Guy Wetmore Carryl: Verses about Water

Matilda Maud Mackenzie frankly hadn't any chin,
Her hands were rough, her feet she turned invariably in;
Her general form was German,
By which I mean that you
Her waist could not determine
Within a feet or two.
And not only did she stammer,
But she used the kind of grammar
That is called, for sake of euphony, askew.

From what I say about her, don't imagine I desire
A prejudice against this worthy creature to inspire.
She was willing, she was active,
She was sober, she was kind,
But she never looked attractive
And she hadn't any mind.
I knew her more than slightly
And treated her politely
When I met her, but of course I wasn't blind!

Matilda Maud Mackenzie had a habit that was droll,
She spent her morning seated on a rock or on a knoll,
And threw with such composure
A smallish rubber ball
At an inoffensive osier
By a little waterfall;
But Matilda's way of throwing
Was like other people's mowing,
And she never hit the willow-tree at all!

One day as Miss Mackenzie with uncommon ardour tried
To hit the mark, the missile flew exceptionally wide.
And, before her eyes astounded,
On a fallen maple's trunk
Ricochetted and rebounded
In the rivulet, and sunk!
Matilda, greatly frightened,
In her grammar unenlightened,
Remarked, 'Well now I ast yer, who'd 'er thunk?'

But what a marvel followed! From the pool at once there rose
A frog, the sphere of rubber balanced deftly on his nose.
He beheld her fright and frenzy
And, her panic to dispel,
On his knee by Miss Mackenzie
He obsequiously fell.
With quite as much decorum
As a speaker in a forum
He started in his history to tell.

'Fair maid,' he said, 'I beg you do not hesitate or wince,
If you'll promise that you'll wed me, I'll at once become a prince;
For a fairy, old and vicious,
An enchantment round me spun!'
Then he looked up, unsuspicious,
And he saw what he had won,
And in terms of sad reproach, he
Made some comments,
sotto voce,

(Which the publishers have bidden me to shun!)

Matilda Maud Mackenzie said, as if she meant to scold:
'I never! Why you forward thing! Now, ain't you awful bold!'
Just a glance he paused to give her,
And his head was seen to clutch,
Then he darted to the river,
And he dived to beat the Dutch!
While the wrathful maiden panted
'I don't think he was enchanted!'
(And he really didn't look it overmuch!)


The Moral


In one's language one conservative should be;
Speech is silver and it never should be free!

Magician hands through long, laborious nights
Have made these princely palaces to loom
Whiter than are the city's legion lights,
On threads unseen stretched out across the gloom.
Reared in an hour, for one brief hour to reign,
The proud pavilions watchful hold in fee
A world's achievements, where the stately Seine
Slides slowly past her bridges to the sea.

Mute and memorial, as on either bank
She sees the marvel worked before her eyes,
Beholds as in a vision, rank on rank,
Pagoda, dome, and campanile rise,
Like to a mother scowling on a child
Sceptred and crowned to make a queen of May,
The Seine, that sorrowed not for France defiled,
Past France triumphant frowning goes her way.

Yet, dragged reluctant from these ransomed shores,
Upon her tide, that sullenly and slow
Creeps channelward, the unapparent scores
Of history's spectres disregarded go;
And as the Empress City gains the seat
Of that imperial throne to which at last
By devious ways she comes, beneath her feet
The Seine in silence blots away the past.

Blots out the warning of cathedral bells,
The night of snowy scarfs, of swords, of staves,
The muffled bass of tumbril wheels that tells
Of mortal men that dig immortal graves;
Blots out the faces, calmly unafraid,
Of prince and peasant, courtesan and queen,
When men made martyrs and were martyrs made,
When France meant Hell and God meant Guillotine!

Like pilgrims whom a holy city calls,
The peoples bring their miracles to her;
The world of peace lays down within her walls
Its gifts of gold, and frankincense, and myrrh:
The West, wide-eyed, alert, intrepid, young,
With rush of shuttles and the song of steam;
The East, that, lotus-eating, gropes among
The half-remembered fragments of her dream.

From minarets the muezzins call to prayer,
From violins the mad mazurkas rise,
And western rangers watch in wonder, where
The camel boy his listless lash applies:
And nations warring, or that late have warred,
Their feuds forgot, their battles under ban,
Proclaim above the clamor of the sword
The pæan of the mastery of man.

Man! Born to grovel in a squalid cave,
Whose hand it is that every door unbars,
Whose cables cleave three thousand miles of wave,
Whose lenses tear their secrets from the stars!
Man! Naked, dull, unarmed, barbaric, dumb,
What magic path is this that he had trod?
Through what refining furnace hath he come,
This demi-brute become a demi-god?

As some great river merges every song
Of tributary waters in its own,
To blend in turn its music in the strong
Full measure of the ocean's monotone-
So this triumphant anthem, skyward sent
Man's marvellous finale to presage,
Within its thunderous diapason blent,
The keynote holds of each succeeding age!

For her the whip-lash sings above the slaves
Who bend despairing to the galley's oars;
The hoarse hail rings, across the sunlit waves,
Of vikings bound to unexploited shores:
Here is the chant of ransomed Israel's joy,
The moan of Egypt stricken in her home,
The challenge of the Grecian host to Troy,
The shout of Huns before the gates of Rome:

The oaths of sailors on the galleon's decks,
The welcome of Columbus to the land,
The prayers upon the doomed Armada's wrecks,
The rallying cry of Braddock's final stand;
Trafalgar's cannon, and the bugle's calls
Where France's armies thread the Alpine gorge,
The Campbell's pipes heard near to Lucknow's walls,
The patriot's hymn that hallowed Valley Forge!

All, all are here! The feeble and the strong;
The spoiled beside the victors of the spoil
Of twenty centuries swell the sacred song
Of human triumph won by human toil!
Up and yet upward to the heaven's wide arch
The thunders of the great thanksgiving roll
To mark the way of that majestic march
Of mortal man toward his Maker's goal!

And while the echo of her folly dies,
As in the hills the sound of village bells,
Upward from Paris to the April skies
Her hymn of rehabilitation swells;
From dark to dawn, from weakness back to strength,
The pendulum majestically swings,
And o'er the ashes of her past at length
The phoenix of her future spreads its wings!