The Project Gutenberg eBook of The open sea

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: The open sea

Author: Edgar Lee Masters

Release date: August 12, 2016 [eBook #52786]

Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif, Bryan Ness and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This

file was produced from images generously made available

by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OPEN SEA ***

THE OPEN SEA

By

EDGAR LEE MASTERS

STARVED ROCK

MITCH MILLER

DOMESDAY BOOK

TOWARD THE GULF

SONGS AND SATIRES

THE GREAT VALLEY

SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY

THE OPEN SEA

By

EDGAR LEE MASTERS

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

1921

All rights reserved

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

COPYRIGHT, 1921,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped. Published November, 1921.

Press of

J. J. Little & Ives Company

New York, U. S. A.

CONTENTS

PART I

PAGE

Brutus

3

Brutus and Antony

3

At the Mermaid Tavern

17

Charlotte Corday

31

A Man Child is Born

49

Richard Booth to His Son, Junius Booth

52

A Man Child is Born

57

Squire Bowling Green

58

Lincoln Speaking in Congress

63

John Wilkes Booth at the Farm

64

Junius Brutus Booth

66

A Certain Poet on the Debates

71

PART II

The Decision

81

PART III

Lincoln Makes a Memorandum

117

Winter Garden Theatre

118

The Sparrow Hawk in the Rain

120

Adelaide and John Wilkes Booth

134

Brutus Lives Again in Booth

140

Booth’s Philippi

151

The Burial of Boston Corbett{vi}

160

The New Apocrypha

163

Business Reverses

163

The Fig Tree

166

Tribute Money

169

The Great Merger

171

At Decapolis

174

The Single Standard

178

First Entrants

183

John in Prison

186

Ananias and Sapphira

190

The Two Malefactors

193

Berenice

202

Nebuchadnezzar or Eating Grass

212

Hip Lung on Yuan Chang

220

Ulysses

225

The Party

232

Celsus at Hadrian’s Villa

238

Invoation to the Gods

248

Pentheus in These States

253

Comparative Criminals

262

The Great Race Passes

270

Demos the Despot

272

A Republic

275

The Inn

277

Monody on the Death of William Marion Reedy

285

God and My Country

290

The Dunes of Indiana

295

Nature

299

THE OPEN SEA

PART ONE

THE OPEN SEA

BRUTUS

BRUTUS AND ANTONY

(Lucilius Talks at a Feast Given to Aristocrates in

Rome.)

B. C. 20

THE OPEN SEA

BRUTUS

BRUTUS AND ANTONY

Part I

(Lucilius Talks at a Feast Given to Aristocrates in Rome)

B.C. 20

How shall I write this out? I do not write.

Talk to you? Yes, and tell of Antony,

And how I knew him. There at Philippi

I let myself be captured, so to give

Time to escape to Brutus—made pretense

That I was Brutus, and so Brutus flies

And I am captured. Antony forgives me,

And to his death I was his faithful friend.

Well, after Actium, in Africa,

He roamed with no companions but us two,

Our friend Aristocrates, here, myself,

And fed upon his bitter heart. Our guest

Nods truth to what I say, he knows it all.

And after certain days in solitude

He seeks his Cleopatra. As for her,

She was the sovereign queen of many nations;

Yet that she might be with her Antony,

Live with him and enjoy him, did not shun

The name of mistress, and let Fulvia keep

Her wifehood without envy. As for him,

A lover’s soul lives in the loved one’s body,

And where bode Cleopatra, there his soul

Lived only, though his feet of flesh pursued

The Parthian, or Cæsar’s hateful heir....

And if this Antony would wreathe his spear

With ivy like a thyrsus; from the chamber

Of his beloved rush to battle, helmet

Smelling of unguents and of Egypt; leave

Great action and great enterprise to play

Along the seashore of Canopus with her;

And fly the combat, not as Paris did,

Already beaten, with lift sail, desert

The victory that was his, yet true it is

His rank, his eloquence, his liberal blood,

His interest in all grades and breeds of men,

His pity and his kindness to the sick,

His generous sympathies, stamped Antony

A giant in this dusty, roaring place

Which we call earth. Who ruined Antony?

Why, Brutus! For he gave to Antony

The truth of which the Queen of Egypt stood

As proof in the flesh:—Beauty and Life. His heart

Was apt to see her for mad days in Rome,

And soul created sateless for the cup

Of ecstasy in living.

On a day

Myself and Aristocrates and Antony,

We two companioning him in Africa,

Wandering in solitary places, Antony

Brooding on Actium, and the love that kept

His soul with Cleopatra, up he speaks,

And asks us if we knew what Brutus said,

While nearing death, to Cassius. “No,” we said.

And Antony began to tell of Brutus:—

How all his life was spent in study, how

He starved his body, slept but briefly, cut

His hours of sleep by practice; fixed his thought

On virtue and on glory; made himself

A zealot of one purpose: liberty;

A spirit as of a beast that knows one thing:

Its food and how to get it; over its spirit

No heaven keeps of changing light; no stars

Of wandering thought; no moons that charm

Still groves by singing waters, and no suns

Of large illumination, showing life

As multiform and fathomless, filled with wings

Of various truth, each true as other truth.

This was that Brutus, made an asp by thought

And nature, to be used by envious hands

And placed to Cæsar’s breast. So Antony

Discoursed upon our walk, and capped it off

With Brutus’ words when dying. They were these:

“O virtue, miserable virtue, bawd and cheat;

Thou wert a bare word and I followed thee

As if thou hadst been real. But even as evil,

Lust, ignorance, thou wert the plaything too

Of fortune and of chance.”

So Antony

Consoled himself with Brutus, sighed and lapsed

To silence; thinking, as we deemed, of life

And what it yet could be, and how ’twould end;

And how to join his Cleopatra, what

The days would hold amid the toppling walls

Of Rome in demolition, now the hand

Of Cæsar rotted, and no longer stayed

The picks and catapults of an idiot world!

So, as it seemed, he would excuse himself

For Actium and his way in life. For soon

He speaks again, of Theophrastus now,

Who lived a hundred years, spent all his life

In study and in writing, brought to death

By labor; dying lay encompassed by

Two thousand followers, disciples, preachers

Of what he taught; and dying was penitent

For glory, even as Brutus was penitent

For virtue later. And so Antony

Spoke Theophrastus’ dying words, and told

How Theophrastus by a follower

Asked for a last commandment, spoke these words:

“There is none. But ’tis folly to cast away

Pleasure for glory! And no love is worse

Than love of glory. Look upon my life:—

Its toil and hard denial! To what end?

Therefore live happy; study, if you must,

For fame and happiness. Life’s vanity

Exceeds its usefulness.”

So speaking thus

Wise Theophrastus died.

Now I have said

That Brutus ruined Antony. So he did,

If Antony were ruined—that’s the question.

For Antony hearing Brutus say, “O virtue,

Miserable virtue, bawd and cheat,” and seeing

The eyes of Brutus stare in death, threw over him

A scarlet mantle, and took to his heart

The dying words of Brutus.

It is true

That Cicero said Antony as a youth

Was odious for drinking-bouts, amours,

For bacchanals, luxurious life, and true

When as triumvir, after Cæsar’s death,

He kept the house of Pompey, where he lived,

Filled up with jugglers, drunkards, flatterers.

All this before the death of Brutus, or

His love for Cleopatra. But it’s true

He was great Cæsar’s colleague. Cæsar dead,

This Antony is chief ruler of all Rome,

And wars in Greece, and Asia. So it’s true

He was not wholly given to the cup,

But knew fatigue and battle, hunger too,

Living on roots in Parthia. Yet, you see,

With Cæsar slaughtered in the capitol,

His friend, almost his god; and Brutus gasping

“O miserable virtue”; and the feet of men

From Syria to Hispania, slipping off

The world that broke in pieces, like an island

Falling apart beneath a heaving tide—

Whence from its flocculent fragment wretches leap—

You see it was no wonder for this Antony,

Made what he was by nature and by life,

In such a time and fate of the drifting world,

To turn to Cleopatra, and leave war

And rulership to languish.

Thus it was:

Cæsar is slaughtered, Antony must avenge

The death of Cæsar. Brutus is brought to death,

And dying scoffs at virtue which took off

In Brutus’ hand the sovran life of Cæsar.

And soon our Antony must fight against

The recreant hordes of Asia, finding here

His Cleopatra for coadjutor....

He’s forty-two and ripe. She’s twenty-eight,

Fruit fresh and blushing, most mature and rich;

Her voice an instrument of many strings

That yielded laughter, wisdom, folly, song,

And tales of many lands, in Arabic,

And Hebrew, Syriac and Parthiac.

She spoke the language of the troglodytes,

The Medes and others. And when Antony

Sent for her in Cilicia, she took time,

Ignored his orders, leisurely at last

Sailed up the Cydnus in a barge whose stern

Was gilded, and with purple sails. Returned

His dining invitation with her own,

And bent his will to hers. He went to her,

And found a banquet richer than his largess

Could give her. For while feasting, branches sunk

Around them, budding lights in squares and circles,

And lighted up their heaven, as with stars.

She found him broad and gross, but joined her taste

To him in this. And then their love began.

And while his Fulvia kept his quarrels alive

With force of arms in Rome on Octavianus,

And while the Parthian threatened Syria,

He lets the Queen of Egypt take him off

To Alexandria, where he joins with her

The Inimitable Livers; and in holiday

Plays like a boy and riots, while great Brutus

Is rotting in the earth for Virtue’s sake;

And Theophrastus for three hundred years

Has changed from dust to grass, and grass to dust!

And Cleopatra’s kitchen groans with food.

Eight boars are roasted whole—though only twelve

Of these Inimitable Livers, with the Queen

And Antony are to eat—that every dish

May be served up just roasted to a turn.

And who knows when Marc Antony may sup?

Perhaps this hour, perhaps another hour,

Perhaps this minute he may call for wine,

Or start to talk with Cleopatra; fish—

For fish they did together. On a day

They fished together, and his luck was ill,

And so he ordered fishermen to dive

And put upon his hook fish caught before.

And Cleopatra feigned to be deceived,

And shouted out his luck. Next day invited

The Inimitable Livers down to see him fish,

Whereat she had a diver fix his hook

With a salted fish from Pontus. Antony

Drew up amid their laughter. Then she said:

“Sweet Antony, leave us poor sovereigns here,

Of Pharos and Canopus, to the rod;

Your game is cities, provinces and kingdoms.”

Were Antony serious, or disposed to mirth?

She had some new delight. She diced with him,

Drank with him, hunted with him. When he went

To exercise in arms, she sat to see.

At night she rambled with him in the streets,

Dressed like a servant-woman, making mischief

At people’s doors. And Antony disguised

Got scurvy answers, beatings from the folk,

Tormented in their houses. So it went

Till Actium. She loved him, let him be

By day nor night alone, at every turn

Was with him and upon him.

Well, this life

Was neither virtue, glory, fame, nor study,

But it was life, and life that did not slay

A Cæsar for a word like Liberty.

And it was life, its essence nor changed nor lost

By Actium, where his soul shot forth to her

As from a catapult a stone is cast,

Seeing her lift her sixty sails and fly.

His soul lived in her body as ’twere born

A part of her, and whithersoever she went

There followed he. And all their life together

Was what it was, a rapture, justified

By its essential honey of realest blossoms,

In spite of anguished shame. When hauled aboard

The ship of Cleopatra, he sat down

And with his two hands covered up his face!

Brutus had penitence at Philippi

For virtue which befooled him. Antony

Remorse and terror there at Actium

Deserting with his queen, for love that made

His body not his own, as Brutus’ will

Was subject to the magic of a word....

For what is Virtue, what is Love? At least

We know their dire effects, that both befool,

Betray, destroy.

The Queen and Antony

Had joined the Inimitable Livers, now they joined

The Diers Together. They had kept how oft

The Festival of Flagons, now to keep

The Ritual of Passing Life was theirs.

But first they suffered anger with each other

While on her ship, till touching Tenarus

When they were brought to speak by women friends,

At last to eat and sleep together. Yet

Poison had fallen on their leaves, which stripped

Their greenness to the stalk, as you shall see....

Here to make clear what flight of Antony meant,

For cause how base or natural, let me say

That Actium’s battle had not been a loss

To Antony and his honor, if Canidius,

Commanding under Antony, had not flown

In imitation of his chief; the soldiers

Fought desperately in hope that Antony

Would come again and lead them.

So it was

He touched, with Cleopatra, Africa,

And sent her into Egypt; and with us,

Myself and Aristocrates, walked and brooded

In solitary places, as I said.

But when he came to Alexandria

He finds his Cleopatra dragging her fleet

Over the land space which divides the sea

Near Egypt from the Red Sea, so to float

Her fleet in the Arabian Gulf, and there,

Somewhere upon earth’s other side, to find

A home secure from war and slavery.

She failed in this; but Antony leaves the city,

And leaves his queen, plays Timon, builds a house

Near Pharos on a little mole; lives here

Until he hears all princes and all kings

Desert him in the realm of Rome; which news

Brings gladness to him, for hope put away,

And cares slipped off. Then leaving Timoneum,—

For such he named his dwelling there near Pharos—

He goes to Cleopatra, is received,

And sets the city feasting once again.

The order of Inimitable Livers breaks,

And forms the Diers Together in its place.

And all who banquet with them, take the oath

To die with Antony and Cleopatra,

Observing her preoccupation with

Drugs poisonous and creatures venomous.

And thus their feast of flagons and of love

In many courses riotously consumed

Awaits the radiate liquor dazzling through

Their unimagined terror, like the rays

Shot from the bright eyes of the cockatrice,

Crackling for poison in the crystal served

By fleshless hands! A skeleton steward soon

Will pass the liquer to them; they will drink,

And leave no message, no commandment either—

As Theophrastus was reluctant to—

Denied disciples; for Inimitable Livers

Raise up no followers, create no faith,

No cult or sect. Joy has his special wisdom,

Which dies with him who learned it, does not fire

Mad bosoms like your Virtue.

I must note

The proffered favors, honors of young Cæsar

To Cleopatra, if she’d put to death

Her Antony; and Antony’s jealousy,

Aroused by Thyrsus, messenger of Cæsar,

Whom Cleopatra gave long audiences,

And special courtesies; seized, whipped at last

By Antony, sent back to Cæsar. Yet

The queen was faithful. When her birth-day came

She kept it suitable to her fallen state,

But all the while paying her Antony love,

And honor, kept his birth-day with such richness

That guests who came in want departed rich ...

Wine, weariness, much living, early age

Made fall for Antony. October’s clouds

In man’s life, like October, have no sun

To lift the mists of doubt, distortion, fear.

Faces, events, and wills around us show

Malformed, or ugly, changed from what they were.

And when his troops desert him in the city

To Cæsar, Antony cries out, the queen,

His Cleopatra, has betrayed him. She

In terror seeks her monument, sends word

That she is dead. And Antony believes

And says delay no longer, stabs himself,

Is hauled up dying to the arms of her,

Where midst her frantic wailings he expires!

Kings and commanders begged of Cæsar grace

To give this Antony his funeral rites.

But Cæsar left the body with the queen

Who buried it with royal pomp and splendor.

Thus died at fifty-six Marc Antony,

And Cleopatra followed him with poison,

The asp or hollow bodkin, having lived

To thirty-nine, and reigned with Antony

As partner in the empire fourteen years ...

Who in a time to come will gorge and drink,

Filch treasure that it may be spent for wine,

Kill as Marc Antony did, war as he did,

Because Marc Antony did so, taking him

As warrant and exemplar? Why, never a soul!

These things are done by souls who do not think,

But act from feeling. But those mad for stars

Glimpsed in wild waters or through mountain mists

Seen ruddy and portentous will take Brutus

As inspiration, since for Virtue’s sake

And for the good of Rome he killed his friend;

And in the act made Liberty as far

From things of self, as murder is apart

From friendship and its ways. Yes, Brutus lives

To fire the mad-men of the centuries

As Cæsar lives to guide new tyrants. Yet

Tyrannicide but snips the serpent’s head.

The body of a rotten state still writhes

And wriggles though the head is gone, or worse,

Festers and stinks against the setting sun....

Marc Antony lived happier than Brutus

And left the old world happier for his life

Than Brutus left it.

AT THE MERMAID TAVERN

(April 10th, 1613)

(LIONARD DIGGES is speaking)

Yes, so I said: ’twas labored “Cataline”

Insufferable for learning, tedious.

And so I said: the audience was kept

There at the Globe twelve years ago to hear:

“It is no matter; let no images

Be hung with Cæsar’s trophies.”

And to-day

They played his Julius Cæsar at the Court.

I saw it at the Globe twelve years ago,

A gala day! The flag over the Theatre

Fluttered the April breeze and I was thrilled.

And look what wherries crossed the Thames with freight

Of hearts expectant for the theatre.

For all the town was posted with the news

Of Shakespeare’s “Julius Cæsar.” So we paid

Our six-pence, entered, all the house was full.

And dignitaries, favored ones had seats

Behind the curtain on the stage. At last

The trumpet blares, the curtains part, Marullus

And Flavius enter, scold the idiot mob

And we sat ravished, listening to the close.

We knew he pondered manuscripts, forever

Was busy with his work, no rest, no pause.

Often I saw him leave the theatre

And cross the Thames where in a little room

He opened up his Plutarch. What was that?

A fertilizing sun, a morning light

Of bursting April! What was he? The earth

That under such a sun put forth and grew,

Showed all his valleys, mountain peaks and fields,

Brought forth the forests of his cosmic soul,

The coppice, jungle, blossoms good and bad.

A world of growth, creation! This the work,

Precedent force of Thomas North, his work

In causal link the Bishop of Auxerre,

And so it goes.

But others tried their hand

At Julius Cæsar, witness “Cæsar’s Fall”

Which Drayton, Webster, others wrote. And look

At Jonson’s “Cataline,” that labored thing,

Dug out of Plutarch, Cicero. Go read,

Then read this play of Shakespeare’s.

I recall

What came to me to see this, scene by scene,

Unroll beneath my eyes. ’Twas like a scroll

Lettered in gold and purple where one theme

In firmest sequence, precious artistry

Is charactered, and all the sound and sense,

And every clause and strophe ministers

To one perfection. So it was we sat

Until the scroll lay open at our feet:

“According to his virtue, let us use him

With all respect and rites of burial,”

Then gasped for breath! The play’s a miracle!

This world has had one Cæsar and one Shakespeare,

And with their birth is shrunk, can only bear

Less vital spirits.

For what did he do

There in that room with Plutarch? First his mind

Was ready with the very moulds of nature.

And then his spirit blazing like the sun

Smelted the gold from Plutarch, till it flowed

Molten and dazzling in these moulds of his.

And lo! he sets up figures for our view

That blind the understanding till you close

Eyes to reflect, and by their closing see

What has been done. O, well I could go on

And show how Jonson makes homonculus,

And Shakespeare gets with child, conceives and bears

Beauty of flesh and blood. Or I could say

Jonson lays scholar’s hands upon a trait,

Ambition, let us say, as if a man

Were peak and nothing else thrust to the sky

By blasting fires of earth, just peak alone,

No slopes, no valleys, pines, or sunny brooks,

No rivers winding at the base, no fields,

No songsters, foxes, nothing but the peak.

But Shakespeare shows the field-mice and the cricket,

The louse upon the leaf, all things that live

In every mountain which his soaring light

Takes cognizance; by which I mean to say

Shows not ambition only, that’s the peak,

But mice-moods, cricket passions in the man;

How he can sing, or whine, or growl, or hiss,

Be bird, fox, wolf, be eagle or be snake.

And so this “Julius Cæsar” paints the mob

That stinks and howls, a woman in complaint

Most feminine shut from her husband’s secrets;

Paints envy, paints the demagogue, in brief,

Paints Cæsar till we lose respect for Cæsar.

For there he stands in verity, it seems,

A tyrant, coward, braggart, aging man,

A stale voluptuary shoved about

And stabbed most righteously by patriots

To avenge the fall of Rome!

Now I have said

Enough to give me warrant to say this:

This play of Shakespeare fails, is an abuse

Upon the memory of the greatest man

That ever trod this earth. And Shakespeare failed

By just so much as he might have achieved

Surpassing triumph had he made the play

Cæsar instead of Brutus, had he shown

A sovereign will and genius struck to earth

With loss irreparable to Time and ruin

To Cæsar’s dreams; struck evilly to death

By a mad enthusiast, a brutal stoic,

In whom all gratitude was tricked aside

By just a word, the word of Liberty.

Or might I also say the man had envy

Of Cæsar’s greatness, or might it be true

Brutus took edge for hatred with the thought

That Brutus’ sister flamed with love for Cæsar?

But who was Brutus, by the largest word

That comes to us that he should be exalted,

Forefronted in this play, and warrant given

To madmen down the ages to repeat

This act of Brutus’, con the golden words

Of Shakespeare as he puts them in his mouth:

“Not that I loved him less, but loved Rome more.

He was ambitious so I slew him. Tears

For his love, joy for his fortune, honor for valor,

Death for ambition. Would you die all slaves

That Cæsar might still live, or live free men

With Cæsar dead?”

And so it is the echo

Of Cæsar’s fall is cried to by this voice

Of Shakespeare’s and increased, to travel forth,

To fool the ages and to madden men

With thunder in the hills of time to deeds

As horrible as this.

Did Shakespeare know

The worth of Cæsar, that we may impute

Fault for this cartoon—caricature? Why look,

Did he not write the “mightiest Julius,” write

“The foremost man of all the world,” “the conqueror

Whom death could conquer not,” make Cleopatra,

The pearl of all the east, say she was glad

That Cæsar wore her on his hand? He knew

What Cæsar’s greatness was! Yet what have we?

A Cæsar with the falling sickness, deaf,

Who faints upon the offering of the crown;

Who envies Cassius stronger arms in swimming,

When it is known that Cæsar swam the Tiber,

Being more than fifty; pompous, superstitious,

Boasting his will, but flagging in the act;

Greedy of praise, incautious, unalert

To dangers seen of all; a lust incarnate

Of power and rulership; a Cæsar smashing

A great republic like a criminal,

A republic which had lived except for him.

So what was Rome when Cæsar took control?

All wealth and power concentered in the few;

A coterie of the rich who lived in splendor;

A working class that lived on doles of corn

And hordes of slaves from Asia, Africa,

Who plotted murders in the dark purlieus;

The provinces were drained to feed the rich;

The city ruled by bribery, and corruption;

Armed gladiators sold their services.

And battled in the Forum; magistrates

Were freely scoffed at, consuls were attacked;

And orators spat in each other’s faces

When reason failed them speaking in the Forum;

No man of prominence went on the streets

Without his hired gladiators, slaves.

The streets were unpoliced, no fire brigade,

Safe-guarded property. Domestic life

Was rotten at the heart, and vice was taught.

Divorce was rife and even holy Cato

Put by his wife.

And this was the republic

That Cæsar took; and not the lovely state

Ordered and prospered, which ambitious Cæsar,

As Shakespeare paints him, over-whelmed. For Cæsar

Could execute the vision that the people

Deserve not what they want, but otherwise

What they should want, and in that mind was king

And emperor.

And what was here for Shakespeare

To love and manifest by art, who hated

The Puritan, the mob? Colossus Cæsar,

Whose harmony of mind took deep offense

At ugliness, disharmony! See the man:

Of body perfect and of rugged health,

Of graceful carriage, fashion, bold of eye,

A swordsman, horseman, and a general

Not less than Alexander; orator

Who rivalled Cicero, a man of charm,

Of wit and humor, versed in books as well;

Who at one time could dictate, read and write,

Composing grammars as he rode to war,

Amid distractions, dangers, battles, writing

Great commentaries. Yes, he is the man

In whom was mixed the elements that Nature

Might say:—this was a man—and not this Brutus.

Look at his camp, wherever pitched in Gaul,

Thronged by young poets, thinkers, scholars, wits,

And headed by this Cæsar, who when arms

Are resting from the battle, makes reports

Of all that’s said and done to Cicero.

Here is a man large minded and sincere,

Active, a lover, conscious of his place,

Knowing his power, no reverence for the past,

Save what the past deserved, who made the task

What could be done and did it—seized the power

Of rulership and did not put it by

As Shakespeare clothes him with pretence of doing.

For what was kingship to him? empty name!

He who had mastered Asia, Africa,

Egypt, Hispania, after twenty years

Of cyclic dreams and labor—king indeed!

A name! when sovereign power was nothing new.

He’s fifty-six, and knows the human breed,

Sees man as body hiding a canal

For passing food along, a little brain

That watches, loves, attends the said canal.

He’s been imperator at least two years—

King in good sooth! He knows he is not valued,

That he’s misprized and hated, is compelled

To use whom he distrusts, despises too.

Why, what was life to him with such contempt

Of all this dirty world, this eagle set

Amid a flock of vultures, cow-birds, bats?

His ladder was not lowliness, but genius.

Read of his capture in Bithynia,

When he was just a stripling by Cilician

Pirates whom he treated like his slaves,

And told them to their face when he was ransomed

He’d have them crucified. He did it, too.

His ransom came at last, he was released,

And set to work at once to keep his word;

Fitted some ships out, captured every one

And crucified them all at Pergamos.

Not lowliness his ladder, but the strength

That steps on shoulders, fit for steps alone.

So on this top-most rung he did not scan

The base degrees by which he did ascend,

But sickened rather at a world whose heights

Are not worth reaching. So it was he went

Unarmed and unprotected to the Senate,

Knowing that death is noble, being nature,

And scorning fear. Why, he had lived enough.

The night before he dined with Lepidus,

To whom he said the death that is not seen,

Is not expected, is the best. But look,

Here in this play he’s shown a weak old man,

Propped up with stays and royal robes, to amble,

Trembling and babbling to his coronation;

And to the going, driven by the fear

That he would be thought coward if he failed.

Who was to think so? Cassius, whom he cowed,

And whipped against strong odds, this Brutus, too,

There at Pharsalus! Faith, I’d like to know

What Francis Bacon thinks of this.

My friend,

Seeing the Rome that Cæsar took, we turn

To what he did with what he took. This Rome

At Cæsar’s birth was governed by the people

In name alone, in fact the Senate ruled,

And money ruled the Senate. Rank and file

Was made of peasants, tradesmen, manumitted

Slaves and soldiers—these the populares,

Who made our Cæsar’s uncle Marius

Chief magistrate six times. This was the party

That Cæsar joined and wrought for to the last.

He fought the aristocracy all his life.

His heart was democratic and his head

Patrician—was ambitious from the first,

As Shakespeare is ambitious, gifted by

The Muses, must work out his vision or

Rot down with gifts neglected; so this Cæsar

Gifted to rule must rule—but what’s the dream?

To use his power for democratic weal,

Bring order, justice in a rotten state,

And carry on the work of Marius,

His democratic uncle. Now behold,

He’s fifty when he reaches sovereign power;

Few years are left in which he may achieve

His democratic ideas, for he sought

No gain in power, but chance to do his work,

Fulfill his genius. Well, he takes the Senate

And breaks its aristocracy, then frees

The groaning debtors; reduces the congestion

Of stifled Italy, founds colonies,

Helps agriculture, executes the laws.

Crime skulks before him, luxury he checks.

The franchise is enlarged, he codifies

The Roman laws, and founds a money system;

Collects a library, and takes a census;

Reforms the calendar, and thus bestrode

The world with work accomplished. Round his legs

All other men must peer; and envy, hatred

Were serpents at his heels, whose poison reached

His heart at last. He was the tower of Pharos,

That lighted all the world.

Now who was Brutus?

Cæsar forgave this Brutus seven times seven,

Forgave him for Pharsalia, all his acts

Of constant opposition. Who was Brutus?

A simple, honest soul? A heart of hate,

Bred by his uncle Cato! Was he gentle?

Look what he did to Salamis! Besieged

Its senate house and starved the senators

To force compliance with a loan to them

At 48 per cent! This is the man

Whom Shakespeare makes to say he’d rather be

A villager than to report himself

A son of Rome under these hard conditions,

Which Cæsar wrought! Who thought or called them hard?

Brutus or Shakespeare? Is it Plutarch, maybe,

Whom Shakespeare follows, all against the grain

Of truth so long revealed?

Do you not see

Matter in plenty for our Shakespeare’s hand,

To show a sovereign genius and its work

Pursued by mad-dogs, bitten to its death,

Its plans thrown into chaos? Is there clay

Wherewith to mould the face of Cæsar; take

What clay remains to mould the face of Brutus?

Do you not see a straining of the stuff,

Making that big and salient which should be

Little and hidden in a group of figures?

And why, I ask? Here is the irony:

Shakespeare has minted Plutarch, stamped the coin

With the face of Brutus. It’s his inner genius,

The very flavor of his genius’ flesh

To do this thing. Here is a world that’s mad,

A Cæsar mad with power, a Brutus madder,

Being a dreamer, student, patriot

Who can’t see things as clearly as the madman

Cæsar sees them, Brutus sees through books.

A mad-man butchered by a man more mad.

His father mad before him. Why, it’s true

That every one is mad, because the world

Cannot be solved. Why are we here and why

This agony of being? Why these tasks

Imposed upon us never done, which drive

Our souls to desperation. So to print

The tragedy of life, our Shakespeare takes,

And by the taking shows he deems the theme

Greater than Cæsar’s greatness: human will,

A dream, a hope, a love, and makes them big.

Strains all the clay to that around a form

Too weak to hold the moulded stuff in place.

Thus from his genius fashioning the tales

Of human life he passes judgment on

The mystery of life. Which could he do

By making Cæsar great, and would it be

So bitter and so hopeless if he did,

So adequate to curse this life of ours?

Why make a man as great as Nature can

The gods will raise a manakin to kill him,

And over-turn the order that he founds.

A grape seed strangles Sophocles, a turtle

Falls from an eagle’s claws on Aeschylos,

And cracks his shiny pate.

So at the last

The question is, is history the truth,

Or is the Shakespeare genius, which arranges

History to speak the Shakespeare mood,

Reaction to our life, the truth?

And here

I leave you to reflect. Let’s one more ale

And then I go.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY

(The Revolutionary Tribunal; July 17th, 1793)

MONTANÉ, Presiding judge.

FOUQUER-TINVILLE, Prosecutor.

CHAVEAU-LAGARDE, Defending counsel.

DANTON,} Leaders of the Jacobins.

ROBESPIERRE,}

MADAM EVARD, Marat’s friend.

CHARLOTTE CORDAY.

MONTANÉ

Where is your home?

CHARLOTTE

Caen.

MONTANÉ

Why did you come to Paris?

CHARLOTTE

To kill Marat.

MONTANÉ

Why?

CHARLOTTE

His crimes.

MONTANÉ

What crimes?

CHARLOTTE

The woes of France! His readiness to fire

All France with civil war.

MONTANÉ

You meant to kill

When you struck?

CHARLOTTE

Yes! I meant to kill.

MONTANÉ

How old are you?

CHARLOTTE

Twenty-four.

MONTANÉ

A woman

Young as you are could not have done this murder

Unless abetted.

CHARLOTTE

No! You little know

The human heart. The hatred of one’s heart

Impels the hand better than other’s hate.

MONTANÉ

You hated Marat?

CHARLOTTE

Hated! I did not kill

A man, I killed a wild beast eating up

The people and the nation.

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

She’s familiar

With crime, no doubt.

CHARLOTTE

You monster! Do you take me

For just a common murderer?

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

Yes! Why not?

Here is your knife!

CHARLOTTE

Oh! Yes, I recognize it.

I bought it at the cutler’s shop.

MONTANÉ

What for?

CHARLOTTE

To kill Marat with; cost me forty sous.

After I came to Paris—

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

When?

CHARLOTTE

Four days ago.

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

That was the day you wrote Marat?

CHARLOTTE

Same day.

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

Saying you knew of news in Caen, knew

Means by the which Marat could render service

To the Republic!

