Wampum and Old Gold

by Hervey Allen

Spring's Pilgrimage.

When Spring is born of Winter
Then there comes a day
In early April with the warmth of May,
The clouds go gadding and the winds turn mild,
And Spring is born in sunlight,
Merry child!
Her nurse is April with the misty eyes;
The birds sing round her cradle
Where she lies
In green-streaked woodlands by the mantled ponds,
Where the young ferns unfurl their snaky fronds.

She comes up from the South
With a bird whistle on her pouting mouth,
And sits upon some hill
Her mother, Winter, has kept cold and still,
Till her Sun-lover melts the snow—
Then out the strong floods go.
Leaping like horses to the sea,
And the green frogs go mad with glee.
Ah! When that child is on her way
The trees make ready, in the North
The robins herald her
And the buds put forth.
Puss Willow's little catkins are a-stir,
And it is all, is all for her!

But for a little while
She lingers in the South.
Wandering the moss-draped aisle,
Brushing the shiest flowers with her mouth.
Tuning her swanny throat
To the lush warble of the swamp-bird's note,
Beneath the lamp-hung jasmine's vine tent
Her warm, delicious childhood soon is spent.

Then forth she fares,
About the middle of the month of May,
A young girl, wild-eyed, gay;
The mountains are her stairs,
The birds her harbingers,
With merry song
The peewit pipes her as she trips along—
The trumpet flowers blow fanfares.
Even the sea caves know her
And deep down
The mermen chime the bells
In some dim town,
Where wrecks lie rotten and forgotten;
The shark's fin glides
More avidly among the sea-isle tides—
The whole glad earth
Hails her with gales of mirth.
The frantic midges dance;
There is tumultuous lowing from the cattle.
When Spring fares northward from the South,
The young sun hungers for her cherry mouth
And the black stallions scream as if in battle.

Summer.

Now come the Dog Days
When the fat-faced sun
Like Falstaff pours hot jest
On Prince and thieves;
The earth at morning smokes
And at high noon
Straight downward point the listless hanging leaves.

Come, love, come, come away with me,
Beneath the arbor tree,
Where is sweet greenery and shade within;
Shall we not take our ease in love's own inn?

Come to that elfin place
Where fawns feed on the tender grass
And slim, shy shepherds come
To see their sunburnt face
Upon a water glass,
Miraculously still—
Ah! Magic pool! They let the lead-sheep's bell
Grow fainter, fainter down the winding dell,
Until the only tone
That comes is the far "lina-lina-lone"
Of strayed sheep wandering on a windy hill.

Come, love, come, come away with me;
Drink from the coldest spring,
Where little frogs make Attic melody,
Tonight, perhaps, some moon-fooled bird will sing.

Dog Days,
I wish my love
Would come and live with me,
Beneath a tented tree,
The lush catalpa that in summer flowers,
Sol, I could laugh at thee!
If dalliance and sweet kisses sped the hours.

Autumn Portents.

The amber foam creams from the cider flagons,
Backward the shadow of the ground-hog shrinks,
The lanes creak with the laden harvest wagons,
And the fur thickens on the owl-eyed lynx,
The hunter sees cold mist about the moon,
And in the bottom lands at morn,
The print of tiny, thievish, fairy hands
Where the raccoon last night went stealing corn.

Autumn Invocation.

"The seasons wait their turn among the stars."

Come from the blinding sun fields where you are,
Come from the interspace of star and star,
Summer lies sleeping in her dusty tomb,
The owlets mourn her through the woodland's gloom
Where all the night birds are.

Autumn, come down!

Into the columned forests cast your torches,
Light all their shadowed aisles like temple porches,
Stop at the Dog Star first and snatch his fire,
Bold sun-hot yellow and the red that scorches
To light dead summer's funeral pyre.

Autumn, come down!

Lean down, High Lady, from your starry arch,
Over the maples and the fragrant larch,
Stoop down some frosty night,
Like a proud maiden from an old, walled town
Tossing a rainbow favor to her knight.

Lean down, lean down!

