FREEDOM, TRUTH AND BEAUTY
SONNETS BY EDWARD DOYLE
Author of Cagliostro, Moody Moments,
the American Soldier, the Haunted
Temple and other poems; The
Comet, a play of our times
and Genevra, a play of
Mediaeval Florence.
"He owns only his mental vision. But this is clear and broad of range—as broad, indeed, as that of Dante, Milton and Goethe, sweeping beyond the horizon of eschatology and mounting, like Francis Thompson's, even to the Throne of Grace itself when the theme demands reverential daring."
—STANDARD AND TIMES, PHILADELPHIA.
Manhattan and Bronx Advocate
1712 Amsterdam Avenue, New York.
THE SECOND REVISED EDITION
Copyright, 1921
BY
EDWARD DOYLE
CONTENTS
THE QUALITY OF THE WORKS OF EDWARD DOYLE
The quality of Edward Doyle's work was appraised by Ella Wheeler Wilcox in the following article by Mrs. Wilcox which appeared in the New York Evening Journal and the San Francisco Examiner, in 1905:
Shut your eyes and bind them with a black cloth and try for one hour to see how cheerful you can be. Then imagine yourself deprived for life of the light of day.
Perhaps this experiment will make you less rebellious with your present lot.
Then take the little book called "The Haunted Temple and Other Poems," by Edward Doyle, the blind poet of Harlem, and read and wonder and feel ashamed of any mood of distrust of God and discontent with life you have ever indulged.
Mr. Doyle has been blind for the last thirty-seven years; he has lived a half century.
Therefore he still remembers the privilege of seeing God's world when a lad, and this must augment rather than ameliorate his sorrow.
He who has never known the use of eyes cannot fully understand the immensity of the loss of sight.
I hear people in possession of all their senses, and with many blessings, bewail the fact that they were ever born.
They have missed some aim, failed of some cherished ambition, lost some special joy or been defeated in some purpose.
A GREAT SOUL
And so they sit in spiritual darkness and curse life and doubt God. But here is a great soul who has found his divine self in the darkness and who sends out this wonderful song of joy and gratitude.
Read it, oh, ye weak repiners, and read it again and again. It is beautiful in thought, perfect in expression and glorious with truth.
CHIME, DARK BELL
My life is in deep darkness; still, I cry,
With joy to my Creator, "It is well!"
Were worlds my words, what firmaments would tell
My transport at the consciousness that I
Who was not, Am! To be—oh, that is why
The awful convex dark in which I dwell
Is tongued with joy, and chimes a temple bell.
Antiphonally to the choirs on high!
Chime cheerily, dark bell! for were no more
Than consciousness my gift, this were to know
The Giver Good—which sums up all the lore
Eternity can possibly bestow.
Chime! for thy metal is the molten ore
Of the great stars, and marks no wreck below.
I know a gifted and brilliant man in New York who is full of charm and wit in conversation, but the moment he touches a pen he becomes, as a rule, a melancholy pessimist, crying out at the injustice of the world and the uselessness of high endeavor in the field of art.
When urged to take a different mental attitude for the sake of the reading world, which needs strong tonics of hope and courage, rather than the slow poison of pessimism, however subtly sweet the brew, my friend responds that "The song and dance of literature is not my special gift." And he is obliged to "speak of the world as I find it."
He is an able-bodied man, in the prime of life, with splendid years waiting on his threshold to lead him to any height he may wish to climb. But to his mental vision, nothing is really "worth while."
What a rebuke this wonderful poem of Edward Doyle's should be to all such men and women. What an inspiration it should be to every mortal who reads it, to look within, and find the Kingdom of God as this blind poet has found it.
Mr. Doyle was in St. Francis Xavier's College when his great affliction fell upon him. He started a local paper, The Advocate, in Harlem twenty-three years ago and has in the darkness of his physical vision developed his poetical talent and given the world some great lines.
AN INSPIRATION
Here is a poem which throbs with the keen anguish which must have been his guest through many silent hours of these thirty-seven years:
TO A CHILD READING
My darling, spell the words out. You may creep
Across the syllables on hands and knees,
And stumble often, yet pass me with ease
And reach the spring upon the summit steep.
Oh, I could lay me down, dear child, and weep
These charr'd orbs out, but that you then might cease
Your upward effort, and with inquiries
Stoop down and probe my heart too deep, too deep!
I thirst for Knowledge. Oh, for an endless drink
Your goblet leaks the whole way from the spring—
No matter, to its rim a few drops cling,
And these refresh me with the joy to think
That you, my darling, have the morning's wing
To cross the mountain at whose base I sink.
But Edward Doyle has not sunk "at the mountain's base." He is far up its summit, and he will go higher. He has found God, and nothing can hinder his flight. He is an inspiration to all struggling, toiling souls on earth.
As I read his book, with its strong clarion cry of faith and joy and courage, and ponder over the carefully finished thoughts and beautifully polished lines, I feel ashamed of my own small achievements, and am inspired to new efforts.
Glory and success to you, Edward Doyle.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
TRUE NATIONALISM
(From the "Maccabaein", June, 1920.)
THE JEWS IN RUSSIA
From town and village to a wood, stript bare,
As they of their possessions, see them throng.
Above them grows a cloud; it moves along,
As flee they from the circling wolf pack's glare.
Is it their Brocken-Shadow of despair,
The looming of their life of cruel wrong
For countless ages? No; their faith is strong
In their Jehovah; that huge cloud is prayer.
A flash of light, and black the despot lies.