CHARLOTTE

By his death!

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

But yet

You gave him credit in this note for love

Of France, our France. You tricked him.

CHARLOTTE

Like a viper.

He was a mad-dog, dog-leech, alley rat,

With bits of carrion festering ’twixt his teeth,

Hair glued with ordure, urine. Why not trick

By best means, so to catch a beast with fangs

As venomous as his? He was a fire

That crawled and licked its way; why not put out

The fire by water, snuffing, stamping, why

Be precious of the means?

MADAM EVARD

You know me, woman?

CHARLOTTE

You struck me when I stabbed him. You’re his whore!

MADAM EVARD

Oh! Oh!

ROBESPIERRE

(To Danton)

This is enough! When fury claws at fury.

I hear the tumbril for her. Come!

DANTON

The slut!

(Danton and Robespierre leave the room together.)

CHARLOTTE

Was that not Robespierre who left the room?

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

Why do you ask?

CHARLOTTE

I wanted him for counsel.

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

For what? The guillotine?

CHARLOTTE

(Shrinking) You monster! You!

MONTANÉ

Have you a lawyer?

CHARLOTTE

No! I wrote Doulcet.

He shirks the honor, doubtless; have not heard.

I thought of Chabot and of Robespierre.

MONTANÉ

Chaveau-Lagarde shall counsel you. Proceed!

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

Is this your letter?

CHARLOTTE

Yes.

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

This letter here

Is written to a man named Barbarous,

Her lover—

CHARLOTTE

No! You monster!

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

Very well!

Is this yours: “To the French, friends of the laws,

And friends of peace.”

CHARLOTTE

Yes! I admit what’s true.

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

And is this yours: “To the Committee of Public Safety”?

CHARLOTTE

I wrote it, yes.

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

Let’s see now what’s her mind.

This letter to the friends of peace and laws:—

“O France, thy peace depends upon the laws.”

Laws! And she hastens to the cutler’s shop,

And buys a knife with which to slay Marat.

Now look! This friend of France’s peace and laws

Must dodge self-contradiction. How? That’s plain:

“I do not break the law, killing Marat.”

Why? What’s Marat? A man? Of course, a man.

But then an “out-law,” as she writes. How’s that?

Outlawed by whom? Charlotte Corday of Caen!

What else? A man! But then condemned. By whom?

“The universe.” Voila! The universe

Is swallowed by her swollen vanity.

She speaks for God, for solar systems, stars;

Adjudges laws, interprets, executes;

Is greater than the Revolution, France.

She’s a descendant of the great Corneille;

A stage imagination, actress, acts,

And quotes here in this letter from Voltaire’s

“Mort de César.” Now listen what her hate

Has used for whetrock, in the words of Brutus:

“Whether the world astonished loads my name

“And deed with horror, admiration, censure,

“I do not care, nor care to live in Time.

“I act indifferent to reproach or glory,

“A free, untrameled patriot am I.

“Duty accomplished I shall rest content.

“Think only, friends, how you may break your chains.”

So Brutus lives in her! And like disease

Loosed from the crumbling cerements and dust

Of broken tombs, the madness which slew Cæsar

Infects, makes mad this woman; and she slays

The great Marat!

She does not care for the world’s

Censure or admiration! Does not care

To live in time! She lies! Why, in this room

A man, Huer, is sketching her. Behold

He’s drawing now her face for Time to see.

And in this letter written to the Committee

She says: “Since I have little time to live,

“I trust you will permit me to have painted

“My portrait.” Why? If careless if she live

In memory or time? The secret’s out,

And written in her hand: “I want to leave

“A picture for remembrance to my friends.”

What friends? Her father? Barbarous? Caen,

Paris, the whole of France, the world, if Time

Writes down the people’s friend as beast, would see

The face, in such case, which destroyed Marat,

Condemned first by the “universe” and at last

By France, the world! What next? She doubts her God,

Her Brutus warrant, “universe” approval,

And writes here as a reason, in addition:

“That as men cherish memory of good men,

“So curiosity”—see her spirit flop

And smile with idiot guilt upon itself—

“So curiosity sometimes seeks out

“Memorials of criminals.” That’s her word:

“Criminals,” and by that word she stands

Self-dedicated to the guillotine.

CHARLOTTE

Well, am I not a criminal in the eyes

Of such a beast as you? Will nature spawn

No other beasts like you?

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

Yes, in my eyes,

You are a criminal. But you mistake.

I have no curiosity about you.

When you are dead I’d have your name erased,

Your face erased, lest it corrupt the face

Of Brutus, and lead hands in years to come

To speak the “universe,” interpret “laws,”

And slay whom they would slay.

This is not all

About her picture, a memorial

For admiration by posterity.

She writes this Barbarous, lover or what,

It matters nothing, writes him pages here

In detail of herself, and intimate

Portrayal of her feelings: how she planned,

And killed Marat. To Barbarous she writes

About her letter to the Committee, asking

To have her portrait painted. Now, for whom?

Her friends? Not now! For the department now

Of Calvados. There! hanging on a wall,

A prize of history, is the deathless face

Of Charlotte Corday, destroyer of Marat,

Saviour of France, as Brutus struck for Rome!

Yes, I invite your thought to what she writes

To Barbarous: description of her act

In sneaking to Marat with hidden knife;

And as he sat there helpless in the tub,

And unsuspecting of her hatred, quick

She rips him like a butcher. Then, “A moi!”

He cries, “A moi!” And she’s elate, her eyes

Bright as the lightning that has struck. Look now!

How she writhes here, how passing cross her face

Are lights of ghastly fields of fire and clouds

When hurricanes descend.

CHARLOTTE

You beast! You beast!

FOUQUER-TINVILLE

I am a beast, eh? You are what? I’ll tell.

From Caen, as ’tis known. She’s being sketched,

I’ll sketch her too. You see, she’s strongly built,

Large eyes of blue, large features, handsome though;

Nose shapely, and good teeth; equipped to play

In dramas of Corneille, her ancestor.

She needs a man. A husband would have drawn

Innocuously the electric passion, which

Collected in a bolt to loose and lurch

Against Marat. All women should be farmed.

She has her schooling in a convent, reads;

Lives with her thoughts and dreams. I’ll sketch her soul:

Has not enough of living to consume

The forces of her dreams. She reads Rousseau,

And Plutarch’s heroes, Brutus most of all.

Thrills at the words “Republic,” “Liberty.”

Thinks the Girondists only can set up

A real republic. Ideas are the stuff

Of history. Kill ideas or be killed

By ideas is the fate of man. Republic,

Liberty, Brutus are ideas. Ideas

Are dangerous, being truths, more so as lies.

And lies destroyed Marat.

Who was Marat?

A man of study, learning. Physicist,

Admired of Franklin, Göethe for his works

On heat and light; a doctor, having won

An honorary title at St. Andrew’s

In England. Linguist, speaking Spanish, German,

Italian, English. Versed in Governments:—

You know his work on England’s constitution

Whereby he sought to clear the mind of France—

This Charlotte Corday’s with the rest—that England

Is free, her systems free; stop the Girondists

From that re-iterated lie; stop France

From taking on the English system.

So

True ideas of Marat, evolved from life,

Living and study must combat, destroy

False ideas of Girondists, will succeed;

But cannot bar the door to the idea

That enters at his bathroom with a knife.

How was it that no valet and no guard

Preserved him? Why? Lovers of liberty

Starve in her service!

But there was a time

When he knew elegance and privacy.

But Liberty and Wisdom would be served.

He went to rags, was hunted, had to hide

In sewers for the cause of Liberty;

And there took loathsome trouble, eased at times

By steam, hot tubs. And thus our people’s friend

Is found accessible to this female lie,

Girondist lie, possessing her, and stabbed.

Or at the best ideas of Liberty

Conduct her to his bath-room, where Marat

Is tubbed in sequence and in punishment

Of his idea of Liberty. Gods can laugh,

But men must weep. O worthless, rotten world!

It is most pitiful, most tragic, lifts

Man’s heart to spit at heaven, that these friends

Of peoples must be slain, starved, hunted first,

Then butchered for their service and their love.

Saved not by truth; destroyed by lies, a lie

That he was evil, by the maniac lie

Of her mad vision that she knew what Freedom,

Liberty, Republic mean. Slain by the lie

Of this Girondist dream, this milk and water,

Emasculated, luke-warm craft of states:

Girondists: patches on the robes of kings;

Girondists: autogamists; mating sisters,

The past, and in the mating without child

Of truth or progress. Neither hot nor cold,

Spewed, therefore, from the mouth of Time. Betrayers,

Waylayers of the brave, the clear of eye;

Girondists: ’twixt republicans and kings,

And holding hands of each to make them friends.

Workers and owners of the new foaled mule

Bred of the royal stallion and an ass.

Girondists! loving wealth and ease, the church

Which loves them too. Girondists picking steps

Of moderate reform. Girondists hating

The Revolution, which must kill the foes

Of Liberty, as criminals are killed

For robbery, yet rejoice to see the blood

Of dead Marat. They’re lofty! They are pure!

They love the laws, love peace! Yes, as this woman

Loves law and peace.

What is it like? A play

Where all is mimicked. Do we talk of facts?

Are these not fautocinni? Where’s the hand

That plays this coarse and bloody joke to eyes

Of men that crave reality? I mean this:

A woman with lovers who suggest, abet;

A woman with no man, who dreams and reads,

Lives in the stench of these Girondist lies;

Ghosts float on fogs of her miasmic soul.

She hears Marat’s a monster, dabbling blood,

A rabid ignoramus running foul

Of liberty and order, nihilist,

And sanguinary madman, dragon slimed

In back-wash of all hatred, envy, lust

Of the dispossessed, malformed, misborn; and then

She dreams of Brutus, who struck down—there now

I nail a lie that will be always truth

To Charlotte Cordays. Cæsar? Tyrant? No.

No man is tyrant who sees truth and rules

For truth’s sake. For the ruled must share the truth

Where Cæsars rule.

So much for her. She stands

Watchful and envious in the wings, and sees

Marat, not as we see him; not as Time

Will see Marat. L’Ami du Peuple to her

Is enemy of France, of Liberty.

This man most rare, most pure of soul, most clear

Of vision that the contest lies between

The rich and poor, has always lain between

The rich and poor, and not between the people

And kings; that poverty’s the thing, is seen

By Charlotte Corday from the wings, as nothing

But hatred, murder.

Well, my girl, you’ll get

Your picture in the galleries of history.

You’ll get it; and to choke you with your words:

“So curiosity would have memorials

Of criminals, which serve to keep alive

Horror for their crimes.”

Your picture’s up

Already. Horror stares! You killed Marat.

That is your place in Time: you killed Marat!

You sneaked upon a great man, true man, weak

From torture of disease, contracted serving

Democracy, and slew him like a beast.

Charlotte Corday, assassin! That’s your place,

And character in history.

CHARLOTTE

Let it be.

Assassin. Well, assassins kill assassins:

The words repel, destroy each other, sir.

If any grieve for me I beg of them

To think of me in the Elysian Fields

With Brutus and the heroes.

CHAVEAU-LAGARDE

Gentlemen!

The deed’s admitted. What to say, but ask

Your clemency? The girl’s fanatical.

The prosecutor argues well for me

In saying that a lie corrupted her,

And maddened her to act; which is to say

If that lie were a truth, she had the right

To slay Marat. With this regard Voltaire,

Great minds before him, painted Brutus great

Because he slew a tyrant. But if Cæsar

Was not a tyrant, how does Brutus stand

But mad-man who believed, was honest, slew

In honesty of heart? Then what’s the case?

To punish for ill-judging of the facts,

Or mercy show for human frailty

Of judgment and of vision? Great Marat

Has done his work, and left his legacy.

We cannot help him, meting death for death.

And would his noble spirit ask her death?

Think of it! You will answer no, I think.

He would say: kill the ideas of Caen,

The world which fires these Charlottes with a lie.

Smallpox is deadly as a butcher knife,

He had to die. The syllabus is death

In this our human logic: what’s the odds

What premises produce conclusions? Knives,

Consumptions, fevers, wars? We may be gods

Withholding death where we have power to kill;

Withhold it saying: She mistook, believed

A lie, was faultless for believing it,

And slew believing. Were it truth and all

Believed we would applaud, as nations war,

Bound in a common vision of one truth.

The Revolution, France, will lose not, rather

Gain by this clemency; ’twill lift a light,

First in the world, of reason, justice purged

Of hatred’s refuse: vengeance, fear, all passions

Of bitterness of soul. We worship Reason,

And this is Reason.

CHARLOTTE

You have done your part

And served me well. I thank you.

THE JURY

Let her join

Brutus in the Elysian Fields. We say:

The guillotine!

THE MOB

(Outside) To the guillotine! To the guillotine!

CHARLOTTE

I am content.

A MAN CHILD IS BORN

(February 12th, 1809. Log Hut near Hodgenville, Ky.)

(A neighbor woman is talking)

The wind blows through the chinks—it’s snowing too,

Tom piles the logs on, but that door is loose.

An earthen floor is always cold. You’re warm.

I’m glad I brought a kiverlid along,

An extra one comes handy at this time.

You are all right—you had an easy time,

Considering this baby, big and long.

He’s very long, will be a tall man, too,

A hunter and a chopper, Indian fighter,

Lord, who knows what, a big man in the country,

A preacher, congressman or senator,

A president—who knows? God blesses you

To give you such a son. He nurses well.

Don’t let him have too much at first. You see

That single window gives too little light

To show you what he’s like. He looks a little

Like Nancy Shipley Hanks, your mother, perhaps

A little like your aunt, old Mary Lincoln.

Since you and Tom are cousins, it may be

This boy will be a mixture, but if folks

Resemble animals, the traits of you

Will be made stronger in this child, because

You two are cousins.

You will be up to see

What he looks like, in just a week or so.

Perhaps when next the flames mount in the fire-place

The light will show you. Have you named him yet—

Tom likes the name of Abraham—well, that’s good—

You’ve chosen that!

I thought I heard a step—

Who do you think is coming? Dennis Hanks!

He’s come to see his cousin Abraham.

Good mornin’, Dennis! come into the fire—

I’ll you see your cousin Abraham—

A big, long baby—quick! and shut the door,

The room is none too warm, the wind is blowing—

Tom’s gone for logs again! Here, I’ll raise up

The kiverlid and let you see—look here!

You think he’s homely! Pretty is, you know,

As pretty does—but see how big and long!

In fifteen years he’ll make you up and come

To beat him wrestling, I will bet a coon’s skin.

Now you may kiss him; in a little bit

I’ll let you hold him by the fire. The pot

Is on for dinner, we are having squirrel

And hominy for dinner—you can stay.

Now clear out, Dennis—I must do some things—

Open the door for Tom, he’s coming there

With logs to mend the fire!

RICHARD BOOTH TO HIS SON JUNIUS BRUTUS

(London, December 13th, 1813.)

So you’re to play Campillo, all in spite

Of my commands, at Deptford? Here’s the bill

Found in your pocket. You are seventeen,

Too young for this adventure in the world.

What will you be, a strolling vagabond,

Smelling of grease, impoverished, set apart

From stable folk by this, your wandering art?

And just to think I named you Junius Brutus,

After the great republican who slew

The Roman tyrant Cæsar—I myself

A worshipper of Liberty all my life,

And choosing such a patronym for you

To dedicate you to the faith in me.

Now you would leave this dignity to speak

Mimetic words, and act. I beg of you,

Listen, my boy, before it is too late,

And let me tell my story to you now,

That you may profit by the things I’ve lived....

You see that face of Washington, hung up

There on the wall where every entering eye

Must mark it? You remember that I ask,

Enforce respect to Washington and make

The passer bow his head—well, listen now:

It’s seventeen seventy-seven, I’m fourteen.

Burgoyne’s surrender fires my tender heart.

We hear Lord George Germain forgets to take

A letter from a pigeon hole containing

Instructions to Burgoyne that touches on

The campaign on the Hudson. Anyway,

Burgoyne gets tangled in the wilderness

Around Champlain. He faces broken bridges,

And trees felled in his way. His horses fail,

Provisions are exhausted. Then he sends

A thousand men to Bennington to get

More horses and provisions. There he’s stumped:

A veteran of Bunker Hill is there,

A Colonel Stark, whose wife is Mollie Stark,

Who says we beat the British here to-day,

Or Mollie Stark’s a widow. August 16th

They whipped the British soundly—and Burgoyne

Was driven to defeat.

That made us flame!

I was a hot republican. Slipped away

To Paris with a cousin to set sail

For America and help the Americans,

And wrote from there a letter to John Wilkes,

And asked his help to get me in the army

Of Washington. As Englishmen, I wrote,

It may be said we are not justified

In taking arms against the English cause.

That argument with you could have no weight,

You, who have fought for Liberty so long.

And England, what is she? All human rights

Are lost in England under tyrant rule.

It is the duty of an English heart

To help those whom this lawless tyranny

Oppresses in America. So I wrote,

And sent to London. What do you suppose?

John Wilkes went to my father with this letter.

They caught me, brought me home, and here I am,

A lawyer to this day. You think it strange!

Who was John Wilkes, that he should thus betray?—

I wonder, even now.

For he had been

A rebel spirit from his boyhood up,

Born here in London seventeen twenty-seven;

Was sent to Parliament when he was thirty.

Attacked the king in writing, was arrested;

Refused to answer questions, then they chucked

Our rebel in the Tower; he got out,

Saying he had a privilege as a member

Of Parliament. They passed a special law

To warrant prosecution, ousted him

From Parliament, and then he went to France,

Was outlawed, but returned, again was sent

To Parliament, before he took his seat.

Was sent to prison on the sentences

Passed on the old conviction, and expelled

From Parliament again for libeling

The minister of war. Three times again

They elected him to Parliament, but they kept

Our rebel out. He now became the people’s

Idol for his sufferings and his courage.

They let him out of prison, made him mayor

Of London, and in seventeen seventy-four

He goes from Middlesex to Parliament

And takes his seat at last, and there he was

When I wrote to him, seventeen seventy-seven.

Why did he tell my father, send my father

The letter which I wrote?

I know, I think:

He knew the dangers, agonies ahead,

For a boy who sets his feet along the path

Of Liberty and working for the world

To free the world—and did not know my stuff;

Whether I had the will to fight and die

With no regrets. He knew what he had suffered,

And had a tenderness for the youth who flames

And beats his wings for freedom, would release

From tyranny and wrong.

And so they caught me,

And brought me home and set me to the law.

And here I am, who never lost the dream

And named you Junius Brutus. Oh, my son,

Leave off this actor calling, stay with me,

I who was nipped would see you grow to flower,

Fulfill my vision. What, you promise me,

If I will let you act this time, to come

And let me mould you, teach you what I know,

Fill full your spirit with the hope I had,

That you may do what I have failed to do?

You promise that? Well, Junius Brutus, go

And may you fail at acting and return.

A MAN CHILD IS BORN

(July 14th, 1839. The Farm.)

(Mrs. Booth is speaking.)

After such pain this child against my breast!

Oh what a cunning head and little face!

What coal black hair! You have begun to feed!

Look, doctor, how he feeds—why look at him,

He is a little man! Is not God good

To give me such a baby? Well, I think

You will be something noble in this world,

And something great, you precious little man!

His daddy wants to name him John Wilkes. I

Would name him Junius Brutus to hand down

His father’s glory and perhaps his art.

Look, doctor, is it not a miracle

That God performs, this little life from mine,

This beauty out of love! I pray to God

To bless you, little John, if that’s your name.

A colored mammy read the coffee grounds,

And says he will be famous, rich and great—

He may be so. I know he will be good.

Look at that darling face—it must be so!

SQUIRE BOWLING GREEN

(Rutledge’s Tavern, New Salem, July 14th, 1839.)

You missed it—case all over! Lincoln’s gone.

He’s just had time about to reach the mill.

He couldn’t wait until the stage arrived.

Had business in the courts of Springfield—well,

You can believe he has become a lawyer.

He borrowed Mentor Graham’s horse to ride.

John Yoakum is in Springfield and to-morrow

Will bring it back.

Who won the case? Why, Abe.

He won it by his horse-sense and his wit.

You must have met the jury down the road.

What were they laughing at? About the case.

We started yesterday on the evidence

And finished up this morning. An appeal?

The verdict satisfies both parties, and

My judgment stands.

Abe is a natural lawyer,

Knows things that can’t be found in books, although

He knows the books. And why not? You recall

When he was boarding with me how he studied?

It’s just four years ago or so, that he

Came home one night with Blackstone. Well, I’ve noticed

A man attracts what’s his, just like a magnet

Draws bits of steel. You can’t make me believe

That Blackstone came to him unless ’twas meant

That he should be a lawyer. Don’t you know?

He read this Blackstone in his store all day

And half the night as well. He said to me

Not Volney’s “Ruins,” Shakespeare, Burns, had taken

His interest like this Blackstone. Yes, he took it

When he went fishing with Jack Kelso, read,

And let jack row the boat and bait the hooks....

I think he knows this Blackstone all by heart.

But anyway, he knows the human heart.

Well, now here is the case: Here is a colt.

George Cameron says the colt is his—John Spears

Says no, the colt is mine, and Cameron sues,

And Spears defends, and sixty witnesses

Come here to testify, on my word it’s true,

On my judicial oath it is the fact.

The thirty swear the colt is Cameron’s;

And thirty swear the colt belongs to Spears;

And not a man impeached, these witnesses

Are everyone good men, and most of them

I know as I know you. Well, what’s to do?

The scales are balanced. And besides all this,

Here’s Cameron who swears the colt is his,

And Spears who swears the opposite, and both

Are credible, I know them both. So I

Sit like a fellow trying to decide

What happens when a thing impenetrable

Is struck by something irresistible—

I’m stumped, that’s all.

You see the facts were these:

Each of these fellows owns a mare, the mares

Look pretty much alike, each had a colt

In April. But the other day one colt—

Which colt, that is the question—strayed away

And can’t be found. George Cameron has a colt—

These men are neighbors—but John Spears comes over

And sees the colt at Cameron’s in the field;

And says, “That is my colt.” “Not on your life,”

George Cameron replies, “The colt is mine—

Your colt has strayed, not mine.” They come to law.

John Spears gets Lincoln, and they come to court

With sixty witnesses; and here this noon

With all the evidence put in, I sit

And eye the jury, know the jury’s stumped,

As I am stumped.

Then Lincoln says: “Your honor,

Let’s have a trial on view.” I’d heard of that,

But never sat on such a trial before.

“Let’s bring the colt, the two mares over here,

And let the jury see which mare the colt

Resembles, let the jury use their eyes

As witnesses use theirs.”

That seemed fair.

And so we sent one fellow for the mares,

Another for the colt. For Lincoln said:

“Your honor, bring them separate, so the jury

Can have the sudden flash of seeing them

Separate, to study them.”

For an hour

Abe sat here in the shade and told us stories.

And pretty soon we heard the horses whinney,

And heard the colt. And Lincoln said, “Your honor,

Let’s have the mares led past the jury, trotting,

Let’s see their pace.” And so they trotted them.

“Now trot the colt,” said Lincoln—we did that.

The jury watched to see the look of legs,

And movement, if you please, to catch a likeness.

But nothing came of this. Then Lincoln said:

“Now turn the colt loose”—and they turned it loose.

It galloped to the mare of Spears and sucked!

Well, now it’s true a colt’s a silly thing,

And may mistake its mother, but a mare

Will never let a colt that’s not her own

Put under flanks its nose. Of course the jury,

And all of us know that—and so did Abe.

The jury yelled and all the witnesses

Began to whoop. And when I rapped for order

And got things quiet—Lincoln rose and said,

“I rest, your honor.”

So I entered judgment

For Spears. They went to Berry’s for the drinks—

There! hear them laughing.

Lincoln took his fee,

Ten dollars, I believe, and went to Springfield.

LINCOLN SPEAKING IN CONGRESS

(January 12th, 1848.)

“Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a sacred right. A right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and may make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws, but to break up both and make new ones.”

JOHN WILKES BOOTH AT THE FARM

(January 12th, 1848.)

Mother, I’m breathless! I have seen a man,

The strangest man I ever saw. I’m scared!

I went down to the hollow, was at play,

Was marching with my broomstick gun—and then

While I stood there and said “attention,” playing

Soldier, you know, reciting to my soldiers,

I heard a voice—looked round and saw this man.

He was enormous with a frightful face,

Black eyes, black hair, a voice that sounded like

Low thunder, though it could be soft and sweet.

And he said to me, “What’s your name, my boy?”

I told him. Then he said, “Where is your father?”

I said, “My father’s gone.” “Where is your mother?”

“Up at the house,” I answered. Then he asked,

“What are you doing here?” “Why, playing soldier.”

“Are you a patriot?” And I said yes.

“Oh, no,” he said, “your father was an actor;

I saw him play the part of Brutus often,

And you will be an actor, you’ve the look.”

How did he know these things, do you suppose?

And then he said, “Recite for me.” “I can’t,”

I said to him. “O yes, you can,” he said.

“You must recite for me.” And I was scared,

Began to cry, and he said, “Hush, my boy,

I will not hurt you, but you must recite,

I want to see what you have memorized.”

So I was choking, but I tried to do it:

“The tyrannous and bloody deed is done,

The most arch act of piteous massacre

That ever yet this land was guilty of.” ...

“No Richard III,” he said. “Here look at me!

Why do you dodge? Why not recite some words

From Brutus, for you know them, why, my boy?

You’ve heard your father speak the words of Brutus.

Why do you hide your knowledge? Look at me!”

He terrified me so that I began:

“It must be by his death: and for my part

I know no personal cause to spurn at him,

But for the general. He would be crowned:

How that might change his nature, there’s the question.

It is the bright day that brings forth the adder.”

I got so far and saw him looking down,

As if he saw—I don’t know what—and then

I stopped and looked—and there I saw an adder

Coiled close to me. I jumped and screamed. He laughed—

I ran away, and left him standing there.

Mother, I am afraid. Who was this man?

My head hurts. I’m afraid. Keep close to me—

I am so frightened.

JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH

(On a steamboat bound for Cincinnati from New Orleans, November 30th, 1852.)

You are a doctor? Ill? I’m very ill.

My soul is worn, it is a ghastly life,

This acting, traveling, living through the passions

Of Brutus, and Orestes, Richard III.

My father tried to make a lawyer of me,

But fate is fate. My age is fifty-six,

But counting by the moments I have lived

A thousand years were nearer truth. Oh, well,

What if this talking tire me, I am tired

With such fatigue that nothing adds to it.

And if I die, why what will be, will be.

I’d like to see “The Farm” in Maryland

Just once again, see Mary, that’s my wife,

John Wilkes, my boy, and Junius Brutus, too—

Edwin I left in California,

Shall never see him more I fear—but then

What comes to us must come.

That brandy helps,

I’m better now.

Oh, yes, it’s true my father

Would make a lawyer of me, couldn’t do it—

I am a better lawyer than he was

For acting parts and living other lives,

Thus finding laws of life—but what’s the good?

You can’t find happiness, all is vanity.

If you’re a strolling player, vanity;

Vexation too and jealousy and strife.

If all the house goes mad to see you rage

As life-like as the Moor did, do they know

What realest envy stalks behind the scenes,

What you have done to keep your golden voice,

Your strength to paint the frenzy of Othello?

After one greatest triumph I sat alone,

Was playing solitaire, who should come in?

Chief Justice Marshall, friend of mine? Oh, yes.

He said, “I think you’d be the happiest

Of men, why not enjoy what you’ve achieved?”

“Judge,” I replied, “you see me here alone,

There is no ecstasy, no drop of joy

For me save in that moment when I see,

Both through my genius glowing and the cries

And plaudits from the house, that I have struck.

The fateful note that thrills—all other hours

Are spent in saving power and making ready

For just that moment. What’s an actor, poet?

A medium round whom the spirits swarm

Like bats in Tartarus and shrill Me! Me!

Take now and write, speak for me—make it clear,

You are our hope of truth, of being known

For what we are. And so you’re never done.

The spirits dash about you with their cries;

Men note your eyes turned inward—move away.

And you must keep in vigor. Hoarseness rasps

The voice of Brutus, you must catch no cold.

You drink sometimes to deafen ears against

The spirits’ crying, but you pay for it,

Must climb back into strength, but while you’re weak

The spirits are a-crying, there you are,

Ambitious but enfeebled, can’t respond,

And tortured for it. There is no escape.

And so you play at solitaire.”

The Judge

Replied: “A judge is lonely, for his reasons

Must keep himself aloof.”

Yes, I knew Kean.

He played Othello to my great Iago,

And I say great, for I was twenty-one,

And made the London English shout and howl:

“Great Booth forever,” though they shouted, too,

“No Booth” and “down with Booth,” the partisans

Of Kean, the envious. And on a time

It’s Drury Lane, and what an audience!

Hazlitt is there and Godwin, Shelley’s friend,

John Howard Payne, who wrote “The Fall of Tarquin.”

He saw that Kean was envious, would not be

Excelled by me and wrote as much.

My friend,

Another drink of brandy!

Well, at last

I make America my home. ’Twere well

If I am spared to write my memories,

They throng so at this moment. God be praised,

I knew Old Hickory and supped with him,

A man from top to toe! And I have lived,

Fought, suffered, triumphed, lived through self and lived

Through Brutus, Lear, and Richard.

Look at me,

Am I a man you’d ever take for mad?

Mad-men have struck at me, a lunatic

Struck at me with an ax, I cowed his hate

And fixed him with my eye. But as for me,

Here have I been for life a lover of home,

A husband blest with happiness in a wife,

And yet reputed mad. For little things

Like this reputed mad: I’m playing Shylock,

The call boy searches me, my time has come,

Where was I? In a closet. Was it queer?

A symptom? No! I hid to shut the light

Of other things external from the mind

Of Shylock’s mood. Why, is it strange at all

For a soul that incarnates itself with souls

Like Brutus’ and Lear’s to lose itself,

Seem sometimes naked, trembling, swaying too

With such exhaustion, such tremendous change?

These common minds see not the genius mind

For what it is, forget the strength and wisdom

That makes the genius, in my case, forget

My books and scholarship, my toil, who learned

Greek, Latin, German, French and Arabic,

Hebrew and Spanish; the philosophies,

I’ve mastered in my life.

I tremble too

For thinking of my little son, John Wilkes,

So beautiful and gifted, has the touch;

Is full of dreams, goes charging on his horse,

Spouting heroic speeches, lance in hand

There on “The Farm,” a patriot and a lover

Of liberty even now. What will he be,

A statesman or an actor, warrior, what?

God knows alone, and what his fate God knows.

I named him after John Wilkes, patriot

And English libertarian—but no matter,

He’ll do what he will do. They named me Brutus

And I became an actor, not a statesman,

Warrior, no tyrannicide.

Hold there!

What is this? Take my hand! Sharp pain again—

Pray! pray! pray!

(He dies.)

A CERTAIN POET ON THE DEBATES

(At Alton, Illinois, October 15th, 1858.)

(Arguing with a group at the hotel.)

Why do I speak with such authority?

I know this matter through from A to Z;

I know it just as well as Lincoln knows it.

There’s not a document I have not studied

From Elliott’s Debates to this Le Compton

Kansas constitution that has escaped

My mind’s analysis. And you will see

Lincoln is beaten now. You are absurd

To think he’ll win the presidency for losing

The senatorship—clean crazy all of you!

Who am I? Well, it makes no difference.

I am a mind, a mere intelligence

Going about this year of fifty-eight

An observer and a listener. Gabriel

Could be no more impersonal than I.

I’ve followed up these fellows like the boy

That trails the circus, clear from Ottawa

To Freeport, Charleston, Galesburg, Quincy, Alton;

And made my way at first with sawing wood,

Later by selling razors, soap and strops;

And just to hear the speaking, see the crowds—

These crowds that leave the shop and farms, these crowds

Solemn and noisy, rapt, tumultuous,

Sober and drunk, who carry whips and spit

Tobacco juice around and drink and eat.

