Works

[To be sung to the tune of 'The Blood of the Lamb' with indicated instrument]


I

[Bass drum beaten loudly.]
Booth led boldly with his big bass drum -...

O great heart of God,
Once vague and lost to me,
Why do I throb with your throb to-night,
In this land, eternity?

O little heart of God,
Sweet intruding stranger,...

On -
Thro' the gleaming gray
I ran to the storm and clang -
To the red, red hill where the great tree swayed -
And scattered bells like autumn leaves.
How the red bells rang!...

How the red bells rang
As I neared the Chaos-shore!
As I flew across to the end of the West
The young bells rang and rang
Above the Chaos roar,
And the Wings of the Morning
Beat in tune...

(Written with the hope that the socialists might yet dethrone Kaiser and Czar.)


Here's to the mice that scare the lions,
Creeping into their cages.
Here's to the fairy mice that bite...

We are the smirched. Queen Honor is the spotless.
We slept thro' wars where Honor could not sleep.
We were faint-hearted. Honor was full-valiant.
We kept a silence Honor could not keep.
...

Dedicated to Lucy Bates

(Being a reminiscence of certain private theatricals.)



Oh, cabaret dancer, I know a dancer,
Whose eyes have not looked on the feasts that are vain....

Ah, she was music in herself,
A symphony of joyousness.
She sang, she sang from finger tips,
From every tremble of her dress.
I saw sweet haunting harmony,
An ecstasy, an ecstasy,...

Oh, once I walked in Heaven, all alone
Upon the sacred cliffs above the sky.
God and the angels, and the gleaming saints
Had journeyed out into the stars to die.
...

(A Negro Sermon.)



Once, in a night as black as ink,
She drove him out when he would not drink.
Round the house there were men in wait
Asleep in rows by the Gaza gate....

(The poem shows the Master, with his work done, singing to free his heart in Heaven.)

This poem is intended to be half said, half sung, very softly, to the well-known tune: -

"Last night I lay a-sleeping,...

[Written while a field-worker in the Anti-Saloon League of Illinois.]


King Arthur's men have come again.
They challenge everywhere
The foes of Christ's Eternal Church.
Her incense crowns the air....

My lady in her white silk shawl
Is like a lily dim,
Within the twilight of the room
Enthroned and kind and prim.

My lady! Pale gold is her hair.
Until she smiles her face...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)

No man should stand before the moon
To make sweet song thereon,
With dandified importance,
His sense of humor gone.
...

The gleaming head of one fine friend
Is bent above my little song,
So through the treasure-pits of Heaven
In fancy's shoes, I march along.

I wander, seek and peer and ponder...

Star of my heart, I follow from afar.
Sweet Love on high, lead on where shepherds are,
Where Time is not, and only dreamers are.
Star from of old, the Magi-Kings are dead...

Written for Lorado Taft's Statue of Black Hawk at Oregon, Illinois



To be given in the manner of the Indian Oration and the Indian War-Cry.


Hawk of the Rocks,...

[This is the hymn to Eleanor, daughter of Mab and a golden drone, sung by the Locust choir when the fairy child marries her God, the yellow rose]



This is a song to the white-armed one...

(Moon Poems for the Children/Fairy-tales for the Children)
(What Uncle William told the Children)


Twelve snails went walking after night.
They'd creep an inch or so,
Then stop and bug their eyes...

There dwelt a widow learned and devout,
Behind our hamlet on the eastern hill.
Three sons she had, who went to find the world.
They promised to return, but wandered still....