The Project Gutenberg eBook ofToward the GulfThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Toward the GulfAuthor: Edgar Lee MastersRelease date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7845]Most recently updated: May 21, 2013Language: EnglishCredits: Text file produced by Dave Maddock, Charles Franks and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading TeamHTML file produced by David Widger*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOWARD THE GULF ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Toward the GulfAuthor: Edgar Lee MastersRelease date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7845]Most recently updated: May 21, 2013Language: EnglishCredits: Text file produced by Dave Maddock, Charles Franks and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading TeamHTML file produced by David Widger
Title: Toward the Gulf
Author: Edgar Lee Masters
Author: Edgar Lee Masters
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7845]Most recently updated: May 21, 2013
Language: English
Credits: Text file produced by Dave Maddock, Charles Franks and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading TeamHTML file produced by David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TOWARD THE GULF ***
CONTENTS
TO WILLIAM MARION REEDY
TOWARD THE GULF
LAKE BOATS
CITIES OF THE PLAIN
EXCLUDED MIDDLE
SAMUEL BUTLER ET AL.
JOHNNY APPLESEED
THE LOOM
DIALOGUE AT PERKO'S
SIR GALAHAD
ST. DESERET
HEAVEN IS BUT THE HOUR
VICTOR RAFOLSKI ON ART
THE LANDSCAPE
TO-MORROW IS MY BIRTHDAY
SWEET CLOVER
SOMETHING BEYOND THE HILL
FRONT THE AGES WITH A SMILE
POOR PIERROT
MIRAGE OF THE DESERT
DAHLIAS
THE GRAND RIVER MARSHES
DELILAH
THE WORLD-SAVER
RECESSIONAL
THE AWAKENING
IN THE GARDEN AT THE DAWN HOUR
FRANCE
BERTRAND AND GOURGAUD TALK OVER OLD TIMES
DRAW THE SWORD, O REPUBLIC!
DEAR OLD DICK
THE ROOM OF MIRRORS
THE LETTER
CANTICLE OF THE RACE
BLACK EAGLE RETURNS TO ST. JOE
MY LIGHT WITH YOURS
THE BLIND
"I PAY MY DEBT FOR LAFAYETTE AND ROCHAMBEAU"
CHRISTMAS AT INDIAN POINT
WIDOW LA RUE
DR. SCUDDER'S CLINICAL LECTURE
FRIAR YVES
THE EIGHTH CRUSADE
THE BISHOP'S DREAM OF THE HOLY SEPULCHRE
NEANDERTHAL
THE END OF THE SEARCH
BOTANICAL GARDENS
It would have been fitting had I dedicated Spoon River Anthology to you. Considerations of an intimate nature, not to mention a literary encouragement which was before yours, crowded you from the page. Yet you know that it was you who pressed upon my attention in June, 1909, the Greek Anthology. It was from contemplation of its epitaphs that my hand unconsciously strayed to the sketches of "Hod Putt," "Serepta The Scold" ("Serepta Mason" in the book), "Amanda Barker" ("Amanda" in the book), "Ollie McGee" and "The Unknown," the first written and the first printed sketches of The Spoon River Anthology. TheMirrorof May 29th, 1914, is their record.
I take one of the epigrams of Meleager with its sad revealment and touch of irony and turn it from its prose form to a verse form, making verses according to the breath pauses:
"The holy night and thou, O Lamp, we took as witness of our vows; and before thee we swore, he that would love me always and I that I would never leave him. We swore, and thou wert witness of our double promise. But now he says that our vows were written on the running waters. And thou, O Lamp, thou seest him in the arms of another."
In verse this epigram is as follows:
The holy night and thou,O Lamp,We took as witness of our vows;And before thee we swore,He that would love me alwaysAnd I that I would never leave him.We swore,And thou wert witness of our double promise.But now he says that our vows were written on the running waters.And thou, O Lamp,Thou seest him in the arms of another.