The babies squall, wagons and democrats

Befog the air with dust, and oh, the heat!

Yet though these crowds will settle like the dust

In graves all over Illinois, nothing leave

Of what, or who they were, no less these crowds

Have reason at the centre like the sun;

Dimmed to the eyes this side; the sun is there!

But yet the sun knows it is there—the dust

Rises and shows the sun—there you have thought

Which is now, will be handed down of this—

These days. Oh, yes, the dust will rise at last

When evening—that’s reflection, settles down;

And then you’ll see a star—first magnitude,

The name is Lincoln!

I have read. I know.

Never in Rome or Greece were such debates,

Never in all this world. Look at the theme:

Slavery in a republic! As for men,

Where is their equal? Is it Pericles,

Demosthenes or Cicero, here with us,

Great Webster? And the setting, think of that!

Here in this western prairie state they pass

From town to town, stand up before the mass,

And battle with their wits—set falcons loose

Of swift and ravenous logic to devour

The other’s flights. The crowds perceive the trend,

Gather enough to guide them and persuade,

But much of it is over them. You heard

Lincoln to-day, when he had subtilized

The point to deadly ether, say to them:

“An audience like this will scarcely see

The force of what I say, but minds well trained

Will follow me and see.” That is the point.

Out of this popular oratory rises

A durable spire of truth. This Lincoln leaves

Great thought and beauty to the race. And yet

Douglas will be our senator, and Seward

Our President two years from now. As Webster

Could never win the prize, this Lincoln too

Will fail to win it.

Why, you silly fools!

Lincoln has sprained his arms and back for good—

But he has laid the South out flat and cold,

And broken the slavocracy in two.

He did it with one question; asking that

He made the Little Giant cough and stammer,

And blush his guilt before America.

Oh, yes, he answered well enough to win

This contest here in Illinois; but look,

The Southern press is after him already,

They scent the carcass moved, withdrawn a little;

They croak like buzzards—and there will be war

Between the eagles and the buzzards now,

Perhaps when Seward is elected; truly

If Lincoln should be chosen, as he won’t.

It isn’t that this Douglas isn’t a master.

It is that he is caught between the mill-stones.

The upper is this Kansas and Nebraska,

The lower is Dred Scott—and I am glad!

Why did he father Kansas and Nebraska?

Why did he flout the ancient ordinance

Of 1787, which kept out

This curse of slavery, out of Illinois,

But brought us liberty of press and speech,

The bill of rights? Did Congress have the power

To pass this ordinance of ’87?

Or did it lack the power, because the states

That came into the union with their slaves

Might keep their slaves, reclaim as fugitive

Their slaves on freedom’s soil? Well, if it be

That Congress had the power to plaster down

The ordinance of 1787

Upon this Illinois, this great Northwest,

It had the power to say the western land

Of Kansas and Nebraska should be free

As territories ruled from Washington

And no imperialism! So, I say again

It serves this Douglas right to be destroyed,

And ground to powder for this act of his,

This Kansas and Nebraska.

Well, all right.

It sounds all right, it makes the idiots whoop

To hear the Little Giant say he favors

The people’s rule in Kansas and Nebraska.

Their right to say they’ll have this slavery

Or have it not—yes, popular sovereignty!—

But why not let the people vote on God,

Or choose a king, or take me, all the whites,

And make us slaves? It may be so, if truth

Is just a mockery and there’s nothing real

In human thought at all—one thing is true

As anything, and everything is false.

Thus ruin smites the temple of our life,

And all of us lie down as beasts and grunt

Around its broken arches and its columns!

All right! He gets his Kansas and Nebraska.

That makes him president! Not on your life!

Momus is watching, growls a horrid laugh

And whispers something to Slavocracy,

Which whispers it to Taney—and behold

The prophets and the guardians of the ark

Of the covenant declare a slave’s a slave,

And can be taken to a territory,

And kept there in the face of national law

That makes the territory free. Or else,

Were this not so, the Congress is supreme,

Has slipped the chain of the organic law,

Which recognizes slavery. What is this

But just imperialism?

God Almighty!

They’re all for freedom, a republic too.

Kansas, Nebraska—let the people rule.

Dred Scott:—the Congress is a Parliament

Like England has, unless it pins and tucks

The constitution round its pocky body.

That may be true, but then the question is:

Is slavery charactered upon the robe,

And must the figure of the slave be seen

Wherever Congress walks?

I’ll come to that.

The point is now that Douglas has been caught

Between his Kansas and Nebraska act,

And Dred Scott never his. And being lawful,

Obedient to the law and to the courts—

You heard him hammer Lincoln as a man

Who flouted courts—while he, the Little Giant,

Obeyed the laws—oh, yes!—So, being lawful,

As I began, must hold in level hands

Dred Scott in one, and in the other hand

This Kansas and Nebraska.

Very good.

Lincoln has got him now, and out of all

This rhetoric, these sorties half successful,

These scrimmages with Lincoln, half perplexed,

You find your Little Giant on his back

With Lincoln over him and pinning shoulders

Down to the floor.

Here is the wrestling trick:

Can any territory keep this slavery

Out lawfully, that is, against the wish

Of any citizen? What is the answer?

If you say yes, where is Dred Scott? If no,

How do the people rule?

What is his answer?

Why, yes, he says, a territory can

Keep slavery out. Dred Scott still sends it there,

But then the people rule, and if the people

There in Nebraska make it hot for slavery

By local law and custom, frowns and blows,

It will not thrive. That satisfied the crowd;

Enough at least, elects him Senator,

But loses him the South, the golden prize,

Splits up the country, gives us war in time,

When argument is silenced cannon boom—

And when your Seward comes to Washington

The South secedes.

Now, listen for a moment!

What is Abe Lincoln’s genealogy

In faith political? Sired by the Federalists,

And mothered by the Whigs. A tariff man;

Believes too in the Bank—tariffs and banks

Filched from the plenary stores of privilege

By hands that break the shackles of the law.

He’s born a Whig, has turned Republican,

What is his blood? Why, liberal construction,

Twisting the constitution out of shape,

And tearing holes in it to let the Congress

Escape and wander—where? Why, anywhere!

And though it be that touching slavery

There’s nothing which forbids the Congress acting

In freedom’s way—and that’s the very point—

And granting that the Constitution’s over

The territories, still the Congress can

Bring freedom there—this theory is akin

To loose construction, scarcely can be told

From loose construction. For you see, if freedom,

Since Congress is not hampered, can be brought,

Why not then slavery, if it be not hampered?

And why not colonies, dependencies,

Ruled just as Congress wills, if never a word

Lies in our charter to forbid or grant

The power to do it.

Well, there’ll be a war,

And hell thereafter. So you like my talk!

What is my name? Why, Satan is my name—

And I go wandering on the earth to see,

Walk to and fro and laugh and drop a tear

In spite of all my laughter. Tears and laughter

For ideas in the heads of men that seethe,

Pop, crackle, ferment, blow up bottles, kegs,

Spill and destroy bacteria on the floor

Of epochs, ruin wisdoms, cultures, faiths.

Time scrubs the floor of all such verses—Time

Matures fresh grapes, new ferments, and repeats

The old catastrophes; and hence I laugh,

And drop a tear on all the sorry waste.

PART II

THE DECISION

(April 14th, 1861.)

Lincoln is sitting absorbed in thought in an office of the executive mansion, where he has been in consultation with his cabinet. A telegraph instrument has ceased to click, but the wires are droning. Lincoln suddenly falls into a sleep, at once profound and trance-like. In the vision members of his cabinet and secretaries move in and out of the room.

LINCOLN

So there are five?

A VOICE

Yes, five to two.

SEWARD’S VOICE

A month

Has gone by and no policy. You should

Take hold yourself, or on a cabinet member

Devolve the task.

LINCOLN

Whatever’s to be done

Is mine to do.

SEWARD’S VOICE

Fort Sumpter leave alone!

If we employ armed force we have begun

A civil war—without armed force we fail.

We cannot take the fort and keep the fort,

Unless we subjugate the States as well.

No, let us not first draw the sword.

LINCOLN

To say—

A VOICE

Yes, five to two.

SEWARD’S VOICE

Your cabinet opposes

The Fort’s provisioning.

LINCOLN

The property

And military posts, the forts which were

In our possession when the government

Came to my hands, I shall defend and hold.

I shall collect the duties, but beyond

Such things make no invasion.

A VOICE

And the mails?

ANOTHER VOICE

Fort Sumpter has been shelled!

SEWARD’S VOICE

So I forewarned you.

ANOTHER VOICE

That was an error.

ANOTHER VOICE

May I ask a question?

Will you invade the country to collect

The duties, or relieve a fort alone

Where duties are in question?

Lincoln

My inaugural—

ANOTHER VOICE

To hell with forts and duties—free the slaves!

SEWARD’S VOICE

Drop slavery! Before the people raise

The question: Is it Union or Disunion!

ANOTHER VOICE

I say to let the erring Sisters go.

ANOTHER VOICE

I care more for the principles—

ANOTHER VOICE

Be still!

I’m sick of principles—

THE SAME VOICE

The principles

Of local democratic government are worth

Twice over all the niggers.

ANOTHER VOICE

Senator,

You are most eloquent when full of drink.

ANOTHER VOICE

Would you unite the North? Maneuver them

To fire upon the Fort.

ANOTHER VOICE

The time has come

To open up the question with the sword:

Is this a league, is this a nation, which?

ANOTHER VOICE

What do you want, a tariff or a bank?

Take off your nigger mask, you centralist!

ANOTHER VOICE

A contract broken by a signatory

Absolves the other signatory.

ANOTHER VOICE

Yes

The Yankee cotton spinner—

ANOTHER VOICE

Singing psalms!

ANOTHER VOICE

The radicals have brought us to this pass,

This agitation, hatred sectional.

DOUGLAS’ VOICE

All seem to overlook this vital matter:

The President can use the military

Where only States request it.

ANOTHER VOICE

You forget

The act of ’75.

DOUGLAS’ VOICE

I don’t forget.

The act of ’75 does not apply,

Except to laws resisted, where a marshall

Is overpowered.

ANOTHER VOICE

And there is no marshall,

There is no judge in the seceded States.

ANOTHER VOICE

You will appoint one, so you promised.

LINCOLN

Yes.

DOUGLAS’ VOICE

Then, sir, what cause is there for apprehension?

Who dares to say your President will pursue

A policy of war, unless he call

On Congress for the means and for the power?

ANOTHER VOICE

I ask about Fort Sumpter—are there ships

With cargoes of provisions on their way?—

ANOTHER VOICE

Yes, they have sailed.

OTHER VOICES

No! No!

ANOTHER VOICE

Oh, yes, the seven governors from the North

Have changed his policy. He now intends

To overthrow the federative law.

O great conspiracy—O seven-headed

Apocalyptic Beast!

The vision grows confused. Lincoln seems to himself to attempt to arise from the chair but is unable to do so. The scene whirls about like drifting mist, struck by a sudden current of air, in which there are lights and faces. Voices are mingled together indistinguishably and then fade away. There is a silence. Out of the confusion two figures emerge, one bright, the other shadowy. Both are images of Lincoln. They become seated in a boat which is moving with great rapidity. The only sound is the droning of the telegraph.

FIRST PHANTOM

Twice have I seen this fateful scene before.

SECOND PHANTOM

The depths are moving, but no waters roar.

A mountain silence clasps the air and sea.

Look through the glassy fathoms far below:

Beneath us glides the ocean’s dizzy floor

Which we skim over with a swallow’s speed.

FIRST PHANTOM

I see a shadowy shore and precipices.

Yes, this portends my spirit’s earthly woe.

SECOND PHANTOM

You shall not shrink! What though your heart shall bleed

Its last drop out walking the abysses,

You must go forth—the hour has struck for you!

The little freedoms of your life are past,

As youth may choose its work or happiness;

Now you must steer the boat through fog and blast.

This rock encircled water is no less

Than your soul captured in the trap of Fate.

Far over stands ’twixt earth and heaven a gate

Where souls depart and enter into Time,

You must set foot upon this shore and climb

And blindly your election make, renew

Your will and spirit.

FIRST PHANTOM

Tell me what to do?

SECOND PHANTOM

Heal, if you can, the nation’s growing scars,

Let harmony come out of harsh discord.

FIRST PHANTOM

Suppose the seven States first draw the sword?

Have they not drawn it now?

SECOND PHANTOM

All bloody wars

Furnish great argument to place the blame

For the first blow. But even if it’s blood

That blots the bond of human brotherhood,

Behold the pangs that flow from human pride

When slaughter by such blood is justified.

FIRST PHANTOM

What shall I do with giants who rebel?

SECOND PHANTOM

You do but traffic in a word, a name,

A word it is with which you may inflame

To mob-like fury a judicious nation—

So you may enter on an usurpation.

FIRST PHANTOM

What do you say? Am I a tyrant then?

SECOND PHANTOM

Already have you thought of arming men

Without the sovereign sanction of the law.

FIRST PHANTOM

But if I don’t mad Treason will have gained

Such progress that it will have quite attained

Its purpose to bind down and overawe

Conciliation or resistance even.

SECOND PHANTOM

You arrogate the very will of heaven,

As tyrants do, and in your purpose find

A small reflection of the eternal mind.

What do you know of this? But if you rest

On human will and thought you must concede

A contradiction in your dream, who break

The law a rebel spirit to arrest.

This is a way of sowing nettle seed.

Once you were faithful to a better creed,

That men may found new nations when the old

No longer have the people’s fair consent.

Rights are not hostile. If this be a right

How may you overthrow it with your might?

FIRST PHANTOM

Have you not heard this story of me told:

At New Orleans I saw the children cry

When from the auction block their sire was sold.

I then resolved to strike this curse a blow

If ever Heaven gave

My arm the strength. It is my deepest hate.

SECOND PHANTOM

This is the thought then lying further back

In your fanatic spirit, child of woe,

Reached through a devious and hidden track!

For this you will prepare your country’s grave.

You will free some, but only to enslave

A wider realm of being.

FIRST PHANTOM

I would know

What may be best.

SECOND PHANTOM

The country is at peace.

You do not dare to ask your Congress for

Troops on the Southern people to make war.

FIRST PHANTOM

I do not need to ask. I have enrolled

An oath with God the Nation to uphold.

SECOND PHANTOM

But if you call the troops will you not ask

Congress to validate your powers’ increase

And sharpening of the sword for such a task?

You do not answer. Well, if this may be

Do you not contemplate a tyranny?

FIRST PHANTOM

What is this rupture but a mere defection,

What might be called rebellion, insurrection

Against the laws, which I must overthrow,

As others did before me from the first?

No word writ in the charter of the nation

Has made provision for its termination.

SECOND PHANTOM

But not to argue this—you have reversed

Your mind upon the right of revolution.

FIRST PHANTOM

Not for a righteous or a holy cause.

SECOND PHANTOM

You test it in your own soul’s resolution.

But tell me when there are no writs or laws

For you to execute in the Southern land

How are you acting?

FIRST PHANTOM

But I still command

The property and forts, and other places

Belonging to the Nation.

SECOND PHANTOM

Understand

Their territory all such forts embraces

And sovereignty thereover is resumed.

You cannot have a war on that account,

When they would pay you for the places lost.

FIRST PHANTOM

First the rebellious spirit must surmount

The barriers that keep them home with us.

They cannot leave us, cannot take and hold

What is not theirs, or what if they had sold

They could not grant.

SECOND PHANTOM

That is but bloody gold.

And what you say if acted on will bring

A million deaths.

FIRST PHANTOM

They are responsible

For all the consequences if they cling

To this rebellious purpose.

SECOND PHANTOM

To compel

This fortress’s provisioning

Will be a blow first struck. It is the law:

The first blow of a war is struck by him

Who makes the first blow needful to be struck.

FIRST PHANTOM

You put the woven substance in a ruck.

I leave the issue of a war with them.

They shall not be assailed, nor may they have

Conflict with me unless they first aggress

The government.

SECOND PHANTOM

Oh, then they must withdraw

Resistance to your plan.

FIRST PHANTOM

Well, I confess

No open plan, as yet. But now attend:

I have an oath in heaven registered

The Union to preserve, protect, defend;

They have no oath the Union to destroy.

SECOND PHANTOM

What is the Union but a verbal toy

Like Justice, Beauty, Liberty or Truth?

And as for them they need not take an oath,

They need but act.

FIRST PHANTOM

The Union is unbroken, is a pact

Which cannot be erased or torn apart

By less than half of those who gave it breath.

SECOND PHANTOM

How does a State sink partly into death

By joining other States? Can it accede

And thereby lose its virtue to secede?

FIRST PHANTOM

The Union is much older than accession.

SECOND PHANTOM

Some Union, not the Union which you rule.

The states which formed the old Confederacy

Withdrew to form the Union. Liberty

Is older than all States.

Her handmaiden has always been secession.

FIRST PHANTOM

These arguments are used but to befool

The minds who loathe the wrong they would conceal.

No justice will be lost by him who waits.

SECOND PHANTOM

They ask a council for the general weal

Of all the States these matters to arrange

Without the flow of blood.

FIRST PHANTOM

I shall not change

What I have said: If God who rules above,

Almighty Ruler of all nations, deems

Eternal truth with them, or with our side,

That truth eternal ever must abide.

SECOND PHANTOM

But after all the truth is that which seems

The truth to you. And if mankind you love,

Why draw the sword to justify such truth?

Has any warrior of the world said more?

FIRST PHANTOM

The people may be trusted to restore

All broken rights, to them I leave all things.

SECOND PHANTOM

What do you say? These dubious wanderings

Travel along a pathway scarcely smooth.

You vowed to let no forces intermit

The Nation’s laws in no place, save the means

Which should be requisite,

Were by the people from your arms withheld.

You do not let them choose when you’ve compelled

Their action by your act, which intervenes

Their virgin will and what you do before

You learn its voice. Yes, so arise all wars!

What people ever had a chance to voice

Free and deliberate their honest choice

’Twixt war and peace? Kings leave them to deplore

The initial step while fighting to retrieve

Or mitigate its ills. Your counselors

Have spoken, and your counselors believe

The pending step unwise. So at the last

Out of all dialectics stand two men

Each judging, each appealing to the shrine

Of God, Eternal Justice, all unknown,

Save as they see reflections of them cast

In their refracted speculations—then

What is it but the clash of sovereignties

Grown firmer from offense and wounded pride?

Yet cunning to manipulate decrees

With forethought in successive acts to hide

Provocative offenses, put in fault

The other sovereign for the first assault.

FIRST PHANTOM

One man may risk his life, or suffer wrong,

He has no other but himself at stake.

A ruler has been chosen to be strong,

And save his people for his people’s sake.

The clearest vision, most commanding power,

Interprets and must rule the hour,

Must call its purest sense of duty God.

Must stake its being now, in worlds to come

Before what thrones of judgment chance to be.

One phase alone of life’s immensity

May one o’ermaster, though it bring him doom

For things unseen, the path he never trod

Strewn with his errors. Yet he may be free

By acting through that genesis and win

Approval for the warp. No soul has room

For growth in love, but may it also thrive

To needed power in thought. If heaven require

Excess in either, while the other shrinks

In heaven’s ends, should heaven then requite

The sacrifice with penitential fire?

It is enough that whosoever drinks

Of such success finds bitterness within,

The cup on earth. Can anyone begrudge

The work before me, sword that I possess?

Nor do I of another’s motives judge.

If rights conflict not, yet one master right

Attuned to highest law must still prevail

And lesser laws must fail.

The winds of destiny may bear me far,

Which out of deepest heaven are arising.

I have one compass and one guiding star,

One altar for my spirit’s sacrificing:

The Union is my soul’s profoundest love.

SECOND PHANTOM

If you knew heaven’s wish you might fulfill it,

Seen heaven’s law revealed, then you might will it,

What man can say he knows the word thereof?

Oh, not alone you dedicate your life

To this adventure in uncertain strife!

You give the Nation’s blood and spirit too.

If you could know the Nation would renew

Its strength in years or cycles from your thought,

And through your godlike daring might be wrought

To finer triumphs in the time to come,

You would have warrant to pronounce the doom

Of blood and tears to fertilize the soil,

Where at the start revenge and hate will grow.

But what unending sorrow may recoil

Upon your purposes, who do not know?

FIRST PHANTOM

What are these cliffs of purple which we near?

Gray castes of stagnant mists above them lie.

The boat glides downward as if in a sphere

Of liquid crystal mowing, dizzily

The forked rocks point upward to the sky—

Have I then died?

SECOND PHANTOM

There is a place of moss

Whereon the prow must strike lest it be crushed.

FIRST PHANTOM

This is the world’s end. How the air is hushed!

SECOND PHANTOM

Come now! You have been ferried well across.

There! We have landed. Hear the whispering keel.

FIRST PHANTOM

I’m growing faint.

SECOND PHANTOM

Much still must I reveal.

We two must stand on yonder highest rock.

FIRST PHANTOM

It cannot be!

SECOND PHANTOM

I will the door unlock.

They may not be away. First let me knock.

(He knocks on the cliff. The vision grows cloudy.)

FIRST PHANTOM

What heights are these where midway to the sea

The gulls like flakes of snow eddy around!

SECOND PHANTOM

The purple wastes lie under a shorn sun.

They do not bleed, no golden ooze is seen,

No arrows pierce them.

FIRST PHANTOM

And how could it be?

A barrier of mud, a sunken realm

With shores where wrecks are rotting are before you.

They sleep upon the tideless water.

SECOND PHANTOM

Yes,

This is a quiet sea of perished dreams!

FIRST PHANTOM

Greater than Asia was this kingdom once,

But in a war it sank.

SECOND PHANTOM

What is the tale?

FIRST PHANTOM

There was a city set upon a hill

Which heaven governed as a pilot guides

The vessel from the stern, by force of thought.

Till spirits here were given air and light

To prove their natures, for it was the wish

Of that first pair which built its earliest hearth.

There since the husband worked with iron and fire,

Where twenty bellows blew, and all the day

The anvil sounded in a shop, which seemed

A palace thick with stars, and giants bore

Great burdens, wielded sledges, and obeyed

The master workman, so the city heaped

Great store of armament and priceless works.

Meanwhile the woman in whose eyes and brow

The final reason, compress of all light

Made of all lights absorbed, resolved, and tamed

Lay like a high serenity of power,

Or balanced wisdom, bore great sons to rule

The state and to preserve it in the wars

When wars should come. In peace to keep the courts,

And laws like to their mother’s face, a face

Which awed the dullest slave, out of whose brain

The idea like a statue carved in rock

By hammers broken, rolled, beholding it.

She taught her sons that some are born to rule,

And some to serve, and some to carry torches,

And some to blow the bellows for the fire

Where torches may be lit; and how a state

Where high and low remain as high and low

So long as nature wills, move in a sphere

Of democratic laws, where all may have

The bread they earn, and where no strength may seize

Another’s happiness, another’s bread.

Hence was it that she fired her sons to drive

A giant troubler from the city’s gates,

And shut him up in Sicily.

But the land

Over whose hills and vales the waters lie

There where we look had other life. I speak:

It was a land of many lakes and rivers,

And plains and meadows, mountains full of ore,

Both gold and silver, copper, precious stones.

And valued wood, most fruitful of all things,

Herbage or roots, or corn, whatever gives

Delight or sustenance. And the ruler’s strength

Brought riches from all ports. But to relate

Its founder’s part, the country was divided

Among ten rulers who had sworn to obey

Injunctions carven on a shaft of gold,

Erected in the middle of the realm.

And here the people of the several States

Gathered for conference on the general weal,

And to inquire if any of the states

Had trespassed on the other, or transgressed

The writing on the shaft of gold, and pass

Appropriate judgment; for upon the shaft

Curses were graven on the recreant.

And it was written none should take up arms

Against the other; and if one should raise

His hand against the central strength (for where

The shaft of gold stood, there a palace stood

Where lived a ruler speaking for them all),

Then should the others rescue it and fling

The rebels back.

Such was this empire lost

And so did it remain so long as men

Obeyed the laws and heaven loved. At first

They practiced wisdom, they despised all things

Save virtue only, lightly thought of gold,

Were sober, hated luxury, knew control

Of passions and of self. And knew that wealth

Grows with such virtues, and by unity

With one another, but by zeal for wealth

All friendship dies. And so they waxed in store

Of gold and spirit. But at last the soul,

Which was divine and moved in them, fell off

And weakened, grew diluted with too much

Of human nature, and became unjust,

Cruel and base, voracious, drunken, lost

To wisdom, discipline; and the seeing eye

Saw all good things forgotten, but to those

Who had no eye to see true happiness

They still appeared most blest and glorious,

Filled as they were with avarice and lust.

So then arose one state, and then another

Against the central ruler, none was free

Of disobedience to the graven words

Upon the shaft of gold, until at last

The city on the hill watching the strife

Embarked with troops.

SECOND PHANTOM

Have you not prophesied

Your country’s fate if you assault the South?

It is the zeal for wealth that cries for war.

From such a war our spirit shall be lost,

Our justice fouled, our friendship turned to hate,

Our laughter rendered drunken. We shall be

The city on the hill, the island lost—

Have both not perished?

FIRST PHANTOM

Stay! It is enough

To live amid the misery of today,

Without this contemplation of the past.

What is this sky, this earth to which we come?

This nothingness, this substance, air and rock

Which to our life is hard reality

And to our thought a dream? All nature sings,

Creates, rejoices, man alone has life

In pain as life, unfolding life as pain,

As if a child could live but never be

Delivered from the womb. And for myself

What am I but a creature, heart and head,

Hands reaching up to catch at rock or bough?

Hands, heart and head of flesh, immortal fire,

With feet unshapen, still a part of earth

Where from that undistinguished mass of clay

Hands, heart and head would pluck them? I could faint,

Fly from the task before me but for this:

The will which when confronted bares its face

And says go on, or lie down with the beasts

In silence and corruption. Let me look

No more upon this sea!

SECOND PHANTOM

Where shall we go?

FIRST PHANTOM

To some place less disquieting, more secure.

(They leave the heights and descend, approaching a mysterious place where heaven and earth are connected by gates.)

FIRST PHANTOM

I can no further walk or fly.

SECOND PHANTOM

You enter at these gates near by.

FIRST PHANTOM

I fall through space. Your hand, my friend.

SECOND PHANTOM

Quietly like a star descend.

(They pass through the gates into a meadow.)

FIRST PHANTOM

What is this meadow which I see?

SECOND PHANTOM

Here come the souls of men to be.

Can you remember what you said

Among the living and the dead:

I would know heaven’s deepest law

And flood the world of men with light,

I would bring justice and be just.

FIRST PHANTOM

Out of each soul’s prenatal night

Something of what you say returns.

The soul descending into dust

Loses its memory as it burns

Less brightly when the spirit wanes.

SECOND PHANTOM

Behold that pillar of splendor shining

And bound to earth and heaven by chains!

You see the distaff to it fixed

And in the distaff whorls of iron,

Each rising to a higher rim,

And on each whirling rim a siren

Chants, as you hear, her solemn hymn.

FIRST PHANTOM

I hear it with the singing mixed

Of one upon whose giant knee

The distaff turns to hands that reach

From thrones which stand at equal spaces.

SECOND PHANTOM

The giant is Necessity,

The Fates are reaching from the thrones.

FIRST PHANTOM

Such garlands for such darkened faces!

What are these solemn monotones,

Which are not music, are not speech?

SECOND PHANTOM

They labor through Eternity.

The Universe of visible things

Turns with the distaff here again.

The dead come back with questionings

Of earthly failure, loss or pain,

And would choose better than before.

Some say that Agamemnon chose

The loneliness of eagle wings

In hatred of his mortal woes.

FIRST PHANTOM

From dreams like these I must be free! I know,

Dread phantom, you are nothing but myself.

You stand before me lately, mocking elf,

Too much, and follow me where’er I go.

What this portends I know not, death I fear.

But what seems just to do I shall perform.

A nation’s destiny is mine to steer,

A people’s hope is on me in the storm.

Behind these voices when they sing or laugh

I hear the droning of the telegraph:

Come! I would study now the last dispatches.

SECOND PHANTOM

No meaning it is clear your soul attaches

To thrones, or sirens, or the giant knees.

You have not fixed upon a policy.

FIRST PHANTOM

I shall be guided—

SECOND PHANTOM

By necessity—

FIRST PHANTOM

Well, yes, but by the will of God as well.

SECOND PHANTOM

How can you tell it from the will of hell?

(Voices from the thrones.)

FIRST THRONE

Here I sit spinning

From what beginning

Did I begin?

SECOND THRONE

Give me the thread!

I will assign him

Grief to refine him,

Thorns for his head.

Toil never ending

Up from his birth

This shall be leaven

To lift him from earth

Up into heaven.

(Many souls are crowded into the meadow. A figure takes from the lap of Lachesis lots and scatters them.)

SECOND PHANTOM

Who honors heaven, heaven wins.

Not here your fate on earth begins.

I only show you where you stood

Amid the fates and now your work

Of justice and of brotherhood.

You’re weary, yet you cannot shrink

The task assumed—how it increases!

A giant hand thrust in releases

The numbered lots of mortal life,

There from the apron of Lachesis,

And throws them to the multitude

Awaiting mortal strife.

SECOND THRONE

One fluttered to his hand. He ran

Between the thrones, the distaff under

Which swayed and rolled upon her knees.

The chains that bound it clanked and creaked.

The far-off depths the lightening streaked

Uprolled the deep symphonic thunder

Which rumbled like a chariot, till

Its echoes died and all was still,

Save for the tinkling pipe and purl

As faster sped the seventh whorl.

We nodded, laughing at the game,

And said: He’s dreaming Pericles

Who gave his soul to ancient Greece.

What will he do with such a name?

SECOND PHANTOM

Do you remember?

FIRST PHANTOM

I remember

A dream I had in early youth:

My birth was humble, still I dreamed

To consecrate my life to Truth

And for the truth to be esteemed.

I love the Republic, I would see

Its soil and all its people free!

(The Furies enter.)

THE THRONES

Heaven and God are under us. Reveal

We never may what end the law achieves.

He shall be free who with increasing zeal

Still labors and believes.

THE FURIES

You may deceive this fellow with such stuff;

We have seen history woven long enough

To know the good men plan at least by half

Results in evil.

THE THRONES

Be the epitaph

Of him who moulds his being by this thought:

“He doubted, failure marked the work he wrought.”

THE FURIES

What is the law, then, that he must obey?

THE THRONES

The law that has most universal sway.

THE FURIES

What may that be? Is it to choose the good?

THE THRONES

You know his dream of human brotherhood.

THE FURIES

He must seize power such dreams to realize.

In usurpation great corruption lies.

FIRST PHANTOM

What is this shape I deal with? It is whole,

Inseparable forever, with a soul.

It is a life of undivided breath.

To break its body is to give it death.

THE FURIES

There might be two souls where before was one.

FIRST PHANTOM

From heaven’s battlements a clarion

Shivers the mystic chords of memory,

Stretched forth from every grave and battle-field,

My life may pay the forfeit—let it be.

Destroy me if you will, I shall not yield

To anarch forces.

THE FURIES

Then by tyranny

You’ll break the giants if they dare rebel.

Men through the giants only may be free.

Destroy them or enchain them and you quell

The Titan powers by whom there came

Freedom’s Promethean flame.

THE THRONES

Whence is the Voice,

Which sings the eternal theme

Of giants whirled

Beneath the thunderbolts of Strength supreme;

Of angels who have made the fateful choice,

From heaven headlong hurled?

Of Odin, in Valhalla, keeping guard

Against the malice of the giant world,

Slaying the mighty Ymir?

