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[Contents.]
[List of Illustrations] (In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.) (etext transcriber's note) |
THE BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
THE BOOK OF THE
HOMELESS
(Le Livre des Sans-Foyer)
EDITED BY
EDITH WHARTON
New York & London
MDCCCCXVI
THE
BOOK OF THE HOMELESS
(LE LIVRE DES SANS-FOYER)
EDITED BY EDITH WHARTON
. .
.
Original Articles in Verse and Prose
Illustrations reproduced from Original Paintings & Drawings
THE BOOK IS SOLD
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE AMERICAN HOSTELS FOR REFUGEES
(WITH THE FOYER FRANCO-BELGE)
AND OF THE CHILDREN OF FLANDERS RESCUE COMMITTEE
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
MDCCCCXVI
COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON, U. S. A.
LETTRE DU GÉNÉRAL JOFFRE
République Française
Armées de l’Est
Le Commandant en Chef
Au Grand Quartier Général, le 18 Août, 1915
Les Etats-Unis d’Amérique n’ont pas oublié que la première page de l’Histoire de leur indépendance a été écrite avec un peu de sang français.
Par leur inépuisable générosité et leur grande sympathie, ils apportent aujourd’hui à la France, qui combat pour sa liberté, l’aide la plus précieuse et le plus puissant réconfort.
LETTER FROM GENERAL JOFFRE
[TRANSLATION]
Headquarters of the Commander-in-chief
of the Armies of the French Republic
August 18ᵗʰ 1915
The United States of America have never forgotten that the first page of the history of their independence was partly written in French blood.
Inexhaustibly generous and profoundly sympathetic, these same United States now bring aid and solace to France in the hour of her struggle for liberty.
J. Joffre
INTRODUCTION
It is not only a pleasure but a duty to write the introduction which Mrs. Wharton requests for “The Book of the Homeless.” At the outset of this war I said that hideous though the atrocities had been and dreadful though the suffering, yet we must not believe that these atrocities and this suffering paralleled the dreadful condition that had obtained in European warfare during, for example, the seventeenth century. It is lamentable to have to confess that I was probably in error. The fate that has befallen Belgium is as terrible as any that befell the countries of Middle Europe during the Thirty Years’ War and the wars of the following half-century. There is no higher duty than to care for the refugees and above all the child refugees who have fled from Belgium. This book is being sold for the benefit of the American Hostels for Refugees and for the benefit of The Children of Flanders Relief Committee, founded in Paris by Mrs. Wharton in November, 1914, and enlarged by her in April, 1915, and chiefly maintained hitherto by American subscriptions. My daughter, who in November and December last was in Paris with her husband, Dr. Derby, in connection with the American Ambulance, has told me much about the harrowing tragedies of the poor souls who were driven from their country and on the verge of starvation, without food or shelter, without hope, and with the members of the family all separated from one another, none knowing where the others were to be found, and who had drifted into Paris and into other parts of France and across the Channel to England as a result of Belgium being trampled into bloody mire. In April last the Belgian Government asked Mrs. Wharton to take charge of some six hundred and fifty children and a number of helpless old men and women from the ruined towns and farms of Flanders. This is the effort which has now turned into The Children of Flanders Rescue Committee.