What thunder round the world! 'Tis transport's strain
Proclaiming loud: "No righteous prayer is vain
No God-imploring tears are lost; they rise
Into a cloud, and in the sky remain
Till they draw lightening from Jehovah's eyes."
The author of this superb little gem, like Homer, is blind; but, like Homer, his mental vision is clear, and broad, and deep. President Schurman, of Cornell University, commenting on Doyle once said: "It is as true today as of yore that the genuine poet, even though blind, is the Seer and Prophet of his generation." The poem here printed illustrates the point. Did we not know that it was published some fifteen years ago in a volume entitled "The Haunted Temple," we should assume that it was written on the occasion of the fall of the Czar. In fact, however, it merely foretells this event by some dozen years. And how terribly applicable are the lines to the facts of today! The prophecy is one capable of repeated fulfillment.
But it is as a prophet of nationalism that this man compels our particular attention. The prophecy is embodied in a play entitled "The Comet, a Play of Our Times," brought out as far back as 1908. The play is a microcosm of American life. The chief character is a college president, and he it is that is chosen to expound the true nature of nationalism and to give voice and utterance to the principle of self-determination. (Is it merely a coincidence that at that time Woodrow Wilson was President of Princeton, or is it a case of poetic vision. Wilson, be it remembered, was already a national figure, and there were already glimmerings that he was destined to usher in a new era in politics.) According to the protagonist, America is not "a boiling cauldron in which the elements seethe, but never settle," but rather a college where every class is taught to translate—
"Into the common speech of daily life
The country's loftiest ideals—"
and any body of citizens form a part of our republic only in so far—
"As they contribute to its character
As leader of the nations unto Right
By thought or deed, in service for mankind."
We must lead the peoples of the world to freedom. And what is freedom?
"'Tis intelligence
Aloof from harm and hamper, grandly circling
Its native sun-lit peaks, the highest hopes
Heaved from the heart of man upon the earth,
In ranges long as time and soul endure."
What, then, is America's duty to the oppressed race or the small nation? It is to "wake and disabuse it of false hope"—
"and urge it on
To the development of its own powers,
The culmination of its own ideals,
The star seed sown by God,—the only means
By which a tribe can thrive to its perfection."
To make this possible, civilization must be given a more human content. It is therefore necessary to awake human intelligence, "the godlike genius," to a realization of the fact—
"—that, on having brought
This world from out the chaos dark
Of waters and of woody wilderness,
And shaped it into hills of hope for man,
Must providence its beautiful creation
With altruistic love and tenderness;
So that all tribes of man, what'er their hue,
Have each a hill where it can touch the star
That it has followed with its mental growth."
Such a program is rendered imperative by the inexorability of the law of race, which nullifies any attempts to force assimilation:
"It is a foolish, futile thing
To try to shape society by codes,
Vetoed by Nature. Nature trumpets forth
No edict, through the instinct of a race,
Proclaiming certain territory hers
And warning all encroaching powers therefrom,
Without the ordering out of her reserves
To see to it the edict is enforced.
Let politics keep off forbidden shores."
If any powers preserve in a policy of oppression, our duty is plain:
"To teach the barbarous tribes throughout the globe,
Christian or Turk, that all humanity
Is territory sheltered by our flag;
That butchery must cease throughout the world;
That, having ended human slavery,
Old glory has a mission from on high
To stop the slaughter of the smiling babe,
The pale, crazed mother, weak, defenseless sire,
All places on the habitable globe."
Finally to render feasible the ideal development of all peoples, and put an end to war, America must bring about a league of all nations. It develops on us—
"To get the races by degrees together
To talk their grievance over, in a voice
As gentle as a woman's....
There is no education in the world
Like human contact for mankind's advance;
All differences, then, adjust themselves;
But when two races are estranged by hate,
They grow so deaf to one another's rights,
That it soon comes to pass that either has
To use the trumpet of artillery
In order to be heard at all."
Recently, Doyle wrote the following lines. Their application is obvious:
"Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb
The mountain and the star on trail of thee?
Thy wing-flash beams toward man, and if it be
True inspiration—whether thought sublime,
Or fervor for the truth, or liberty—
Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time."
What wonder that from so lofty an outlook his searching eye should pierce the tragedy of "The Jews in Russia"—or elsewhere—should pierce even the revenges that Time would ring in, and rest on a vision of righteous peace!
DAVID KLEIN, Ph.D.
AUTHOR OF LITERARY CRITICISM, from the Elizabethian Dramatist.
GENEVRA
(From the "Independent," May 30, 1912.)
The scene of Mr. Edward Doyle's new play is the Florence of 1400; the atmosphere that of a plague stricken city in a time when man was helpless, authorities hopeless, social life in shreds and patches. The plot of the play founded on this state of affairs is rich in incident, varied and sufficiently complex in color, passion and character to furnish material for an exciting spectacular representation. The tragic element is strong, but supported and shaded by the company of roysterers, a jester, whose foolery is a compound of bluff of that period and bluff of modern politics and athletics. The jester, the black company and the penitents, together with the roysterers, form now the foreground, now the background, of action, which in itself is never without the dolorous sound of the death bell. The doomed city is under a spell comparable to that set forth so vividly in Manzoni's "I Promessi Sposi." Says the villain of the plot as he listens from his seat at the festive board:
"It bodes ill for the black Cowled company
To make a visit to a festive house.
'Tis like death looking in and whispering 'Next.'
Fool, call the servants. Bid them fetch the wine—
A cask of it—the best varnaccio!