And what was their reward

Who warred upon the Thunderer

For sovereignty for pity of mankind?—

Go bear in pain the burden of the earth,

Or under mountains blind

Breathe hateful fire,

Or moan your agony and fallen wrath

Chained to the rocks,

So shall thought rule, not force, or their desire

Which is the law of music not of bread

Or lower ordinance. Do you now tread,

Mortal, the path of service to the race?

Do you bring fire, or quell disharmony,

Destroy the Titans? In all time and space

Freedom is only for the wise and free!

THE THRONES

A hand like lightning from a thunder cloud

Reaches from heaven to the apron’s folds,

And takes the inscrutable lots,

And scatters them among the spectral crowd.

On them are written labors, wars and plots.

Thus are they thrown, like snow they fall where’er

They may be driven by the unseen air,

Which moves so thinly here no eye beholds

Its coming and its going. They shall fall

Where chance may govern. Look! These two shall find

Their fate and incarnation, work above

This meadow under earth. Not wholly blind

Shall they select the soul they would be like—

That they may will in part—the rest shall be

Ruled by the working of a destiny

Of our appointing when the hour shall strike

Commissioned under seal to say “Arise

The hour has struck.”

FIRST PHANTOM

My other self, your hand.

SECOND PHANTOM

We must be one, not two.

FIRST PHANTOM

We must not stand

In strength, intentions, visions separate.

(The two phantoms become one.)

THE THRONES

O soul, now one which just before was two,

What is your deepest love?

THE PHANTOM

It is the True.

I love the Right, the Good, confederate

And in this order, ruling, not apart:

If this may be, mind, conscience, heart

In harmony and balanced equipoise,

I would possess, and I would have a voice

To sway with truth.

THE THRONES

Choose then O soul your fate!

THE PHANTOM

Down bending I obey. What have I done?

FIRST THRONE

Come Destiny and over-watch your son.

THE DESTINY

Behold I loved and kept the public good

Forever in my eye. At my command

Were many armies, cities, islands, realms

Which I ruled over with a master hand.

And where I could not lead by gentle word

I forced compliance, so my power withstood

Internal quarrels and the foreign sword.

But when I left the life of earth they came

Around my bed, a worthy group, and spoke

My trophies and authority and fame.

Not one took notice of my greatest deeds:

No father’s heart for my fault ever broke,

Nor wailing woman tore her widow’s weeds.

Law, Freedom, Progress, Virtue, Beauty, Truth,

Humility, Religion, Knowledge lay

Along the pathway of my city’s youth.

Ill fortune forced imperial temptation

And these divided even by heaven sundered

Leaving to Empire and to Riches sway

O’er Beauty, Knowledge, Progress, till the day

Of hatred, envy, bitter disputation,

All good was sunk. Its walls and temples thundered,

My city on the hill was crushed and fell

Through lust of riches, from its elevation.

Study my problem and my spirit well.

Yours are not greatly different—beware

Great riches for your country lest they come

With weakness and debasement for a snare.

And to this end curb studied greed and those

Spirits luxurious, and adventuresome,

And those unjust, their hatred, guile oppose.

Right is a thing ’twixt equals, and the strong

Do what they can, the weak must suffer wrong.

Therefore the balance hold for all, assuage

The fury and revenge which yet may rage

Around your fallen brothers, when you ride

Triumphant.

SECOND THRONE

Now conduct him to our side

Beneath the distaff in my hand.

Thus is his fate forever ratified.

(The Image Passes.)

THIRD THRONE

Now hither bring him,—thus I breathe my spell.

His doom is now made irreversible.

THE THRONE OF NECESSITY

Pass under me. Now of this cup drink deep.

There, he has drunk it and so falls in sleep.

Now guard him, Destiny!

(A sound of cannon. Lincoln awakes. The Secretary of War enters.)

THE SECRETARY OF WAR

Fort Sumter has been fired on!

LINCOLN

Call the troops!

PART III

LINCOLN MAKES A MEMORANDUM

(November 23rd, 1864.)

“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time. In the present Civil War it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best adoption to effect his purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By his mere great power on the minds of the now contestants he could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun he could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”

WINTER GARDEN THEATRE

(New York, November 23rd, 1864.) JOHN WILKES BOOTH is speaking behind the scenes to his brother.

If you—if you had told me this before,

If I had known of it—if I had known,

I had not played to-night, no, by the gods,

I had not played Marc Antony, nor heard

You speak the words of Brutus. You—my brother,

You nursed in liberty—you nourished upon

Great thoughts and dreams, have soiled me, soiled the name

Of Booth, our father’s name. Yes, you have soiled

All spirits free, all lofty souls, the soul

Of Brutus and of Shakespeare. Why, till now

Conceal from me your vote for Lincoln—why?

Why? In your heart of hearts you are ashamed,

And loose the secret now for penitence!

For you have helped the hand that wrecks and slays

Who will be king and on these ruined States

Erect a throne. He who commenced this war,

And broke the law to do it. He who struck

The liberty of speech and of the press;

He who tore up the ancient writ of freemen,

And filled the jails against the law. Lincoln!

Into whose ears the shrieks of horror rise

From Gettysburg, Manassas—yet who says

The will of God be done, for him you vote!

And walk these boards to-night and live the soul

Of Brutus, speak his words—Oh! “Had you rather

Cæsar were living and die all slaves than

That Cæsar were dead to live all freemen.” God!

You had this secret in your breast the while:

This vote for Lincoln, and these words of Brutus

Blown from the Shakespeare trumpet to our ears,

Hearts, consciences, meant what to you—meant what?

Words for an actor, words for a lisping girl

Repeating them by rote! But why not truth

For men to live by, to be taken into

The beings of men for living? Oh, my God—

I hate you and I leave you. I shall never

Look on your face again!

THE SPARROW HAWK IN THE RAIN

(ALEXANDER STEPHENS hears news.)

(Liberty Hall, April 9th, 1865.)

That’s done! And well, I’d rather not have gone

To take such news. But now I’m glad you picked me—

I saw and heard him. I was ushered in,

And after hems and haws, I said at last,

“Lee has surrendered.”

What a face he had

When I said that: “Lee has surrendered.” Once,

When I was just a boy, I shot a sparhawk,

Just tore his breast away, and did not kill him.

He hopped up to a twig and perched, I peered

Through bushes for my victim—there he was

His breast shot all away, so I could see

His heart a-beating—but the sparhawk’s eyes

Were bright as dew, with pain! I thought of this

When I saw Alec Stephens, said to him,

“Lee has surrendered.”

There the midget sat

His face as wrinkled as thin cream, as yellow

As squirrel skin—But ah, that piercing eye!

As restless as my sparhawk’s, not with moving

But just with light, such pained uneasiness.

So there he sat, a thin, pale, little man,

Wrapped in a monstrous cloak, as wide and dark

As his own melancholy—I shed tears

For such soul sickness, sorrow and such eyes,

That breast all shot away, that heart exposed

For eyes to see it beat, those burning eyes!

I stood there with my hat within my hand,

Said: “Mr. Stephens, I have come to tell you,

Lee has surrendered.” He just looked at me

Then in a thin, cracked voice he said at once,

“It had to come.” That’s all, “It had to come.”

“Pray have a seat,” he added. For you see

He’s known me for some years, I am his friend.

“It had to come.” He only said that once.

Then, after silence, he chirped up again:

“I knew when I came back from Hampton Roads

It soon would be. Home-coming is the thing

When all is over in the world you’ve loved,

And worked with. And this Liberty Hall is good.

My sleeplessness is not so tiring here,

My pain more tolerable, and as for thought,

That goes on anywhere, and thought is life,

And while I think, I live.”

He paused a minute,

I took a seat, enthralled with what he said,

A sparhawk in the rain, breast torn away,

His beating heart in view, his burning eyes!

“But everyone will see, the North will see,

Our cause was theirs, the South’s cause was the cause

Of everyone both north and south. They’ll see

Their liberties not long survive our own.

There is no difference, and cannot be

Between empire, consolidation, none

Between imperialism, centralism, none!”

I saw he was disposed to talk, let fall

My hat upon the floor. There in that cloak

All huddled like a child he sat and talked

In that thin voice. Bent over, hands on knees,

I listened like a man bewitched.

He said:

“As I am sick, cannot endure the strain

Of practice at the bar, am face to face

With silence after thunder, after war,

This terrifying calm, and after days

Top full of problems, duties in my place

In the South, vice-president, adviser,

Upon insoluble things, now after these

I cannot sit here idle, so I plan

To write a book. For, if I tell the truth,

My book will live, will be a shaft of granite

Which guns can never batter. First, perhaps,

I’ll have to go to prison, let it be.

The North is now a maniac—here I am,

Easy to capture, but I’ll think in prison,

Perhaps they’ll let me write, but anyway

I’ll try to write a book and answer questions.

“A soldier at Manassas shot to death

Asked, as he died, ‘What is it all about?’

Thousands of boys, I fancy, asked the same

Dying at Petersburg and Antietam,

Cold Harbor, Gettysburg. I’ll answer them.

I’ll dedicate the book to all true friends

Of Liberty wherever they may be,

Especially to those with eyes to look

Upon a federation of free states as means

Surest and purest to preserve mankind

Against the monarch principle.”

Just then

A darkey came to bring him broth, he drank

And I arose to go. He waved his hand

And asked me: “Would you like to hear about

The book I plan to write?”

I longed to stay

And hear him talk, but feared to tire him out.

I hinted this, he smiled a little smile

And said: “If I’m alone, I think, and thought

Without you talk it out is like a hopper

That is not emptied and may overflow,

Or choke the grinding stones. Be seated, sir,

If you would please to listen.”

So I stayed.

When he had drunk the broth, he settled back

To talk to me and tell me of his book,

A sparhawk, as I said, with burning eyes!

“First I will show the nature of the league,

The compact, constitution, the republic

Called federative even by Washington.

I only sketch the plan to you. Take this:

States make the Declaration, therefore states

Existed at the time to make it. States

Signed up the Articles of Confederation

In seventeen seventy-eight, and to what end?

Why for ‘perpetual union.’ Was it so?

No, nine years after, states, the very same

Withdrew, seceded from ‘perpetual union’

Under the Articles and acceded to,

Ratified, what you will, the Constitution,

And formed not a ‘perpetual union’ but

`More perfect union.’

“If there is a man

Or ever was more gifted with the power

Of cunning words that reach the heart than Lincoln,

I do not know him. Don’t you see it wins,

Captures the swelling feelings to declare

The Union older than the states?—it’s false,

But Lincoln says it. Here’s another strain

That moves the mob: ‘The Constitution has

No word providing for its own destruction,

The ending of the government thereunder.’

This Lincoln is a sophist, and in truth

With all this moral cry against the curse

Of slavery and these arguments of Lincoln

We were put down, just as a hue and cry

Will stifle Reason; but you can be sure

Reason will have her way and punishment

Will fall for her betrayal.

“Let us see:

‘Was there provisions in the Articles

Of that perpetual union for the end

Of that perpetual union? Not at all!

How did these states then end it? By seceding

To form a better one! Is there provision

For getting out, withdrawing from the Union

Formed by the Constitution? No! Why not?

Could not states do what they had done before,

Leave ‘a more perfect union,’ as they left

‘Perpetual union?’ What’s a state in fact?

A state’s a sovereign, look in Vattell, look

In any great authority. So a sovereign

May take back what it delegated, mark you,

Not what it deeded, parted with, but only

Delegated. In regard to that

All powers not delegated were reserved.

Well, to resume, no word is in the charter

To end the charter. And a contract has

No word to end it by, how do you end it?

You end it by rescinding, when one party

Has broken it. Is this a contract, compact?

Even the mighty Webster said it was.

And further, if the Northern States, he said,

Refuse to carry in effect the part

Respecting restoration of fugitive slaves,

The South would be no longer bound to keep—

What did he say? the compact, that’s the word!

Next then, what caused the war? I’ll show and prove

It was not slavery of the blacks, but slavery

The North would force on us. For seventy years

Fierce, bitter conflict waged between the forces

Of those who would maintain the Federal form,

And those who would absorb in the Federal head

All power of government; between the forces

Of sovereignty in the people and control,

And sovereignty in a central hand. Why, look,

No sooner was the perfect union formed

Than monarchists began to play their arts

Through tariffs, banks, assumption bills, the Act

That made the Federal Courts. And none of these

Had warrant in the charter; yet you see

They overleaped its bounds. And so it was

To make all clear, explicit, when we framed

For these Confederate States our charter, we

Forbade expressly tariffs, meant to foster

Industrial adventures.

“No, my friend,

Our slavery was not the cause of war.

They would have Empire and the slavery

That comes from it: unlicensed power to deal

With fortunes, lives, economies and rights.

We fought them in the Congress seventy years;

We fought them at the hustings, with the ballot;

And when they shouldered guns, we shouldered guns,

And fought them to the last—now we have lost,

And so I write my book.

“What is the difference

Between a mob, an army shouting God,

Fired by a moral erethism fixed

On slaughter for the triumph of its dream,

A riddance of its hate—what is the difference

Between an army like this and a man

Who dreams God moves, inspires him to an act

Of foul assassination? None at all!

Why, there’s your Northern army shouting God,

Your pure New England with its tariff spoils,

Its banks and growing wealth, uplifting hands,

Invoking God against us till they flame

A crazy party and a maddened army,

To war upon us. But if slavery

Be sinful, where’s the word of Christ to say

That slavery is sinful? Not a word

From him who scourged the Scribes and Pharisees

For robbing widows’ houses, but no word

Against the sin of slavery. Yet behold

He found no faith in all of Israel

To equal that—of whom?—a man who owned

Slaves, as we did. I mean the Centurion.

And is this all? St. Paul who speaks for God

With equal inspiration with New England,

As I should judge, enjoins the slaves to count

Their masters worthy of all honor, that

God and his doctrine be not blasphemed.

“But

If it be wrong to hold as property

A service, even a man to keep the service—

Let us be clear and fair—then is it wrong

To hold indentures of apprenticeship?

And if, as Lincoln says, it is a right

Given of God for every man to have,

Eat if he will the bread he earns, then God

Is blasphemed in the North where labor’s paid

Not what it earns, but what it must accept,

Chained by necessity, and so enslaved.

And all these tariff laws are slavery

By which my bread is taken, all the banks

That profit by their issues, special rights,

Enslave us, in the future will enslave

Both North and South, when darkeys shall be free

To choose their masters, but must choose, no less

Take what the master hand consents to pay,

And eat what bread is given. Yes, you know

Our slavery was a gentle thing, belied

As bloody, sullen, selfish—yet you know

It was a gentle thing, a way to keep

A race inferior in a place of work,

Duly controlled. For once that race is freed

It will go forth to mingle, mix and wed

With whites and claim equality, the ballot,

Places of trust and profit, judgment seats.

Lincoln denies he favors this, no less

We’ll come to that. And all the while the mills

And factories in the North will bring to us

The helpless poor of Europe, and enslave them

By pauper wages, and enslave us all

With tariff-favored products. Slavery!

God’s curse is on us for our Slavery!

What do you think?

“They say we broke the law,

Were rebels, insurrectionists; I’ll treat

Those subjects in my book. But let us see,

They did not keep the law; they had their banks,

They had their tariffs, they infracted laws

Respecting slaves who ran away, they joined

Posses and leagues to break those laws, and we

In virtue of these breaches, were released

From this, the compact, just as Webster says.

Did Lincoln keep the law and keep his oath

The Constitution to support, obey?

He did not keep it, and he broke his oath.

Did he have lawful power to call the troops?

Did he have lawful warrant to blockade

Our southern ports? No one pretends he did.

His Congress by a special act made valid

These tyrant usurpations. Had he power

To strike the habeas corpus, gag the press?—

No power at all—he only seized the power

To reach what he conceived was all supreme,

The saving of the Union—more of this.

Well, then, what are these words: You break the law

On those who break it and confess they do?

You have two ideas: Union and Secession,

Or two republics made from one, that’s all.

And those who think secession criminal

Turn criminals themselves to stay the crime,

And shout the Union. To this end I come,

This figment called the Union, which obsessed

The brain of Lincoln.

“For the point is this,

You may take Truth or Liberty or Union

For a battle cry, kill and be killed therefor,

But if our reasons rule, if we are men,

We take them at our peril. We must stake

Our souls upon the choice, be clear of mind

That what we cry as Truth is Truth indeed,

That Liberty is Liberty, that the Union

Is not a noun, a word, a subtlety,

But is a status, substance, living temple

Reared from the bottom up on stones of fate,

Predestined. Yet the truth is only this:

The Union is a noun and nothing more,

And stands for what? A federative thing

Formed of the wills of states, not otherwise.

Existing; and to kill to save the Union

Is but the exercise of a hue and cry,

An arbitrary passion, sophist’s dream.

And Robespierre, who killed for liberty,

And Cæsar, who destroyed the Roman liberties

To have his way, are of the quality

Of Lincoln, whom I know. Take Robespierre,

Was he not by a sense of justice moved,

Pure, and as frigid as a bust of stone?

And Cæsar had devoted friends, and Cæsar,

The accomplished orator, general and scholar,

Charming and gentle in his private walks,

Destroyed the hopes of Rome.

“Now, mark me friend,

I do not think that Lincoln meant to crush

The institutions of his country—no,

His fault was this—the Union, yes the noun,

Rose to religious mysticism, and enthralled

With sentiment his soul. And his ideas

Of its formation, structure in his logic

Rested upon a subtle solecism.

And for this noun, in spite of virtues great

Of head and heart, he used his other self,

His Cæsar self, his self of Robespierre,

In the great office which he exercised,

To bring us Oak Hill, Corinth, Fredericksburg.

Think you, if when he kept the store at Salem

A humble, studious man, he had been told

He would make wails of horror, wake the cries

Of pestilence and famine in the camps,

Bring devastation, rapine, fire and death—

Had he been told this, he had said—‘My soul!

Never,’ and with Hazael said, ‘Behold,

Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?’

Power changes men! And when the people give

Power or surrender it, they scarcely know

The thing they give, surrender.

“But I ask

What is there in the Union, what indeed

In any government’s supremacy

Or maintenance that justifies these acts—

These horrors, slaughters—near a million men

Slaughtered for what? The Union. Treasure spent

Beyond all counting for the Union. When

No life had been destroyed, no dollar spent

If they had let us go, left us alone

To go our way. You see they did to us

What England did; succeeded, where she failed.

And thus you see that human life is cheap,

And suffering a sequence when a dream,

An Idea takes a man, a mob, an army.

Which makes our life a jest, our boasted Reason

An instrument too weak for savagery.

Then for the rest—you see—I think you see.—”

Sleep now was taking him. My little sparhawk

Was worn out, and his eyes began to droop,

His voice to fail him. In a moment then

He sank down in his cloak and fell asleep—

And I arose and left.

ADELAIDE AND JOHN WILKES BOOTH

(At the National Hall, Washington, April 9, 1865.)

ADELAIDE

Yes, even this you can surmount by art,

Lee has surrendered, but—

BOOTH

No! all is lost.

God judge me, right or wrong, but never man.

I love peace more than life, have loved the Union.

Have waited for the clouds to break, have prayed

For justice, peace; but now all hope is dead.

My prayers are futile, as my hopes have been.

God’s will be done. I go to see and share

The end, though bitter.

ADELAIDE

John! you must be calm.

BOOTH

I am most calm, but fixed.

ADELAIDE

You are not calm;

Strange light is in your eyes, your face is pale.

You cannot stretch your hands out but they tremble.

You have avoided me, you walk alone,

Sup, sit alone, lest concentrated thought,

This thought of yours be turned aside. My friend,

Take Beauty in your heart to heal its hurts.

Art is for you. You are a son of Art—

Why waste your spirit on such things as these?

Rulers and nations pass, and wars are lost,

Their issues are forgotten, pushed aside—

Art is eternal and the sons of Art

Live in its calm, above the dust and sweat

Of politics and statecraft. O my friend,

Why should this Brutus, the tyrranicide,

The patriot, move you so; and why not Brutus

As a soul made clear by Shakespeare for your Art

To glory in and re-create for men

To see what Brutus was?

BOOTH

Why, what is this

But playing with life, that’s all it is to play,

Hard play at that, to sleep, to walk, to rest

For strength to trip the stage and imitate

The soul of Brutus! If it be so much,

Art as you say, to live him on the stage,

What would it be to live him to the life,

And do his act in deed?

ADELAIDE

What do you say?

John, you are mad! So that is in your heart!

Look! pause! and muster all your strength of mind,

Forecast, survey—fly from yourself—away—

Even for a week withdraw your mind from this—

That you may see, return with freshened mind

To look upon the horror that you plot.

John, by the love you woke in me for beauty

Of face and genius, listen, on my knees

I ask you, pause and think!

BOOTH

But I have thought.

I know I shall be hated by the North,

And doubted in the South, it may be, yet

God’s will be done. For in a day to come

My name will shine as shines the name of Brutus,

Whose spirit is in me and speaks to me.

Could you have seen, as I have seen, the woes

And horrors of this war in every state,

Then you would pray, as I have prayed, to God

To give the Northern mind pity and justice,

And dry this sea of blood. Alas! my country!

What is this trifling Art beside my country,

This rhetoric spoken, memorized? My friend,

I would have given a thousand lives to see

My country whole, unbroken. Even now

I’d give my life to see her what she was,

Before this man, this tyrant, bloody Cæsar,

This Cæsar worse than Cæsar, who—behold,

In the name of God—why, think in the name of God

Made her a pitiless sovereignty, a force

As cold as steel, and dragged her glorious flag

Through cruelty, oppression, till its stripes

Are bloody gashes on the face of heaven.

How I have loved that flag! How I have longed

To see it flap free from the scarlet mist

That spoils its glory. As for me, this country

Which I loved as a lover loves his bride,

Seems now a dream! The South has all my love,

What has it done? Withdrawn, and that alone,

From the Union which was formed by states withdrawing

From the old confederacy, and leaving states

Out in the cold that did not wish to join.

What has the South done that it might not do

Under the Declaration? Then to think

That all these tens of thousands of our kin,

Our blood, our brothers, should be massacred

For loving God and Liberty, serving God.

And now this day! The South is crushed at last,

The negroes freed by what?—by force, by force

Which John Brown used, and for the which he paid

With his damned neck! O Reason! Adelaide,

Of all men I am sanest, they are mad

Who cannot see these truths: that slavery

Is sanctioned by the Creator, read St. Paul;

That men may revolutionize, as matter of right,

Secede from what they have acceded to,

And not be murdered for it. Do you think

I have not measured motives, thoughts? My friend,

I could be happy, if I could forget

The duty laid upon me, have the means

For happiness, so many friends and you,

Great competence and fame, and greater fame

In store for deeper art. So much for this!

As for the South, as citizens, persons, love

The South is not my friend. Then there’s my mother,

Whom I adore: See what I sacrifice:

Fame, money, friends, my mother—and for what?

Were it the South, I should not think to act—

But it is God, is Justice, and I love

God, Justice, more than wealth or fame, yes more

Than home or mother. All is lost at last.

The South has been erased and is no more.

The Republic of the North and South is dead,

Gutted by a guerilla. Yes, my country

Has vanished from the earth and is no more,

I have no wish to live, my country being

Dead and a stench.

ADELAIDE

I put my arms around you—

Be patient—listen—do not thrust me off—

John—

BOOTH

You must not hold me, Adelaide—farewell.

ADELAIDE

John! John!

BOOTH

God calls me—I obey!

(He goes out.)

BRUTUS LIVES AGAIN IN BOOTH

(Ford’s Theatre, Good Friday, April 14th, 1865.)

FIRST STAGE HAND

What time is it?

SECOND STAGE HAND

Time for the curtain nearly.

FIRST STAGE HAND

There’s Miss Keene in the wings.

The orchestra starts up; the audience sings:

Honor to our soldiers,

Our Nation’s greatest pride,

Who ’neath our Starry Banner’s folds,

Have fought, have bled and died.

They’re Nature’s noblest handiwork,

No king as proud as they.

God bless the heroes of the land,

And cheer them on their way.

Scene II. The White House.

Colfax

Oglesby

Lincoln

LINCOLN

This for you, Colfax.

(Hands him a pass)

Come in at nine to-morrow.

I’m off soon for the theatre with my wife—

A little party. Grant was going too;

Has changed his mind, goes north with Mrs. Grant.

There’ll be an audience to see the hero

Of Appomatox.

OGLESBY

Well, rather you, I think

Who picked Grant for the work, and brought the war

To end, as it has ended.

LINCOLN

Oh, not me.

I am familiar as an old shoe here.

I’d say the war is ending. There may be

Some battle yet.

COLFAX

Mere sputterings of the flame.

LINCOLN

Well, something’s on. I had my dream last night

Which I have had before, so often, always

Before some great event: I’m in a boat,

And swiftly move toward a shadowy shore.

I had this dream preceding Bull Run, Vicksburg,

Gettysburg, Antietam. It may be

A battle’s on this minute. I think so.

It must relate to Sherman. For I know

No other great event to follow my dream.

OGLESBY

Our dreams are made of days lived long ago:

Your boat’s perhaps your flat boat at New Salem.

COLFAX

I’m happy to live now, the war is won.

God bless you, Mr. President, keep you too.

LINCOLN

You will excuse me, gentlemen. I go,

For Mrs. Lincoln waits.

(He goes out.)

OGLESBY

The other day

Lincoln was with Charles Sumner down the James,

Was reading Shakespeare, read aloud three times

Those lines which read: “Duncan is in his grave,

After life’s fitful fever he sleeps well;

Treason has done his worst: nor steel nor poison,

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing

Can touch him further.”

COLFAX

Did you note to-night

He looked those words: “Nothing can touch him further”?

These months before how ghastly gray his face!

What droop of melancholy in his eyes!

What weariness without words, what ultimate woe!

And now to-night he stood transfigured here

Clothed in a great serenity and a joy

As if his life had wrought what he would have it.

OGLESBY

Yes, he is changed. Shall we go on?

(They go out.)

Scene III. The entrance of Ford’s Theatre.

BOOTH

(Passing the doorkeeper without a ticket.)

Is this all right?

DOORKEEPER

All right for you.

BOOTH

Can you leave,

Go with me for a brandy?

DOORKEEPER

No.

BOOTH

Why not?

The play’s commenced, and everyone is here.

DOORKEEPER

Not everyone—the presidential party!

BOOTH

They enter without tickets.

DOORKEEPER

Yes, I know.

Go in and watch Miss Keene a little, John.

You might get wakened up to play again,

Marc Antony to your brother’s Brutus.

BOOTH

No!

Never with him again. And as for that

My next part will be Brutus.

(He goes into the theatre.)

Scene IV. Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln Driving to the Theatre.

LINCOLN

Mary, the war is over. We have had

Hard times since we came here. But now, thank God,

The war is over. We may hope for peace,

And happiness for the four years that remain,

While I close up my work as President.

Then back to Illinois to rest and live.

I have some money saved. Wrote recently

To friends to find a house for me in Chicago—

We can live there, or Springfield. Law again,

At least enough to keep us.

MRS. LINCOLN

That’s my dream,

And from this night we start to live, rejoice.

(They drive on.)

Scene V. The stage of Ford’s Theatre.

(Laura Keene as “Florence Trenchard”; John Dyatt as “Dundreary” in dialogue in Tom Taylor’s “American Cousin.”)

FLORENCE

“Can’t you see the point of that joke?”

DUNDREARY

“No, really.”

FLORENCE

“You can’t see it?”

DUNDREARY

“No!”

(Lincoln, Mrs. Lincoln and party enter the box.)

FLORENCE

(Making a profound courtesy to Lincoln.)

“Everyone can see that!”

(The audience breaks into great applause. The band plays “Hail to the Chief.” Lincoln bows to the audience.)

Scene VI. Back of the stage.

FIRST STAGE HAND

Whose horse is at the door?

SECOND STAGE HAND

Booth’s!

A VOICE

Ten twenty-five.

FIRST STAGE HAND

Ten twenty-five.

SECOND STAGE HAND

Ten twenty-five.

Scene VII. The Presidential Box.

LINCOLN

Oh, no! No persecution, bloody work,

How to articulate the states again,

Just how to handle the states that left us—well,

There will be problems up from day to day,

During my term, at least. But no revenge,

No hate, no hanging, killing—rather shoo!

Like Hannah Armstrong used to shoo her chickens.

Let the obstreporous, unreconciled

Go clear to—Halifax—get out! But, Major,

My feeling is to treat the Southern people

As fellow citizens. To be their fellows

And not their masters is my way.

MAJ. RATHBONE

We need

Your genius, Mr. President, for the work

Of reconstruction more, if that may be,

Then we had need of you to push the war.

MRS. LINCOLN

How do you like the play?

LINCOLN

Oh, very good.

Scene VIII. Dress Circle.

FIRST AUDITOR

(Gazing at the Presidential box.)

What’s keeping General Grant? I came to see

The conqueror of Lee.

SECOND AUDITOR

He will not come.

Too late now.

FIRST AUDITOR

(Looking at his watch.)

Yes, ten twenty-five.

SECOND AUDITOR

Who’s that?

FIRST AUDITOR

Who?

SECOND AUDITOR

Why, a man as pale as snow

Or ivory, with hair black as a horse’s tail

Passed back of the seats there, and approached the entrance

To Lincoln’s box.

FIRST AUDITOR

A secret officer,

With message of a battle. Oh, perhaps

Sherman has vanquished Johnston!

Scene IX. In the passageway leading to the Presidential box.

BOOTH

Right or wrong, God judge me—never man.

Liberty is dead—I would not live,

Beyond my country’s life. Oh, Liberty!

Brutus, sustain me!

Scene X. The Presidential box.

MAJOR RATHBONE

(Observing Lincoln rise.)

Can I get something for you?

LINCOLN

I want my coat.

I felt a chill and shudder down my back.

(He gets his coat and is seated.)

Scene XI. Booth at the door of the Presidential box aiming a pistol.

BOOTH

Brutus! (He fires. The President’s head falls upon

his breast. Booth rushes into the box, slashes Major

Rathbone with a dagger, leaps from the box to the stage.

Falls, arises.)

Scene XII. On the stage.

BOOTH

Sic semper Tyrannis! The South is avenged!

(He rushes off. Great confusion.)

BOOTH’S PHILIPPI

(Garrett’s Tobacco House, Bowling Green, Virginia, April 26th, 1865. Booth and Harrold.)

SCENE I

BOOTH

If this must be, I take it. Be a man.

Don’t whine like that. You suffer only from fear.

But if you had this torturing leg. My God!

If you rode sixty miles as I did, flesh

Prodded at every jump by broken bones ...

HARROLD

What’s that?

BOOTH

A dog there in the yard.

HARROLD

Those troopers

We hid from on the way here—Federals—

Did they go on, or follow, hunting us?

BOOTH

We’re ended likely. Let us stand our ground.

We have our carbines for the ending up ...

But oh, to be thus hunted, like a dog,

Through swamps, woods, thickets, chased by gunboats too,

With every hand against me. And for what?

For doing what brought honor unto Brutus,

And deathless fame to Tell. Who’ll clear my name?

Who’ll print what I have written? There’s the pang

To die and have my spirit and sacrifice

Sealed up in silence, or drowned out in cries

Of “cut-throat” or “assassin.”

I struck down

A greater tyrant than great Brutus slew.

And my act was more pure than his or Tell’s.

One would be great, and one had private wrongs

To heap his country’s up for quick revenge.

But I, what greatness could I hope for this?

What wrongs had I except the common wrong?

I struck for country and for that alone;

I struck for liberty that groaned beneath

A tyrant’s monstrous tyranny—and now look

The cold hand they extend me in the South

For which I struck! Our country bleeding, broken,

Cried to me for relief, and I was made

The instrument of God by God alone.

HARROLD

A rooster crows!