It will be observed that iambic feet prevail in this translation. They merely become noticeable and imperative when arranged in verses. But so it is, even in the briefest and starkest rendering of these epigrams from the Greek the humanism and dignity of the original transfer themselves, making something, if less than verse, yet more than prose; as Byron said of Sheridan's speeches, neither poetry nor oratory, but better than either. It was no difficult matter to pass from Chase Henry:
"In life I was the town drunkard.When I died the priest denied me burialIn holy ground, etc."
to the use of standard measures, or rhythmical arrangements of iambics or what not, and so to make a book, which for the first third required a practiced voice or eye to yield the semblance of verse; and for the last two-thirds, or nearly so, accommodated itself to the less sensitive conception of the average reader. The prosody was allowed to take care of itself under the emotional requirements and inspiration of the moment. But there is nothing new in English literature for some hundreds of years in combinations of dactyls, anapests or trochees, and without rhyme. Nor did I discover to the world that an iambic pentameter can be lopped to a tetrameter without the verse ceasing to be an iambic; though it be no longer the blank verse which has so ennobled English poetry. A great deal of unrhymed poetry is yet to be written in the various standard rhythms and in carefully fashioned metres.
But obviously a formal resuscitation of the Greek epigrams, ironical and tender, satirical and sympathetic, as casual experiments in unrelated themes would scarcely make the same appeal that an epic rendition of modern life would do, and as it turned out actually achieved.
The response of the American press to Spoon River Anthology during the summer of 1914 while it was appearing in theMirroris my warrant for saying this. It was quoted and parodied during that time in the country and in the metropolitan newspapers.Current Opinionin its issue of September, 1914, reproduced from theMirrorsome of the poems. Though at this time the schematic effect of the Anthology could not be measured, Edward J. Wheeler, that devoted patron of the art and discriminating critic of its manifestations, was attracted, I venture to say, by the substance of "Griffy, The Cooper," for that is one of the poems from the Anthology which he set forth in his column "The Voice of Living Poets" in the issue referred to.Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, followed in its issue of October, 1914, with a reprinting from theMirror. In a word, the Anthology went the rounds over the country before it was issued in book form. And a reception was thus prepared for the complete work not often falling to the lot of a literary production. I must not omit an expression of my gratitude for the very high praise which John Cowper Powys bestowed on the Anthology just before it appeared in book form and the publicity which was given his lecture by theNew York Times. Nathan Haskell Dole printed an article in the BostonTranscriptof June 30, 1915, in which he contrasted the work with the Greek Anthology, pointing in particular to certain epitaphs by Carphylides, Kallaischros and Pollianos. The critical testimony of Miss Harriet Monroe in her editorial comments and in her preface to "The New Poetry" has greatly strengthened the judgment of to-day against a reversal at the hands of a later criticism.
This response to the Anthology while it was appearing in theMirrorand afterwards when put in the book was to nothing so much as to the substance. It was accepted as a picture of our life in America. It was interpreted as a transcript of the state of mind of men and women here and elsewhere. You called it a Comedy Humaine in your announcement of my identity as the author in theMirrorof November 20, 1914. If the epitaphic form gave added novelty I must confess that the idea was suggested to me by the Greek Anthology. But it was rather because of the Greek Anthology than from it that I evolved the less harmonious epitaphs with which Spoon River Anthology was commenced. As to metrical epitaphs it is needless to say that I drew upon the legitimate materials of authentic English versification. Up to the Spring of 1914, I had never allowed a Spring to pass without reading Homer; and I feel that this familiarity had its influence both as to form and spirit; but I shall not take the space now to pursue this line of confessional.
What is the substance of which I have spoken if it be not the life around us as we view it through eyes whose vision lies in heredity, mode of life, understanding of ourselves and of our place and time? You have lived much. As a critic and a student of the country no one understands America better than you do. As a denizen of the west, but as a surveyor of the east and west you have brought to the country's interpretation a knowledge of its political and literary life as well as a proficiency in the history of other lands and other times. You have seen and watched the unfolding of forces that sprang up after the Civil War. Those forces mounted in the eighties and exploded in free silver in 1896. They began to hit through the directed marksmanship of Theodore Roosevelt during his second term. You knew at first hand all that went with these forces of human hope, futile or valiant endeavor, articulate or inarticulate expression of the new birth. You saw and lived, but in greater degree, what I have seen and lived. And with this back-ground you inspired and instructed me in my analysis. Standing by you confirmed or corrected my sculpturing of the clay taken out of the soil from which we both came. You did this with an eye familiar with the secrets of the last twenty years, familiar also with the relation of those years to the time which preceded and bore them.
So it is, that not only because I could not dedicate Spoon River to you, but for the larger reasons indicated, am I impelled to do you whatever honor there may be in taking your name for this book. By this outline confession, sometime perhaps to be filled in, do I make known what your relation is to these interpretations of mine resulting from a spirit, life, thought, environment which have similarly come to us and have similarly affected us.
