Harriet Monroe

THE HOTEL

The long resounding marble corridors, the shining parlors with shining women in them.

The French room, with its gilt and garlands under plump little tumbling painted Loves.

The Turkish room, with its jumble of many carpets and its stiffly squared un-Turkish chairs.

The English room, all heavy crimson and gold, with spreading palms lifted high in round green tubs.

The electric lights in twos and threes and hundreds, made into festoons and spirals and arabesques, a maze and magic of bright persistent radiance.

The people sitting in corners by twos and threes, and cooing together under the glare.

The long rows of silent people in chairs, watching with eyes that see not while the patient band tangles the air with music.

The bell-boys marching in with cards, and shouting names over and over into ears that do not heed.

The stout and gorgeous dowagers in lacy white and lilac, bedizened with many jewels, with smart little scarlet or azure hats on their gray-streaked hair.

232The business men in trim and spotless suits, who walk in and out with eager steps, or sit at the desks and tables, or watch the shining women.

The telephone girls forever listening to far voices, with the silver band over their hair and the little black caps obliterating their ears.

The telegraph tickers sounding their perpetual chit—chit-chit from the uttermost ends of the earth.

The waiters, in black swallow-tails and white aprons, passing here and there with trays of bottles and glasses.

The quiet and sumptuous bar-room, with purplish men softly drinking in little alcoves, while the barkeeper, mixing bright liquors, is rapidly plying his bottles.

The great bedecked and gilded café, with its glitter of a thousand mirrors, with its little white tables bearing gluttonous dishes whereto bright forks, held by pampered hands, flicker daintily back and forth.

The white-tiled, immaculate kitchen, with many little round blue fires, where white-clad cooks are making spiced and flavored dishes.

The cool cellars filled with meats and fruits, or layered with sealed and bottled wines mellowing softly in the darkness.

The invisible stories of furnaces and machines, burrowing deep into the earth, where grimy workmen are heavily laboring.

The many-windowed stories of little homes and shelters and sleeping-places, reaching up into the night like some miraculous, high-piled honey-comb of wax-white cells.

The clothes inside of the cells—the stuffs, the silks, the laces; the elaborate delicate disguises that wait in trunks and drawers and closets, or bedrape and conceal human flesh.

The people inside of the clothes, the bodies white and young, bodies fat and bulging, bodies wrinkled and wan, all alike veiled by fine fabrics, sheltered by walls and roofs, shut in from the sun and stars.

233The soul inside of the bodies—the naked souls; souls weazen and weak, or proud and brave; all imprisoned in flesh, wrapped in woven stuffs, enclosed in thick and painted masonry, shut away with many shadows from the shining truth.

God inside of the souls, God veiled and wrapped and imprisoned and shadowed in fold on fold of flesh and fabrics and mockeries; but ever alive, struggling and rising again, seeking the light, freeing the world.

THE TURBINE

To W. S. M.

Look at her—there she sits upon her throne

As ladylike and quiet as a nun!

But if you cross her—whew! her thunderbolts

Will shake the earth! She’s proud as any queen,

The beauty—knows her royal business too,

To light the world, and does it night by night

When her gay lord, the sun, gives up his job.

I am her slave; I wake and watch and run

From dark till dawn beside her. All the while

She hums there softly, purring with delight

Because men bring the riches of the earth

To feed her hungry fires. I do her will

And dare not disobey, for her right hand

Is power, her left is terror, and her anger

Is havoc. Look—if I but lay a wire

Across the terminals of yonder switch

She’ll burst her windings, rip her casings off,

And shriek till envious Hell shoots up its flames,

Shattering her very throne. And all her people,

The laboring, trampling, dreaming crowds out there—

Fools and the wise who look to her for light—

Will walk in darkness through the liquid night

Submerged.

234Sometimes I wonder why she stoops

To be my friend—oh yes, who talks to me

And sings away my loneliness; my friend

Though I am trivial and she sublime.

Hard-hearted?—No, tender and pitiful,

As all the great are. Every arrogant grief

She comforts quietly, and all my joys

Dance to her measures through the tolerant night.

She talks to me, tells me her troubles too,

Just as I tell her mine. Perhaps she feels

An ache deep down—that agonizing stab

Of grit grating her bearings; then her voice

Changes its tune, it wails and calls to me

To soothe her anguish, and I run, her slave,

Probe like a surgeon and relieve the pain.

We have our jokes too, little mockeries

That no one else in all the swarming world

Would see the point of. She will laugh at me

To show her power: maybe her carbon packings

Leak steam, and I run madly back and forth

To keep the infernal fiends from breaking loose:

Suddenly she will throttle them herself

And chuckle softly, far above me there,

At my alarms.

