Read Ebook: The Little Book of Modern Verse A Selection from the Work of Contemporaneous American Poets by Rittenhouse Jessie Belle Editor

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Ebook has 1022 lines and 46997 words, and 21 pages

Fluid the world flowed under us: the hills Billow on billow of umbrageous green Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen One rapturous instant, blind with flash of rills And silver-rising storms and dewy stills Of dripping boulders, till the dim ravine Drowned us again in leafage, whose serene Coverts grew loud with our tumultuous wills.

Then all of Nature's old amazement seemed Sudden to ask us: "Is this also Man? This plunging, volant, land-amphibian What Plato mused and Paracelsus dreamed? Reply!" And piercing us with ancient scan, The shrill, primeval hawk gazed down -- and screamed.

The Black Vulture.

Aloof upon the day's immeasured dome, He holds unshared the silence of the sky. Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry The eagle's empire and the falcon's home -- Far down, the galleons of sunset roam; His hazards on the sea of morning lie; Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam.

And least of all he holds the human swarm -- Unwitting now that envious men prepare To make their dream and its fulfillment one, When, poised above the caldrons of the storm, Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare His roads between the thunder and the sun.

Chavez.

So hath he fallen, the Endymion of the air, And so lies down in slumber lapped for aye. Diana, passing, found his youth too fair, His soul too fleet and willing to obey. She swung her golden moon before his eyes -- Dreaming, he rose to follow -- and ran -- and was away.

His foot was winged as the mounting sun. Earth he disdained -- the dusty ways of men Not yet had learned. His spirit longed to run With the bright clouds, his brothers, to answer when The airs were fleetest and could give him hand Into the starry fields beyond our plodding ken.

All wittingly that glorious way he chose, And loved the peril when it was most bright. He tried anew the long-forbidden snows And like an eagle topped the dropping height Of Nagenhorn, and still toward Italy Past peak and cliff pressed on, in glad, unerring flight.

Oh, when the bird lies low with golden wing Bruised past healing by some bitter chance, Still must its tireless spirit mount and sing Of meadows green with morning, of the dance On windy trees, the darting flight away, And of that last, most blue, triumphant downward glance.

So murmuring of the snow: "THE SNOW, AND MORE, O GOD, MORE SNOW!" on that last field he lay. Despair and wonder spent their passionate store In his great heart, through heaven gone astray, And early lost. Too far the golden moon Had swung upon that bright, that long, untraversed way.

Now to lie ended on the murmuring plain -- Ah, this for his bold heart was not the loss, But that those windy fields he ne'er again Might try, nor fleet and shimmering mountains cross, Unfollowed, by a path none other knew: His bitter woe had here its deep and piteous cause.

The Sea Gypsy.

I am fevered with the sunset, I am fretful with the bay, For the wander-thirst is on me And my soul is in Cathay.

There's a schooner in the offing, With her topsails shot with fire, And my heart has gone aboard her For the Islands of Desire.

I must forth again to-morrow! With the sunset I must be Hull down on the trail of rapture In the wonder of the sea.

At Gibraltar.

England, I stand on thy imperial ground, Not all a stranger; as thy bugles blow, I feel within my blood old battles flow -- The blood whose ancient founts in thee are found Still surging dark against the Christian bound Wide Islam presses; well its peoples know Thy heights that watch them wandering below; I think how Lucknow heard their gathering sound. I turn, and meet the cruel, turbaned face. England, 't is sweet to be so much thy son! I feel the conqueror in my blood and race; Last night Trafalgar awed me, and to-day Gibraltar wakened; hark, thy evening gun Startles the desert over Africa!

Thou art the rock of empire, set mid-seas Between the East and West, that God has built; Advance thy Roman borders where thou wilt, While run thy armies true with His decrees. Law, justice, liberty -- great gifts are these; Watch that they spread where English blood is spilt, Lest, mixed and sullied with his country's guilt, The soldier's life-stream flow, and Heaven displease! Two swords there are: one naked, apt to smite, Thy blade of war; and, battle-storied, one Rejoices in the sheath, and hides from light. American I am; would wars were done! Now westward, look, my country bids good-night -- Peace to the world from ports without a gun!

Euchenor Chorus.

Of old it went forth to Euchenor, pronounced of his sire -- Reluctant, impelled by the god's unescapable fire -- To choose for his doom or to perish at home of disease Or be slain of his foes, among men, where Troy surges down to the seas.

