Chapter VIII

But hark! as if some league-long barrier broke
To let wide waters in tumultuously,
I hear the voices of the outland folk
From sea to sea--yea, rolling over-sea:
“You shall not limit his large glory thus,
You shall not mete his greatness with a span!
This man belongs to us,
Gentile and Jew, Teuton and Celt and Russ
And whatso else we be!
This man belongs to Man!
And never, till a flood of love efface
The hard distrusts that sever race from race,
Comes his true jubilee!
Never, till all the wars,
Yea, even the noble wars that strive to peace,
With all the thunder of all the drums shall cease,
And all the booming guns on all the brother-shores;
Never, till that worst strife of every day,
More bitter-sordid than the clash of steel,
By some new solving word our lips may learn to say,
Be wholly done away,
Deep-drowned in brotherhood, quenched in the common weal,
Ah, never, till every spirit shall stand up free,
Comes the great Liberator’s jubilee!”

GREENCASTLE JENNY

A BALLAD OF ’SIXTY-THREE

Oh, Greencastle streets were a stream of steel
With the slanted muskets the soldiers bore,
And the scared earth muttered and shook to feel
The tramp and the rumble of Longstreet’s Corps;
The bands were blaring “The Bonny Blue Flag,”
And the banners borne were a motley many;
And watching the gray column wind and drag
Was a slip of a girl--we’ll call her Jenny.

A slip of a girl--what needs her name?--
With her cheeks aflame and her lips aquiver,
As she leaned and looked with a loyal shame
At the steady flow of the steely river:
Till a storm grew black in the hazel eyes
Time had not tamed, nor a lover sighed for;
And she ran and she girded her, apron-wise,
With the flag she loved and her brothers died for.

Out of the doorway they saw her start
(Pickett’s Virginians were marching through),
The hot little foolish hero-heart
Armored with stars and the sacred blue.
Clutching the folds of red and white
Stood she and bearded those ranks of theirs,
Shouting shrilly with all her might,
“Come and take it, the man that dares!”

Pickett’s Virginians were passing through;
Supple as steel and brown as leather,
Rusty and dusty of hat and shoe,
Wonted to hunger and war and weather;
Peerless, fearless, an army’s flower!
Sterner soldiers the world saw never,
Marching lightly, that summer hour,
To death and failure and fame forever.

Rose from the rippling ranks a cheer;
Pickett saluted, with bold eyes beaming,
Sweeping his hat like a cavalier,
With his lion locks in the warm wind streaming.
Fierce little Jenny! her courage fell,
As the firm lines flickered with friendly laughter,
And Greencastle streets gave back the yell
That Gettysburg slopes gave back soon after.

So they cheered for the flag they fought
With the generous glow of the stubborn fighter,
Loving the brave as the brave man ought,
And never a finger was raised to fright her:
So they marched, though they knew it not,
Through the fresh green June to the shock infernal,
To the hell of the shell and the plunging shot,
And the charge that has won them a name eternal.

And she felt at last, as she hid her face,
There had lain at the root of her childish daring
A trust in the men of her own brave race,
And a secret faith in the foe’s forbearing.
And she sobbed, till the roll of the rumbling gun
And the swinging tramp of the marching men
Were a memory only, and day was done,
And the stars in the fold of the blue again.

(_Thank God that the day of the sword is done,
And the stars in the fold of the blue again!_)

BY THE BLOCKHOUSE ON THE HILL

_A Ballad of ’Ninety-Eight_

The soul of the fair young man sprang up
From the earth where his body lay,
And he was aware of a grim dark soul
Companioning his way.

“Who are you, brother?” the fair soul said;
“We wing together still!”
And the soul replied, that was swart and red,
“The spirit of him who shot you dead
By the blockhouse on the hill.

“Your men and you on the crest were first,
And the last foe left was I;
In the crackle of rifles I dropped and cursed,
Lightning-struck as the cheer outburst
And the hot charge panted nigh.

“You saw me writhe at the side of the trench:
You bade--I know not what:
With one last gnash, with one last wrench,
I sped my last, sure shot.

“The thing that lies on the sodden ground
Like a wrack of the whirlwind’s track,
Your men have made of the body of me,--
But they could not call you back!

“In that black game I won, I won!
But had you worked your will,
Speak now the shame that you would have done
By the blockhouse on the hill!”

