Songs and Satires Part 6

And men and women sell their smiles For friends.h.i.+p's lifeless dregs.

For fear of the morrow we bend and bow To moneybags with the slanting brow.

For the heart that knows life's little wiles Seldom or never begs.

"Poor men," sighed Helios, "how they long For the ultimate fire of love.

They yearn, through life, like the peac.o.c.k moth, And die worn out in search of the troth.

For love in the soul is the siren song That wrecks the peace thereof."

Helios turned from the world and fled As the convent bell tolled six.

For he caught a glimpse of an aged crone Who knelt beside a coffin alone; She had sold her cloak to shrive the dead And buy a crucifix!

THE IDIOT

Two children in a garden Shouting for joy Were playing dolls and houses, A girl and boy.

I smiled at a neighbor window, And watched them play Under a budding oak tree On a wintry day.

And then a board half broken In the high fence Fell over and there entered, I know not whence, A jailbird face of yellow With a vacant sulk, His body was a sickly Thing of bulk.

His open mouth was slavering, And a green light Turned disc-like in his eyeb.a.l.l.s, Like a dog's at night.

His teeth were like a giant's, And far apart; I saw him reel on the children With a stopping heart.

He trampled their dolls and ruined The house they made; He struck to earth the children With a dirty spade.

As a tiger growls with an antelope After the hunt, Over the little faces I heard him grunt.

I stood at the window frozen, And short of breath, And then I saw the idiot Was Master Death!

A bird in the lilac bushes Began to sing.

The garden colored before me To the kiss of spring.

And the yellow face in a moment Was a mystic white; The matted hair was softened To starry light.

The ragged coat flowed downward Into a robe; He carried a sword and a balance And stood on a globe.

I watched him from the window Under a spell; The idiot was the angel Azrael!

HELEN OF TROY

On an ancient vase representing in bas-relief the flight of Helen.

This is the vase of Love Whose feet would ever rove O'er land and sea; Whose hopes forever seek Bright eyes, the vermeiled cheek, And ways made free.

Do we not understand Why thou didst leave thy land, Thy spouse, thy hearth?

Helen of Troy, Greek art Hath made our heart thy heart, Thy mirth our mirth.

For Paris did appear,-- Curled hair and rosy ear And tapering hands.

He spoke--the blood ran fast, He touched, and killed the past, And clove its bands.

And this, I deem, is why The restless ages sigh, Helen, for thee.

Whate'er we do or dream, Whate'er we say or seem, We would be free.

We would forsake old love, And all the pain thereof, And all the care; We would find out new seas, And lands more strange than these, And flowers more fair.

We would behold fresh skies Where summer never dies And amaranths spring; Lands where the halcyon hours Nest over scented bowers On folded wing.

We would be crowned with bays, And spend the long bright days On sea or sh.o.r.e; Or sit by haunted woods, And watch the deep sea's moods, And hear its roar.

Beneath that ancient sky Who is not fain to fly As men have fled?

Ah! we would know relief From marts of wine and beef, And oil and bread.

Helen of Troy, Greek art Hath made our heart thy heart, Thy love our love.

For poesy, like thee, Must fly and wander free As the wild dove.

O GLORIOUS FRANCE

You have become a forge of snow white fire, A crucible of molten steel, O France!

Your sons are stars who cl.u.s.ter to a dawn And fade in light for you, O glorious France!

They pa.s.s through meteor changes with a song Which to all islands and all continents Says life is neither comfort, wealth, nor fame, Nor quiet hearthstones, friends.h.i.+p, wife nor child Nor love, nor youth's delight, nor manhood's power, Nor many days spent in a chosen work, Nor honored merit, nor the patterned theme Of daily labor, nor the crowns nor wreaths Or seventy years.

These are not all of life, O France, whose sons amid the rolling thunder Of cannon stand in trenches where the dead Clog the ensanguined ice. But life to these Prophetic and enraptured souls is vision, And the keen ecstasy of fated strife, And divination of the loss as gain, And reading mysteries with brightened eyes In fiery shock and dazzling pain before The orient splendor of the face of Death, As a great light beside a shadowy sea; And in a high will's strenuous exercise, Where the warmed spirit finds its fullest strength And is no more afraid. And in the stroke Of azure lightning when the hidden essence And s.h.i.+fting meaning of man's spiritual worth And mystical significance in time Are instantly distilled to one clear drop Which mirrors earth and heaven.

This is life Flaming to heaven in a minute's span When the breath of battle blows the smoldering spark.

And across these seas We who cry Peace and treasure life and cling To cities, happiness, or daily toil For daily bread, or trail the long routine Of seventy years, taste not the terrible wine Whereof you drink, who drain and toss the cup Empty and ringing by the finished feast; Or have it shaken from your hand by sight Of G.o.d against the olive woods.

As Joan of Arc amid the apple trees With sacred joy first heard the voices, then Obeying plunged at Orleans in a field Of spears and lived her dream and died in fire, Thou, France, hast heard the voices and hast lived The dream and known the meaning of the dream, And read its riddle: How the soul of man May to one greatest purpose make itself A lens of clearness, how it loves the cup Of deepest truth, and how its bitterest gall Turns sweet to soul's surrender.

And you say: Take days for repet.i.tion, stretch your hands For mocked renewal of familiar things: The beaten path, the chair beside the window, The crowded street, the task, the accustomed sleep, And waking to the task, or many springs Of lifted cloud, blue water, flowering fields-- The prison house grows close no less, the feast A place of memory sick for senses dulled Down to the dusty end where pitiful Time Grown weary cries Enough!

FOR A DANCE

There is in the dance The joy of children on a May day lawn.

The fragments of old dreams and dead romance Come to us from the dancers who are gone.

What strains of ancient blood Move quicker to the music's pa.s.sionate beat?

I see the gulls fly over a shadowy flood And Munster fields of barley and of wheat.

And I see sunny France, And the vine's tendrils quivering to the light, And faces, faces, yearning for the dance With wistful eyes that look on our delight.