Here come my friends to help me drown the Plague."
Pictures like this as sharply defined are frequent and throw in shadowed blackening on shadow. The author defends the use of a meteorological phenomenon translated in the spirit of the time as supernatural by quoting Dante as recognizing it, but the authority of Dante was not necessary to justify the dramatist in introducing the "Crimson Cross." It was a part of the pyrotechnics of the church propaganda. Though the advance of scientific discovery has laid a heavy hand on thaumaturgy of the sort, it would no doubt, have its use when properly handled on a modern stage. The action of the drama is rapid and natural, the characters well drawn and individualized, the dialogue spicy, forceful and varied.
Price $1.00.
DEDICATION
TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
I
What lineage so noble as from Sires,
Laureled by Freedom? For, who, but the brave
Have glory to transmit? The Hero's grave
Blooms ever. It is there the spring retires
To dream to flowers, her heart and soul desires,
When winter's whitening wind, like wash of wave,
Sweeps mauseleums of the skulk and knave
From mounts of glare off to Oblivion's mires.
The bloom, for which mere wealth lacks length of arm,
And fainting Time takes for reviving scent,
Fame, with bright eyes from heart and soul content,
Forms wreaths for Valor's Daughters—crowns that charm
Not with death-smells from Human welfare rent
But breath of Country's rescue from dire harm.
II
Those crowns, not cold from death sweat on the brow,
At sight of apparitions with fixed stare,
But warm with summer, conjuring beauties rare—
Wilt not. They are dewed daily by your vow,
Daughters of sires who, to no thrall, would bow!
Which, at the alter with raised hands, ye swear,
Cheering the blessed spirits, gathered there,
That, like their Mothers, are their daughters now.
True women—and therefore, craft foilers clever—
With sons for your hearts utterance, ye sue
Not, but like Barry to the British crew,
Ye cry out: "What! we strike our colors? Never!
Fie, shot! fie, Gold! these colors, since they drew
Their first star-breath, are God's, and God's forever."
III
Ye know the Leopard changes not his spots.
The Prince of Peace, who spake eternal truth,
Confirmed this fact of Nature. He, with ruth
Omniscient, saw afar, the scarlet clots
Of English nature, in profidious plots
For conquest, mangling not alone brave youth
With teeth set, but old age without a tooth,
And Mothers, clutching up their bleeding tots.
Oh, yea, this beast makes his own desert, still;
And Ireland, India and Egypt show
His spots so spread, he is one ghastly glow;
Aye, as your sires saw him from Bunker Hill.
Oh, vain, gold rubs the skin and press shouts, "Lo!
It has not now one spot of threatening ill."
IV
O Daughters of the brave, well ye abjure
The fiend and all his works. Ye know his smiles
Are fire-fly flare at gloaming, lighting miles
Of snake-boughed forests down to swamps, impure
From mind and soul decay; hence are heart-sure
That creed and racial hatreds are his wiles,
For God is Love, and Love draws, reconsiles,
And is the strength that makes our land endure.
O Mothers, as you lift your babes and gaze
Into their eyes, your love runs through their vains
In crimson flushes—oh, your love that pains
At any of God's creatures hurt! that stays;
The heavens may pass away, but that remains,
Being of Christ, who walks earth Mother-ways.
V
Oh, like your sires, you, too, know Freedom's worth
To Human Spirit. For its liberation,
A God unrealmed himself by tribulation,
And was an out-cast on a scornful earth.
Christ is no myth and, since with Human birth
He forms new Heavens for blissful habitation—
There unto is the Freedom of the Nation;
All other trend is down to dark and dearth.
When from the darkness rainbowed birth comes pouring,
Your virtue heeds the voice, Eternity—
Re-echos: "Let them come." 'Tis Nature's plea
For broadening progress; Nay, 'tis God imploring
The Human to take strength for Liberty,
Truth, Honor, to catch up to the stars, a-soaring.
VI
O Daughters of brave sires, what is true glory?
No marsh-ward falling star, however bright.
'Tis inspirational; its upward flight
Lifts generations—such your Father's story,
And also yours, for is not that, too, gory?
You pour out your hearts blood in sons to fight
For honor, and cease not till every right
Has been set down in Triumph's inventory.
Oh, into daughters, too, old noble Mothers!
You pour out your hearts blood that, in your place,
They may fill up the ranks and, as in case
Of Molly Pitcher, man guns for their brothers,
And hearten firm, the trembling human race
To know, though brave men fall, there still comes others.
VII
If Christ's foreshadowing in Juda's haze
Was of his grief, 'tis of His triumph, here,
For, is not His celestrial glory clear
In Freedom for all men? First, gaseous rays
In Maryland, then rounded firm full blaze
In the Republic, it draws every sphere
Of Human welfare, whether far or near,
From depths occult to nights with dawns and days.
The Freedom of the Generation's longing
Reflects Lord Christ in glory, hour by hour,
With more distinctness, as you, with His power,
Free heart and brain from every brother-wronging,
And give your offspring, these, as flesh and dower,
To live and lead the millions, hither thronging.
VIII
Oh, ever Mothers—shaping robust youth
No less than infant, and as perfectly!
There's life blood to their veins from when on knee
To when thy battle, from your broadening ruth
For Human kind and fervent love of truth.
If, like their fathers, they have come to be
The wonder of the world, for liberty,
Your virtue, 'tis, that in their valor greweth.