“God judge my men!” said the fair young soul;
“He knows you tried them sore.
Had He given me power to bide an hour
I had wrought that they forbore.

“I bade them, ere your bullet brought
This swift, this sweet release,
To bear your body out of the fire
That you might pass in peace.”

Said the grim dark soul, “Farewell, farewell,
Farewell ’twixt you and me,
Till they set red Judas loose from hell
To kneel at the Lord Christ’s knee!”

“Not so, not so,” said the fair young soul,
“But reach me out your hand:
We two will kneel at the Lord Christ’s knee,
And He that was hanged on the cruel tree
Will remember and understand.

“We two will pray at the Lord Christ’s knee
That never on earth again
The breath of the hot brute guns shall cloud
The sight in the eyes of men!”

The clean stars came into the sky;
The perfect night was still;
Yet rose to heaven the old blood-cry,
By the blockhouse on the hill.

THE ADMIRAL’S STORY

This the Admiral told,
The Admiral early-old,
Gentle, and tragic-eyed,
The year before he died;
Told to the lads of the street,
At the Settlement where they meet,
Jake and Patsy and Pete,
Sons of the lean East Side.
Eyes of the Irish blue,
Jewel-bright eyes of the Jew,
Stared at him, wonder-wide,
As he stood there blanched and frail,
Telling a world-known tale
With a look that was far away.
Some that were once as they,
Aliens, lads of the street,
Served with the great gray fleet
On Santiago Day.
They looked upon him then
With eyes that did not swerve,
Gravely; they too were men;
Haply they too might serve!

Sunday it was, he said;
The warm sky overhead
Bright blue, without a fleck;
And the flagship steaming east
To Shafter at Siboney,
With the Admiral on her deck.
Westward the Morro lay,
Seven long miles at least.
(Each in her station right,
The gray ships ranged in a ring;
Slender the Spaniard’s chance for flight!
So grim birds on a poising wing
Threaten a wounded beast.)

Suddenly burst from the Morro bluff
One round, cloud-white puff!
Nobody felt a doubt:
The Spaniard was coming out,
And the Admiral seven miles east--
Seven long miles at least!
(Ah, fate’s master-stroke,
Irony royal-rare!
After the long blockade
And the patient plans well laid,
The search-light’s sleepless glare
And the growl of the cannonade--
The whole fleet bid to the battle-feast,
And the Admiral seven miles east!)

Forth from the channel they came,--
Adventure of despair!--
Each stately and splendid name
Foredoomed to thunder and flame,
Foredoomed to ruin and fame,
But the Admiral was not there!
He saw from afar his ships close in,
The smoke-veils thicken, the chase begin,
(And _O for wings!_ sighed the Admiral’s heart,
As the flagship followed, apart.)

“Then it was, as we speeded west,
Just as the flagship came abreast
Of the poor Theresa there, on the beach,
And the Almirante Oquendo, each
Wrecked and ablaze,” he said,
“We saw on the seaward side,
All alone in the waters wide,
Rising and falling, the round black head
Of a Spanish sailor as good as dead,
Fighting death in the sea.

“Strange it seemed when the strife
Shrank to a single man,
Fighting alone for his life!
One of the flagship’s crew
A second stood at a loss,
Then leaped and shouted and ran
And reached and lifted and threw
The desk with the wooden cross
Where the chaplain used to read.
He hurled it over the side.
‘Dago, cling to the Cross
And you shall be saved!’ he cried.
And the thing was so indeed.

“Strange, how the terrible battle-strain
Goes like wine to the brain!
Those were the words we heard him speak,
With a twitch of his leathern cheek.
Did he jest? would his own soul know?
‘_Dago, cling to the Cross
And you shall be saved!_’ he cried;
And indeed the thing was so.”

This the Admiral told
To the boys of alien race,
Each eager, sparkling face
Insistently outthrust
To hear and to behold;
He, robbed of his desire,
Gentle and blanched and frail,
War’s martyr, ashen-pale,
Burnt brittle in that fire,--
And now a long time dust.

DEATH AFTER WAR

Gone the Red Harvester, with heaped-up wain
Darkening against the blood-bright sky; yet lingers
The lone, gaunt Gleaner on the twilight plain,
Blind-gathering with the clutch of hungry fingers.