Come take our northern forests for your palace,
Dance in the witch fires of the borealis,
Stand misty-eyed upon the mountain tops
Or sit and gaze,
With wind-twitched cloak and merry, cast-back hood,
Down valleys purpled by the grape-blue haze,
Beside some flaming wood.
Come throw your mad flambeaux
Till all the motley, fire-streaked woodlands glow!

Autumn, come down!

Lady, how often must I ask it?
Proud plenty, if you will, with vine-wreathed basket
Shall bring you offerings of damasked plums—
For you in orchards mellow peaches plash
All night.
The lichens whiten on the lonely ash,
The clover blackens and the last bee hums.

Autumn, come down,

You brown-skinned sorceress,
And witch the leaves, for harvest home,
And bear the nodding sheaves
Into the red barns by the little town,

Autumn, come down, come down!

DREAM FRAGMENT.

I walked last night in southern Brittany,
In deep, warm meadows where the rouge-gorge sang,
A land cliff-bordered, by an azure sea,
Far off, far down, the muffled buoy bells rang
In bays that stretched into a land of indolence,
It seemed the peasants, in a fit of folly,
Had fled and left me in sweet impotence
To range blue uplands, tinged with melancholy,
In amethystine pastures, smooth and lone,
Charmed by a tepid ocean's magic moan.

WHEN SHADY AVENUE WAS SHADY LANE.

When Shady avenue was Shady lane,
Before the city fathers changed the name,
And cows stood switching flies beneath the trees,
And old-time gardens hummed with dusty bees,
And white ducks paddled in the summer rain;
Then everybody drove to church,
And Shady avenue was Shady lane.
We lived on Arabella street, that too
Is changed—Kentucky avenue—
And where the tollgate stood beside the spring,
The phlox and hollyhocks
Once flourished by the box
Where the gatekeeper sat with key and ring.
A wiser looking man there never was,
In contemplative mood he smoked and spat,
There by the gate he sat
In an old dog-eared hat
And listened to the yellow jackets' buzz.

All this is gone—
Gone glimmering down the ways
Of old, loved things of our lost yesterdays,
After the little tollgate by the spring.
And the gatekeeper odd
Rests in the quiet sod,
Safe in the arms of God
Where thrushes sing.
Even the spring has gone, for long ago
They walled that in,
And its dark waters flow
A sunless way along;
And no one stops to wonder where they go,
For no one hears their song.

Only a few old hearts
Of these much changed parts,
Whose time will soon run out on all the clocks,
Catching the scent of clover,
Live all the old days over
When Shady avenue was Shady lane.

Δ'S VERSUS ☉'S.

Do you not see, you American people,
What the triangle means?
Mind, soul, body.
Man is to live and die
In a little metaphysical, three-roomed apartment,
Office, chapel, and kitchenette.

As I sat and listened to the words of the wise man,
I looked out of the window
And suddenly a feeling of great well-being came on me.
I saw that I was made of the same stuff as the hillside
And that tomorrow I would be flowers,
Or dance in the dust motes in the sun
And that all things are one.

Then two laughing children came
And threw a stone into a fountain
And the ring widened till it was lost in the pool.
Behold a sign!
And I awoke and the wise man babbled like a fool.

And yet, O Great Republic,
The symbol of your state church
Is a triangle, blood red,
Pointing downward.

THE OLD JUDGE.

Around the courthouse corner from the square,
Where Poet Timrod's bust stands in the glare,
There is an ancient office shuttered tight,
With fluted pillars and the paint worn bare.
Seldom, if ever now, do passing feet
Disturb that little, cobbled cul-de-sac
Or rouse dull echoes in the quiet street
Where time has eddied back.
Only the old judge comes,
With quivering hands and thin,
With palsied scraping at the rusty lock
And enters in.

He is the last of all the courtly men,
Those lion-hearts who knew their Montesquieu,
And fought for what he taught them, too,
The STATE was something then—
But now—but now—he seems a very ghost
That haunts the little office off the square,
A Rip Van Winkle of the place at most
At which to stare.
Only on Saturdays he goes,
And no one knows,
And enters by the dusty, blinded door,
And sits and sits
While the long sunlight streams between the slits
And the rats scurry underneath the floor.
And there he stays all afternoon;
The wagons rumble in the square,
And the cracked, plaster bust of grim Calhoun
Frowns with its classic stare.
What dreams are these, old judge, of the old days,
When cotton bales made mountains on the ways,
When clipper ships were loading at the quays—
Or statelier, courtlier times of ease
And manners without flaw,
When Smythe & Pringle,
The name is all but weathered from the shingle,
Were the state's foremost firm at law.

