The Sinking of the Titanic
AND OTHER POEMS

BY
C. VICTOR STAHL
Author of “Zorabella,” etc.

BOSTON
SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY
1915

Copyright, 1915
Sherman, French & Company

CONTENTS

THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC
AND OTHER POEMS

THE SINKING OF THE TITANIC

Oh, Titan was her gorgeous armament

And Titan was her sail and crew;

A thing of pride to sweep the surging tide

And laugh to scorn the perilous blue.

Yet let us weep not for her treasured hulk

That sank leagues deep into the sea,

But for the toll of ill-starred voyagers

Who rode her to eternity.

I see the glory of that primal hour

When first her beams did breast the wave,—

Yea, owner, builder, seaman’s eyes did sparkle

As did the sea her huge side lave:—

How zealously the elite madly rushed

To trust their passage in her care,

To boast their presence on the maiden trip

Of that leviathan so rare.

She sailed.—The sky gleamed bright and azure clear,

The waves lashed gently at her side,

The moon that night shone down auspiciously

Upon that ship of gorgeous pride.

Her engines tore in frenzy o’er and o’er,

Her powerful shafts did heave and quake,

As loud and clear her captain’s voice rang out,

“Speed on! Fear not the iceberg’s brake.”

Ahead there floundered in the chilly sea

A huge and bristling wall of ice.

“What shall we do?” her helmsman tremulously cried.

Word came, “Let’s cleave it in a trice,”

Whereat the mighty engines creaked and strained

And madly sped the Titan hulk.

Ne’er moved nor stirred the ocean’s icy berg,

But braced against her speeding bulk.

“Dost thou defy me, master of the sea,

Thou untried artifice of man?

I’ll show thee, then, whose is the stronger hand,

For mine was here e’er thine began.”

Crash! Crash! The waters rushed. The ship’s side heaved.

The ponderous engines ceased to throb,

And there above the darkening drawbridge cried

A thousand souls in fear to God.

From peaceful slumbers wildly they uprose,

From games of whist, from dance and wine.

“Can it be so?” they cried in anguished pride—

“So sinking in the icy brine?”

But ah! alas! the hand of death hung o’er.

Alas for captain, ship and crew!

In headstrong haste they’d left the boats behind

That save men from the watery blue.

“Let there be women saved, and they alone!”

Rose up like steel the chivalrous cry,

While gallant men stood on the slippery deck

And brave resolved themselves to die.

Then solemn strains rose from the engulfing main,

“Nearer my God,” they sang, “to Thee,”

Till all that was left of the Titan’s envied hulk

Was a billowy gurgle in the sea.

Alas for man! Alas for vaunting boast!

Which seeks to conquer the fate of the sea,

Essays to raise proud hulks of iron and steel

And laugh to scorn God’s mastery!

Thus from their watery grave he lifts his voice;

“None tempt my power by craft malign.

Lo! all shall cleave unto the common end,

And none shall stand but I, divine!”

INSPIRATION

Proud child of fortune, smile on thy better hope!

Let not thine arm swerve from thy great desire!

Stand not abashed, nor fear the tow’ring steep

Which thou wouldst climb, but bend thy will—

That magic wand of every earthly deed,

The power that peopleth worlds and raiseth thrones—

And upwards mount. Thou hast thy heart’s want now,

If thou but claim’st it!

SPRING BALLAD

Spring, Spring, O gentle Spring, where hast thou been so long?

Why hast thou not come sooner to me?

Goddess of mirth,

Gay queen of the earth,

I am faint for thy smile, as I watched the long while

Thy merry, rollicksome face to see.

Spring, Spring, O gentle Spring, why wast thou silent so long?

Why didst thou not answer my reverent call?

Goddess of mirth,

Gay queen of the earth,

Come forth, from glade or glen, from vale or hill, from bog or fen,

And flutter thy magical wand high over all.

