The Wail of Two Cities
Chicago, October 9,1871.
GAUNT in the midst of the prairie,
She who was once so fair;
Charred and rent are her garments,
Heavy and dark like cerements;
Silent, but round her the air
Plaintively wails, 'Miserere!'
Proud like a beautiful maiden,
Art-like from forehead to feet,
Was she till pressed like a leman
Close to the breast of the demon,
Lusting for one so sweet,
So were her shoulders laden.
Friends she had, rich in her treasures:
Shall the old taunt be true,—
Fallen, they turn their cold faces,
Seeking new wealth-gilded places,
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poem by John Boyle O'Reilly
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A Message of Peace
THERE once was a pirate, greedy and bold,
Who ravaged for gain, and saved the spoils;
Till his coffers were bursting with bloodstained gold,
And millions of captives bore his toils.
Then fear took hold of him, and he cried:
'I have gathered enough; now, war should cease!'
And he sent out messengers far and wide
(To the strong ones only) to ask for peace.
'We are Christian brethren!' thus he spake;
'Let us seal a contract—never to fight!
Except against rebels who dare to break
The bonds we have made by the victor's right.'
And the strong ones listen; and some applaud
The kindly offer and righteous word;
With never a dream of deceit or fraud,
They would spike the cannon and break the sword.
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Dolores
IS he well blessed who has no eyes to scan
The woeful things that shadow all our life:
The latent brute behind the eyes of man,
The place and power gained and stained by strife,
The weakly victims driven to the wall,
The subtle cruelties that meet us all
Like eyes from darksome places? Blessed is he
Who such sad things is never doomed to see!
The crust of common life is worn by time,
And shines deception, as a thin veneer
The raw plank hides, or as the frozen mere
Holds drowned men embedded in its slime;
The ninety eat their bread of death and crime,
And sin and sorrow that the ten may thrive.
O, moaning sea of life! the few who dive
Beneath thy waters, faint and short of breath,
Not Dante-like, who cannot swim in death
And view its secrets, but must swiftly rise,—
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A Legend Of The Blesses Virgin
THE day of Joseph's marriage unto Mary,
In thoughful mood he said unto his wife,
Behold, I go into a far-off country
To labor for thee, and to make thy life
And home all sweet and peaceful.' And the Virgin
Unquestioning beheld her spouse depart:
Then lived she many days of musing gladness,
Not knowing that God's hand was round her heart.
And dreaming thus one day within her chamber,
She wept with speechless bliss, when lo! the face
Of white-winged angel Gabriel rose before her,
And bowing spoke, ' Hail! Mary, full of grace,
The Lord is with thee, and among the nations
Forever blessed is thy chosen name.'
The angel vanished, and the Lord's high Presence
With untold glory to the Virgin came.
A season passed of joy unknown to mortals,
When Joseph came with what his toil had won,
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Prologue To Western Australia
Nor gold, nor silver are the words set here,
Nor rich-wrought chasing on design of art;
But rugged relics of an unknown sphere
Where fortune chanced I played one time apart.
Unthought of here the critic blame or praise,
These recollections all their faults atone;
To hold the scenes, I’ve writ of men and ways
Uncouth and rough as Austral ironstone.
It may be, I have left the higher gleams
Of skies and flowers unheeded or forgot;
It may be so,— but, looking back, it seems
When I was with, them I beheld them not.
I was no rambling poet, but a man
Hard pressed to dig and delve, with naught of ease
The hot day through, save when the evening's fan
Of sea-winds rustled through the kindly trees.
It may be so; but when I think I smile
At my poor hand and brain to paint the charms
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The Empty Niche
A KING once made a gallery of art,
With portraits of dead friends and living graced;
And at the end, 'neath curtains drawn apart,
An empty marble pedestal was placed.
Here, every day, the king would come, and pace
With eyes well-pleased along the statued hall;
But, ere he left, he turned with saddened face,
And mused before the curtained pedestal.
And once a courtier asked him why he kept
The shadowed niche to fill his heart with dole;
'For absent friends,' the monarch said, and wept;
'There still must be one absent to the soul.'
And this is true of all the hearts that beat;
Though days be soft and summer pathways fair,
Be sure, while joyous glances round us meet,
The curtained crypt and vacant plinth are there.
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The Wonderful Country
THERE once was a time when, as old songs prove it,
The earth was not round, but an endless plain;
The sea was as wide as the heavens above it—
Just millions of miles, and begin again.
And that was the time—ay, and more's the pity
It ever should end!—when the world could play,
When singers told tales of a crystal city
In a wonderful country far away!
But the schools must come, with their scales and measures,
To limit the visions and weigh the spells;
They scoffed at the dreams and the rainbow treasures,
And circled the world in their parallels;
They charted the vales and the sunny meadows,
Where a poet might ride for a year and a day;
They sounded the depths and they pierced the shadows,
Of that wonderful country far away.
For fancies they gave us their microscopics;
For knowledge, a rubble of fact and doubt;
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In Bohemia
I'D rather live in Bohemia than in any other land;
For only there are the values true,
And the laurels gathered in all men's view.
The prizes of traffic and state are won
By shrewdness or force or by deeds undone;
But fame is sweeter without the feud,
And the wise of Bohemia are never shrewd.
Here, pilgrims stream with a faith sublime
From every class and clime and time,
Aspiring only to be enrolled
With the names that are writ in the book of gold;
And each one bears in mind or hand
A palm of the dear Bohemian land.
The scholar first, with his book—a youth
Aflame with the glory of harvested truth;
A girl with a picture, a man with a play,
A boy with a wolf he has modeled in clay;
A smith with a marvelous hilt and sword,
A player, a king, a plowman, a lord—
And the player is king when the door is past.
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The Loss of the Emigrants
The Steamer ' Atlantic ' Was Wrecked Near Halifax, N. S., April1, 1873, And 560 Lives Lost.
FOR months and years, with penury and want
And heart-sore envy did they dare to cope;
And mite by mite was saved from earnings scant,
To buy, some future day, the God-sent hope.
They trod the crowded streets of hoary towns,
Or tilled from year to year the wearied fields,
And in the shadow of the golden crowns
They gasped for sunshine and the health it yields.
They turned from homes all cheerless, child and man,
With kindly feelings only for the soil,
And for the kindred faces, pinched and wan,
That prayed, and stayed, unwilling, at their toil.
They lifted up their faces to the Lord,
And read His answer in the westering sun
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Living
To toil all day and lie worn-out at night;
To rise for all the years to slave and sleep,
And breed new broods to do no other thing
In toiling, bearing, breeding — life is this
To myriad men, too base for man or brute.
To serve for common duty, while the brain
Is hot with high desire to be distinct;
To fill the sand-grain place among the stones
That build the social wall in million sameness,
Is life by leave, and death by insignificance.
To live the morbid years, with dripping blood
Of sacrificial labor for a Thought;
To take the dearest hope and lay it down
Beneath the crushing wheels for love of Freedom;
To bear the sordid jeers of cant and trade,
And go on hewing for a far ideal, —
This were a life worth giving to a cause,
If cause be found so worth a martyr life.
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