THE RIDDLE OF WRECK

Dark hemlocks, seventy and seven,
High on the hill-slope sigh in dream,
With plumy heads in heaven;
They silver the sunbeam.

One broken body of a tree,
Stabbed through and slashed by lightning keen,
Unsouled, and grim to see,
Hangs o’er the hushed ravine.

A hundred masts, a hundred more,
Crowd close against the sunset-fires.
Their late adventure o’er,
They mingle with the spires.

But one is lying prone, alone,
Where gleaming gulls to seaward sweep,
White sand of burial blown
In sheets about its sleep.

When lightning’s leashed, and sea is still,
Ye sacrificial mysteries dread,
Scapegoats of shore and hill,
Your riddle may be read.

THE COMMON STREET

The common street climbed up against the sky,
Gray meeting gray; and wearily to and fro
I saw the patient, common people go,
Each with his sordid burden trudging by.
And the rain dropped; there was not any sigh
Or stir of a live wind; dull, dull and slow
All motion; as a tale told long ago
The faded world; and creeping night drew nigh.

Then burst the sunset, flooding far and fleet,
Leavening the whole of life with magic leaven.
Suddenly down the long wet glistening hill
Pure splendor poured--and lo! the common street,
A golden highway into golden heaven,
With the dark shapes of men ascending still.

CALNAN’S CHRISTMAS

When you hear the fire-gongs beat fierce along the startled street,
See the great-limbed horses bound, and the gleaming engine sway,
And the driver in his place, with his fixed, heroic face,
Say a prayer for Calnan’s sake--he that died on Christmas day!

Cling! Cling! Each to his station!
Clang! Clang! Quick to clear the way!
(Christ keep the soldiers of salvation,
Fighting nameless battles in the war of every day!)

In the morning, blue and mild, of the Mother and the Child,
While the blessed bells were calling, thrilled the summons through
the wire;
In the morning, blue and mild, for a woman and a child
Died a man of gentle will, plunging on to fight the fire.

Ring, swing, bells in the steeple!
Ring the Child and ring the Star, as sweetly as ye may!
Ring, swing, bells, to tell the people
God’s good will to earthly men, the men of every day!

“Thirty-four” swung out agleam, with her mighty, bounding team;
Horses’ honor pricked them on, and they leaped as at a goad;
Jimmy Calnan in his place, with his clean-cut Irish face,
Iron hands upon the reins, eyes a-strain upon the road.

Clang! Clang! Quick to clear the way!
(Sweetly rang, above the clang, the bells of Christmas day.)

Tearing, plunging through the din, scarce a man can hold them in;
None on earth could pull them short: Mary Mother, guard from harm
Yonder woman straight ahead, stony-still with sudden dread,
And the little woman-child, with her waxen child in arm!

Oh, God’s calls, how swift they are! Oh, the Cross that hides the
Star!
Oh, the fire-gong beating fierce through the bells of Christmas
day!
Just a second there to choose, and a life to keep or lose--
To the curb he swung the horses, and he flung his life away!

Ring, swing, bells in the steeple!
Ring the Star and ring the Cross, for Star and Cross are one!
Ring, swing, bells, to tell the people
God is pleased with manly men, and deeds that they have done!

GUION

Is it so hard to die in the glory and fury of fight?
Sweet is the death for the flag--splendid the death when Fame
Snatches the sinking torch, and lifts it alive, alight!--
Let us remember his name who drank of a cup of flame
Silently pledging Duty, and would not shirk
Death in the plain day’s work.

Guion was running the lift
There at the doomed hotel
When the grim chance befell.
Twenty years, day out, day in,
Still the same had the day’s work been:
Up and down, steady and swift,
At the thrill of the calling bell.
Boy and man, and still the same;
Then--the wild moment came.

Fire and fear, and the rush, and the gush of the choking smoke;
Cries, and the hoarse command, and the engine’s clanging stroke;
Still, at the well-known call, in the wonted way,
Up and down, steady and swift,
Guion kept running the lift;
Many and many a life is his gift
That had else gone out that day.