BOOTH

Two hours till morning yet.

It’s only two o’clock.

HARROLD

What shall we do?

BOOTH

To-night we’ll try the river once again ...

Why not return to Washington and end it?

They’d try me and I’d clear my name. Repent?

No, I do not repent. But I’ve a soul

Too great to die a felon’s death. Swift guns

Against a firing wall are honorable.

Before them I can clear my name. O God!

Give me a brave man’s death, for I have wronged,

Nor hated no one. And was this a wrong

To kill a tyrant? God must deem it so,

By making it a curse upon our time,

Our country and our countrymen. My fate

How miserable soever it may be

Proves not I did a wrong.

Great Milton come

And comfort me in this my agony!

You who could write a tyrant forfeits life

To those whom he oppresses, and ’tis just

To take him off. O curse of Cain no less!

Now I must pray again.

(He prays.)

SCENE II. (At the Garrett House.)

(Lieutenant Baker, and a squad, including Boston Corbett.)

BAKER

(Knocking at the door.) Halloo! halloo!

A VOICE

What’s wanted?

BAKER

Open the door!

SCENE III. (Inside the Tobacco House.)

HARROLD

They’ve come.

BOOTH

Yes! rapping at the door. Perhaps

Old Garrett will not tell that we are here.

Hold to your carbine. Do as I command.

SCENE IV. (At the Garrett House.)

BAKER

(Taking Garrett by the throat.)

Where are these fellows? In your house?

GARRETT

No! No!

BAKER

We’ll search! Men, search the house!

GARRETT

They are not here!

BAKER

You make yourself accomplice if you hide them.

Last time: where are they?

GARRETT

In the Tobacco House.

SCENE V. (Inside the Tobacco House.)

HARROLD

They’re walking toward us.

BOOTH

Do as I command.

BAKER

(Outside.) Come out of there.

BOSTON CORBETT

(Outside.) Lieutenant, they can pick

The whole of us through cracks with their carbines.

Old Garrett says they’re armed.

(He goes back of the tobacco house.)

BAKER

Come out of there.

Five minutes to come out, then I set fire

To the tobacco house.

BOOTH

(Inside.)

Who are you? What do you want?

BAKER

(Outside.)

We want you. And we know you. Come, you are

Booth, assassin of the President. Surrender arms.

Come out!

BOOTH

(Inside.)

I want a little time to think about it.

(A silence.)

BAKER

(Outside.)

Well, now come out.

BOOTH

(Inside.)

You are a brave man, captain, I believe,

Honorable too. I am a cripple, have

One leg, the other broken. Yet no less

If you will take your men a hundred yards

From the door of the tobacco house, I’ll come

Out as you command and fight you all.

BAKER

(Outside.)

I have not come to fight, but capture you.

BOOTH

(Inside.)

Give me a chance for life. I’ll better terms.

If you will take your men off fifty yards

I’ll come out, fight you all, till I am killed,

Or kill you all.

BAKER

(Outside.)

No!

BOOTH

(Inside.)

You are a coward, sir,

Denying to a brave man chance for life.

HARROLD

(Inside.)

They’ve set the house afire! Now, let me out!

(The house burns.)

BOOTH

(Inside.)

You hellish coward, would you leave me now?

Go! Go! and leave me. It would be dishonor

To die with such a coward.

Let this man

Come out of here!

BAKER

(Outside.)

All right! Hand out his arms

And come.

BOOTH

(Inside amid flames.)

A coward goes to cowards.

(The flames are coming up around Booth.)

(He stands on a crutch, pale and defiant.)

SCENE VI. (Boston Corbett looking through a crack in the Tobacco House at Booth amid the flames.)

CORBETT

I hear you God and will obey!

(He points a carbine through a crack and fires at Booth. Booth leaps and falls. The soldiers go in and bring him out on the lawn.)

SCENE VII. (On the lawn.)

BAKER

(To Corbett.)

Why did you shoot? You had no orders to?

I’ll take you back to Washington in chains!

Why did you shoot?

CORBETT

God told me to.

BAKER

It looks it.

You hit him just behind the ear. Same place

Where Lincoln got the mortal wound.

BOOTH

Tell mother

I died for country, liberty, as Brutus

Did what he did for Rome. I thought it best

To do what I have done. God’s will be done

As I have tried to do it.

(He dies.)

THE BURIAL OF BOSTON CORBETT

(One warden to another.)

(Asylum for the insane, Kansas, 1885.)

So this is what we bury? How his face

Seems like a smear of yellow wax. This beard

Grown fine and curly. Something nasty here,

Hermaphroditic, feminine. Like a dog

That has run loose with rabies, yelps and snaps,

And makes a terror for a day, is slain,

And lies where passers-by can foot the corpse,

So he lies here: this steadfast paranoic!

How vanished from these sealed lids dreams of God!

Where are they now? For all this outer world

Of lunatics, care-takers, wardens, world

Of fields and villages, the state and states

Smiles at these lids so neatly sealed, the God

That had his altar in the spectral light

Of his mad eyes!

This is the man who slew

The slayer of the noble Lincoln. First

For the common good was Cæsar slain by Brutus,

And Booth slew Lincoln in a dream of Brutus,

This Corbett slew the slayer in a faith

Of God. Catch up the corner of the sheet.

He gets a grave where many hundreds lie,

Each with his epitaph of “Rest in Peace”;

Who had no peace in living, for the dreams

Of God, or Duty, Terror, Visions Vain.

Some say he came to Kansas, hither drawn

By hope of sympathy, since all are mad

In Kansas; otherwise the true God know,

And keep His ritual of reform. He found

God mocked in Kansas, or he had not tried

To shoot the state assembly to a man,

When he was keeper of the door. Perhaps

’Twas right enough to slay the actor Booth,

Obeying God; we might accept his word

God told him to kill Booth. But was it God

Commanded him to slay so many honorable

Members of the Kansas legislature

For legislating, or not legislating

As God would have them? Well, I have a doubt.

And many doubted his divine appointment

For massacre like that. And so we flung

The lasso round him, gathered him, and quick

We shut him in the pound, dishonored God,

As he conceived it, doing so.

I’ve heard

Brutus at last said, Miserable Virtue, Bawd,

Thou wert a world alone, a cheat at last!

This Boston Corbett never did recant

The faith, or God, the word.

So ends it here.

Mad unto death! This Corbett is the corneous

And upcurved withered calyx of a flower

Rich out of time. His madness is the lisping

Of that same stricken calyx in the wind

Of Infinite Mysteries.

Are you ready now?

Knot fast your corners of the sheet to hold.

All ready, to the field. There in corruption

We’ll sow him, to be raised—but why at all

Should he be raised?

THE NEW APOCRYPHA

BUSINESS REVERSES

(Mark, Chapter VI.)

Everything! Counter and scales—

I’ll take whatever you give.

I’m through, and off to Athens,

Where a man like me can live.

And Hipparch, the baker, is going;

My chum, who came with me

To follow the crowds who follow

The prophet of Galilee.

We two were there at Damascus

Dealing in figs and wine.

Nice little business! Some one

Said: “Here, I’ll give you a line!

“Buy fish, and set up a booth,

Get a tent and make your bread.

There are thousands who come to listen,

They are hungry and must be fed.”

And so we went. Believe me,

There were crowds, and hungry, too.

Five thousand stood in the desert

And listened the whole day through.

Famished? Well, yes. The disciples

Were saying to send them away

To buy their bread in the village,

But the prophet went on to say:

“Feed them yourselves, O you

Of little faith.” But they said:

“We have just five little fishes

And two little loaves of bread.”

We heard it, me and Hipparch,

And rubbed our hands. You see

We were there to make some money

In the land of Galilee.

We had stock in plenty. We waited.

I wiped the scales, and my chum

Re-stacked the loaves. We bellowed,

But no one seemed to come.

“Fresh fish!” I bawled my lungs out:

“Nice bread!” poor Hipparch cried,

But what did they do? Sat down there

In fifties, side by side,

In ranks, the whole five thousand.

Then—well, the prophet spoke,

And broke the five little fishes,

And the two little loaves he broke.

And fed the whole five thousand.

Why, yes! So gorged they slept.

And we stood beaten and bankrupt.

Poor Hipparch swore and wept.

They gathered up twelve baskets

Full from the loaves of bread;

Five little fishes—twelve baskets

Of fragments after they fed.

And we—what was there to do

But dump our stock on the sand?

That’s what we got for our labor

And thrift, in such a land.

We met a man near Damascus

Who had joined the mystagogues.

He said: “I was wicked as you men

Until I lost my hogs.”

Now Hipparch and I are going

To Athens, beautiful, free.

No more adventures for us two

In the land of Galilee.

THE FIG TREE

(Matthew, Chapter XXI.)

With all of the rest of my troubles my fig tree’s withered and gone.

It stood in the road, you know, I haven’t much of a lawn.

I step from my door to a step, and from that right into the street.

Just the same I sat under my tree, as a shade from the noonday heat.

Camels came by and asses, caravans, footmen, too;

Soldiers of Cæsar saw me and ate of my tree, nor drew

Ax nor sword to the branches, nor even a hack on the bole.

Now what had I done or my tree? I call it an evil dole

To a tree that must rest as a man rests. Why last year what a crop!

Figs all over the branches, from lower limb to top.

The tree was resting this year, contenting itself with leaves,

If magic comes of believing, beware the man who believes.

If faith can remove a mountain, then faith, I say, beware.

Some morn I’ll look toward Olivet and find it no longer there.

These fellows can blast our vineyards, level our hills or remove.

And what does it prove but faith, what other good does it prove?

Nothing at all! Just magic, like Egypt’s cunning breed.

And to do such things with faith the size of a mustard seed!

What is there need of more? If you gave them faith as a pear

They would set Orion dancing around the paws of the Bear;

Make the heavens fall on our heads, the whole world ruin and wreck;

Slay us and our children, slave us, put the yoke on our neck;

Smash cities to strengthen the village, have life just as they would.

And make that evil which is not, make evil into a good.

Anyway he came, he was hungry, and it was break of dawn.

He ran to my tree expectant, saw nothing but leaves thereon.

Then raged for the lack of figs, no grace for the years that it bore.

And he said may no fruit grow hereon forevermore.

With that my tree curled up like a leaf in a windy blaze.

I was standing here on my step half blind in a sudden maze.

Then he said: have faith and do what I have done to this tree,

Or say to the mountains move and be cast into the sea.

So now I have no shade at noon under leafy boughs,

Why the tree was good for resting, cooler than in the house,

If it never bore again, if the life is more than meat

Why not this tree for my dreams, though he found no figs to eat.

But I swear it had borne next year, it was only taking a rest.

There’s too many saints who are straining the world to a dream in the breast.

Next year no figs for Cæsar, and none for myself, what’s worse,

If this be the work of faith, then faith itself is a curse.

TRIBUTE MONEY

(Matthew, Chapter XXII: 24-27.)

This is all of the story

Capernaum stood in the way,

The takers of tribute came:

“Does your master tribute pay?”

And Peter ran to Jesus,

And Jesus answered him: “Nay!

Do the kings of the earth have tribute

From their own children, pray?

“Or do they get it of strangers?”

And Peter answered him: “Yea.”

Then Jesus said: “This is Galilee,

Should Galileans pay?

“But yet lest we offend them

There’s a fish out there in the bay

With a silver coin in his mouth—

Go catch the fish and pay.”

Did Jesus mean to mock

The tariff laws of the day:

That Peter could catch the fish

As likely as he would pay?

Did he mean to resist or yield

If Peter was lucky that day?

I, Matthew, tell you no more,

And Mark and Luke don’t say.

Did we enter the gate, or sit

Where the rocks and olives are gray?

Right then there was better matter

For a follower to portray.

The multitude gathered. He called

A child to him from its play,

And set the child in our midst;

And then he began to say:—

“This is the kingdom of heaven.”

And he took its hand and smiled.

“The kingdom of heaven,” he said,

“Is like the heart of a child.”

And I say, if this be true,

The Kingdom is surely defiled

By laws, and tariffs and kings

Unknown to the heart of a child.

THE GREAT MERGER

(Exodus, Chapter XX.)

Philo, the worst has come,

All we foresaw and feared:

Delphos will soon be dumb,

Eleusis felled and cleared.

Not only Marduk and Bel

Shamash, Nana, and Sin

Are doomed to be swallowed. Rebel?

It is too late to begin.

They have worked for this merger for years;

They have bullied, lied and coerced.

They have played with curses and tears.

And now at last is the worst:

For Zeus goes into the bowl

Of Cyclops, thoroughly blended.

The brew is Jehovah, a Soul

Envious, sour, commended

And forced to our lips. His son

And another, the Holy Ghost,

Are mixed with him, there is none

Not stirred in the mixture and lost

Of the gods we loved. They say

There is only one god, not many.

Well, who knows, we of clay,

If there be a thousand, or any?

They say there is one—all right!

They take over all the rest.

And so there is one, we can fight,

Argue, pray and protest;

Set up a booth to Apollo,

Athene; bawl and persuade.

The crowds no longer follow—

Jehovah has got the trade.

For the Jews have used the scheme

Of commerce for making a god:

A harbor where no trireme

But their own can dock or load.

Now who will come to dissolve

This theo-monopoly?

And the power they took devolve

On a mightier deity?

It will come. But as for Zeus,

Osiris, Ptah, Zoroaster,

They are stewed in the dominant juice

Of Jehovah, lord and master.

We accept the fate. We laugh.

The earth, the sea and the sky

Are at last the cenotaph

Of gods, who always die.

AT DECAPOLIS

(Mark, Chapter V.)

1

THE ACCUSATION

I am a farmer and live

Two miles from Decapolis.

Where is the magistrate? Tell me

Where the magistrate is!

Here I had made provision

For children and wife,

And now I have lost my all;

I am ruined for life.

I, a believer, too,

In the synagogues,—

What is the faith to me?

I have lost my hogs.

Two thousand hogs as fine

As ever you saw,

Drowned and choked in the sea—

I want the law!

They were feeding upon a hill

When a strolling teacher

Came by and scared my hogs—

They say he’s a preacher,

And cures the possessed who haunt

The tombs and bogs.

All right; but why send devils

Into my hogs?

They squealed and grunted and ran

And plunged in the sea.

And the lunatic laughed who was healed,

Of the devils free.

Devils or fright, no matter

A fig or a straw.

Where is the magistrate, tell me—

I want the law!

2

JESUS BEFORE MAGISTRATE AHAZ

Ahaz, there in the seat of judgment, hear,

If you have wit to understand my plea.

Swine-devils are too much for swine, that’s clear.

Poor man possessed of such is partly free.

Is neither drowned, destroyed at once, his chains

May pluck while running, howling through the mire

And take a little gladness for his pains,

Some fury for unsatisfied desire.

But hogs go mad at once. All this I knew,—

But then this lunatic had rights. You grant

Swine-devils had him in their clutch and drew

His baffled spirit. How significant,

As they were legion and so named! The point

Is, life bewildered, torn in greed and wrath;—

Desire puts a spirit out of joint.

Swine-devils are for swine who have no path.

But man with many lusts, what is his way,

Save in confusion, through accustomed rooms?

He prays for night to come, and for the day

Amid the miry places and the tombs.

But hogs run to the sea. And there’s an end.

Would I might cast the swinish demons out

From man forever. Yet the word attend.

The lesson of the thing what soul can doubt?

What is the loss of hogs, if man be saved?

What loss of lands and houses, man being free?

Clothed in his reason sits the man who raved,

Clean and at peace, your honor. Come and see.

Your honor shakes a frowning head. Not loth,

Speaking more plainly, deeper truth to draw;

Do your judicial duty, yet I clothe

Free souls with courage to transgress the law.

By casting demons out from self, or those

Like this poor lunatic whom your synagogues

Would leave to battle singly with his woes—

What is a man’s soul to a drove of hogs?

Which being lost, men play the hypocrite

And make the owner chief in the affair.

You banish me for witchcraft. I submit.

Work of this kind awaits me everywhere.

And into swine where better they belong,

Casting the swinish devils out of men,

The devils have their place at last, and then

The man is healed who had them—where’s the wrong,

Save to the owner? Well, your synagogues

Make the split hoof and chewing of the cud

The test of lawful flesh. Not so are hogs.

This rule has been the statute since the flood.

Ahaz, your judgment has a fatal flaw.

Is it not so with judges first and last—

You break the law to specialize the law?—

This is the devil that from you I cast.

THE SINGLE STANDARD

(St. John, Chapter VIII.)

It was known through Judea, we knew it:—

That Joseph beguiled

By mercy for Mary espoused,

And already with child,

Before they had come to each other,

Would put her away

In secret, before the Sanhedrin

Could summon, array,

The witnesses, judge her and make her

A noise and a shame—

We knew this, and what would he do

If the case were the same

As his father believed was the case

With his mother? would he,

A prophet, fulfill all the law,

Or let her go free?—

This Sarah, you know, that I caught,

Was a witness and saw.

Now what would he do, shade away,

Or judge by the law?

For Moses decreed if a woman

Who is married shall lie

With a man, whether wedded or not,

The woman shall die

With the man in a volley of stones;

And Moses decreed

If a virgin already betrothed

Shall lust in the deed

With a man not the bridegroom, and whether

The man shall be wed,

The people shall stone them with stones

Until they be dead.

Now mark you, how equal the law

Of weight and of span:

One law for the woman in sin,

The same for the man.

If Moses be still the law-giver,

By nothing dethroned,

And this be the law, then this Sarah

Was fit to be stoned.

And if it be true, as he says,

That he came to fulfill

The law, nor destroy it, why then

We thought he would will

The death of this woman we took

In adultery, yes in the act,

So we argued together beforehand

The law and the fact.

Now the case was this way: this Josiah

Late journeyed from Tyre,

Three wives to his household already,

Yet alive with desire,

And free by our custom and law

To add to his hearth

A fourth for the heirs to his house,

And for comfort and mirth,

Came back in the cause of a field

He had bought; as it chanced

Met up with this Sarah, a wife,

They feasted and danced,

Her spouse being absent, what’s more

In Egypt for good.

So Josiah and Sarah were found

In the act in the wood.

We brought her before him, accused,

And told him the case.

He stooped, as it seemed, to conceal

A blush on his face,

And wrote in the sand, as we stood

And pressed him he wrote:

“Anise” and “cummin” and “gnat”

And “Moses” and “mote.”

We cried all the more, he uplifted

Himself, said: “Begin

Your throwing of stones, let the first

Be him without sin.”

So there I was caught, for he knew—

Like wheat from the scythe

We shrank—I was guilty of sin,

I had failed in my tithe

Of anise. But why have clean hands

To work at our smudges?

And how will you ever stop sin

If you ask of the judges

To be without sin ere they punish

A matter of lust?

I call this a ruling where morals

Fall down in the dust.

The most of us left then. He asked her:

“Does no man condemn?

Nor do I.” And so he made one

With me and with them.

So here in a sense was the world

Spiritual, civil,

Prophet and Pharisee, judge

Leagued up with the devil.

For what did it matter to say

To go and no more

Sin as she had, if the sin

Would fare as before?

It followed that Sarah went free,

And Josiah the man.

One standard for both is the rule,

And the modern plan.

What’s that? Why to sin if you wish—

For what is a sin

If no stones are hurled for the lack

Of a man to begin?

And so it all ended. This Sarah

Was given a bill.

She married Josiah, they say,

And lives with him still.

FIRST ENTRANTS

(St. Matthew, Chapter XXII: 31.)

We know the game of lawyer and priest;

We know the cunning of Pharisee, Scribe;

We know the malice of soldier, jailer;—

Hearts of those who abstain, imbibe.

And when we saw a God-mad fool

Like John the Baptist who cursed and grieved

For the hate of the elders, the harlot’s sorrow

We listened to him and we believed.

We know we are wronged, he voiced it for us;

We know we are mocked, he gave us place

With the children of grief, the simple hearted,

The broken spirits deserving grace.

He knew men use us and throw us away.

He knew we give and the gift is loathed.

We are the givers to men who scourge us,

Drive us to darkness, cold, unclothed.

And when he said: “Behold he is there

Whose latchet I am unworthy to loose,”

Jesus took us, the humble hearted,

The broken vessels that none will use.

And we believed again, and saw

A youth who loved us without desire;

Feasting, drinking with us the harlots,

Outcasts, sinners, wrecks of the fire.

These were our brothers: John the Baptist,

Jesus of Nazareth. Brothers I say.

Brothers and sisters bound in the service

Of giving comfort and pity away.

Pity and solace and hope of heaven,

Healing and tenderness came of Christ.

And we, the harlots, have given pity

And given delight to men who enticed

This little gift, so easy to give;

This wonder gift to them, as they said.

That is the passion that moves a woman

Before it becomes a matter of bread.

Before the lashes of scorn and the chains,

The dungeons, before the scowls and sneers;

Before the wrath of the priest, the temple’s

Bolted door for our hunger, tears.

Before the delight we sell is stale

As the steps of a dancer, growing old.

All is delight, kisses and dancing—

Men can buy, for they have the gold.

And we, he says, shall enter heaven

Before the priests and the elders do.

Why do we enter? Because as sorrow,

Poverty, humbleness, we are true.

Without pretense or pride. We are children

Who have shirked the task, but repent the sin.

But they, the elders and priests have promised

To work for heaven and never begin.

Why do we enter, save spite of our craft

To wheedle with lies we all stand forth

Known to the world as painted harlots,

Taken by no one over our worth?

And it’s good to enter, if we can be

With Jesus and John, and given reprieve

From priests and elders who run the city

And hound the harlots who see and believe.

JOHN IN PRISON

(St. Luke, Chapter XVI. St. Matthew, Chapter XI.)

John said to the jailer: “Where are my disciples? Befriend

My grief and my doubt, and entreat them to come, to the end

That they ask him for me if we look for another, or deem,

As I did, that this prophet shall save and fulfill and redeem.”

And the jailer replied: “Since the wrath of King Herod a dish

Your head shall contain by to-morrow, I give you your wish.”

So he brought the disciples to John and the two of them led

To the cell where he sat, and John to the two of them said:—

“At this end of my life and my hopes, at the door of my doom

Go ask him for me and report: is it he that should come,

Or shall we yet look for another?” Amazed were the two

And one of them spoke to the Baptist and said: “Is it true

That you preached in the wilderness saying repent and prepare

The way of the Lord, whose shoes I am worthless to bear;

Who will fan out the chaff, gather wheat, purge the floor

With fire and the Spirit baptize you, bring down and restore

The kingdom of heaven? And are we abused in the word

That as he came out of the waters of Jordan you heard

A voice call from heaven which thundered: ‘This son of my love

With whom I am pleased you shall hear,’ and a dove

For the Spirit descended upon him—and yet can you ask

If he be the one that should come? Yet we take up the

task

And go at your bidding.” And John said: “I suffer without

You seek him and ask, for this is the cause of my doubt:—

I have heard of his works and rejoice. But why does he feast

When I fasted myself? And how have the rumors increased

That he fellows with publicans, sinners and drinkers of wine,

A bibber himself, when the springs of the desert were mine?

And how is the ax, as I said, laid close to the root of the tree,

And my curses fulfilled of the Pharisees, if this must be?

And if, as they say, he is preaching the word that we make

Of the unrighteous mammon a friend for the day when we break

With the lords of the riches of truth, as he put it, for then

The unrighteous mammon shall take us, console us again:—

I have wasted the goods of my lord! I am caught and accused!

Shall I make good the theft from my lord in a trust I abused?

Why, no! I go out to the debtors, my master to foil,

How much do you owe him? Why, so many measures of oil!

Sit down then, I say, make the bill but a half, quickly write:—

I am wiser in this, so he says, than the children of light—

As I make for myself by the trick of a thief, and a theft,

The confederates’ home for my own for my honor bereft.

Go! learn if he said this. Return ere the rise of the sun:—

Shall we look for another to save us, or is he the one?”

ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA

Who is that coming? Look! They are bearing a body again.

It’s a woman now, I think. And the very same young men

Who brought Ananias’ body we buried a moment ago.

Pat down the earth a little, the grass will sooner grow.

Yes, now I see it’s Sapphira. What did she do to win

Death at the hands of Peter, or was it her husband’s sin?

To which she agreed, or kept her husband’s secret in faith.

They sold a sheep, as I hear it, and suffered sudden death

For hiding part of the price, for a thing commendable:

Their boy is sick, and they needed money to get him well.

Just look how things are going: Cæsar the despot rules,

The state is his. For the rest, we are run by a pack of fools;

Zealots and mystics who say that the end of the world is near.

Tyranny around us, on top, under us dullness and fear.

Songs and the wine-cup banished, freedom throttled blue.

It’s the same here being a Greek, Persian, Median, Jew.

Roman sovereignty over us, merciless, cold and bright.

Fogs over the land of dust, day no different than night.

Listless we labor or idle, creep into an early bed.

Sleep is the best thing now, and the best is the sleep of the dead.

Prepare for the end of the world! Build up the church, the throne,

Sell all your goods and give, have nothing to call your own;

Put everything in common. That’s one cry. What remains?

Taxes, soldiers, prisons, edicts, laws and chains.

There never was such a time! What man is lord of his soul?

Someone entered my barn and took my ass with foal

For the prophet to ride on in triumph. I was there and saw him ride,

Crowds crying hallelujah pressing on every side.

They would have all things in common. They kill a man and his wife,

And Cæsar rules as always, and yet they call this life!

Wars forever and ever, manned by hovels and huts;

And what is it all about? lands, and gold and guts;

And baptists stirring the dreamers, and bankers that thrive thereby.

Why kill off Ananias when the whole of life is a lie?

All right, young men, put her down. Go to it now with the spade.

We’ll bury the woman Sapphira here where her husband’s laid.

They’re out of it. Neither Cæsar nor Peter can wake their sleep.

I lost my ass, and they lost their lives for the price of a sheep.

And Cæsar will rule forever! And Peter if he grows strong

Will make a pact with Cæsar, and Israel’s woe and wrong

Will spread all over the earth. It takes no prophet to see

That while there is Gold and Fear man will never be free—

Until the world is fed, and hunger steals like a wraith

With the ghost of Cæsar’s lust, and the mist of Peter’s faith.

THE TWO MALEFACTORS

Ask Matthew, or ask Mark, and get the truth.

I know myself, was there and heard them both—

Both railed at him. No! one did not rebuke

The other for his railing; did not ask

To be remembered when into his Kingdom

Jesus should come. What kingdom? David’s?—pah!

That had gone whirling with the desert’s dust.

What kingdom? That within you? A fool’s kingdom!

“To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise,”

He never said that. I was there. I know.

And if he did, where is that paradise?

Where is he? And where is the man they say

He said this to? Ask Matthew, learn the truth:

Both railed at him. Both died, nerved to the last

By bitter disappointment.

Listen, friend,

These malefactors were my brothers! Well,

I saw them grow up lusty. I beheld

Their course from hope to action, till defeat

And prison took them.

For we are the sons,

We Jews, of those who went to Babylon;

Returned to fall by Alexander’s sword;

Were snatched by Syria, then Egypt came,

Put heels upon our necks. Rome sailed to us,

And took us over. And these bitter years

Made poets, prophets of us, spurred us on

To inflate the dream Jehovah with our breath

Of threats and curses; yet these bitter years

Kept at white heat the hope of David’s throne,

Restored, triumphant, and our prophecies

Were from Jehovah of a king to come

Who would free Israel, drive the oppressor off,

And let us live as men.

Now it may be

A certain Jacob was his grandfather,

As Matthew says; or it may be that Heli

Was his grandfather, as Luke says, but still

Both say he was of David. And Luke says

The angel Gabriel came to Mary, his mother,

And said he shall be great and shall be called

The Son of the Most High, and God shall give him

The throne of his father David. He shall reign

Over the house of Jacob, and his kingdom

Shall have no end. We looked for such a one

To free us and with portents such as stars,

And Gabriel descending, Bethlehem

Become his birth-place, and the prophecies

Of old fulfilled, we looked for Israel freed,

And for a king of Jewish blood to rule us—

No Cæsar any more. For it was prophesied

Of Bethlehem: For out of thee shall come

A governor, a shepherd of my people!

And look, he’s born in Bethlehem! And why not

Our hope re-kindled?

And now look at us;

These centuries bruised, imprisoned and made poor,

Jerusalem a city of wails and woes,

The whole of Israel slaved! And look at him!

How does he start his work, whatever it be?

By reading from Isaiah at Nazareth:—

“The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because

He anointed me to preach good tidings to

The poor, hath sent me to proclaim release

To captives and to set at liberty

Them that are bruised.”

What doctrine may this be,

But change, or revolution, and the ferment

Of new wine bursting bottles frail and old,

This tyranny of Cæsar, this dependence

On alien rulership? You know yourself

Barabbas was not single in the crime

Of insurrection, ask the fellow Mark.

He’ll tell you this Barabbas lay in bonds

With many who rose up, committed murder.

Of these were my two brothers, crucified

With Jesus on that day.

Well, so it was

He preached, was followed by the poor, the weak,

The slaved, despoiled until ’twas noised abroad

Through all the hill country and in the cities

That he stirred up the people everywhere,

Devising revolution, overthrow

Of Cæsar’s rule. But there was murmuring too:

For some said he was good, and others said

He deceived the people. For upon a day

When he was asked directly of our tribute,

Whether to pay to Cæsar, not to pay,

He dodged and said: “Give Cæsar his due and God

His due”; but what we wished to know, was what

Was Cæsar’s due, and give it him, and if

No tribute was his due, but rather casting

The yoke of Cæsar, then give Cæsar that.

He did not answer what the Pharisees asked,

That which we wished to hear him answer, though

The Pharisees had asked him. For we poor,

Enslaved and disinherited had followed

His leadership thus far.

Behold the change:

Passing from work unfinished he becomes

The Son of God and God himself, becomes

A mystery, the Word that lived and wrought

Before John who announced him. Tidings preached,

I grant you, to the poor, but who remain

Poor as before, but worn for broken hope

Of words that changed no thing. And no release

To captives, and no liberty to those

Bruised and in chains. And so I say his work

Is left unfinished, nothing done in truth.

And quickly, like a sun-rise on the hills,

He flashes forth his God-head, and we’re left

To Cæsar’s will, and end up with the words:—

His kingdom is of heaven, not of earth;

Refines the point: this kingdom is within us.

And he will die and rise again from death,

Ascend to heaven, and return again

Before this generation passes to take up

His own to heaven, and will rule forever

In heaven, not in Israel. For the world

Is to be burnt, with all its disbelievers.

And when it’s burnt, sitting at God’s right hand

He’ll rule forever with his own! You see

What we expected vanished in such words,

Such madness, idle dreams.

But, as I said,

His lineage was David’s; Matthew, Mark

Will tell you so. But David said of Christ,

Calling him Lord; sit thou on my right hand

Till I make enemies of thine thy foot-stool.

“How is Christ son of David, being his Lord?”

Asked Jesus of the Pharisees, closed their mouths

With asking that. The common people heard

Him gladly when he said this—true enough!

But I, my brothers, did not hear him gladly.

For if he were the son of God, yet equal

In being and in time with God, why not

The son and lord of David? Both perplex

The spirit of man; one mystery is as dark

As another mystery, and if one be so, then

Another may be also. Pass the point....

They crucified my brothers with him! Both

Railed on him for deliverance from the cross.

If he were God, he could have plucked the nails

And let them down, escape. And listen now:

My brothers kept their faith in him to the last,

And since they were condemned and had to pay

For insurrection on the cross, chose out

His day of crucifixion for their own;

Believed that he would save them, and so make

This choosing of his time of penalty

An hour of luck. And so I tell you truth:

Though both were railing it was rather pain

Than lack of hope that made them rail at him.

Nor was it mockery that made them rail.

They hoped to stir him by their words, evoke

His greatest strength to help them that they railed.