I call this book "Toward the Gulf," a title importing a continuation of the attempts of Spoon River and The Great Valley to mirror the age and the country in which we live. It does not matter which one of these books carries your name and makes these acknowledgments; so far, anyway, as the opportunity is concerned for expressing my appreciation of your friendship and the great esteem and affectionate interest in which I hold you.
The following poems were first printed in the publications indicated:
Toward the Gulf, The Lake Boats, The Loom, Tomorrow is my Birthday, Dear Old Dick, The Letter, My Light with Yours, Widow LaRue, Neanderthal, in Reedy's Mirror.
Draw the Sword, Oh Republic, in the Independent.
Canticle of the Race, in Poetry, a Magazine of Verse.
Friar Yves, in the Cosmopolitan Magazine.
"I pay my debt for Lafayette and Rochambeau," in Fashions of the Hour.
Dedicated to Theodore Roosevelt
From the Cordilleran Highlands,From the Height of LandFar north.From the Lake of the Woods,From Rainy Lake,From Itasca's springs.From the snow and the iceOf the mountains,Breathed on by the sun,And given life,Awakened by kisses of fire,Moving, gliding as brightest hyalineDown the cliffs,Down the hills,Over the stones.Trickling as rills;Swiftly running as mountain brooks;Swirling through runnels of rock;Curving in spheréd silenceAround the long worn walls of granite gorges;Storming through chasms;And flowing for miles in quiet over the Titan basinTo the muddled waters of the mighty river,Himself obeying the call of the gulf,And the unfathomed urge of the sea!
Waters of mountain peaks,Spirits of libertyLeaving your pure retreatsFor work in the world.Soiling your crystal springsWith the waste that is whirled to your breast as you run,Until you are foul as the crawling leviathanThat devours you,And uses you to carry waste and earthFor the making of land at the gulf,For the conquest of land for the feet of men.
De Soto, Marquette and La SallePlanting your cross in vain,Gaining neither gold nor ivory,Nor tributeFor France or Spain.Making land aloneFor liberty!You could proclaim in the name of the crossThe dominion of kings over a world that was new.But the river has altered its course:There are fertile fieldsFor a thousand miles where the river flowed that you knew.And there are liberty and democracyFor thousands of milesWhere in the name of kings, and for the crossYou tramped the tangles for treasure.
The Falls of St. Anthony tumble the watersIn laughter and tumult and roaring of voices,Swirling, dancing, leaping, foaming,Spirits of caverns, of canyons and gorges:Waters tinctured by star-lights, sweetened by breezesBlown over snows, out of the rosy northlands,Through forests of pine and hemlock,Whisperings of the Pacific grown symphonic.Voices of freedom, restless, unconquered,Mad with divinity, fearless and free:—Hunters and choppers, warriors, revelers,Laughers, dancers, fiddlers, freemen,Climbing the crests of the Alleghenies,Singing, chopping, hunting, fightingErupting into Kentucky and Tennessee,Into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,Sweeping away the waste of the Indians,As the river carries mud for the making of land.And taking the land of Illinois from kingsAnd handing its allegiance to the Republic.What riflemen with Daniel Boone for leader,And conquerors with Clark for captainPlunge down like melted snowsThe rocks and chasms of forbidden mountains,And make more land for freemen!Clear-eyed, hard-muscled, dauntless hunters,Choppers of forests and tillers of fieldsMeet at last in a field of snow-white cloverTo make wise laws for states,And to teach their sons of the new WestThat suffrage is the right of freemen.Until the lion of Tennessee,Who crushes king-craft near the gulf.Where La Salle proclaimed the crown,And the cross,Is made the ruler of the republicBy freeman suffragans,And winners of the West!
Father of Waters! Ever recurring symbol of wider freedom,Even to the ocean girdled earth,The out-worn rule of Florida rots your domain.But the lion of Tennessee asks: Would you take from SpainThe land she has lost but in name?It shall be done in a month if you loose my sword.It was done as he said.And the sick and drunken power of Spain that clung,And sucked at the life of Chile, Peru, Argentina,Loosened under the blows of San Martin and Bolivar,Breathing the lightning thrown by Napoleon the GreatOn the thrones of Europe.Father of Waters! 'twas you who made us say:No kings this side of the earth forever!One-half of the earth shall be freeBy our word and the might that is back of our word!
