To you, dear mother heart, whose hair is grayAbove this page to-day,Whose face, though lined with many a smile and care,Grows year by year more fair,Be tenderest tribute set in perfect rhyme,That haply passing timeMay cull and keep it for strange lips to payWhen we have gone our way;And, to strange men, weary of field and street,Should this, my song, seem sweet,Yours be the joy, for all that made it soYou know, dear heart, you know.
The Sun has come again and fedThe lily's lamp with light,And raised from dust a rose, rich red,And a little star-flower, white;He also guards the PleiadesAnd holds his planets true:But we—we know not which of theseThe easier task to do.But, since from heaven he stoops to breatheA flower to balmy air,Surely our lives are not beneathThe kindness of his care;And, as he guides the blade that gropesUp from the barren sod,So, from the ashes of our hopes,Will beauty grow toward God.Whate'er thy name, O Soul of Life,—We know but that thou art,—Thou seest, through all our waste of strife,One groping human heart,Weary of words and broken sight,But moved with deep accordTo worship where thy lilies lightThe altar of its Lord.
Near where the shepherds watched by nightAnd heard the angels o'er them,The wise men saw the starry lightStand still at last before them.No armored castle there to wardHis precious life from danger,But, wrapped in common cloth, our LordLay in a lowly manger.No booming bells proclaimed his birth,No armies marshalled by,No iron thunders shook the earth,No rockets clomb the sky;The temples builded in his nameWere shapeless granite then,And all the choirs that sang his fameWere later breeds of men.But, while the world about him slept,Nor cared that he was born,One gentle face above him keptIts mother watch till morn;And, if his baby eyes could tellWhat grace and glory were,No roar of gun, no boom of bellWere worth the look of her.Now praise to God that ere his graceWas scorned and he reviledHe looked into his mother's face,A little helpless child;And praise to God that ere men stroveAbout his tomb in warOne loved him with a mother's love,Nor knew a creed therefor.
When I go home, green, green will glow the grass,Whereon the flight of sun and cloud will pass;Long lines of wood-ducks through the deepening gloamWill hold above the west, as wrought on brass,And fragrant furrows will have delved the loam,When I go home.When I go home, the dogwood stars will dashThe solemn woods above the bearded ash,The yellow-jasmine, whence its vine hath clomb,Will blaze the valleys with its golden flash,And every orchard flaunt its polychrome,When I go home.When I go home and stroll about the farm,The thicket and the barnyard will be warm.Jess will be there, and Nigger Bill, and Tom—On whom time's chisel works no hint of harm—And, oh, 'twill be a day to rest and roam,When I go home!
A horror of great darkness over them,No cloud of fire to guide and cover them,Beasts for the shambles, tremulous with dread,They crouch on alien soil among their dead."Thy shield and thy exceeding great reward,"This was thine ancient covenant, O Lord,Which, sealed with mirth, these many thousand yearsIs black with blood and blotted out with tears.Have these not toiled through Egypt's burning sun,And wept beside the streams of Babylon,Led from thy wilderness of hill and glenInto a wider wilderness of men?Life bore them ever less of gain than loss,Before and since Golgotha's piteous Cross,And surely, now, their sorrow hath sufficedFor all the hate that grew from love of Christ!Thou great God-heart, heed thou thy people's cry,Bare-browed and empty-handed where they die,Sea-sundered from wall-girt Jerusalem,There being no sword that wills to succor them,—And Miriam's song, long hushed, will rise to thee,And all thy people lift their eyes to thee,When, for the darkness' horror over them,Thou comest, a cloud of light to cover them.
What shall I bring you, sweet?A posy prankt with every April hue:The cloud-white daisy, violet sky-blue,Shot with the primrose sunshine through and through?Or shall I bring you, sweet,Some ancient rhyme of lovers sore beset,Whose joy is dead, whose sadness lingers yet,That you may read, and sigh, and soon forget?What shall I bring you, sweet?Was ever trifle yet so held amissAs not to fill love's waiting heart with bliss,And merit dalliance at a long, long kiss?
