University of Virginia Library

SILHOUETTES AND SONNETS

RIDERS IN THE NIGHT

MASKS

Death rides black-masked to-night; and through the land
Madness beside him brandishes a torch.
The peaceful farmhouse with its vine-wreathed porch
Lies in their way. Death lifts a bony hand
And knocks, and Madness makes a wild demand
Of fierce Defiance: then the night's deep arch
Reverberates, and under beech and larch
A dead face stares; shot where one took his stand.
Then down the night wild hoofs; the darkness beats;
And like a torrent through the startled town
Destruction sweeps; high overhead a flame;
And Violence that shoots amid the streets.
A piercing whistle: one who gallops down:
And Death and Madness go the way they came.

THE RAID

Rain and black night. Beneath the covered bridge
The rushing Fork that roars among its rocks.
Nothing is out.—Nothing?—What's that which blocks
The long grey road upon the rain-swept ridge?
A horseman! No! A mask! As hewn from jet
With ready gun he waits and sentinels
The open way. Far off he hears wild bells;
And now a signal shrills through wind and wet.
Was that the thunder, or the rushing stream?
The tunnel of the bridge throbs with mad hoofs;
Now its black throat pours out a midnight cloud—
Riders! behind whom steadily a gleam
Grows to a glare that silhouettes dark roofs,
Whence armed Pursuit gathers and gallops loud.

THE RENDEZVOUS

A lonely barn, lost in a field of weeds;
A fallen fence, where partly hangs a gate:
The skies are darkening and the hour is late;
The Indian dusk comes,—red in rainy beads.—
Along a path, which from a woodland leads,
Horsemen come riding who dismount and wait:
Here Anarchy conspires with Crime and Hate,
And Madness masks and on its business speeds.
Another Kuklux in another war
Of blacker outrage down the night they ride,
Brandishing a torch and gun before each farm.—
Is Law asleep then? Does she fear? Where are
The servants of her strength, the Commonwealth's pride?
And where the steel of her restraining arm?

IN BLACK AND RED

The hush of death is on the night. The corn,
That loves to whisper to the wind; the leaves,
That dance with it, are silent: one perceives
No motion mid the fields, as dry as horn.
What light is that?—It cannot be the morn!—
Yet in the east it seems its witchcraft weaves
A fiery rose.—Look! how it grows! it heaves
And flames and tosses!—'Tis a burning barn!
And now the night is rent with shouts and shots.
Dark forms and faces hurry past. The gloom
Gallops with riders.—Homes are less than straw
Before this madness: human lives, mere lots
Flung in and juggled from the cap of Doom,
Where Crime stamps yelling on the face of Law.

AN EPISODE

[There was a man rode into town one day]

There was a man rode into town one day,
Barefooted, hatless, and without a coat.
It was the dead of winter. Round his throat
Were marks of violence: bits and wisps of hay
Bristled his beard and hair. From far away
We saw him coming: desolate and remote
And wild his gaze, that of no man took note,
Or seeming note; and nothing would he say.
But when he'd had a drink, then drunk some more,
He told us he had sold tobacco; see?
And all was lost.—At that he caught his breath.—
Last night a knock came at his cabin-door.
His son, who answered, was shot dead. And he
Was caught and chok'd and almost beat to death.

[They said he'd sold tobacco; and he knew]

They said he'd sold tobacco; and he knew
They ought to kill him, burn his house and barn,
And would unless he gave them (this with scorn)
The money he'd received. What could he do?
He had a little money, it was true,
Hid in an old pot underneath the corn
There in the crib, he told them. 'Twas a yarn
To get away. They were a desperate crew.
They set to work upon the crib; and he
Got loose and on a horse and took to flight:
They shot at him.—Whatever might occur
He did not care now; they had burned, you see,
His home: for miles its glare lit up the night.—
His wife and daughters?—God knows where they were.

