Day Of Our Lord, The
The chime of many bells upon the air
Calling to halls of prayer,
And, from the street,
A child’s laugh, shrill and sweet,
Break in upon my silence, and the thought
The day has brought.
Christ’s Day! The sacred morn
Whereon, long centuries past, the Lord was born.
With the deep-toning bells,
The organs’ sinks and swells,
The churches’ pageantry,
The song, the feasting and festivity-
How many think of Thee?
Of Thee, and this Thy day,
And all the solemn story which it tells?
Do I? I look within
On mine own sin;
I do not need to gaze without, to find
The mote that makes another’s vision blind,
Or seek along strange ways
For burdens that make weary all the days.
I know Whose willing breast
Would bear my load;
I know Whose clasp, most blest,
Would lead the feet that stumble on the road;
I know His sure abode, -
And hear, unceasingly,
The call, “Come unto me,
And I will give you rest! ”
We know . . . and answer not!
The fiercest fights are fought,
Not between nations, nor ‘twixt race and race,
But in the human soul’s still, secret space.
The pride that yields not unto foe or friend;
The stubborn will that breaks not, nor will bend;
The vengeful thought where falsehood’s cruel wrong
And serpent-fanged ingratitude have stung;
The base ambition that would self exalt,
Upon another’s effort; envy, strife,
The cowardice that dares not own the fault;
The vampire, hate that drains the veins of life, -
Of these the forces which the soul engage
To hold it from its holy heritage:
Of these the foes, whose multitudes appall,
That it must meet, to fell them or to fall.
How hard it seems! How simple it all is!
And oh, the priceless worth!
It reckons not of worldly power or pelf,
Nor of earth-praise the meed.
The all in all in this His simple creed:
“Love thou thy God; thy neighbor as thyself;
Forgive, as thou dost hope to be forgiven! ”
And lo! we have sweet Heaven
About us on earth.
It is Thy day, dear Lord,
Help me remember it.
Help me to live thy word,
So living, honor it.
Help me to thrust away
My cruel foes, to-day,
Forever and for aye.
It is Thy day, dear Lord,
It is Thy Day!
Captive Of The White City, The *
Flower of the foam of the waves
Of the beautiful inland sea, -
White as the foam that laves
The ships of the Sea-Kings past, -
Marvel of human hands,
Wonderful, mystical, vast,
The great White City stands;
And the banners of all the lands
Are free on the western breeze,
Free as the West is free.
And the throngs go up and down
In the streets of the wonderful town
In brotherly love and grace, -
Children of every zone
The light of the sun has known:
And there in the Midway Place,
In the House of the Unhewn Trees,
There in the surging crowd,
Silent, and stern, and proud,
Sits Rain-in-the-Face!
Why is the captive here?
Is the hour of the Lord so near
When slayer and slain shall meet
In the place of the Judgment seat
For the word of the last decree?
Ah, what is the word to be?
For the beautiful City stands
On the Red Man’s wrested lands, **
The home of the fated race;
And the ghostly shadow falls
Over the trophied walls ***
Of the House of the Unhewn Tree,
In the pleasant Midway Place.
There is blood on the broken door,
Ther is blood on the broken floor,
Blood on your bronzed hands,
O Rain-in-the-Face.
Shut from the sunlit air,
Like a sun-god overthrown,
The soldier, Custer, lies.
Dust is the sun-kissed hair,
Dust are the dauntless eyes,
Dust and name alone; -
While the wife holds watch with grief
For the never-returning chief.
What if she walked to-day
In the City’s pleasant way,
The beautiful Midway Place,
And there to her sudden gaze,
Dimmed with her widow’s tears,
After the terrible years,
Stood Rain-in-the-Face!
Quench with a dropp of dew
From the morning’s cloudless blue
The prairies’ burning plains-
The seas of seething flame;
Turn from its awful path
The tempest, in its wrath;
Lure from his jungle-lair
The tiger, crouching there
For the leap on his sighted prey:
Then seek as well to tame
The hate in the Red Man’s veins,
His tiger-thirst to cool,
In the hour of the evil day
When his foe before him stands!
From the wrongs of the White Man’s rule
Blood only may wash the trace.
Alas, for the death-heaped slain!
Alas for your blood-stained hands,
O Rain-in-the-Face!
And the throngs go up, go down,
In the streets of the wonderful town;
And jests of the merry tongue,
And the dance, and the glad songs sung,
Ring through the sunlit space.
And there, in the wild, free breeze,
In the House of the Unhewn Trees,
In the beautiful Midway Place,
The captive sits apart,
Silent, and makes no sign.
But what is the word in your heart,
O man of a dying race?
What tale on your lips for mine,
O Rain-in-the-Face?
* “The White City” was the name given to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago,1893. The man who killed General Custer on the Little Bighorn was displayed in the Midway Plaisance of the fair. He sat, under guard, in a log cabin brought from Montana and reportedly owned by Sitting Bull, the same cabin in which that chief and his son had been killed.
** The Indians claim that the Land upon which Chicago is built was never fully paid for.
*** ”The walls were hung with relics of the fight” (Coolbrith’s note)
