The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder

The North Star draws the hero; he abides
Stedfast tho' death defends the unending quest.
But, ah, more faithful still the love that hides
In woman's empty arms and aching breast!

269

GLAVE

This day I read in the sad scholar's page
That the old earth is withered and undone;
That faith and great emprize beneath the sun
Are vain and empty in our doting age;
'T were best to calm the spirit's noble rage,
To live in dreams, and all high passion shun,
While round and round the aimless seasons run—
Pleasured alone with dead art's heritage.
Then, as I read, outshone thy face of youth,
Hero and martyr of humanity,
Dead yesterday on Afric's shore of doom!
Ah, no; Faith, Courage fail not, while lives Truth,
While Pity lives, while man for man can die,
And deeds of glory light the dark world's gloom.

OF HENRY GEORGE

WHO DIED FIGHTING AGAINST POLITICAL TYRANNY AND CORRUPTION

Now is the city great! That deep-voiced bell
Tolls for a martyred hero. Such is he
Who loved her, strove for her, and nobly fell.
His fire be ours—the passion to be free.

New York, 1897.

SCORN

Who are the men that good men most despise?
Not they who, ill begot and spawned in shame,
Riot and rob, or rot before men's eyes,—
Who basely live, and dying leave no name.
These are the piteous refuse of mankind,
Fatal the ascendant star when they were born,

270

Distort in body, starved in soul and mind;
Ah, not for them the good man's bitter scorn!
He, only, is the despicable one
Who lightly sells his honor as a shield
For fawning knaves, to hide them from the sun;
Too nice for crime, yet, coward, he doth yield
For crime a shelter. Swift to Paradise
The contrite thief, not Judas with his price!

THE HEROIC AGE

He speaks not well who doth his time deplore,
Naming it new and little and obscure,
Ignoble and unfit for lofty deeds.
All times were modern in the time of them,
And this no more than others. Do thy part
Here in the living day, as did the great
Who made old days immortal! So shall men,
Gazing long back to this far-looming hour,
Say: “Then the time when men were truly men:
Tho' wars grew less, their spirits met the test
Of new conditions; conquering civic wrong;
Saving the state anew by virtuous lives;
Guarding the country's honor as their own,
And their own as their country's and their sons':
Proclaiming service the one test of worth;
Defying leaguèd fraud with single truth;
Knights of the spirit; warriors in the cause
Of justice absolute 'twixt man and man;
Not fearing loss; and daring to be pure.
When error through the land raged like a pest
They calmed the madness caught from mind to mind
By wisdom drawn from eld, and counsel sane;
And as the martyrs of the ancient world

271

Gave Death for man, so nobly gave they Life:
Those the great days, and that the heroic age.”

Athens, 1896.

THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT

(IN MEMORY OF JOE EVANS)

Too much of praise for the quick, pitiless blow!
Justice doth lean on strength, full well we know;
But the sharp, glittering sword that strikes for right
Takes fame too easily. Thank Heaven for might,
Which is Heaven's servant, oft! Yet he's not man
Who, when the heart's afire, no brave deed can.
Praise thou the clencht fist that, when blood is hot,
On itself tightens, but descendeth not.
Ay, praise the sword undrawn, the bolt unsped,
The rage supprest till the true word is said.
Might of the spirit, this shalt thou extol,
And holy weakness of the conquering soul.

And on this day, when one well loved has past
From suffering to the unknown peace, at last,
Would I might praise, as nobly as I ought,
The hero-soldier who no battle fought—
Or, rather, one who, facing fate's worst frown,
The spirit's sword but with his life laid down.
The soul that from that body, bent and frail,
Peered out, did at no earthly terror quail.
To face an army he was brave enough;
Martyrs and conquerors are of that stuff.
And in the civic conflict that was waged
Year after year, his knightly spirit raged;
He could not bear his country should have blame,
So this slight warrior did the mighty shame.

272

Yet Beauty was his passion, and the art
To paint it—that it might not all depart.
He loved the gentlest things; there was a grace
In his sad look surpassing many a face
More beautiful. Ah, back, ye bitter tears!
He, lover of light and gladness, all these years
Fighting twin demons of keen pain and doom;
He, of such humor that the very tomb
Might snatch a brightness from his presence there!
But no; not bright the tomb. We, in despair,
Seek through the world again a charm like this—
That which our friend has taken we shall forever miss.

April, 1898.

“THROUGH ALL THE CUNNING AGES”

Through all the cunning ages
Mankind hath made for man
From out his loves and rages
A god to bless and ban.

When he his foe despises
This god he calls to curse;
And would he win earth's prizes
His praise doth man rehearse.

So, when he craves the guerdon
Of others' land and pelf,
He flings the blame and burden
On this shadow of himself.

If, spite of all their ranting,
There reigns a God indeed,
How well He hates the canting
That framed their sordid creed!