Oh, as the Roman Mother, when she showed
For jewels, her two sons, saw each of them
In Time's Tiara, glittering there a gem;
So, see your offspring shine. The light, bestowed
Your Fathers, in your sons is diamond flame,
Encircling Freedom's ocean-walled abode.
IX
Is it Apocalyptic Vision, when
White-winged Columbus swoops from Spain's palmed shore
And, from dark depths, lifts at San Salvador,
A continent, adrip with streams which, then,
Become the fountain of the Psalmist's ken,
Where Right the heart, from hoof to horn foam-hoar
From craggy speed, slakes thirst, and, evermore,
Comes Hope's whole clattering herd?—you chant, "Amen."
Aye, for your sires made earth this new creation
Where, from San Salvadore and Plymouth Reef
To Westward Mission Trails, ascends belief
In God and, therefore, in the Soul's Salvation
Through Freedom, in white, spiral spray which grief
Sees, spite earth-mists, or solar obscuration.
SONNETS
FREEDOM, TRUTH AND BEAUTY
THE PROEM
Soar thou aloft, though thou ascend alone,
O Human Spirit! Thou canst not be lost.
What though yon stars, the azure's nightly frost
Melt dark, or mount round thee an arctic zone!
Thou hast sun-warmth and star-source of thine own.
If thou mount not, how bitter is the cost!
What anguish, when whirled down, or tempest tossed,
To know how high toward God thou mightst have flown!
Vault Godward, Poet. What though few may climb
The mountain and the star on trail of thee?
Thy wing-flash beams toward Man, and, if it be
True inspiration—whether thought sublime,
Or fervor for the Truth, or Liberty—
Thy light will reach the earth in goodly time.
THE ATLANTIC
Forming the great Atlantic, see God take
The mist from woe's white mountain, spring and stream,
The breath of man in frost, the spiral lean
From roof-cracked caves where, though the heart may break,
The soul will not lie torpid, like the snake,—
And battle smoke. On them He breathes with dream
And, Lo! an Angel with a sword agleam
'Twix the Old World and New for Justice's sake.
What sea so broad, as that from Human weeping?
Or Sun so flaming, as the Angel's sword
Of Human and Devine Wills in accord?
There, with sword-flash of myriad waves, joy-leaping,
Shall loom forever, Freedom's watch and ward,
With the New World in his Seraphic keeping.
HUMAN FREEDOM
This is thy glory, Man, that thou art free.
'Tis in thy freedom, thy resemblance lies
To thy Creator. Nature, which, tide-wise,
Is flood and ebb, bounds not sky flight for thee.
Lo! as the sun arises from the sea,
Startling all beauty God-ward, thou dost rise
With mind to God in heaven, from finite ties,
And there, in freedom, thou art great as He.
Meeting thy God with mind, 'tis thine to choose,
Wheather to follow him with love and soar,
Or dream Him myth and, rather than adore,
Plunge headlong into Nature's whirl and ooze.
Thine is full freedom. Ah! could God do more
To liken thee to Him, and love, infuse?
THE STARS
God loves the stars; else why star-shape the dew
For the unbreathing, shy, heart-hiding rose?
And when earth darkens, and the North wind blows,
Why into stars, flake every cloud's black brew?
What fitter forms for longings high and true,
Man's hopes, ideals, than bright orbs like those
Asbine from Nature's dawn to Nature's close,
In clusters, prisming every dazzling hue?
Nor is the Sun with harvests in its heat,
And that, sky-hidden, makes the moon at night,
An earth-ward cascade for its leaps of light,
More real, or a world force more complete,
Than Faith and Hope, that brake through clouds with sight
Of evil's foil and ultimate defeat.
THE GENESIS OF FREEDOM
I
O Freedom! Born amid resplendent spheres,
And, with God-like creative power, endowed,
Hast thou, to human life's blue depths, not vowed
A splendor, not alone like that which 'pears
At present, where the upper asure clears,
But that the Nebulae will yet unshroud?
I hear thy far off cry where thou art lone,
A John the Baptist: "Lo! one greater nears."
What is this Greater—this which is to meet
The planets and ascend high, high and higher?
The right of human spirit to aspire
And mount, unhampered—and by act, complete
Creations harmony, as by desire,
Proclaimed by brain with throb, by heart with beat.
II
In thy descent through azures, all aglow
With circling spheres, the beauty of each blaze,
And grandeur, then, of all, entrance thy gaze.
Thou thinkest, why not thus all life below?
Perceiving, then that all the breezes blow
Upward and onward, in the skyey maze,
Thou wouldst go back and start with them, to raise
A new creation from chaotic throe.
Thou seest plainly that without that breeze,
The breath of God, all that thou couldst create,
Were lifeless, save to turn on thee with hate,
And chase an age with grim atrocities;
But with that breath, thou couldst raise life to mate
The Planet's splendor, in the azures Peace.
III
O Freedom! as thy sister spirit, Spring,
Pausing above the earth, sees every hue
Of her prismatic crown, reflected true
In forests and in fields, and fledgling's wing,
So thou dost see thy spirit glorying
With faith, that man is more than Nature's spew—
In human spirit that, from beauty drew
First breath to know that soul is more than thing.
O Freedom! fain we follow thee in flight
From chaos to God's glory round and round,
Aloft! how like an elk pursued by hound,
To brinks thou springest toward the distant height
And, on bent knees, then speedest without sound,
Like Faith through Death, till, lo! thou dost alight.
THE PILGRIM FATHERS
"Ye Wreaches, who would lay proud England's head
Upon the block, and raise her features, then,
Bloodless and ghastly, for the scorn of men!