Down on the Lumbee riverWhere the eddies ripple coolYour boat, I know, glides stealthilyAbout some shady pool.The summer's heats have lulled asleepThe fish-hawk's chattering noise,And all the swamp lies hushed aboutYou sunburnt boys.You see the minnow's waves that rockThe cradled lily leaves.From a far field some farmer's song,Singing among his sheaves,Comes mellow to you where you sit,Each man with boatman's poise,There, in the shimmering water lights,You sunburnt boys.I know your haunts: each gnarly boleThat guards the waterside,Each tuft of flags and rushes whereThe river reptiles hide,Each dimpling nook wherein the bassHis eager life employsUntil he dies—the captive ofYou sunburnt boys.You will not—will you?—soon forgetWhen I was one of you,Nor love me less that time has borneMy craft to currents new;Nor shall I ever cease to shareYour hardships and your joys,Robust, rough-spoken, gentle-heartedSunburnt boys!
A soaking sedge,A faded field, a leafless hill and hedge,Low clouds and rain,And loneliness and languor worse than pain.Mottled with moss,Each gravestone holds to heaven a patient Cross.Shrill streaks of lightTwo sycamores' clean-limbed, funereal white,And low between,The sombre cedar and the ivy green.Upon the stoneOf each in turn who called this land his ownThe gray rain beatsAnd wraps the wet world in its flying sheets,And at my eavesA slow wind, ghostlike, comes and grieves and grieves.
I care not what his name for God may be,Nor what his wisdom holds of heaven and hell,The alphabet whereby he strives to spellHis lines of life, nor where he bends his knee,Since, with his grave before him, he can seeWhite Peace above it, while the churchyard bellPoised in its tower, poised now, to boom his knell,Seems but the waiting tongue of liberty.For names and knowledge, idle breed of breath,And cant and creed, the progeny of strife,Thronging the safe, companioned streets of life,Shrink trembling from the cold, clear eye of death,And learn too late why dying lips can smile:That goodness is the only creed worth while.
I pass a cobbler's shop along the streetAnd pause a moment at the door-step, where,In nature's medley, piping cool and sweet,The songs that thrill the swamps when spring is near,Fly o'er the fields at fullness of the year,And twitter where the autumn hedges run,Join all the months of music into one.I shut my eyes: the shy wood-thrush is there,And all the leaves hang still to catch his spell;Wrens cheep among the bushes; from somewhereA bluebird's tweedle passes o'er the fell;From rustling corn bob-white his name doth tell;And when the oriole sets his full heart freeBarefooted boyhood comes again to me.The vision-bringer hangs upon a nailBefore a dusty window, looking dimOn marts where trade goes hot with box and bale;The sad-eyed passers have no time for him.His captor sits, with beaded face and grim,Plying a listless awl, as in a dreamOf pastures winding by a shady stream.Gray bird, what spirit bides with thee unseen?For now, when every songster finds his loveAnd makes his nest where woods are deep and green,Free as the winds, thy song should mock the dove.If I were thou, my grief in moans should moveAt thinking—otherwhere, by others' artCharmed and forgetful—of mine own sweetheart.But I, who weep when fortune seems unkindTo prison me within a space of walls,When far-off grottoes hold my loves enshrinedAnd every love is cruel when it calls;Who sulk for hills and fern-fledged waterfalls,—I blush to offer sorrow unto thee,Master of fate, scorner of destiny!
The hills again reach skyward with a smile.Again, with waking life along its way,The landscape marches westward mile on mileAnd time throbs white into another day.Though eager life must wait on livelihood,And all our hopes be tethered to the mart,Lacking the eagle's wild, high freedom, wouldThat ours might be this day the eagle's heart!
Cows in the stall and sheep in the fold;Clouds in the west, deep crimson and gold;A heron's far flight to a roost somewhere;The twitter of killdees keen in the air;The noise of a wagon that jolts through the gloamOn the last load home.There are lights in the windows; a blue spire of smokeClimbs from the grange grove of elm and oak.The smell of the Earth, where the night pours to herIts dewy libation, is sweeter than myrrh,And an incense to Toil is the smell of the loamOn the last load home.