THE FEUD

ITS BEGINNING

It happened this way: He was just a lad,
Though big for sixteen years; and there they stood,
He and some others, laughing as youth should,
About some nonsense or some fun they'd had.
Then some one said what made another mad,
And words were passed and oaths, (young blood! young blood!)
You know how 'tis! and suddenly, thud! thud!
Two boys were at it. Worse grew out of bad.
One boy went up to him we all admired,
The merry-hearted fellow, handsome one,
And with a curse about—why, God knows what!
Just put a pistol to his heart and fired.—
That was the feud's beginning.—Some one's son
Shot some one's son, and he in turn was shot.

THE END

And so one night they came, in wild carouse,
The father and the kinsmen of the boy,
That young fiend shot. With never an “Ahoy,”
They shot into the windows of that house,
And burnt the barn and in it all the cows.
Not one was saved. They came there to destroy,
And did it thoroughly. Like some new joy
They toyed with death and made it boisterous vows.
They killed the boy first; while he blinked and gaped
They shot him by a tree outside the door:
The women fled: the men they killed like dogs,
The father and the uncle. One escaped,
The old grandfather in a gown he wore,
Who hid all night among a pen of hogs.

THE MOUNTAIN-STILL

THE MOONSHINER

He leans far out and watches: Down below
The road seems but a ribbon through the trees:
The bluff, from which he gazes, whence he sees
Some ox-team or some horseman come and go,
Is briered with brush. A man comes riding slow
Around a bend of road. Against his knees
The branches whip. He sits at careless ease.
It is the sheriff, armed for any foe.
A detonation tears the echoes from
Each pine-hung crag; upon the rider's brow
A smear of red springs out: he shades it now,
His grey eyes on the bluff. The crags are dumb.
Smoke wreathes one spot. The sheriff, with a cough,
Marks well that place, and then rides slowly off.

THE SHERIFF

Night and the mountain road: a crag where burns
What seems a star, low down: three men that glide
From tree and rock towards it: one a guide
For him who never from his purpose turns,
Who stands for law among these mountain kerns.
At last the torchlit cave, along whose side
The still is seen, and men who have defied
The law so long—law, who the threshold spurns
With levelled weapons now. ... Wolves in a den
Fight not more fiercely than these fought; wild fear
In every face, and rage and pale surprise.
The smoke thins off, and in the cave four men
Lie dead or dying: one that mountaineer,
And one the sheriff with the fearless eyes.

IN THE MOUNTAINS

LAND-MARKS

The way is rock and rubbish to a road
That leads through woods of stunted oaks and thorns
Into a valley that no flower adorns,
One mass of blackened brier; overflowed
With desolation; whence their mighty load
Of lichened limbs,—like two colossal horns,
Two dead trees lift: trees, that the foul earth scorns
To vine with poison, spotted like the toad.
Here, on gaunt boughs, unclean, red-beaked, and bald,
The buzzards settle; roost, since that fierce night
When, torched with pine-knots, grim and shadowy,
Judge Lynch held court here; and the dark, appalled,
Heard words of hollow justice; and the light
Saw, on these trees, dread fruit swing suddenly.

THE OX-TEAM

An ox-team, its lean oxen, slow of tread,
Weighed with an old-time yoke, creaked heavily
Along the mountain road. Beside it, three
Walked with no word: A woman with bowed head,
A young girl, old before her youth had fled,
Hugging a sleeping baby; near her knee
A gaunt hound trotted.—Any one could see
The wagon held their all, from box to bed.
Slowly they creaked into the mountain town
And asked their way. Their men had all been killed,—
Father and brother,—at some mountain ball,
This girl the cause: a man had shot them down,
The father of the infant.—As God willed,
They sought another State, and that was all.