I appeal to the American people to picture to themselves the plight of these poor creatures and to endeavor in practical fashion to secure that they shall be saved from further avoidable suffering. Nothing that our people can do will remedy the frightful wrong that has been committed on these families. Nothing that can now be done by the civilized world, even if the neutral nations of the civilized world should at last wake up to the performance of the duty they have so shamefully failed to perform, can undo the dreadful wrong of which these unhappy children, these old men and women, have been the victims. All that can be done surely should be done to ease their suffering. The part that America has played in this great tragedy is not an exalted part; and there is all the more reason why Americans should hold up the hands of those of their number who, like Mrs. Wharton, are endeavoring to some extent to remedy the national shortcomings. We owe to Mrs. Wharton all the assistance we can give. We owe this assistance to the good name of America, and above all for the cause of humanity we owe it to the children, the women and the old men who have suffered such dreadful wrong for absolutely no fault of theirs.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CONTRIBUTIONS OF WRITERS AND MUSICIANS
| PAGE | |
| MAURICE BARRÈS | |
| Les Frères | [59] |
| Translation: The Brothers | [61] |
| SARAH BERNHARDT | |
| Une Promesse | [64] |
| Translation: A Promise | [64] |
| LAURENCE BINYON | |
| The Orphans of Flanders. Poem | [3] |
| PAUL BOURGET | |
| Après un An | [65] |
| Translation: One Year Later | [67] |
| RUPERT BROOKE | |
| The Dance. A Song | [4] |
| PAUL CLAUDEL | |
| Le Précieux Sang. Poem | [5] |
| Translation: The Precious Blood | [6] |
| JEAN COCTEAU | |
| La Mort des Jeunes Gens de la Divine Hellade. Fragment. Poem | [9] |
| Translation: How the Young Men died in Hellas. A Fragment | [11] |
| JOSEPH CONRAD | |
| Poland Revisited | [71] |
| VINCENT D’INDY | |
| Musical Score: La légende de Saint Christophe (Acte I, Sc. III) | [55] |
| ELEONORA DUSE | |
| Libertà nella Vita | [98] |
| Translation: The Right to Liberty | [98] |
| JOHN GALSWORTHY | |
| Harvest | [99] |
| EDMUND GOSSE | |
| The Arrogance and Servility of Germany | [101] |
| ROBERT GRANT | |
| A Message. Poem | [14] |
| THOMAS HARDY | |
| Cry of the Homeless. Poem | [16] |
| PAUL HERVIEU | |
| Science et Conscience | [105] |
| Translation: Science and Conscience | [106] |
| WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS | |
| The Little Children. Poem | [17] |
| GÉNÉRAL HUMBERT | |
| Les Arabes avaient Raison | [109] |
| Translation: An Heroic Stand | [111] |
| HENRY JAMES | |
| The Long Wards | [115] |
| FRANCIS JAMMES | |
| Epitaphe. Poem | [18] |
| Translation: An Epitaph | [19] |
| GÉNÉRAL JOFFRE | |
| Lettre du Général Joffre | [vii] |
| Translation: Letter from General Joffre | [viii] |
| MAURICE MAETERLINCK | |
| Notre Héritage | [127] |
| Translation: Our Inheritance | [127] |
| EDWARD SANDFORD MARTIN | |
| We Who Sit Afar Off | [129] |
| ALICE MEYNELL | |
| In Sleep. Poem | [20] |
| PAUL ELMER MORE | |
| A Moment of Tragic Purgation | [133] |
| COMTESSE DE NOAILLES | |
| Nos Morts. Poem | [21] |
| Translation: Our Dead | [21] |
| JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY | |
| Two Songs of a Year: 1914-1915 | |
| I. Children’s Kisses | [23] |
| II. The Sans-Foyer | [25] |
| LILLA CABOT PERRY | |
| Rain in Belgium. Poem | [26] |
| AGNES REPPLIER | |
| The Russian Bogyman | [139] |
| HENRI DE RÉGNIER | |
| L’Exilé. Poem | [27] |
| Translation: The Exile | [28] |
| THEODORE ROOSEVELT | |
| Introduction | [ix] |
| EDMOND ROSTAND | |
| Horreur et Beauté. Poem | [30] |
| Translation: Horror and Beauty | [30] |
| GEORGE SANTAYANA | |
| The Undergraduate Killed in Battle. Poem | [32] |
| IGOR STRAVINSKY | |
| Musical Score: Souvenir d’une marche boche | [49] |
| ANDRÉ SUARÈS | |
| Chant des Galloises | [143] |
| Translation: Song of the Welsh Women | [147] |
| EDITH M. THOMAS | |
| The Children and the Flag. Poem | [33] |
| HERBERT TRENCH | |
| The Troubler of Telaro. Poem | [34] |
| ÉMILE VERHAEREN | |
| Le Printemps de 1915. Poem | [37] |
| Translation: The New Spring | [38] |
| MRS. HUMPHRY WARD (Mary A. Ward) | |
| Wordsworth’s Valley in War-time | [151] |
| BARRETT WENDELL | |
| 1915. Poem | [40] |
| EDITH WHARTON | |
| Preface | [xix] |
| The Tryst. Poem | [41] |
| MARGARET L. WOODS | |
| Finisterre. Poem | [43] |
| W. B. YEATS | |
| A Reason for Keeping Silent. Poem | [45] |
. .
