WASHING THE DISHES
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When we on simple rations sup How easy is the washing up! But heavy feeding complicates The task by soiling many plates. And though I grant that I have prayed That we might find a serving-maid, I'd scullion all my days, I think, To see Her smile across the sink! I wash, She wipes. In water hot I souse each dish and pan and pot; While Taffy mutters, purrs, and begs, And rubs himself against my legs. The man who never in his life Has washed the dishes with his wife Or polished up the silver plate— He still is largely celibate. One warning: there is certain ware That must be handled with all care: The Lord Himself will give you up If you should drop a willow cup! |
THE FURNACE
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At night I opened The furnace door: The warm glow brightened The cellar floor. The fire that sparkled Blue and red, Kept small toes cosy In their bed. As up the stair So late I stole, I said my prayer: Thank God for coal! |
THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES
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As I went by the church to-day I heard the organ cry; And goodly folk were on their knees, But I went striding by. My minster hath a roof more vast: My aisles are oak trees high; My altar-cloth is on the hills, My organ is the sky. I see my rood upon the clouds, The winds, my chanted choir; My crystal windows, heaven-glazed, Are stained with sunset fire. The stars, the thunder, and the rain, White sands and purple seas— These are His pulpit and His pew, My God of Unbent Knees! |
THE NEW ALTMAN BUILDING
Madison Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street
(January, 1914)
(January, 1914)
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Fled is the glamour, fled the royal dream, Fled is the joy. They work no more by night Deep in that cave of dazzling amber light, In pools of darkness, under plumes of steam. Gone are the laughing drills that sting and hiss Deep in the ribs of the metropolis. Gone are the torches and the great red cranes That swung their arms with such resistless might; Gone are the flags and drums of that great fight, No more they swink with rocks and autumn rains; And only girders, rising tier on tier, Give hint of all the struggle that was here. We too, mad zealots of the hardest craft, Striving to build a word-house fair and tall, Have wept to see our dear erections fall; Have wept—then flung away our tools, and laughed. Fled is the dream, but working year by year We see our buildings rising, tier on tier. |
THE MADONNA OF THE CURB
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On the curb of a city pavement, By the ash and garbage cans, In the stench and rolling thunder Of motor trucks and vans, There sits my little lady, With brave but troubled eyes, And in her arms a baby That cries and cries and cries. She cannot be more than seven; But years go fast in the slums, And hard on the pains of winter The pitiless summer comes. The wail of sickly children She knows; she understands The pangs of puny bodies, The clutch of small hot hands. In the deadly blaze of August, That turns men faint and mad, She quiets the peevish urchins By telling a dream she had— A heaven with marble counters, And ice, and a singing fan; And a God in white, so friendly, Just like the drug-store man. Her ragged dress is dearer Than the perfect robe of a queen! Poor little lass, who knows not The blessing of being clean. And when you are giving millions To Belgian, Pole and Serb, Remember my pitiful lady— Madonna of the Curb! |
MY PIPE
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My pipe is old And caked with soot; My wife remarks: "How can you put That horrid relic, So unclean, Inside your mouth? The nicotine Is strong enough To stupefy A Swedish plumber." I reply: "This is the kind Of pipe I like: I fill it full Of Happy Strike, Or Barking Cat Or Cabman's Puff, Or Brooklyn Bridge (That potent stuff) Or Chaste Embraces, Knacker's Twist, Old Honeycomb Or Niggerfist. I clamp my teeth Upon its stem— It is my bliss, My diadem. Whatever Fate May do to me, This is my favourite BBB. For this dear pipe You feign to scorn I smoked the night The boy was born." |
TO A GRANDMOTHER
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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!) |
A HANDFUL OF SONNETS
I
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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." |
II
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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
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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 Vanished 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! |
ARS DURA
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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.
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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."