SONG OF THE NIGHT-RIDERS

THE TOWN WITCH

Crab-faced, crab-tongued, with deep-set eyes that glared,
Unfriendly and unfriended lived the crone
Upon the common in her hut, alone,
Past which but seldom any villager fared.
Some said she was a witch and rode, wild-haired,
To devils' revels: on her hearth's rough stone
A fiend sat ever with gaunt eyes that shone—
A shaggy hound whose fangs at all were bared.
So one day, when a neighbour's cow had died
And some one's infant sickened, good men shut
The crone in prison: dragged to court and tried:
Then hung her for a witch and burnt her hut.—
Days after, on her grave, all skin and bones
They found the dog, and him they killed with stones.

THE VILLAGE MISER

The dogs made way for him and snarled and ran;
And little children to their parents clung,
Big-eyed with fear, when, gruff of look and tongue,
Bent-backed he passed who had the village ban.
In old drab coat and trousers, shoes of tan,
And scarecrow hat,—from some odd fashion sprung,—
A threadbare cloak about his shoulders flung,
Grasping a crookèd stick, limped by this man.
Unspeaking and unspoken to, but oft
Cursed after for a miser as he passed,
Or barked at by the dogs who feared his cane.—
One day they found him dead; killed in his loft.
Among his books,—the hoard which he had massed.—
And then they laughed and swore he was insane.

THE INFANTICIDE

She took her babe, the child of shame and sin,
And wrapped it warmly in her shawl and went
From house to house for work. Propriety bent
A look of wonder on her; raised a din
Of Christian outrage. None would take her in.
All that she had was gone; had long been spent.
Penniless and hungry by the road she leant,
No friend to go to and no one of kin.
The babe at last began to cry for food.
Her breasts were dry; she had no milk to give.—
She was so tired and cold.—What could she do?—
... The next day in a pool within a wood
They found the babe. ... 'Twas hard enough to live,
She found, for one; impossible for two.

THE HERB-GATHERER

A grey, bald hillside, bristling here and there
With leprous-looking grass, that, knobbed with stones,
Slopes to a valley where a wild stream moans,
And every bush seems tortured to despair
And shows its teeth of thorns as if to tear
All things to pieces: where the skull and bones
Of some dead beast protrude, like visible groans,
From one bleak place the winter rains washed bare.
Amid the desolation, in decay,
Like some half-rotted fungus, grey as slag,
A hut of lichened logs; and near it, old,
Unspeakably old, a man, the colour of clay,
Sorting damp roots and herbs into a bag
With trembling hands purple and stiff with cold.

THE RAG-PICKER

A pond of filth a sewer flows into,
Around whose edge the evil ragweeds crowd,
Poison in every breath; and, cloud on cloud,
Insects that sing and sting, the pool's fierce spew:
All hideousness, from every street and stew,
And every stench weaves for the place a shroud;
And in its midst a figure, bent and bowed,
A woman who no girlhood ever knew.
Some offal of humanity she seems;
One with the rags she picks and scrapes among;
More soiled, perhaps, in soul: the veriest rag
Of womankind, whose squalor looks and dreams
Of nothing higher than the cart that flung
Its last load here from which she crams her bag.

THE BOY IN THE RAIN

Sodden and shivering, in mud and rain,
Half in the light that serves but to reveal
The blackness of an alley and the reel
Homeward of wretchedness in tattered train,
A boy stands crouched; big drops of drizzle drain
Slow from a rag that was a hat: no steel
Is harder than his look, that seems to feel
More than his small life's share of woe and pain.
The pack of papers, huddled by his arm,
Is pulp; and still he hugs the worthless lot. ...
A door flares open to let out a curse
And drag him in—out of the night and storm.—
Out of the night, you say?—You know not what!—
To blacker night, God knows! and hell, or worse!

TREES

“Trees,” so he said and laid him lovingly
At a great beech-tree's root, “are my best friends.
Upon their love it seems my life depends.
No dog or woman for me! Give me a tree!
In winter saying, ‘Courage! hold to me!’
In spring, ‘Look up! hope's here, and winter ends!’
In summer, ‘Come! here's peace that naught transcends!’
In autumn, ‘See! the dreams I bring to thee!’
Why, I have loved a tree until for me
It had a soul. And as the Greeks believed
So I believe: that in each dwells a life,
Lovely, ecstatic, that some man may see
Take on material form, and, so perceived,
Hold him for aye. ... That's why I have no wife.”

