The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems | Page 9

God,
And made the rose of Sappho's
song,
She who saved France, and beat the drum
Of freedom, brook
this vulgar wrong?
I wonder if such men as these
Had once a sister with blue eyes,

Kind as the soothing hand of God,
And as the quiet heaven wise.
I wonder if they ever saw
A soldier lying on a bed
On some lone
battle-field, and watched
Some holy woman bind his head.
I wonder if they ever walked,
Lost in a black and weary land,
And
suddenly a flower came
And took them softly by the hand.
I wonder if they ever heard
The silver scream, in some grey morn,

High in a lit and listening tower,
Because a man-child then was born.
I wonder if they ever saw
A woman's hair, or in her eye
Read the
eternal mystery--
Or ever saw a woman die.
I wonder, when all friends had gone,--
The gay companions, the

brave men--
If in some fragile girl they found
Their only stay and
comrade then.
She who thus went through flaming hell
To make us, put into our
clay
All that there is of heaven, shall she--
Mother and sister, wife
and fay,--
Have no part in the world she made--
Serf of the rainbow, vassal
flower--
Save knitting in the afternoon,
And rocking cradles, hour
by hour!
AN EASTER HYMN
Spake the Lord Christ--"I will arise."
It seemed a saying void and
vain--
How shall a dead man rise again!--
Vain as our tears, vain as
our cries.
Not one of all the little band
That loved Him this might
understand.
"I will arise"--Lord Jesus said.
Hearken, amid the morning dew,

Mary, a voice that calleth you,--
Then Mary turned her golden head,

And lo! all shining at her side
Her Master they had crucified.
At dawn to his dim sepulchre,
Mary, remembering that far day,

When at his feet the spikenard lay,
Came, bringing balm and spice
and myrrh;
To her the grave had made reply:
"He is not here--He
cannot die."
Praetor and priest in vain conspire,
Jerusalem and Rome in vain

Torture the god with mortal pain,
To quench that seed of living fire;

But light that had in heaven its birth
Can never be put out oh earth.
"I will arise"--across the years,
Even as to Mary that grey morn,
To
us that gentle voice is borne--
"I will arise." He that hath ears
O
hearken well this mystic word,
Let not the Master speak unheard.
No soul descended deep in hell,
The child of sorrow, sin and death,


The immortal spirit suffereth
To see corruption; though it fell
From
loftiest station in the skies,
It still to heaven again must rise.
No dream of faith, no seed of love,
No lonely action nobly done,

But is as stable as the sun,
And fed and watered from above;
From
nether base to starry cope
Nature's two laws are Faith and Hope.
Safe in the care of heavenly powers,
The good we dreamed but might
not do,
Lost beauty magically new,
Shall spring as surely as the
flowers,
When, 'mid the sobbing of the rain,
The heart of April
beats again.
Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be
this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul:
O Gentle
Master of the Wise
Teach us to say, "I will arise."
BALLAD OF THE SEVEN O'CLOCK WHISTLE
The daisied dawn is in the sky,
And the young day still dew and
dream,
When on the innocent morning air
There comes a terrifying
scream;
And the four ends of the sad earth
Repeat the hellish dreadful call;

Soft ladies murmur in soft beds--
"The morning whistle--that is all!"
And I too turn to sleep once more,
A haunted sleep all filled with pain;

For in my sleep I see the men,
The victims of colossal Gain,
Troop in the doors of servitude;
I see the children weary-eyed,
I see
the time-clock, and I see
The endless day that glooms inside.
It is the Moloch of the dawn,
Capital calling for its prey--
Men,
women and little boys and girls,
It's human sacrifice each day.
And, as I hear that dreadful scream,
High in the dawn all filled with

song,--
I pray within my aching heart--"O Lord!
O Lord! How long!
How long!"
MORALITY
Give me the lifted skirt,
And the brave ways of wrong,
The fist, the
dagger and the sword,
And the out-spoken song.
Ah! bring me not the love
That bargains, bids and buys:
For so
much loving I will give
So much in lips and eyes;
But love with bosom bared,
Sweet as a bird and wild,
That in her
savage maidenhood
Cries for a little child.
VI
FOR THE BIRTHDAY OF EDGAR ALLAN POE
(January 19, 1909)
Poet of doom, dementia, and death,
Of beauty singing in a charnel
house,
Like the lost soul of a poor moon-mad maid,
With too much
loving of some lord of hell;
Doomed and disastrous spirit, to what
shore
Of what dark gulf infernal art thou strayed,
Or to what
spectral star of topless heaven
Art lifted and enthroned?
The winter dark,
And the drear winter cold that welcomed thee
To a
world all winter, gird with ice and storm
Thy January day--yea! the
same world
Of winter and the wintry hearts of men;
And still, for
all thy shining, the same swarm
That mocked thy song gather about