Charles Main, of Main & Winchester, attend
With friendly ear the chit-chat of a friend
Who knows you not, yet knows that you and he
Travel two roads that have a common end.
We journey forward through the time allowed,
I humbly bending, you erect and proud.
Our heads alike will stable soon the worm—
The one that's lifted, and the one that's bowed.
You in your mausoleum shall repose,
I where it pleases Him who sleep bestows;
What matter whether one so little worth
Shall stain the marble or shall feed the rose?
Charles Main, I had a friend who died one day.
A metal casket held his honored clay.
Of cyclopean architecture stood
The splendid vault where he was laid away.
A dozen years, and lo! the roots of grass
Had burst asunder all the joints; the brass,
The gilded ornaments, the carven stones
Lay tumbled all together in a mass.
A dozen years! That taxes your belief.
Make it a thousand if the time's too brief.
'Twill be the same to you; when you are dead
You cannot even count your days of grief.
Suppose a pompous monument you raise
Till on its peak the solar splendor blaze
While yet about its base the night is black;
But will it give your glory length of days?
Say, when beneath your rubbish has been thrown,
Some rogue to reputation all unknown—
Men's backs being turned—should lift his thieving hand,
Efface your name and substitute his own.
Whose then would be the monument? To whom
Would be the fame? Forgotten in your gloom,
Your very name forgotten—ah, my friend,
The name is all that's rescued by the tomb.
For memory of worth and work we go
To other records than a stone can show.
These lacking, naught remains; with these
The stone is needless for the world will know.
Then build your mausoleum if you must,
And creep into it with a perfect trust;
But in the twinkling of an eye the plow
Shall pass without obstruction through your dust.
Another movement of the pendulum,
And, lo! the desert-haunting wolf shall come,
And, seated on the spot, shall howl by night
O'er rotting cities, desolate and dumb.
ON THE PLATFORM
When Dr. Bill Bartlett stepped out of the hum
Of Mammon's distracting and wearisome strife
To stand and deliver a lecture on "Some
Conditions of Intellectual Life,"
I cursed the offender who gave him the hall
To lecture on any conditions at all!
But he rose with a fire divine in his eye,
Haranguing with endless abundance of breath,
Till I slept; and I dreamed of a gibbet reared high,
And Dr. Bill Bartlett was dressing for death.
And I thought in my dream: "These conditions, no doubt,
Are bad for the life he was talking about."
So I cried (pray remember this all was a dream):
"Get off of the platform!—it isn't the kind!"
But he fell through the trap, with a jerk at the beam,
And wiggled his toes to unburden his mind.
And, O, so bewitching the thoughts he advanced,
That I clung to his ankles, attentive, entranced!
A DAMPENED ARDOR
The Chinatown at Bakersfield
Was blazing bright and high;
The flames to water would not yield,
Though torrents drenched the sky
And drowned the ground for miles around—
The houses were so dry.
Then rose an aged preacher man
Whom all did much admire,
Who said: "To force on you my plan
I truly don't aspire,
But streams, it seems, might quench these beams
If turned upon the fire."
The fireman said: "This hoary wight
His folly dares to thrust
On us! 'Twere well he felt our might—
Nay, he shall feel our must!"
With jet of wet and small regret
They laid that old man's dust.
ADAIR WELCKER, POET
The Swan of Avon died—the Swan
Of Sacramento'll soon be gone;
And when his death-song he shall coo,
Stand back, or it will kill you too.
TO A WORD-WARRIOR
Frank Pixley, you, who kiss the hand
That strove to cut the country's throat,
Cannot forgive the hands that smote
Applauding in a distant land,—
Applauding carelessly, as one
The weaker willing to befriend
Until the quarrel's at an end,
Then learn by whom it was begun.
When North was pitted against South
Non-combatants on either side
In calculating fury vied,
And fought their foes by word of mouth.
That devil's-camisade you led
With formidable feats of tongue.
Upon the battle's rear you hung—
With Samson's weapon slew the dead!
So hot the ardor of your soul
That every fierce civilian came,
His torch to kindle at your name,
Or have you blow his cooling coal.
Men prematurely left their beds
And sought the gelid bath—so great
The heat and splendor of your hate
Of Englishmen and "Copperheads."
King Liar of deceitful men,
For imposition doubly armed!
The patriots whom your speaking charmed
You stung to madness with your pen.
There was a certain journal here,
Its English owner growing rich—
Your hand the treason wrote for which
A mob cut short its curst career.
If, Pixley, you had not the brain
To know the true from false, or you
To Truth had courage to be true,
And loyal to her perfect reign;
If you had not your powers arrayed
To serve the wrong by tricksy speech,
Nor pushed yourself within the reach
Of retribution's accolade,
I had not had the will to go
Outside the olive-bordered path
Of peace to cut the birch of wrath,
And strip your body for the blow.
Behold how dark the war-clouds rise
About the mother of our race!
The lightnings gild her tranquil face
And glitter in her patient eyes.
Her children throng the hither flood
And lean intent above the beach.
Their beating hearts inhibit speech
With stifling tides of English blood.
"Their skies, but not their hearts, they change
Who go in ships across the sea"—
Through all centuries to be
The strange new land will still be strange.
The Island Mother holds in gage
The souls of sons she never saw;
Superior to law, the law
Of sympathetic heritage.
Forgotten now the foolish reign
Of wrath which sundered trivial ties.
A soldier's sabre vainly tries
To cleave a spiritual chain.
The iron in our blood affines,
Though fratricidal hands may spill.
Shall Hate be throned on Bunker Hill,
Yet Love abide at Seven Pines?