CONSECRATION

[This is the place where visions come to dance]

This is the place where visions come to dance,
Dreams of the trees and flowers, glimmeringly;
Where the white moon and the pale stars can see,
Sitting with Legend and with dim Romance.
This is the place where all the silvery clans
Of Music meet: music of bird and bee;
Music of falling water; melody
Mated with magic, with her golden lance.
This is the place made holy by Love's feet,
And dedicate to wonder and to dreams,
The ministers of Beauty. 'Twas with these
Love filled the place, making all splendours meet
And all despairs, as once in woods and streams
Of Ida and the gold Hesperides.

[Here is the place where Lovliness keeps house]

Here is the place where Loveliness keeps house,
Between the river and the wooded hills,
Within a valley where the Springtime spills
Her firstling wind-flowers under blossoming boughs:
Where Summer sits braiding her warm, white brows
With bramble-roses; and where Autumn fills
Her lap with asters; and old Winter frills
With crimson haw and hip his snowy blouse.
Here you may meet with Beauty. Here she sits
Gazing upon the moon; or, all the day,
Tuning a wood-thrush flute, remote, unseen:
Or when the storm is out 'tis she who flits
From rock to rock, a form of flying spray,
Shouting, beneath the leaves' tumultuous green.

[The road winds upward under whispering trees]

The road winds upward under whispering trees
Through grass and clover where the dewdrop winks;
And at the hill's green crest abruptly sinks
Into a valley boisterous with bees
And brooks and birds. Its beauty seems to seize
And take one's breath with rapture, joy that drinks
The soul's cup dry while dreamily it links
Present and past with mortal memories.
Or so it seems to us who, heart to heart,
Come back the old way through the dusk and dew
With all our old dreams with us, blossom-deep
With love: old dreams, this vale has made a part
Of its unchanging self, the dreams come true,
That consecrate it and still guard and keep.

[Keep it, O dim recorders of grey years]

Keep it, O dim recorders of grey years,
And memories of bygone happiness!
This vale among the hills where Love's distress
And rapture walked, beautiful with smiles and tears.
Guard it for Love's sake, and for what endears
Its every tree and flower: each fond caress,
Each look of Love with which he once did bless
The paths he wandered, filled with hopes and fears
Guard it for that sure day when, far apart,
Life's ways have led us; and with Memory
One shall sit down here where two sat with Love:
Keep it for that time; keep it, like my heart,
Haunted for ever by that ecstasy
And by those words its bowers still whisper of.

THE GOLDEN HOUR

Gold-haired she stood among the golden-rod,
A girl, embodying all the Golden Age,
Who made that autumn day a glorious page
Out of a book of gold inspired of God
And made for Him by priests and worshippers
Of Truth and Beauty, putting their praise in gold.—
The golden blossoms round her and, gold-rolled,
The fields before, were as a golden verse
Of which she was the bright initial: she!
My heart-song's gold beginning, from whom grew
Love's golden ritual, filled with aureate gleams
And music, which my soul read wonderingly
Within Love's book of gold, that mightily drew
Our souls together, binding them with dreams.

OUR DREAMS

Spare us our Dreams, O God!—The dream we dreamed
When we were children and dwelt near the Land
Of Faery, which our Childhood often planned
To reach, beholding where its towers gleamed:
The dream our Youth put seaward with; that streamed
With Love's wild hair, or beckoned with the hand
Of stout Adventure: Then that dream which spanned
Our Manhood's skies with fame; that shone, it seemed,
The one fixed star of purpose, fair and far,
The dream of great achievement, in the heaven
Of our desire, and gave the soul strong wings:
Then that last dream, through which these others are
Made true: The dream that holds us at Life's even,
The mortal hope of far immortal things.