But there are moments—hush!—

When my turn comes; her slave can be her master,

Conquering her he serves. For she’s a woman,

Gets bored there on her throne, tired of herself,

Tingles with power that turns to wantonness.

Suddenly something’s wrong—she laughs at me,

Bedevils the frail wires with some mad caress

That thrills blind space, calls down ten thousand lightnings

To ruin her pomp and set her spirit free.

Then with this puny hand, swift as her threat,

235Must I beat back the chaos, hold in leash

Destructive furies, rescue her—even her—

From the fierce rashness of her truant mood,

And make me lord of far and near a moment,

Startling the mystery. Last night I did it—

Alone here with my hand upon her heart

I faced the mounting fiends and whipped them down;

And never a wink from the long file of lamps

Betrayed her to the world.

So there she sits,

Mounted on all the ages, at the peak

Of time. The first man dreamed of light, and dug

The sodden ignorance away, and cursed

The darkness; young primeval races dragged

Foundation stones, and piled into the void

Rage and desire; the Greek mounted and sang

Promethean songs and lit a signal fire:

The Roman bent his iron will to forge

Deep furnaces; slow epochs riveted

With hope the secret chambers: till at last

We, you and I, this living age of ours,

A new-winged Mercury, out of the skies

Filch the wild spirit of light, and chain him there

To do her will forever.

Look, my friend,

Here is a sign! What is this crystal sphere—

This little bulb of glass I lightly lift,

This iridescent bubble a child might blow

Out of its brazen pipe to hold the sun—

What strange toy is it? In my hand it lies

Cold and inert, its puny artery—

That curling cobweb film—ashen and dead.

But now—a twist or two—let it but touch

The hem, far trailing, of my lady’s robe,

236And look, the burning life-blood of the stars

Leaps to its heart, and glows against the dark,

Kindling the world.

Even so I touch her garment,

Her servant through the quiet night; and thus

I lay my hand upon the Pleiades

And feel their throb of fire. Grandly she gives

To me unworthy; woman inscrutable,

Scatters her splendors through my darkness, leads me

Far out into the workshop of the worlds.

There I can feel those infinite energies

Our little earth just gnaws at through the ether,

And see the light our sunshine hides. Out there,

Close to the heart of life, I am at peace.

ON THE PORCH

As I lie roofed in, screened in,

From the pattering rain,

The summer rain—

As I lie

Snug and dry,

And hear the birds complain:

Oh, billow on billow,

Oh, roar on roar,

Over me wash

The seas of war.

Over me—down—down—

Lunges and plunges

The huge gun with its one blind eye,

The armored train,

And, swooping out of the sky,

The aeroplane.

237Down—down—

The army proudly swinging

Under gay flags,

The glorious dead heaped up like rags,

A church with bronze bells ringing,

A city all towers,

Gardens of lovers and flowers,

The round world swinging

In the light of the sun:

All broken, undone,

All down—under

Black surges of thunder ...

Oh, billow on billow

Oh, roar on roar,

Over me wash

The seas of war ...

As I lie roofed in, screened in,

From the pattering rain,

The summer rain—

As I lie

Snug and dry,

And hear the birds complain.

THE WONDER OF IT

How wild, how witch-like weird that life should be!

That the insensate rock dared dream of me,

And take to bursting out and burgeoning—

Oh, long ago—yo ho!—

And wearing green! How stark and strange a thing

That life should be!

Oh, mystic mad, a rigadoon of glee,

That dust should rise, and leap alive, and flee

238A-foot, a-wing, and shake the deeps with cries—

Oh, far away—yo-hay!

What moony masque, what arrogant disguise

That life should be!

THE INNER SILENCE

Noises that strive to tear

Earth’s mantle soft of air

And break upon the stillness where it dwells:

The noise of battle and the noise of prayer,

The cooing noise of love that softly tells

Joy’s brevity, the brazen noise of laughter—

All these affront me not, nor echo after

Through the long memories.

They may not enter the deep chamber where

Forever silence is.

Silence more soft than spring hides in the ground

Beneath her budding flowers;

Silence more rich than ever was the sound

Of harps through long warm hours.

It’s like a hidden vastness, even as though

Great suns might there beat out their measures slow,

Nor break the hush mightier than they.

There do I dwell eternally,

There where no thought may follow me,

Nor stillest dreams whose pinions plume the way.

LOVE SONG

I love my life, but not too well

To give it to thee like a flower,

So it may pleasure thee to dwell

Deep in its perfume but an hour.