The falls of St. Anthony tumble the watersIn laughter and tumult and roaring of voices!And the river moves in its winding channel toward the gulf,Over the breast of De Soto,By the swamp grave of La Salle!The old days sleep, the lion of Tennessee sleepsWith Daniel Boone and the hunters,The rifle men, the revelers,The laughers and dancers and choppersWho climbed the crests of the Alleghenies,And poured themselves into Tennessee, Ohio,Kentucky, Illinois, the bountiful West.But the river never sleeps, the river flows forever,Making land forever, reclaiming the wastes of the sea.And the race never sleeps, the race moves on forever.And wars must come, as the waters must sweep awayDrift-wood, dead wood, choking the strength of the river—For Liberty never sleeps!
The lion of Tennessee sleeps!And over the graves of the hunters and choppersThe tramp of troops is heard!There is war again,O, Father of Waters!There is war, O, symbol of freedom!They have chained your giant strength for the causeOf trade in men.But a man of the West, a denizen of your shore,Wholly American,Compact, clear-eyed, nerved like a hunter,Who knew no faster beat of the heart,Except in charity, forgiveness, peace;Generous, plain, democratic,Scarcely appraising himself at full,A spiritual rifleman and chopper,Of the breed of Daniel Boone—This man, your child, O, Father of Waters,Waked from the winter sleep of a useless dayBy the rising sun of a Freedom bright and strong,Slipped like the loosened snows of your mountain streamsInto a channel of fate as sure as your own—A fate which said: till the thing be doneTurn not back nor stop.Ulysses of the great Atlantis,Wholly American,Patient, silent, tireless, watchful, undismayedGrant at Fort Donelson, Grant at Vicksburg,Leading the sons of choppers and riflemen,Pushing on as the hunters and farmersPoured from the mountains into the West,Freed you, Father of Waters,To flow to the Gulf and be oneWith the earth-engirdled tides of time.And gave us states made ready for the handsWholly American:Hunters, choppers, tillers, fightersFor epochs vast and newIn Truth, in Liberty,Posters from land to land and sea to seaTill all the earth be free!
Ulysses of the great Atlantis,Dream not of disaster,Sleep the sleep of the braveIn your couch afar from the Father of Waters!A new Ulysses arises,Who turns not back, nor stopsTill the thing is done.He cuts with one stroke of the swordThe stubborn neck that keeps the GulfAnd the CaribbeanFrom the luring Pacific.Roosevelt the hunter, the pioneer,Wholly American,Winner of greater westsTill all the earth be free!
And forever as long as the river flows toward the GulfUlysses reincarnate shall comeTo guard our places of sleep,Till East and West shall be one in the west of heaven and earth!
In an old printI see a thicket of masts on the river.But in the prints to beThere will be lake boats,With port holes, funnels, rows of decks,Huddled like swans by the docks,Under the shadows of cliffs of brick.And who will know from the prints to be,When the Albatross and the Golden Eagle,The flying craft which shall carry the visionOf impatient lovers wounded by SpringTo the shaded rivers of Michigan,That it was the Missouri, the Iowa,And the City of Benton HarborWhich lay huddled like swans by the docks?You are not Lake Leman,Walled in by Mt. Blanc.One sees the whole world round you,And beyond you, Lake Michigan.And when the melodious winds of MarchWrinkle you and drive on the shoreThe serpent rifts of sand and snow,And sway the giant limbs of oaks,Longing to bud,The boats put forth for the ports that began to stir,With the creak of reels unwinding the nets,And the ring of the caulking wedge.But in the June days—The Alabama ploughs through liquid tonsOf sapphire waves.She sinks from hills to valleys of water,And rises again,Like a swimming gull!I wish a hundred years to come, and foreverAll lovers could know the raptureOf the lake boats sailing the first Spring daysTo coverts of hepatica,With the whole world sphering round you,And the whole of the sky beyond you.I knew the captain of the City of Grand Rapids.He had sailed the seas as a boy.And he stood on deck against the railingPuffing a cigar,Showing in his eyes the cinema flash of the sun on the waves.It was June and life was easy. ...One could lie on deck and sleep,Or sit in the sun and dream.People were walking the decks and talking,Children were singing.And down on the purser's deckA man was dancing by himself,Whirling around like a dervish.And this captain said to me:"No life is better than this.I could live forever,And do nothing but run this boatFrom the dock at Chicago to the dock at HollandAnd back again."One time I went to Grand HavenOn the Alabama with Charley Shippey.It was dawn, but white dawn only,Under the reign of Leucothea,As we volplaned, so it seemed, from the lakePast the lighthouse into the river.And afterward laughing and talkingHurried to Van Dreezer's restaurantFor breakfast.(Charley knew him and talked of thingsUnknown to me as he cooked the breakfast.)Then we fished the mile's length of the pierIn a gale full of warmth and moistureWhich blew the gulls about like confetti,And flapped like a flag the linen dusterOf a fisherman who paced the pier—(Charley called him Rip Van Winkle).The only thing that could be betterThan this day on the pierWould be its counterpart in heaven,As Swedenborg would say—Charley is fishing somewhere now, I think.There is a grove of oaks on a bluff by the riverAt Berrien Springs.There is a cottage that eyes the lakeBetween pines and silver birchesAt South Haven.There is the inviolable wonder of wooded shoreCurving for miles at Saugatuck.And at Holland a beach like Scheveningen's.And at Charlevoix the sudden quaintnessOf an old-world place by the sea.There are the hills around Elk LakeWhere the blue of the sky is so still and clearIt seems it was rubbed above themBy the swipe of a giant thumb.And beyond these the little Traverse BayWhere the roar of the breeze goes roundLike a roulette ball in the groove of the wheel,Circling the bay,And beyond these Mackinac and the Cheneaux Islands—And beyond these a great mystery!—Neither ice floes, nor winter's palsyStays the tide in the river.