Begone forever. Go where terrors spread
Their sea and forest mouths to crush you dead.
Oh, how the clouds shall crimson from each glen,
A roar with blaze, and flame search out each fen,
If back to us, yea e'er are vomited."
To this Parental blessing and God-speed,
The Pilgrim Fathers gladly made reply:
"These waves are Conscience's wings along the sky;
They carry us to God, whose call we heed.
The further from thy coast of hate and lie,
The nearer God. On! On!—that is our creed."
PLYMOUTH ROCK
O Sun and Stars! bear ye Earth's thanks to God;
For Oh! what waters, slaking every thirst
Of heart, mind, spirit, in long cascades burst
From Plymouth Rock, when struck by Freedom's rod!
No wanderer in the burning sand, unshod,
Plods man with lolling tongue, dog-like, as erst;
For lo! this fountain, deepening from the first,
Floods Earth's old wells and greens Life's sand to sod.
Oh, more those waters than the Font of Youth,
For which, through field and swamp, the Spaniard ran!
For they are clear with God's eternal truth
Of fatherhood, hence brotherhood of man,
And are no dream. They quench all human drouth
And cleanse man's desert dust of sect and clan.
THE CATHOLICS IN MARYLAND
Of Expeditions in the Arctic Past,
All honor to the one that reached the pole
And formed a settlement where every soul
Enjoyed full freedom. There above the blast,
How musical the bell, by Justice cast!
It welcomed all to come. It ceased to toll
After a while, but why? Those, welcomed, stole
And dragged it where the ice formed thick and fast.
Of Arctic Expeditions there is none
So profitable to the human race
As that toward Freedom's pole, and hence men face
All storms to reach it. If they fail, the sun
Has but one joy—to thaw out wrecks, and trace
Man's progress where alone it can be done.
A FOREST FOR THE KING'S HAWKS
Say, what is Ma-jest-y without externals?
Is Burke's analysis not right—"A Jest"?
Ah, but a jest, at which the poor, oft pressed
To their last heart-drop, laugh not, like court journals.
The King needs coin, and, where he sowed no kernels,
Wants the whole forest for his hawks to nest
And breed in, and became an annual pest;
In this the farmers show that they discern ills.
Hark! blares the tyrant's horn and, in a thrice,
The Tories gather. Eagerly they band,
For is the King not greater than the land?
And rows with royalty, a rabble's vice?
Besides, what creeping tribes at his command,
And Spies and Hessians at a ferret's price!
TO ARMS SHOUTS FREEDOM
To Arms! shouts Freedom to her sons. Behold!
How, like Job's war-horse, they gulp down the ground
To battle! What care they how foes surround?
Oh, joy to Celts, nigh half the true and bold!
There, with the roar of all their wrongs uprolled
From ancient depths, they dash with billow-bound
Up rock and summit, and through cave and mound,
Spurning both Tyrants' steel and Treason's gold.
No tide are they to ebb in heart and spirit.
If dashed back, they return with all the force
Of six dark sea's momentum on its course
For vengeance on the vile, who disinherit
The human-being—shut off every source
Of happiness, or let but Serf's draw near it!
BRITISH SOLDIERY
The wounded Sidney, who despite his thirst,
Gave water to his comrade, shines, a lamp
In the Cimerian dark of Britain's camp.
Even the Raleigh, who so finely versed,
Preferred to such a light, the flame accursed
Of sword and torch, to please a royal vamp.
Is British triumph in its world-wide tramp
The Hell, still "lower than lowest"—Milton's worst?
Lord Christ! is British soldiery the swine,
In whose gross forms the fiends, exercised, flew?
Oh! watch them through the ages, they pursue
The noble and devour all things Divine.
Look! they illustrate horrors, which prove true
The Hell, which Milton's glimpse could not outline.
AMPHIBIOUS BARRY
Look! Freedom glares and pallid as a ghost,
Except for gashes on her brow and breast,
And faint from hunger, sits awhile to rest.
Amphibious Barry, bold on sea or coast,
Mounts and spurs darkness to the Tory Host,
And, like an Indian rider with head prest
Down to his steed's hot neck in prowess test,
Plucks from the ground, a prize he well may boast.
Oh, as the sun's smile passing through the rain,
Shines forth a double arch, so, Barry's deed,
Refleshing Freedom's bones made gaunt by need,
Shines through the Ages; aye, and shines forth twain—
Both for America, from Britain Freed,
And Erin, still choked black in Britain's chain!
FREEDOM'S TRIUMPH
With France and Erin heartening Washington,
Prone Freedom rose, with head above the cloud.
Beholding her transfigured, Thrall is cowed.
His minions are bewildered. How they run!
Some follow him against the rising sun;
Others plod north. The Torries' vaster crowd
Hide in dark places, and like Satan, proud,
They hate the glory, that the true have won.
O Milton! Thou beheldest them. Thine ear
Caught their defiance and thy lightening pen,
In shattering the dark in evil's den,
Caught hope amphibious from leer to leer
Of those grim shadows, plotting to regain
Lost Paradise, or bane its atmosphere.
WASHINGTON'S ARMY AND BARRY'S NAVY
Who loosed our land from Britain's numbing hold?
"They who had naught to loose," the Tories say;
That is—not menials in the King's sure pay,
Nor mongrels, chained to guard their master's gold.
They were True Men. Their spirit, young and bold,
With dreams played follow-master, climbing day
From deepest night, to catch the Sun and stay
His glory for the World, then whiteing cold.
