Giant Hours with Poet Preachers Part 15

"Then sweetly she mocked his scruples, and softly she him beguiled: 'You, who are verily man among men, speak with the tongue of a child.

We have outlived the old standards; we have burst like an overtight thong The ancient outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong.'"

"Then the Master feared for His angel, and called him again to His side, For O, the woman was wondrous, and O, the angel was tried!

And deep in his h.e.l.l sang the devil, and this was the strain of his song: 'The ancient, outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong.'"

The Spell of the Yukon.

And I doubt not, but that we all need that warning not to give up "The ancient, outworn, Puritanic traditions of Right and Wrong."

RHYMES OF A RED CROSS MAN

Here it is that we find a consciousness of the Eternal creeping through the smoke and din and glare. Here, like the hard, dangerous life of the Alaskan trails, only harder and more dangerous; here amid war in "The Fool" we catch six last lines that thrill us:

"He died with the glory of faith in his eyes, And the glory of love in his heart.

And though there's never a grave to tell, Nor a cross to mark his fall, Thank G.o.d we know that he "batted well"

In the last great Game of all."

Rhymes of a Red Cross Man.

And even amid the terrible thunder of war the "Lark" sings, as Service reminds us in his poem of that name, sings and points to heaven:

"Pure heart of song! do you not know That we are making earth a h.e.l.l?

Or is it that you try to show Life still is joy and all is well?

Brave little wings! Ah, not in vain You beat into that bit of blue: Lo! we who pant in war's red rain Lift s.h.i.+ning eyes, see Heaven too!"

Rhymes of a Red Cross Man.

To close this study of Service, which has run from the hard battle ground of the Alaskan trails to the harder battle ground of France; which has run from a study of white peaks and white lives, to high peaks and high hopes, through sin and death to heaven and the Father himself, I quote the closing lines of Service's "The Song of the Wage Slave," which will remind the reader in tone and spirit of Markham's "The Man with the Hoe":

"Master, I've filled my contract, wrought in thy many lands; Not by my sins wilt thou judge me, but by the work of my hands.

Master, I've done thy bidding, and the light is low in the west, And the long, long s.h.i.+ft is over--Master, I've earned it--Rest."

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUPERT BROOKE.]

IX

RUPERT BROOKE [Footnote: The poetical selections from the writings of Rupert Brooke appearing in this chapter are used by permission, and are taken from The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke, published by John Lane Company, New York.]

PREACHER OF FRIENDs.h.i.+P, LOVE, COUNTRY, G.o.dS, AND G.o.d

Wilfred Gibson expressed it for us all; voiced the sorrow and the hope in the death of Rupert Brooke, a victim of the Hun as well as that other giant of art, the Rheims Cathedral; expressed it in these lines written shortly after Rupert Brooke died:

"He's gone.

I do not understand.

I only know That, as he turned to go And waved his hand, In his young eyes a sudden glory shone, And I was dazzled by a sunset glow-- And he was gone,"

Thanks, Wilfred Gibson, you who have made articulate the voice of the downtrodden of the world, the poetic "Fires" which have lighted up with sudden glow the slums, the slag heaps, the factories, the coal mines, and hidden common ways of folks who toil; thanks that you have also beautifully lighted up the "End of the Trail" of your friend and our friend, Poet Rupert Brooke; lighted it with the light that s.h.i.+nes from eternity. We owe you debt unpayable for that.

And you yourself, war-dead poet, you sang your end, full knowing that it would come, as it did on foreign soil, far from the England that you loved and voiced so wondrously. And now these lines that you wrote of your own possible pa.s.sing have new meaning for us who remain to mourn your going:

"If I should die, think only this of me: That there's some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam; A body of England's breathing, breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

And so here, even in this hymn of your pa.s.sing, you have given a striking ill.u.s.tration off one of your strongest characteristics, love of homeland. Poet of Youth who left us so early in life, take your place along with Byron, and Sh.e.l.ley, and our own Seeger--a quartette of immortals, whose voices were heard, but, like the horns of Elfland, "faintly blowing" when they were hushed. Though you were but a youthful voice, yet left you poetry worth listening to, and preached a gospel that will make a better world, though it had not gone far enough to save the world.

THE GOSPEL OF FRIENDs.h.i.+P

Among the few definite, outstanding gospels that Brooke preached is seen the gospel of friends.h.i.+p. In "The Jolly Company" he says:

"O white companions.h.i.+p! You only In love, in faith unbroken dwell, Friends, radiant and inseparable!"

"Light-hearted and glad they seemed to me And merry comrades, even so G.o.d out of heaven may laugh to see.--"

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

Then, again, in a poem which he called "Lines Written in the Belief That the Ancient Roman Festival of the Dead Was Called Ambarvalia," he voices in an even more striking quatrain the immortality of friends.h.i.+p.

What a thrill of hope runs through us here as we, who believe that life brings no richer gold than friends.h.i.+p, read this poet's thought that friends.h.i.+p too shall last beyond the years!

"And I know, one night, on some far height, In the tongue I never knew, I yet shall hear the tidings clear From them that were friends of you.--"

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

THE GOSPEL OF LOVE

And where Friends.h.i.+p sweeps into love who shall tell, or where the dividing line is? But while Brooks lived he forgot not love. His was a throbbing, beating love whose light was a beacon night and day; a beacon of which he was not ashamed. He set the fires of romantic love burning and when he went away he left them burning so that their light might light the way for other poets and other lovers and other travelers when they came. He believed, like Noyes, that love should not be weak; that that was the great hope. Noyes said:

"But one thing is needful, and ye shall be true To yourselves and the goal and the G.o.d that ye seek; Yea, the day and the night shall requite it to you If ye love one another if your love be not weak."

From Collected Poems of Alfred Noyes.

Now I do not mean to suggest that the love that Brooke sang was exactly the type that Noyes sang in these four lines. In fact, one feels a difference as he reads the two English poets, but they are alike in that each agreed that Love should not be weak, whatever it was. Brooke sang of romantic love, high and holy as that is; love of Youth for Maiden, lad for la.s.s, and man for woman; and thank G.o.d for the high clean song that he gave to it in such lines as in "The Great Lover":

"Love is a flame;--we have beaconed the world's night.

A city:--and we have built it, these and I.

An emperor:--we have taught the world to die."

The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke.

And again in that same great poem:

"--Oh, never a doubt but, somewhere, I shall wake, And give what's left of love again, and make New friends, now strangers...."