The Project Gutenberg eBook of In Various Moods: Poems and Verses
Title: In Various Moods: Poems and Verses
Author: Irving Bacheller
Release date: June 30, 2016 [eBook #52457]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
Credits: Produced by David Widger from page images generously
provided by the Internet Archive
IN VARIOUS MOODS
Poems And Verses
By Irving Bacheller
Harper & Brothers Publishers New York And London
MCMX
CONTENTS
BALLAD OF THE SABRE CROSS AND 7
IN VARIOUS MOODS
THE SOWERS
Written for the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of St. Lawrence
University
I know the hills that lift the distant plain,
The college hall—the spirit of its throngs,
The meadows and the waving fields of grain,
Full well I know their colors and their songs.
I know the storied gates where love was told,
The grove where walked the muses and the seers,
The river, dark or touched with light of gold,
Or slow, or swift so like the flowing years.
I know not these who sadly sit them down
And while the night in half-forgotten days;
I know not these who wear the hoary crown
And find a pathos in the merry lays.
Here Memory, with old wisdom on her lips,
A finger points at each familiar name—
Some writ on water, stone or stranded ships,
Some in the music of the trump of fame.
Here oft, I think, beloved voices call
Behind a weathered door 'neath ancient trees.
I hear sad echoes in the empty hall,
The wide world's lyric in the harping breeze.
It sings of them I loved and left of old,
Of my fond hope to bring a worthy prize—
Some well-earned token, better far than gold,
And lay it humbly down before their eyes.
And tell them it were rightly theirs—not mine,
An harvest come of their own word and deed;
I strove with tares that threatened my design
To make the crop as noble as the seed.
So they might see it paid—that life they knew—
A toilsome web and knit of many a skein,
With love's sweet sacrifice all woven through,
And broken threads of hope and joy and pain.
On root-bound acres, pent with rocks and stones,
Their hope of wealth and leisure slowly died.
They gave their strength in toil that racked their
bones,
They gave their youth, their beauty, and their pride.
Ere Nature's last defence had been withdrawn
That those they loved might have what they could
not—
The power of learning wedded to their brawn
And to the simple virtue there begot.
My college! Once—it was a day of old—
I saw thy panes aglow with sunset fire
And heard the story of thy purpose told
And felt the tide of infinite desire.
In thee I saw the gates of mystery
That led to dream-lit, vast, inviting lands—
Far backward to the bourne of history
And forward to the House not made with hands.
You gave the husbandman a richer yield
Than any that his granary may hold;
You called his children from the shop and field,
Taught them to sow and reap an undredfold.
To sow the seed of truth and hope and peace,
And take the root of error from the sod;
To be of those who make the sure increase,
Forever growing, in the lands of God.
THE NEW WORLD
Read before the Lambda Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, June 24, 1902
Idle gods of Old Olympus—Zeus and his immortal
clan,
Grown in stature, grace and wisdom, meekly serve
the will of man.
Every elemental giant has been trained to seek and
raise
Gates of the "impossible" that lead to undiscovered
ways.
Man hath come to stranger things than ever bard
or prophet saw.
Lo, he sits in judgment on the gods and doth amend
their law.
Now reality with wonder-deed of ancient fable teems—
Fact is wrought of golden fancy from the old
Homeric dreams.
Zeus, with thought to load the fulmen gathered for
his mighty sling,
Hurls across the ocean desert as 'twere ut a pebble-fling;
Titans move the gathered harvests, push the loaded
ship and train,
Rushing swiftly 'twixt horizons, shoulder to the
hurricane.
Hermes, of the winged sandal, strides from midday
into night.
Pallas, with a nobler passion, turns the hero from
his fight.
Vulcan melts the sundered mountain into girder,
beam and frieze.
Where the mighty wheel is turning hear the groan
of Hercules.
Eyes of man, forever reaching where immensity
envails,
View the ships of God in full career with light upon
their sails.
Read the tonnage, log, and compass—measure each
magnetic chain
Fastened to the fiery engine towing in the upper
main.
Man hath searched the small infernos, narrow as a
needle's eye,
Rent the veil of littleness 'neath which unnumbered
dragons lie.
Conquered pain with halted feeling, baned the
falling House of Life,
As with breeding rats infested, ravening in bloody
strife.
Change hath shorn the distances from little unto
mighty things—
Aye, from man to God, from poor to rich, from
peasants unto kings.
Justice, keen-eyed, Saxon-hearted, scans the records
of the world,
Makes the heartless tyrant tremble when her stem
rebuke is hurled.
Thought-ways, reaching under oceans or above the
mountain height,
Drain to distant, darkened realms the ceaseless
overflow of light.
In the shortened ways of travel Charity shall seek
her goal,
Find the love her burden merits in the commerce
of the soul.
Right must rule in earth and heaven, though its
coming here be slow;
Gods must grow in grace and wisdom as the mind
of man doth grow;
Law and Prophet be forgotten, deities uprise and
fall
Till one God, one hope, one rule of life be great
enough for all.
FAITH
Being some words of counsel from an old Yankee to his son Bill when the
latter is about to enter college.
