The Chinese Nightingale | Page 8

stars, that pay her court?And leaping beasts, that make her sport;?Because, gray Europe's rags august?She tramples in the dust;?Because we are her fields of corn;?Because our fires are all reborn?From her bosom's deathless embers,?Flaming?As she remembers?The springtime?And Virginia,?Our Mother, Pocahontas.
III
We here renounce our Saxon blood.?Tomorrow's hopes, an April flood?Come roaring in. The newest race?Is born of her resilient grace.?We here renounce our Teuton pride:?Our Norse and Slavic boasts have died:?Italian dreams are swept away,?And Celtic feuds are lost today. . . .
She sings of lilacs, maples, wheat,?Her own soil sings beneath her feet,?Of springtime?And Virginia,?Our Mother, Pocahontas.
Concerning Emperors
I. God Send the Regicide
Would that the lying rulers of the world?Were brought to block for tyrannies abhorred.?Would that the sword of Cromwell and the Lord,?The sword of Joshua and Gideon,?Hewed hip and thigh the hosts of Midian.?God send that ironside ere tomorrow's sun;?Let Gabriel and Michael with him ride.?God send the Regicide.
II. A Colloquial Reply: To Any Newsboy
If you lay for Iago at the stage door with a brick?You have missed the moral of the play.?He will have a midnight supper with Othello and his wife.?They will chirp together and be gay.?But the things Iago stands for must go down into the dust:?Lying and suspicion and conspiracy and lust.?And I cannot hate the Kaiser (I hope you understand.)?Yet I chase the thing he stands for with a brickbat in my hand.
Niagara
I
Within the town of Buffalo?Are prosy men with leaden eyes.?Like ants they worry to and fro,?(Important men, in Buffalo.)?But only twenty miles away?A deathless glory is at play:?Niagara, Niagara.
The women buy their lace and cry: --?"O such a delicate design,"?And over ostrich feathers sigh,?By counters there, in Buffalo.?The children haunt the trinket shops,?They buy false-faces, bells, and tops,?Forgetting great Niagara.
Within the town of Buffalo?Are stores with garnets, sapphires, pearls,?Rubies, emeralds aglow, --?Opal chains in Buffalo,?Cherished symbols of success.?They value not your rainbow dress: --?Niagara, Niagara.
The shaggy meaning of her name?This Buffalo, this recreant town,?Sharps and lawyers prune and tame:?Few pioneers in Buffalo;?Except young lovers flushed and fleet?And winds hallooing down the street:?"Niagara, Niagara."
The journalists are sick of ink:?Boy prodigals are lost in wine,?By night where white and red lights blink,?The eyes of Death, in Buffalo.?And only twenty miles away?Are starlit rocks and healing spray: --?Niagara, Niagara.
Above the town a tiny bird,?A shining speck at sleepy dawn,?Forgets the ant-hill so absurd,?This self-important Buffalo.?Descending twenty miles away?He bathes his wings at break of day --?Niagara, Niagara.
II
What marching men of Buffalo?Flood the streets in rash crusade??Fools-to-free-the-world, they go,?Primeval hearts from Buffalo.?Red cataracts of France today?Awake, three thousand miles away?An echo of Niagara,?The cataract Niagara.
Mark Twain and Joan of Arc
When Yankee soldiers reach the barricade?Then Joan of Arc gives each the accolade.
For she is there in armor clad, today,?All the young poets of the wide world say.
Which of our freemen did she greet the first,?Seeing him come against the fires accurst?
Mark Twain, our Chief, with neither smile nor jest,?Leading to war our youngest and our best.
The Yankee to King Arthur's court returns.?The sacred flag of Joan above him burns.
For she has called his soul from out the tomb.?And where she stands, there he will stand till doom.
. . . . .
But I, I can but mourn, and mourn again?At bloodshed caused by angels, saints, and men.
The Bankrupt Peace Maker
I opened the ink-well and smoke filled the room.?The smoke formed the giant frog-cat of my doom.?His web feet left dreadful slime tracks on the floor.?He had hammer and nails that he laid by the door.?He sprawled on the table, claw-hands in my hair.?He looked through my heart to the mud that was there.?Like a black-mailer hating his victim he spoke:?"When I see all your squirming I laugh till I choke?Singing of peace. Railing at battle.?Soothing a handful with saccharine prattle.?All the millions of earth have voted for fight.?You are voting for talk, with hands lily white."?He leaped to the floor, then grew seven feet high,?Beautiful, terrible, scorn in his eye:?The Devil Eternal, Apollo grown old,?With beard of bright silver and garments of gold.?"What will you do to end war for good??Will you stand by the book-case, be nailed to the wood?"?I stretched out my arms. He drove the nails deep,?Silently, coolly. The house was asleep,?I hung for three years, forbidden to die.?I seemed but a shadow the servants passed by.?At the end of the time with hot irons he returned.?"The Quitter Sublime" on my bosom he burned.?As he seared me he hissed: "You are wearing away.?The good angels tell me you leave them today.?You want to come down from the nails in the door.?The victor must hang there three hundred years more.?If any prig-saint would outvote all mankind?He must use an immortally resolute mind.?Think what the saints of Benares endure,?Through infinite birthpangs their courage is sure.?Self-tortured, self-ruled, they build their powers high,?Until they are gods, overmaster the