They even smiled a little when the nails

Were driven through their hands, as if to say:

“You cannot harm us when this god is here;

Go, do your butcher business, for at last

He’ll save himself and us.” And just as men

Refuse to think death near, and still believe

They will escape it somehow, when no aid,

But human hands is near, my brothers thought

This god would surely save them. So they talked,

Hunched up their legs and shoulders to ease up

The strain of hanging on the nails, and waited,

Joked with the lookers on, and smiled and begged,

And sweated agony and railed at last.

But when the voices in the crowd called out:

“If you trust God, let God deliver you,

If you are God’s son, let Him save you now;

Save thou thyself!” my older brother said:

“If I were off this cross I’d break your heads,

You crooked priests, you whited sepulchers,

You carrion Scribes and Pharisees.”

And such noise

As they cast lots to get his garments, shouts

When they were won and parted! In a silence

He asked his Father to forgive them, saying

They knew not what they did. My brother bawled:

“They know what they are doing, they have killed

The prophets in all ages! Don’t say that!

Don’t end up soft, you cursed them hitherto,

These are the vipers that you cursed before;

These are the vultures that you said you’d shut

The gates of heaven against; these are the wolves

That thirst for blood and lap it, unrepentant

Blasphemers against you and the Holy Ghost;

Committers of unpardonable sins, the band

You drove with knotted cords from out the temple.

And what is usury or selling doves

To killing you? Why ask your Father this?

Why now this softness? Change of mood, why prayers

Instead of curses? If you’re dying, sire,

Be what you were when you were flush with life,

And curse them into hell. Hold to your strength,

And curse them into hell.” And so it went

With talking back and forth, mixed in with groans,

And curses, railings, while my brothers twisted

Their bodies, and hunched up their thighs and backs

To ease the strain of hanging on the nails,

And dribbled at the mouth, and babbled things

And laughed like devils in a soul possessed.

But when he thirsted and they took a sponge

And gave him vinegar, and he sucked it in,

They looked at him with eyes that bulged with fear:—

They saw him drooping, fainting, losing strength,

They struggled then and shouted: “Keep on breathing!

Breathe deep! Call on your Father! Don’t give up!

Fight for your life, your god-head and ourselves!

We’re here because you came and preached, and stirred

The people! Don’t desert us now! Great Lord,

Messiah, Son of God, are we first martyrs

To what you failed to do? We cannot die,

You must not die. Let David’s throne be lost

As lost it is, but not our lives! Great Lord!”

Thus as they chattered, chattered, bawled and shouted

Jesus threw back his head and cried so loud

That all the valleys echoed it: “My God,

My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And then

His head dropped on his chest—and he was dead....

They looked at him—my brothers looked at him,

And whimpered—they were beaten, but fought on.

Tears stained with blood went coursing down their cheeks.

And then the soldiers came to break their legs.

And one had fainted, but the other one

Was fighting still and said: “Have mercy friend,

Cæsar would save me, what does Cæsar care

For one poor rebel?”

Then they broke their legs,

And all were dead. So ended up another

Chapter in this poor world’s hopeless hope.

BERENICE

AGRIPPA

How is it with this people?

FESTUS

Much the same.

They kick the Roman rule. Like flame in stubble,

Which being slapped with sticks, leaps up and spreads,

Oppression makes them hotter.

BERENICE

And why not?

Seeing their customs, altars, arks and temples

The beauty of their faith, as they have dreamed it,

And fashioned it with hands from gold and wood

Is desecrated.

FESTUS

How to firmly keep

The rule of Cæsar, leave their god untouched,

That is the problem. Where the state and god

Are one, inseparable, can Cæsar rule

And not subject their god? There was this Judas

Together with a Pharisee named Sadduk

Who fought the Roman census of the Jews,

Raised revolution in religion’s name,

A cunning strategy. You could not crush

The revolution, leave their faith unharmed.

And now this new sect called the Nazarenes—

The country’s in a tumult.

AGRIPPA

Yes, these Nazarenes,

The worst of all.

BERENICE

I have heard the desert

Fosters a little burr of poisonous spines

Which sometimes as the lion roams the sands,

Sticks in the hairy clefts between his claws.

It itches, stings, and maddens; with a growl

The lion lays him down and with his tongue

Licks out the pest. It sticks upon his tongue.

He has no second tongue to lick it thence.

It sticks and stings. The poison spreads apace

And puffs the rebelling member till his throat

Narrows for breath. And then he runs and roars,

And with his nose plows through the sand, lies down,

Digs in the desert, leaps, rolls over, froths,

Grows green of eye; chokes to his death at last.

Rome is your lion, and the burr these Jews.

AGRIPPA

Sweet sister, be as apt with counsel as

Your parable is apt.

BERENICE

You have my word.

Let them alone, their internecine strife

’Twixt sect and sect fight out. Madmen they are

And zealots—let them choke and strive and wail.

Jesus they killed and Stephen. But should Rome

Repress religions, doctrines, script or speech?

If what they teach be false ’twill die, if true

You cannot kill it.

AGRIPPA

You could say as well

If thickets bear no apples they will die;

If they bear apples you can kill them not.

But thickets bear no apples. Apple trees

Fall easily to the ax. And so with truth,

And false truth. Where you have one man who’s wise

You have a million fools, who take the stones

Of ignorance and error in their hands

And overwhelm the wise. Rome shall not fall,

Recede, relent before a mob like this.

FESTUS

They seem to thrive by being mowed, and yet

If left uncut they choke us. There is Paul,

My heritage from Felix, jailed two years,

And brought before me by the Jews, who charged

Offenses numerous against him, such

As breaches of the Jewish law, attacks

Upon their temple, on the emperor,

Contemned perhaps, the which they could not prove.

Now to report to you, O King, my judgment

Divided in the case of Paul. I sought

To do the Jews a pleasure. So I asked:

Will you go to Jerusalem and be judged?

But Paul replied: I stand at Cæsar’s seat,

There should my judgment be.

AGRIPPA

O, wicked Rome,

Whose laws become a haven to her foes

When they are troubled.

FESTUS

Yes, I told these Jews

Rome does not give a man to die before

He meets his accusers face to face, has time

To answer for himself. And so it was

I came to Cæsarea, had him brought

And heard the case. As I supposed, they charged

This Paul with nothing, only matters raised

Of their own superstitions, and of Jesus

Whom Paul affirmed, affirms to be alive,

Though dead long since. But as he had appealed

To Cæsar I commanded he be kept

Till I might send him. But what shall I say?

How shall I send him, after all, to Cæsar

Without a writing that shall signify

Why and for what I send him? Cæsar’s time

Is not for crimeless causes.

AGRIPPA

Nevertheless

As he’s appealed to Cæsar he must go.

But I would hear him.

FESTUS

I have sent for him

That you may hear him. There, he enters now!

(Paul is brought in.)

He has a speech that he has often made

How first he persecuted, for in truth Agrippa

He is a catapult that has sprung up

As far as he was pulled the other way.

And he will tell you how he stoned this Stephen,

And hunted Nazarenes: and how he went

With writs of persecution from the priests

Up to Damascus, on the way saw light

From heaven, heard the voice of Jesus cry

That he should be a minister to the faith,

And preach as he had persecuted. You see

The rebound of nature, mind.

BERENICE

How thin,

How pale he is, how bright his eyes! Agrippa

Confine him to the matter of this god

Who died, and from the dead arose. O Death,

You are man’s horror, and we brood upon you,

Our altars are placations to your wrath.

This Paul is mad for thinking of you, mad

With faith that he has conquered you. Look there!

See how his eyes are staring bright as fire—

I am afraid. And yet if it were true

Jesus arose, nay if the world could be

Persuaded that he rose, the faith would sweep

The world with fire, and crumble every temple

And altar of our gods in almighty Rome.

Look how he stares!

AGRIPPA

There is a noble madness,

A madness which has slaved nobility

And energy and eloquence. Say now

Who saw this Jesus after he arose?

Did Paul? Who saw him?

FESTUS

No one that I know.

Not Paul. He says a multitude. Some disciples,

Some women, and one Peter.

AGRIPPA

Where are they?

Bring one to me. Bring Peter; bring a woman.

This is the cause I’d hear. And if this Paul

Can bring me witness, though his crime were great

As Hannibal’s on Rome, I’ll set him free.

Why look at him! Is this new matter to me?

Is he the first who for the gods went mad?

Or for the mystery of life went mad?

Or madness took for what we are and why,

And what this life means? For this world has seen

A perfect harmony and working thought

And inspiration in a thousand minds

Of madness on some matter. Fellow, come

Close here before me. Look at me. Yes, well,

There is the light of rising suns, and stars

That burn immortally, in your eyes. Now speak.

Did Jesus die?

PAUL

He died.

AGRIPPA

Did he arise?

PAUL

He arose.

AGRIPPA

How long being dead?

PAUL

Three days.

AGRIPPA

Saw you him in life?

PAUL

No.

AGRIPPA

In death?

PAUL

No.

AGRIPPA

After he rose?

PAUL

No! I only heard his voice.

AGRIPPA

Where?

PAUL

On the way to Damascus.

AGRIPPA

What did he say?

PAUL

“It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.”

AGRIPPA

What else?

PAUL

I asked, “Who art thou Lord?”

AGRIPPA

And then?

PAUL

“I am Jesus,” he said, “whom thou persecutest.

To thee have I come to make of thee a witness

And a minister.”

AGRIPPA

Since then you have preached,

For which the Jews have persecuted you

As you stoned Stephen?

PAUL

Yes.

AGRIPPA

And you affirm

That Jesus from the dead arose?

PAUL

Thou hast said.

But also I affirm that all shall rise

From death who in the Christ believe, save those

Who live now, and shall die not ere he come.

AGRIPPA

He comes again?

PAUL

Quickly, even before

This generation passes.

AGRIPPA

You are mad.

Do you appeal to Cæsar?

PAUL

I appeal.

AGRIPPA

Why not be stoned as Stephen was and rise?

If you believe in Jesus, you believe

They cannot kill you.

PAUL

As you will, O King.

I must finish my course, whatever time I die.

AGRIPPA

I could have set you free, if you had taken

To Cæsar no appeal. Being as it is

I send you up to Rome. Who can find out

The workings of a mind? Yet true it is

He saves himself out of a cunning thought

Of this appeal to Cæsar. Turn him over

To the Centurion Julius—on to Rome.

We have conferred together. He has done

No thing deserving death. Take him to Rome.

He’ll find a house and hire it, in Rome

Live unmolested, preach, hear Mithra preached

Who cheated death, they say, as Jesus did.

Now let us rise and to the banquet room.

Come Sister, Festus, to the banquet room.

NEBUCHADNEZZAR: OR EATING GRASS

Nebuchadnezzar the King, called Ha-Rashang,

Which is to say, the wicked, by the Jews;

I, King of Babylon, the beautiful,

The mighty who have spread the prospering code

Of Hammumrapi, and the obelisk

Of diorite whereon the code is stamped,

Kept in the Temple of Marduk, myself

The lover of progress, beauty, breathe this prayer:

Peace to all peoples, nations, languages

That dwell in all the earth, and also peace

Be multiplied to you; this I record

Upon these bricks of Babylon, and as well

My glory and my madness.

First attend:

What would the gods, the god Jehovah even

Have me to do, me gifted with this strength,

This wisdom, skill in arms? Sit in a hut

Of mud beside the Tigris, be a marsh

Of spirit, sleeping, oozing, grown with flags?

Or be Euphrates rushing, giving life

And drink of life to fields? What should I do?

Suffer this Syra to dream and drool?

Jerusalem to boast, dispute and trade,

And vaunt its favoring heaven, or go forth

And smite Jerusalem and Tyre and take them,

And lead their peoples back to Babylon,

And make them work and serve me, build canals,

Great reservoirs, my palace, city walls,

The Hanging Gardens, till my Babylon

In all this would become a wonder, terror

And worthy of my spirit, hope and dream;

A city and a kingdom in the world

Become the external substance, form and beauty,

Administration, order of a soul

Lordly and gifted—mine, my Babylon,

My dream expressed!

That which I did they tried

To do and failed in doing, even themselves

Would rule as I have ruled, build as I builded,

Win glory as I won it; to that end

Did they invoke their gods, and in the mouths

Of gods and of Jehovah put the curses

And wails of failure. I have triumphed, now

My gods are full of song; I have maintained

My kingdom and my spirit, driving out

The aggressor Necho, who came forth from Egypt,

Syria and Palestine to take from me,

Him I destroyed at Carchemish—my spirit

Have I regained and healed. And now in age,

These eighty years of life gone over me,

And rulership of forty years, I sit

Within the level sun-light of my age,

And at this close of day upon my roof

And view my Babylon; but without fear

Madness will come upon me ever again.

The glory of my kingdom has returned,

My honor and my brightness have returned;

My counselors and lords have come to me;

I am established in my age, and excellent

Majesty is added unto me.

All this

Though here upon this roof, upon this spot,

My madness came upon me, when I looked

Over the roofs and temples of my city

And said: Is not this Babylon, the great,

That I have builded for my kingdom’s house

By the might of my power and for the honor

Of my great majesty? Why was it so?

First genius and the dream, then toil and pain

While hands lay stone on stone, and as the stones

Rise from the earth, where naked slaves cry out,

Wheel, lift and grunt; and mortar, scaffolding,

Pillars of cedar strewn confusedly,

Your dream is blurred, even while your city rises

Out of the dream. I was like to a woman

In the pain of travail, who is mad with pain,

Scarce knows her friends or what is being done,

Nor needs to know, since nature orders all,

Delivers her, but lets the mid-wife lift

The infant to her breast. Even so with me,

I had conceived this Babylon, nourished it

In the womb of my genius where it grew, came forth

Whole like a child at last from scaffoldings,

Confusion, waste of mortar, stone and bronze.

And when it was accomplished, then my madness

Came on me in a moment of clear seeing

That this which was within me, was without me;

Was substance and reality before me;

Was even myself gone out of me, as the child

Goes from the mother—then my madness came

Not when I saw it first, for I had seen it

Both from this roof and from the Hanging Gardens,

And from the temple of Bel, and in the streets;

But seen it without knowing, as the mother

Exhausted, dulled with agony may know

The child is born, without the consciousness,

The wonder and the rapture of the child,

As the miracle that was of her, but now

Is a miracle external and a life,

A beauty separate, that walks from her

And has its life and way, herself and hers,

But different and its own.

And so it was

When I beheld my Babylon, saw my dream

Spread out before me, clear and definite,

A beauty separate, my very soul

Torn out of me and fashioned into stone,

Having its life and way, myself and mine,

Yet being itself, its own. If I had seen

Myself divided and become two men,

My other self come toward me, stand, extend

His hand to me, my terror were not more

Than this to see my Babylon. In that moment

My madness came upon me.

But before,

Some nights and days before this I had lain

In troubled dreams upon my couch, had dreamed

Of images and trees, for daily cares

Of empire and the fears of change and loss

Had entered in my dreams. Cyaxeres

Dreamed that a vine grew from his daughter’s womb

And overshadowed Asia, which denoted

Her offspring should be clothed with majesty

And rulership of Asia. As for me,

My tree was felled, only the stump was left,

Bound to the earth with brass and iron—this

Foretold what I am now, as Daniel said,

Interpreting my dream. These dreams had come

Which shook me for the thought of human life—

How frail and fleeting! But again to hear

Curses about me for my work and genius

Called by these Jews Ha-Rashang; and to feel

Though I had chosen Daniel, Hananiah,

Michael, Azariah for mine own,

And to be taught to help me in the task

Of my administration; even though

I chose all men for duty, wisest use

And in my great humanity and strength

Had placed my subjects where they best could serve

The beauty and the progress of my city—

Though, as I said, to feel that I had done

All things for good and with no thought but good,

Yet still to hear these curses and to see

The worthlessness of human kind, the crowd,

I bowed my head and prayed to Ishtar saying:

Make me an animal and let me feed

With beasts instead of these: So had I prayed

Before my madness in that moment came.

Then as to that, my madness: it was sunset,

I walked upon my palace’s level roof,

And looked upon my Babylon; then I thought

Of all my labors, how I had restored

The temples of Borsippa, Uruk, Ur,

Sippar and Larsa, Dilbat; made the plains

Below the great Euphrates rich in corn;

Brought plenty to my people, bread and wine

To all my people; laughter, as it may be,

Between our fated tears to all my people,

And then I looked on Babylon lying there

Beneath the evening’s sunlight, safe behind

Its sixty miles of walls unscalable,

Rising four hundred feet, impregnable

For near a hundred feet of width in stone.

I saw its hundred gates of durable bronze;

My eyes were lifted to the terraces

Up, up above the river to the temple

Of Bel who blessed my city, and I saw

The temples built to Nebo, Sin and Nana,

Marduk and Shamash, saw my aqueducts,

The houses of my people, in between

The palm grooves and the gardens bearing food

Enough to feed the city if besieged;

Beheld the Hanging Gardens which I built

To soothe Amytis, who had memories

Of mountainous Media, gazing on

The Babylonian plains.

So as I stood

And looked upon my city, voices passed

Below me muttering Ha-Rashang, and then

This Babylon, my Babylon, lay before me

As my genius realized, grown out of me,

Myself become another, and a being

Which once was me, but now no more was me,

Was mine and was not mine; and with that thought

Rising like Enlil, god of storm and thunder,

Over my terrored spirit, I grew mad

And fled among the beasts, where for a season

I ate grass with the oxen, let the dew

Fall on my body, till my hairs were grown

Like eagle’s feathers and my nails were grown

Like claws of birds. In madness and in hate

Of men and life, in loathing of my glory,

My genius and my labors did I live;

In loathing of these tribes who hate the mother

Goddess of our ritual and belief;

Tribes who have made religion of the hate

Of procreative nature, curse the flame

Of beauty, and of love wherewith I built

This Babylon of glory, lust of life;

Till nature cured me and I came again

To rule my Babylon, my excellence

Of majesty returned.

What am I now,

Bowed with these eighty years? My Babylon,

What is it now to me? I am a father

Whose son is aging, even has made his place

And lived to see it fade, diminish. A son

So old his sonship is a memory,

Has almost ceased to be—that’s Babylon.

And I, the father, know this Babylon

As creature of my loins, yet indeed

This city scarcely differs from the cities

That lie afar, as aging sons are men

Among the men of earth, but scarcely more

To a father bent with time than other men.

For in my riotous genius, like a vine

I did put forth this branch, the vine decays,

The branch will live a season. Out of genius

And lust of life to madness, out of madness

To this tranquillity, and this setting sun,

This peace with heaven.

HIP LUNG ON YUAN CHANG

You like store? You like Chinese tea? You like me?

You like silk, fan, screen, dragon, pearl chair, jade;

You like Chinese tobacco, picture, Budda too,

Well, as Geesu Klist? All light Lee,

You Chinaman, maybe. I like Chicago too.

I like you, and Hinky Dink, lots I like.

Good city here, much friends. I make some money,

Go back to China sometime. Keep store here,

Come back to store.

China old country, vely old country,

Wise country, much wise men long time ago.

Here book Shu Ching, about old time,

More’n tree tousand year ago. Here Lun Yu book

About Confucius, live long time ago, much time

Before live Geesu; taught love one another,

Be good to good men; bad men be fair to; speak truth.

Where sun and moon shine, all place, love and honor

Come to Confucius, brother of God.

More yet:

Lao Tzu great man, too, who say be good

To bad men; Chinaman read; close book and speak

What book says; to be wise, Chinese learn to speak

What book say closed, on shelf, burned up, or lost.

Chicago good town, Amelika good country, England,

Europe good country too, but China good country,

Wise long time ago, when no Amelika was,

No town in England, and no book in Europe,

Two tousand year before Geesu Kliste came.

Some say Budda greater than Kliste;

Chinee say Confucius greater than Budda.

I say all gods; leave alone—what you care?

Kill Chinaman if you wish, golden rule is golden rule

In Pekin, or Jerusalem.

Geesu Kliste people,

Salvation Army come and say: “Hip Lung,

Be saved, love Geesu Kliste, be baptized.”

I know the Four Books, I say the Four Books

And never look; but when I say Confucius

Taught Golden Rule and love, they say, not clear

Like Geesu Kliste, Confucius heathen man,

Not good like Geesu Kliste. All light! All light!

I sing about the Dragon Boats, go round

The store till they go on. They no read

The Four Books, no care. Sometime I ask

Why China not hear about Geesu Kliste for years.

Why? Eh? We hear of Budda, why

No hear of Kliste?

Kliste people say

Tree hundred year they know Kliste comin’—

China no hear. China hear ’bout Budda

Tree hundred year after Budda die.

Ming Ti, great king, sent down India

To hear ’bout God Budda.

China no hear of Kliste then ...

Tousand year after God Budda die,

Great man come to China; Fa Hsien,

Kliste dead now four hundred year,

But China no hear. Why?

Fa Hsien go to India to get books about Budda.

Go trou Gobi desert—no birds, tigers,

But much dragons and devils.

Fa Hsien go to Benares, Budda, Gaya, Ceylon

Come back with books about light way;

See light, hope light, speak light,

Do light, live light, try light; light mind,

Light happiness. And China hear

And love Budda!...

Kliste dead four hundred year—

Alle time much people in China, temples, cities,

Much books, many wise men.

And Kliste dead now six hundred year,

And China no hear. Kliste!

Same time god Budda grow in China.

Kliste dead more’n six hundred year,

And Arabs come from Medina to Canton,

Tell about prophet of God Muhammed—Allah!

But no Kliste much.

Next year, Kliste dead now ’bout 630 year.

Salvation Army come from Persia, and China hear

’Bout Kliste, too late; god Budda worshipped now

By much China people.

Year before Salvation Army from Persia

Great man come again: Yuan Chang.

He go to India to get books

’Bout god Budda, and see holy place.

You no hear ’bout Yuan Chang? No?

Greek men, great men, and Cheeser,

Napoleon great men and popes, and Roosevelt—

All light! Yuan Chang great man too.

Like Fa Hsien he go trou Gobi desert,

Fight robbers, dragons, no water, no food;

See much broken cities;

Go from Samarkand to Nepal;

Gone fourteen years;

Come back to Singor,

Tai-tsung emperor now,

And vely glad to see Yuan Chang,

Who bring tousands of books by god Budda,

Gold, silver, crystal images of god Budda,

And bones of god Budda, hair, nails, leaves of Bo tree,

All like that. Where is Kliste now? I don’t know.

China hear not much....

Tai-tsung great emperor! Know much too!

Know about Allah, know about Budda,

Know about Kliste, and Salvation Army.

But Tai-tsung no give a damn,

Only say to Yuan Chang:

Write Budda books in China language.

And write Lao Tzu in Indian language.

Trade gods that way! We no lose.

Maybe India see more in Lao Tzu

Than China, who knows? All time

Kliste dead more’n six hundred year,

And no body say much bout Kliste,

And China goin’ to hell, as Salvation Army say,

Alle time.

Kliste dead six hundred year,

Salvation Army come to England,

And baptize everybody; but China no hear.

Kliste dead eighteen hundred year,

England come to China for Kliste and opium—

Make nice dreams—what you care

’Bout Budda, Kliste—Smoke? Eh?

ULYSSES

Settled to evenings before the doorway

With Telemachus, who sat at his knee,

“Why did you stay so long from Ithaca,

Leaving my mother Penelope?”

The eyes of the hero rolled and wandered,

Thinking of Scylla and Sicily.

“That’s a hard question,” answered Ulysses,

“Harder, if answered, for you to see.

“There was the Cyclops, there was Æolus,

There were the Sirens, and Hades for me;

Apollo’s oxen, Hades’ horrors,

Circe, and then Ogygia.

“All these after the war, Telemachus—

Too long a tale, as you will agree.

The bards must write it, when you are older

Read till the gray hairs give you the key

“Of the wonder and richness that were your father’s

Life in the war, the long way home.

No man has lived, as I, Telemachus,

None ever will live in the days to come

“A life that followed the paths and hollows

Of Time, the wayward ways of the streams

That flow round earth, the winds and waters

Of passion, wisdom, thought and dreams.

“There are two things, my boy, and only

Two in the world, remember this:

One thing is men, the other women,

And after the two of them nothing is.

“I have known men as king and warrior,

Known them as liegmen, spears of the line.

Good enough lamps for workaday darkness—

They are not food, they are not wine;

“They are not heat that stir the secret

Core of the seed of a man, be sure.

And I, Ulysses, needed the planets,

And suns of the spring to live, mature.”

“What do you mean?” asked Telemachus,

“And, say is it true you lost eight years

Away from Ithaca, me and my mother

Because of a certain Calypso’s tears?”

The eyes of the hero rolled and wandered.

“There now, my boy, you have the truth.

I’ll try to tell you perhaps you’ll get it

In spite of your filial love and your youth.

“First, understand there are two things only;—

One is women, the other men.

And men I knew before and at Troyland,

And searched their hearts again and again.

“What do you get? Secrets of cunning,

Cruelty, strength, and much that you use

In the battle with them; but what’s a woman?

She is the mother, she is the Muse

“That leads and lifts to life—Telemachus

How can I tell you?—have a care!

Young men seize on the words of wisdom,

And find their hands in a silken snare,

“Hearing blindly, seeing literally,

What is a sword, a lamp, a shield?

Touch and learn, the name is only

The shell wherein the thing is concealed.”

“What do you mean?” asked Telemachus.

“What do I mean? Attend to me!

I’ll try to tell you, telling a story

Of the island called Ogygia.

“I know women—how shall I tell you?

Women are good, and good is wine.

Yet how to tell the wine and women

That turn her adorers into swine.

“You must have aid of Hermes, swiftness

Of spirit and sense to tell them apart;

How to be strong, how to be tender,

How to surrender and keep your heart.

“Easy for me to baffle Circe,

Easy the Sirens to slip—just wax!

I steered for Ithaca, you and your mother,

Isle to isle on the ocean’s tracks,

“Until I came and saw Calypso.

Son you would be with Calypso yet.

It takes a hero suppled in flame

To see Calypso, and leave, forget

Face and voice enough to leave her,

Spurn her promises, turn from her tears,

Come to Ithaca with this doorway,

Age that hovers, the little years.”

“What do you mean?” asked Telemachus.

“Live and learn,” Ulysses replied.

“Calypso promised me youth eternal

If I would stay and make her my bride.”

“And why not stay?” asked Telemachus

“To have her for wife, if not a youth

Eternal given you?” “Boy of me listen

Now for the core of the deepest truth:

“We dined in grottoes of blooming ivy;

We supped in halls of cedar and gold;

We slept on balconies, sapphire tented—

But even I found this growing old.

“I saw her beauty bare by star light,

And by the sea in the sun, and stoled

In silk as white as snow on Parnassus—

But even I found this growing old.

“Her tresses smelt of the blooms of Hymettus,

Her breasts were cymbals sweet to behold;

Her voice was a harp of pearl and silver—

But even I found this growing old.

“Her Lips were like the flame of a taper

Scented and musical, as she would fold

White arms over the brawn of my shoulders—

But even I found this growing old.

“She promised me this and youth forever,

So long as the sun and the planets rolled.

I knew they were gifts she could not give me,

Empty promises too grow old.

“And even if given, why forever

Live the things that have grown enough?

She loved me, wonderful Calypso.

But what is love? It is only love.

“And the salt of a man turns to his doorway,

He makes his will for his blood at the end.

My boy, that’s why I left Calypso

And came to you—do you comprehend?

“To sit unshorn, and clothed as I choose,

Talk with the swineherd, potter or shirk,

Babble at ease, my boy, with your mother

Around the house at rest or at work.

“And you must not forget, Telemachus,

In order to have immortality

It had to be with Calypso—therefore

I came to you and Penelope,

“Who soon will leave me, at best, or else

I’ll leave you for the Isles of the Blest.

I find this doorway good, Telemachus,

As a place to dream and a place to rest.”

“I do not understand, Ulysses,

Father of me. At first the call

Of the blood, I thought, would hasten you homeward.

And now I wonder you came at all

“Here to Ithaca. What, my father,

Is here but my mother growing old;

Aged Lærtes, Telemachus—

What of Calypso’s hair of gold?

“What of the island, what of the feasting,

What of her kisses, were it I

I’d spurn eternal youth, as a mortal

Live with Calypso until I should die.”

“I have no doubt,” said the many minded

Great Ulysses. “It’s plain to see

You are a boy yet. When is supper?

Go ask your mother Penelope.”

THE PARTY

Our wishes not consulted whether

We chose to come, not even the hour,

Some would have asked for fairer weather

Than on a day of sun and shower.

No chance to choose! And some got wet,

Were sick and nervous while they stayed;

Others came in the sun, the debt

Of Fortune to them overpaid.

We all came ignorant, willy-nilly,

Pell mell, piebald, grave and silly,

Resistless to the party drawn,

Which had gone on and would go on

From dawn to night and night to dawn.

Though some, it seemed, had scarcely come

Before they left; and some at noon,

Or morning bade adieu. The moon

Saw others take departure home.

All talked about it as you would;

Esteemed it dull, over too soon,—

Bad, sad, or wearing, very good!

Over too soon! Yet truth to tell

It was a lasting festival.

Guests had to leave—and that was all.

To each some different thing befell.

The party went on just the same.

First guests departed, late arrived;

Fresh candles burned with brighter flame;

New cakes were cut, and laughter thrived

Over a wit re-sharpened. Crumbs

Of eaten things were brushed away;

Dishes were cleared and lovelier bowls

Were piled with new picked grapes and plums.

The place the while was mad and gay

Because of sad and merry souls.

There was a room for love’s romancing;

A room for talk, a room for dancing;

A room for globes and maps and books;

A room with sky lights, a room of nooks;

A room of pictures, marbles, bronzes;

Guns, gauntlets, spears, armor, sconces;

A room of racks and torture hooks;

A room of ikons, shrines and josses;

A room of crosiers, cups and crosses;

A room—but everything was here—

That brain can think of, plan or make

To shackle spirits, honor brows,

To thrill the heart, or start the tear,

Or stir a rapture, or an ache—

It was a wonder house!

I noticed this: You enter with

Fellow arrivers, ill at ease.

The rooms are full, and some of these

Know you, but only with their eyes

Acknowledge you in mild surprise.

Listen! and you will get the pith

And meaning of what went before

From these. The high ones talk in myth,

Who own the rooms—in loose ellipsis

Show what their tried out fellowships’

Inner communion is and lore.

But kinder souls say: “Some one great

Was here before you came.” “This thing

Happened this morning.” “Look! that one

Just going out, is so and so.”

“There comes the waiter with your plate!”

“You should have heard that woman sing!

She’s going!” “Oh, we’ve had such fun.”

“What happened? What’s ahead? Its slow!”

Late stayers stare your ignorance:

“Why don’t they tell us?” “Oh, no use,

You wouldn’t understand. You’ll know

Later, perhaps, by happy chance.

And if you don’t, it’s too abstruse,

We have no words. Feed on and run

The rooms around. You’ll see what we

Have felt, seen, suffered and enjoyed.”

And so it is to father and son,

Mother and maid. Then what should be?

The bell rings, some are glad, annoyed:

New guests are coming, and for some

The Chauffeur rings, the Car has come!

And we who were the novices,

And wondered, stared, deferred, inquired,

Are now in charge, and take amiss

Curious questions, have acquired

The Party’s manner, secrets, speech.

And see, as those before us saw,

New and old groups are troubled, each

Is deaf and dumb. How can we draw

Their wordless wonder to the point?

What would you know? How can we reach

And vocalize your dumbness? What

To ask of us you do not know,

And what to tell you we know not—

Groups, therefore, clearly out of joint.

Yes, but they do not know us now.

Most here are strange. Where is the throng

With whom we came? Where is the brow

Sunny of hair, the voice of song?

Where is the hand that understood,

Without a word? There’s none to hear,

And know our meaning as he would ...