And under the shadows of cliffs of brickThe lake boatsHuddled like swansTurn and sigh like sleepers——They are longing for the Spring!
Where are the cabalists, the insidious committees,The panders who betray the idiot citiesFor miles and miles toward the prairie sprawled,Ignorant, soul-less, rich,Smothered in fumes of pitch?
Rooms of mahogany in tall sky scrapersSee the unfolding and the folding upOf ring-clipped papers,And letters which keep drugged the public cup.The walls hear whispers and the semi-tonesOf voices in the corner, over telephonesMuffled by Persian padding, gemmed with brass spittoons.Butts of cigars are on the glass topped table,And through the smoke, gracing the furtive Babel,The bishop's picture blesses the picaroons,Who start or stop the life of millions movingUnconscious of obedience, the plasticYielders to satanic and dynasticHands of reproaching and approving.
Here come knights armed,But with their arms concealed,And rubber heeled.Here priests and wavering want are charmed.And shadows fall here like the shark'sIn messages received or sent.Signals are flying from the battlement.And every presidentOf rail, gas, coal and oil, the parks,The receipt of custom knows, without a look,Their meaning as the code is in no book.The treasonous cracksmen of the city's wealthWatch for the flags of stealth!
Acres of coal lie fenced along the tracks.Tracks ribbon the streets, and beneath the streetsWires for voices, fire, thwart the plebiscites,And choke the counsels and symposiacsOf dreamers who have pity for the backsThat bear and bleed.All things are theirs: tracks, wires, streets and coal,The church's creed,The city's soul,The city's sea girt loveliness,The merciless and meretricious press.
Far up in a watch-tower, where the news is printed,Gray faces and bright eyes, weary and cynicalDiscuss fresh wonders of the old cabal.But nothing of its work in type is hinted:Taxes are high! The mentors of the townMust keep their taxes downOn buildings, presses, stocksIn gas, oil, coal and docks.The mahogany rooms conceal a spider manWho holds the taxing bodies through the church,And knights with arms concealed. The mentors searchThe spider man, the master publican,And for his friendship silence keep,Letting him herd the populace like sheepFor self and for the insatiable desiresOf coal and tracks and wires,Pick judges, legislators,And tax-gatherers.Or name his favorites, whom they name:The slick and sinistral,Servitors of the cabal,For praise which seems the equivalent of fame:Giving to the delicate handed crackersOf priceless safes, the spiritual slackers,The flash and thunder of front pages!And the gulled millions stare and fling their wagesWhere they are bidden, helpless and emasculate.And the unilluminate,Whose brows are brass,Who weep on every Sabbath dayFor Jesus riding on an ass,Scarce know the ass is they,Now ridden by his effigy,The publican with Jesus' painted mask,Along a way where fumes of odorless gasFirst spur then fell them from the task.
Through the parade runs swift the psychic cackleLike thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle.And the angels say to Yahveh looking downFrom the alabaster railing, on the town,O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crackWe wish we had our little Sodom back!
