THE KINGS

A man said unto his Angel:
"My spirits are fallen low,
And I cannot carry this battle:
O brother! where might I go?

"The terrible Kings are on me
With spears that are deadly bright;
Against me so from the cradle
Do fate and my fathers fight."

Then said to the man his Angel:
"Thou wavering, witless soul,
Back to the ranks! What matter
To win or lose the whole,

"As judged by the little judges Who hearken not well, nor see?

Not thus, by the outer issue,

The Wise shall interpret thee.

"Thy will is the sovereign measure And only event of things:

The puniest heart, defying,

Were stronger than all these Kings.

"Though out of the past they gather, Mind's Doubt, and Bodily Pain,

And pallid Thirst of the Spirit
That is kin to the other twain.

"And Grief, in a cloud of banners,
And ringleted Vain Desires,
And Vice, with the spoils upon him

Of thee and thy beaten sires,

"While Kings of eternal evil
Yet darken the hills about,
Thy part is with broken sabre
To rise on the last redoubt;

"To fear not sensible failure,
Nor covet the game at all,
But fighting, fighting, fighting,
Die, driven against the wall!"

Bliss Carman

(William) Bliss Carman was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, April 15, 1861, of a long line of United Empire Loyalists who withdrew from Connecticut at the time of the Revolutionary War. Carman was educated at the University of New Brunswick (1879-81), at Edinburgh (1882-3) and Harvard (18868). He took up his residence in the United States about 1889 and, with the exception of short sojourns in the Maritime Provinces, has lived there ever since.

In 1893, Carman issued his first book, Low Tide on Grand Pré: A Book of Lyrics. It was immediately successful, running quickly into a second edition. From the outset, it was evident that Carman possessed the true lyrical power: the ability to fuse thought in emotion, to interpret the external world through a personal intensity. Simple and direct in his choice of themes, his passion made them universal. A vivid buoyancy, new to American literature, made his worship of Nature frankly pagan as contrasted to the moralizing tributes of most of his predecessors. This freshness and irresponsible whimsy made Carman the natural collaborator for Richard Hovey, and when their first joint Songs from Vagabondia appeared in 1894 Carman's fame was established. (See Preface.)

Although the three Vagabondia collections contain Carman's best known poems, several of his other volumes (he has published almost twenty of them) vibrate with the same glowing pulse. An almost physical gaiety rises from Ballads of Lost Haven (1897), From the Book of Myths (1902) and Songs of the Sea Children (1904). Here are songs for the open road, the windy beach, the mountain top.

Carman has also written several volumes of essays and, in conjunction with Mary Perry King, has devised several poemdances (Daughters of Dawn, 1913) suggesting Vachel Lindsay's later poem-games. Although the strength is diluted and the music somewhat thinned in the later collections, such as April Airs (1916), some of the old magic persists; the spell may be overfamiliar but it is not powerless.

A VAGABOND SONG

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood

Touch of manner, hint of mood;

And my heart is like a rhyme,

With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping

time.

The scarlet of the maples can shake me like a cry

Of bugles going by.

And my lonely spirit thrills

To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

There is something in October sets the gypsy blood astir;

We must rise and follow her,

When from every hill of flame

She calls and calls each vagabond by name.

THE GRAVEDIGGER

Oh, the shambling sea is a sexton old,

And well his work is done.

With an equal grave for lord and knave,

He buries them every one.

Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;

And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;

But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,-

Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.

Oh, the ships of Greece and the ships of Tyre
Went out, and where are they?

In the port they made, they are delayed

With the ships of yesterday.

He followed the ships of England far,

As the ships of long ago;

And the ships of France they led him a dance, But he laid them all arow.

Oh, a loafing, idle lubber to him

Is the sexton of the town;

For sure and swift, with a guiding lift,

He shovels the dead men down.

But though he delves so fierce and grim,

His honest graves are wide,

As well they know who sleep below
The dredge of the deepest tide.

Oh, he works with a rollicking stave at lip,
And loud is the chorus skirled;

With the burly rote of his rumbling throat
He batters it down the world.

He learned it once in his father's house,
Where the ballads of eld were sung;
And merry enough is the burden rough,
But no man knows the tongue.

Oh, fair, they say, was his bride to see,
And wilful she must have been,

That she could bide at his gruesome side
When the first red dawn came in.

And sweet, they say, is her kiss to those
She greets to his border home;

And softer than sleep her hand's first sweep
That beckons, and they come.

Oh, crooked is he, but strong enough

To handle the tallest mast;

From the royal barque to the slaver dark,

He buries them all at last.

Then hoy and rip, with a rolling hip,
He makes for the nearest shore;

And God, who sent him a thousand ship,
Will send him a thousand more;

But some he'll save for a bleaching grave,
And shoulder them in to shore,
Shoulder them in, shoulder them in,
Shoulder them in to shore.

HEM AND HAW

Hem and Haw were the sons of sin,
Created to shally and shirk;

Hem lay 'round and Haw looked on
While God did all the work.

Hem was foggy, and Haw was a prig,
For both had the dull, dull mind;
And whenever they found a thing to do,
They yammered and went it blind.

Hem was the father of bigots and bores;
As the sands of the sea were they.
And Haw was the father of all the tribe
Who criticize to-day.