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



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.



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.



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.



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.