Out of the mercury shimmer of glassOver these daguerreotypesThe balloon-like spread of a skirt of silk emergesWith its little figure of flowers.And the enameled glair of parted hairLies over the oval brow,From under which eyes of fiery blacknessLook through you.And the only repose of spirit shownIs in the handsLying loosely one in the other,Lightly clasped somewhat below the breast. ...And in the companion folder of this caseOf gutta perchaIs the shape of a man.His brow is oval too, but broader.His nose is long, but thick at the tip.His eyes are blueWherein faith burns her signal lights,And flashes her convictions.His mouth is tense, almost a slit.And his face is a massive CalvinismResting on a stock tie.They were married, you see.The clasp on this gutta percha caseLocks them together.They were locked together in life.And a hasp of brassKeeps their shadows face to face in the caseWhich has been handed down—(The pictures of noble ancestors,Showing what strains of gentle bloodFlow in the third generation)—From Massachusetts to Illinois. ...Long ago it was over for them,Massachusetts has done its part,She raised the seedAnd a wind blew it over to IllinoisWhere it has mixed, multiplied, mutatedUntil one soul comes forth:But a soul all striped and streaked,And a soul self-crossed and self-opposed,As it were a tree which on one branchBears northern spies,And on another thorn apples. ...Come Weissmann, Von Baer and Schleiden,And you Buffon and De Vries,Come with your secrets of sea shore astersNight-shade, henbanes, gloxinias,Veronicas, snap-dragons, Danebrog,And show us how they cross and change,And become hybrids.And show us what heredity is,And how it works.For the secret of these human beingsLocked in this gutta percha caseIs the secret of Mephistos and red Campions.Let us lay out the facts as far as we can.Her eyes were black,His eyes were blue.She saw through shadows, walls and doors,She knew life and hungered for more.But he lived in the mists, and climbed to high placesTo feel clouds about his face, and get the lightsOf supernal sun-sets.She was reason, and he was faith.She had an illumination, but of the intellect.And he had an illumination but of the soul.And she saw God as merciless law,And he knew God as divine love.And she was a man, and he in part was a woman.He stood in a pulpit and preached the Christ,And the remission of sins by blood,And the literal fall of man through Adam,And the mystical and actual salvation of manThrough the coming of Christ.And she sat in a pew shading her great eyesTo hide her scorn for it all.She was crucified,And raged to the last like the impenitent thiefAgainst the fate which wasted and trampled downHer wisdom, sagacity, versatile skill,Which would have piled up gold or honorsFor a mate who knew that life is growth,And health, and the satisfaction of wants,And place and reputation and mansion houses,And mahogany and silver,And beautiful living.She hated him, and hence she pitied him.She was like the gardener with great prunersDeciding to clip, sometimes not clippingJust for the dread.She had married him—but why?Some inscrutable airWafted his pollen to her across a wide garden—Some power had crossed them.And here is the secret I think:(As we would say here is electricity)It is the vibration inhering in sexThat produces devils or angels,And it is the sex reaction in men and womenThat brings forth devils or angels,And starts in them the germs of powers or passions,Becoming loves, ferocities, gifts and weaknesses,Till the stock dies out.So now for their hybrid children:—She gave birth to four daughters and one son.But first what have we for the composition of these daughters?Reason opposed and becoming keener therefor.Faith mocked and drawing its mantel closer.Love thwarted and becoming acid.Hatred mounting too high and thinning into pity.Hunger for life unappeased and becoming a stream under-groundWhere only blind things swim.God year by year removing himself to remoter thronesOf inexorable law.God coming closer even while diseaseAnd total blindness came between him and GodAnd defeated the mercy of God.And a love and a trust growing deeper in himAs she in great thirst, hanging on the cross,Mocked his crucifixion,And talked philosophy between the spasms of pain,Till at last she is all satirist,And he is all saint.And all the children were raisedAfter the strictest fashion in New England,And made to join the church,And attend its services.And these were the children:Janet was a religious fanatic and a virago,She debated religion with her husband for ten years,Then he refused to talk, and for twenty yearsScarcely spoke to her.She died a convert to Catholicism.They had two children:The boy became a forgererOf notorious skill.The daughter married, but was barren.Miranda married a rich manAnd spent his money so fast that he failed.She lashed him with a scorpion tongueAnd made him believe at lastWith her incessant reasoningsThat he was a fool, and so had failed.In middle life he started over again,But became tangled in a law-suit.Because of these things he killed himself.Louise was a