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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. |
THE LAST SONNET
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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, Honour and pride would cast it to the floor Facing the judge with what was done before. |
THE WAR
IRONY
| Anton Lang, the Christus of Oberammergau, has not been called upon to fight in the German army. |
| NEWS ITEM. |
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So War hath still some ruth? some sense of shame? The Crown of Thorns hath reverence even now? For when the summons to that village came, They spared the Christ of Oberammergau. Enlist the actors of that sacred mime— Paul, Peter, Pilate—Judas too, I trow; Spurn Christ of Galilee, but (O sublime!) Revere the Christ of Oberammergau. |
TO A FRENCH BABY
Marcel Gaillard, Baby number 6 in Life's fund for
French war-orphans
French war-orphans
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What unsaid messages arise Behind your clear and wondering eyes, O grave and tiny citizen? And who, of wise and valiant men, Can answer those mute questionings? I think the captains and the kings Might well kneel in humility Before you on your mother's knee, As knelt, beside a stable door, Other great men, long before. In you, poor little lad, one sees All children and all mothers' knees: All voices inarticulate That cry against the hymns of hate; All homes, by Thames or Rhine or Seine, Where cradles will not rock again. |
AFTER HEARING GERMAN MUSIC
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What pang of beauty is in all these songs, Flooding the heart with painful bliss within— Was this the folk to which Von Kluck belongs, The land of poison gas and Zeppelin? Most gifted race the world has ever known, Now bleeding in the dust of rank despairs,— Was it for this men builded at Cologne, Kant wrote at midnight, Schumann dreamed his airs? |
IN MEMORY OF THE AMERICAN AVIATORS KILLED IN FRANCE
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Not at their own dear country's call, But answering another voice, They gave to Liberty their all, Nor faltered in the choice. Their young and ardent hearts were coined Into a golden seal for France; Above their graves two flags are joined; They lie beyond mischance. And we, remembering whence came Our Goddess where the sea-tide runs, Nobly acquit the noble claim France has upon our sons. Who dies for France, for us he dies, For all that gentle is and fair: God prosper, in those shell-torn skies, Our chivalry of air. |
THE FLAGS ON FIFTH AVENUE
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Above the stately roofs, wind-lifted, high, A lane of vivid colour in the sky, They ripple cleanly, seen of every eye. This is your flag: none other: yours alone: Yours then to honour: and where it is flown By your devotion let your heart be known. Feeble the man who dare not bow the knee Before some symbol greater far than he— This is no pomp and no idolatry. Emblem of youth, and hope, and strength held true By honour, and by wise forbearance, too— God bless the flags along the Avenue! |
"THEY"
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Whoso has gift of simple speech Of measured words and plain, To him be given it to teach The sadness of Lorraine. She asked but sun and rain to bless Her blue enfolding hills, And time, to heal the old distress Of dim-remembered ills. The fields, the vineyards and the lathe, The river, loved so well— O sunset pools and lads that bathe Along the green Moselle. One whispered word—curt, bitter, brief, Lives now in black Lorraine, One word that sums her whole of grief— Dead children, women slain. The curé's blood that stained the road, The village burned away, The needless horrors men abode Are all in one word—they. |
BALLAD OF FRENCH RIVERS
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Of streams that men take honour in The Frenchman looks to three, And each one has for origin The hills of Burgundy; And each has known the quivers Of blood and tears and pain— O gallant bleeding rivers, The Marne, the Meuse, the Aisne. Says Marne: "My poplar fringes Have felt the Prussian tread, The blood of brave men tinges My banks with lasting red; Let others ask due credit, But France has me to thank; Von Kluck himself has said it:— I turned the Boche's flank!" Says Meuse: "I claim no winning, No glory on the stage, Save that, in the beginning I strove to save Liége. Alas that Frankish rivers Should share such shame as mine— In spite of all endeavours I flow to join the Rhine!" Says Aisne: "My silver shallows Are salter than the sea, The woe of Rheims still hallows My endless tragedy. Of rivers rich in story That run through green Champagne, In agony and glory The chief am I, the Aisne!" Now there are greater waters That Frenchmen all hold dear— The Rhone, with many daughters, That runs so icy clear; There's Moselle, deep and winy, There's Loire, Garonne and Seine, But O the valiant tiny— The Marne, the Meuse, the Aisne! |