One sits in soft light, where the hearth is warm,A halo, like an angel's, on her hair.She clasps a sleeping infant in her arm.A holy presence hovers round her there,And she, for all her mother-pains more fair,Is happy, seeing that all sweet thoughts that stirThe hearts of men bear worship unto her.Another wanders where the cold wind blows,Wet-haired, with eyes that sting one like a knife.Homeless forever, at her bosom closeShe holds the purchase of her love and life,Of motherhood, unglorified as wife;And bitterer than the world's relentless scornThe knowing her child were happier never born.Whence are the halo and the fiery shameThat fashion thus a crown and curse of love?Have roted words such power to bless and blame?Ay, men have stained a raven from many a dove,And all the grace and all the grief hereofAre the two words which bore one's lips apartAnd which the other hoarded in her heart.He who stooped down and wrote upon the sand,The God-heart in him touched to tenderness,Saw deep, saw what we cannot understand,—We, who draw near the shrine of one to blessThe while we scourge another's sore distress,And judge like gods between the ill and good,The glory and the guilt of womanhood.
The thought of old, dear things is in thine eyes,O, month of memories!Musing on days thine heart hath sorrow of,Old joy, dead hope, dear love,I see thee stand where all thy sisters meetTo cast down at thy feetThe garnered largess of the fruitful year,And on thy cheek a tear.Thy glory flames in every blade and leafTo blind the eyes of grief;Thy vineyards and thine orchards bend with fruitThat sorrow may be mute;A hectic splendor lights thy days to sleep,Ere the gray dusk may creepSober and sad along thy dusty ways,Like a lone nun, who prays;High and faint-heard thy passing migrant calls;Thy lazy lizard sprawlsOn his gray stone, and many slow winds creepAbout thy hedge, asleep;The sun swings farther toward his love, the south,To kiss her glowing mouth;And Death, who steals among thy purpling bowers,Is deeply hid in flowers.Would that thy streams were Lethe, and might flowWhere lotus blossoms blow,And all the sweets wherewith thy riches blessMight hold no bitterness!Would, in thy beauty, we might all forgetDead days and old regret,And through thy realm might fare us forth to roam,Having no thought for home!And yet I feel, beneath thy queen's attire,Woven of blood and fire,Beneath the golden glory of thy charmThy mother heart beats warm,And if, mayhap, a wandering child of thee,Weary of land and sea,Should turn him homeward from his dreamer's questTo sob upon thy breast,Thine arm would fold him tenderly, to proveHow thine eyes brimmed with love,And thy dear hand, with all a mother's care,Would rest upon his hair.
All day low clouds and slanting rainHave swept the woods and dimmed the plain.Wet winds have swayed the birch and oak,And caught and swirled away the smoke,But, all day long, the wooden clockWent on, Nic-noc, nic-noc.When deep at night I wake with fear,And shudder in the dark to hearThe roaring storm's unguided strength,Peace steals into my heart at length,When, calm amid the shout and shock,I hear, Nic-noc, nic-noc.And all the winter long 't is IWho bless its sheer monotony—Its scorn of days, which cares no whitFor time, except to measure it:The prosy, dozy, cosy clock,Nic-noc, nic-noc, nic-noc!
Tear-marks stain from page to pageThis book my fathers left to me,—So dull that nothing but its ageWere worth its freight across the sea.But tear stains! When, by whom, and why?Thus takes my fancy to its wings;For grief is old, and one may cryAbout so many things!
If many years should dim my inward sight,Till, stirred with no emotion,I might stand gazing at the fall of nightAcross the gloaming ocean;Till storm, and sun, and night, vast with her stars,Would seem an oft-told story,And the old sorrow of heroic warsBe faded of its glory;Till, hearing, while June's roses blew their musk,The noise of field and city,The human struggle, sinking tired at dusk,I felt no thrill of pity;Till dawn should come without her old desire,And day brood o'er her stages,—O let me die, too frail for nature's hire,And rest a million ages.
The home of love is her blue eyes,Wherein all joy, all beauty lies,More sweet than hopes of paradise,She being young.Speak of her with a miser's praise;She craves no golden speech; her waysWind through charmed nights and magic days,She being young.She is so far from pain and death,So warm her cheek, so sweet her breathGlad words are all the words she saith,She being young.Seeing her face, it seems not farTo Troy's heroic field of war,To Troy and all great things that are,She being young.