nymphomaniac.She was married twice.Both husbands fled from her insatiable embraces.At thirty-two she became a woman on a telephone list,Subject to be called,And for two years ran through a daily orgy of sex,When blindness came on her, as it came on her father before her,And she became a Christian Scientist,And led an exemplary life.Deborah was a Puritan of Puritans,Her list of unmentionable thingsTabooed all the secrets of creation,Leaving politics, religion, and human faults,And the mistakes most people make,And the natural depravity of man,And his freedom to redeem himself if he chooses,As the only subjects of conversation.As a twister of words and meanings,And a skilled welder of fallacies,And a swift emerger from ineluctable traps of logic,And a wit with an adder's tongue,And a laugher,And an unafraid facer of enemies,Oppositions, hatreds,She never knew her equal.She was at once very cruel, and very tender,Very selfish and very generousVery little and very magnanimous.Scrupulous as to the truth, and utterly disregardless of the truth.Of the keenest intuitions, yet gullible,Easily used at times, of erratic judgment,Analytic but pursuing with incredible swiftnessThe falsest trails to her own undoing—All in all the strangest mixture of colors and scentDerived from father and mother,But mixed by whom, and how, and why?Now for the son named Herman, rebel soul.His brow was like a loaf of bread, his eyesTurned from his father's blue to gray, his noseWas like his mother's, skin was dark like hers.His shapely body, hands and feet belongedTo some patrician face, not to Marat's.And his was like Marat's, fanatical,Materialistic, fierce, as it might guideA reptile's crawl, but yet he crawled to peaksLoving the hues of mists, but not the mistsHis father loved. And being a rebel soulHe thought the world all wrong. A nothingnessMoving as malice marred the life of man.'Twas man's great work to fight this Giant Fraud,And all who praise and serve Him. 'Tis for manTo free the world from error, suffer, dieFor liberty of thought. You see his motherIs in possession of one part of him,Or all of him for some time.So he livesNursing the dream (like father he's a dreamer)That genius fires him. All the while a giftFor analytics stored behind that brow,That bulges like a loaf of bread, is allOf which he well may boast above the manHe hates as but a slave of faith and fear.He feeds luxurious doubt with Omar Khyam,But for long years neglects the jug of wine.And as for "thou" he does not wake for years,Is a pure maiden when he weds, the grainsRun counter in him, end in knots at times.He takes from father certain tastes and traits,From mother certain others, one can seeHis mother's sex re-actions to his father,Not passed to him to make him celibate,But holding back in sleeping passions whichBurst over bounds at last in lust, not love.Not love since that great engine in the browTears off the irised wings of love and baresThe poor worm's body where the wings had been:What is it but desire? Such stuff in rhymeIn music over what is but desire,And ends when that is satisfied!He's a crank.And follows all the psychic thrills which runTo cackles o'er the world. It's Looking Backward,Or Robert Elsmere, Spencer's Social Statics,It's socialism, Anarchism, Peace,It's non-resistance with a swelling heart,As who should say how truer to the faithOf Jesus am I, without hope or faith,Than churchmen. He's a prohibitionist,The poor's protagonist, the knight at armsOf fallen women, yelling at the richWhose wicked greed makes all the prostitutes—No prostitutes without the wicked rich!But as he ages, as the bitter daysApproach with perorations: O ye vipers,The engine in him changes all the world,Reverses all the wheels of thought behind.For Nietzsche comes, and makes him superman.He dumps the truth of Jesus over—thereIt lies with his youth's textual skepticism,And laughter at the supernatural.Now what's the motivating principleOf such a mind? In youth he sought for rulesWherewith to trail and capture truths. He found itIn James McCosh's Logic, it was this:Lex Exclusi Tertii aut Medii,Law of Excluded Middle speaking plain:A thing is true, or not true, never a thirdHypothesis, so God is or is not.That's very good to start with, how to endAnd how to know which of the two is false—He hunted out the false, as mother did—Requires a tool. He found it in this book,Reductio ad absurdum; let us seeExcluded middle use reductio.God is or God is not, but then what God?Excluded Middle never sought a GodTo suffer demolition at his handsExcept the God of Illinois, the GodGrown but a little with his followersSince Moses lived and Peter fished. So nowGod is or God is not. Let us assumeGod is and use reductio ad absurdum,Taking away the rotten props, the postsThat do not fit or hold, and let Him fall.For if he falls, the other postulateThat God is not is demonstrated. SeeA universe of truth pass on the wayCleared by Excluded Middle through the stuffOf thought and visible things, a way that letsA greater God escape, uncaught by allThe nippers of reductio ad absurdum.But to resume his argument