DROUTH

The road is drowned in dust; the winds vibrate
With heat and noise of insect wings that sting
The stridulous noon with sound; no waters sing;
Weeds crowd the path and barricade the gate.
Within the garden Summer seems to wait,
Among her flowers, dead or withering;
About her skirts the teasel's bristles cling,
And to her hair the hot burr holds like hate.
The day burns downward, and with fiery crest
Flames like a furnace; then the fierce night falls
Dewless and dead, crowned with its thirsty stars:
A dry breeze sweeps the firmament and west
The lightning leaps at flickering intervals,
Like some caged beast that thunders at its bars.

PREMONITION

I saw the Summer through her garden go,
A marigold hung in her auburn hair,
Her brown arms heaped with harvest, and the lair
Of poppied plenty, like the peach aglow:
Among the pepper-pods, in scarlet row,
And golden gourds and melons, where the pear
And quince hung heavy, in the languid air
She laid her down and let her eyes close slow.
Not so much breath as blows the thistle by,
Not so much sound as rounds a cricket's croon,
Was in her sleep, and yet about her seemed
The long dark sweep of rain, the whirling cry
And roar of winds beneath a stormy moon.—
Was it a dream of Autumn that she dreamed?

AFTER A NIGHT OF RAIN

The rain made ruin of the rose and frayed
The lily into tatters: now the Morn
Looks from the hopeless East with eyes forlorn,
As from her attic looks a dull-eyed maid.
The coreopsis drips; the sunflowers fade;
The garden reeks with rain: beneath the thorn
The toadstools crowd their rims where, dim of horn,
The slow snail slimes the grasses gaunt and greyed.
Like some pale nun, in penitential weeds,
Weary with weeping, telling sad her beads,—
Her rosary of pods of hollyhocks,—
September comes, heavy of heart and head,
While in her path the draggled four-o'-clocks
Droop all their flowers, saying, “Summer's dead.”

A MIDSUMMER DAY

The locust gyres; the heat intensifies:
The rain-crow croaks from hot-leafed tree to tree:
The butterfly, a flame-fleck, aimlessly
Droops down the air and knows not where it flies.
Beside the stream, whose bed in places dries,
The small green heron flaps; the minnows flee:
And mid the blackberry-lilies, wasp and bee
Drowse where the cattle pant with half-closed eyes.
The Summer Day, like some tired labourer,
Lays down her burden here and sinks to rest,
The tan of toil upon her face and hands:
She dreams, and lo, the heavens over her
Unfold her dream:—Along the boundless West
Rolls gold the harvest of the sunset's lands.

THE CLOSE OF SUMMER

The melancholy of the woods and plains
When summer nears its close; the drowsy, dim,
Unfathomed sadness of the mists that swim
About the valleys after night-long rains;
The humming garden, with it tawny chains
Of gourds and blossoms, ripened to the brim;
And then at eve the low moon's quiet rim,
And the slow sunset, whose one cloud remains,
Fill me with peace that is akin to tears;
Unutterable peace, that moves as in a dream
Mid fancies, sweeter than it knows or tells:
That sees and hears with other eyes and ears,
And walks with Memory beside a stream
That flows through fields of fadeless asphodels.

MUTATIS MUTANDIS

THE FOOL

Here is a tale for children and their grannies:
There was a fool, a man who'd had his chances
But missed them, somehow; lost them, just for fancies,
Tag-ends of things with which he'd crammed the crannies
Of his cracked head, as panes are crammed with paper:
Fragments of song and bits of worthless writing,
Which he was never weary of reciting,
Fluttered his mind as night a windy taper.
A witless fool! who lived in some fair Venice
Of his own building where he dreamed of Beauty:
Who swore each weed a flower—the sorry pauper!—
This would not do. Men said he was a menace
To all mankind; and, as it was their duty,
Clapped him in prison where he died—as proper.

