The Chinese Nightingale and Other Poems Part 6

Our Guardian Angels and Their Children

Where a river roars in rapids And doves in maples fret, Where peace has decked the pastures Our guardian angels met.

Long they had sought each other In G.o.d's mysterious name, Had climbed the solemn chaos tides Alone, with hope aflame:

Amid the demon deeps had wound By many a fearful way.

As they beheld each other Their shout made glad the day.

No need of purse delayed them, No hand of friend or kin-- Nor menace of the bell and book, Nor fear of mortal sin.

You did not speak, my girl, At this, our parting hour.

Long we held each other And watched their deeds of power.

They made a curious Eden.

We saw that it was good.

We thought with them in unison.

We proudly understood

Their amaranth eternal, Their roses strange and fair, The asphodels they scattered Upon the living air.

They built a house of clouds With skilled immortal hands.

They entered through the silver doors.

Their wings were wedded brands.

I labored up the valley To granite mountains free.

You hurried down the river To Zidon by the sea.

But at their place of meeting They keep a home and shrine.

Your angel twists a purple flax, Then weaves a mantle fine.

My angel, her defender Upstanding, spreads the light On painted clouds of fancy And mists that touch the height.

Their st.u.r.dy babes speak kindly And fly and run with joy, Shepherding the helpless lambs-- A Grecian girl and boy.

These children visit Heaven Each year and make of worth All we planned and wrought in youth And all our tears on earth.

From books our G.o.d has written They sing of high desire.

They turn the leaves in gentleness.

Their wings are folded fire.

Epitaphs for Two Players

I. Edwin Booth

An old actor at the Player's Club told me that Edwin Booth first impersonated Hamlet when a barnstormer in California.

There were few theatres, but the hotels were provided with crude a.s.sembly rooms for strolling players.

The youth played in the blear hotel.

The rafters gleamed with glories strange.

And winds of mourning Elsinore Howling at chance and fate and change; Voices of old Europe's dead Disturbed the new-built cattle-shed, The street, the high and solemn range.

The while the coyote barked afar All shadowy was the battlement.

The ranch-boys huddled and grew pale, Youths who had come on riot bent.

Forgot were pranks well-planned to sting.

Behold there rose a ghostly king, And veils of smoking h.e.l.l were rent.

When Edwin Booth played Hamlet, then The camp-drab's tears could not but flow.

Then Romance lived and breathed and burned.

She felt the frail queen-mother's woe, Thrilled for Ophelia, fond and blind, And Hamlet, cruel, yet so kind, And moaned, his proud words hurt her so.

A haunted place, though new and harsh!

The Indian and the Chinaman And Mexican were fain to learn What had subdued the Saxon clan.

Why did they mumble, brood, and stare When the court-players curtsied fair And the Gonzago scene began?

And ah, the duel scene at last!

They cheered their prince with stamping feet.

A death-fight in a palace! Yea, With velvet hangings incomplete, A pasteboard throne, a pasteboard crown, And yet a monarch tumbled down, A brave lad fought in splendor meet.

Was it a palace or a barn?

Immortal as the G.o.ds he flamed.

There in his last great hour of rage His foil avenged a mother shamed.

In duty stern, in purpose deep He drove that king to his black sleep And died, all G.o.dlike and untamed.

I was not born in that far day.

I hear the tale from heads grown white.

And then I walk that earlier street, The mining camp at candle-light.

I meet him wrapped in musings fine Upon some whispering silvery line He yet resolves to speak aright.

II. John Bunny, Motion Picture Comedian

In which he is remembered in similitude, by reference to Yorick, the king's jester, who died when Hamlet and Ophelia were children.

Yorick is dead. Boy Hamlet walks forlorn Beneath the battlements of Elsinore.

Where are those oddities and capers now That used to "set the table on a roar"?