The Second Book of Modern Verse Part 6

What though the moon should come With a blinding glow, And the stars have a game On the wood's edge, A man would have to still Cut and weed and sow, And lay a white line When he plants a hedge.

What though G.o.d With a great sound of rain Came to talk of violets And things people do, I would have to labor And dig with my brain Still to get a truth Out of all words new.

To a Portrait of Whistler in the Brooklyn Art Museum. [Eleanor Rogers c.o.x]

What waspish whim of Fate Was this that bade you here Hold dim, unhonored state, No single courtier near?

Is there, of all who pa.s.s, No choice, discerning few To poise the ribboned gla.s.s And gaze enwrapt on you?

Sword-soul that from its sheath Laughed leaping to the fray, How calmly underneath Goes Brooklyn on her way!

Quite heedless of that smile -- Half-devil and half-G.o.d, Your quite unequalled style, The airy heights you trod.

Ah, could you from earth's breast Come back to take the air, What matter here for jest Most exquisite and rare!

But since you may not come, Since silence holds you fast, Since all your quips are dumb And all your laughter past --

I give you mine instead, And something with it too That Brooklyn leaves unsaid -- The world's fine homage due.

Ah, Prince, you smile again -- "My faith, the court is small!"

I know, dear James -- but then It's I or none at all!

Flammonde. [Edwin Arlington Robinson]

The man Flammonde, from G.o.d knows where, With firm address and foreign air, With news of nations in his talk And something royal in his walk, With glint of iron in his eyes, But never doubt, nor yet surprise, Appeared, and stayed, and held his head As one by kings accredited.

Erect, with his alert repose About him, and about his clothes, He pictured all tradition hears Of what we owe to fifty years.

His cleansing heritage of taste Paraded neither want nor waste; And what he needed for his fee To live, he borrowed graciously.

He never told us what he was, Or what mischance, or other cause, Had banished him from better days To play the Prince of Castaways.

Meanwhile he played surpa.s.sing well A part, for most, unplayable; In fine, one pauses, half afraid To say for certain that he played.

For that, one may as well forego Conviction as to yes or no; Nor can I say just how intense Would then have been the difference To several, who, having striven In vain to get what he was given, Would see the stranger taken on By friends not easy to be won.

Moreover, many a malcontent He soothed and found munificent; His courtesy beguiled and foiled Suspicion that his years were soiled; His mien distinguished any crowd, His credit strengthened when he bowed; And women, young and old, were fond Of looking at the man Flammonde.

There was a woman in our town On whom the fas.h.i.+on was to frown; But while our talk renewed the tinge Of a long-faded scarlet fringe, The man Flammonde saw none of that, And what he saw we wondered at -- That none of us, in her distress, Could hide or find our littleness.

There was a boy that all agreed Had shut within him the rare seed Of learning. We could understand, But none of us could lift a hand.

The man Flammonde appraised the youth, And told a few of us the truth; And thereby, for a little gold, A flowered future was unrolled.

There were two citizens who fought For years and years, and over nought; They made life awkward for their friends, And shortened their own dividends.

The man Flammonde said what was wrong Should be made right, nor was it long Before they were again in line, And had each other in to dine.

And these I mention are but four Of many out of many more.

So much for them. But what of him -- So firm in every look and limb?

What small satanic sort of kink Was in his brain? What broken link Withheld him from the destinies That came so near to being his?

What was he, when we came to sift His meaning, and to note the drift Of incommunicable ways That make us ponder while we praise?

Why was it that his charm revealed Somehow the surface of a s.h.i.+eld?

What was it that we never caught?

What was he, and what was he not?

How much it was of him we met We cannot ever know; nor yet Shall all he gave us quite atone For what was his, and his alone; Nor need we now, since he knew best, Nourish an ethical unrest: Rarely at once will nature give The power to be Flammonde and live.

We cannot know how much we learn From those who never will return, Until a flash of unforeseen Remembrance falls on what has been.

We've each a darkening hill to climb; And this is why, from time to time In Tilbury Town, we look beyond Horizons for the man Flammonde.

The Chinese Nightingale. [Vachel Lindsay]

"How, how," he said. "Friend Chang," I said, "San Francisco sleeps as the dead -- Ended license, l.u.s.t and play: Why do you iron the night away?

Your big clock speaks with a deadly sound, With a tick and a wail till dawn comes round.

While the monster shadows glower and creep, What can be better for man than sleep?"

"I will tell you a secret," Chang replied; "My breast with vision is satisfied, And I see green trees and fluttering wings, And my deathless bird from Shanghai sings."

Then he lit five fire-crackers in a pan.

"Pop, pop," said the fire-crackers, "cra-cra-crack."

He lit a joss stick long and black.

Then the proud gray joss in the corner stirred; On his wrist appeared a gray small bird, And this was the song of the gray small bird: "Where is the princess, loved forever, Who made Chang first of the kings of men?"

And the joss in the corner stirred again; And the carved dog, curled in his arms, awoke, Barked forth a smoke-cloud that whirled and broke.

It piled in a maze round the ironing-place, And there on the snowy table wide Stood a Chinese lady of high degree, With a scornful, witching, tea-rose face . . .

Yet she put away all form and pride, And laid her glimmering veil aside With a childlike smile for Chang and for me.

The walls fell back, night was aflower, The table gleamed in a moonlit bower, While Chang, with a countenance carved of stone, Ironed and ironed, all alone.

And thus she sang to the busy man Chang: "Have you forgotten . . .

Deep in the ages, long, long ago, I was your sweetheart, there on the sand -- Storm-worn beach of the Chinese land?

We sold our grain in the peac.o.c.k town Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown -- Built on the edge of the sea-sands brown . . .

"When all the world was drinking blood From the skulls of men and bulls And all the world had swords and clubs of stone, We drank our tea in China beneath the sacred spice-trees, And heard the curled waves of the harbor moan.

And this gray bird, in Love's first spring, With a bright-bronze breast and a bronze-brown wing, Captured the world with his carolling.

Do you remember, ages after, At last the world we were born to own?

You were the heir of the yellow throne -- The world was the field of the Chinese man And we were the pride of the Sons of Han?

We copied deep books and we carved in jade, And wove blue silks in the mulberry shade . . ."