THE SCARECROW

Here is a tale for prelates and for parsons:
There was a scarecrow once, a thing of tatters
And sticks and straw, to whom men trusted matters
Of weighty moment—murders, thefts and arsons.
None saw he was a scarecrow. Every worship
And honour his. Men set him in high places,
And ladies primped their bodies, tinged their faces,
And kneeled to him as slaves to some great Sirship.
One night a storm,—none knew it,—blew to pieces
Our jackstraw friend, and the sweet air of heaven
Knew him no more, and was no longer tainted.
Then learnèd doctors put him in their theses:
The State set up his statue: and thought, even
As thought the Church, perhaps he should be sainted.

SERVICE

Here is a tale for proper men and virgins:
There was a woman once who had a daughter,
A fair-faced wench, as stable as is water,
And frailer than the first spring flower that burgeons.
She did not need to work, but then her mother
Thought it more suitable, and circumspectly
Put her with gentlefolks, where, indirectly,
She rose in service as has many another.
The house she served in soon became divided:
The wife and husband parted, with some scandal:
But she remained and, in the end, was married.
What happened then?—You'll say, “The girl decided
She loved another.”—Nay; not so. The vandal
Wrecked no more homes but lived a life unvaried.

THE APE

Here is a tale for maidens and for mothers:
There was an ape, a very prince of monkeys,
Who capered in the world of fools and flunkies,
The envy of his set and of all others.
He was the handbook of all social manners:
The beau of beaux, and simian glass of fashion,
To whom all folly functioned, played at passion,
And matrimony waved beleaguering banners.
A girl of girls, one God had given graces
And beauty, more than oft He grants to human,
Captured the creature, and they were united.
And strange to say, she loved him. Saw no traces
Of ape in him. And, like a very woman,
Reformed her countenance, and was delighted.

THE PESSIMIST

Here is a tale for uncles and old aunties:
There was a man once who denied the Devil,
Yet in the world saw nothing else but evil;
A pessimist, with face as sour as Dante's.
Still people praised him; men he loathed and hated,
And cursed beneath his breath for wretched sinners,
While still he drank with them and ate their dinners,
And listened to their talk and tolerated.
At last he wrote a book, full of invective
And vile abuse of earth and all its nations,
Denying God and Devil, Heaven and Hades.
Fame followed this. “His was the right perspective!”
“A great philosopher!”—He lost all patience.
But still went out to dine with Lords and Ladies.

AN INCIDENT

Here is a tale for men and women teachers:
There was a girl who'd ceased to be a maiden;
Who walked by night with heart like Lilith's laden;
A child of sin anathemaed of preachers.
She had been lovely once; but dye and scarlet,
On hair and face, had ravaged all her beauty;
Only her eyes still did her girl-soul duty,
Showing the hell that hounded her—poor harlot!
One day a fisherman from out the river
Fished her pale body, (like a branch of willow,
Or golden weed) self-murdered, drowned and broken:—
The sight of it had made a strong man shiver;—
And on her poor breast, as upon a pillow,
A picture smiled, a baby's, like some token.

VINDICATION

Here is a tale for gossips and chaste people:
There lived a woman once, a straight-laced lady,
Whose only love was slander. Nothing shady
Escaped her vulture eye. Like some prim steeple
Her course of life pointed to Heaven ever;
And woe unto the sinner, girl or woman,
Whom love undid.—She was their fiercest foeman.
No circumstance excused. Misfortune, never. ...
As she had lived she died. The mourners gathered:
Parson and preacher, this one and another,
And many gossips of most proper carriage.
Her will was read. And then ... a child was fathered.
Fat Lechery had his day. ... She'd been a mother.
A man was heir. ... There'd never been a marriage.

