King Volsung And The Skald
HE sang on the Heath of the Volsungs,
Mid Volsung common men,
Shepherds, chafferers, delvers,
And the fowlers of the fen,
The beaters of the anvil,
Wights who mined the ore,
Tamers of the horsekind,
And fishers from the shore.
Tall through the press strode Sigmund,
Lord-warden of the Peace,
While, shrilling fierce, the blood song
Rang to the throng’s increase,
And some lips smiled the pleasure
Of Lynxes scenting prey,
And some brows frowned the anger
That holds the wolf at bay.
“Be dumb, O Skald!” spoke Sigmund,
“Thou singst a troublous song,—
The King of the kindly Volsungs
Shall judge thee right or wrong.”
Then slow to the Hall of The Mighty,
And silently under its roof,
Flowed the host of the mid-world people
To hear the thing at proof.
On the High-seat shone King Volsung,
His Champions gleamed anear,
And the voice of lordly Sigmund
Came welcome to his ear:—
“Father, King and Judger,
Now tell me what to do.
This Skald divides thy people—
Is praise or death his due?”
“Son Sigmund, tell thy story,
And whence the stranger came”.—
“I found him chanting on the Heath,
And no man knows his name.
Some think him even as Baldur
Come back to bless the Earth,
And some hear in his blood song
The Dwarf-kind’s cruel mirth.”
Then softly laughed King Volsung,
Yet pierced so keen his eyes
Men deemed he saw the stranger
As naked from disguise.
“O Skald!” he spoke, “fear nothing;
Though thou be Dwarf or Elf
Come back to trouble mankind,
Sing up, and be thyself.”
The stranger eyed the Father
As one who works a spell,
And from the board his fingers
Seized a sounding shell;
His touches thrilled its edges,
He sang, to words all changed,
A strain the brown seafarers
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Oft chanted where they ranged.
Then round about the High-seat,
And through the huge-built Hall,
Did all men deem they listened
To waves whelm up and fall;
They heard the clash and clatter
Of shield-hung longships’ sides,
Straining sails gale-bellied,
The snarl of racing tides,
While, foul in seamen’s nostrils
Wallowing bilges stank
Of ale and meal long sea-borne,
Musty, wormy, rank;
Yet, half a-rot with scurvy,
They toppled up once more
To hail the enchanted looming
Of some unheard-of shore.
Out spoke the gracious Volsung,—
“The chant is good to me
That draws my shoremen closer
To their brothers of the sea.
And now, O Skald, I charge thee
To voice what song most brings
Joy to the hearts of heroes,
And men of worth and Kings.”
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The stranger pondered, staring
So long on Volsung’s Pride
That soft-hand chafferers clamored:—
“Sing what thou sangst outside—
The song that stirred our pulses
As if through war-horn blown,
Thy chant of swords and corpses,
And blood on grass bestrown.
Hearing, we felt as Champions,
Our foes seemed beaten sore,
And fierce in exultation
We saw them free no more.”
Then, nearing close to Volsung,
The singer whispered, “King,
Thou knowst how wild the feeble
Relish a deathful thing;
Here came I hungry, seeking
The means for rest and meat—
They love to dream them heroes,
And praise to Skalds is sweet.
But now, O Volsung Father,
I read thy kingly heart,
And I know the battle-mighty
From war-lust dwell apart.”
Frowned dark the lordly Volsung,—
“Shame drowneth as a flood
The fame of every singer
Who urgeth men to blood.
The scorn of sworded heroes
Is on the swordless wight
Who stirs the weak to clamor
That sends the strong to fight;
Behold, all blades of battle
Around my shield-hung wall
Are hid in sheath, lest baleful
Their deadly gleams should fall;
And yet thy plea shall save thee
If now thou singst what brings
Most joy to hearts of heroes,
And men of worth, and Kings.”
Then beamed so kind the stranger,
It seemed that Baldur there
Had rose from Niflheim’s torpor
To bless the shining air;
He grasped an iron hammer,
He tinkled on the steel,
And he sang the ancient stithy
Laboring mankind’s weal.
Spike and chain and crowbar,
Axes, bolts, and ploughs,
Mallet, wedge, and hammer,
Bonds to stiffen prows,
Every shape of iron
Listeners saw anew,
For the splendor of the labor
Rang the song-craft through.
So changed the tinkled measure
That looms rocked in the Hall,
Spindles twirled, and shuttles
Flew ’twixt wall and wall,—
Cloth for street and temple,
Cloth for sea and wold,
And the weavers’ patient pleasure
Wove in every fold.
Through all Man’s craft and labor
The runic rhythm changed,
As Valorous Endeavor
All useful works it ranged;
And the Idler was the Dastard,
And the Pleasure-seeker’s joy
More weak, and far more witless
Than the pastime of a boy.
“O Skald,” spoke gladdened Volsung,
“Thou sangst the truest song!
