The Little Book of Modern Verse | Page 5

she sets for sail,?The sun is her masthead light,?She tows the moon like a pinnace frail?Where her phosphor wake churns bright.?Now hid, now looming clear,?On the face of the dangerous blue?The star fleets tack and wheel and veer,?But on, but on does the old earth steer?As if her port she knew.
God, dear God! Does she know her port,?Though she goes so far about??Or blind astray, does she make her sport?To brazen and chance it out??I watched when her captains passed:?She were better captainless.?Men in the cabin, before the mast,?But some were reckless and some aghast,?And some sat gorged at mess.
By her battened hatch I leaned and caught?Sounds from the noisome hold, --?Cursing and sighing of souls distraught?And cries too sad to be told.?Then I strove to go down and see;?But they said, "Thou art not of us!"?I turned to those on the deck with me?And cried, "Give help!" But they said, "Let be:?Our ship sails faster thus."
Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue,?Blue is the quaker-maid,?The alder-clump where the brook comes through?Breeds cresses in its shade.?To be out of the moiling street?With its swelter and its sin!?Who has given to me this sweet,?And given my brother dust to eat??And when will his wage come in?
Scattering wide or blown in ranks,?Yellow and white and brown,?Boats and boats from the fishing banks?Come home to Gloucester town.?There is cash to purse and spend,?There are wives to be embraced,?Hearts to borrow and hearts to lend,?And hearts to take and keep to the end, --?O little sails, make haste!
But thou, vast outbound ship of souls,?What harbor town for thee??What shapes, when thy arriving tolls,?Shall crowd the banks to see??Shall all the happy shipmates then?Stand singing brotherly??Or shall a haggard ruthless few?Warp her over and bring her to,?While the many broken souls of men?Fester down in the slaver's pen,?And nothing to say or do?
On a Subway Express. [Chester Firkins]
I, who have lost the stars, the sod,?For chilling pave and cheerless light,?Have made my meeting-place with God?A new and nether Night --
Have found a fane where thunder fills?Loud caverns, tremulous; -- and these?Atone me for my reverend hills?And moonlit silences.
A figment in the crowded dark,?Where men sit muted by the roar,?I ride upon the whirring Spark?Beneath the city's floor.
In this dim firmament, the stars?Whirl by in blazing files and tiers;?Kin meteors graze our flying bars,?Amid the spinning spheres.
Speed! speed! until the quivering rails?Flash silver where the head-light gleams,?As when on lakes the Moon impales?The waves upon its beams.
Life throbs about me, yet I stand?Outgazing on majestic Power;?Death rides with me, on either hand,?In my communion hour.
You that 'neath country skies can pray,?Scoff not at me -- the city clod; --?My only respite of the Day?Is this wild ride -- with God.
The Automobile. [Percy MacKaye]
Fluid the world flowed under us: the hills
Billow on billow of umbrageous green?Heaved us, aghast, to fresh horizons, seen?One rapturous instant, blind with flash of rills?And silver-rising storms and dewy stills
Of dripping boulders, till the dim ravine?Drowned us again in leafage, whose serene?Coverts grew loud with our tumultuous wills.
Then all of Nature's old amazement seemed
Sudden to ask us: "Is this also Man??This plunging, volant, land-amphibian?What Plato mused and Paracelsus dreamed?
Reply!" And piercing us with ancient scan,?The shrill, primeval hawk gazed down -- and screamed.
The Black Vulture. [George Sterling]
Aloof upon the day's immeasured dome,
He holds unshared the silence of the sky.?Far down his bleak, relentless eyes descry?The eagle's empire and the falcon's home --?Far down, the galleons of sunset roam;
His hazards on the sea of morning lie;?Serene, he hears the broken tempest sigh?Where cold sierras gleam like scattered foam.
And least of all he holds the human swarm --?Unwitting now that envious men prepare?To make their dream and its fulfillment one,?When, poised above the caldrons of the storm,?Their hearts, contemptuous of death, shall dare?His roads between the thunder and the sun.
Chavez. [Mildred McNeal Sweeney]
So hath he fallen, the Endymion of the air,?And so lies down in slumber lapped for aye.?Diana, passing, found his youth too fair,?His soul too fleet and willing to obey.?She swung her golden moon before his eyes --?Dreaming, he rose to follow -- and ran -- and was away.
His foot was winged as the mounting sun.?Earth he disdained -- the dusty ways of men?Not yet had learned. His spirit longed to run?With the bright clouds, his brothers, to answer when?The airs were fleetest and could give him hand?Into the starry fields beyond our plodding ken.
All wittingly that glorious way he chose,?And loved the peril when it was most bright.?He tried anew the long-forbidden snows?And like an eagle topped the dropping height?Of Nagenhorn, and still toward Italy?Past peak and cliff pressed on, in glad, unerring flight.
Oh, when the bird lies low with golden wing?Bruised past healing by some bitter chance,?Still must its tireless spirit mount and sing?Of meadows green with morning, of the dance?On windy trees, the