But lo! now thou art come, with thy wonderful train,

Never so bright and never so gay.

Goddess of mirth,

Gay queen of the earth,

Thy throne they prepare in the heights of the air

For thine inauguration day.

Thy wonderful reign has begun with the rise of the sun,

All heaven and earth but wait on thee now,

Goddess of mirth,

Gay queen of the earth,

I smell thy sweet flowers and thy odorous bowers

And see the green trees before thee to bow.

The robins have come from their faraway home,

And I hear their sweet songs to burst forth again.

Goddess of mirth,

Gay queen of the earth,

Thou mak’st their tones rise up to the azure skies

That they may encore thine orchestral train.

March spreads her boisterous clouds like Autumn’s silvery shrouds,

And whistles her winds through thy soft, balmy hair,—

Goddess of mirth,

Gay queen of the earth,

Then soon thy soft April showers make way for May’s bowers

And nature but waits for June time so fair.

Spring, Spring, O gentle Spring, thou art dearest of all to me,

A subject of thine, I kneel at thy shrine,—

Goddess of mirth,

Gay queen of the earth,

I shall wait for thy smile, as I watch the long while

To see thee return when again I shall call.

THE SPIRIT OF WAR

Ho! ho! I come in fury as the storm

And seek earth’s nations east and west.

I breathe the breath of fire within them all,

And lure to arms the proud’st and best.

I swoop down on their gilded palaces,

And shake the monarchs of the world;

I rouse them from their cots of peace and ease

And set their boasting flags unfurled.

Upon the doors of happy homes I knock,

And men of valor do I call

To take the stand against their fellowmen,

To spill their blood and spill it all.

I wend my flight to peaceful, quiet fields

Where tillers ever tireless toil;

I bid them leave their plows and homes behind,

And steel themselves with arms of spoil.

Then nursing babes at mothers’ breasts I touch,

For loud their fathers do I call;

I reck not of their mothers’ tear-stained eyes

When those do in the battle fall.

I sweep o’er peaceful cities great and strong,

Whose towers outtop the blue-ribbed sky;

I give the word to grind out shot and shell

Until they lowly, humble lie.

The mighty nations to my wings I call,—

A hundred million men of war

To struggle helpless ’gainst the sword of death,—

Beneath my spell they fallen are.

O’er Asia’s strand I spread mine eaglet wings,

O’er Austria, England, France and Spain;

Then do I touch Japan and Mexico,

Then back to Europe’s soil again.

My maw is ever empty for their blood,

“On! on!” I cry for newer prey;

My master Mars doth urge me take the field

Myself to slaughter and to slay.

Away with peace and arbitration’s hand,

’Neath whose pale spell I envious quake:

They only dare to cross my boist’rous path;

Them can I never bend nor break.

But on I go, and when my wreak is o’er

And Mars requites me for my pain,

To war’s dead corps and sepulchres I cry:

“Great God, what fools have mortals been!”

THE FLOWERETS’ COMMUNION

There is a solitary hillside,

Where flow’rets, blooming gay,

Have watched the sky with eager pride

From dawn till close of day.

No wand’ring stranger do they see,

Who treads that silent place,

To look upon their majesty

Or view their radiant face.

But yet, unplaintive, do they bloom

And smile out ’gainst the sky,—

From them the birds do take their song

And bees their honey ply.

Then come the little sunbeams fair,

Leaping o’er the crumbled wall,

And gayly dancing here and there

Spring at the flow’rets’ call.

Then sweet communion do they hold,

The flowers and sunbeams there;

The sunbeams stoop to plant their lips

Upon the flow’rets fair.

They breathe into the sunbeams life

To trip athwart the plain,

To sparkle in their dazzling revelries

And round and round again.

Glad Hymen joins them there ’neath heaven

And seals them with her love:

And as the issue of their amity,

Joy rings to heaven above.