A century of silent sunsHave set since he was laid on sleep,And now they bear with booming gunsAnd streaming banners o'er the deepA withered skin and clammy hairUpon a frame of human bones:Whose corse? We neither know nor care,Content to name it John Paul Jones.His dust were as another's dust;His bones—what boots it where they lie?What matter where his sword is rust,Or where, now dark, his eagle eye?No foe need fear his arm again,Nor love, nor praise can make him whole;But o'er the farthest sons of menWill brood the glory of his soul.Careless though cenotaph or tombShall tower his country's monument,Let banners float and cannon boom,A million-throated shout be spent,Until his widowed sea shall laughWith sunlight in her mantling foam,While, to his tomb or cenotaph,We bid our hero welcome home.Twice exiled, let his ashes restAt home, afar, or in the wave,But keep his great heart with us, lestOur nation's greatness find its grave;And, while the vast deep listens by,When armored wrong makes terms to right,Keep on our lips his proud reply,"Sir, I have but begun to fight!"
Repose upon her soulless face,Dig the grave and leave her;But breathe a prayer that, in his grace,He who so loved this toiling raceTo endless rest receive her.Oh, can it be the gates ajarWait not her humble quest,Whose life was but a patient warAgainst the death that stalked from farWith neither haste nor rest;To whom were sun and moon and cloud,The streamlet's pebbly coil,The transient, May-bound, feathered crowd,The storm's frank fury, thunder-browed,But witness of her toil;Whose weary feet knew not the blissOf dance by jocund reed;Who never dallied at a kiss!If heaven refuses her, life isA tragedy indeed!
They locked him in a prison cell,Murky and mean.She kissed him there a wife's farewellThe bars between.And when she turned to go, the crowd,Thinking to see her shamed and bowed,Saw her pass out as calm and proudAs any queen.She passed a kinsman on the street,To whose sad eyesShe made reply with smile as sweetAs April skies.To one who loved her once and knewThe sorrow of her life, she threwA gay word, ere his tale was dueOf sympathies.She met a playmate, whose red roseHad never a thorn,Whom fortune guided when she choseHer marriage morn,And, smiling, looked her in the eye;But, seeing the tears of sympathy,Her smile died, and she passed on byIn quiet scorn.They could not know how, when by nightThe city slept,A sleepless woman, still and white,The watches kept;How her wife-loyal heart had borneThe keen pain of a flowerless thorn,How hot the tears that smiles and scornHad held unwept.
The wintry sun was paleOn hill and hedge;The wind smote with its flailThe seeded sedge;High up above the world,New taught to fly,The withered leaves were hurledAbout the sky;And there, through death and dearth,It went and came,—The Glory of the earthThat hath no name.I know not what it is;I only knowIt quivers in the blissWhere roses blow,That on the winter's breathIt broods in space,And o'er the face of deathI see its face,And start and stand betweenDelight and dole,As though mine eyes had seenA living Soul.And I have followed it,As thou hast done,Where April shadows flitBeneath the sun;In dawn and dusk and star,In joy and fear,Have seen its glory farAnd felt it near,And dared recall his nameWho stood unshodBefore a fireless flame,And called it God.
I have not been among the woods,Nor seen the milk-weeds burst their hoods,The downy thistle-seeds take wing,Nor the squirrel at his garnering.And yet I know that, up to God,The mute month holds her goldenrod,That clump and copse, o'errun with vines,Twinkle with clustered muscadines,And in deserted churchyard placesDwarf apples smile with sunburnt faces.I know how, ere her green is shed,The dogwood pranks herself with red;How the pale dawn, chilled through and through,Comes drenched and draggled with her dew;How all day long the sunlight seemsAs if it lit a land of dreams,Till evening, with her mist and cloud,Begins to weave her royal shroud.If yet, as in old Homer's land,Gods walk with mortals, hand in hand,Somewhere to-day, in this sweet weather,Thinkest thou not they walk together?
