Our Guardian Angels and Their Children

  Where a river roars in rapids
  And doves in maples fret,
  Where peace has decked the pastures
  Our guardian angels met.

  Long they had sought each other
  In God’s mysterious name,
  Had climbed the solemn chaos tides
  Alone, with hope aflame: 

  Amid the demon deeps had wound
  By many a fearful way. 
  As they beheld each other
  Their shout made glad the day.

  No need of purse delayed them,
  No hand of friend or kin
  Nor menace of the bell and book,
  Nor fear of mortal sin.

  You did not speak, my girl,
  At this, our parting hour. 
  Long we held each other
  And watched their deeds of power.

  They made a curious Eden. 
  We saw that it was good. 
  We thought with them in unison. 
  We proudly understood

  Their amaranth eternal,
  Their roses strange and fair,
  The asphodels they scattered
  Upon the living air.

  They built a house of clouds
  With skilled immortal hands. 
  They entered through the silver doors. 
  Their wings were wedded brands.

  I labored up the valley
  To granite mountains free. 
  You hurried down the river
  To Zidon by the sea.

  But at their place of meeting
  They keep a home and shrine. 
  Your angel twists a purple flax,
  Then weaves a mantle fine.

  My angel, her defender
  Upstanding, spreads the light
  On painted clouds of fancy
  And mists that touch the height.

  Their sturdy babes speak kindly
  And fly and run with joy,
  Shepherding the helpless lambs
  A Grecian girl and boy.

  These children visit Heaven
  Each year and make of worth
  All we planned and wrought in youth
  And all our tears on earth.

  From books our God has written
  They sing of high desire. 
  They turn the leaves in gentleness. 
  Their wings are folded fire.

Epitaphs for Two Players

I. Edwin Booth

An old actor at the Player’s Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California.  There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude assembly rooms for strolling players.

  The youth played in the blear hotel. 
  The rafters gleamed with glories strange. 
  And winds of mourning Elsinore
  Howling at chance and fate and change;
  Voices of old Europe’s dead
  Disturbed the new-built cattle-shed,
  The street, the high and solemn range.

  The while the coyote barked afar
  All shadowy was the battlement. 
  The ranch-boys huddled and grew pale,
  Youths who had come on riot bent. 
  Forgot were pranks well-planned to sting. 
  Behold there rose a ghostly king,
  And veils of smoking Hell were rent.

  When Edwin Booth played Hamlet, then
  The camp-drab’s tears could not but flow. 
  Then Romance lived and breathed and burned. 
  She felt the frail queen-mother’s woe,
  Thrilled for Ophelia, fond and blind,
  And Hamlet, cruel, yet so kind,
  And moaned, his proud words hurt her so.

  A haunted place, though new and harsh! 
  The Indian and the Chinaman
  And Mexican were fain to learn
  What had subdued the Saxon clan. 
  Why did they mumble, brood, and stare
  When the court-players curtsied fair
  And the Gonzago scene began?

  And ah, the duel scene at last! 
  They cheered their prince with stamping feet. 
  A death-fight in a palace!  Yea,
  With velvet hangings incomplete,
  A pasteboard throne, a pasteboard crown,
  And yet a monarch tumbled down,
  A brave lad fought in splendor meet.

  Was it a palace or a barn? 
  Immortal as the gods he flamed. 
  There in his last great hour of rage
  His foil avenged a mother shamed. 
  In duty stern, in purpose deep
  He drove that king to his black sleep
  And died, all godlike and untamed.

. . . . .

  I was not born in that far day. 
  I hear the tale from heads grown white. 
  And then I walk that earlier street,
  The mining camp at candle-light. 
  I meet him wrapped in musings fine
  Upon some whispering silvery line
  He yet resolves to speak aright.

II.  John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian

  In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick,
  the king’s jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.

  Yorick is dead.  Boy Hamlet walks forlorn
  Beneath the battlements of Elsinore. 
  Where are those oddities and capers now
  That used to “set the table on a roar”?

  And do his bauble-bells beyond the clouds
  Ring out, and shake with mirth the planets bright? 
  No doubt he brings the blessed dead good cheer,
  But silence broods on Elsinore tonight.

  That little elf, Ophelia, eight years old,
  Upon her battered doll’s staunch bosom weeps. 
  ("O best of men, that wove glad fairy-tales.”)
  With tear-burned face, at last the darling sleeps.

  Hamlet himself could not give cheer or help,
  Though firm and brave, with his boy-face controlled. 
  For every game they started out to play
  Yorick invented, in the days of old.