New wine is opened. No more wine!

New cake is cut. I must instead

Drink brandy, bitters, heavy beer.

I rather like this coarse, black bread.

Strange music plays, not high and clear.

No matter! For you might inspect

The pictures, marbles, once again,

Look at the books some more, correct

First errors. Surely that were well.

And you can do it, having fared

So differently. Was that the bell?

“Your chauffeur’s here!” “Why speed me so?”

“Too bad! Too bad you have to go!”

Yes, but the party’s over! No?

Over for me. And I am tired.

Desire for what I once desired

Is dying or is satisfied.

Tell him to wait a moment—yes

I wish to see what may betide;

Watch the new corners laugh and feast;

Watch eyes that glance, and breasts that heave;

Watch cunning, aspiration, pride;

Watch soldier, statesman, poet, priest;

Watch those who doubt and who believe,

Untangle, tangle, spin and weave.

I’ve helped to make the party, still

The party is not to my will.

I can re-make it, now I know

How to enjoy it better, use

Its hour more wisely. “By your leave.

Just wait a moment!” “Well, your car

Is at the door and must not park;

The way you go is rather far,

Besides it’s growing dark.”

Bowed out! No matter! I am due

At a better party, so they say.

To-morrow is a better day—

Always to-morrow. “What of you?

You’re coning? Well, I hope you may.”

“Meantime good night, a safe return,

And blessings on your way.”

CELSUS AT HADRIAN’S VILLA

This is the place, my friend Aristo. Here

We sit and muse on the state of the world. Alas!

What are we coming to?

The tufa walls

Inlaid with yellow lichens look like bronze

Gold filagreed. And through those rifts and breaks

There are the trunks of ilex, gnarled and dark.

Look! Nature mocks us. Hadrian is asleep

These nearly hundred years. Does cyclamen

Crimson about these walls grow less profuse?

Or these anemones laugh less to the sun?

Or bramble, honeysuckle, bougainvillea

Desert the gardens of the emperor?

The merle and golden-crested wrens build nests,

Sing the hymeneal song! But man, poor man,

Forsakes his triumphs, work, his palaces.

And barbarous weeds sprout over them and creep,

And choke his wisdom and his art.

Let’s sit

Here in this colonnade. Philosophers

From Rome and Athens, Alexandria,

From mystic India, walked this colonnade,

And let the mind run free. It is no more,

Unless we fight the human weeds that spring

Under the rains that darken Rome. Let’s up

With hoes and root them.

Here’s cat-brier—chop!

Cat-brier, Christian meekness, fair to view—

But how it stinks! And briars: pain and loss

For ecstasy and gain beyond—I chop!

Chop here, Aristo, get your friends to chop,

Lest all the world be given up to weeds,

As Hadrian’s Villa is about to be.

Rome soon will stretch her templed neck to breathe

Above the thorns, the hyssop. Even now

The state is crumbling with the heresy

That Rome should not be reverenced and saved,

But every soul saved. The Imperial City

To which each Roman is a servitor

Put by for doctrine making every heart

Worthy of saving from the wreck of life—

I chop this weed. And for the soul of Rome,

The lazar soul, the slave, the fuller, cobbler,

The fool, the God-forsaken and the child ...

What if Rome fall? The City of God remains

Eternal in the Heavens. Yes, but Earth,

Where is thy city, if it be not Rome?

Destroy your Romans, Hadrians, what is left?—

Itinerant exorcists and prophets, idlers,

And sacred beggars, leper lips that curse

Rome and her beauty? These the citizens

Of the City of God! What will that city be?

Themselves externalized, as Rome has flowered

From Roman minds; but never a Hadrian Villa

In the City of God, never from scowls and sores!

No You shall have a world of trade and lies,

Of itching and denials, for a world

Of freedom and expression, wine and song.

These huckstering Jews are planting in our Rome

The faith that they persuaded God to kill

His Son to save them. And a huckstering

Will taint the flesh of all who eat this god.

But yet how they will rub their palms and coo

And ape a meekness. Here! Aristo, chop!...

But just so long as stories remain in place

Of Hadrian’s Villa, eyes will look upon them

And sense the mind of Rome, and what it was:

That eyes were made for seeing, ears for hearing,

Hands made to touch, tongues made to taste, minds made

To think, imagine, love given to indulge

For rapture. There’s no law of heaven or earth

That trims eyes, ears, the senses,

Of use; but all were made to leaf and bloom

The idea of the eye, the ear, the hand.

And only reason with regard for health

Of eyes, ears, hands, may guide and say: how far....

See now what Hadrian’s mind created here:—

A tragic theatre, a comic theatre.

What for? For eyes’ sake, for exploring life.

Katharsis? Yes. But use? No use to him

Who thinks life sin, the world’s end near, for Jews

Who like the frogs in marshes croaking, say:

“For our sakes was the world created, we

Alone are chosen of God.” No use for him

Who sees enough of suffering in life

Without its mimicry; sees not the art

Of shooting light between the mystery

Of human fate, and waking sympathy

Through understanding. Christian weeds I chop,

Whose roots begin to sap the tragic roots

Of Sophocles.

But I say eyes may see:

And if I wish to watch the lions fight

What interdicts me, and what reason for it?

Now look how Hadrian’s mind puts into flower:

A temple for Greek books, and one for Latin;

And there’s the stadium, and there’s the baths.

These Christians frown the bath. If I make out

Jesus may come today, and wherefore wash?

Besides the naked bathers cling and kiss

Within the tepidarium at times, and hence

Out with all bathing!

There’s the palace too

Which o’ertops Nero’s Golden House, they say.

And what guest chambers here! The laughing soul

Of Hadrian glows amid his friends. What’s best

In life, Aristo? Why, when the soul is freed,

From business, traffic, grasping, thought of self,

The aches of the day, and being freed shines forth

As star companions star, in smiles and words

Of praise, affection. Hadrian loves the faith

Of happiness, and lets his guests fare free,

Wander eight miles of garden, enter vales

Of Tempe, watch a mimic Peneus

Flow by; encounter fauns amid the brakes;

Surprise Bacchantes sleeping; hear from hills

A chorus of Euripides soothe their souls

With dreams before Faustina’s sculptured face,

Or Antinous, Apollo, Venus; bathe

Their glowing bodies in the pools; partake

Of food or wine, gifts of the gods. Such life

Is passing, soon will pass. Aurelius

Lies under thought, which thrived before the day

Of Paul for all of that, the folly sees not

Of slaving Christians, while himself is teaching

The Christian doctrine! Ugliness, denial,

Self-laceration, beggary, are older

Than Jesus—and I chop!

But let the world

Submit to weeds, in time what will you have?

Not Hadrian’s Villa, but a villa walled,

Walls spiked and guarded, and a house of walls

Empty of sculpture, where a miser-man,

Guarding his gold, a lone man eating bread

And milk, rules realms and countries from the book

Of Enoch, Exodus, the Septuagint,

And these purported writings of one Paul;

And who has made his heart a granary

For seed of faith and trade. This weed I chop!

For then your world lies flatter than the land

Of that campagna, made a marsh for frogs,

Dull grass and feculent roots, as it would lie

If once invaders smashed the aqueducts

And drowned our lovely plain!

You see, my friend

Why I fight back the weeds. This is not all,

For I know what engenders Christian faith:

Man dreams he can be saved, but saved from what?

Sin? What is sin? Age? What can save from age,

What keep the spring of youth, its rosy flesh,

Its spirit never tiring, hope undarkened,

Its courage without fears, long dreams and days?

Why nothing! All’s illusion that holds forth

A medicine for wrinkles, shrunken arms.

Therefore what saves from death? Does Jesus save?

Does Jesus ease a soul’s pain, cure a loss

Save as these devotees may soothe their hearts

With prospects of to-morrow, or of heaven?

No! good Aristo, all this Roman realm,

Washed by this sea, for centuries has been

As fertile as the valley of the Nile

For seed of this salvation dream, the seed

Of Mithra and Osiris, Krishna, Budda,

Adonis, Tammuz, Dionysus, Attis,

What is this seed of Jesus? Nothing new:

The virgin birth? That’s old as human dreams.

There’s Dionysus born of Semele,

A virgin, and of Zeus; great Dionysus

The resurrection of the year, the mad

Intoxicating power of nature, wine.

There is a myth that Jesus at a feast

Turned water into wine, a Bacchic feat.

One myth blends in another like mosaics

Of microscopic jewels. I go on.

Zeus fathers many sons of virgins born,

Is not content with one. He takes Danæ

And Perseus is the fruit, who slays the Gorgons

And saves Andromeda, the human soul.

Devaki is a virgin, weds Vishnu,

And Krishna comes. A virgin is the mother

Of Budda. Horus springs from virgin Isis,

Our Lady, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea,

Mother of God, so called for centuries

Before the days of Mary. Neith, the virgin,

Was mother of Osiris. Mithra’s born

Of a virgin mother.

This is what I mean

By fertile soil of Egypt, Persia, Greece,

That crops the seed of Jesus. Is this all?

All saviours tally fully. All were born

In caves or stables, chambers under ground;

All labored for the welfare of the race;

All were light bringers, healers, mediators

Between the gods and men. All fell in death,

Descended to the underworld. All rose

To strive for men in heaven; all created

Communions, churches, rites of water, wine,

Last suppers, brought the entheos, spilt their blood;

God, Krishna, Dionysus, Hercules.

And as for that Tammuz was crucified,

Prometheus was nailed and chained.

You know!

These from the mysteries of the heart, from life;—

Death of the year, birth of the year, the hope

That shines amid the mist of doubts and days;

The dream that says if nature leave the grave

Of winter, what’s the life of man, to be

Shut from the law that wakes the fallen seed?

If God renews the wine, I drink the juice

Of the grape and live! If God be in the bull,

And must be, life is life, and all is life

Of one divinity, I drink the blood,

I wash therein, cleanse sin, and celebrate

A ritual of salvation, endless life!...

I trace all Krishnas, Mithras in this god,

Hope’s latest dream.

What’s needed but a flame

That draws these older flames? What but a man

Of inspiration, labor, sacrifice,

A poet, hater of the scurvy times,

Killed for his blasting eyes, accusing tongue,

To have your Christos? Jesus lived. Why not?

’Tis credible; killed by the Jews, why not?

And made a sacrifice for many—doctrine

World old and wide. From Babylon the Jews

Brought Hammurapi, brought Sacaea too,

A ritual for prisoners doomed to die,

By which they would be decked in kingly robes,

Stripped, scourged and hanged even as we have done

At Saturnalia. How else “King of the Jews,”

Except by ancient custom? Think, Aristo,

Would great Tiberius suffer such sedition

Except as drama and in mockery?

Aristo, if this Jesus were the god

As Mithra, Dionysus are, ’twere well

With Rome and Hadrian’s Villa. Understand

If these infatuate zealots, Jews would keep

Their god, belief, but still conform to Rome,

Rome’s gods, the empire reverence, who would care?

No Roman! No one! But to hear these prophets

Cry through our cities, camps: to everlasting

Flames commit our cities and our lands,

And curse us out of Jewish scriptures, draw

The imprecations of the epileptic

Paul upon us, this I fight, I chop!

I stand with sword against the enervation

Of private judgment, that the common man

Is heaven’s prize. This demos mania

And ruin of the empire I oppose.

And when these plagues of Christians grow too loud,

And Rome arouses, wants the lions fed,

Or crosses painted with a little red,

I go to see. These anarch colleges,

Illicit schools, called churches, quiet down

When in the circus Christian bones are crunched....

Now for my consolation if Rome fall;

If lowliness and other worldiness;

If meekness, sacrifice; if life’s denial;

If all this creed out of inverted thought,

Shame for the lust of life, the Orient’s

Sick perfume, drugs, if all of this be taken

Into the body of Rome, the world; the poison

Of Jesus swallowed—this my consolation:

Life, being God, is stronger than God’s Son;

Life will digest it, and evacuate

What cannot be digested, and retain

What can be used. Another Rome will rise

If our Rome fall. Let’s go up there, a while,

And watch the waterfalls, and have some wine.

INVOCATION TO THE GODS

I

Goddess, born of the mother of all things, the sea,

Goddess of beauty, goddess of rapture,

Goddess whose girdle is life,

Come down to us, O Aphrodite.

We are sunk in the slough of our shame;

We are torn with denials and fears,

Who have turned from thy altar,

And rejected thy worship

And mangled the gift of love

For the ritual of Mary the Virgin.

Come down to us that we may re-make ourselves

In the likeness of thy face—

We have no goddess like thee

O Aphrodite!

II

And thou, equal sister, O goddess

Whose temple yet stands enthroned rock-bound above

The grotto of Mary of Galilee,

Eternal symbol!

Come down to us:

Preserver of the state

In peace and war,

With the healing of harmonious thought.

Stern goddess of an equal law,

And ruler of the mind.

Guardian of temples and republics.

Lover and inspirer of the arts,

Come down to us that we may re-make ourselves

In the likeness of thy face.

We have no goddess like thee

Pallas Athena!

III

Thou soul of the Sun

And master of fire,

Law-giver, ruler, warder,

Founder of templed cities,

Founder of states invincible and free;

Thou voice of prophecy, wisest friend

Of commonwealths;

Lord of music, lord of words and sounds,

And brother of the muses.

Come down that we may re-make ourselves

In the likeness of thy face.

We have no god like thee

O great Apollo!

IV

Of old amid the mountains sat the father

Of gods and men!

Broad souled as nature, being nature.

Human and gracious, laughing, wise as time.

Ruler of earth and heaven—all but fate;

And promising no life that was not fate;

No wonder and no change

Beyond the rule of fate.

Great Zeus whose fruitful loins

Peopled Olympus

With gods and goddesses, well belovéd.

Not father of one son, but many sons;

Not father of one daughter, but many daughters,

Begotten of thee, immaculately,

Being begotten in nature.

Great father of redeemers who redeemed

Through truth which frees through being known,

Not faith in truth which is not known.

Beauty and not belief,

Mystical waters, curses, flames and death!

Come down, O Father Zeus, while we re-make

Our faces in the likeness of thy face.

We have no god like thee

O sovran Zeus!

V

Thou Thunderer, whose mood was wine and love,

Miraculous life, creativeness

Of color and sound,

Out of the lightning, out of the mist,

Out of the beat and urge of the sea,

Out of mountains, sacred groves and streams.

Thou king and father of the virgin daughter

Templed in pure, in deathless stone

In sacred Athens.

Not always striking at the foes of Hellas;

Nor sending fury on her enemies;

Nor bathing swords in heaven

To smite the foes of Hellas;

Nor treading grapes in anger;

Nor sprinkling blood on garments

To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!

Nor breeding worms that die not,

To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!

Nor stirring envy like a man of war

To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!

Nor preaching words of gladness to the meek;

Nor opening prison doors

To sound the day of vengeance,

To make all peoples worship thee, O Zeus!

Nor saying, eat the riches of thy foes,

And suck their milk;

And make them plowmen;

And take dominion over them and power.

I am the one, the only god, go forth

And make all peoples worship, I am Zeus!

VI

The hunted ghost of Delphos steals

From land to land.

Thy lyre has been weighed in the balances

Of the money changers, and rejected.

The Prince of Peace has brought the sword

Even as he prophesied.

All peoples are at strife

Between his ritual and the will to life.

Vengeance, hypocrisy and darkness

Are over us, we are vipers

Coiled in a cistern.

We wait for blood in the moon,

For darkness in the Sun,

For a voice from clouds of glory:

Depart from me, accursed; into fire.

I shut the gates of heaven

And burn the world with wrath!

Thou in Olympus tombed

With all thy sons and daughters,

Palace no more, a footstool

For Jehovah of Judea,

Come back that we may re-make ourselves

In the likeness of thy face.

O, father Zeus,

Wake when Jesus shuts

The gates of heaven,

And take us to Olympus!

PENTHEUS IN THESE STATES

I

Muse of the meditative hymn, and Muse

Of chronicles and the scroll, to us refuse

No gift to sing the daimon, the divine

God-head of Nature, Freedom and the Vine.

Nor less that Orpheus of the Mysteries:

Stars and the Soul and Heaven, and the Seas

Of tangible streams made light above the dust

Of this bewildering earth of Flesh and Lust.

II

First from what Thracian land

Did your attendants come

In coon-skin caps and jeans,

Into this wilderness, spanned

By mountains, to this home

Of the Corn-mother, clothed in variable greens

Of barley, oats and wheat?

Hither hurried your adventurous feet

From England, and from the hills

Above the Rhine, and out of the valleys

Of the populous plain

Of Lombardy, around the Seine,

You came

Like flame that follows flame!

From Galway, Lyons, Bergen, Budapest,

Onward you pressed,

With hearts that sang, and brave,

Like wave that runs to wave!

And from all northlands of new dreams, from ills

That stir the Spring awakening and the quest.

Thence were these swarming sallies

Into New England, and the great Northwest—

Virginia and Kentucky, Tennessee.

Thracians you were, attending Dionyse,

And seeking realms of Nature to be free.

Ciders from orchards would have ease,

And wine from vineyards, to be planted,

Where the roar of mountain torrents haunted

Heights of the pine and slopes of fragrant grasses

From plains to granite passes.

Rocks sealed with frost and ice which prisoned

The secret wine of Life new sensed and newly visioned

Flowed when the Spring of a great Age, and its Herakles,

Fire of the Sun of Liberty, melted the locks

Of ancient and forbidding rocks

Binding the torrent: human and divine

Strength and adventure: Mænads and Thyiades,

Bacchæ, Bassarides:

Spirits and evangels of new wine.

Mad Ones: armed for war.

And Rushing Ones: defying Strife.

Inspired Ones: trailing the Star

Of larger life.

III

And with this swift descent,

To this far occident,

Tracking the gleam, the god, the freer fields;

Rejoicing, but in rites

For the Mystery, the delights

Of living and of thought, which moulds and wields,

These hunters, fur-capped, like the devotees

Out of the Thrace of old, worshipping and defending

The wine-grower, and temple-builder, Dionyse,

Carved from the fire impregnate Earth the sovereignties

Of Maryland, New York, and Tennessee’s

Mountainous realm, to the blending

Of foothills with the meadows of Illinois.

And made initiate in great liberties

The farthest West, until the Orient sea’s

Soft thunder lustrates California, bending

Above green water, clothed in purple and gold.

Carved these with hope their children would uphold,

And no hand would destroy

The altars of States heaped full of grapes and grain:

Births of the Sun and earth, to be adored,

And gathered in high festival and joy

From mountain side and plain;

And drunk from golden kantharoi,

God entering into man, thereby: restored

By the blood and flesh of the god, the lord,

To strength and vision to unveil

Deep mysteries and raptures, worshippings

Of nature, love for man, for deities

Quick intimations, quiverings through the wings

Of larger life, and sweeter music, cities

Of higher fellowships and lovelier ways

Of wisdom, where the phantoms of the Pities,

And the Hatreds, the Agonies

Of Melancholy, Madness, Soul’s Disease

From horrors, and from idiot pieties

Are softened or dispelled in Freedom’s praise.

IV

Pentheus in the tree-top spies upon

The wild white women, the dance, the festival.

And Judas spies on Jesus

In the epiphany of Orpheus out of Dionysus.

But the cup is drunk by the lover, the singer John.

Who finding the ecstasy of sorrow, and sounding the deeps

Of love and vision, human and mystical

In the wine cup, oh, beloved guest,

Sinks in a moment of ineffable rest,

And rid of the flesh, half sleeps

Upon the Master’s breast.

Judas alert for treasure and for treason

Dips in the sop his bread—

Judas the founder of the sect which fouls

The feast of Life, lizards and owls.

But where the liknon is borne, the cradle heaped

With fruits and flowers at the bridal feast,

O, Dionysiac Christ, you passed the cup;

And at the supper of parting, O lovely priest,

At the time of the fan, and the purging of the floor,

You served the blood of the grape, and you did sup

With fur-capped fellows, and revealed the lore

Of remembrance for the mysteries you had spoken

Over the purple hills, and by the yellow shore

In wine quaffed and bread broken.

V

Thin lips where cruel smiles betray

Envy and frigid spirits, souls of gray

Who will descend upon you, rend and slay?

Unknowers of the cycle of Man’s day:

That nourished flesh grows spirit, and that wine

Is the oil of the lamp of the soul, and feeds the flame

That lights the world with Art! Who will waylay

Your spying and your hatred, limb from limb

Tear you, or drive you to a death of shame,

Like Judas self-hung? As if in paradigm,

Purple but horrible! Cut-throats of the rites

Of amity and dreams, the blossoming,

The release from the flesh to soul’s delights,

Intenser life in soft intoxication—

And from that life, and rapturous elation

Who are you who restrain,

Making a cult of undelivered pain?—

Through which men love and fashion, sing.

You false salvationists and street haranguers,

Self-drunk with soul suppression and perversion,

Who shout the terror of putrescence, never beauty;

You with suspicions of the peasant Persian;

You foul-breathed ranters of Duty

About these states, you vermin-eaten clangers

Of hog-ribs, paper tambourines:—

Degenerate instruments for an imbecile faith,

And mockeries of bright silver (touched by queens,

The Muses), and the ebony crotola.

You scare-crows of the Mænads and the Muses,

Breastless or babeless women who would vote

For rulership of other homes, not yours.

And you who moralize and gloat

On the refuse of banquets in the sewers.

You preachers of Denial and of Death,

And maniacs of repression which refuses

The cup of life! And in this bacchanalia,

You followers of Orpheus, as reformer,

Plain dressed in alpaca and string ties,

Who bellow forth your prophecies and curses

Not that man lives, but that man dies.

You carriers of umbrellas, not the thyrsos,

Or rifles of the fur-capped pioneers;

Slick spouters who fill fat penurious purses

Out of inevitable tears.

You Judases to Beauty, the sneak, informer,

Blind that all Canas must precede

The soul’s Gethsemanes, that there can be

Save Cana strengthens, no Gethsemane;

And if no living then no heart to bleed

Its blood to make us like the god, the Christ.

No flower of spirit without root and vine,

Nor loveliness for our sakes sacrificed;

No beauty without wine—

You who these mysteries see not, or gainsay

Who will tear limb from limb of you and slay?

VI

You who behold no spirit in earth and sun,

And in their marriage no symbol of increase;

And you who plan or plot or brood, but run

About the wine press never, and who shun

The kinship which makes one of beasts and man,

Blossoms and vines and trees.

You who see not the mystery of food,

The ecstasy of the feast, replenishment

Of spirit in the wine-cup, and who ban

In fear or loathing, swooning of the blood;

You who can take as memory’s sacrament

The wafer and the thimble of vapid juice,

And yet deny us, seekers of elation,

Re-birth through Dionysus, the youthful Christ:

Living, rejoicing in Life’s thrilling spring,

Not grieving in its autumn and decline,

Bridal, not funeral wine

In the hour of memory and of parting;

You who forbid our ritual and our use

Of Nature’s secrets, our illumination,

Our sleep, our peace,

Our freedom from the Fears, intoxication

In which our souls are paradised;

Our insight, charities, and our release

From the grave of the day’s flesh, our Orphic lips

Through which we find creations, sun-lit wings,

Love, wanderings of the soul, and fellowships—

You who these wisdoms see not, or gainsay

Who will tear limb from limb of you, and slay?

Will the old States never come to us, never again,

And the sovereignty of men,

In the mountains of our fathers, along the boundless plain?

Has the will of the people perished, or passed into the hand

Of the oafs and boors and lunk-heads of the land,

And the bigot, Puritan,

And the martyrs to the martyrdom of Pain,

Seeking remembrance not for Life, but Death?

Have we given up the sister realms, the freedom of the States

Through a tyranny of shame

In the South land where the black-man wears the gag?

Shall we bear the blight of cities, charged to electorates

In the silence of the bearers of the flag?

Shall the cowardice of sycophants commissioned to obey

Defeat the trust, but call it still our voice?

Shall we who give you, as we wish, the choice

Of freedom to be solemn or rejoice,

Avenge not your injustice, nor gainsay,

Nor strew you limb from limb along the way?

COMPARATIVE CRIMINALS

Marion Strode, my friend, a chanting voice

For heaven’s kingdom on this earth, a hand

Ready to open prisons, heal the bruised,

Bring liberty to men, was wrought to fire

Over the martyrdom of Ott. He called it

A martyrdom, and said: “Come go with me

And comfort Ott in prison.” So he went.

And on the train I read what Ott had said,

For which he suffered prison. Jail for words

Is older than Saint Paul; as old as cities,

And fear that dreads the change that words may bring.

I also saw a picture of this Ott:

Head like a billiard ball, a little cracked,

Warped egg-like too. A homeless cat made furtive

By missive cans and frightful hoots. A ragged

Gabriel shut from heaven’s bliss. A porter

Of righteousness compelled to open the gate

Of paradise for Mark Hanna, but himself

Debarred an entrance. Asking nothing either,

Yet facing God to sift him, find him pure

As those who enter.

Here’s a man who never

To eighty years loses from brightening eyes

Flames from the stake reflected, or the shadows

Of prison for the sake of conscience. Thinks

No one who has soft raiment ever reads

“The Ancient Lowly,” or the “Martyrdom

Of Labor,” history, science; none are wise

But radicals.

And then I read in full

What Ott had said for which they prisoned him.

They charged him with obstructing the enlistment.

But in his speech there isn’t a single word

Advising a resistance to the draft,

By just so many words concretely. Quite

Adroit this speech, quite foxy. Yet it’s true

If you knew you could get a man to act

On what was in his mind, long brooded on

By giving him a shot of alcohol;

And if you gave it and he did the deed

You would be an inciter, principal

And doer of the deed.

Now take this speech

Which glorifies the socialistic cause;

Lauds divers martyrs tried, already jailed

For words against the draft; denounces Prussia,

Oh, yes! but in such words as hit the home

Of the brave, the free America! Ouch! Quit!

Says that the master class has always made

The wars in which the subject class was used,

Which never had a voice in making war:

Affirmative universal! What’s the answer?

He means this war, this holy war, the traitor!

Denounces capital, exhorts the crowd

To strive for something better than to be

Fodder for cannon. What? The prize of death

In battle called a foddering of the cannon!

What better thing to strive for? Throw him out!

The price of coal is due to plutocrats;

They’re bleeding you, and say it’s for the war.

They lie! What’s treason? Not disloyal

To those you work for, but disloyalty

To truth, your better self.

If you believe this

Would you become a soldier, or say no,

I will not fight for such a cause or country?...

I see, said Voltaire, three times one are one.

A man in heat might flout the trinity;

But when he studies out some persiflage

With which to flout it—well—here’s Ott who has

Contempt aforethought for the war and draft,

And squirts his venom through closed teeth, the better

To shoot it further, make it hit.

I said:

“Your Mr. Ott is guilty of the charge.

No use to talk of constitutions. No.

He loves the Lovejoys, Garrisons and Paines,

The Brunos, martyrs, let him stand his ground.”

And Marion Strode replied: “Yes, Ott is guilty.

But did he speak the truth? Yes? Very well.

It must have been the time and place that made

The penitentiary for twenty years

A fitting penalty. But when’s the time

To talk against war’s horror? When there’s war,

And words are vivid, or when war is not,

And talks against it sound like when you say

‘Look out for bears’ to children?

“War-lords talk

In peace and war to be prepared. May I

Prepare for peace in war time, when my words

Have demonstrations in the events of war?

You think not? The majority has spoken!

Well, has it? Point me out a plebiscite

That asked for war. But take your point at full

The majority has spoken: why forbid

The back-hall, soap-box rostrum; what will come?

The majority will stick and go ahead;

Or else the soap box will persuade it back

And end the war. Is there another term?

The great majority annoyed, obstructed,

Delayed, distracted, harried! Well, you know

The Tories did that to George Washington.

And Lincoln! Why, the people at the polls

Returned a critical congress. And if trials

Strengthen the character of a man, why not

Obstructions for majorities howling war

To clarify and strengthen them? God works

In ways mysterious, but in every way;

Whatever is is true.

“Ott, as I see it,

Was jailed for twenty years for speaking truth

At the wrong time and place. A heavy fine

For wrong a æsthetics, etiquette.

“I go deeper,

I pass the law that jailed him, all æsthetics,

All etiquette, all wrong of time and place.

Let’s enter in a realm of realer things.

What does Ott stand for in a war or peace?

Is it not freedom, equal rights, the end

Of poverty, disease? Has he not held

The torch of science up, the torch of thought

Interpreting the greatest minds to win

Attention to them and adherence to them?

If he did this, has not his life been given

To making America a brighter light,

A sounder realm, her breed a stronger breed?

If he be not a light himself, but only

A humble trimmer of the wick, let’s say

The wick of Socrates, or Franklin, Paine,

Or Jesus as the prophet in the work

Of freeing for the truth, then what of that?

Who gets the judgment in the years to come,

A parlor lamp of yellow flame, that smells

Of coal oil, or your Ott?

“Let’s take a type:

He woos the average man, appeals to him;

The average man whose morals, art and books

Are just victrola records, microscopic

Echoes of small realities of the past.

He sees what he can do with this America

Of the average man, the common people called.

He follows them and gives them vapid stuff

Of morals, laws and politics. His aim?

Talk which will win the very largest nod

Of ignorant assent. Result? Why look,

He is a daily of a million sale,

He coins the money lecturing, uses too

His following to keep America

Upon the level of the common man

In morals, freedom, thought, virility.

He scoffs at science and the noodles giggle.

Music? Why, who’s Beethoven? Let me hear

‘Lead Kindly Light.’ The drama? Well, Ben Hur

Is moral and historical. Sculpture? Look

At those bronze figures by the mantel clock—

That’s Faith and Hope. Freedom of speech and press?

Within the limits of the law! And war?

I loathe it, I opposed it, but when war

Is by the law decreed, I enter too

And howl for what I hissed, for what I called

An evil and a wrong.

“Now hear me out:

Suppose he could persuade America

To take his books, and music, sculpture, ethics—

That is his purpose, to persuade us all

To take them, as it was the aim of Ott

To stay enlistment and so stop the war—

What of our civilization? It would fall.

If so who should be jailed, this orator

Or Ott?

“Now we’ve arrived, can test these souls.

Ott fights the war and sticks, your orator

Opposes the war and quotes the Nazarene.

But does he stick? Why no! The truth remains.

He changes, lifts his nose for noting when

The noses of the majority are lifted.

Our Mr. Ott winters behind the bars.

Our orator retires to Florida;

Emerges slick and strong when April comes

To lecture, get the money.

“Now suppose

Ott by his talk had balked the war, that crime

Is nothing by the side of the other crime

Of keeping common followers commoner;

Corrupting thought. The war is over now.

With Ott in prison and the orator out.

Let’s test them on the whole, and wholly freed

From war tests; Ott’s a trimmer of great wicks;

Your orator a parlor lamp that smells

Of coal oil. And the larger truth would open

The prison doors for Ott, and push the orator

Behind the doors and lock them.”

Marion Strode

Went on till we arrived. And there was Ott

Serene and smiling in his prison clothes.

“We mean

To get a pardon for you,” Marion Strode

Spoke out at once, “and give this prison cell

To a certain orator of the commonplace.”

Ott laughed and said, “What for? You’d break his puerile

And shifty heart. This is a place for men

Who stand their ground. I may not have much brains,

But what I have I use as Socrates

Devoted his. I want to share the greatness

Of the great with what brains I possess. I like

This cell because it helps me do this.”

Then

We shook the hand of Ott and turned away!

THE GREAT RACE PASSES

They were the fair-haired Achæans,

Who won the Trojan war;

They were the Vikings who sailed to Iceland

And America.

They became the bone of England,

And the fire of Normandy,

And the will of Holland and Germany,

And the builders of America.