was this:God is or God is not, but if God isWhy pestilence and war, earthquake and famine?He either wills them, or cannot prevent them,But if he wills them God is evil, ifHe can't prevent them, he is limited.But God, you say, is good, omnipotent,And here I prove Him evil, or too weakTo stay the evil. Having shown your GodLacking in what makes God, the propositionWhich I oppose to this, that God is notStands proven. For as evil is most clearIn sickness, pain and death, it cannot beThere is a Power with strength to overcome them,Yet suffers them to be.And so this manWent through the years of life, and stripped the fieldsOf beauty and of thought with mandiblesInsatiable as the locust's, which devoursA season's care and labor in an hour.He stripped these fields and ate them, but they madeNo meat or fat for him. And so he livedOn his own thought, as starving men may liveOn stored up fat. And so in time he starved.The thought in him no longer fed his life,And he had withered up the outer worldOf man and nature, stripped it to the bone,Nothing but skull and cross-bones greeted himWherever he turned—the world became a bottleFilled with a bitter essence he could drinkFrom long accustomed doses—labeled poisonAnd marked with skull and cross-bones. Could he laughAs mother laughed? No more! He tried to findThe mother's laugh and secret for the laughWhich kept her to the end—but did she laugh?Or if she laughed, was it so hollow, forcedAs all his laughter now was. He had provedToo much for laughter. Nothing but himselfRemained to keep himself, he lived aloneUpon his stored up fat, now daily growingTo dangerous thinness.So with love of woman.He had found "thou" the jug of wine as well,"Thou" "thou" had come and gone too many times.For what is sex but touch of flesh, the handIs flesh and hands may touch, if so, the loins—Reductio ad absurdum, O you fools,Who see a wrong in touch of loins, no wrongIn clasp of hands. And so again, againWith his own tools of thought he bruised his handsUntil they grew too callous to perceiveWhen they were touched.So by analysisHe turned on everything he once believed.Let's make an end!Men thought Excluded MiddleWas born for great things. Why that bulging browAnd analytic keen if not for greatness?In those old days they thought so when he foughtFor lofty things, a youthful radicalCome here to change the world! But now at lastHe lectures in back halls to youths who areWhat he was in his youth, to acid soulsWho must have bitterness, can take enoughTo kill a healthy soul, as fiends for dopeMust have enough to kill a body clean.And so upon a night Excluded MiddleIs lecturing to prove that life is evil,Not worth the living—when his auditorsBehold him pale and sway and take his seat,And later quit the hall, the lecture leftHalf finished.This had happened in a twinkling:He had made life a punching bag, with fists,Excluded Middle and Reductio,Had whacked it back and forth. But just as oftenAs he had struck it with an argumentThat it is not worth living, snap, the bagWould fly back for another punch. For lifeJust like a punching bag will stand your whacksOf hatred and denial, let you punchAlmost at will. But sometime, like the bag,The strap gives way, the bag flies up and fallsAnd lies upon the floor, you've knocked it out.And this is what Excluded Middle doesThis night, the strap breaks with his blows. He provesHis strength, his case and for the first he seesLife is not worth the living. Life gives up,Resists no more, flys back no more to him,But hits the ceiling, snap the strap gives way!The bag falls to the floor, and lies there still—Who now shall pick it up, re-fasten it?And so his color fades, it well may beThe crisis of a long neurosis, wellWhat caused it? But his eyes are wondrous clearPerceiving life knocked out. His heart is sick,He takes his seat, admiring friends swarm round him,Conduct him to a carriage, he goes homeAnd sitting by the fire (O what is fire?The miracle of fire dawns on his thought,Fire has been near him all these years unseen,How wonderful is fire!) which warms and soothesNeuritic pains, he takes the rubber caseWhich locks the images of father, mother.And as he stares upon the oval brow,The eyes of blue which flash the light of faith,Preserved like dendrites in this silver shimmer,Some spectral speculations fill his brain,Float like a storm above the sorry wreckOf all his logic tools, machines; for nowSince pains in back and shoulder like to father'sFall to him at the age that father had them,Father has entered him, has settled downTo live with him with those neuritic pangs.Thus are his speculations. Over allHow comes it that a sudden feel of life,Its wonder, terror, beauty is like father's?As if the soul of father entered in himAnd made the field of consciousness his own,Emotions, powers of thought his instruments.That is a horrible atavism, whenYou find yourself reverting to a soulYou have not loved, despite yourself becomingThat other soul, and with an out-worn selfCrying for burial on your hands, a lifeNot yours till now that waits your new found powers—Live now or die indeed!