Though darkness be far vaster than the lamp,
It is the beams that lead to progress, count.
"To manhood, with the virtues to surmount
Such darknesses as Valley Forge's camp,
And seas, deep hell's sky-reaching, broadening fount,
Honor!" The ages shout on Triumph's tramp.
THE SUNKEN CONTINENT
When hurled from heaven, 'tis thought, the fiends of pride
Caught Earth to brake their fall. The regions gave
And sank with all the hosts beneath the wave!
'Tis in those sunken regions which divide
The new world of the resolute and brave,
From the old world of king and abject slave,
Where Torries, counterfeiting Satan, hide.
Clinging, like lava, to a lifeless limb,
They think the phosphorescence of the bark
Is morning, which the long-belated lark
Is hastening to welcome with his hymn;
Else, they form poisons and breathe from the dark,
Miasma mist to make the sun-rise dim.
ELISHA BROWN
Old Guard of Boston! Halt; Right Face; Attention!
Order One: quell the weeds in rankest riot
Where lies Elisha Brown, in conscience, quiet.
This Brown was John's precursor. Ye, on pension
For ancient glory, now do duty. Mention
Elisha's name for countersign—and why, it?
Because with him, wrong, seen, was to defy it,
And act, else, was beyond his comprehension.
Against his home's invasion this man held
A red-coat regiment for seventeen days,
Which was a spark to help start freedom's blaze
And, therefore, Order Two: the weeds all quelled,
Stand sentries till a statue takes your place
And throngs shout, "Bravo, Brown!" as 'tis unveiled!
EVACUATION DAY
What is it that today we celebrate
With school recital, banquet and parade
Of our achievements, pageanting each trade?
The ousting of the English—train and trait—
And posting, then, sharp-eyed, eternal hate
To watch with Josuah's son above his head,
That night come not to help them re-invade,
However wide, we swing our ocean gate.
If not un-Englishing America in mind
And heart forever, vain the shrieks
Of Freedom, eagling back to dawn's first streaks.
Oh, yea, the sun stands, and the night afar
Holds Thrall, whose craft would swamp our noblest peaks
And leave but bubbling mud show where they are!
MANHATTA
Manhatta! Glory flings his arms round thee
And proudly holds thee in his high caress.
What charms him, Mother, is thy nobleness
Of spirit. How his features beam to see
Thy scorn dash in the bay the tyrant's tea,
And hear thee call to Boston: "Do no less;
Else on sunlight, heart, soul—all we possess—
Will tyrant's next exact their deadly fee."
In thee I glory. Can the world else boast
A harbor, like thy heart, for every sail
In flight from sea-toss, white with horror's gale,
Or icebergs from despondence Polar coast?
Oh, fleets whose throngs, glad Freedom well may hail;
For, landing, they became her staunchest host.
THE BURNING OF WASHINGTON CITY BY THE BRITISH
With what wild glee, the British set on fire
Yon Capital, beholding in its flames,
America, robed in her deeds and fames,
In death throes at the stake of England's ire?
Though that was long ago and, then no pyre,
The stake still stands; 'tis Anglo-Saxon claims,
And Arnolds, bearing infamy's last names,
Tilt schools to raise the stake flames high and higher.
Oh, sight to strike the coming ages dead,
My country, were a cloud, thy mocking crown,
And schools, ignited by Truth's lamps hurled down,
To feed that cloud, like craters, inly red!
What! mock with cloud, Thy land and sea renown
And Washington, God's Holy Spirit—known
By the unerring World Light, that it shed?
THE LAND OF THE GREAT SPIRIT
Behold Ye Here the Happy Hunting Grounds,
Where the Great Spirit, called Democracy,
Sets every heart and soul forever free,
An Equity, not royal grant, sets bounds.
No Phaeton attempting Phoebus rounds
And burning up earth's grass and forestry,
Is lust for power; 'tis love for liberty,
With bloom and birds for wheel-sparks, here resounds.
It is the land of Spirit. "Ye who enter,
Abandon first all fratricidal hate,"
Proclaims the edict, blazoned o'er each gate.
There see all tribes chase truth to joy—the center
Convexing broad and broader, as more great
Their numbers from where prejudice is mentor.
THE BLIGHT TO SPRING
Hark, 'tis the sea! How leonine its roar!
But, oh, how more the lion on a height,
As there he glares and listens for the night,
Having devoured day's clouds from shore to shore!
Now grows his mane of billows, high and hoar.
What scents he? Potencies escaping sight,
Till, like the cold, they icily alight
Upon a land where all was spring before.
The sun darts under earth and east again,
What sees he? First the lion at earth's brink
With head down to the stream of stars to drink;
And then, arising to his zenith ken,
Sees that which makes his high, warm spirit sink—
The blight to spring, blown here from England's fen.
THE SCORN OF HUMAN RIGHTS
What is the blight to spring that kills the seed
And raises spectres, so that stars cry "See!"
Aghast at forests, white or shadowy?
The scorn of human rights, that can but lead
The world from doom to doom! and for what mead?
A bronze for rain and rust, or effigy
For nibbling minutes—ah, not hours!—these flee
To life's progression—truth and kindly deed.
Look! How this scorn holds freemen in the dark,
Except for a flare at will that, then, the throng,
Reduced to dust, may rise and whirl along
The lift and drop of glitter, without spark
To set the spring a-crackling with bird song,
Till bud and angel both come out to hark!
