Transcriber's Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Ventures into Verse
Being Various Ballads, Ballades, Rondeaux, Triolets, Songs, Quatrains, Odes and Roundels
All rescued from the Potters' Field of Old Files and here Given Decent Burial
[Peace to Their Ashes]
BY
Henry Louis Mencken
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS & OTHER THINGS
By CHARLES S. GORDON & JOHN SIEGEL
MARSHALL, BEEK & GORDON :: NEW
YORK :: LONDON :: TORONTO :: SYDNEY
BALTIMORE
First (and Last) Edition
M C M I I I
Copyright, 1903, by Henry L. Mencken
CONTENTS
VENTURES INTO VERSE
[THE TRANSPORT GEN'RAL FERGUSON]
[THE BALLAD OF SHIPS IN HARBOR]
ESSAYS IN OLD FRENCH FORMS
[THE RHYMES OF MISTRESS DOROTHY]
SONGS of THE CITY
OTHER VERSES
WARNING
Most of the verses that follow have been printed before and the author wishes to acknowledge his thanks for permission to reproduce them, to the editors and publishers of The Bookman, Life, The New England Magazine, The National Magazine and the Baltimore Morning Herald. Some are imitations—necessarily weak—of the verse of several men in whose writings he has found a good deal of innocent pleasure. The others, he fears, are more or less original.
PRELIMINARY REBUKE
Don't shoot the pianist; he's doing his best.
Gesundheit! Knockers! have your Fling!
Unto an Anvilfest you're bid;
It took a Lot of Hammering,
To build Old Cheops' Pyramid!
Ventures into Verse
BY HENRY L. MENCKEN
TO R. K.[[1]]
Prophet of brawn and bravery!
Bard of the fighting man!
You have made us kneel to a God of Steel,
And to fear his church's ban;
You have taught the song that the bullet sings—
The knell and the crowning ode of kings;
The ne'er denied appeal!
Prophet of brain and handicraft!
Bard of our grim machines!
You have made us dream of a God of Steam,
And have shown what his worship means
In the clanking rod and the whirring wheel
A life and a soul your songs reveal,
And power and might supreme.
Bard of the East and mystery!
Singer of those who bow
To the earthen clods that they call their gods
And with god-like fees endow;
You have shown that these heed not the suppliant's plea,
Nor the prayers of the priest and devotee,
Nor the vestal's futile vow.
Singer, we ask what we cannot learn
From our wise men and our schools;
Will our offered slain from our gods obtain
But the old reward of fools?
Will our man-made gods be like their kind?
If we bow to a clod of clay enshrined
Will we pray our prayers in vain?
[1]. Copyright, 1899, by Dodd, Mead & Co.
THE SONG OF THE OLDEN TIME
Powder and shot now fight our fights
And we meet our foes no more,
As face to face our fathers fought
In the brave old days of yore;
To the thirteen inch and the needle gun,
To the she-cat four-point-three
We look for help when the war-dogs yelp
And the foe comes o'er the sea!
Oho! for the days of the olden time,
When a fight was a fight of men!
When lance broke lance and arm met arm—
There were no cowards then;
Sing ho! for the fight of the olden time,
When the muscles swelled in strain,
As the steel found rest in a brave man's breast
And the axe in a brave man's brain!
The lance-point broke on the armor's steel,
And the pike crushed helmet through,
And the blood of the vanquished, warm and red,
Stained the victor's war-steed, too!
A fight was a fight in the olden time—
Sing ho, for the days bygone!—
And a strong right arm was the luckiest charm,
When the foe came marching on!
Oho! for the days of the olden time,
When a fight was a fight of men!
When lance broke lance and arm met arm—
There were no cowards then!
Sing ho! for the fight of the olden time,
When the muscles swelled in strain,
As the steel found rest in a brave man's breast
And the axe in a brave man's brain!
THE SPANISH MAIN
Between the tangle of the palms,
There gleaming, like a star-strewn plain,
All smiling, lies the sea of calms,
And calls to us to fare amain;
And calls us, as with smile and gem,
She called that bold, upstanding brood,
Whose bones, when she had done with them,
Upon her shores she strewed.
Between the tangle of the palms,
By day the gleam is on the swell,
And drifting zephyrs, bearing balms,
Her tales of joy and riches tell,
And when the winds of night are free
Long, glimmering ripples wander by
As if the stars where in the sea,
Instead of in the sky.
And they went forth in ships of war
Girt up in all foolhardiness,
To take their toll from out her store,
Beguiled and snared by her caress;
And we go forth in cargo ships
To wrest her treasures bloodlessly,
And buy the nectar from her lips,
Our fairy goddess, she!
Where once their galleons blundered by
Our cargo ships are on their way,
And where their galleons rotting lie,
Our cargo ships are wrecked today.
For ever, 'till the world is done,
And all good merchantmen go down,
And dies the wind, as pales the sun,
Her smile will mask her frown.
