Eunice Tietjens

THE BACCHANTE TO HER BABE

Scherzo

Come, sprite, and dance! The sun is up,

The wind runs laughing down the sky

That brims with morning like a cup.

Sprite, we must race him,

We must chase him—

You and I!

And skim across the fuzzy heather—

You and joy and I together

Whirling by!

You merry little roll of fat!—

Made warm to kiss, and smooth to pat,

And round to toy with, like a cub;

To put one’s nozzle in and rub

And breathe you in like breath of kine,

Like juice of vine,

That sets my morning heart a-tingling,

Dancing, jingling,

All the glad abandon mingling

Of wind and wine!

Sprite, you are love, and you are joy,

A happiness, a dream, a toy,

A god to laugh with,

Love to chaff with,

The sun come down in tangled gold,

The moon to kiss, and spring to hold.

There was a time once, long ago,

Long—oh, long since ... I scarcely know.

340Almost I had forgot ...

There was a time when you were not,

You merry sprite, save as a strain,

The strange dull pain

Of green buds swelling

In warm, straight dwelling

That must burst to the April rain.

A little heavy I was then,

And dull—and glad to rest. And when

The travail came

In searing flame ...

But, sprite, that was so long ago!—

A century!—I scarcely know.

Almost I had forgot

When you were not.

So, little sprite, come dance with me!

The sun is up, the wind is free!

Come now and trip it,

Romp and skip it,

Earth is young and so are we.

Sprite, you and I will dance together

On the heather,

Glad with all the procreant earth,

With all the fruitage of the trees,

And golden pollen on the breeze,

With plants that bring the grain to birth,

With beast and bird,

Feathered and furred,

With youth and hope and life and love,

And joy thereof—

While we are part of all, we two—

For my glad burgeoning in you!

So, merry little roll of fat,

Made warm to kiss and smooth to pat

341And round to toy with, like a cub,

To put one’s nozzle in and rub,

My god to laugh with,

Love to chaff with,

Come and dance beneath the sky,

You and I!

Look out with those round wondering eyes,

And squirm, and gurgle—and grow wise!

THE STEAM SHOVEL

Beneath my window in a city street

A monster lairs, a creature huge and grim

And only half believed: the strength of him—

Steel-strung and fit to meet

The strength of earth—

Is mighty as men’s dreams that conquer force.

Steam belches from him. He is the new birth

Of old Behemoth, late-sprung from the source

Whence Grendel sprang, and all the monster clan

Dead for an age, now born again of man.

The iron head,

Set on a monstrous, jointed neck,

Glides here and there, lifts, settles on the red

Moist floor, with nose dropped in the dirt, at beck

Of some incredible control.

He snorts, and pauses couchant for a space,

Then slowly lifts, and tears the gaping hole

Yet deeper in earth’s flank. A sudden race

Of loosened earth and pebbles trickles there

Like blood-drops in a wound.

But he, the monster, swings his load around—

Weightless it seems as air.

His mammoth jaw

342Drops widely open with a rasping sound,

And all the red earth vomits from his maw.

O thwarted monster, born at man’s decree,

A lap-dog dragon, eating from his hand

And doomed to fetch and carry at command,

Have you no longing ever to be free?

In warm, electric days to run a-muck,

Ranging like some mad dinosaur,

Your fiery heart at war

With this strange world, the city’s restless ruck,

Where all drab things that toil, save you alone,

Have life;

And you the semblance only, and the strife?

Do you not yearn to rip the roots of stone

Of these great piles men build,

And hurl them down with shriek of shattered steel,

Scorning your own sure doom, so you may feel,

You too, the lust with which your fathers killed?

Or is your soul in very deed so tame,

The blood of Grendel watered to a gruel,

That you are well content

With heart of flame

Thus placidly to chew your cud of fuel

And toil in peace for man’s aggrandizement?

Poor helpless creature of a half-grown god,

Blind of yourself and impotent!

At night,

When your forerunners, sprung from quicker sod,

Would range through primal woods, hot on the scent,

Or wake the stars with amorous delight,

You stand, a soiled, unwieldy mass of steel,

Black in the arc-light, modern as your name,

Dead and unsouled and trite;

Till I must feel

343A quick creator’s pity for your shame:

That man, who made you and who gave so much,

Yet cannot give the last transforming touch;

That with the work he cannot give the wage—

For day, no joy of night,

For toil, no ecstasy of primal rage.

THE GREAT MAN

I cannot always feel his greatness.

Sometimes he walks beside me, step by step,

And paces slowly in the ways—

The simple, wingless ways

That my thoughts tread. He gossips with me then,

And finds it good;

Not as an eagle might, his great wings folded, be content

To walk a little, knowing it his choice,

But as a simple man,

My friend.

And I forget.

Then suddenly a call floats down

From the clear airy spaces,

The great keen, lonely heights of being.

And he who was my comrade hears the call

And rises from my side, and soars,

Deep-chanting, to the heights.

Then I remember.

And my upward gaze goes with him, and I see

Far off against the sky

The glint of golden sunlight on his wings.

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