I love my life, but not too well.

239I love my life, but not too well

To sing it note by note away,

So to thy soul the song may tell

The beauty of the desolate day.

I love my life, but not too well.

I love my life, but not too well

To cast it like a cloak on thine,

Against the storms that sound and swell

Between thy lonely heart and mine.

I love my life, but not too well.

A FAREWELL

Good-by!—no, do not grieve that it is over,

The perfect hour;

That the winged joy, sweet honey-loving rover,

Flits from the flower.

Grieve not—it is the law. Love will be flying—

Oh, love and all.

Glad was the living—blessed be the dying!

Let the leaves fall.

LULLABY

My little one, sleep softly

Among the toys and flowers.

Sleep softly, O my first-born son,

Through all the long dark hours.

And if you waken far away

I shall be wandering too.

If far away you run and play

My heart must follow you.

240Sleep softly, O my baby,

And smile down in your sleep.

Here are red rose-buds for your bed—

Smile, and I will not weep.

We made our pledge—you did not fear

To go—why then should I?

Though long you sleep, I shall be near;

So hush—we must not cry.

Sleep softly, dear one, softly—

They can not part us now;

Forever rest here on my breast,

My kiss upon your brow.

What though they hide a little grave

With dream-flowers false or true?

What difference? We will just be brave

Together—I and you.

PAIN

She heard the children playing in the sun,

And through her window saw the white-stemmed trees

Sway like a film of silver in the breeze

Under the purple hills; and one by one

She noted chairs and cabinets, and spun

The pattern of her bed’s pale draperies:

Yet all the while she knew that each of these

Was a dull lie, in irony begun.

For down in hell she lay, whose livid fires

Love may not quench, whose pangs death may not quell.

The round immensity of earth and sky

Shrank to a point that speared her. Loves, desires,

Darkened to torturing ministers of hell,

Whose mockery of joy deepened the lie.

241Little eternities the black hours were,

That no beginning knew, that knew no end.

Day waned, and night came like a faithless friend,

Bringing no joy; till slowly over her

A numbness grew, and life became a blur,

A silence, an oblivion, a dark blend

Of dim lost agonies, whose downward trend

Led into time’s eternal sepulchre.

And yet, when, after aeons infinite

Of dark eclipse she woke—lo, it was day!

The pictures hung upon the walls, each one;

Under the same rose-patterned coverlet

She lay; spring was still young, and still the play

Of happy children sounded in the sun.

THE WATER OUZEL

Little brown surf-bather of the mountains!

Spirit of foam, lover of cataracts, shaking your wings in falling waters!

Have you no fear of the roar and rush when Nevada plunges—

Nevada, the shapely dancer, feeling her way with slim white fingers?

How dare you dash at Yosemite the mighty—

Tall, white-limbed Yosemite, leaping down, down, over the cliff?

Is it not enough to lean on the blue air of mountains?

Is it not enough to rest with your mate at timber-line, in bushes that hug the rocks?

Must you fly through mad waters where the heaped-up granite breaks them?

Must you batter your wings in the torrent?

Must you plunge for life or death through the foam?

242

THE PINE AT TIMBER-LINE

What has bent you,

Warped and twisted you,

Torn and crippled you?—

What has embittered you,

O lonely tree?

You search the rocks for a footing,

dragging scrawny roots;

You bare your thin breast to the storms,

and fling out wild arms behind you;

You throw back your witch-like head,

with wisps of hair stringing the wind.

You fight with the snows,

You rail and shriek at the tempests.

Old before your time, you challenge the cold stars.

Be still, be satisfied!

Stand straight like your brothers in the valley,

The soft green valley of summer down below.

Why front the endless winter of the peak?

Why seize the lightning in your riven hands?

Why cut the driven wind and shriek aloud?

Why tarry here?

MOUNTAIN SONG

I have not where to lay my head;

Upon my breast no child shall lie;

For me no marriage feast is spread:

I walk alone under the sky.

243My staff and scrip I cast away—

Light-burdened to the mountain height!

Climbing the rocky steep by day,

Kindling my fire against the night.

The bitter hail shall flower the peak,

The icy wind shall dry my tears.

Strong shall I be, who am but weak,

When bright Orion spears my fears.

Under the horned moon I shall rise

Up-swinging on the scarf of dawn.

The sun, searching with level eyes,

Shall take my hand and lead me on.

Wide flaming pinions veil the West—

Ah, shall I find? and shall I know?

My feet are bound upon the Quest—

Over the Great Divide I go.