Aye! Those were times!
They leap to life among the steeple chimes,
A passion and a white tone in the bells
Flatters his sleep until he dreams of bout
And rapier thrust at law—
Of frosty marches,
Camp fires and faces of dead men,
The War,
And old Virginia's academic arches—
And he is young again!
Oh! Life! Oh! Glory!
He leaps up from his seat—
Ah! Judge, the old, old story;
The blood can scarcely creep
Back to the icy feet
As the old man startles from his sleep,
The last bell hums and then—
Memento mori!

Dream, dream, old judge,
May quiet bring you ease,
Among the Wedgwood phantoms of old Greece,
Dream while the carved lambs in the frieze
Trot to the voiceless sound
Of Pan-pipes in the Georgian mantelpiece,
Summon the forms of men you used to know;
Till dead men's footfalls creak across the floor—
Is it your partner's who once long ago
Planted the brick court with rêve d'or?
Ah! He is gone now with his roses,
Gone these thirty years and more.

And now the new South quickens, in the square
The huge trucks thunder and the motors blare.
The park oaks droop with Spanish moss and age,
The jedge no longer now is marss but boss,
And all the old things suffer change and loss
But still he makes his weekly pilgrimage.
Some day, some waif will look in through the pane
And see him sitting with his gold-head cane
With wide unseeing eyes a-stare—
Then there will be an end of dreams and care,
A courtesy will pass we cannot spare,
And humor, sparkling, dry as old champagne.

BEWITCHED.

A little lad was he
Who loved a fisher maid in Brittany,
Where sands stretch flat and wide
When ebbs the tide,
Smooth as a threshing floor,
And there they played, young Véronique and Pierre,
Along the shore.
Often they used to walk
Hand fast in hand,
And laughed and kissed,
Lost in such heavenly talk
That spirits there,
Who dwelt in sunny places in the mist,
Drew very near to Véronique and Pierre,
And the shrill curlews cried,
And there were rainbow castles in the foam
Where seawites died.

Mornings, dear Véronique brought shells
And laid them on the stone beside Pierre's door,
Sea-shapes of beauty, magic as the stars,
Washed from old ocean's dragon-haunted floor,
And Pierre would dream that she was sitting there
And hoped that he would find her when he woke;
And so he did—and she would look at Pierre
And he at her—and neither of them spoke.
So passed July, whose molten hours flow,
The sun laughed hot and high,
And then they said good-bye,
For Pierre must go.
He left her standing dumbly in the lane,
Her lips a-tremble with his parting kiss,
And had her farewell gift, a twisted shell,
Bewitched! Bewitched! With melancholy spell,
For in that shell it was that little Pierre
First heard love's secret whispered thus, "De-ssspairr."

THE WINGLESS VICTORY.

Nike of Samothrace,
Thy godlike wings
Cleft windy space
Above the ships of kings,
Fain of thy lips,
By hope made glorious,
Time kissed thy grand, Greek face
Away from us.

Our Nike has no wings;
She has not known
Clean heights, and from her lips
Comes starvèd moan.
Mints lie that coin her grace,
And Time will hate her face,
For it has turned the world's hope
Into stone.

POEMS WRITTEN IN FRANCE AT THE FRONT
1918

THE BLINDMAN.

A Ballad of Nogent l'Artaud.

At Nogent, on the river Marne,
I passed a burning house and barn.
I went into the public square
Where pigeons fluttered in the air
And empty windows gaped a-stare.

There crouched a blindman by the wall
A-shivering in a ragged shawl,
Who gave a hopeless parrot screech
And felt the wall with halting reach.
He went around as in a trap.
He had a stick to feel and rap.
A-rap-a-tap, a-rap-a-tap.

I strode across the public square.
I stopped and spoke him full and fair.
I asked him what he searched for there.
There came a look upon his face
That made me want to leave the place.
He could not answer for a space.
He moved his trembling hands about
And in-and-out, and in-and-out.