  The times are out of joint!  O cursed spite! 
  The noble jester Yorick comes no more. 
  And Hamlet hides his tears in boyish pride
  By some lone turret-stair of Elsinore.

Mae Marsh, Motion Picture Actress

  In “Man’s Genesis”, “The Wild Girl of the Sierras”, “The Wharf Rat”,
  “A Girl of the Paris Streets”, etc.

      I

  The arts are old, old as the stones
  From which man carved the sphinx austere. 
  Deep are the days the old arts bring: 
  Ten thousand years of yesteryear.

      II

  She is madonna in an art
  As wild and young as her sweet eyes: 
  A frail dew flower from this hot lamp
  That is today’s divine surprise.

  Despite raw lights and gloating mobs
  She is not seared:  a picture still: 
  Rare silk the fine director’s hand
  May weave for magic if he will.

  When ancient films have crumbled like
  Papyrus rolls of Egypt’s day,
  Let the dust speak:  “Her pride was high,
  All but the artist hid away: 

  “Kin to the myriad artist clan
  Since time began, whose work is dear.” 
  The deep new ages come with her,
  Tomorrow’s years of yesteryear.

Two Old Crows

  Two old crows sat on a fence rail,
  Two old crows sat on a fence rail,
  Thinking of effect and cause,
  Of weeds and flowers,
  And nature’s laws. 
  One of them muttered, one of them stuttered,
  One of them stuttered, one of them muttered. 
  Each of them thought far more than he uttered. 
  One crow asked the other crow a riddle. 
  One crow asked the other crow a riddle: 
  The muttering crow
  Asked the stuttering crow,
  “Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle? 
  Why does a bee have a sword to his fiddle?”
  “Bee-cause,” said the other crow,
  “Bee-cause,
  B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause.”

  Just then a bee flew close to their rail:
  “Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZZ.” 
  And those two black crows
  Turned pale,
  And away those crows did sail. 
  Why? 
  B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause. 
  B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B B-cause. 
  “Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz ZZZZZZZ.”

The Drunkard’s Funeral

  “Yes,” said the sister with the little pinched face,
  The busy little sister with the funny little tract:
  “This is the climax, the grand fifth act. 
  There rides the proud, at the finish of his race. 
  There goes the hearse, the mourners cry,
  The respectable hearse goes slowly by. 
  The wife of the dead has money in her purse,
  The children are in health, so it might have been worse. 
  That fellow in the coffin led a life most foul. 
  A fierce defender of the red bar-tender,
  At the church he would rail,
  At the preacher he would howl. 
  He planted every deviltry to see it grow. 
  He wasted half his income on the lewd and the low. 
  He would trade engender for the red bar-tender,
  He would homage render to the red bar-tender,
  And in ultimate surrender to the red bar-tender,
  He died of the tremens, as crazy as a loon,
  And his friends were glad, when the end came soon. 
  There goes the hearse, the mourners cry,
  The respectable hearse goes slowly by. 
  And now, good friends, since you see how it ends,
  Let each nation-mender flay the red bar-tender,
  Abhor
  The transgression
  Of the red bar-tender,
  Ruin
  The profession
  Of the red bar-tender: 
  Force him into business where his work does good. 
  Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood,
  Let him learn how to plough, let him learn to chop wood.

  “The moral,
  The conclusion,
  The verdict now you know:
  ’The saloon must go,
  The saloon must go,
  The saloon,
  The saloon,
  The saloon,
  Must go.’”

  “You are right, little sister,” I said to myself,
  “You are right, good sister,” I said. 
  “Though you wear a mussy bonnet
  On your little gray head,
  You are right, little sister,” I said.

The Raft

  The whole world on a raft!  A King is here,
  The record of his grandeur but a smear. 
  Is it his deacon-beard, or old bald pate
  That makes the band upon his whims to wait? 
  Loot and mud-honey have his soul defiled. 
  Quack, pig, and priest, he drives camp-meetings wild
  Until they shower their pennies like spring rain
  That he may preach upon the Spanish main. 
  What landlord, lawyer, voodoo-man has yet
  A better native right to make men sweat?

  The whole world on a raft!  A Duke is here
  At sight of whose lank jaw the muses leer. 
  Journeyman-printer, lamb with ferret eyes,
  In life’s skullduggery he takes the prize
  Yet stands at twilight wrapped in Hamlet dreams. 
  Into his eyes the Mississippi gleams. 
  The sandbar sings in moonlit veils of foam. 
  A candle shines from one lone cabin home. 
  The waves reflect it like a drunken star. 
  A banjo and a hymn are heard afar. 
  No solace on the lazy shore excels
  The Duke’s blue castle with its steamer-bells. 
  The floor is running water, and the roof
  The stars’ brocade with cloudy warp and woof.

  And on past sorghum fields the current swings. 
  To Christian Jim the Mississippi sings. 
  This prankish wave-swept barque has won its place,
  A ship of jesting for the human race. 
  But do you laugh when Jim bows down forlorn
  His babe, his deaf Elizabeth to mourn? 
  And do you laugh, when Jim, from Huck apart
  Gropes through the rain and night with breaking heart?

  But now that imp is here and we can smile,
  Jim’s child and guardian this long-drawn while. 
  With knife and heavy gun, a hunter keen,
  He stops for squirrel-meat in islands green. 
  The eternal gamin, sleeping half the day,
  Then stripped and sleek, a river-fish at play. 
  And then well-dressed, ashore, he sees life spilt. 
  The river-bank is one bright crazy-quilt
  Of patch-work dream, of wrath more red than lust,
  Where long-haired feudist Hotspurs bite the dust ... 
  This Huckleberry Finn is but the race,
  America, still lovely in disgrace,
  New childhood of the world, that blunders on
  And wonders at the darkness and the dawn,
  The poor damned human race, still unimpressed
  With its damnation, all its gamin breast
  Chorteling at dukes and kings with nigger Jim,
  Then plotting for their fall, with jestings grim.

  Behold a Republic
  Where a river speaks to men
  And cries to those that love its ways,
  Answering again
  When in the heart’s extravagance
  The rascals bend to say
  “O singing Mississippi
  Shine, sing for us today.”

  But who is this in sweeping Oxford gown
  Who steers the raft, or ambles up and down,
  Or throws his gown aside, and there in white
  Stands gleaming like a pillar of the night? 
  The lion of high courts, with hoary mane,
  Fierce jester that this boyish court will gain
  Mark Twain! 
  The bad world’s idol: 
  Old Mark Twain!

  He takes his turn as watchman with the rest,
  With secret transports to the stars addressed,
  With nightlong broodings upon cosmic law,
  With daylong laughter at this world so raw.

  All praise to Emerson and Whitman, yet
  The best they have to say, their sons forget. 
  But who can dodge this genius of the stream,
  The Mississippi Valley’s laughing dream? 
  He is the artery that finds the sea
  In this the land of slaves, and boys still free. 
  He is the river, and they one and all
  Sail on his breast, and to each other call.

  Come let us disgrace ourselves,
  Knock the stuffed gods from their shelves,
  And cinders at the schoolhouse fling. 
  Come let us disgrace ourselves,
  And live on a raft with gray Mark Twain
  And Huck and Jim
  And the Duke and the King.

The Ghosts of the Buffaloes

  Last night at black midnight I woke with a cry,
  The windows were shaking, there was thunder on high,
  The floor was a-tremble, the door was a-jar,
  White fires, crimson fires, shone from afar. 
  I rushed to the door yard.  The city was gone. 
  My home was a hut without orchard or lawn. 
  It was mud-smear and logs near a whispering stream,
  Nothing else built by man could I see in my dream ... 
  Then ... 
  Ghost-kings came headlong, row upon row,
  Gods of the Indians, torches aglow.

  They mounted the bear and the elk and the deer,
  And eagles gigantic, aged and sere,
  They rode long-horn cattle, they cried “A-la-la.” 
  They lifted the knife, the bow, and the spear,
  They lifted ghost-torches from dead fires below,
  The midnight made grand with the cry “A-la-la.” 
  The midnight made grand with a red-god charge,
  A red-god show,
  A red-god show,
  “A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la.”

  With bodies like bronze, and terrible eyes
  Came the rank and the file, with catamount cries,
  Gibbering, yipping, with hollow-skull clacks,
  Riding white bronchos with skeleton backs,
  Scalp-hunters, beaded and spangled and bad,
  Naked and lustful and foaming and mad,
  Flashing primeval demoniac scorn,
  Blood-thirst and pomp amid darkness reborn,
  Power and glory that sleep in the grass
  While the winds and the snows and the great rains pass. 
  They crossed the gray river, thousands abreast,
  They rode in infinite lines to the west,
  Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam,
  Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home,
  The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled,
  And on past those far golden splendors they whirled. 
  They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep. 
  And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep.

