A Jongleur Strayed Part 12

THE OVERWORKED GHOST

When the embalmer closed my eyes, And all the family went in black, And shipped me off to Paradise, I had no thought of coming back; I dreamed of undisturbed repose Until the Judgment Day went crack, Tucked safely in from top to toes.

"I've done my bit," I said. "I've earned The right to take things at my ease!"

When folk declared the dead returned, I called it all tomfooleries.

"They are too glad to get to bed, To stretch their weary limbs in peace; Done with it all--the lucky dead!"

But scarcely had I laid me down, When comes a voice: "Is that you, Joe?

I'm calling you from Williamstown!

Knock once for 'yes,' and twice for 'no.'"

Then, hornet-mad, I knocked back two-- The table shook, I banged it so-- "Not Joe!" they said, "Then tell us who?

"We're waiting--is there no one here, No friend, you have a message for?"

But I pretended not to hear.

"Perhaps he fell in the great war?"

"Perhaps he's German?" someone said; "How goes it on the other sh.o.r.e?"

"That's no way to address the dead!"

And so they talked, till I got sore, And made the blooming table rock, And ribald oaths and curses swore, And strange words guaranteed to shock.

"He's one of those queer spooks they call A poltergeist--the ghosts that mock, Throw things--" said one, who knew it all.

"I wish an old thigh-bone was round To break your silly head!" I knocked.

"A humourist of the burial-ground!"

A bright young college graduate mocked.

Then a young girl fell in a trance, And foamed: "Get out--we are deadlocked-- And give some other ghost a chance!"

Such was my first night in the tomb, Where soft sleep was to hold me fast; I little knew my weary doom!

It even makes a ghost aghast To think of all the years in store-- The slave, as long as death shall last, To ouija-boards forevermore.

For morning, noon, and night they call!

Alive, some fourteen hours a day I worked, but now I work them all.

No sooner down my head I lay, A lady writer knocks me up About a novel or a play, Nor gives me time for bite or sup.

I hear her d.a.m.ned typewriter click With all the things she says I say, You'd think the public would get sick; And that's my only hope--some day!

Then seances, each night in dozens I must attend, their parts to play For dead grandpas and distant cousins.

O for my life to live again!

I'd know far better than to die; You'd never hear me once complain, Could I but see the good old sky, For here they work me to the bone; "Rest!"--don't believe it! Well, good-by!

That's Patience Worth there on the phone!

THE VALIANT GIRLS

The valiant girls--of them I sing-- Who daily to their business go, Happy as larks, and fresh as spring; They are the bravest things I know.

At eight, from out my lazy tower, I watch the snow, and shake my head; But yonder petticoated flower Braves it alone, with aery tread; Nor wind, nor rain, nor ice-fanged storm, Frightens that valiant little form.

Strange! she that sweetens all the air, The New York sister of the rose, To a grim office should repair, With picture-hat and silken hose, And strange it is to see her there, With powder on her little nose; And yet how business-like is she, With pad and pencil on her knee.

Changed are the times--no stranger sign, If you but think the matter over, Than she, the delicate, the divine, Whose lot seemed only love and lover, Should to Life's rough and muddy wheel So gravely set her pretty shoulder;-- (What would her dead grandmother feel, If someone woke her up and told her!) Yet bate not, through her dreary duty, One jot of womanhood or beauty.

A woman still--yes! still a girl, She changes, yet she does not change, A moon-lit creature made of pearl And filled with music sad and strange: The while she takes your gruff dictation, Who knows her secret meditation!

Most skilled of all our new machines, She sits there at the telephone, Prettier far than fabled queens; Yea! Greece herself has never known, Nor Phidias wrought, nor Homer sung, Girls fairer than the girls that throng, So serious and so debonair, At morn and eve, the Subway stair; A bright processional of faces, So valiant--for all their laces.

The girls that work! that take their share In Life's grim battle, hard and rough, Wearing their crowns of silken hair, Armed only with a powder-puff: These, not the women of old time, Though, doubtless, they were fair enough, Shall be the theme for modern rhyme.

Nay! never shall our hearts forget The flower face of Juliet, Or Helen on her golden throne; But there shall come a Homer yet, A Shakespeare still to fame unknown, To sing among the stars up there Fair Helen, the stenographer, Sweet Juliet of the telephone.

NOT SOUR GRAPES

I'm not sorry I am older, love--are you?

Over all youth's fuss and flurry, All its everlasting hurry, All its solemn self-importance and to-do.

Perhaps we missed the highest reaches of high art; Love we missed not, and the laughter, Seeing both before and after-- Life was such a serious business at the start!

We've lost nothing worth the keeping--do you think?

You are just as slim and elfish, And I've grown a world less selfish; We look back on life together--and we wink.

Over all those old misgivings of the heart, Growing pains of love and lover; Life's fun begins, its fevers over-- Life was such a serious business at the start!

Garners full, life's grain and chaff we have sifted; Youth went by in idle tasting, Now we drink the cup, unhasting, Spill not a drop, brimful and high uplifted; And we watch now, calm and fearless, the years depart, Knowing nothing can now sever Two that life made one forever-- Life was _such_ a serious business at the start!

BALLADE OF READING BAD BOOKS

O sad-eyed man who yonder sits, Face in a book from morn till night, Who, though the world should go to bits, Pores on right through the waning light; O is it sorrow or delight That holds you, though the sun has set?

"I read," he said, "what these fools write, Not to remember--but forget."

"Man drinks or gambles, woman knits, To put their sorrow out of sight, From folly unto folly flits The weary mind, or wrong or right; My melancholy taketh flight Reading the worst books I can get, The worst--yet best! such is my plight-- Not to remember--but forget."

"'Tis not alone the immortal wits, The lords of language, pens of might, Past masters of the word that fits In their mosaic true and bright, That aid us in our mortal fight, And heal us of our wild regret, But books that humbler pens indite, Not to remember--but forget."

ENVOI

"O Prince, 'tis but the neophyte Who scorns this humble novelette You watch me reading, un-contrite-- Not to remember--but forget."

BALLADE OF THE MAKING OF SONGS

Bees make their honey out of coloured flowers, Through the June day, with all its beam and scent, Heather of breezy hills, and idle bowers, Brushing soft doors of every blossoming tent, Filling gold thighs in drowsy ravishment, Pillaging vines on the hot garden wall, Taking of each small bloom its little rent-- Poets must make their honey out of gall.

Singers, not so this craven life of ours, Our honey out of bitter herbs is blent; The songs that fall as soft as April showers Came of the whips and scorns of chastis.e.m.e.nt, From smitten lips and hearts in sorrow bent, Distilled of blood and wormwood are they all-- Idly you heard, indifferent what they meant: Poets must make their honey out of gall.