273

“Lay not to me your hollow
And broken words of faith—
To sin that good may follow
No law of mine,” He saith.

“If, 'twixt your tribes and nations,
There lives no law but might,
Not myriad incantations
Can make your evil right.

“Ye call me ‘God of battle’;
I weary while ye slay.
Are ye my hornèd cattle
To find no better way?”

ONE COUNTRY—ONE SACRIFICE

(ENSIGN WORTH BAGLEY, MAY 11, 1898)

In one rich drop of blood, ah, what a sea
Of healing! Thou, sweet boy, wert first to fall
In our new war; and thou wert Southron all!
There is no North, no South, remembering thee.

“WHEN WITH THEIR COUNTRY'S ANGER”

When with their country's anger
They flame into the fight,—
On sea, in treacherous forest,
To strike with main and might,—

He shows the gentlest mercy
Who rains the deadliest blows;
Then quick war's hell is ended,
And home the hero goes.

274

What stays the noblest memory
For all his years to keep?
Not of the foemen slaughtered,
But rescued from the deep!

Rescued with peerless daring!
O, none shall forget that sight,
When the unaimed cannon thundered
In the ghastly after-fight.

And, now, in the breast of the hero
There blooms a strange, new flower,
A blood-red, fragrant blossom
Sown in the battle-hour.

'T is not the Love of Comrades,—
That flower forever blows,—
But the brave man's Love of Courage,
The Love of Comrade-Foes.

For since the beginning of battles
On the land and on the wave,
Heroes have answered to heroes,
The brave have honored the brave.

1898.

A VISION

All round the glimmering circuit of the isle
Audibly pulsed the ocean. In the dark
Of the thick wood a voice not of its own
Might come to sharpened ears; a sound supprest,
The rustling of an armèd multitude
Who toss in sleep, or, wakening, watch for death.
Beneath the tropic stars that in strange skies
Drew close and glittered large, I saw in dream
A Soul pass hoveringly.

275

Then came I near
And questioned of that Ghost, who answer made
Like a deep, murmuring wind that slowly draws
Through dim memorial aisles of ancient time:—

“I am the mother of men, and from my womb
Came all the dead and living. I am curst
With memory, with knowledge of what is,
And what shall be; yet, verily, am I blest
With these three knowledges,—my children I
Have seen these myriad years grow, age by age,
More wise, more just, more joyous, yet have I
Seen mutual slaughter sow the earth with tears.
In this New World here had I hoped my children
Would learn to unlearn the path mankind had climbed
Over its slain to happiness and power;
For soon or late I know that boon shall come,
And in the wars of peace the race shall wax
Manlier, purer, gentler, and more wise.
“But now again the sacred truce is broken,
And bleeds this breast at every wound and sigh,
And aches my mother-heart with the new pain
Of mortal mothers comfortless forever.”

Then past the Spirit from my dream at dawn;
I woke into another day of war
With news of splendid deeds, and victory—
Yet still I heard that brooding shade lament.

1898.

THE WORD OF THE WHITE CZAR

This day, a strange and beautiful word was spoken,—
Not with the voice of child, nor the voice of a woman,
Nor yet with the voice of a poet, the melody sounded,—

276

Forth from the lips of a warrior, girt for the battle,
Breathed this word of words o'er a world astonished.

Prisoners returning from war, and conquering armies,
Navies flusht with new and amazing victory,
Heard the message, so strange, so high, so entrancing,
And soldiers dying of wounds or the wasting of fever.
In tropic islands it sounded, through wrecks of cities;
O'er burning plains where warlike death was in waiting;
Armies and navies confronting, in watchful silence,
Heard it and wondered; statesmen stopt their debates,
And turning their eyes toward the voice, with its meaning unlooked for,
Listened and smiled with the smile and the sneer of the cynic.
But the mothers of youths who had died of their wounds and of fever,
And the poor crusht down by the price of the glory of battle
And the weight of the wars that have been, and that yet are preparing,
They from their burdens looked up and uttered their blessing:
For Peace,—the Peace of God,—was the warrior's prayer!

And I, who heard, I saw in a waking vision
An image familiar long to the hearts of mortals,
A face of trouble, a brow celestial, yet human—
In a dream of the day, I saw that suffering spirit,
Him accustomed to labor, to anguish not alien,
Still mourning for men alone in the valley of shadows;—
I dreamed that he lifted that face of infinite sorrow,

277

And harkened—when lo! a light in those eyes of sadness
Came sudden as day that breaks from the mountains of Moab.

University of Virginia Library

3. PART III

ROBERT GOULD SHAW

(THE MONUMENT BY AUGUSTUS SAINT-GAUDENS)

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

VIII

“THE NORTH STAR DRAWS THE HERO”

(TO H. N. G.)