Their blood flowed into the veins of David,

And the veins of Jesus,

Homer and Æschylos,

Dante and Michael Angelo,

Alexander and Cæsar,

William of Orange and Washington.

They sang the songs,

They won the wars.

They were chosen for might in battle;

For blue eyes and white flesh,

For clean blood, for strength, for class.

They went to the wars

And left the little breeds

To stay with the women,

Trading and plowing.

They perished in battle

All the way along the stretch of centuries,

And left the little breeds to possess the earth—

The Great Race is passing.

They went forth to free peoples,

White and black.

They fought for their own freedom,

And perished.

They founded America,

And perished—

The Great Race is passing.

On State street throngs crowd and push,

Wriggle and writhe like maggots.

Their noses are flat,

Their faces are broad,

Their heads are like gourds,

Their eyes are dull,

Their mouths are open—

The Great Race is passing.

The meek shall inherit the earth:

Crackers and negroes in the South,

Methodists and prohibitionists,

Mongrels and pigmies

Possess the land.

A president sits in a wheel chair

Sick from the fumes of his own idle dreams—

The Great Race is passing.

DEMOS THE DESPOT

Not in the circus before your thumbs inverted,

Demos, the despot, do we stand;

But amid the swarming half-born girted,

And amid the idiot millions who command

Have we our freedom re-asserted—

Rule us you cannot, though you rule the land.

Frederick and Charles and Philip the misbegotten

Destroyed the body with fagots and with fetters,

Until the finger magic of movable letters

Choked them out of a world that they made rotten

With blood and corpses. But, O Demos, you

Plague us with dwarfs that trip us, run and hide;

Foul us with frogs that froth our ancient wine;

Scourge us with locusts, and with snakes that twine,

And hiss but do not kill. With lice subdue

Our patience, and our time divide

In seeking the favored hour. And then you say:

Have you not freedom, pray?

Do you not think and print? You do not bleed

For freedom’s sake! You do not die at once.

And if you starve, have you not had your way?

We let you print, but do we have to read?

Or suffer what you print to be displayed?

What you call liberty affronts

Our white-frog breasts, the laws we made.

All rightful rights remain.

Neglect and want shall be your ball and chain

If you trespass our rules—

In other times you would be burned or slain!

Such being the freedom that you grant, O Demos,

Our olden task is this: we fire the rushes

Of yesteryear, and beat with sticks of truth

The little snakes and dwarfs that hide in bushes;

Drain the dead water, set exhilarant youth

With ploughs upon the musty marsh to turn

The scum and green decay, and chase the frogs.

Then after we cut and drain and burn

All will be sweet and clean awhile.

But soon the weeds and crawlers will defile

Our labor. Then the demagogues

Will lead the chorus of the frogs:

This is the land, this is the field

This is the age of freedom, long revealed.

This is the age most blest,

This is the country freest, best,

This is the country that fulfills

Ancient hope and prophecy,

This is the age, this is the land,

The land, the age, the realm most free....

Then in that hour we shall be dancing,

And feasting with new gods upon the hills;

And graving images of lovelier Beauty;

And building altars of a purer Duty;

And singing rituals of a deeper Faith.

And living life, and facing death

As fairer gods would have us. And for you

O frogs, the fated sharers

Of all we dream and do,

We the dreamers, the preparers,

Shall then be gathering strength to burn

Bushes and plow again

The frog marsh and the weedy plain!

A REPUBLIC

Her faith abandoned and her place despised,

Her mission lost through ridicule, hooted forth

From the forum she erected, by cat calls,

And tory sneers and schemes. Her basic law

Scoffed out of court, amended at the need

Of stomachology by the judges, or

A majority of States, as it is said—

Rather by drunks and grafters, for the time

The spokesmen of the States, coerced and scared

By Methodists with a fund to hire spies,

And unearth women scrapes, or other sins

With which to say: “Vote dry, or be exposed.”

A marsh Atlantic drifting, towed at last

By pirates into harbor, made a pasture

For alien hatreds, greeds. A shackled press,

And voices gagged, creative spirits frozen,

Obtunded by disgust or fear. War only,

Armies and navies speak the national mind,

And make it move as a man; for other things

Resistance, thought divided, ostracism,

Or jail for their protagonists. At the mast

The cross above the crossbones, in between

The starry banner. A people hatched like chickens:

Of feeble spirit for much intercrossing,

Without vision and without will, incapable

Of lusty revolution whatever right

Is spit upon or taken. A wriggling mass

Bemused and babbling, trampling private right

As a tyrant tramples it, calling it law

Because it speaks the majority of the mob.

A land that breeds the reformer, the infuriate

Will in the shallow mind, the plague of frogs

That hop into our rooms at Pharaoh’s will,

And soil our banquet dishes, hour of joy.

A giantess growing huger, duller of mind,

Her gland pituitary being lost.

THE INN

Low windows in the room

That tunnel the darkness with light!

The tick of a clock in the fog that hovers

From the cave and slide of the darkness

Into the tunnels of light.

A cannon stove, a dog at my feet;

Cheap magazines on a table,

Dead flies, an atlas;

A register for guests,

And stillness! Not a voice, a step—

Only the tick of the clock!

Mists of Fear, Mists of Memory, swirl and writhe,

Dive, curl and coil

From the mountain tops.

A stretch of ochre grass by the river;

Bent trees imploring the sun;

And by the inn a road that stretches

Along the river, full of dead dreams, patience,

Weariness long endured!

Second morning of rain.

Second morning of separation, death in loneliness!

The wind rushes to the corner of the porch

And sighs as it hides.

Second morning that I see

The walker of the road:

An opera cloak of blue blows round him,

Flaps out a lining of red.

And an Alpine hat comes down to his little ears.

He is booted, he limps a little.

But he’s a figure compacted of iron,

He’s master of the landscape;

He has cowed it, kicks it about him,

As if to say: “A village, a road,

A river, mountains, rain, an inn,

And a lonely soul in the inn.

Well, what of it? To-morrow Benares,

To-morrow Bactria—who knows?”

And I know as well as I know dead flies,

And the tick of the clock

He wants me, passes the inn to draw me.

Strides to my view, though he never looks in.

The flap of his cloak is a gesture;

His eyes fixed straight ahead allure.

He is passing again, returns and passes.

I can stand no more!

I walk from the room, and haste to his side.

A rusty hand out of the blue of his cloak

Reaches for mine; silken soft in the palm

Like an anthropoid’s, but boned

To the strength of bronze in the fingers.

Red scar on his cheek—a sabre cut!

Or was it an aiguille gashed him

When he fell headlong like a meteor,

And rolled to a valley, got up, shook out,

And dusted himself, set forth to travel

From Ctesiphon to Sarajevo?...

But now the blue and red,

The Alpine hat, the little ears,

Against the ochre of stricken grass

Are shrunk to the rust of jowl and jaw,

And the scar, like lips grown to;

And the smile of Jenghiz Khan....

His voice is the lowest octave

Of riotous thought, conscienceless as nature.

No talk, much thought. The earth’s a treadmill,

And spheres back of us to toes dug in,

Until we come to a mountain lake

Clear and calm as a sky.

Green shadows rich as moss around the shores;

Clouds, clear blues at the centre!

We are bending over, see each other’s faces

In the water.

What was it? Red scar on his cheek,

Or red feather in the Alpine hat?

I thrill! For I see his eyes at last;

They are the fires of burning cities,

Carthage, Athens.

Quick! And we are lying

Looking up into the sky.

When a whiff of rotting men—I turn

But he stays me with his hand.

The scent passes—he talks

To me—the sky!

“I am a soul fancier and catcher,

A catcher and cager of birds,

Whether they be kites, condors, cormorants,

Crows, cow-birds, vultures,

Or martins, mocking-birds, or hawks,

Shrikes, orioles, clarindas, thrushes,

Songsters, or scavengers, I catch them,

And in these mountains, call them of memory

Or bitter reflection,

I cage them.

But to be brief: Your bird of prey I catch

By luring him with carrion;

And your mocking bird with sounds

Sweet as his own soul’s echo, as it were

Unreal made real. But whether bird of prey,

Or songster, it’s to fool them

Always, until my hand cups over so—

Then a cottage, in the mountains of memory!

“I prize the soul called mocking bird

Mimetic of all spirits, would be all,

Self-fooler, and world fooler!

Coos in scourged kingdoms like the dove,

Presaging peace;

Croaks like the eagle where the serfs implore

Omens and leadership.

I caught one lately, big as any crow.

And cooped him—you shall see!

But first as far as Prague, borne over seas,

I heard the eagle, yes, was nearly fooled,

Me, the expert in songsters, souls!

I looked my soul-bird up and found

My eagle was a mocking-bird;

And when he croaked of counsel and debate,

And breathing bracing air of matching minds,

He was the mocking bird embowered and hidden

In scented leaves of dreams,

And sang what he would be, but could not be!

A lyrist who sang down seclusion, still

Could live nowhere but in concealment.

A seeker of sweet notes from rich thesauri,

Slaved to the habit of the lexicon.

I would not catch him yet! Believe me now

There is that in each soul which builds its cage,

Achieves its capture, be it thirst or lust,

A lexicon or rhetoric, singing notes

Which makes the world say: ‘Hear the eagle cry!’

The world is fooled, but not the self is fooled;

It sleeps, submits to singing, but arouses

When soul is highest charmed with its own song,

And at the apex of the life, and treats

The man as mocking bird for what he is!...

The self as mocking bird betrays and leads,

Not eagle-wings, but weak wings to the fray,

And there the realest self is seen at last

Of self and all. To capture them or slay

Is where I come and act.

“Sweet bird of dawning, dreaming of Fourteen,

Who carried Christ across a stream,

And gained the magic sack,

Into the which whatever he wished would come

When saying Artchila and Murtchila.

But, he, this Fourteen, bird of dawning, mock-bird

How could he carry Christ? What magic bag

Would gather in, to words like ‘counsel,’ ‘process’?

So charmed with voice of self he flew alone

To a parley of fowls. And there amid rich crumbs,

Silk vestured falconers, birds of paradise,

Mock eagle fails, but true to song

Utters what self of him destroys him for.

Then I, to end, come in!

“Wouldn’t you think he’d know what had been done

To him, his counsels, processes?

Voice of the eagle sometimes, but the talons

And wings, where were they?

How was he Christopherus, how Fourteen?

I step in here and send him

On a great tour of singing, laugh in my sleeve

To see him start with his empty magic bag—

Empty? Great wars to come and woes,

Hatreds and desolations, blight of unfaith,

And distillate of night-shade: Soul’s despair

Were in the bag now.

But I forget—all could not see these in it,

Though most could see an empty bag. Well, now

My project was to send him forth to chant

The rhetoric of a life-time, tent him to

The repetend and echo, the refrain

That hides a hollow courage, and a brain

Tired of its make-believe, and borrowed moods.

My plan went further: Thus to send him forth,

And in keen lighting have him see himself

As some ten thousand saw him; in one moment

Together by him and them! flash picture

Photographed on a mountain’s wall,

And visible for ages! So it was!

I laughed, but being master I could pity....

My hand goes over him cup-like now, shuts eyes

From sight of how he pecked me peevishly,

Like a stud-sparrow shrilled. Time for the cage

For our mock-eagle, logolyrist, truly!—

You shall know them by their words.”

“How’s this so quick, on a peak?”

I said, for there we were, and the lake lost.

Below us the plum world, pitted with gums: oceans.

Streaked with streams: white-wash excrement of sparrows;

Pine forests: fuzz on the rind; lice green and brown: men.

I bawl in his ear against the breeze

Whirl-pooled around us:

“No Jesus business, no Budda business,

I wouldn’t give a damn for it all.”

“You lie,” he said. “You’re like the rest

Esophagus, coil of guts, a vent.”

“Man is a spirit.” “Man is a smell.”

Just then up from the world’s valley a breeze

Bearing the stench of ten million corpses—

“Hey! I faint.”

I back away, bump into a cottage wall, a door

Which opens—and there

Is logolyrist caged, in durance,

Twittering to himself the habitual notes,

Impotent, damned, alone!

“Night comes quickly these days,” says the landlady

Lighting the lamp. I stretch out of sleep

And pat the head of an honest dog.

MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM MARION REEDY

I

Son of the freer Republic, child of a day

More joyous and more vital and more blest

At the feast of Life; great heart, wise and gay,

Forgiving and compassionate, though ever stressed

Between the thorns, seeing afar the flower;

And living from hour to hour

In laughter for your wounds, or with a sigh

For the thickening brambles that around you pressed:—

April has come to me again and May

Since that July

When you sank gladly to a coveted rest,

Almost with your words to me upon your lips:

That immortality

Is not a promise, but a threat; that sleep

However eternal, or however deep

No more the worn out heart equips

For life again; cannot make whole

A liver and a dreamer, and a soul

That climbed, as you did, earth’s precipitous steep.

II

You who had lived with books and walked the city

Of statesman and of priest,

Of money changer, theorist,

And knew the human heart thereby,

Saw with clairvoyant eye

Behind my irony and laughter, pity;

Behind indifference desire;

At the core of me unquenchable fire,

Walled with impenetrable ice.

This I confess:

I strewed adversities to your love

With pride, with slow forgiveness

Of the world’s ways. Yet for the strength thereof,

Born of that mystic brotherhood, which can rise

From kindred spirits, none the less

Was your love mine, even to the end.

You were my brother, O my friend!

III

The wages of Wisdom is Death:—

Shame, Fear, Want, Hate, Lust, Strife and Enmity,

All these you lived, and living them through

You survived them, but still knew

Their quality. At last from them made free

You stood in blossom, perfecter of bloom

At the touch of the sickle than ever in all your years.

Pure flame had conquered the reek and fume

Of the gross fuel of your nature, feeding

The light that lighted us, but to consume

Itself at last. O soul of eyes and ears

Open and heeding

Signs of all fair and foul in the land, all climes,

Riches of dead epochs, ancient times.

O, human, worldly Augustine, in your tower

Watching the wavering lines of Want or Power,

Hailing and warning, Stilites of the rite

Of Epicurus (that happiness at the last

Is freedom) viewing the misty age

Atop a pillar of Zeus, and holding fast,

Through change and weariness, to work, in spite

Of clear conviction, nothing can assuage

The soul’s desire. Though the flesh has food,

And water, and is satisfied,

Yet the soul must hunger for hope, for explanation

Of this insoluble task of life, defied

By every test of the human soul, still wooed

By flitting lights of faith and intimation.

Yet if soul father us could soul not do

For souls of us what water for our thirst

Accomplishes? Promethean, this you knew:

The restless search with which man’s soul is cursed;

Yet brooding on it, still you dreamed

Of a city for all nations, consecrate

To the creative spirit of God in man;

Guardian angels were to you revealed

In labor with man’s fate,

Uplifting the human spirit, like a flame,

Consoled, redeemed,

Strengthened and purified and healed,

To the silent, eternal life from whence it came.

IV

To this you have gone. I saw your artist hands

That had so little rest

Folded in quietness upon your breast.

Whether the dead find peace, or loose the bands

Of some intenser rhythm, still with peace

Your face was sealed, as of a great surcease:

Like sculpture, tideless streams,

Or winter woods, or windless skies,

Or sleep that has no dreams.

Those spheres of flame, your ever wandering eyes,

Were turned within to a realm more deep,

Where death’s great secret seemingly was known

As some clear, mild Simplicity! Or ’twas sleep

Of the unborn that stilled them, or the void

Of the dead seed never sown....

You were no more to me, whatever death is.

I stood alone

Empty of hand, save for the heritage

Of what you were:

A voice, a light, a music of deep tone,

Which life made richer, and the age,

And something of heaven employed

To be for us our best interpreter.

You were our star of empire lighting

The path of peoples more and more

To a freer day! O, voice of you which woke

Rapt listeners over the earth.

Out of your ashes wings of memory soar

To carry the message of your life and word.

Death of your body was the clearer birth

Of the spirit of you, shining afar

Upon our day and days to be:

As evening winds blow coldly, yet make free

From mist and hovering cloud

The Western Star!

GOD AND MY COUNTRY

He had the bluest eyes I ever saw,

And a smiling face like a bed of yellow daisies,

And a voice around the house like a pet crow.

And he went whistling through the yard and rooms,

His hands grimed up with grease about machines,

Which he could take apart and put together.

And he could run a motor boat or a car.

Or mend a telephone or a dynamo.

And he knew novels, poetry and science.

And he could swim, and box and run a race.

And on a morning I went in his room

And saw his naked body, saw his shoulders

As broad as a great wrestler’s, and his arms

As big as mine. He started to play bear,

And took me in his arms and hugged me so

I felt my ribs crack. Then I wondered when

He had quit wearing stockings and knee breeches,

And when it was he slipped to seventeen,

Became a man.

And so the war came on.

He tried to be a flyer, for he knew

What engines were and all about machines

And he knew trigonometry, and chemistry,

And wireless telegraphy—but his age

Debarred him from the flyers; so he chafed

And did not whistle as he used to do,

But growled a little like a yearling bear.

And then his face grew bright again: he had gone,

Enlisted in the army, came to me,

His face all glowing: “Everything I am

You taught to me,” he said; “to love the truth,

To love democracy and America.

And now we have a war, the very first

When men could fight to bring democracy.

Our country turned against the revolution

In France, which was a democratic cause,

But now we war to bring democracy

To peoples everywhere, and I am off.

God moves among us, and to serve and die

Are blessings, I am happy, and am off.”

He terrified me with his shining face,

His blue eyes, beautiful body, slim and strong.

St. George was not more beautiful. I was awed,

And said to him: “You terrify me, boy.

There are plenty of men to go, await the call;

Go if they call you, but you have your school,

And if you go you’ll never go to school

Again, and that will leave you half prepared

For life, you’ll feel it all the rest of life.”

But he stood up so straight and stern and shining

And said: “I owe this service to you, Dad,

For what you’ve been and taught me, and I owe it

To God and to my country.” So it was

He terrified me, and I said: “My boy,

I am not wise enough, after all, to say

What you should do. Perhaps you have a vision—

You are America come to herself;

A vision and a mission and a glory

Perhaps, perhaps. I step aside. Go on!”

They took him to a camp, and in a week

I went to see him. He was in a pen

Like a prize porker, looked a little down.

He had been shot with vaccines of all sorts.

He didn’t say much. Two weeks after that

I saw him and he had a cold he caught

From doing picket duty in the rain

And sleeping on a mattress soaked with rain.

The food was pretty good, not very good.

He whispered: “All the pin-heads in the world

Have got the jobs of officers. I’m surprised.

I know more mathematics than they do,

And more of everything. I thought an officer

Was educated. Well, I am surprised.”

He said the boys were dying right and left

Because they had no care. And on a day

When he came home to visit for a while

He was stricken with the flu. I telephoned

The officer, who raved and said no trick

Would go with him. He’d send for him. He did,

And took him out with a raging temperature,

And back to camp. He almost died for that.

And, when he got up, wobbled for some weeks.

And about the time he stood up fairly strong

They shipped him off to Europe; and they went

Yelling like tigers smelling blood, and God

Seemed farthest from their thoughts.

Well, so it went.

And after while we had the armistice,

The war was over, but no letter came.

Where was he? Dead? We couldn’t learn a thing.

Until at last this boy who went to fight

For God and for democracy landed up

In Russia fighting democracy, as America

Fought France in eighteen hundred—for a letter

Came to us telling where he was. And there

He stayed some months and fought for covenants

Arrived at in the open, independence

Of little and big peoples, for the sea’s

Freedom, or democracy, I’m not sure,

For one of these or all, I am not sure.

He got through anyway, or they got through

With him, perhaps, for he came back at last,

One eye out and one leg gone, and he’d lost

God, so he said, and didn’t use the word

Democracy at all, and, as for war,

He said to me: “What is it? Everything

Has its own idea, and the idea of war

Is killing people? That’s our job, that’s war!

And everybody yells atrocities,

And everybody does ’em—what the hell

Do people think war is, a Sunday School?

I want some money, Dad, for I am broke;

And I can’t work at much now, and, by God,

I think I’ll write my story. So they’ll know

They use you, and they fool you, and you die

That some one may make money selling stuff,

Or grab off lands or commerce. Hell’s delight!

When I was sick in Russia, had delusions,

I saw a snake so big he wrapped the world

And swallowed it with everybody in it.

You see, the snake’s the money-men, big business,

The schemers, human buzzards, who eat up

Young fellows and the kids, and lay on fat

With fresh young blood that wants to shed itself

For God and truth! I killed a Russian soldier

And said: ‘You bastard,’ as I stuck him through,

You hate yourself, so you just kill to glut

Your hatred of yourself, your cruelty

Which lusts, as it can masquerade behind

The mask of duty. Give me a dollar, Dad,

To get some cigarettes and some shaving blades.”

THE DUNES OF INDIANA

Under a sky as green as a juniper berry

The yellow sands of the dunes, in clefts and curves

Run up and down, until the horizon swerves

At Michigan City, twenty miles from Gary.

Scrawls and grotesqueries of giants who laugh

At the storm’s puffed cheeks, the water’s pilfering hands!

Like the beat of a heart traced by a cardiograph,

Their sky-line lifts and lulls,

With the eternal pulse

Of air and the sands.

The dunes are a quilt of yellow, green and gray

Spread to the Calumet River.

Peaked by giant children who play

Circus with feet for poles. Fantastic dunes,

Protean hills, and migratory tents

Of invisible gypsies, changing with the moon’s

Replenished and exhausted valleys of light.

Forests of pine and oak arise

On many a height,

And down the steep descents

Flourish and vanish from sight,

Under the restless feet of the wandering hills.

They trace in sand the changes of the skies

When the sun of evening smelts

Great towers of cloud or battlements,

And levels them, or warps

Their shapes to broken walls,

Or twisted scraps,

Or floors of emerald strewn with lion pelts....

Here there are water-falls;

Lakes bright as mercury, and pools

Green as the mosses, where hepaticas

And asters scurry before the gesturing wind;

Cool hollows, scented brakes

Of bramble, fern and cane;

Great marshes where the flags leap like green snakes,

Bordered with garish gules

Of pye-weed; over whose wastes the crane

Flaps the slow rhythm of extended wings.

And on whose reeds the blackbird sings

A quaver of blue water, March’s fire.

Between the feet of the dunes and the trampling troops

Of waves along the shore the sand is pounded

Into a broad mosaic firm and smooth,

Whereon are strewn old reels, between the groups

Of blackened hut and booth.

Boats lie here where they grounded,

Like skeletons in the desert ribbed and black,

Scaled with the water’s scurf.

The shore is the moat between the ruined rampart

Of the dunes, whose shifting is stayed

By splotches of thickets, trees and turf,

And the invading surf.

Here phantom mists descend, and the wrack

Of autumn clouds fade into the air when storms

Harry the water, and the sand is flayed

By the whip of the wind.

There is forever here the futile fashioning

Of hills, and their leveling;

The growth of forests and their burial;

Pools filled and rivers changed or dried

Between the spoiling winds, and the mystical

Hands of the tide!

Branches as gnarled as an ancient olive tree

Stream cherry blossoms like blown snow

Toward the blue of the lake, a hundred feet below.

They have been sand, now being blossoms drift

With the winds whose spirit cannot be

Quieted or given shrift.

By night they howl or whine

As if they asked for words, or a sign

To tell of the sand and seeds and spores

Which build and root, bear blossoms, seed,

And change the uplands and the shores;

Destroy, make over, mend

Without use, without end

In an endless cycle of sand and seed,

Of wind and the washing of waves;

They would tell why forests grow and find their graves;

And hills glide to their sepulchres,

Even as cities sink and pass away:

Old Memphis, or old Bactria....

NATURE

Seas, mountains, rivers, hills, forests and plains,

Our earth that floats in heaven’s translucent sphere,

And keeps us fosterlings, though man attains—

As a spider winds the nerve white gossamer

From its own being, and unwinding sails

The heights—the secrets of the stars, the sheer

Chasms of space, and tears the vaporous veils

From Force and Distance. Nature! At the last

Our breast of consolation! Man exhales

Thereon the spirit which was an him cast

From that same breast at birth. But what you are

Remains, or on the mind of man is glassed

As you, remaining; while the farthest star,

The changing moon, the lessening sun, the sands

Of buried cities toll our calendar

Of dying days. Waters by star light, lands

That slip or climb; leaves, blossoms, fruits contain

The flesh of wonder perished, and the hands

That sought with zeal or laughter, but in pain

To know you and themselves. Still nourishing,

Destroying, but unriddled, you remain!

Immeasurable Arc! To which our brief existence

Is a point, if relative, not understood.

With you endowed with motion and persistence,

Contained within you, is life evil, good?

Is life not of you? Is there aught without

By which to judge this restless brotherhood

Of will and water, and to quiet doubt

That life is good? And may the scheme deny

Itself when it is all, and rules throughout,

Knows no defeat, except as forces vie

Within it, striving? But, O Nature, you

Mother of suns and systems, what can lie

As God beyond you, making you untrue

To larger truth or being? You are all!

And man who moves within you may imbrue

His hands in war, or famine on him fall

Out of your eyeless genius, yet what wrong

Is wrought to your creating, magical

Renewal, scheme? What arbiter more strong

Than you are judges discord for the strife

That stirs upon our earth, wherever throng

Thoughts, forces, fires. What is evil? Life!

Even as life is struggle, whether it smite,

Or lift, as waves to waves in will are rife

With enmity. Whatever is, is right.

Like insects on a drift weed water tossed

The sea of nature moves in man’s despite,

While generations flourish and are lost.

Ether of the ethereal energy

Which whirls the atoms: Will in man. And soul

Which is to light as light to flame: the free

Soaring of man’s thought. This is the dole

And tragedy of man: He has outgrown

His kinship with the beasts that kept him whole,

Through thought, which is not instinct, but would own

The unerring realm of instinct. Like a sun

He flares his thought in storms of fire, has flown

His symmetry and sphere, has wandered, won

No orbit for the beast’s, which he has marred,

Departed from; must finish what’s begun,

Until he be in spirit moved and starred,

Instinct regained to thought, his sun created

As far as flames have leaped; or leave the scarred

Black cavities of his hopes to beings fated

To grow therefrom to what he failed to reach.

Something within him drew the gods, and mated

His spirit to celestial powers. The breach

Between him and the beast is fixed. He sinks

In tangled madness, anger, railing speech,

Below the ape, or else he rises, links

His being to a life to which he climbs,

A realm of thought harmonious, while he thinks.

This is the tragedy of man, and Time’s

Colossal task laid on him: Roll he must

The stone up to the peak against the slimes,

And fasten it, or let it make him dust,

Escaped his hand and crushing, still confess

That you, O Mighty Mother, still are just

Who fling him down to failure, nothingness.

This is the tragedy of man: to learn

Your secret wishes, having learned to press

The heights of life, or ignorant still to burn

With questioning; and on this stage of earth

Live as they lived of old in a return,

Endless of useless labor, madder mirth.

Labor or Mirth! No matter—but to man,

And for an hour! And after that the sleep.

Waking or sleeping man fulfills the plan

Of you, O Mother. Other thought may creep

On man’s defeated spirit, make him say

That you should weep, O Mother, if he weep.

But we are but ephemera in a play

Of tangled sun light, and the universe

Of ages counts the minutes of our day,

And makes them of the ages. And the curse

That man deems his is not upon the far

And infinite existence. It could nurse

No evil in great spaces, sun and star

As great as man’s to man, and not lie down

To death as man does. Hence if you unbar

To us, O Nature, nothing better, crown

Our hour with folly still, you give us rest

Among the mountains, meadows, and unclown

Our idiot brows, and on your infinite breast

Rock us eternally under the infinite sky.

THE END

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OPEN SEA ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™ electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™ works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™ trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™ License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary, compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying, performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works provided that:

- • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”

- • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.

- • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.

- • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread public support and donations to carry out its mission of increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations ($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™, including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Table of Contents

THE OPEN SEA

CONTENTS

THE OPEN SEA

PART ONE THE OPEN SEA

BRUTUS BRUTUS AND ANTONY (Lucilius Talks at a Feast Given to Aristocrates in Rome.) B. C. 20

THE OPEN SEA

BRUTUS

AT THE MERMAID TAVERN (April 10th, 1613)

CHARLOTTE CORDAY (The Revolutionary Tribunal; July 17th, 1793)

A MAN CHILD IS BORN (February 12th, 1809. Log Hut near Hodgenville, Ky.) (A neighbor woman is talking)

RICHARD BOOTH TO HIS SON JUNIUS BRUTUS (London, December 13th, 1813.)

A MAN CHILD IS BORN (July 14th, 1839. The Farm.) (Mrs. Booth is speaking.)

SQUIRE BOWLING GREEN (Rutledge’s Tavern, New Salem, July 14th, 1839.)

LINCOLN SPEAKING IN CONGRESS (January 12th, 1848.)

JOHN WILKES BOOTH AT THE FARM (January 12th, 1848.)

JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH (On a steamboat bound for Cincinnati from New Orleans, November 30th, 1852.)

A CERTAIN POET ON THE DEBATES (At Alton, Illinois, October 15th, 1858.) (Arguing with a group at the hotel.)

PART II

THE DECISION (April 14th, 1861.)

PART III

LINCOLN MAKES A MEMORANDUM

WINTER GARDEN THEATRE

THE SPARROW HAWK IN THE RAIN

ADELAIDE AND JOHN WILKES BOOTH (At the National Hall, Washington, April 9, 1865.)

BRUTUS LIVES AGAIN IN BOOTH (Ford’s Theatre, Good Friday, April 14th, 1865.)

Scene II. The White House.

Scene III. The entrance of Ford’s Theatre.

Scene IV. Lincoln and Mrs. Lincoln Driving to the Theatre.

Scene V. The stage of Ford’s Theatre.

Scene VI. Back of the stage.

Scene VII. The Presidential Box.

Scene VIII. Dress Circle.

Scene IX. In the passageway leading to the Presidential box.

Scene X. The Presidential box.

Scene XI. Booth at the door of the Presidential box aiming a pistol.

Scene XII. On the stage.

BOOTH’S PHILIPPI (Garrett’s Tobacco House, Bowling Green, Virginia, April 26th, 1865. Booth and Harrold.)

SCENE I

Scene II. (At the Garrett House.)

Scene III. (Inside the Tobacco House.)

Scene IV. (At the Garrett House.)

Scene V. (Inside the Tobacco House.)

Scene VI. (Boston Corbett looking through a crack in the Tobacco House at Booth amid the flames.)

Scene VII. (On the lawn.)

THE BURIAL OF BOSTON CORBETT

THE NEW APOCRYPHA BUSINESS REVERSES

THE FIG TREE (Matthew, Chapter XXI.)

TRIBUTE MONEY (Matthew, Chapter XXII: 24-27.)

THE GREAT MERGER (Exodus, Chapter XX.)

AT DECAPOLIS (Mark, Chapter V.)

1 THE ACCUSATION

2 JESUS BEFORE MAGISTRATE AHAZ

THE SINGLE STANDARD (St. John, Chapter VIII.)

FIRST ENTRANTS (St. Matthew, Chapter XXII: 31.)

JOHN IN PRISON (St. Luke, Chapter XVI. St. Matthew, Chapter XI.)

ANANIAS AND SAPPHIRA

THE TWO MALEFACTORS

BERENICE

NEBUCHADNEZZAR: OR EATING GRASS

HIP LUNG ON YUAN CHANG

ULYSSES

THE PARTY

CELSUS AT HADRIAN’S VILLA

INVOCATION TO THE GODS

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

PENTHEUS IN THESE STATES

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

COMPARATIVE CRIMINALS

THE GREAT RACE PASSES

DEMOS THE DESPOT

A REPUBLIC

THE INN

MONODY ON THE DEATH OF WILLIAM MARION REEDY

I

II

III

IV

GOD AND MY COUNTRY

THE DUNES OF INDIANA

NATURE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE