A Message to America

      You have the grit and the guts, I know;

You are ready to answer blow for blow

You are virile, combative, stubborn, hard,

But your honor ends with your own back-yard;

Each man intent on his private goal,

You have no feeling for the whole;

What singly none would tolerate

You let unpunished hit the state,

Unmindful that each man must share

The stain he lets his country wear,

And (what no traveller ignores)

That her good name is often yours.

      You are proud in the pride that feels its might;

From your imaginary height

Men of another race or hue

Are men of a lesser breed to you:

The neighbor at your southern gate

You treat with the scorn that has bred his hate.

To lend a spice to your disrespect

You call him the "greaser". But reflect!

The greaser has spat on you more than once;

He has handed you multiple affronts;

He has robbed you, banished you, burned and killed;

He has gone untrounced for the blood he spilled;

He has jeering used for his bootblack's rag

The stars and stripes of the gringo's flag;

And you, in the depths of your easy-chair -- -

What did you do, what did you care?

Did you find the season too cold and damp

To change the counter for the camp?

Were you frightened by fevers in Mexico?

I can't imagine, but this I know -- -

You are impassioned vastly more

By the news of the daily baseball score

Than to hear that a dozen countrymen

Have perished somewhere in Darien,

That greasers have taken their innocent lives

And robbed their holdings and raped their wives.

      Not by rough tongues and ready fists

Can you hope to jilt in the modern lists.

The armies of a littler folk

Shall pass you under the victor's yoke,

Sobeit a nation that trains her sons

To ride their horses and point their guns -- -

Sobeit a people that comprehends

The limit where private pleasure ends

And where their public dues begin,

A people made strong by discipline

Who are willing to give -- - what you've no mind to -- -

And understand -- - what you are blind to -- -

The things that the individual

Must sacrifice for the good of all.

      You have a leader who knows -- - the man

Most fit to be called American,

A prophet that once in generations

Is given to point to erring nations

Brighter ideals toward which to press

And lead them out of the wilderness.

Will you turn your back on him once again?

Will you give the tiller once more to men

Who have made your country the laughing-stock

For the older peoples to scorn and mock,

Who would make you servile, despised, and weak,

A country that turns the other cheek,

Who care not how bravely your flag may float,

Who answer an insult with a note,

Whose way is the easy way in all,

And, seeing that polished arms appal

Their marrow of milk-fed pacifist,

Would tell you menace does not exist?

Are these, in the world's great parliament,

The men you would choose to represent

Your honor, your manhood, and your pride,

And the virtues your fathers dignified?

Oh, bury them deeper than the sea

In universal obloquy;

Forget the ground where they lie, or write

For epitaph: "Too proud to fight."

      I have been too long from my country's shores

To reckon what state of mind is yours,

But as for myself I know right well

I would go through fire and shot and shell

And face new perils and make my bed

In new privations, if Roosevelt led;

But I have given my heart and hand

To serve, in serving another land,

Ideals kept bright that with you are dim;

Here men can thrill to their country's hymn,

For the passion that wells in the Marseillaise

Is the same that fires the French these days,

And, when the flag that they love goes by,

With swelling bosom and moistened eye

They can look, for they know that it floats there still

By the might of their hands and the strength of their will,

And through perils countless and trials unknown

Its honor each man has made his own.

They wanted the war no more than you,

But they saw how the certain menace grew,

And they gave two years of their youth or three

The more to insure their liberty

When the wrath of rifles and pennoned spears

Should roll like a flood on their wrecked frontiers.

They wanted the war no more than you,

But when the dreadful summons blew

And the time to settle the quarrel came

They sprang to their guns, each man was game;

And mark if they fight not to the last

For their hearths, their altars, and their past:

Yea, fight till their veins have been bled dry

For love of the country that will not die.

      O friends, in your fortunate present ease

(Yet faced by the self-same facts as these),

If you would see how a race can soar

That has no love, but no fear, of war,

How each can turn from his private role

That all may act as a perfect whole,

How men can live up to the place they claim

And a nation, jealous of its good name,

Be true to its proud inheritance,

Oh, look over here and learn from France!

Introduction and Conclusion of a Long Poem

      I have gone sometimes by the gates of Death

And stood beside the cavern through whose doors

Enter the voyagers into the unseen.

From that dread threshold only, gazing back,

Have eyes in swift illumination seen

Life utterly revealed, and guessed therein

What things were vital and what things were vain.

Know then, like a vast ocean from my feet

Spreading away into the morning sky,

I saw unrolled my vanished days, and, lo,

Oblivion like a morning mist obscured

Toils, trials, ambitions, agitations, ease,

And like green isles, sun-kissed, with sweet perfume

Loading the airs blown back from that dim gulf,

Gleamed only through the all-involving haze

The hours when we have loved and been beloved.

      Therefore, sweet friends, as often as by Love

You rise absorbed into the harmony

Of planets singing round magnetic suns,

Let not propriety nor prejudice

Nor the precepts of jealous age deny

What Sense so incontestably affirms;

Cling to the blessed moment and drink deep

Of the sweet cup it tends, as there alone

Were that which makes life worth the pain to live.

What is so fair as lovers in their joy

That dies in sleep, their sleep that wakes in joy?

Caressing arms are their light pillows. They

That like lost stars have wandered hitherto

Lonesome and lightless through the universe,

Now glow transfired at Nature's flaming core;

They are the centre; constellated heaven

Is the embroidered panoply spread round

Their bridal, and the music of the spheres

Rocks them in hushed epithalamium.

                . . . . .

      I know that there are those whose idle tongues

Blaspheme the beauty of the world that was

So wondrous and so worshipful to me.

I call them those that, in the palace where

Down perfumed halls the Sleeping Beauty lay,

Wandered without the secret or the key.

I know that there are those, of gentler heart,

Broken by grief or by deception bowed,

Who in some realm beyond the grave conceive

The bliss they found not here; but, as for me,

In the soft fibres of the tender flesh

I saw potentialities of Joy

Ten thousand lifetimes could not use. Dear Earth,

In this dark month when deep as morning dew

On thy maternal breast shall fall the blood

Of those that were thy loveliest and thy best,

If it be fate that mine shall mix with theirs,

Hear this my natural prayer, for, purified

By that Lethean agony and clad

In more resplendent powers, I ask nought else

Than reincarnate to retrace my path,

Be born again of woman, walk once more

Through Childhood's fragrant, flowery wonderland

And, entered in the golden realm of Youth,

Fare still a pilgrim toward the copious joys

I savored here yet scarce began to sip;

Yea, with the comrades that I loved so well

Resume the banquet we had scarce begun

When in the street we heard the clarion-call

And each man sprang to arms -- - ay, even myself

Who loved sweet Youth too truly not to share

Its pain no less than its delight. If prayers

Are to be prayed, lo, here is mine! Be this

My resurrection, this my recompense!

Ode in Memory of the American Volunteers Fallen for France

I

Ay, it is fitting on this holiday,

Commemorative of our soldier dead,

When -- - with sweet flowers of our New England May

Hiding the lichened stones by fifty years made gray -- -

Their graves in every town are garlanded,

That pious tribute should be given too

To our intrepid few

Obscurely fallen here beyond the seas.

Those to preserve their country's greatness died;

But by the death of these

Something that we can look upon with pride

Has been achieved, nor wholly unreplied

Can sneerers triumph in the charge they make

That from a war where Freedom was at stake

America withheld and, daunted, stood aside.

Be they remembered here with each reviving spring,

Not only that in May, when life is loveliest,

Around Neuville-Saint-Vaast and the disputed crest

Of Vimy, they, superb, unfaltering,

In that fine onslaught that no fire could halt,

Parted impetuous to their first assault;

But that they brought fresh hearts and springlike too

To that high mission, and 'tis meet to strew

With twigs of lilac and spring's earliest rose

The cenotaph of those

Who in the cause that history most endears

Fell in the sunny morn and flower of their young years.

Yet sought they neither recompense nor praise,

Nor to be mentioned in another breath

Than their blue coated comrades whose great days

It was their pride to share -- - ay, share even to the death!

Nay, rather, France, to you they rendered thanks

(Seeing they came for honor, not for gain),

Who, opening to them your glorious ranks,

Gave them that grand occasion to excel,

That chance to live the life most free from stain

And that rare privilege of dying well.

O friends! I know not since that war began

From which no people nobly stands aloof

If in all moments we have given proof

Of virtues that were thought American.

I know not if in all things done and said

All has been well and good,

Or if each one of us can hold his head

As proudly as he should,

Or, from the pattern of those mighty dead

Whose shades our country venerates to-day,

If we've not somewhat fallen and somewhat gone astray.

But you to whom our land's good name is dear,

If there be any here

Who wonder if her manhood be decreased,

Relaxed its sinews and its blood less red

Than that at Shiloh and Antietam shed,

Be proud of these, have joy in this at least,

And cry: "Now heaven be praised

That in that hour that most imperilled her,

Menaced her liberty who foremost raised

Europe's bright flag of freedom, some there were

Who, not unmindful of the antique debt,

Came back the generous path of Lafayette;

And when of a most formidable foe

She checked each onset, arduous to stem -- -

Foiled and frustrated them -- -

On those red fields where blow with furious blow

Was countered, whether the gigantic fray

Rolled by the Meuse or at the Bois Sabot,

Accents of ours were in the fierce melee;

And on those furthest rims of hallowed ground

Where the forlorn, the gallant charge expires,

When the slain bugler has long ceased to sound,

And on the tangled wires

The last wild rally staggers, crumbles, stops,

Withered beneath the shrapnel's iron showers: -- -

Now heaven be thanked, we gave a few brave drops;

Now heaven be thanked, a few brave drops were ours."

There, holding still, in frozen steadfastness,

Their bayonets toward the beckoning frontiers,

They lie -- - our comrades -- - lie among their peers,

Clad in the glory of fallen warriors,

Grim clusters under thorny trellises,

Dry, furthest foam upon disastrous shores,

Leaves that made last year beautiful, still strewn

Even as they fell, unchanged, beneath the changing moon;

And earth in her divine indifference

Rolls on, and many paltry things and mean

Prate to be heard and caper to be seen.

But they are silent, calm; their eloquence

Is that incomparable attitude;

No human presences their witness are,

But summer clouds and sunset crimson-hued,

And showers and night winds and the northern star.

Nay, even our salutations seem profane,

Opposed to their Elysian quietude;

Our salutations calling from afar,

From our ignobler plane

And undistinction of our lesser parts:

Hail, brothers, and farewell; you are twice blest, brave hearts.

Double your glory is who perished thus,

For you have died for France and vindicated us.