathes out its lay.

Little scavenger avaunt,

tempt me with jeer and taunt,

yet you will wait to-day;

for it were surely ill

to mock and shout and revel;

it were more fit to tell

with flutes and calathes,

your mother’s praise.

Lur’d by some Captain’s smooth address,

His scarlet coat and roguish face,

One Half-A-Joe on drum-head laid,

A tavern-treat—and reckoning paid;

See yonder simple lad consign’d

To slavery of the basest kind.

With only skill to drive a plough

a musquet he must handle now;

Must twirl there and twirl it there

Now on the ground, no in the air:

Its every motion by some rule

Of practice, taught in Frederick’s school, *

Must be directed—nicely true—

Or he be beaten black—and blue.

A sergeant, rais’d from cleaning shoes

May now this country lad abuse:—

On meager fare grown poor and lean,

He treats him like a mere machine,

Directs his look, directs his step,

And kicks him into decent shape,

From aukward habit frees the clown,

Erects his head—or knocks him down,

Last Friday week to Battery-Green

The sergeant came with this Machine—

One motion of the firelock miss’d—

The Tutor thump’d him with his fist:

I saw him lift his hickory cane,

I heard poor Jeffery’s head complain!—

Yet this—and more—’s forc’d to bear;

And this goes on from year to year,

’Till desperate grown at such a lot,

He drinks—deserts—and so is shot!

 

°The Prussian manual exercise.

(For Carl Van Vechten)

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats;
There never was a spring like this;
It is an echo, that repeats
My last year’s song and next year’s bliss.
I know, in spite of all men say
Of Beauty, you have felt her most.
Yea, even in your grave her way
Is laid. Poor, troubled, lyric ghost,
Spring never was so fair and dear
As Beauty makes her seem this year.

I cannot hold my peace, John Keats,
I am as helpless in the toil
Of Spring as any lamb that bleats
To feel the solid earth recoil
Beneath his puny legs. Spring beats
Her tocsin call to those who love her,
And lo! the dogwood petals cover

Her breast with drifts of snow, and sleek
White gulls fly screaming to her, and hover
About her shoulders, and kiss her cheek,
While white and purple lilacs muster
A strength that bears them to a cluster
Of color and odor; for her sake
All things that slept are now awake.

And you and I, shall we lie still,
John Keats, while Beauty summons us?
Somehow I feel your sensitive will
Is pulsing up some tremulous
Sap road of a maple tree, whose leaves
Grow music as they grow, since your
Wild voice is in them, a harp that grieves
For life that opens death’s dark door.
Though dust, your fingers still can push
The Vision Splendid to a birth,
Though now they work as grass in the hush
Of the night on the broad sweet page of the earth.

“John Keats is dead,” they say, but I
Who hear your full insistent cry
In bud and blossom, leaf and tree,
Know John Keats still writes poetry.

And while my head is earthward bowed
To read new life sprung from your shroud,
Folks seeing me must think it strange
That merely spring should so derange
My mind. They do not know that you,
John Keats, keep revel with me, too.
 

*Spring, 1924

When I was sick and lay a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

Ah broken is the golden bowl! the spirit flown forever!
Let the bell toll!–a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river;
And, Guy De Vere, hast thou no tear?–weep now or never more!
See! on yon drear and rigid bier low lies thy love, Lenore!
Come! let the burial rite be read–the funeral song be sung!–
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young–
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young.

“Wretches! ye loved her for her wealth and hated her for her pride,
“And when she fell in feeble health, ye blessed her–that she died!
“How shall the ritual, then, be read?–the requiem how be sung
“By you–by yours, the evil eye,–by yours, the slanderous tongue
“That did to death the innocent that died, and died so young?”

Peccavimus; but rave not thus! and let a Sabbath song
Go up to God so solemnly the dead may feel so wrong!
The sweet Lenore hath “gone before,” with Hope, that flew beside
Leaving thee wild for the dear child that should have been thy bride–
For her, the fair and debonair, that now so lowly lies,
The life upon her yellow hair but not within her eyes–
The life still there, upon her hair–the death upon her eyes.

“Avaunt! to-night my heart is light. No dirge will I upraise,
“But waft the angel on her flight with a Pæan of old days!
“Let no bell toll!–lest her sweet soul, amid its hallowed mirth,
“Should catch the note, as it doth float up from the damnéd Earth.
“To friends above, from fiends below, the indignant ghost is riven–
“From Hell unto a high estate far up within the Heaven–
“From grief and groan, to a golden throne, beside the King of Heaven.”

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift, 
  The road is forlorn all day, 
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift, 
  And the hoof-prints vanish away. 
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
  Expend their bloom in vain. 
Come over the hills and far with me, 
  And be my love in the rain. 

The birds have less to say for themselves 
  In the wood-world’s torn despair
Than now these numberless years the elves, 
  Although they are no less there: 
All song of the woods is crushed like some 
  Wild, easily shattered rose. 
Come, be my love in the wet woods; come,
  Where the boughs rain when it blows. 

There is the gale to urge behind 
  And bruit our singing down, 
And the shallow waters aflutter with wind 
  From which to gather your gown.    
What matter if we go clear to the west, 
  And come not through dry-shod? 
For wilding brooch shall wet your breast 
  The rain-fresh goldenrod. 

Oh, never this whelming east wind swells   
  But it seems like the sea’s return 
To the ancient lands where it left the shells 
  Before the age of the fern; 
And it seems like the time when after doubt 
  Our love came back amain.      
Oh, come forth into the storm and rout 
  And be my love in the rain.

Thee for my recitative,
Thee in the driving storm even as now, the snow, the winter-day declining,	 
Thee in thy panoply, thy measur’d dual throbbing and thy beat convulsive,	 
Thy black cylindric body, golden brass, and silvery steel,
Thy ponderous side-bars, parallel and connecting rods, gyrating, shuttling at thy sides,         
Thy metrical, now swelling pant and roar, now tapering in the distance,	 
Thy great protruding head-light fix’d in front,	 
Thy long, pale, floating vapor-pennants, tinged with delicate purple,	 
The dense and murky clouds out-belching from thy smoke-stack,
Thy knitted frame, thy springs and valves, the tremulous twinkle of thy wheels,	  
Thy train of cars behind, obedient, merrily following,	 
Through gale or calm, now swift, now slack, yet steadily careering; 
Type of the modern—emblem of motion and power—pulse of the continent,
For once come serve the Muse and merge in verse, even as here I see thee,
With storm and buffeting gusts of wind and falling snow,	  
By day thy warning ringing bell to sound its notes,	
By night thy silent signal lamps to swing.	 
  
Fierce-throated beauty!	 
Roll through my chant with all thy lawless music, thy swinging lamps at night,
Thy madly-whistled laughter, echoing, rumbling like an earthquake, rousing all,
Law of thyself complete, thine own track firmly holding,
(No sweetness debonair of tearful harp or glib piano thine,)
Thy trills of shrieks by rocks and hills return’d,	
Launch’d o’er the prairies wide, across the lakes,	
To the free skies unpent and glad and strong.