Ballads of a Bohemian Part 20

As in a gla.s.s darkly I can see the skin-clad men, the women with their tangled hair, the beast-like feast, the cowering terror of the night.

Then the sunset is cut off suddenly, and a clammy mist shrouds that silent army. So it is almost with a shudder I take my last look at the Stones of Carnac.

But now my pilgrimage is drawing to an end. A painter friend who lives by the sea has asked me to stay with him awhile. Well, I have walked a hundred miles, singing on the way. I have dreamed and dawdled, planned, exulted. I have drunk buckets of cider, and eaten many an omelette that seemed like a golden glorification of its egg. It has all been very sweet, but it will also be sweet to loaf awhile.

Oh, It Is Good

Oh, it is good to drink and sup, And then beside the kindly fire To smoke and heap the f.a.ggots up, And rest and dream to heart's desire.

Oh, it is good to ride and run, To roam the greenwood wild and free; To hunt, to idle in the sun, To leap into the laughing sea.

Oh, it is good with hand and brain To gladly till the chosen soil, And after honest sweat and strain To see the harvest of one's toil.

Oh, it is good afar to roam, And seek adventure in strange lands; Yet oh, so good the coming home, The velvet love of little hands.

So much is good. . . . We thank Thee, G.o.d, For all the tokens Thou hast given, That here on earth our feet have trod Thy little s.h.i.+ning trails of Heaven.

V

August 10, 1914.

I am living in a little house so near the sea that at high tide I can see on my bedroom wall the reflected ripple of the water. At night I waken to the melodious welter of waves; or maybe there is a great stillness, and then I know that the sand and sea-gra.s.s are lying naked to the moon. But soon the tide returns, and once more I hear the roistering of the waves.

Calvert, my friend, is a lover as well as a painter of nature. He rises with the dawn to see the morning mist kindle to coral and the sun's edge clear the hill-crest. As he munches his coa.r.s.e bread and sips his white wine, what dreams are his beneath the magic changes of the sky! He will paint the same scene under a dozen conditions of light. He has looked so long for Beauty that he has come to see it everywhere.

I love this friendly home of his. A peace steals over my spirit, and I feel as if I could stay here always. Some day I hope that I too may have such an one, and that I may write like this:

I Have Some Friends

I have some friends, some worthy friends, And worthy friends are rare: These carpet slippers on my feet, That padded leather chair; This old and shabby dressing-gown, So well the worse of wear.

I have some friends, some honest friends, And honest friends are few; My pipe of briar, my open fire, A book that's not too new; My bed so warm, the nights of storm I love to listen to.

I have some friends, some good, good friends, Who faithful are to me: My wrestling partner when I rise, The big and burly sea; My little boat that's riding there So saucy and so free.

I have some friends, some golden friends, Whose worth will not decline: A tawny Irish terrier, a purple shading pine, A little red-roofed cottage that So proudly I call mine.

All other friends may come and go, All other friends.h.i.+ps fail; But these, the friends I've worked to win, Oh, they will never stale; And comfort me till Time shall write The finish to my tale.

Calvert tries to paint more than the thing he sees; he tries to paint behind it, to express its spirit. He believes that Beauty is G.o.d made manifest, and that when we discover Him in Nature we discover Him in ourselves.

But Calvert did not always see thus. At one time he was a Pagan, content to paint the outward aspect of things. It was after his little child died he gained in vision. Maybe the thought that the dead are lost to us was too unbearable. He had to believe in a coming together again.

The Quest

I sought Him on the purple seas, I sought Him on the peaks aflame; Amid the gloom of giant trees And canyons lone I called His name; The wasted ways of earth I trod: In vain! In vain! I found not G.o.d.

I sought Him in the hives of men, The cities grand, the hamlets gray, The temples old beyond my ken, The tabernacles of to-day; All life that is, from cloud to clod I sought. . . . Alas! I found not G.o.d.

Then after roamings far and wide, In streets and seas and deserts wild, I came to stand at last beside The death-bed of my little child.

Lo! as I bent beneath the rod I raised my eyes . . . and there was G.o.d.

A golden mile of sand swings hammock-like between two tusks of rock. The sea is sleeping sapphire that wakes to cream and crash upon the beach.

There is a majesty in the detachment of its lazy waves, and it is good in the night to hear its friendly roar. Good, too, to leap forth with the first suns.h.i.+ne and fall into its arms, to let it pummel the body to living ecstasy and send one to breakfast glad-eyed and glowing.

Behind the house the greensward slopes to a wheat-field that is like a wall of gold. Here I lie and laze away the time, or dip into a favorite book, Stevenson's _Letters_ or Belloc's _Path to Rome_. Bees drone in the wild thyme; a cuckoo keeps calling, a lark spills jeweled melody.

Then there is a seeming silence, but it is the silence of a deeper sound.

After all, Silence is only man's confession of his deafness. Like Death, like Eternity, it is a word that means nothing. So lying there I hear the breathing of the trees, the crepitation of the growing gra.s.s, the seething of the sap and the movements of innumerable insects. Strange how I think with distaste of the spurious glitter of Paris, of my garret, even of my poor little book.

I watch the wife of my friend gathering poppies in the wheat. There is a sadness in her face, for it is only a year ago they lost their little one. Often I see her steal away to the village graveyard, sitting silent for long and long.

The Comforter

As I sat by my baby's bed That's open to the sky, There fluttered round and round my head A radiant b.u.t.terfly.

And as I wept--of hearts that ache The saddest in the land-- It left a lily for my sake, And lighted on my hand.

I watched it, oh, so quietly, And though it rose and flew, As if it fain would comfort me It came and came anew.

Now, where my darling lies at rest, I do not dare to sigh, For look! there gleams upon my breast A snow-white b.u.t.terfly.