"Kind sir," he said, "I scarcely know—
A week ago there fell a blow—
I think it was a week ago.
I sent my little girl to school,
With kisses and her book and rule,
A week ago she went to school."
The pigeons all began to coo,
"A-cock-a-loo, a-cock-a-loo."

"O God! to be a blinded fool;
I cannot find the children's school—
The gate, the court about the pool—
But, sir, if you will guide my feet
Across the square and down the street,
I think I know then where it lies.
O Jesu! Give me back my eyes!
O Jesu! Give me back my eyes!"

I led him down the littered street,
He seemed to know it with his feet,
For suddenly he turned aside
And entered through a gateway wide.
It was the court about the pool.
Long shadows slept there deep and cool.
No sound was there of beast or bird;
It was the silence that we heard.

"And this," he said, "might be the place,"
An eager look came on his face.
He raised his voice and gave a call;
An echo mewed along the wall,
And then it rose, and then it fell,
Like children talking down a well.
"Go in," he said, "see what you see,
And then come back again for me."

Like one who bears a weight of sin
And walks with fear, I entered in—
A turn—and halfway up the stair
There was a sight to raise your hair;
A dusty litter, books and toys,
Three bundles that were little boys,
White faces like an ivory gem;
A statue stood and looked at them.

So thick the silence where I stood,
I thought I wore a woolen hood;
The blood went whispering through my ears,
Like secrets that one overhears.
I looked upon the dead a while;
I saw the glimmering statue smile.
The children slept so sweetly there,
I scarce believed the tainted air.

And then I heard the blindman's stick,
As rhythmic as a watch's tick,
A step—a click, a step—a click—
As slow as days grow to a year,
So long it seemed while he drew near,
But sure and blind as death or fate,
He came and said, "I dared not wait.
It was too silent at the gate."

"And tell me now, sir, what you see
That keeps you here so silently."
"Three harmless things," I said, "I fear,
Three things I see but cannot hear,
Three shadows of what was before,
Cast by no light are on the floor."
"Sir," said the blindman, "lead me round,
Lest I should tread on holy ground."

Like men they lead at dawn to doom,
We slowly climbed the stairway's gloom
And came into a sunlit room.
The ceiling lay upon the floor,
And slates, and books, and something more—
The master with a glassy stare,
Sat gory in his shivered chair
And gazed upon his pupils there.

The blindman grasped me eagerly.
"And tell me now, sir, what you see?
This is the place where she should be—
My Eleanor, who used to wear
Short socks that left her brown legs bare.
She had a crown of golden hair."
I saw his blind eyes peer and stare.
Now there and here, now here and there.

"Blindman," I cried, "these things I see:
Time here has turned eternity.
The clock hands point but only mock,
For it is always three o'clock.
I see the shadows on the wall;
I see the crumbling plaster fall."
"Oh! sir," he said, "I crave your eyes—
Be not so kindly with your lies."

I drew the blindman to my side;
I told the truth I wished to hide.
I said, "I see your Eleanor
And she is dead upon the floor.
And something fumbles with her hair;
I guess the wind is playing there.
And I see gray rats sleek and stout
That dart about and dart about."

"Now, sir," he said, "I love your lies
And Christ be thanked that took my eyes!
But lead me, lead me to my dead!
And let me touch her once," he said.
I placed his hand upon her head.

And when we left the charnel place,
I dared not look upon his face;
For suddenly upon the street
Arose the sound of trampling feet,
And wheels that rumbled on the ground,
And ground around and ground around,
The din of them that go to slay,
The shout of men and horses' neigh,
And men and beasts swept on to war
A dreadful drumming on before.

It throbbed and throbbed through Nogent Town,
Till desolation settled down.
The blindman leaned against the door;
"And tell me, sir, about the war,
What is it they are fighting for?"
"Blindman," I cried, "Can you not see?
It is to set the whole world free!
It is for sweet democracy—"

"I do not know her, sir," he said.
"My little Eleanor is dead."

HANDS OFF.

Dedicated to Orators and Others.