How it billowed, the surge of black
On the delicate springtime sky!
The firemen knew they were come to the end of it all,--
They were beaten, the roof must fall.
Hands laid hold upon Guion: “You can’t go back!”
But he answered, “I’ll stand by!”
And again through the tumult--hark!
Shrill, oh pitiful-shrill,
The throb of the bell that summoned, the agony-thrill,
Calling,--it fell on his soul like the sting of a spark.
“One more trip!” said Guion; and steady and swift
Mounted the man and the lift.
--Save in the dust of ruin, that baffles ken,
None saw Guion again.

Year after year, when the great March sunsets flame,
Let us remember his name.

POVERTY ROW

Brave old neighbors in Poverty Row,
Why should we grudge to dwell with you?
Pinch of poverty well ye know--
Doubtful dinner and clouted shoe.
Grinned the wolf at your doors, and yet
You sang your songs and you said your say.
Lashed to labor by devil Debt,
All were manful, and some were gay.

What, old Chaucer! a royal jest
Once you made in your laughing verse:
“No more goldfinch-song in the nest--
Autumn nest of the empty purse!”
Master Spenser, your looks are spare;
Princes’ favors, how fleet they be!
Thinking that yours was the selfsame fare,
Crust or crumb shall be sweet to me.

Worshipful Shakespeare of Stratford town,
Prosperous-portly in doublet red,
What of the days when you first came down
To London city to earn your bread?
What of the lodging where Juliet’s face
Startled your dream with its Southern glow,
Flooding with splendor the sordid place?
That was a garret in Poverty Row!

Many a worthy has here, I ween,
Made brief sojourn or long abode:
Johnson, dining behind the screen;
Goldsmith, vagrant along the road;
Keats, ah, pitiful! poor and ill,
Harassed and hurt, in his short spring day;
Best Sir Walter, with flagging quill
Digging the mountain of debt away.

Needy comrade, whose evil star,
Pallid-frowning, decrees you wrong,
Greatly neighbored, in truth, we are;
Hold your heart up and sing your song!
Lift your eyes to the book-shelf where,
Glorious-gilded, a shining show,
Every man in his mansion fair,
Dwell the princes of Poverty Row!

THE INN OF THE STAR

When the Old Year plods down
Toward the end of the hill,
Where the white little town
Lies asleep, wonder-still,
Then he mends his dull pace,
For a ray, streaming far,
Strikes a gleam on his face
From the Inn of the Star.

Then the staff is set by,
And the shoon from his feet,
And the burden let lie,
And he sitteth at meat;
Old jests round the board,
Old songs round the blaze,
While the faint bells accord
Like the souls of old days.

In the sweet bed of peace
He shall sleep for a night,
And faith, like a fleece,
Lap him kindly and light;
Then the wind, crooning wild,
Mystic music shall seem,
And the brow of the Child
Be a light through his dream.

And we, too, follow down
The long slope of the hill:
See, the white little Town,
Where it shines, wonder-still!
Be our hopes quenched or bright,
Be our griefs what they are,
We shall sojourn a night
At the Inn of the Star.

MARINA SINGS

(_Pericles, Act V, Sc. i._)

This is the song Marina sang
To forlorn Pericles:
Silver the young voice rang.
The gray beard blew about his knees,
And the hair of his bowed head, like a veil,
Fell over his cheeks and blent with it:
He knew not anything.
Above him the Tyrian fold
Of the curtain billowed, fringed with gold,
As might beseem a king.
Sunset was rose on every sail
That did along the far sea flit,
And rose on the cedarn deck
Of the ship that at anchor swayed;
And the harbor was golden-lit.
He lifted not his neck
At the coming of the maid.
She swept him with her eyes,
As though some tender wing
Just touched a bleaching wreck
In sheeted sand that lies;
Then she began to sing.

THE SONG

Hush, ah hush! the sea is kind!
Lullaby is in the wind;
Grief the babe forgets to weep,
Lapped and spelled and laid to sleep:
His lip is wet with the milk of the spray;
He shall not wake till another day.
Ah hush! the sea is kind!

Who can tell, ah who can tell,
The cradling nurse’s croonèd spell?
While the slumber-web she weaves
Never nursling stirs or grieves:
The tears that drowned his sweet eye-beams
Are turned to mists of rainbow dreams.
Ah hush! she charms us well!

“All thy hurts I balm and bind;
All thy heart’s loves thou shalt find!”
Yea, this she murmurs, best of all:
“It was not loss that did befall!
All thy joys are put away;
They shall be thine another day!”
Ah hush! the sea is kind!

