General William Booth Enters into Heaven | Page 6

prize be gold,?Cards help not the bread that tastes of mold,?Cards dye not your hair to black more deep,?Cards make not the children cease to weep.
Scorned, I sit with half shut eyes all day --?Watch the cataract of sunshine play?Down the wall, and dance upon the floor.?Sun, come down and break the dungeon door!?Of such gold dust could I make a key, --?Turn the bolt -- how soon we would be free!?Over borders we would hurry on?Safe by sunrise farms, and springs of dawn,?Wash our wounds and jail stains there at last,?Azure rivers flowing, flowing past.?GOD HAS GREAT ESTATES JUST PAST THE LINE,?GREEN FARMS FOR ALL, AND MEAT AND CORN AND WINE.
On the Road to Nowhere
On the road to nowhere?What wild oats did you sow?When you left your father's house?With your cheeks aglow??Eyes so strained and eager?To see what you might see??Were you thief or were you fool?Or most nobly free?
Were the tramp-days knightly,?True sowing of wild seed??Did you dare to make the songs?Vanquished workmen need??Did you waste much money?To deck a leper's feast??Love the truth, defy the crowd?Scandalize the priest??On the road to nowhere?What wild oats did you sow??Stupids find the nowhere-road?Dusty, grim and slow.
Ere their sowing's ended?They turn them on their track,?Look at the caitiff craven wights?Repentant, hurrying back!?Grown ashamed of nowhere,?Of rags endured for years,?Lust for velvet in their hearts,?Pierced with Mammon's spears,?All but a few fanatics?Give up their darling goal,?Seek to be as others are,?Stultify the soul.?Reapings now confront them,?Glut them, or destroy,?Curious seeds, grain or weeds?Sown with awful joy.?Hurried is their harvest,?They make soft peace with men.?Pilgrims pass. They care not,?Will not tramp again.
O nowhere, golden nowhere!?Sages and fools go on?To your chaotic ocean,?To your tremendous dawn.?Far in your fair dream-haven,?Is nothing or is all . . .?They press on, singing, sowing?Wild deeds without recall!
Upon Returning to the Country Road
Even the shrewd and bitter,?Gnarled by the old world's greed,?Cherished the stranger softly?Seeing his utter need.?Shelter and patient hearing,?These were their gifts to him,?To the minstrel, grimly begging?As the sunset-fire grew dim.?The rich said "You are welcome."?Yea, even the rich were good.?How strange that in their feasting?His songs were understood!?The doors of the poor were open,?The poor who had wandered too,?Who had slept with ne'er a roof-tree?Under the wind and dew.?The minds of the poor were open,?Their dark mistrust was dead.?They loved his wizard stories,?They bought his rhymes with bread.?Those were his days of glory,?Of faith in his fellow-men.?Therefore, to-day the singer?Turns beggar once again.
The Angel and the Clown
I saw wild domes and bowers?And smoking incense towers?And mad exotic flowers?In Illinois.?Where ragged ditches ran?Now springs of Heaven began?Celestial drink for man?In Illinois.
There stood beside the town?Beneath its incense-crown?An angel and a clown?In Illinois.?He was as Clowns are:?She was snow and star?With eyes that looked afar?In Illinois.
I asked, "How came this place?Of antique Asian grace?Amid our callow race?In Illinois?"?Said Clown and Angel fair:?"By laughter and by prayer,?By casting off all care?In Illinois."
Springfield Magical
In this, the City of my Discontent,?Sometimes there comes a whisper from the grass,?"Romance, Romance -- is here. No Hindu town?Is quite so strange. No Citadel of Brass?By Sinbad found, held half such love and hate;?No picture-palace in a picture-book?Such webs of Friendship, Beauty, Greed and Fate!"
In this, the City of my Discontent,?Down from the sky, up from the smoking deep?Wild legends new and old burn round my bed?While trees and grass and men are wrapped in sleep.?Angels come down, with Christmas in their hearts,?Gentle, whimsical, laughing, heaven-sent;?And, for a day, fair Peace have given me?In this, the City of my Discontent!
Incense
Think not that incense-smoke has had its day.?My friends, the incense-time has but begun.?Creed upon creed, cult upon cult shall bloom,?Shrine after shrine grow gray beneath the sun.
And mountain-boulders in our aged West?Shall guard the graves of hermits truth-endowed:?And there the scholar from the Chinese hills?Shall do deep honor, with his wise head bowed.
And on our old, old plains some muddy stream,?Dark as the Ganges, shall, like that strange tide --?(Whispering mystery to half the earth) --?Gather the praying millions to its side,
And flow past halls with statues in white stone?To saints unborn to-day, whose lives of grace?Shall make one shining, universal church?Where all Faiths kneel, as brothers, in one place.
The Wedding of the Rose and the Lotos
The wide Pacific waters?And the Atlantic meet.?With cries of joy they mingle,?In tides of love they greet.?Above the drowned ages?A wind of wooing blows: --?The red rose woos the lotos,?The lotos woos the rose . . .
The lotos conquered Egypt.?The rose was loved in Rome.?Great India crowned the lotos:?(Britain the rose's home).?Old China crowned the lotos,?They crowned it in Japan.?But Christendom adored the rose?Ere Christendom began . . .
The lotos speaks of slumber:?The rose is as a dart.?The lotos is Nirvana:?The rose is Mary's heart.?The rose is deathless, restless,?The splendor of our pain:?The flush and fire of