The Chinese Nightingale | Page 5

fold,
Nests in the top of the almond tree. . . .
The evergreen tree . . .
and the mulberry tree . . .
Life and hurry and joy forgotten,
Years
on years I but half-remember . . .
Man is a torch, then ashes soon,

May and June, then dead December,
Dead December, then again June.

Who shall end my dream's confusion?
Life is a loom, weaving
illusion . . .
I remember, I remember
There were ghostly veils and
laces . . .
In the shadowy bowery places . . .
With lovers' ardent
faces
Bending to one another,
Speaking each his part.
They
infinitely echo
In the red cave of my heart.
`Sweetheart, sweetheart,
sweetheart.'
They said to one another.
They spoke, I think, of perils
past.
They spoke, I think, of peace at last.
One thing I remember:

Spring came on forever,
Spring came on forever,"
Said the Chinese
nightingale.
Second Section
America Watching the War, August, 1914, to April,
1917
Where Is the Real Non-resistant?
(Matthew 5:38-48)
Who can surrender to Christ, dividing his best with the stranger, Giving
to each what he asks, braving the uttermost danger
All for the enemy,
MAN? Who can surrender till death
His words and his works, his
house and his lands,

His eyes and his heart and his breath?
Who can surrender to Christ? Many have yearned toward it daily. Yet
they surrender to passion, wildly or grimly or gaily;
Yet they
surrender to pride, counting her precious and queenly; Yet they
surrender to knowledge, preening their feathers serenely.

Who can surrender to Christ? Where is the man so transcendent, So
heated with love of his kind, so filled with the spirit resplendent That
all of the hours of his day his song is thrilling and tender, And all of his
thoughts to our white cause of peace
Surrender, surrender, surrender?
Here's to the Mice!
(Written with the hope that the socialists might yet
dethrone Kaiser
and Czar.)
Here's to the mice that scare the lions,
Creeping into their cages.

Here's to the fairy mice that bite
The elephants fat and wise:
Hidden
in the hay-pile while the elephant thunder rages.
Here's to the
scurrying, timid mice
Through whom the proud cause dies.
Here's to the seeming accident
When all is planned and working,

All the flywheels turning,
Not a vassal shirking.
Here's to the
hidden tunneling thing
That brings the mountain's groans.
Here's to
the midnight scamps that gnaw,
Gnawing away the thrones.
When Bryan Speaks
When Bryan speaks, the town's a hive.
From miles around, the autos
drive.
The sparrow chirps. The rooster crows.
The place is kicking
and alive.
When Bryan speaks, the bunting glows.
The raw procession onward
flows.
The small dogs bark. The children laugh
A wind of
springtime fancy blows.
When Bryan speaks, the wigwam shakes.
The corporation magnate
quakes.
The pre-convention plot is smashed.
The valiant pleb
full-armed awakes.

When Bryan speaks, the sky is ours,
The wheat, the forests, and the
flowers.
And who is here to say us nay?
Fled are the ancient tyrant
powers.
When Bryan speaks, then I rejoice.
His is the strange composite voice

Of many million singing souls
Who make world-brotherhood their
choice.
Written in Washington,
D.C.
February,
1915.
To Jane Addams at the Hague
Two Poems, written on the Sinking of the Lusitania.
Appearing in the
Chicago `Herald', May 11, 1915.
I. Speak Now for Peace
Lady of Light, and our best woman, and queen,
Stand now for peace,
(though anger breaks your heart),
Though naught but smoke and
flame and drowning is seen.
Lady of Light, speak, though you speak alone,
Though your voice
may seem as a dove's in this howling flood, It is heard to-night by
every senate and throne.
Though the widening battle of millions and millions of men

Threatens to-night to sweep the whole of the earth,
Back of the
smoke is the promise of kindness again.
II. Tolstoi Is Plowing Yet
Tolstoi is plowing yet. When the smoke-clouds break,
High in the sky
shines a field as wide as the world.
There he toils for the Kingdom of
Heaven's sake.

Ah, he is taller than clouds of the little earth.
Only the congress of
planets is over him,
And the arching path where new sweet stars have
birth.
Wearing his peasant dress, his head bent low,
Tolstoi, that angel of
Peace, is plowing yet;
Forward, across the field, his horses go.
The Tale of the Tiger Tree
A Fantasy, dedicated to the little poet Alice Oliver Henderson, ten
years old.
The Fantasy shows how tiger-hearts are the cause of war in all ages. It
shows how the mammoth forces may be either friends or enemies of
the struggle for peace. It shows how the dream of peace