O ye who in earth’s lonely vales

Do struggling, plaintive go,

Think not thine humble merits less

Than in the world’s bright glow.

And ye who are most lonesome, sore,

Do not despairing wend,—

For every flower there darts a sunbeam fair,

For every soul, a helping friend.

THE RIDDLE OF LIFE

Oh, what a weak, sporadic thing is man,

Burst forth upon life’s troublous sea!

Unasked he comes, unwished therefrom he goes,—

Oh, whither is his destiny?

I put my riddle to the flying breeze

That flurried past with airy wing;

My words were borne back on the fleecy clouds

Who laughed to scorn my questioning.

I asked it of the lordful mountain peak

Who lays his hoar face to the sky;

He only shrugged his Atlan shoulders bare,

And answered me a mournful sigh.

I plied it to the deep and surging sea

Where myriads slept in her watery grave;

She roared and spumed, and splashed her surges higher,

And answer none to me she gave.

Then to the heavens with upturned face I gazed,

And reverent asked my God in prayer;

A still, small voice breathed back to me in love,

“Wait, child; thou shalt know better there.”

COLUMBIA’S FLAG

Let’s raise Columbia’s banner to the clouds

And hoist her colors in the skies;

Let every patriot ’neath her azure stand;

Let never a foe upon her rise!

Let’s wear her emblem proudly on our breasts;

Let’s steel our hearts with valor true.

As long as she doth guard our liberty

With the tints of the red, white and blue!

Whether in peace or in the battle’s roar,

Be she the guardian of our soil!

Spare not our lives to save our country’s hearth;

Shirk not the havoc and the toil!

Dear flag, thou emblem of a nation’s pride,

Sail proudly o’er the scattered main,

And gather all Columbia’s sons to thee,

That never may our freedom wane!

Go raise Columbia’s banner to the clouds,

And hoist her colors in the skies!

Let every patriot ’neath her azure stand;

Let never a foe upon her rise!

THE BAR OF SCIENCE

Who thwarts thy will?

O Science, who can stop thine onward sweep,

Or lay a bar ’fore thine ambitious ways?

Oh, who will fling the gauntlet down to thee

And dare estop thee in thy feats of skill

That thou so bold perform’st? None, none of man,

But God alone. He knows what mysteries

To scuttle from thy sight.

Were’t not for Him,

Thou would’st unmine the whole great globe of man;

Draw figures o’er the moon’s frail, verdant map;

Bind all the planets to our earth’s great orb;

And, cooling, freeze the sun’s most torrid heat,

Or give it greater fire. Thou’d’st chain the thunderbolt;

Catch heaven’s lightning in thine own great leash

For man’s devising smiths.

But let us praise thee

For what thy dare-all, do-all skill hath wrought

On earth alone. Thou’st built the flying planes,

The heaving ships—dark instruments of war;

Thou’st wrought the grafting of man’s hearts and brains,

The coinage of bright pearls and rubies rare,

The speeding trains, the horseless vehicles,—

But naught ’gainst God’s great will.

For thou’st not reached

Where thou can’st scorn our great Creator’s skill,

For thou know’st not the essence of the soul,

That which ’bove all he holds firm in his mighty hand.

Yea, yea, with all thy vaunted boast of power,

Thou canst not His great’st handiwork outdo,—

Thou canst not e’er make man!

THE CHORD UNSUNG

O let me on some mystic height above

Compose, my soul, a perfect lay!

O let me rise and ever onward rise

Unto the fairest, perfect day!

My heart doth swell with sweet, concordant tones,

And I would fain burst out in song;

But my weak soul can never rise the height

Where such Æolian strains belong.

Oft have I sat upon the seashore’s strand

And strung my proud harp to the wave,

While the billows rolled in splendor at my feet

And the salt sea did my cushion lave.

Then struck I out upon the surging tide

My sweetest notes of harp and wand,—

But my weak themes fell most far short the minstrelsy

Of those celestial strains beyond.