I know a glade in Argonne where they lean—
Those crosses—loosened by last winter's snows,
Throwing their silent shadows on the green;
There I could go this very day—God knows!
To hide a sorrow mocked by tears and words,
To fall face downward on the catholic grass
That sprang this springtime through the shroud of snows
And let the little, greenwood birds say mass.

Like sound of taps at twilight from the hill,
The solemn thought comes that these lads are gone;
At evening when the breathing world grows still
And ghostly day steals from the bird-hushed lawn,
When over wooded crests the swimming moon
Casts ivory spells of beauty they have lost,
Across delicious valleys warm with June
I count the ghastly price the victory cost.

I count it in moongold and coin of life,
The love and beauty that these dead have missed,
Who lived to reap no glory from the strife,
But are like sleepers by the loved one kissed;
Each sleeps and knows not that she is so near,
Or at the most sinks deeper in his dream,
And life, and all blithe things they once held dear,
Are far and faint like voices of a stream.

Hands off our dead! For all they did forbear
To drag them from their graves to point some speech;
Less sickening was the gas reek over there,
Less deadly was the shrapnel's whirring screech;
You cannot guess the uttermost they gave;
Those martyrs did not die for chattering daws
To loot false inspiration from the grave
When mouthing fools turn ghouls to gain applause.

SOLDIER-POET.

To Francis Fowler Hogan.

I think at first like us he did not see
The goal to which the screaming eagles flew;
For romance lured him, France, and chivalry;
But Oh! Before the end he knew, he knew!
And gave his first full love to Liberty,
And met her face to face one lurid night
While the guns boomed their shuddering minstrelsy
And all the Argonne glowed with demon light.
And Liberty herself came through the wood,
And with her dear, boy lover kept the tryst;
Clasped in her grand, Greek arms he understood
Whose were the fatal lips that he had kissed—
Lips that the soul of Youth has loved from old—
Hot lips of Liberty that kiss men cold.

DOOMED.

Connigis from Bois de la Jutte, July, 1918.

Left to its fate, the little village stands
Between the armies trenched on either hill,
Raising twin spires like supplicating hands
From meadow lands where all lies ghastly still.

The lakes of clover ripple to the breeze
As from the vineyards glides a rancid breath,
Bringing the homelike murmur of the bees,
Mixed with a sickening whiff of carrion death.

It is the valley of the shadow there,
Where death lies ambushed in the tossing flowers
Whose very beauty seems to cry, "Beware!"
For terror haunts its villages and towers.

That home where peasants led their blameless life,
That thatched, stone cottage is a clever trap
With painful wounds and fatal danger rife,
Noted with two red circles on the map.

Seen through the glass, dead, sleeps the petite place.
Where white-capped housewives lingered once to chat
On market days, or after early mass;
Now nothing moves there but the stealthy cat—

The only thing that even dares to stir;
It hugs short shadows near the walls at noon,
Lashing its tail to hear an airplane purr,
Circling about a peering, fat balloon.

The houses gleam too bright, their limelight glare,
Pure sunlight though it be, is filled with gloom;
They are too white, too garnished and too bare—
They are too much like walls about a tomb.

The windows stare beside each gaping door,
Where once in gingham apron and a shawl,
In days now passed away forevermore,
Some little mother sat and nursed her doll.

Sepulchral silence and a lonely dread
And desolation's calm have settled down,
Making brief peace there for the rigid dead—
Tonight the shells will burst upon the town!

WHITE LIGHT.

How like high mountain air this air in France;
The sun is so intense, so clear, so bright,
The fields unearthly green, the poplars glance,
Shivering their leafy lances in the light.
Those drilling troops flash back a steely gleam.
Others with distant din of clean delight,
Bathe where their bodies flash along the stream
And everywhere, the air, a lake of light!

White light, strange light of tense romantic days,
You are too rare, too cloudless and too clear,
Like a deep crystal where a seer might gaze
And see some vast disaster drawing near.

Petite Villiers,
July 4th, 1918.

BEAUMONT.

Deep in the mystery of the woodland's gloom,
Topping the sea of trees with pointed cone,
So that from many hills its towers loom,
The old château of Beaumont stands alone.
This generation saw its last sons go
To spill their noble blood with humbler men;
So Madame lives alone at the château
And waits for steps that never come again.
The sunlight sleeps along the buttressed walls,
And on the stagnant moats the midges dance,
And in the haunted wood the cuckoo calls,
Where hunted once the vanished kings of France.
The terraced gardens hum with greedy bees,
And Madame walks among the orange trees.