TREASURE

Here is a tale for infants and old nurses:
There was a man who gathered rags; and peddled:
Who lived alone: with no one ever meddled:
And this old man was very fond of verses.
His house, a ruin, so the tale rehearses;
A hovel over-run of rats and vermin;
Not fit for beast to live in. (Like a sermon
Embodying misery and hell and curses.)
There, one grey dawn of rain and windy weather,
They found him dead; starved; o'er a written paper;
Beside a dim and half-expiring taper:
It was a play, the poor fool'd put together,
Of gnomes and fairies, for his own sad pleasure:
And folks destroyed it, saying,—“We seek for treasure.”

THE ASS

Here is a tale for artists and for writers:
There was an ass, in other words, a critic,
Who brayed and balked and kicked most analytic,
And waved long ears above his brother smiters.
He could not tell a rose-tree from a thistle,
But oft mistook the one thing for the other;
Then wagged his ears most wisely at some brother,
Sent him his he-haw for the Penny Whistle.
A poet sent his volume to him: kindly
Asking for criticism.—You might know it:
He made one mouthful of it, weed and flower.
There rose a cry that he had done it blindly.—
'Twas poetry!—What! would he kill a poet!—
Not he! The ass had brayed him into power.

THE CABBAGE

Here is a tale for any one who wishes:
There grew a cabbage once among the flowers,
A plain, broad cabbage—a good wench, whose hours
Were kitchen-busy with plebeian dishes.
The rose and lily, toilless, without mottle,
Patricians born, despised her:—“How unpleasant!”
They cried; “What odour!—Worse than any peasant
Who soils God's air! Give us our smelling-bottle.”
There came a gentleman who owned the garden,
Looking about him at both flower and edible,
Admiring here and there; a simple sinner,
Who sought some bud to be his heart's sweet warden:
But passed the flowers and took—it seems incredible!—
That cabbage!—But a man must have his dinner.

THE CRIMINAL

Here is a tale for all who wish to listen:
There was a thief who, in his cut-throat quarter,
Was hailed as chief; he had a way of barter,
Persuasion, masked, behind a weapon's glisten,
That made it cockcrow with each good man's riches.
At last he joined the Brotherhood of Murder,
And rose in his profession; lived a herder
Of crime in some dark tavern of the ditches.
There was a war. He went. Became a gunner.
And slew, as soldiers should, his many a hundred,
In authorized and most professional manner.
Here he advanced again. Was starred a oner.
Was captained, pensioned, and nobody wondered;
And lived and died respectable as a tanner.

DEATH AND THE FOOL

Here is a tale for any man or woman:
A fool sought Death; and braved him with his bauble
Among the graves. At last he heard a hobble,
And something passed him, monstrous, superhuman.
And by a tomb, that reared a broken column,
He heard it stop. And then Gargantuan laughter
Shattered the hush. Deep silence followed after,
Filled with the stir of bones, cadaverous, solemn.
Then said the fool: “Come! show thyself, old prancer!
I'll have a bout with thee. I, too, can clatter
My wand and motley. Come now! Death and Folly,
See who's the better man.”—There was no answer;
Only his bauble broke; a serious matter
To the poor fool who died of melancholy.

THE BAGPIPE

Here is a tale for poets and for players:
There was a bagpipe once, that wheezed and whistled,
And droned vile discords, notes that fairly bristled,
Nasal and harsh, outbraying all the brayers.
And then the thing assumed another bearing:
Boasted itself an organ of God's making,
A world-enduring instrument, Earth-shaking,
Greater than any organ, more sky-daring.
To prove which, lo, upon an elevation
It pranced and blew to its own satisfaction,
Until 'twas heard from Key West far as Fundy.
But while it piped, some schoolboy took occasion—
There was a blow; a sudden sharp impaction;
The wind-bag burst ... Sic transit gloria mundi.

THE OX

Here is a tale for farmer and for peasant:
There was an ox, who might have ploughed for Jason,
So strong was he, his huge head like a bason,
A Gothic helmet with enormous crescent.
Stolid of look and slow of hoof and steady,
Meek was the beast and born but to be driven,
Unmindful of the yoke which toil had given,
Toil with his goad and lash for ever ready.
One day a bull, who was the bullock's neighbour,
Proud as a sultan haremed with his women,
Lowed to the ox who had received a beating:
“You are a fool! What have you for your labour?
Blows and bad food!—Go to.—Why don't you show men?”
The ox was but an ox and went on eating.

