Prairie Gold Part 15

"I say, old top, I wish you wouldn't be continually kissing the wife. I think once when you come and once when you go quite sufficient."

"But, my dear man, I can't wear myself out coming and going all the time just to please you."

_--From "Judge." Copyright by Leslie-Judge Co._]

The Poet of the Future

_By Tacitus Hussey_

Oh, the poet of the future. Will he come to us as comes The beauty of the bugle's voice above the roar of drums-- The beauty of the bugle's voice above the roar and din Of battle drums that pulse the time the victor marches in?

--_James Whitcomb Riley._

"Oh, the poet of the future!" Can anybody guess Whether he'll sound his bugle, or she'll wear them on her dress; An' will they kinder get their themes from nature, second hand, An' dish 'em up in language that plain folks can't understand?

There's a sight of this 'ere po'try stuff, each year, that goes to waste, Jest a-waitin' fer a poet who has the time and taste To tackle it just as it is, an' weave it into rhyme, With warp and woof of hope and love, in life's swift loom of time.

An' mebbe the future poet, if he understands the thing, Won't start the summer katydids to singin' in the spring, Jest like the croakin' frog; but let the critter wait at most, To announce to timid farmers that "it's jest six weeks till frost."

The katydid and goldenrod are partners in this way: They sing and bloom where'er there's room, along life's sunny way; So I warn you, future poet, jest let 'em bloom an' lilt Together--don't divorce 'em. That's jest the way they're built.

In order to be perfect, the future poet should Know every sound of nature, of river, lake an' wood, Should know each whispered note and every answerin' call-- He should never set c.o.c.k-pheasants to drummin' in the fall.

"Under the golden maples!" Not havin' voice to sing They flap their love out on a log quite early in the spring; For burnin' love will allus find expression in some way-- That's the style that _they've_ adopted--don't change their natures, pray.

I cannot guess just what the future poet's themes may be; Reckon they'll be pretty lofty, fer, as anyone can see, The world of poetry's lookin' up an' poets climbin' higher; With divine afflatus boostin' them, of course they must aspire.

The poets of the good old times were cruder with the pen; Their idees weren't the same as ours--these good old-fashioned men-- Bet old Homer never writ, even in his palmiest day, Such a soul-upliftin' poem as "Hosses Chawin' Hay."

"Hosses" don't know any better out in the Hawkeye State-- Down to Boston now, I reckon, they jest simply masticate.

The poet of the future'll blow a bugle, like as not-- Most all us modern poets had to blow fer what we've got.

To keep the pot a-b'ilin' we all have to raise a din To make the public look our way--an' pa.s.s the shekels in.

The scarcity of bugles seems now the greatest lack Though some of us keep blowin' 'thout a bugle to our back.

The poet of the future! When once he takes his theme His pen will slip as smoothly as a canoe glides down stream.

He'll sing from overflowin' heart--his music will be free-- Would you take up a subscription fer a robin in a tree?

He'll never try to drive the Muse, if he doesn't want to go, But will promptly take the harness off--er drive keerfully an' slow-- When po'try's forced, like winter pinks, the people's apt to know it An' labor with it jest about as hard as did the poet.

Putting the Stars with the Bars

_By Verne Marshall_

Midnight beneath a low-hanging strip of amber-hued moon. Smoke in one's eyes and sulphur in his nostrils; the pounding of cannon in his ears and a hatred of war and its sponsors in his soul. A supply wagon piled high with dead men on one side of the road and a little ambulance waiting for its bruised load to emerge from the mouth of the communicating trench near by. Sharp tongues of fire darting into the night on every side as the guns of the French barked their challenge at the Crown Prince on the other bank of the Meuse. A lurid glare over there to the left where the smoke hung thickest under drifting yellow illuminating bombs and red and blue signal bombs that added their touch to the weird fantasy that wasn't a fantasy at all, but a hill in whose spelling men had changed one letter and turned it into h.e.l.l.

It was Dead Man's Hill at Verdun--Le Cote Mort Homme. And Dead Man's Hill it truly was, for among the barbed wire entanglements and in some of the sh.e.l.l craters in No Man's Land there still lay the skeletons of Frenchmen and Germans who had been killed there months before and whose bodies it had been impossible to recover because the trenches had not changed positions and to venture out between them was to shake hands with Death.

