Chimneysmoke

The human cadence and the subtle chime
Of little laughters—

TO A DISCARDED MIRROR

[TN: Mirror Image Translated below.]

Dear glass, before your silver pane

My lady used to tend her hair;

And yet I search your disc in vain

To find some shadow of her there.

I thought your magic, deep and bright,

Might still some dear reflection hold:

Some glint of eyes or shoulders white,

Some flash of gowns she wore of old.

Your polished round must still recall

The laughing face, the neck like snow—

Remember, on your lonely wall,

That Helen used you long ago!

TO A CHILD

The greatest poem ever known
Is one all poets have outgrown:
The poetry, innate, untold,
Of being only four years old.

Still young enough to be a part
Of Nature's great impulsive heart,
Born comrade of bird, beast and tree
And unselfconscious as the bee—

And yet with lovely reason skilled
Each day new paradise to build;
Elate explorer of each sense,
Without dismay, without pretence!

In your unstained transparent eyes
There is no conscience, no surprise:
Life's queer conundrums you accept,
Your strange divinity still kept.

Being, that now absorbs you, all
Harmonious, unit, integral,
Will shred into perplexing bits,—
Oh, contradictions of the wits!

And Life, that sets all things in rhyme,
May make you poet, too, in time—
But there were days, O tender elf,
When you were Poetry itself!

TO A VERY YOUNG GENTLEMAN

My child, what painful vistas are before you!

What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps—

Indignities from aunts who "just adore" you,

And chicken-pox and measles, croup and mumps!

I don't wish to dismay you,—it's not fair to,

Promoted now from bassinet to crib,—

But, O my babe, what troubles flesh is heir to

Since God first made so free with Adam's rib!

Laboriously you will proceed with teething;

When teeth are here, you'll meet the dentist's chair;

They'll teach you ways of walking, eating, breathing,

That stoves are hot, and how to brush your hair;

And so, my poor, undaunted little stripling,

By bruises, tears, and trousers you will grow,

And, borrowing a leaf from Mr. Kipling,

I'll wish you luck, and moralize you so:

If you can think up seven thousand methods

Of giving cooks and parents heart disease;

Can rifle pantry-shelves, and then give death odds

By water, fire, and falling out of trees;

If you can fill your every boyish minute

With sixty seconds' worth of mischief done,

Yours is the house and everything that's in it,

And, which is more, you'll be your father's son!

What years of youthful ills and pangs and bumps—

TO AN OLD-FASHIONED POET

(Lizette Woodworth Reese)

Most tender poet, when the gods confer

They save your gracile songs a nook apart,

And bless with Time's untainted lavender

The ageless April of your singing heart.

You, in an age unbridled, ne'er declined

The appointed patience that the Muse decrees,

Until, deep in the flower of the mind

The hovering words alight, like bridegroom bees.

By casual praise or casual blame unstirred

The placid gods grant gifts where they belong:

To you, who understand, the perfect word,

The recompensed necessities of song.

BURNING LEAVES IN SPRING

When withered leaves are lost in flame

Their eddying ghosts, a thin blue haze,

Blow through the thickets whence they came

On amberlucent autumn days.

The cool green woodland heart receives

Their dim, dissolving, phantom breath;

In young hereditary leaves

They see their happy life-in-death.

My minutes perish as they glow—

Time burns my crazy bonfire through;

But ghosts of blackened hours still blow,

Eternal Beauty, back to you!

BURNING LEAVES, NOVEMBER

These are folios of April,

All the library of spring,

Missals gilt and rubricated

With the frost's illumining.

Ruthless, we destroy these treasures,

Set the torch with hand profane—

Gone, like Alexandrian vellums,

Like the books of burnt Louvain!

Yet these classics are immortal:

O collectors, have no fear,

For the publisher will issue

New editions every year.

A VALENTINE GAME

(For Two Players)

They have a game, thus played:
He says unto his maid

What are those shining things
So brown, so golden brown?

And she, in doubt, replies

How now, what shining things
So brown?

But then, she coming near,
To see more clear,
He looks again, and cries
(All startled with surprise)

Sweet wretch, they are your eyes,
So brown, so brown!

The climax and the end consist
In kissing, and in being kissed.