  And the wind crept by
  Alone, unkempt, unsatisfied,
  The wind cried and cried
  Muttered of massacres long past,
  Buffaloes in shambles vast ... 
  An owl said:  “Hark, what is a-wing?”
  I heard a cricket carolling,
  I heard a cricket carolling,
  I heard a cricket carolling.

  Then ... 
  Snuffing the lightning that crashed from on high
  Rose royal old buffaloes, row upon row. 
  The lords of the prairie came galloping by. 
  And I cried in my heart “A-la-la, a-la-la,
  A red-god show,
  A red-god show,
  A-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la, a-la-la.”

  Buffaloes, buffaloes, thousands abreast,
  A scourge and amazement, they swept to the west. 
  With black bobbing noses, with red rolling tongues,
  Coughing forth steam from their leather-wrapped lungs,
  Cows with their calves, bulls big and vain,
  Goring the laggards, shaking the mane,
  Stamping flint feet, flashing moon eyes,
  Pompous and owlish, shaggy and wise. 
  Like sea-cliffs and caves resounded their ranks
  With shoulders like waves, and undulant flanks. 
  Tide upon tide of strange fury and foam,
  Spirits and wraiths, the blue was their home,
  The sky was their goal where the star-flags are furled,
  And on past those far golden splendors they whirled. 
  They burned to dim meteors, lost in the deep,
  And I turned in dazed wonder, thinking of sleep.

  I heard a cricket’s cymbals play,
  A scarecrow lightly flapped his rags,
  And a pan that hung by his shoulder rang,
  Rattled and thumped in a listless way,
  And now the wind in the chimney sang,
  The wind in the chimney,
  The wind in the chimney,
  The wind in the chimney,
  Seemed to say:
  “Dream, boy, dream,
  If you anywise can. 
  To dream is the work
  Of beast or man. 
  Life is the west-going dream-storm’s breath,
  Life is a dream, the sigh of the skies,
  The breath of the stars, that nod on their pillows
  With their golden hair mussed over their eyes.” 
  The locust played on his musical wing,
  Sang to his mate of love’s delight. 
  I heard the whippoorwill’s soft fret. 
  I heard a cricket carolling,
  I heard a cricket carolling,
  I heard a cricket say:  “Good-night, good-night,
  Good-night, good-night, ... good-night.”

The Broncho that Would Not Be Broken

  A little colt ­broncho, loaned to the farm
  To be broken in time without fury or harm,
  Yet black crows flew past you, shouting alarm,
  Calling “Beware,” with lugubrious singing ... 
  The butterflies there in the bush were romancing,
  The smell of the grass caught your soul in a trance,
  So why be a-fearing the spurs and the traces,
  O broncho that would not be broken of dancing?

  You were born with the pride of the lords great and olden
  Who danced, through the ages, in corridors golden. 
  In all the wide farm-place the person most human. 
  You spoke out so plainly with squealing and capering,
  With whinnying, snorting, contorting and prancing,
  As you dodged your pursuers, looking askance,
  With Greek-footed figures, and Parthenon paces,
  O broncho that would not be broken of dancing.

  The grasshoppers cheered.  “Keep whirling,” they said. 
  The insolent sparrows called from the shed
  “If men will not laugh, make them wish they were dead.” 
  But arch were your thoughts, all malice displacing,
  Though the horse-killers came, with snake-whips advancing. 
  You bantered and cantered away your last chance. 
  And they scourged you, with Hell in their speech and their faces,
  O broncho that would not be broken of dancing.

  “Nobody cares for you,” rattled the crows,
  As you dragged the whole reaper, next day, down the rows. 
  The three mules held back, yet you danced on your toes. 
  You pulled like a racer, and kept the mules chasing. 
  You tangled the harness with bright eyes side-glancing,
  While the drunk driver bled you a pole for a lance
  And the giant mules bit at you keeping their places. 
  O broncho that would not be broken of dancing.

  In that last afternoon your boyish heart broke. 
  The hot wind came down like a sledge-hammer stroke. 
  The blood-sucking flies to a rare feast awoke. 
  And they searched out your wounds, your death-warrant tracing. 
  And the merciful men, their religion enhancing,
  Stopped the red reaper, to give you a chance. 
  Then you died on the prairie, and scorned all disgraces,
  O broncho that would not be broken of dancing.

Souvenir of Great Bend, Kansas.

The Prairie Battlements

  (To Edgar Lee Masters, with great respect.)

  Here upon the prairie
  Is our ancestral hall. 
  Agate is the dome,
  Cornelian the wall. 
  Ghouls are in the cellar,
  But fays upon the stairs. 
  And here lived old King Silver Dreams,
  Always at his prayers.