Boxed orange shrubs—they stand in potted row
Along the plaisance—Madame takes her ease;
But it is lonely at the old château;
The milky statues glimmer through the trees,
So silent, too! What can make Madame start?
Down in the garden where late roses blow,
She has heard laughter there that stopt her heart
Like echoes from old summers long ago.
But no—it cannot be! For hark! the click
Of little peasants' sabots; down the walk
That winds among the rows of hedges thick,
The children's voices die away in talk.
Alas! Who knows, who knows,
Why Madame bends so long above the rose?

Gently, old heart—there is no recompense
For the last uttermost you had to give.
Yet there is peace for you to outward sense—
God gives you Beaumont as a place to live.
The white herds graze in stately indolence,
While you sit knitting on the terrace there,
And that your hands still feel no impotence,
Witness the poor and Croix Rouge at St. Pierre;
And sweet the drive home through the wooded park,
When faintly chime the far-off steeple clocks
At dusk when village dogs begin to bark,
And the long lanes go glimmering white with flocks,
When the first, steely stars begin to peep
And the young shepherd whistles to his sheep.

St. Pierre-Le Moutier,
1918.

VILLIERS LE BEL GONNESSE.

Here in this garden where the roses bloom,
And time is scarcely marked by silent days,
The walls and pear trees cast a pleasant gloom,
A wavy, weed-grown fountain softly plays.
And fate has left us listless for a while
Upon the brink of what we do not know;
Outside the walls a passing schoolboy calls,
And lumbering oxcarts rumble as they go.

Red roofs, a spire, white roads and poplar trees;
An aeroplane goes droning through the skies;
The petals fall, there is no breath of breeze;
The old dog by the sundial snaps at flies.
My comrades by the fountain are asleep.
Far on the lines I hear a great gun boom;
Here in the garden, though, white peace lies deep,
And in the limelight heat the roses bloom.

DRAGON'S BREATH.

We held the last stone wall—when day was red—
They crept like morning shadows through the dead,
The flammenwerfer with their dragon's breath
Compressed in nippled bottle-tanks of death.

They puffed along the wall and one long cry
Withered away into the morning sky,
And some made crablike gestures where they lay
And all our faces turned oil gray,
Before the smoke rolled by.

It is beyond belief
How men can live
All curled up like a leaf.

I saw a man bloom in a flower of flame,
Roaring with fire,
Three times he called a name;
Three times he whirled within a white-hot pod
With busy hands and cried, "Oh, God! Oh, God!"

Now when the crumpets lie with blusterous joy
And the silk, wind-tweaked colors virgin fresh,
Borne by the blithe, boy bodies glitter past,
As the old gladiators throw their mesh;
The dragon's breath leaps from the bugle blast
And Azrael comes pounding with his drum—
Fe, fe, ... fi, fo, fum—
I smell the roasting flesh!

WE.

We who have come back from the war,
And stand upright and draw full breath,
Seek boldly what life holds in store
And eat its whole fruit rind and core,
Before we enter through the door
To keep our rendezvous with death.

We who have walked with death in France,
When all the world with death was rife,
Who came through all that devils' dance,
When life was but a circumstance,
A sniper's whim, a bullet's glance,
We have a rendezvous with life!

With life that hurtles like a spark
From stricken steel where anvils chime,
That leaps the space from dark to dark,
A blinding, blazing, flaming arc,
As clean as fire, and frank and stark—
White life that lives while there is time.

We will not live by musty creeds,
Who learned the truth through love and war,
Who tipped the scales for right by deeds,
When old men's lies were broken reeds,
We follow where the cold fact leads
And bow our heads no more.

Deliver us from tactless kin,
And drooling bores that start "reforms,"
And unctious folk that prate of sin,
And theorists without a chin,
And politicians out to win,
And generals in uniforms.

We have come back who broke the line
The hard Hun held by bomb and knife!
All but the blind can read the sign;
The time is ours by right divine,
Who drank with Death in blood red wine,
We have a rendezvous with life!

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