Songs for a Little House | Page 5

Shrine. She is asleep,?Dark hair across the moon-blanched pillow slip.?Her eyes are sealed with peace, but as I touch?The girlish cheek, her lips are tremulous?With secret knowing smiles. In her boudoir?(Her "sulking room" I call it: did you know?It means that?) I wind up the tiny clock?And stand at her Prayer Window where the fields?Lie listening to the crickets and the stars....?Alas, I only hear the throb of pain?That echoes from the moonlit fields of France.
Into our kitchen, too, I love to go,?Straighten the spoons against our break of fast,?Share secrets with our dog, the drowsy-eyed,?Surprise the kitten with some midnight milk.?The pantry cupboard, full of pleasant things,?Attracts me: there I love to place in line?The packages of cereals, or fill up?The breakfast sugar bowl; and empty out?The icebox pan into the singing night.
Then, as I fixed the cushions on the porch,?I wondered whether God, while wandering?Through his big house, the World, householderwise,?Does also quietly set things aright,?Gives sleep to sleepless wives in Germany?And gently smooths the battlefields of France??Dear Father God, the children in their play?Have tossed their toys in saddest disarray--?Wilt Thou not, like a kindly nurse at dusk,?Pass through the playroom, make it neat again??_September_, 1914.
LIGHT VERSE
At night the gas lamps light our street,?Electric bulbs our homes;?The gas is billed in cubic feet,?Electric light in ohms.
But one illumination still?Is brighter far, and sweeter;?It is not figured in a bill,?Nor measured by a meter.
More bright than lights that money buys,?More pleasing to discerners,?The shining lamps of Helen's eyes,?Those lovely double burners!
FULL MOON
The moon is but a silver watch?To tell the time of night;?If you should wake, and wish to know?The hour, don't strike a light.
Just draw the blind, and closely scan?Her dial in the blue:?If it is round and bright, there is?A deal more sleep for you.
She runs without an error,?Not too slow nor too quick,?And better than alarum clocks--?She doesn't have to tick!
MY WIFE
Pure as the moonlight, sweet as midnight air,?Simple as the primrose, brave and just and fair,?Such is my wife. The more unworthy I?To kiss the little hand of her by whom I lie.
New words, true words, need I to make you see?The gallantry, the graciousness, that she has brought to me; How humble and how haughty, how quick in thought and deed, How loyally she comrades me in every time of need.
To-night she is not with me. I kiss her empty dress.?Here I kneel beside it, not ashamed to bless?Each dear bosom-fold of it that bears a breath of her,?Makes my heart a house of pain, and my eyes a blur.
Here I kneel beside it, humble now to pray?That God will send her back to me on the morrow day.
New words, true words, only such could praise?The blessed, blessed magic of her dear and dauntless ways.
WASHING THE DISHES
When we on simple rations sup?How easy is the washing up!?But heavy feeding complicates?The task by soiling many plates.
And though I grant that I have prayed?That we might find a serving-maid,?I'd scullion all my days, I think,?To see Her smile across the sink!
I wash, She wipes. In water hot?I souse each dish and pan and pot;?While Taffy mutters, purrs, and begs,?And rubs himself against my legs.
The man who never in his life?Has washed the dishes with his wife?Or polished up the silver plate--?He still is largely celibate.
One warning: there is certain ware?That must be handled with all care:?The Lord Himself will give you up?If you should drop a willow cup!
THE FURNACE
At night I opened?The furnace door:?The warm glow brightened?The cellar floor.
The fire that sparkled?Blue and red,?Kept small toes cosy?In their bed.
As up the stair?So late I stole,?I said my prayer:?_Thank God for coal!_
THE CHURCH OF UNBENT KNEES
As I went by the church to-day?I heard the organ cry;?And goodly folk were on their knees,?But I went striding by.
My minster hath a roof more vast:?My aisles are oak trees high;?My altar-cloth is on the hills,?My organ is the sky.
I see my rood upon the clouds,?The winds, my chanted choir;?My crystal windows, heaven-glazed,?Are stained with sunset fire.
The stars, the thunder, and the rain,?White sands and purple seas--?These are His pulpit and His pew,?My God of Unbent Knees!
THE NEW ALTMAN BUILDING
Madison Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street?(January, 1914)
Fled is the glamour, fled the royal dream,?Fled is the joy. They work no more by night?Deep in that cave of dazzling amber light,?In pools of darkness, under plumes of steam.?Gone are the laughing drills that sting and hiss?Deep in the ribs of the metropolis.
Gone are the torches and the great red cranes?That swung their arms with such resistless might;?Gone are the flags and drums of that great fight,?No more they swink with rocks and autumn rains;?And only girders, rising tier on tier,?Give hint of all the struggle that was here.
We too, mad zealots of the hardest craft,?Striving to build a word-house fair and tall,?Have wept