Anthology of Massachusetts Poets | Page 5

former austerity, stern even now, but?Fast growing?Foolish, with less of a stately?Reserve that held them sedately.?Oh Zeus, what a sight! With the wine dripping off it,?The grin of an ass on a bald-pated prophet.
After the feast the night, and after the night the day,?Fool and philosopher stirring?With the day dawning,?Stretching and yawning,?While in each wine-throbbing, desolated brain is the?Wheeling and whirring?Of thousands of bats, that the slaking?Of throats will not hinder from aching,?No wine for the brow that is beating to bursting,?But water at morning is quench for the thirsting!
ERNEST BENSHIMOL
SONG
OUT of one heart the birds and I together,?Earth hushed in twilight,?Low through the live-oaks hung heavy with silver,?Gemmed with the sky-light,?Under the great wet star?Shaking with light, we jar?Lute-voiced the silence with intervaled music.
While under the margined world the slow sun?lingers,?Flaming earth's portal,?Over the lilac dusk spreads his great fingersEarth?is immortal!?While the frail beauty dies.?Dream in the dreamer's eyes,?All the good gladness turns praise for the singers.
Hark, 'tis the breath of life! Hush! and I need it;?Northern, gigantic,-?Questing the silences, herding the sudden foam?Down the Atlantic;?Leaves from the autumn's store?Shrill at my desert door,?They and I out of one heart that is grieving.
GEORGE CABOT LODGE
THE WORLDS
I SAW an idler on a summer day?Piping with Iris by a dancing brook;?And all his world was rife with Pleasures gay,?And languid Follies smiled from every nook.
I saw an artist in a world of dreams,?His rainbow rising from his radiant task,?To throw its magic prism beams?O'er Fancy's changeful masque and countermasque.
I saw Toil--stooping underneath a world?Whereon his foster-brothers lighter tread,?His skyward pinions ever closer furled?Before the grim necessity of bread!
I saw a sinner working hard to be?Worthy his death-wage from the mint of time;?I saw a sailor, unto whom the sea?Was hearth and hope and love and weddingchime.
I saw a mother living in her child--?I saw a saint among his fellow men--?Brave soldiery before my eyes defiled?And solemn-hearted scholars--Sudden then
I cried: "The stars are no less neighborly?In their ethereal remoteness swung,?Than these near human orbits wherein we?Live out our lives and speak our chosen tongue!
"Love seek through all--less there be one?Least soul unlit within the night--?And over all, the selfsame sun?Give each creation light!"
MARTHA GILBERT DICKINSON BIANCHI
THE RIOT
YOU may think my life is quiet.?I find it full of change,?An ever-varied diet,?As piquant as 'tis strange.
Wild thoughts are always flying,?Like sparks across my brain,?Now flashing out, now dying,?To kindle soon again.
Fine fancies set me thrilling,?And subtle monsters creep?Before my sight unwilling:?They even haunt my sleep.
One broad, perpetual riot?Enfolds me night and day.?You think my life is quiet??You don't know what you say.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
HUNGER
I'VE been a hopeless sinner, but I understand a?saint,?Their bend of weary knees and their contortions?long and faint,?And the endless pricks of conscience, like a hundred?thousand pins,?A real perpetual penance for imaginary sins.
I love to wander widely, but I understand a cell,?Where you tell and tell your beads because you've?nothing else to tell,?Where the crimson joy of flesh, with all its wild?fantastic tricks,?Is forgotten in the blinding glory of the crucifix.
I cannot speak for others, but my inmost soul is?torn?With a battle of desires making all my life forlorn.?There are moments when I would untread the paths?that I have trod.?I'm a haunter of the devil, but I hunger after God.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
EXIT GOD
Of old our father's God was real,?Something they almost saw,?Which kept them to a stern ideal?And scourged them into awe.
They walked the narrow path of right?Most vigilantly well,?Because they feared eternal night?And boiling depths of Hell.
Now Hell has wholly boiled away?And God become a shade.?There is no place for him to stay?In all the world He made.
The followers of William James?Still let the Lord exist,?And call Him by imposing names,?A venerable list.?But nerve and muscle only count,?Gray matter of the brain,?And an astonishing amount?Of inconvenient pain.
I sometimes wish that God were back?In this dark world and wide;?For though sonic virtues He might lack,?He had his pleasant side.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
ROUSSEAU
THAT odd, fantastic ass, Rousseau,?Declared himself unique.?How men persist in doing so,?Puzzles me more than Greek.
The sins that tarnish whore and thief?Beset me every day.?My most ethereal belief?Inhabits common clay.
GAMALIEL BRADFORD
JOHN MASEFIELD
I
MASEFIELD (HIMSELF)
GOD said, and frowned, as He looked on?Shropshire clay:?"Alone, 'twont do; composite, would I make?This man-child rare; 'twere well, methinks, to take?A handful from the Stratford tomb, and weigh?A few of Shelley's ashes; Bunyan may?Contribute, too, and, for my sweet Son's sake,?I'll visit Avalon; then, let me slake?The whole with Wyclif-water from the Bay.
A sailor, he! Too godly, though, I fear;?Offset it with tobacco! Next, I'll find?Hedge-roses, star-dust, and a vagrant's mind;?His mother's heart now let me breathe upon;?When west winds blow, I'll whisper in her ear:?"Apocalypse awaits him; call him John!"
II
HIS PORTRAIT
A Man of Sorrows! with such haunted eyes,?I trow, the Master looked across the lake,--?Looked from the Judas-heart, so soon to make?Of Him the world's historic sacrifice;?Moreover, as I gaze,