She sang; she trembled like a lyre;
Her pure eyes burned with azure fire;
About her lucent brow the hair
Played like light flames divine ones wear:
The maid was very fair.
But when she saw he gave no heed,--
Close-mantled up in ancient pain
As in some sad-wound weed,
Dumb as a shape of stone,
Being years past all moan,--
She tried no other strain,
But softly spake: “Most royal sir!”
He raised his head and looked at her.
So might a castaway, half dead,
Lift up his haggard head,
Waked by the swirl of sudden rain,
A cool, unhoped-for grace,
Against his tearless face:
And see, with happy-crazèd mind,
Upon his raft a Bright One stand,--
His love of youth, her grave long left behind
In some sweet-watered land.

THE KING’S DIAMOND

_This diamond he greets your wife withal
By the name of most kind hostess._

_Macbeth, Act II, sc. i._

Duncan the King,--Heaven rest his bier!--
Had a diamond icy-clear;
Clear as ice and fierce as flame,--
I wot not whence he had the same.
Its fellow was not in the land.
It shot keen shafts of every hue
On the old king’s trembling hand
Where the veins were large and blue.
A jewel of price was that indeed,
Fit to buy a prince’s life;
A royal gift for the lady wife
Of a kinsman bold and true
Who had served the king at need.
Who was he, but the Red Macbeth
That wrought the false Macdonwald’s death,
And drave the sea-wolf in dismay,
Sweyn the king of Norroway?
Being guest to that great thane,
Ere his limbs on couch had lain
Duncan sent that frozen flame
To Lady Gruach, the gracious dame.
(Clear as ice was the lady’s fame,
A flawless jewel indeed!)

Duncan the king at Colmkill sleeps,
So sound he will not turn or moan;
His slumber-draught was deep, I ween,
Bitter-spiced with daggers keen.
It is the Red Macbeth that keeps
Stern state upon the throne,
With Gruach, his kind queen.
(“Most kind,” the old King Duncan said,
Before he lay in his last bed.)

The Lady Gruach wears the crown,
She wears the glistering golden gown,
But yet she has not worn the ring
That was the guerdon of the king.
In the dark the diamond lies,
Seen of no vassal’s eyes.

Nor any vassal’s tongue can tell
How,--when the spying Day is sped
And sleeps with the safe dead;
When Gruach loosens her long hair
Midnight-black on her shoulders bare,
And sinks to the comfort of despair;
At the witches’ hour, when the shadows swell
As the swinging cressets flare,
And the small swart crickets harp and harp
On the tune remembered, torturing-sharp,
And the sobbing owlets wake,--
The diamond in the dark
Draws, draws her, like the spark
In the head of a deadly snake.

Then will she sit, and dully stare
On the cold diamond’s serpent-glare;
Her lip is fallen, she does not stir,
Her life is sucked into the gem;
It is as though the Powers malign
Had made with mystery in the mine
A thing to be like the soul of her:
It was a jest to them!
All the light upgathered they
That might have been a sunshine day,
Broadcast blessing and heavenly boon,
Peace of even and power of noon;
Seized the rays with a spell unknown,
Forced them into a core of fire
Like the glede of a covetous desire,
Shut them fast in the heart of a stone.
And hard, and harder than the sword,
They made the crystal, fiery-cored;
On steel that oft had steel withstood
Might it grave the word it would.
A gem of beauty and of bale,
A prisoned force in narrow pale,
Evil-perfect, pure of good!
--So will she sit, till naked Morn
Peers at the world with visage white
Like a sleeper roused in fright,
Aghast and most forlorn.

What of the end? since end must be.
She knows a skilled artificer,
And he shall set in a dagger’s haft
The thing that is like the soul of her.
When first she thought thereon, she laughed,
And then she shuddered fearfully.
Ah, what if Heaven no end will grant,
Resolved in any heats of wrath,
To that which for its symbol hath
The unsubduable adamant?
Ah, what if like a falling jewel
The soul whose light was mocking-cruel,
Through gulfs of loss unplummeted
Should fall, and fall, forevermore,
Fire of torment at its core?
Oh, horrible and leaden dread!
The grace of God blot out our sins!
--The women knock at the chamber door,
The queen starts up, the day begins.

DEATH-TRYST

(_Shelley, 1822: Tennyson, 1892._)