FOR A BIRTHDAY

At two years old the world he sees
Must seem expressly made to please!
Such new-found words and games to try,
Such sudden mirth, he knows not why,

So many curiosities!

As life about him, by degrees
Discloses all its pageantries
He watches with approval shy

At two years old.

With wonders tired he takes his ease
At dusk, upon his mother's knees:
A little laugh, a little cry,
Put toys to bed, then "seepy-bye"—
The world is made of such as these

At two years old.

A Birthday

KEATS

(1821-1921)

When sometimes, on a moony night, I've passed

A street-lamp, seen my doubled shadow flee,

I've noticed how much darker, clearer cast,

The full moon poured her silhouette of me.

Just so of spirits. Beauty's silver light

Limns with a ray more pure, and tenderer too:

Men's clumsy gestures, to unearthly sight,

Surpass the shapes they show by human view.

On this brave world, where few such meteors fell,

Her youngest son, to save us, Beauty flung.

He suffered and descended into hell—

And comforts yet the ardent and the young.

Drunken of moonlight, dazed by draughts of sky,

Dizzy with stars, his mortal fever ran:

His utterance a moon-enchanted cry

Not free from folly—for he too was man.

And now and here, a hundred years away,

Where topless towers shadow golden streets,

The young men sit, nooked in a cheap café,

Perfectly happy ... talking about Keats.

TO H. F. M.
a sonnet in sunlight

This is a day for sonnets: Oh how clear

Our splendid cliffs and summits lift the gaze—

If all the perfect moments of the year

Were poured and gathered in one sudden blaze,
Then, then perhaps, in some endowered phrase

My flat strewn words would rise and come more near

To tell of you. Your beauty and your praise

Would fall like sunlight on this paper here.

Then I would build a sonnet that would stand

Proud and perennial on this pale bright sky;

So tall, so steep, that it might stay the hand

Of Time, the dusty wrecker. He would sigh

To tear my strong words down. And he would say:
"That song he built for her, one summer day."

QUICKENING

Such little, puny things are words in rhyme:

Poor feeble loops and strokes as frail as hairs;

You see them printed here, and mark their chime,

And turn to your more durable affairs.
Yet on such petty tools the poet dares

To run his race with mortar, bricks and lime,

And draws his frail stick to the point, and stares

To aim his arrow at the heart of Time.

Intangible, yet pressing, hemming in,

This measured emptiness engulfs us all,

And yet he points his paper javelin

And sees it eddy, waver, turn, and fall,

And feels, between delight and trouble torn,
The stirring of a sonnet still unborn.

AT A WINDOW SILL

To write a sonnet needs a quiet mind....
I paused and pondered, tried again. To write....
Raising the sash, I breathed the winter night:
Papers and small hot room were left behind.
Against the gusty purple, ribbed and spined
With golden slots and vertebræ of light
Men's cages loomed. Down sliding from a height
An elevator winked as it declined.

Coward! There is no quiet in the brain—
If pity burns it not, then beauty will:
Tinder it is for every blowing spark.
Uncertain whether this is bliss or pain
The unresting mind will gaze across the sill
From high apartment windows, in the dark.

THE RIVER OF LIGHT

I. Broadway, 103rd to 96th.

Lights foam and bubble down the gentle grade:
Bright shine chop sueys and rôtisseries;
In pink translucence glowingly displayed
See camisole and stocking and chemise.
Delicatessen windows full of cheese—
Above, the chimes of church-bells toll and fade—
And then, from off some distant Palisade
That gluey savor on the Jersey breeze!

The burning bulbs, in green and white and red,
Spell out a Change of Program Sun., Wed., Fri.,
A clicking taxi spins with ruby spark.
There is a sense of poising near the head
Of some great flume of brightness, flowing by
To pour in gathering torrent through the dark.

II. Below 96th

The current quickens, and in golden flow
Hurries its flotsam downward through the night—
Here are the rapids where the undertow
Whirls endless motors in a gleaming flight.
From blazing tributaries, left and right,
Influent streams of blue and amber grow.
Columbus Circle eddies: all below
Is pouring flame, a gorge of broken light.

See how the burning river boils in spate,
Channeled by cliffs of insane jewelry,
Painting a rosy roof on cloudy air—
And just about ten minutes after eight,
Tossing a surf of color to the sky
It bursts in cataracts upon Times Square!

OF HER GLORIOUS MADNESS

The city's mad: through her prodigious veins
What errant, strange, eccentric humors thrill:
Day, when her cataracts of sunlight spill—
Night, golden-panelled with her window panes;
The toss of wind-blown skirts; and who can drill
Forever his fierce heart with checking reins?
Cruel and mad, my statisticians say—
Ah, but she raves in such a gallant way!

Brave madness, built for beauty and the sun—
In such a town who can be sane? Not I.
Of clashing colors all her moods are spun—
A scarlet anger and a golden cry.
This frantic town where madcap mischiefs run
They ask to take the veil, and be a nun!

IN AN AUCTION ROOM

(Letter of John Keats to Fanny Browne, Anderson Galleries, March 15, 1920.)

To Dr. A. S. W. Rosenbach.

H ow about this lot? said the auctioneer;
One hundred, may I say, just for a start?
Between the plum-red curtains, drawn apart,
A written sheet was held.... And strange to hear
(Dealer, would I were steadfast as thou art)
The cold quick bids. (Against you in the rear!)
The crimson salon, in a glow more clear
Burned bloodlike purple as the poet's heart.

Song that outgrew the singer! Bitter Love
That broke the proud hot heart it held in thrall;
Poor script, where still those tragic passions move—
Eight hundred bid: fair warning: the last call:
The soul of Adonais, like a star....
Sold for eight hundred dollars—Doctor R.!

EPITAPH FOR A POET WHO WROTE NO POETRY

"It is said that a poet has died young in the breast of the most stolid."—Robert Louis Stevenson.

What was the service of this poet? He Who blinked the blinding dazzle-rays that run
Where life profiles its edges to the sun,
And still suspected much he could not see.
Clay-stopped, yet in his taciturnity
There lay the vein of glory, known to none;
And moods of secret smiling, only won
When peace and passion, time and sense, agree.

Fighting the world he loved for chance to brood,
Ignorant when to embrace, when to avoid
His loves that held him in their vital clutch—
This was his service, his beatitude;
This was the inward trouble he enjoyed
Who knew so little, and who felt so much.

SONNET BY A GEOMETER

the circle

Few things are perfect: we bear Eden's scar;
Yet faulty man was godlike in design
That day when first, with stick and length of twine,
He drew me on the sand. Then what could mar
His joy in that obedient mystic line;
And then, computing with a zeal divine,
He called π 3-point-14159
And knew my lovely circuit 2 π r!

A circle is a happy thing to be—
Think how the joyful perpendicular
Erected at the kiss of tangency
Must meet my central point, my avatar!
They talk of 14 points: yet only 3
Determine every circle: Q. E. D.

TO A VAUDEVILLE TERRIER SEEN ON A LEASH, IN THE PARK

Three times a day—at two, at seven, at nine—
O terrier, you play your little part:
Absurd in coat and skirt you push a cart,
With inner anguish walk a tight-rope line.
Up there, before the hot and dazzling shine
You must be rigid servant of your art,
Nor watch those fluffy cats—your doggish heart
Might leap and then betray you with a whine!

But sometimes, when you've faithfully rehearsed,
Your trainer takes you walking in the park,
Straining to sniff the grass, to chase a frog.
The leash is slipped, and then your joy will burst—
Adorable it is to run and bark,
To be—alas, how seldom—just a dog!

You must be rigid servant of your art!

TO AN OLD FRIEND

(For Lloyd Williams.)

I like to dream of some established spot
Where you and I, old friend, an evening through
Under tobacco's fog, streaked gray and blue,
Might reconsider laughters unforgot.
Beside a hearth-glow, golden-clear and hot,
I'd hear you tell the oddities men do.
The clock would tick, and we would sit, we two—
Life holds such meetings for us, does it not?

Happy are men when they have learned to prize
The sure unvarnished virtue of their friends,
The unchanged kindness of a well-known face:
On old fidelities our world depends,
And runs a simple course in honest wise,
Not a mere taxicab shot wild through space!

TO A BURLESQUE SOUBRETTE

Upstage the great high-shafted beefy choir

Squawked in 2000 watts of orange glare—
You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care

Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire.

Flung from the roof, spots red and yellow burned

And followed you. The blatant brassy clang
Of instruments drowned out the words you sang,

But goldenly you capered, twirled and turned.

Boyish and slender, child-limbed, quick and proud,

A sprite of irresistible disdain,
Fair as a jonquil in an April rain,

You seemed too sweet an imp for that dull crowd....

And then, behind the scenes, I heard you say,
"O Gawd, I got a hellish cold to-day!"

You came, and impudent and deuce-may-care
Danced where the gutter flamed with footlight fire.

THOUGHTS WHILE PACKING A TRUNK

The sonnet is a trunk, and you must pack

With care, to ship frail baggage far away;
The octet is the trunk; sestet, the tray;

Tight, but not overloaded, is the knack.
First, at the bottom, heavy thoughts you stack,

And in the chinks your adjectives you lay—
Your phrases, folded neatly as you may,

Stowing a syllable in every crack.

Then, in the tray, your daintier stuff is hid:

The tender quatrain where your moral sings—

Be careful, though, lest as you close the lid

You crush and crumple all these fragile things.

Your couplet snaps the hasps and turns the key—
Ship to The Editor, marked C. O. D.

STREETS

I have seen streets where strange enchantment broods:
Old ruddy houses where the morning shone
In seemly quiet on their tranquil moods,
Across the sills white curtains outward blown.
Their marble steps were scoured as white as bone
Where scrubbing housemaids toiled on wounded knee—
And yet, among all streets that I have known
These placid byways give least peace to me.

In such a house, where green light shining through
(From some back garden) framed her silhouette
I saw a girl, heard music blithely sung.
She stood there laughing, in a dress of blue,
And as I went on, slowly, there I met
An old, old woman, who had once been young.

TO THE ONLY BEGETTER

I have no hope to make you live in rhyme
Or with your beauty to enrich the years—
Enough for me this now, this present time;
The greater claim for greater sonneteers.
But O how covetous I am of NOW—
Dear human minutes, marred by human pains—
I want to know your lips, your cheek, your brow,
And all the miracles your heart contains,
I wish to study all your changing face,
Your eyes, divinely hurt with tenderness;
I hope to win your dear unstinted grace
For these blunt rhymes and what they would express.
Then may you say, when others better prove:—
"Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love."

When all my trivial rhymes are blotted out,
Vanished our days, so precious and so few,
If some should wonder what we were about
And what the little happenings we knew:
I wish that they might know how, night by night,
My pencil, heavy in the sleepy hours,
Sought vainly for some gracious way to write
How much this love is ours, and only ours.
How many evenings, as you drowsed to sleep,
I read to you by tawny candle-glow,
And watched you down the valley dim and deep
Where poppies and the April flowers grow.
Then knelt beside your pillow with a prayer,
And loved the breath of pansies in your hair.

PEDOMETER

My thoughts beat out in sonnets while I walk,
And every evening on the homeward street
I find the rhythm of my marching feet
Throbs into verses (though the rhyme may balk).
I think the sonneteers were walking men:
The form is dour and rigid, like a clamp,
But with the swing of legs the tramp, tramp, tramp
Of syllables begins to thud, and then—
Lo! while you seek a rhyme for hook or crook
shed your shabby coat, and you are kith
To all great walk-and-singers—Meredith,
And Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Keats, and Rupert Brooke!
Free verse is poor for walking, but a sonnet—
O marvellous to stride and brood upon it!

HOSTAGES

"He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune."—Bacon.

Aye, Fortune, thou hast hostage of my best!

I, that was once so heedless of thy frown,
Have armed thee cap-à-pie to strike me down,

Have given thee blades to hold against my breast.
My virtue, that was once all self-possessed,

Is parceled out in little hands, and brown
Bright eyes, and in a sleeping baby's gown:

To threaten these will put me to the test.

Sure, since there are these pitiful poor chinks

Upon the makeshift armor of my heart,

For thee no honor lies in such a fight!

And thou wouldst shame to vanquish one, me-thinks,

Who came awake with such a painful start

To hear the coughing of a child at night.

Hostages.

ARS DURA

How many evenings, walking soberly
Along our street all dappled with rich sun,
I please myself with words, and happily
Time rhymes to footfalls, planning how they run;
And yet, when midnight comes, and paper lies
Clean, white, receptive, all that one can ask,
Alas for drowsy spirit, weary eyes
And traitor hand that fails the well loved task!

Who ever learned the sonnet's bitter craft
But he had put away his sleep, his ease,
The wine he loved, the men with whom he laughed
To brood upon such thankless tricks as these?
And yet, such joy does in that craft abide
He greets the paper as the groom the bride!

O. HENRY—APOTHECARY

("O. Henry" once worked in a drug-store in Greensboro, N. C.)

Where once he measured camphor, glycerine,
Quinine and potash, peppermint in bars,
And all the oils and essences so keen
That druggists keep in rows of stoppered jars—
Now, blender of strange drugs more volatile,
The master pharmacist of joy and pain
Dispenses sadness tinctured with a smile
And laughter that dissolves in tears again.

O brave apothecary! You who knew
What dark and acid doses life prefers
And yet with friendly face resolved to brew
These sparkling potions for your customers—
In each prescription your Physician writ
You poured your rich compassion and your wit!

FOR THE CENTENARY OF KEATS'S SONNET

(1816)

"On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer."

I knew a scientist, an engineer,
Student of tensile strengths and calculus,
A man who loved a cantilever truss
And always wore a pencil on his ear.
My friend believed that poets all were queer,
And literary folk ridiculous;
But one night, when it chanced that three of us
Were reading Keats aloud, he stopped to hear.

Lo, a new planet swam into his ken!
His eager mind reached for it and took hold.
Ten years are by: I see him now and then,
And at alumni dinners, if cajoled,
He mumbles gravely, to the cheering men:—
Much have I travelled in the realms of gold.

TWO O'CLOCK

Night after night goes by: and clocks still chime

And stars are changing patterns in the dark,

And watches tick, and over-puissant Time

Benumbs the eager brain. The dogs that bark,

The trains that roar and rattle in the night,

The very cats that prowl, all quiet find

And leave the darkness empty, silent quite:

Sleep comes to chloroform the fretting mind.

So all things end: and what is left at last?

Some scribbled sonnets tossed upon the floor,

A memory of easy days gone past,

A run-down watch, a pipe, some clothes we wore—

And in the darkened room I lean to know

How warm her dreamless breath does pause and flow.

THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER

Ah very sweet! If news should come to you
Some afternoon, while waiting for our eve,
That the great Manager had made me leave
To travel on some territory new;
And that, whatever homeward winds there blew,
I could not touch your hand again, nor heave
The logs upon our hearth and bid you weave
Some wistful tale before the flames that grew....

Then, when the sudden tears had ceased to blind
Your pansied eyes, I wonder if you could
Remember rightly, and forget aright?
Remember just your lad, uncouthly good,
Forgetting when he failed in spleen or spite?
Could you remember him as always kind?

THE WEDDED LOVER

I read in our old journals of the days
When our first love was April-sweet and new,
How fair it blossomed and deep-rooted grew
Despite the adverse time; and our amaze
At moon and stars and beauty beyond praise
That burgeoned all about us: gold and blue
The heaven arched us in, and all we knew
Was gentleness. We walked on happy ways.

They said by now the path would be more steep,
The sunsets paler and less mild the air;
Rightly we heeded not: it was not true.
We will not tell the secret—let it keep.
I know not how I thought those days so fair
These being so much fairer, spent with you.

TO YOU, REMEMBERING THE PAST

When we were parted, sweet, and darkness came,
I used to strike a match, and hold the flame
Before your picture and would breathless mark
The answering glimmer of the tiny spark
That brought to life the magic of your eyes,
Their wistful tenderness, their glad surprise.

Holding that mimic torch before your shrine
I used to light your eyes and make them mine;
Watch them like stars set in a lonely sky,
Whisper my heart out, yearning for reply;
Summon your lips from far across the sea
Bidding them live a twilight hour with me.

Then, when the match was shrivelled into gloom,
Lo—you were with me in the darkened room.

CHARLES AND MARY

(December 27, 1834.)

Lamb died just before I left town, and Mr. Ryle of the E. India House, one of his extors., notified it to me.... He said Miss L. was resigned and composed at the event, but it was from her malady, then in mild type, so that when she saw her brother dead, she observed on his beauty when asleep and apprehended nothing further.

—Letter of John Rickman, 24 January, 1835.

I hear their voices still: the stammering one
Struggling with some absurdity of jest;
Her quiet words that puzzle and protest
Against the latest outrage of his fun.
So wise, so simple—has she never guessed
That through his laughter, love and terror run?
For when her trouble came, and darkness pressed,
He smiled, and fought her madness with a pun.

Through all those years it was his task to keep
Her gentle heart serenely mystified.
If Fate's an artist, this should be his pride—
When, in that Christmas season, he lay dead,
She innocently looked. "I always said
That Charles is really handsome when asleep."

TO A GRANDMOTHER

At six o'clock in the evening,

The time for lullabies,

My son lay on my mother's lap

With sleepy, sleepy eyes!

(O drowsy little manny boy,

With sleepy, sleepy eyes!)

I heard her sing, and rock him,

And the creak of the swaying chair,

And the old dear cadence of the words

Came softly down the stair.

And all the years had vanished,

All folly, greed, and stain—

The old, old song, the creaking chair,

The dearest arms again!

(O lucky little manny boy,

To feel those arms again!)

DIARISTS

They catalogue their minutes: Now, now, now,

Is Actual, amid the fugitive;

Take ink and pen (they say) for that is how

We snare this flying life, and make it live.

So to their little pictures, and they sieve

Their happinesses: fields turned by the plough,

The afterglow that summer sunsets give,

The razor concave of a great ship's bow.

O gallant instinct, folly for men's mirth!

Type cannot burn and sparkle on the page.

No glittering ink can make this written word

Shine clear enough to speak the noble rage

And instancy of life. All sonnets blurred

The sudden mood of truth that gave them birth.

THE LAST SONNET

Suppose one knew that never more might one
Put pen to sonnet, well loved task; that now
These fourteen lines were all he could allow
To say his message, be forever done;
How he would scan the word, the line, the rhyme,
Intent to sum in dearly chosen phrase
The windy trees, the beauty of his days,
Life's pride and pathos in one verse sublime.
How bitter then would be regret and pang
For former rhymes he dallied to refine,
For every verse that was not crystalline....
And if belike this last one feebly rang,
Honor and pride would cast it to the floor
Facing the judge with what was done before.

THE SAVAGE

Civilization causes me
Alternate fits: disgust and glee.

Buried in piles of glass and stone
My private spirit moves alone,

Where every day from eight to six
I keep alive by hasty tricks.

But I am simple in my soul;
My mind is sullen to control.

At dusk I smell the scent of earth,
And I am dumb—too glad for mirth.

I know the savors night can give,
And then, and then, I live, I live!

No man is wholly pure and free,
For that is not his destiny,

But though I bend, I will not break:
And still be savage, for Truth's sake.

God damns the easily convinced
(Like Pilate, when his hands he rinsed).

ST. PAUL'S AND WOOLWORTH

I stood on the pavement

Where I could admire

Behind the brown chapel

The cream and gold spire.

Above, gilded Lightning

Swam high on his ball—

I saw the noon shadow

The church of St. Paul.

And was there a meaning?

(My fancy would run),

Saint Paul in the shadow,

Saint Frank in the sun!

ADVICE TO A CITY

O city, cage your poets! Hem them in

And roof them over from the April sky—

Clatter them round with babble, ceaseless din,

And drown their voices with your thunder cry.

Forbid their free feet on the windy hills,

And harness them to daily ruts of stone—

(In florists' windows lock the daffodils)

And never, never let them be alone!

For they are curst, said poets, curst and lewd,

And freedom gives their tongues uncanny wit,

And granted silence, thought and solitude

They (absit omen!) might make Song of it.

So cage them in, and stand about them thick,

And keep them busy with their daily bread;

And should their eyes seem strange, ah, then be quick

To interrupt them ere the word be said....

For, if their hearts burn with sufficient rage,

With wasted sunsets and frustrated youth,

Some day they'll cry, on some disturbing page,

The savage, sweet, unpalatable truth!