The girls all like to see the bluets in the laneAnd the saucy johnny-jump-ups in the meadow,But, we boys, we want to see the dogwood blooms again,Throwin' a sort of summer-lookin' shadow;For the very first mild mornin' when the woods are white(And we needn't even ask a soul about it)We leave our shoes right where we pulled them off at night,And, barefooted once again, we run and shout it:You may take the country over—When the bluebird turns a rover,And the wind is soft and hazy,And you feel a little lazy,And the hunters quit the possums—It's the time for dogwood blossoms.We feel so light we wish there were more fences here;We'd like to jump and jump them, all together!No sleds for us, no guns, nor even 'simmon beer,No nothin' but the blossoms and fair weather!The meadow is a little sticky right at first,But a few short days 'll wipe away that trouble.To feel so good and gay, I wouldn't mind the worstThat could be done by any field o' stubble.O, all the trees are seemin' sappy!O, all the folks are smilin' happy!And there's joy in every little bit of room;But the happiest of them allAt the Shanghai rooster's callAre we barefoots when the dogwoods burst abloom!
Give over now; forbear. The moonlight steepsIn silver silence towered castle-keepsAnd cottage crofts, where apples bend the bough.Peace guards us round, and many a tired heart sleeps.Let me brush back the shadow from your brow.Give over now.On such a night, how sweet, how sweet is life,Even to the insect piper with his fife!And must your troubled face still bear the blightOf strength that runs itself to waste in strife?For love's own heart should throb through all the lightOf such a night.
Coiled like a clod, his eyes the home of hate,Where rich the harvest bows, he lies in wait,Linking earth's death and music, mate with mate.Is 't lure, or warning? Those small bells may singLike Ariel sirens, poised on viewless wing,To lead stark life where mailed death is king;Else nature's voice, in that cold, earthy thrill,Bids good avoid the venomed fang of ill,And life and death fight equal in her will.
From pacing, pacing without hope or questHe leaned against his window-bars to restAnd smelt the breeze that crept up from the west.It came with sundown noises from the moors,Of milking time and loud-voiced rural chores,Of lumbering wagons and of closing doors.He caught a whiff of furrowed upland sweet,And certain scents stole up across the streetThat told him fireflies winked among the wheat.Over the dusk hill woke a new moon's light,Shadowed the woods and made the waters white,And watched above the quiet tents of night.Alas, that the old Mother should not knowHow ached his heart to be entreated so,Who heard her calling and who could not go!
To-day was but a dead day in my hands.Hour by hour did nothing more than pass,Mere idle winds above the faded grass.And I, as though a captive held in bands,Who, seeing a pageant, wonders much, but standsApart, saw the sun blaze his course with brassAnd sink into his fabled sea of glassWith glory of farewell to many lands.Thou knowest, thou who talliest life by days,That I have suffered more than pain of toil,Ah, more than they whose wounds are soothed with oil,And they who see new light on beaten ways!The prisoner I, who grasps his iron barsAnd stares out into depth on depth of stars!
When merry milkmaids to their cattle callAt evenfallAnd voices rangeLoud through the gloam from grange to quiet grange,Wild waif-songs from long distant lands and loves,Like migrant doves,Wake and give wingTo passion dust-dumb lips were wont to sing.The new still holds the old moon in her arms;The ancient charmsOf dew and duskStill lure her nomad odors from the musk,And, at each day's millennial eclipse,On new men's lips,Some old song starts,Made of the music of millennial hearts,Whereto one listens as from long agoAnd learns to knowThat one day's tearsAnd love and life are as a thousand years',And that some simple shepherd, singing ofHis pain and love,May haply findHis heart-song speaks the heart of all his kind.
Where the rails converge to the station yardShe stands one moment, breathing hard,And then, with a snort and a clang of steel,She settles her strength to the stubborn wheel,And out, through the tracks that lead astray,Cautiously, slowly she picks her way,And gathers her muscle and guards her nerve,When she swings her nose to the westward curve,And takes the grade, which slopes to the sky,With a bound of speed and a conquering cry.The hazy horizon is all she sees,Nor cares for the meadows, stirred with bees,Nor the long, straight stretches of silent land,Nor the ploughman, that shades his eye with his hand,Nor the cots and hamlets that know no moreThan a shriek and a flash and a flying roar;But, bearing her tidings, she trembles and throbs,And laughs in her throat, and quivers and sobs;And the fire in her heart is a red core of heat,That drives like a passion through forest and street,Till she sees the ships in their harbor at rest,And sniffs at the trail to the end of her quest.If I were the driver who handles her reins,Up hill and down hill and over the plains,To watch the slow mountains give back in the west,To know the new reaches that wait every crest,To hold, when she swerves, with a confident clutch,And feel how she shivers and springs to the touch,With the snow on her back and the sun in her face,And nothing but time as a quarry to chase,I should grip hard my teeth, and look where she led,And brace myself stooping, and give her her head,And urge her, and soothe her, and serve all her need,And exult in the thunder and thrill of her speed.