THE TRANSPORT GEN'RAL FERGUSON[[2]]
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she left the Golden Gate,
With a thousand rookies sweatin' in her hold;
An' the sergeants drove an' drilled them, an' the sun it nearly killed them,—
Till they learned to do whatever they were told.
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she lay at Honolu',
An' the rookies went ashore an' roughed the town,
So the sergeants they corralled them, and with butt and barrel quelled them,—
An' they limped aboard an' set to fryin' brown.
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she steamed to-ward the south,
And the rookies sweated morning, noon and night;
'Till the lookout sighted land, and they cheered each grain o' sand,—
For their blood was boilin' over for a fight.
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she tied up at the dock,
An' each rookie lugged his gun an' kit ashore,
An' a train it come and took 'em where the tropic sun could cook 'em,—
An' the sergeants they could talk to them of war.
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she had her bottom scraped,
For the first part of her labor it was done,
An' the rookies chased the Tagals and the Tagals they escaped,—
An' the rookies set and sweated in the sun.
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she loafed around awhile,
An' the rookies they was soldier boys by now,
For it don't take long to teach 'em—where the Tagal lead can reach 'em—
All about the which and why and when and how.
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she headed home again,
With a thousand heavy coffins in her hold;
They were soldered up and stenciled, they were numbered and blue penciled,—
And the rookies lay inside 'em stiff and cold.
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she reached the Golden Gate,
An' the derrick dumped her cargo on the shore;
In a pyramid they piled it—and her manifest they filed it,
In a pigeon-hole with half a hundred more.
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she travels up and down,
A-haulin' rookies to and from the war;
Outward-bound they sweat in Kharki; homeward bound they come in lead
And they wonder what they've got to do it for.
The transport Gen'ral Ferguson, she's owned by Uncle Sam,
An' maybe Uncle Sam could tell 'em why,
But he don't—and so he takes 'em out to fight, and sweat, and swear,
An' brings them home for plantin' when they die.
[2]. Copyright, 1902, by the Life Publishing Company.
A WAR SONG
The wounded bird to its blasted nest,
(Sing ho! for the joys of war!)
When the sun of its life veers o'er to the West,
(Sing ho! for the war, for the war!)
The wounded fox to its cave in the hill,
And the blood-dyed wolf to the snow-waste chill,
And the mangled elk to the wild-wood rill,
(Sing ho! for the price of war!)
The nest-queen harks to her master's hurts,
(Sing ho! for the wounds of war!)
And the she-fox busies with woodland worts,
(Sing ho! for the end of war!)
The she-wolf staunches the warm red flood,
And the doe is besmeared with the spurting blood,
For 'tis ever the weak that must help the strong,
Though they have no part in the triumph song,
And their glory is brief as their work is long—
(Sing ho! for the saints of war!)
FAITH
The Gawd that guided Moses
Acrost the desert sand,
The Gawd that unter Joner
Put out a helping hand,
The Gawd that saved these famous men
From death on land an' sea,
Can spare a minute now an' then
To take a peep at you an' me.
The Gawd of Ol' Man Adam
An' Father Abraham,
Of lion an' of lamb,
Of kings, an' queens, an' potentates,
An' chaps of pedigree,
Wont put a bar acrost the Gate
When Gabr'el toots fer you an' me.
The Gawd that made the ocean
An' painted up the sky,
The Gawd that sets us livin'
An' takes us when we die,
Is just the same to ev'ry man,
Of high or low degree,
An' no one's better treated than
Poor little you and little me.
THE BALLAD OF SHIPS IN HARBOR
Clatter of shears and derrick,
Rattle of box and bale,
The ships of the earth are at their docks,
Back from the world-round trail—
Back from the wild waste northward,
Back from the wind and the lea,
Back from the ports of East and West,
Back from the under sea.
Here is a bark from Rio,
Back—and away she steals!
Here, from her trip, is a clipper ship
That showed the sea her heels—
South to the Gallapagos,
Down, due south, to the Horn,
And up, by the Windward Passage way,
On the breath of the balm-wind borne.
There, standing down the channel,
With a smoke wake o'er her rail,
Is a ship that goes to Zanzibar
Along the world-round trail,
'Ere seven suns have kissed her
She may pound on Quoddy Head—
A surf-tossed speck of melting wreck,
Deep-freighted with her dead.
And see that gaunt Norwegian,
Greasy, grimy and black—
She sails today for Yeddo Bay;
Who knows but she comes not back?
And there is a low decked Briton,
And yonder a white-winged Dane—
Oh, a song for the ships that put to sea
And come not back again!
Clatter of shears and derrick,
Rattle of box and bale,
The ships of the earth are home today,
Tomorrow they shall sail;
Cleared for the dawn and the sunset,
Cleared for the wind and the lea;
World-round and back, by the olden track—
Playthings of the sea.
