No More Learning

Your words can teach that liberty
Means more than just to cry "We're free"
While bending to some new-found yoke.
So shall each unjust bond be broke,
Each toiler gain his meet reward,
And life sound forth a truer chord.

Ah, if we so have striven,
And mutually the grasp have given
Of brotherhood,
To work each other and the whole race good;
What matter if the dream
Come only partly true,
And all the things accomplished seem
Feeble and few?
At least, when summer's flame burns low
And on our heads the drifting snow
Settles and stays,
We shall rejoice that in our earlier days
We boldly then
Struck hands, young men!






"O JAY! "


O jay--
Blue-jay!
What are you trying to say?
I remember, in the spring
You pretended you could sing;
But your voice is now still queerer,
And as yet you've come no nearer
To a song.
In fact, to sum the matter,
I never heard a flatter
Failure than your doleful clatter.
Don't you think it's wrong?
It was sweet to hear your note,
I'll not deny,
When April set pale clouds afloat
O'er the blue tides of sky,
And 'mid the wind's triumphant drums
You, in your white and azure coat,
A herald proud, came forth to cry,
"The royal summer comes! "

But now that autumn's here,
And the leaves curl up in sheer
Disgust,
And the cold rains fringe the pine,
You really must
Stop that supercilious whine---
Or you'll be shot, by some mephitic
Angry critic.

You don't fulfill your early promise:
You're not the smartest
Kind of artist,
Any more than poor Blind Tom is.
Yet somehow, still,
There's meaning in your screaming bill.
What _are_ you trying to say?
Sometimes your piping is delicious,
And then again it's simply vicious;
Though on the whole the varying jangle
Weaves round me an entrancing tangle
Of memories grave or joyous:
Things to weep or laugh at;
Love that lived at a hint, or
Days so sweet, they'd cloy us;
Nights I have spent with friends;--
Glistening groves of winter,
And the sound of vanished feet
That walked by the ripening wheat;
With other things. . . . Not the half that
Your cry familiar blends
Can I name, for it is mostly
Very ghostly;--
Such mixed-up things your voice recalls,
With its peculiar quirks and falls.

Possibly, then, your meaning, plain,
Is that your harsh and broken strain
Tallies best with a world of pain.

Well, I'll admit
There's merit in a voice that's truthful:
Yours is not honey-sweet nor youthful,
But querulously fit.
And if we cannot sing, we'll say
Something to the purpose, jay!






THE STAR TO ITS LIGHT


"Go," said the star to its light:
"Follow your fathomless flight!
Into the dreams of space
Carry the joy of my face.
Go," said the star to its light:
"Tell me the tale of your flight. "

As the mandate rang
The heavens through,
Quick the ray sprang:
Unheard it flew,
Sped by the touch of an unseen spur.
It crumbled the dusk of the deep
That folds the worlds in sleep,
And shot through night with noiseless stir.

Then came the day;
And all that swift array
Of diamond-sparkles died.
And lo! the far star cried:
"My light has lost its way!