Polyides, the soothsayer, spake it, inflamed by the god. Of his son whom the fates singled out did he bruit it abroad; And Euchenor went down to the ships with his armor and men And straightway, grown dim on the gulf, passed the isles he passed never again.

Why weep ye, O women of Corinth? The doom ye have heard Is it strange to your ears that ye make it so mournful a word? Is he who so fair in your eyes to his manhood upgrew, Alone in his doom of pale death -- are of mortals the beaten so few?

O weep not, companions and lovers! Turn back to your joys: The defeat was not his which he chose, nor the victory Troy's. Him a conqueror, beauteous in youth, o'er the flood his fleet brought, And the swift spear of Paris that slew completed the conquest he sought.

Not the falling proclaims the defeat, but the place of the fall; And the fate that decrees and the god that impels through it all Regard not blind mortals' divisions of slayer and slain, But invisible glories dispense wide over the war-gleaming plain.

He whom a Dream hath possessed.

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of doubting, For mist and the blowing of winds and the mouthing of words he scorns; Not the sinuous speech of schools he hears, but a knightly shouting, And never comes darkness down, yet he greeteth a million morns.

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of roaming; All roads and the flowing of waves and the speediest flight he knows, But wherever his feet are set, his soul is forever homing, And going, he comes, and coming he heareth a call and goes.

He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of sorrow, At death and the dropping of leaves and the fading of suns he smiles, For a dream remembers no past and scorns the desire of a morrow, And a dream in a sea of doom sets surely the ultimate isles.

He whom a dream hath possessed treads the impalpable marches, From the dust of the day's long road he leaps to a laughing star, And the ruin of worlds that fall he views from eternal arches, And rides God's battlefield in a flashing and golden car.

The Kings.

A man said unto his Angel: "My spirits are fallen low, And I cannot carry this battle: O brother! where might I go?

"The terrible Kings are on me With spears that are deadly bright; Against me so from the cradle Do fate and my fathers fight."

Then said to the man his Angel: "Thou wavering, witless soul, Back to the ranks! What matter To win or to lose the whole,

"As judged by the little judges Who hearken not well, nor see? Not thus, by the outer issue, The Wise shall interpret thee.

"Thy will is the sovereign measure And only events of things: The puniest heart, defying, Were stronger than all these Kings.

"Though out of the past they gather, Mind's Doubt, and Bodily Pain, And pallid Thirst of the Spirit That is kin to the other twain,

"And Grief, in a cloud of banners, And ringletted Vain Desires, And Vice, with the spoils upon him Of thee and thy beaten sires, --

"While Kings of eternal evil Yet darken the hills about, Thy part is with broken sabre To rise on the last redoubt;

"To fear not sensible failure, Nor covet the game at all, But fighting, fighting, fighting, Die, driven against the wall."

Mockery.

God, I return to You on April days When along country roads You walk with me, And my faith blossoms like the earliest tree That shames the bleak world with its yellow sprays -- My faith revives, when through a rosy haze The clover-sprinkled hills smile quietly, Young winds uplift a bird's clean ecstasy . . . For this, O God, my joyousness and praise!

But now -- the crowded streets and choking airs, The squalid people, bruised and tossed about; These, or the over-brilliant thoroughfares, The too-loud laughter and the empty shout, The mirth-mad city, tragic with its cares . . . For this, O God, my silence -- and my doubt.

An Ode in Time of Hesitation.

Before the solemn bronze Saint Gaudens made To thrill the heedless passer's heart with awe, And set here in the city's talk and trade To the good memory of Robert Shaw, This bright March morn I stand, And hear the distant spring come up the land; Knowing that what I hear is not unheard Of this boy soldier and his Negro band, For all their gaze is fixed so stern ahead, For all the fatal rhythm of their tread. The land they died to save from death and shame Trembles and waits, hearing the spring's great name, And by her pangs these resolute ghosts are stirred.

Through street and mall the tides of people go Heedless; the trees upon the Common show No hint of green; but to my listening heart The still earth doth impart Assurance of her jubilant emprise, And it is clear to my long-searching eyes That love at last has might upon the skies. The ice is runneled on the little pond; A telltale patter drips from off the trees; The air is touched with Southland spiceries, As if but yesterday it tossed the frond Of pendant mosses where the live-oaks grow Beyond Virginia and the Carolines, Or had its will among the fruits and vines Of aromatic isles asleep beyond Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

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