NOT THIS OUR COUNTRY'S GLORY
O Country of the Sun's warm plenteous hand
To every germ of virtue, how below
Thy progress, mope Gold Mongers to and fro,
Who think they're vaulting from sunlight so grand,
It forms thy chiefest glory. Closely scanned,
They are gross worms, each with the thought to grow
"The Conqueror," as staged by Edgar Poe
For darking planets and a world, Last Manned.
Those worms that, moving, think they move the earth,
Or, under Growth's equestrian statue, think
They hold the horse and hero from the brink,
Are pitifully not a glance's worth,
As of thy glory; they but foul the chink,
If not of thee in warming Good to birth.
AMERICA'S GLORY NO FUGITIVE
I
How weird a whisper! 'tis from Wallabout.
'Tis glory hoarse with calling: "Raise those hulks
Where writhe my faithful." See! the tory skulks
Behind the sun who, stooping to fill out
Their throats with his god-breath, to swell the shout
Of a free people, finds the brave in bulks,
Strewn and held fast where Darkness, beaten, sulks
That thrall has been forever put to rout.
Those mangled thousands are not dead; they live,
Refashioned men by freedom. Is the tory
Behind the sun, to mock me, who am Glory,
Being the lifted life those martyrs give?
He creeps beneath the sun and, ghastly gory,
Crys out: "Thou yet shall be the fugitive".
II
Oh, weirder grows the whisper into word,
As sharp as lightening, and as broad of reach,
As seas, flung down by God to every beach
Where thirsts a sparrow, or a bleating herd!
There is no soul through out the land, not stirred;
For, oh, to glory God gives his own speech
When darkness, raised by Gold, declares that each,
Hulk-held, is good but for the wolf and bird.
Is Gold grown conscious, now the Country's King
That, at his beck, the blood for Freedom spilt
Shall be accursed, and I, then, for the guilt
Of dropping not with thud, as he with ring
At Darkness' feet, be shut in mud and silt
Forever and with stars, cease, beaconing?
III
Oh, as the earth in discord and in dark,
When struck by Love on high with will for mace,
Keeps rattling till each mote finds its true place,
And mountain, fledged with groves, vies with the lark
To reach the sunrise; so the madness stark
Of gold, dethroning blood as God's best grace,
When struck by Glory's voice drops Nadir-base,
And blood for Freedom spilt, forms heaven's blue arc.
The shouts of millions shake Oblivion's mire
And raise Thrall's Hulks. Look! Justice's stooping sun,
Seeing in agony's each, a Washington,
Breaths life in them, and, over Brooklyn's spire
And New York's Babel Tower, they, one by one,
Hold Liberty's broading Torch of quenchless fire.
HATE THOU NOT ANY MAN
Hate thou not any man, for at the worst,
He still is brother. Will a glance not find
Whole peoples alchemied from heart and mind
To steal projectiles by a craft, accursed
By Human Nature? Aye, for, as they burst
At dusk, or midnight, slamming Heaven behind
And crashing Hell wide open, 'tis mankind
Is shattered and quick-gulping grave slake thirst.
Hate thou no man, but scorn all crafts, that smelt
The heart and mind for huge projectiles, shattered
When bursting grandly that some pride be flattered.
Nature beholds not Saxon, Slav, nor Celt;
She only sees the Human fragments scattered,
And, covering them, her eyes to rivers melt.
THE CELTIC SOUL CRY
I
O Freedom! Have I ever been untrue?
When, to thy moan of hunger anywhere,
Have I been deaf? Was I not quick to share
My little, nay, give all! for oh! I knew
Thy beauty, and my love such passion grew
At thy distresses,—What would I not dare!
So, though the bellow, like a grizzly bear,
Reared up before me, on to thee I flew.
O Freedom! Is thy beauty without heart,
Or sense of justice? Unto whom art thou
Indebted for thine arm, encircling now
The world, sun-like, more than to me? My part
I glory in, for I have kept my vow.
I hold thee now to thine, if true thou art.
II
Speak Freedom! When a haggard fugitive,
Thy dwelling was a swamp, who first to trace
Thy crimson footprints to thy hiding place?
With signs thou hadst not many days to live,
I found thee. Had the sun more heart to give
To warm thee, than I gave? Ah, then and there
Thy heart said to my heart; "Ill would I fare
Without thee. I give love for love, believe".
Thy silence, when in glory, troubles me.
Oh! warm blood dashed back cold, chills to the bone!
What do I ask for? Only Erin's own,
That which God gave her, and, if true it be,
Thou art the minister of justice grown,
Thy gratitude should thunder God's decree.
III
What! Why bemoan one island in the sea,
When I can range like mountains, or, the sun,
Above all clouds, and, rosy from my run
To God, like morn, chant praise, since flesh of thee?
Oh, yea, my pride and transport, verily,
Is, thou and I eternally are one;
And this god-passion which no power can stun,
I owe to her, who gave her soul to me.
Oh, when I see her golden hair, adrift
On sorrow's sea, like weeds rent from their reef,
And know she breathes with her sublime belief,
It crazes me that thou, when thou mightst lift
Her saintly features, and dry them of grief,
Wads't not, but waitest for the tide to shift.
IV
America! 'Tis not thy mines of gold,
Nor streams from mounts to meadows, like God's hand
From out the heavens, a-flash across the land
In long, deep sweeps to quicken winter's mould
To reaps of ripeness,—that mine eyes behold,
Invoking thee; for these are mere shore-sand
To the broad ocean of thy spirit grand,
Forming for man a new world for the old.