Dead Man's Hill at Verdun--where ten thousand men have fought for a few feet of blood-soaked ground in vain effort to satiate the battle-thirst of a monarch and his son! The countryside for miles around is laid waste. Villages lie in tumbled ma.s.ses, trees are uprooted or broken off, demolished wagons and motors litter the roads and fields, and dead horses, legs stiff in the air, dot the jagged landscape. Not a moving object is seen there by day except the crows that flutter above the uptorn ground and the aeroplanes that soar thousands of feet above.

But, with the coming of night, long columns of men wind along the treacherous roads on their way to or from the trenches, hundreds of supply wagons lumber across the sh.e.l.l holes to the stations near the line, ammunition trains travel up to the lines and back and the ambulances ply their routes to dressing stations. Everything must be done under night's partially protecting cloak, for the German gunners seldom miss when daylight aids their vision.

A tiny American ambulance--a jitney--threads its way down from the Dead Man to ----, carrying a boy through whose breast a dum-dum bullet had torn its beastly way. Three hours before, the driver of that ambulance had talked with the boy who now lay behind him on a stretcher. Then the young Frenchman had been looking forward to the wondrous day when the war would end. He had planned to come to America to live, just as soon as he could get back to Paris and say good-bye to the mother from whom he had received a letter that very day.

"I will be lucky!" he had exclaimed to the American. "I will not be killed. I will not even be wounded. Ah, but won't I be glad when the war is over!"

But his life was slipping away, faster than the Red Cross car could carry him to aid. The checking station reached, two orderlies pulled the stretcher from the ambulance. There was a choking sound in the wounded soldier's throat and the driver, thinking to ease his breathing, lifted his head. The closed eyes fluttered open, the indescribable smile of the dying lighted his face and with his last faint breath he murmured those words that always still war momentarily--

"Ah, _mere_! _Ma mere!_"

"Oh, mother! My mother!"--and he was dead.

Just one little incident of war, just a single glimpse at the accomplishments of monarchial militarism.

That French boy has not come to America, but America has gone to him.

He died for a flag that is red, white and blue--for the tricolor of France. And we have gone across the sea to place the stars of our flag with the bars of his. His fight was our fight and our fight is his.

Together we fight against those who menace civilization in both old world and new. We fight against the army that outraged Belgium and devastated France, against the militaristic clique that sanctioned the slaughtering and crippling of little children, the maiming of women, against that order of militarists who decorated the commander of the submarine that sank the Lusitania with her babies and their mothers.

We are at war and we are Americans.... Enough.

Verne Marshall was the driver of that ambulance. Three months of his service were spent at Verdun.

The Kings of Saranazett

_By Lewis Worthington Smith_

A SCENE FROM THE FIRST ACT

A drama of the awakening of the nearer Orient. In this scene Nasrulla appears as the royal lover of the fig merchant's daughter, Nourmahal. She has learned something of the ways of the West, where even kings have but one acknowledged consort, and she is not willing to be merely one of a number of queens.

Before the wall and gate enclosing Nourmahal's Garden. It is early morning, just before dawn. Above the gleaming white of the wall's sun-baked clay there is the deep green of the trees--the plane, the poplar, the acacia, and, beyond the garden, mountains are visible through the purple mist of the hour that waits for dawn, slowly turning to rose as the rising sun warms their snowy heights. At the left the wall extends out of sight behind a clump of trees, but at the right it ends in a tower topped by a turret with a rounded dome pa.s.sing into a point. The s.p.a.ce under the dome is open, except for a railing, and is large enough for one or more persons. It may be entered from the broad top of the wall through a break in the railing. At the left, out from the trees and in front of the wall, there is a well marked out with roughly piled stones.

At the right, out of sight behind the trees that come almost to the tower at the corner of the wall, a man's voice is heard singing Sh.e.l.ley's "Indian Serenade."

"I arise from dreams of thee In the first sweet sleep of night, When the winds are breathing low, And the stars are shining bright; I arise from dreams of thee, And a something in my feet Hath led me--who knows how?

To thy chamber window, Sweet!