Hills, wrapped in gray, standing along the west;Clouds, dimly lighted, gathering slowly;The star of peace at watch above the crest—Oh, holy, holy, holy!We know, O Lord, so little what is best;Wingless, we move so lowly;But in thy calm all-knowledge let us rest—Oh, holy, holy, holy!
When the dim, tall sails of the ships were in motion,Ghostly, and slow, and silent-shod,We gazed where the dusk fled over the ocean,A great gray hush, like the shadow of God.The sky dome cut with its compass in sunderA circle of sea from the darkened land,—A circle of tremulous waste and wonder,O'er which one groped with a childish hand.The true stars came to their stations in heaven,The false stars shivered deep down in the sea,And the white crests went like monsters, drivenBy winds that never would let them be,And there, where the elements mingled and muttered,We stood, each man with a lone dumb heart,Full of the vastness that never was utteredBy symbol of words or by echo of art.
God willed, who never needed speech,"Let all things be:"And, lo, the starry firmamentAnd land and seaAnd his first thought of life that livesIn you and me.His circle of eternityWe see in part;Our spirits are his breath, our heartsBeat from his heart;Hence we have played as little godsAnd called it art.Lacking his power, we shared his dreamOf perfect things;Between the tents of hope and sweetRememberingsHave sat in ashes, but our soulsWent forth on wings.Where life fell short of some desireIn you and me,Feeling for beauty which our eyesCould never see,Behold, from out the void we willedThat it should be,And sometimes dreamed our lisping songsOf humanhoodMight voice his silent harmonyOf waste and wood,And he, beholding his and ours,Might find it good.
John Charles McNeill was born in Scotland County, near Laurinburg, North Carolina, on 26 July 1874, and died on 17 October 1907 (when he was 33 years old). He only produced this one volume before he died, though he planned a second, which was published posthumously. "Songs, Merry and Sad", first published in Charlotte in 1906, went through at least five printings over more than 60 years. (This text is taken from the very first edition.)
Both of McNeill's grandfathers came from Scotland.
McNeill attended Wake Forest College, where he received both his Bachelor's and Master's degrees. In 1899-1900 he taught English at Mercer University.
Some of his poems were published nationally as early as 1901. More of his poems were published by `The Charlotte Observer' starting in 1903, and in 1904 he joined its staff.
This etext was created by entering the text (manually) twice, once from the first printing (1906) and once from the second printing (no date), and comparing the two. There were some slight differences in the two printings.
A portrait of John Charles McNeill faces the title page (p. 3) in the second printing, but is absent in the first.
The first printing gives the publisher as Stone & Barringer Co. and gives the date as 1906. The second printing gives the publisher as Stone Publishing Co., and gives no date. Both were printed in Charlotte, N.C.
One error was corrected (the second printing also corrected this error):
(p. 73)[ A holy presence hovers round here there, ]changed to:[ A holy presence hovers round her there, ]
The second printing also changed the title of the poem [ To Melvin Gardner: Suicide ], on p. 19, to [ To Melvin Gardner: ]—in the text, but not in the table of Contents. This may have been done in deference to the family—attitudes on suicide were once quite different than now—but as it has been quite some time, and the original title gives more meaning to the poem, it has been retained.
The Title of the poem [ Now! ] did not have the exclamation point in the table of Contents. It has been added to match the text. The Title of the poem [ "97": The Fast Mail ] appeared as such in the text, but as ["97:" The Fast Mail ] in the Contents. The latter was changed to match the text.
In the original, the book's title does not separate the Contents from the first poem. It has been placed there as a sort of divider.
In two places ASCII fails to provide enough characters for a correct rendering. They are the words Provencal (the c with a cedilla) and mailed (the e with an acute accent, to indicate that the word is to be said with two syllables). These occur in "Reminiscence" and "The Rattlesnake".