Ballads of a Bohemian Part 18

If You Had a Friend

If you had a friend strong, simple, true, Who knew your faults and who understood; Who believed in the very best of you, And who cared for you as a father would; Who would stick by you to the very end, Who would smile however the world might frown: I'm sure you would try to please your friend, You never would think to throw him down.

And supposing your friend was high and great, And he lived in a palace rich and tall, And sat like a King in shining state, And his praise was loud on the lips of all; Well then, when he turned to you alone, And he singled you out from all the crowd, And he called you up to his golden throne, Oh, wouldn't you just be jolly proud?

If you had a friend like this, I say, So sweet and tender, so strong and true, You'd try to please him in every way, You'd live at your bravest--now, wouldn't you?

His worth would shine in the words you penned; You'd shout his praises . . . yet now it's odd!

You tell me you haven't got such a friend; You haven't? I wonder . . . _What of G.o.d?_

To how few is granted the privilege of doing the work which lies closest to the heart, the work for which one is best fitted. The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false G.o.ds.

MacBean is not happy. He is overridden by his appet.i.tes, and to satisfy them he writes stuff that in his heart he despises.

Saxon Dane is not happy. His dream exceeds his grasp. His twisted, tortured phrases mock the vague grandiosity of his visions.

I am happy. My talent is proportioned to my ambition. The things I like to write are the things I like to read. I prefer the lesser poets to the greater, the cackle of the barnyard fowl to the scream of the eagle. I lack the divinity of discontent.

True Contentment comes from within. It dominates circ.u.mstance. It is resignation wedded to philosophy, a Christian quality seldom attained except by the old.

There is such an one I sometimes see being wheeled about in the Luxembourg. His face is beautiful in its thankfulness.

The Contented Man

"How good G.o.d is to me," he said; "For have I not a mansion tall, With trees and lawns of velvet tread, And happy helpers at my call?

With beauty is my life abrim, With tranquil hours and dreams apart; You wonder that I yield to Him That best of prayers, a grateful heart?"

"How good G.o.d is to me," he said; "For look! though gone is all my wealth, How sweet it is to earn one's bread With brawny arms and br.i.m.m.i.n.g health.

Oh, now I know the joy of strife!

To sleep so sound, to wake so fit.

Ah yes, how glorious is life!

I thank Him for each day of it."

"How good G.o.d is to me," he said; "Though health and wealth are gone, it's true; Things might be worse, I might be dead, And here I'm living, laughing too.

Serene beneath the evening sky I wait, and every man's my friend; G.o.d's most contented man am I . . .

He keeps me smiling to the End."

To-day the basin of the Luxembourg is bright with little boats. Hundreds of happy children romp around it. Little ones everywhere; yet there is no other city with so many childless homes.

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe peered through the window-pane, Peered through the window-pane that glowed like beacon in the night; For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain; And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light!

Except the flirting of the fire there was no sound at all; The Woman sat beside the hearth, her knitting on her knee; The shadow of her husband's head was dancing on the wall; She looked with staring eyes at it, she looked yet did not see.

She only saw a childish face that topped the table rim, A little wistful ghost that smiled and vanished quick away; And then because her tender eyes were flooding to the brim, She lowered her head. . . . "Don't sorrow, dear," she heard him softly say; "It's over now. We'll try to be as happy as before (Ah! they who little children have, grant hostages to pain).

We gave Life chance to wound us once, but never, never more. . . ."

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe fled through the night again.

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe went wildered in the dark; Like termagants the winds tore down and whirled it with the snow.

And then amid the writhing storm it saw a tiny spark, A window broad, a s.p.a.cious room all goldenly aglow, A woman slim and Paris-gowned and exquisitely fair, Who smiled with rapture as she watched her jewels catch the blaze; A man in faultless evening dress, young, handsome, debonnaire, Who smoked his cigarette and looked with frank admiring gaze.

"Oh, we are happy, sweet," said he; "youth, health, and wealth are ours.

What if a thousand toil and sweat that we may live at ease!

What if the hands are worn and torn that strew our path with flowers!

Ah, well! we did not make the world; let us not think of these.

Let's seek the beauty-spots of earth, Dear Heart, just you and I; Let other women bring forth life with sorrow and with pain.

Above our door we'll hang the sign: '_No children need apply_. . . .'"

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe sped through the night again.

The Spirit of the Unborn Babe went whirling on and on; It soared above a city vast, it swept down to a slum; It saw within a grimy house a light that dimly shone; It peered in through a window-pane and lo! a voice said: "Come!"

And so a little girl was born amid the dirt and din, And lived in spite of everything, for life is ordered so; A child whose eyes first opened wide to swinishness and sin, A child whose love and innocence met only curse and blow.

And so in due and proper course she took the path of shame, And gladly died in hospital, quite old at twenty years; And when G.o.d comes to weigh it all, ah! whose shall be the blame For all her maimed and poisoned life, her torture and her tears?

For oh, it is not what we do, but what we have not done!

And on that day of reckoning, when all is plain and clear, What if we stand before the Throne, blood-guilty every one? . . .

Maybe the blackest sins of all are Selfishness and Fear.

IV

The Cafe de la Paix, August 1, 1914.

Paris and I are out of tune. As I sit at this famous corner the faint breeze is stale and weary; stale and weary too the faces that swirl around me; while overhead the electric sign of Somebody's Chocolate appears and vanishes with irritating insistency. The very trees seem artificial, gleaming under the arc-lights with a raw virility that rasps my nerves.

"Poor little trees," I mutter, "growing in all this grime and glare, your only dryads the loitering ladies with the complexions of such brilliant certainty, your only Pipes of Pan orchestral echoes from the clamorous cafes. Exiles of the forest! what know you of full-blossomed winds, of red-embered sunsets, of the gentle admonition of spring rain!

Life, that would fain be a melody, seems here almost a malady. I crave for the balm of Nature, the anodyne of solitude, the breath of Mother Earth. Tell me, O wistful trees, what shall I do?"

Then that stale and weary wind rustles the leaves of the nearest sycamore, and I am sure it whispers: "Brittany."

So to-morrow I am off, off to the Land of Little Fields.