THE GOOSE

Here is a tale for spinsters at their sewing:
There was a goose, a little gosling surely,
Who went her goose-girl way and looked demurely
As every goose should when 'tis wise and knowing.
Proper was she as every gosling should be,
And innocent as Margarete or Gretchen,
And did her duty in the house and kitchen,
And like a goose was happy as she could be.
Smug was she with a sleek and dove-like dimple,
Great gooseberry eyes and cheeks out of the dairy:
A goose, aye, just a goose, a little dumb thing.
One day the goose was gone.—The tale is simple:
She had eloped.—'Twas nothing ordinary:
A married man with children.—That was something.

THE BEAST

Here is a tale for sportsmen when at table:
There was a boar, like that Atalanta hunted,
Who gorged and snored and, unmolested, grunted
His fat way through the world as such are able.
Huge-jowled and paunched and porcine-limbed and marrowed,
King of his kind, deep in his lair he squatted,
And round him fames of many maidens rotted
Where Licence whelped and Lust her monsters farrowed.
There came a damsel, like the one in Spenser,
A Britomart, as sorcerous as Circe,
Who pierced him with a tract, her spear, and ended
The beast's career. Made him a man; a censor
Of public morals; arbiter of mercy;
And led him by the nose and called him splendid.

THE OWL

Here is a tale for ladies with romances:
There was an owl; composer and musician,
Who looked as wise as if he had a mission,
And at all art cast supercilious glances.
People proclaimed him great because he said it;
And, like the great, he never played, nor printed
His compositions, 'though 'twas whispered, hinted
He'd written something—but no one had read it.
Owl-eyed he posed at functions of position,
Hirsute, and eye-glassed, looking analytic,
Opening his mouth to worshipping female knowledge:
And then he married. A woman of ambition.
A singer, teacher, and a musical critic.
Just what he wanted. He became a college.

THE TOAD

Here is a tale to tell to rich relations:
There was a toad, a Calibanic monster,
In whose squat head ambition had ensconced her
Most bloated jewel, dear to highest stations.
He was received, though mottled as a lichen
In coat and character, because the creature
Croaked as the devil prompted him, or nature,
And said the right thing both in hall and kitchen.
To each he sang according to their liking,
And purred his flattery in the ear of Leisure,
Cringing attendance on the proud and wealthy.
One day a crane, with features of a Viking,
Swallowed him whole and did it with great pleasure:
His system needed such; toads kept him healthy.

THE CRICKET

Here is a tale for those who sing with reason:
There was a cricket, troubadouring fellow,
Who chirped his lay, or zoomed it like a 'cello,
Day in, day out, no matter what the season.
Great was his love for his own violining;
He never wearied saying, “What performing!”
And oft, when through, would ask, “Was not that charming?”
Then play it over, right from the beginning.
A talent, such as his, should be rewarded,
So thought he, all unconscious of intention
Of any one among the violin sects,
Until by some one, lo, he was regarded;
Lifted, examined; given special mention;
And placed within a case with other insects.

THE TORRENT

Here is a tale for workmen and their masters:
There was a torrent once that down a mountain
Flashed its resistless way; a foaming fountain,
Basaltic-built, 'twixt cataract-hewn pilasters.
Down from its eagle eyrie nearer, nearer,
Its savage beauty—born mid rocks and cedars,—
Swept free as tempest, wild as mountain leaders,
Of stars and storms the swiftly moving mirror.
Men found it out; and set to work to tame it;
Put it to pounding rock and rafting lumber;
Made it a carrier of the filth of cities:
Harnessed its joy to engines; tried to shame it;
Saying, “Be civilized!” and piled their cumber
Upon it; bound it.—God of all the Pities!