'Tis Liberty, to whose most blessed birth
The stars all lead, rejoicing, which souls thee
With God's compassion for humanity,—
That I invoke; and, now, when all the earth
Bears palms and chants hosannas—what! shall she,
The most devout, be shut from Freedom's mirth?
BRITISH GLORY IN KIPLING'S "BOOTS"
All English glory is in "Kipling's Boots."
O English People! read that poem true,
And answer,—are those maddening men not you?
Oh, not yea few, who gather all the loots,
But yea vast legions, lured to be recruits
To march, march, march and march with naught in view
But boots, boots, boots with blood and mud soaked through,—
And, after ages, with out rest, or fruits!
"Boots, boots, boots, and no discharge from war,"—
That is the Empire's anthem. Brass it out,
Ye Orchestras! But oh, leave not in doubt
Its import, Kipling,—that 'tis maelstrom roar—
'Tis England's streams of home-life, world about
And down a gulf, for Greed and Pride on shore!
TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
If deaf to Shelley's loudest sky-lark strain,
His rage at tyrants, and to Byron's thong,
Nerve-proof, how wake the English to the wrong
Done their true selves, no less than to the slain,
When willing weapons for Ambition's gain?
Aye, weapons only; for, to whom belong
The minds of England, and treed fields of song—
Nay, all but grave-ground, grudged by hill and plain?
O English People, whom the crafty class
Has huddled into graves from sight and sound
Of what God hands you, and, with pence, or pound,
Lids down your wild dead stare,—wake! why so crass?
See in the Celts spring-burst from underground,
The Human Resurrection come to pass.
SHAKESPEARE
Oh, what are England's lines of lords and kings,
Shakespeare, to thine, a-throb with thought and feeling?
In thine, imagination shines, revealing
The soul's convictions, swift on dawn-ward wings
From beastly life and such Hell-smelling things,
As wealth and pomp from church and abbey stealing,—
And hearts in hopes high Belfries, Heavenward pealing,
As Time, his Sun and Starry censor, swings.
Would thou wert England's Nature, Bard Supreme,
To fashion kings and lordlings fit to rule;
They would be flesh and blood, not fiend and ghoul;
And would thou wert her Sun, that every beam
Might not, for tally, show a youth's blood-pool,
Choking blithe Spring, as, now, to earth's extreme.
ENGLAND'S RIGHTEOUSNESS
The righteousness of England! "Tis to kneel
Full weight on weaker nations, and entone
Hosannas louder than the victims groan;
Then, stooping, drink their blood with gulps of zeal."
What right have wounds, though wide, to throb, or feel?
'Tis blasphemy to England's crimson throne.
Knee-deep in Erin's blood, she mocks Christ's moan:
Forgive them, Lord! they know not their true weal.
"Whose is the fault? Tis not my arrogance,
But candor, Lord, that puts the blame on Thee.
What right hadst Thou to make these people free
And let all nature prompt them to advance?—
Oh, no such blunder, Lord, hadst Thou called me,
Instead of Wisdom, to approve Thy plans!"
THE MASSACRE OF THE WELSH MINERS
The Bard's curse: "Ruin seize thee Ruthless King,"
Took bat-like form for hollow echo-flight.
Though stoned and lanced at, when, at fall of night,
It darted forth with ghastly—spreading wing,
It found in fresh, wide, royal ravishing,
New hollows, dark with horror and sad plight,
To dash in and live on. Oh, to my sight,
How grows its grimness, while eternaling!
Deep are the minds of Wales, but far more deep
The horror, gulfed out by McCreedy, firing
On men defenseless and, through want, expiring.
Oh, from that gulf the Bard's curse makes a sweep
Up to the Sun and, from its long desiring,
Grown eagle, shrieks to heaven from steep to step!
A DIRTY WORK
"A dirty work," said Dyer, rebuked for spilling
Hundreds of lives to irrigate new lands.
A dirty work, but not for British hands,
Dabbling in blood to earn each day their shilling.
Hark! Mohawk Valley and Wyoming, chilling
With thought of Tarleton's King-serving bands,
And Canada red-clayed, though high snow stands,
Cry: Work for which the British are too willing!
Invaded lands need terror irrigation
To make them fruitful. Better flood the field,
Then let the native bloom become the yield;
And, so, this Dyer submerged a small whole nation
With crimson death, that England might, deep-keeled,
Have for display, new seas of desolation.
HUMAN NATURE
The ocean, holding pure the azure's blue,
Laughs at the tempests, with one empire's dust
After an other, to round out Earth's crust.
Ah, so does Human Nature hold the hue
It takes from heaven, its conscience, and laughs, too,
At madness, wrecking life and with its gust
Forming new islands, where Pride, Greed, or Lust,
Welcomes the crater's glare, in sun-light's lieu.
Look in the sea and deep, what scattered rock,
The islands which at dusk, the tempest piled!
Ere rose a star, they sank with crews, beguiled.
O Tempests that with world formations, mock
The good Creator, how, as ye grow wild,
Earth quakes and no live thing survives the shock.
OUR COUNTRY—SOUL AND CHARACTER
I
Our country is not rock and wood and stream,
But soul transfusing them. What is the soul?
The substance, born of God, above control
And, when one, with God's love, called "Will," supreme;
And Freedom is the soul in thought, and dream
That Nature's beauty and harmonious whole—
God's foot-steps—followed, life attains its Goal;
And soul is purpose to achieve God's scheme.
The soul, then,—our true country,—is the brave
Who fought and bled for Freedom, or will fight
To their last pulse, last breath, for Human Right.——