PEASANT AND KING
What the Peasants of Europe Are Thinking
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You who put faith in your banks and brigades, Drank and ate largely, slept easy at night, Hoarded your lyddite and polished the blades, Let down upon us this blistering blight— You who played grandly the easiest game, Now can you shoulder the weight of the same? Say, can you fight? Here is the tragedy: losing or winning Who profits a copper? Who garners the fruit? From bloodiest ending to futile beginning Ours is the blood, and the sorrow to boot. Muster your music, flutter your flags, Ours are the hunger, the wounds, and the rags. Say, can you shoot? Down in the muck and despair of the trenches Comes not the moment of bitterest need; Over the sweat and the groans and the stenches There is a joy in the valorous deed— But, lying wounded, what one forgets You and your ribbons and d——d epaulettes— Say, do you bleed? This is your game: it was none of our choosing— We are the pawns with whom you have played. Yours is the winning and ours is the losing, But, when the penalties have to be paid, We who are left, and our womenfolk, too, Rulers of Europe, will settle with you— You, and your trade. October, 1914. |
TILL TWISTON WENT
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Till Twiston went, the war still seemed A far-off thing: a nightmare dreamed, Some bruit or fable half-believed, Too hideous to be conceived. His letter came: the memories throng Of days that made the friendship strong— The oar he won, the ties he wore, His love of china, fairy lore, (And flappers); and his honest eyes; His stammer, his absurdities; His marmalade, his bitter beer, And all that made him quaint and dear. And though we muckle have to do Yet love must needs come breaking through, And now and then the office hum Dies like a mist, ... and there will come An Oxford breakfast scene: the quad All blue and grey outside—O God— And there sits Twiston at the feast Proclaiming he will be a priest! I see his eyes, his homely neb— Ring, telephones, and cut the web! And when it's over, will there be In his grey house above the Dee A mug to drain? Will we renew The dreams of all we hoped to do? Our Cotswold tramps? And will there still Be flappers in the surf at Rhyl? O how I counted on the hour When he would see the Woolworth Tower, And how we set our hearts upon The steep grey walls of Carcassonne! |
TO RUDYARD KIPLING
For His Fiftieth Birthday
(December 30, 1915)
(December 30, 1915)
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Lord of our noble English tongue, Who holdest seizin of our speech, Whose epic Mowgli first did reach The valves of all our hearts when young— Master of every grace and ire, Wide as the salt-winged fulmar gulls That circle England's battle hulls, Your songs have fanned the Imperial fire. By Oak and Ash and Thorns, by all Old memories of Sussex sod, To you we pile the altar clod And ask a new Recessional. |
TO A U-BOAT
With Apologies to William Blake
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Tiger, tiger of the seas, King of scarlet butcheries, What infernal hand and eye Planned your dread machinery? Men of Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel, Watch the gauge and turn the wheel, Proud, perhaps, to have defiled Oceans, to destroy a child. With your thunderbolt you strike Cargo, women, all alike— Stain with red God's clean green sea, Call it "naval victory." U-boat, U-boat, as you grope With your half-blind periscope, Lo, your hateful trail we mark, Send you to your kin, the shark! |
KITCHENER
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No man in England slept, the night he died: The harsh, stern spirit passed without a pang, And freed of mortal clogs his message rang. In every wakeful mind the challenge cried: Think not of me: one servant less or more Means nothing now: hold fast the greater thing— Strike hard, love truth, serve England and the King! Servant of England, soldier to the core, What does it matter where his body fall? What does it matter where they build the tomb? Five million men, from Calais to Khartoum, These are his wreath and his memorial. |
MARCH 1915
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Pussy willow, pussy willow Do you bloom in Belgium now? Tiny furry little catkins Where the Meuse runs green and clear, Do the children run to pick you In this springtime of the year? Do they stroke you and caress you Kiss the silky balls of fur, Take you to the priest to bless you And pretend to hear you purr? Do their small hot fingers wilt you? (Sweethearts, you remember how—) Pussy willow, pussy willow, Do you bloom in Belgium now? |