It endeth and amendeth
Labor’s ancient wrong;
Its glory none had chanted,
Its pride no ear had heard,
For the toiling held the toiler
From the finding of the Word.
Yet none, save to that throbbing
My harp hath in its strings,
Can sing what most joys heroes,
And men of worth, and Kings.”
He took the harp of Volsung,
His fingers lingered slow,
He sang of Love commingled
With Work, and Joy, and Woe,—
The lover’s love for lover,
The bridegroom and the bride,
The father love for children,
The wifely true-heart’s pride,
Brother’s love for brother,
Love of friend for friend,
The yearning, patient mother love
That hath no stint nor end;
And, even as all World-things
Forth from the World-tree start,
He sang all love forever flows
Back to All-father’s heart.
King Volsung and his heroes,
All people round the Hall,
Yearned and flushed and joyed and wept
As if one soul swayed all.
None saw the singer vanish,
So blinding was his spell;—
And was he of the Gods, or Dwarfs,
King Volsung would not tell.
Father Abraham Lincoln
My private shrine. The Gettysburg Address
Framed in with all authentic photographs
Of him from whom the New Religion flows.
Homely? That’s it. A perfect homeliness.
Homely as Home itself that countenance
Benign, immortal sweet, his very soul,
The steadfast, common, great American.
It is a gladness in my aging heart
These eyes three times beheld himself alive,
Ungainly, jointed loose, rail-fence-like, queer
In garb that hung with scarecrow shapelessness—
Absolute figure of The States half-made,
Turning from toil and joke to sacred war.
MY heart has smiles and tears, remembering how
The boy, fourteen, round-cheeked and downy-lipped,
With Philadelphia cheese-cake freshly bit,
Halted to stare on marbled Chestnut Street;
He could not gulp the richness in his maw,
Because that black-frock-coated countryman
Of bulged umbrella, rusty stovepipe hat,
Five yards ahead, and coming rapidly,
Could be none other than the President,
From caricatures familiar as the day.
A sudden twinkle lit his downcast eyes,
Marking the cheese-cake and the staring boy;
Tickled to note the checked gastronomy,
Passing, he asked, “Good, sonny?” in a tone
Applausive more than questioning, full of fun,
Yet half-embracive, as your mother’s voice,
And smiled so comrade-like the wondering lad
Glowed with a sense of being chosen chum
To Father Abraham Lincoln, President.
Such was the miracle his spirit wrought
In millions while he lived. And still it lives.
He stalked along, unguarded, all alone,
That central soul of unremitting war,
A common man level with common Man.
The heart-warmed, wondering boy stared after him,
And wonders yet to-day on how it chanced
The mighty, well-loved, martyr President
Went rambling on unknown in broadest day
On crowded street, as if by nimbus hid
From all except the cheese-caked worshipper
He sonnied, smiled on, joked at fatherly.
That night the streets of Philadelphia thronged;
No end of faces; one great human cross,
As far each way as lamp-post boys could see,
Packed Ninth and Chestnut, waiting Father Abe;
The Continental’s balcony on high
Glowed Stars and Stripes, with crape for all the dead
“We cannot dedicate, nor consecrate.”
On chime of eight precise, gaunt, bare of head,
They saw his tallness in the balcony-flare,
And straightway all the murmurous street grew still,
Till silence absolute as death befell.
And in that perfect silence one clear voice
Inspired began, from out the multitude, [Page 40]
The song of all the songs of all the war,
Simple, ecstatic, sacrificial, strong—
“We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand
more”—
And neighboring voices took the long refrain
While some more distant raised the opening words,
Till to and fro and far and near at once,
Never in chorus, chanting as by groups,
Here ending, there beginning, some halfway,
All sang at once, and all renewing all
In pledge and passion of the mighty song,
Their different words and clashing cadences
Wondrously merging in a sound supreme,
As if the inmost meaning of the hymn
Harmonious rolled in one unending vow
While all the singers gazed on Lincoln’s face.
Hands gripping balcony-rail, he stooped and saw
And listened motionless, with such a look
The boy upon the lamp-post clearly knew
“The heavens were opened unto him,”
“The spirit of God descending like a dove”—
Until the mystery of the general soul
Wrought to unwonted sense of unison
Moved all to silence for the homely words
Of Father Abraham Lincoln to his kind—
Words clear as Light itself, so plain—so plain
None deemed him other than their fellow man.
Once more. A boy in blue at sixteen years,
Mid groups of blue along the crazy road
Of corduroy astretch from City Point,
Toward yonder spire in fatal Petersburg,
Beyond what trenches, rifle-pits, and forts,
What woeful far-front grave-mounds sunken down
To puddles over pickets shot on post—
What cemeteries shingle-marked with names
Of companies and regiments and corps
Of mouldering bones and rags of blue and gray,
And belts and buttons, rain and wind exposed—
Mired army wagons—forms of swollen mules—
Springfields and Enfields, broken-stocked, stuck up
Or strown, all rusting—parked artillery—
Brush shelter stables—lines and lines of huts,
Tent-covered winter quarters, sticks and mud
For chimneys to the many thousand smokes
Whose dropping cinders black-rimmed million holes
Through veteran canvas ludicrously patched—
Squares of parade all mud—and mud, and mud,
With mingled grass and chips and refuse cans
Strown myriad far about the plain of war,
Whose scrub-oak roots for scanty fires were grubbed,
And one sole house, and never fence remained
Where fifty leagues of corn-land smiled before.
Belated March—a lowering, rainless day
With glints of shine; the veteran tents of Meade
Gave forth their veteran boys in crowds of blue,
Infantry, cavalry, gunners, engineers,
Easterner, Westerner, Yankee, Irish, “Dutch,”
Canuck, all sorts and sizes, frowsed, unkempt,
Unwashed, half-smoked, profane exceedingly,
Moody or jokeful, formidable, free
From fear of colonels as of corporals,
Each volunteer the child of his own whim,
And every man heart-sworn American
Trudging the mud to view the cavalcade
Of Father Abraham Lincoln to The Front.
He, Chief Commander of all Union hosts,
Of more than thrice three hundred thousand more,
Rode half a horseneck first, since Grant on right
And Meade on left kept reining back their bays;
Full uniformed were they and all their train,
Sheridan, Humphreys, Warren, Hazen, Kautz,
Barlow, McLaughlen, Ord, and thirty more,
Blazing for once in feathers and in gold.
Old Abe, all black, bestrode the famous steed,
Grant’s pacing black—and sure since war began
No host of war had such Commander seen!
Loose-reined he let the steady pacer walk;
Those rail-like legs, that forked the saddle, thrust
Prodigious spattered boots anear the mud,
Preposterous his parted coat-tails hung,
In negligence his lounging body stooped,
Tipping the antic-solemn stovepipe hat;
It seemed some old-time circuit preacher turned
From Grant to Meade and back again to Grant,
Attentive, questioning, pondering, deep concerned—
The common Civil Power directing War.
He, travesty of every point of horsemanship,
They, so bedizened, riding soldier stern—
The contrast past all telling comical—
And Father Abraham wholly unaware!
Too much by far for soldier gravity—
A breeze of laughter travelling as he passed,
Rose sudden to a gale that stormed his ear.
The President turned and gazed and understood
All in one moment, slightly shook his head,
Not warningly, but with a cheerful glee,
And sympathy and love, as if he spoke:
“You scalawags, you scamps, but have your fun!”
Pushed up the stovepipe hat, and all around
Bestowed his warming, right paternal smile,
As if his soul embraced us all at once.
Then strangely fell all laughter. Some men choked,
And some grew inarticulate with tears;
A thousand veteran children thrilled as one,
And not a man of all the throng knew why;
Some called his name, some blessed his holy heart
And then, inspired with pentecostal tongues,
We cheered so wildly for Old Father Abe
That all the bearded generals flamed in joy!
What was the miracle? His miracle.
Was Father Abraham just a son of Man,
As Jesus seemed to common Nazarenes?
Shall Father Abraham Lincoln yet prevail,
And his Republic come to stay at last?
Kind Age, unenvious Youth, democracy,
None lower than the first in comradeship,
However differing in mental force,
The higher intellect set free to Serve,
All undistracted by the woeful need
To grab or pander lest its children want;
Old trivial gewgaws of the peacock past
Smiled to the nothingness of desuetude,
With strutful Rank, with pinchbeck Pageantry,
With apish separative-cant of Class,
With inhumane conventions, all designed
To sanctify the immemorial robbery
Of Man by men; with mockful mummeries,
Called Law, to save the one perennial Wrong—
That fundamental social crime which fate
All babes alike to Inequality,
And so condemns the many million minds
(That might, with happier nurture, finely serve)
To share, through life, the harmful hates or scorns
The accursed System breeds, which still most hurts
The few who fancy it their benefit,
Shutting them lifelong from the happiness
Of such close sympathy with all their kind
As feels the universal God, or Soul,
Alive to love in every human heart.
Was it for this our Mother’s sons were slain?
Shall Father Abraham not prevail again?
We who are marching to the small-flagged graves
We earned by fight to free our fathers’ slaves,
We who by Lincoln’s hero soul were sworn,
We go more sadly toward our earthly bourne
To join our comrade host of long ago,
Since, oh so clearly, do our old hearts know
We shall not witness what we longed to see—
Our own dear children minded to be free.
Why let democracy be flouted down?
Why let your money-mongers more renown
Their golden idol than the Common Weal,
Flaunting the gains of liberty-to-steal,
Fouling the promise of the heights we trod
With Freedom’s sacrifice to Lincoln’s God?
Was it for this he wept his children slain?
Or shall our Father’s spirit rise again?