  Here lived grey Queen Silver Dreams,
  Always singing psalms,
  And haughty Grandma Silver Dreams,
  Throned with folded palms. 
  Here played cousin Alice. 
  Her soul was best of all. 
  And every fairy loved her,
  In our ancestral hall.

  Alice has a prairie grave. 
  The King and Queen lie low,
  And aged Grandma Silver Dreams,
  Four tombstones in a row. 
  But still in snow and sunshine
  Stands our ancestral hall. 
  Agate is the dome,
  Cornelian the wall. 
  And legends walk about,
  And proverbs, with proud airs. 
  Ghouls are in the cellar,
  But fays upon the stairs.

The Flower of Mending

  (To Eudora, after I had had certain dire adventures.)

  When Dragon-fly would fix his wings,
  When Snail would patch his house,
  When moths have marred the overcoat
  Of tender Mister Mouse,

  The pretty creatures go with haste
  To the sunlit blue-grass hills
  Where the Flower of Mending yields the wax
  And webs to help their ills.

  The hour the coats are waxed and webbed
  They fall into a dream,
  And when they wake the ragged robes
  Are joined without a seam.

  My heart is but a dragon-fly,
  My heart is but a mouse,
  My heart is but a haughty snail
  In a little stony house.

  Your hand was honey-comb to heal,
  Your voice a web to bind. 
  You were a Mending Flower to me
  To cure my heart and mind.

Alone in the Wind, on the Prairie

  I know a seraph who has golden eyes,
  And hair of gold, and body like the snow. 
  Here in the wind I dream her unbound hair
  Is blowing round me, that desire’s sweet glow
  Has touched her pale keen face, and willful mien. 
  And though she steps as one in manner born
  To tread the forests of fair Paradise,
  Dark memory’s wood she chooses to adorn. 
  Here with bowed head, bashful with half-desire
  She glides into my yesterday’s deep dream,
  All glowing by the misty ferny cliff
  Beside the far forbidden thundering stream. 
  Within my dream I shake with the old flood. 
  I fear its going, ere the spring days go. 
  Yet pray the glory may have deathless years,
  And kiss her hair, and sweet throat like the snow.

To Lady Jane

  Romance was always young. 
  You come today
  Just eight years old
  With marvellous dark hair. 
  Younger than Dante found you
  When you turned
  His heart into the way
  That found the heavenly stair.

  Perhaps we must be strangers. 
  I confess
  My soul this hour is Dante’s,
  And your care
  Should be for dolls
  Whose painted hands caress
  Your marvellous dark hair.

  Romance, with moonflower face
  And morning eyes,
  And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies
  The canticles of a coming king unknown,
  Remember, when you join him
  On his throne,
  Even me, your far off troubadour,
  And wear
  For me some trifling rose
  Beneath your veil,
  Dying a royal death,
  Happy and pale,
  Choked by the passion,
  The wonder and the snare,
  The glory and despair
  That still will haunt and own
  Your marvellous dark hair.

How I Walked Alone in the Jungles of Heaven

  Oh, once I walked in Heaven, all alone
  Upon the sacred cliffs above the sky. 
  God and the angels, and the gleaming saints
  Had journeyed out into the stars to die.

  They had gone forth to win far citizens,
  Bought at great price, bring happiness for all: 
  By such a harvest make a holier town
  And put new life within old Zion’s wall.

  Each chose a far-off planet for his home,
  Speaking of love and mercy, truth and right,
  Envied and cursed, thorn-crowned and scourged in time,
  Each tasted death on his appointed night.

  Then resurrection day from sphere to sphere
  Sped on, with all the powers arisen again,
  While with them came in clouds recruited hosts
  Of sun-born strangers and of earth-born men.

  And on that day gray prophet saints went down
  And poured atoning blood upon the deep,
  Till every warrior of old Hell flew free
  And all the torture fires were laid asleep.

  And Hell’s lost company I saw return
  Clear-eyed, with plumes of white, the demons bold
  Climbed with the angels now on Jacob’s stair,
  And built a better Zion than the old.

. . . . .

  And yet I walked alone on azure cliffs
  A lifetime long, and loved each untrimmed vine: 
  The rotted harps, the swords of rusted gold,
  The jungles of all Heaven then were mine.

  Oh mesas and throne-mountains that I found! 
  Oh strange and shaking thoughts that touched me there,
  Ere I beheld the bright returning wings
  That came to spoil my secret, silent lair!