Faith, Bill? You remember how ye used to wake
an' cry,
An' when I lit a candle how the bugaboos 'u'd fly?
Well, faith is like a father in the dark of every
night—
It tells ye not t' be afraid, an' mebbe strikes a
light.
Now, don't expect too much o' God, it wouldn't
be quite fair
If fer anything ye wanted ye could only swap a
prayer;
I'd pray fer yours, an' you fer mine, an' Deacon
Henry Hospur,
He wouldn't hev a thing t' do but lay abed an'
prosper.
If all things come so easy, Bill, they'd hev but little
worth,
An' some one with a gift o' prayer 'u'd mebbe own
the earth.
It's the toil ye give t' git a thing—the sweat an'
blood an' care—
That makes the kind o' argument that ought to
back yer prayer.
Fer the record o' yer doin'—I believe the soul is
planned
With some self-workin' register t' tell jest how ye
stand.
An' it won't take any cipherin' t' show, that
fearful day,
If ye've multiplied yer talents well, er thrown 'em
all away.
When yer feet are on the summit, an' the wide
horizon clears,
An' ye look back on yer pathway windin' thro' the
vale o' tears;
When ye see how much ye've trespassed, an' how
fur ye've gone astray,
Ye'll know the way o' Providence ain't apt t' be
your way.
God knows as much as can be known, but I don't
think it's true.
He knows of all the dangers in the path o' me an'
you.
If I shet my eyes an' hurl a stun that kills—the
King o' Siam,
The chances are that God 'll be as much surprised
as I am.
If ye pray with faith believin', why, ye'll certainly
receive,
But that God 'll break His own good law is more 'n
I'll believe.
If it grieves Him when a sparrow falls, it's sure as
anything,
He'd hev turned the arrow, if He could, that broke
the sparrow's wing.
Ye can read old Nature's history that's writ in rocks
an' stones,
Ye can see her throbbin' vitals an' her mighty rack
o' bones,
But the soul o' her—the livin' God, a little child
may know
No lens er rule o' cipherin' can ever hope t' show.
There's a part o' God's creation very handy t' yer
view,
All the truth o' life is in it an' remember, Bill, it's
you.
An' after all yer science ye must look up in yer
mind
An' learn its own astronomy the star o' peace t' find.
There's good old Aunt Samanthy Jane that all her
journey long
Has led her heart to labor with a reveille of song.
Her folks hev robbed an' left her, but her faith in
goodness grows;
She hasn't any larnin', but I tell ye, Bill, she knows!
She's hed her share o' troubles; I remember well
the day
We took her t' the poor-house—she was singin' all
the way.
Ye needn't be afraid t' come where stormy Jordan
flows,
If all the l'arnin' ye can git has taught ye half she
knows.
There's a many big departments in this ancient
school o' God,
An' ye keep right on a l'arnin' till ye lay beneath
the sod,
All the books an' apperaytus, all the wisdom o'
the seers
Will be jest a preparation fer the study o' the years.
BALLAD OF THE SABRE CROSS AND 7
A troop of sorrels led by Vic and then a troop of
bays,
In the backward ranks of the foaming flanks a
double troop of grays;
The horses are galloping muzzle to tail, and back
of the waving manes
The troopers sit, their brows all knit, a left hand
on the reins.
Their hats are gray, and their shirts of blue have
a sabre cross and 7,
And little they know, when the trumpeters blow,
they'll halt at the gates of heaven.
Their colors have dipped at the top of a ridge—
how the long line of cavalry waves!—
And over the hills, at a gallop that kills, they are
riding to get to their graves.
"I heard the scouts jabber all night," said one;
"they peppered my dreams with alarm.
"That old Ree scout had his medicine out an'
was tryin' to fix up a charm."
There are miles of tepees just ahead, and the
warriors in hollow and vale
Lie low in the grass till the troopers pass and then
they creep over the trail.
The trumpets have sounded—the General shouts!
He pulls up and turns to the rear;
"We can't go back—they've covered our track—
we've got t' fight 'em here."
He rushes a troop to the point of the ridge, where
the valley opens wide,
And Smith deploys a line of the boys to stop the
coming tide.
A fire flames up on the skirt of the hills; in every
deep ravine
The savages yell, like the fiends of hell, behind a
smoky screen.
"Where's Reno?" said Custer. "Why don't he
charge? It isn't a time to dally!"
And he waves his hat, this way and that, as he
looks across the valley.
There's a wild stampede of horses; every man in
the skirmish line
Stands at his post as a howling host rush up the
steep incline.
Their rifles answer a deadly fire and they fall with
a fighting frown,
Till two by two, in a row of blue, the skirmish line
is down.
A trooper stood over his wounded mate. "No use
o' yer tryin't' fight,
"Blow out yer brains—you'll suffer hell-pains
when ye go to the torture to-night.
"We tackled too much; 'twas a desperate game—
I knowed we never could win it.
"Custer is dead—they're all of 'em dead an' I
shall be dead in a minute."
They're all of them down at the top of the ridge;
the sabre cross and 7
On many a breast, as it lies at rest, is turned to the
smoky heaven.
Three wounded men are up and away; they're
running hard for their lives,
While bloody corses of riders and horses are
quivering under the knives.
Some troopers watch from a distant hill with hope
that never tires;
There's a reeling dance on the river's edge; its
echoes fill the night;
In the valley dim its shadows swim on a lengthening
pool of light.
The scattered troops of Reno look and listen with
bated breath,
While bugle strains on lonely plains are searching
the valley of death.
"What's that like tumbled grave-stones on the
hilltop there ahead?"
Said the trooper peering through his glass, "My
God! sir, it's the dead!
"How white they look! How white they look!
they've killed 'em—every one!
"An' they're stripped as bare as babies an' they're
rotting in the sun."
And Custer—back of the tumbled line on a slope
of the ridge we found him;
And three men deep in a bloody heap, they fell as
they rallied 'round him.
The plains lay brown, like a halted sea held firm
by the leash of God;
In the rolling waves we dug their graves and left
them under the sod.
WHISPERIN' BILL
So ye 're runnin' fer Congress, mister? Le 'me tell
ye 'bout my son—
Might make you fellers carefuller down there in
Washington—
He clings to his rifle an' uniform—folks call him
Whisperin' Bill;
An' I tell ye the war ain't over yit up here on
Bowman's Hill.
This dooryard is his battle-field—le's see, he was nigh
sixteen
When Sumter fell, an' as likely a boy as ever this
world has seen;
An' what with the news o' battles lost, the speeches
an' all the noise,
I guess ev'ry farm in the neighborhood lost a part
of its crop o' boys.
'T was harvest time when Bill left home; ev'ry stalk
in the fields o' rye
Seemed to stan' tiptoe to see him off an' wave him
a fond good-bye;
His sweetheart was here with some other gals—the
sassy little miss!
An' purtendin' she wanted to whisper 'n his ear, she
give him a rousin' kiss.
Oh, he was a han'some feller! an' tender an' brave
an' smart,
An' though he was bigger 'n I was, the boy had a
woman's heart.
I couldn't control my feelin's, but I tried with all
my might,
An' his mother an' me stood a-cryin' till Bill was
out o' sight.
His mother she often tol' him, when she knew he
was goin' away,
That God would take care o' him, maybe, if he
didn't fergit to pray;
An' on the bloodiest battle-fields, when bullets
whizzed in the air,
An' Bill was a-fightin' desperit, he used to whisper
a prayer.
Oh, his comrades has often tol' me that Bill never
flinched a bit
When every second a gap in the ranks tol' where
a ball had hit.
An' one night, when the field was covered with the
awful harvest o' war,
They found my boy 'mongst the martyrs o' the cause
he was fightin' for.
His fingers was clutched in the dewy grass—oh,
no, sir, he wasn't dead,
But he lay kind o' helpless an' crazy with a rifleball
in his head;
An' he trembled with the battle-fear as he lay there
in the dew;
An' he whispered as he tried to rise: "God 'll take
care o' you."
An officer wrote an' toL' us how the boy had been
hurt in the fight,
But he said the doctors reckoned they could bring
him around all right.
An' then we heard from a neighbor, disabled at
Malvern Hill,
That he thought in the course of a week or so he'd
be comin' home with Bill.
We was that anxious t' see him we'd set up an'
talk o' nights
Till the break o' day had dimmed the stars an'
put out the Northern Lights;
We waited an' watched fer a month or more, an'
the summer was nearly past,
When a letter come one day that said they'd started
fer home at last.
I'll never fergit the day Bill come—'twas harvest
time again—
An' the air blown over the yeller fields was sweet
with the scent o' the grain;
The dooryard was full o' the neighbors, who had
come to share our joy,
An' all of us sent up a mighty cheer at the sight o'
that soldier boy.
An' all of a sudden somebody said: "My God!
don't the boy know his mother?"
An' Bill stood a-whisperin', fearful like, an' a-starin'
from one to another;
"Don't be afraid, Bill," says he to himself, as he
stood in his coat o' blue,
"Why, God 'll take care o' you, Bill, God 'll take
care o' you."
He seemed to be loadin' an' firin' a gun, an' to act
like a man who hears
The awful roar o' the battle-field a-soundin' in his
ears;
Ten thousan' ghosts o' that bloody day was marchin'
through his brain
An' his feet they kind o' picked their way as if
they felt the slain.
An' I grabbed his hand, an' says I to Bill, "Don't
ye 'member me?
I'm yer father—don't ye know me? How frightened
ye seem to be!"
But the boy kep' a-whisperin' to himself, as if
'twas all he knew,
"God'll take o' you, Bill, God'll take care o'
you."
He's never known us since that day, nor his
sweetheart, an' never will;
Father an' mother an' sweetheart are all the same
to Bill.
An' he groans like a wounded soldier, sometimes
the whole night through,
An' we smooth his head, an' say: "Yes, Bill,
He 'll surely take care o' you."
Ye can stop a war in a minute, but when can ye
stop the groans?
Fer ye've broke our hearts an' sapped our blood
an' plucked away our bones.
An' ye've filled our souls with bitterness that goes
from sire to son,
So ye best be kind o' careful down there in Washington.