.
The French poems, except M. Rostand’s Sonnet
are translated by Mrs. Wharton
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
CONTRIBUTIONS OF ARTISTS
PREFACE
I
THE HOSTELS
Last year, among the waifs swept to Paris by the great torrent of the flight from the North, there came to the American Hostels a little acrobat from a strolling circus. He was not much more than a boy, and he had never before been separated from his family or from his circus. All his people were mummers or contortionists, and he himself was a mere mote of the lime-light, knowing life only in terms of the tent and the platform, the big drum, the dancing dogs, the tight-rope and the spangles.
In the sad preoccupied Paris of last winter it was not easy to find a corner for this little figure. But the lad could not be left in the streets, and after a while he was placed as page in a big hotel. He was given good pay, and put into a good livery, and told to be a good boy. He tried ... he really tried ... but the life was too lonely. Nobody knew anything about the only things he knew, or was particularly interested in the programme of the last performance the company had given at Liège or Maubeuge. The little acrobat could not understand. He told his friends at the Hostels how lonely and puzzled he was, and they tried to help him. But he couldn’t sleep at night, because he was used to being up till nearly daylight; and one night he went up to the attic of the hotel, broke open several trunks full of valuables stored there by rich lodgers, and made off with some of the contents. He was caught, of course, and the things he had stolen were produced in court. They were the spangled dresses belonging to a Turkish family, and the embroidered coats of a lady’s lap-dog....
I have told this poor little story to illustrate a fact which, as time passes, is beginning to be lost sight of: the fact that we workers among the refugees are trying, first and foremost, to help a homesick people. We are not preparing for their new life an army of voluntary colonists; we are seeking to console for the ruin of their old life a throng of bewildered fugitives. It is our business not only to feed and clothe and keep alive these people, but to reassure and guide them. And that has been, for the last year, the task of the American Hostels for Refugees.
The work was started in November, 1914, and since that time we have assisted some 9,300 refugees, given more than 235,000 meals, and distributed 48,333 garments.
But this is only the elementary part of our work. We have done many more difficult things. Our employment agency has found work for over 3,500 men. Our work-rooms occupy about 120 women, and while they sew, their babies are kept busy and happy in a cheerful day-nursery, and the older children are taught in a separate class.
The British Young Women’s Christian Association of Paris has shown its interest in our work by supplying us with teachers for the grown-up students who realize the importance of learning English as a part of their business equipment; and these classes are eagerly followed.
Lastly, we have a free clinic where 3,500 sick people have received medical advice, and a dispensary where 4,500 have been given first aid and nursing care; and during the summer we sent many delicate children to the seaside in the care of various Vacation Colonies.
This is but the briefest sketch of our complicated task; a task undertaken a year ago by a small group of French and American friends moved to pity by the thousands of fugitives wandering through the streets of Paris and sleeping on straw in the railway-stations.
We thought then that the burden we were assuming would not have to be borne for more than three or four months, and we were confident of receiving the necessary financial help. We were not mistaken; and America has kept the American Hostels alive for a year. But we are now entering on our second year, with a larger number to care for, and a more delicate task to perform. The longer the exile of these poor people lasts, the more carefully and discriminatingly must we deal with them. They are not all King Alberts and Queen Elisabeths, as some idealists apparently expected them to be. Some are hard to help, others unappreciative of what is done for them. But many, many more are grateful, appreciative, and eager to help us to help them. And of all of them we must say, as Henri de Régnier says for us in the poem written for this Book:
He who, flying from the fate of slaves
With brow indignant and with empty hand,
Has left his house, his country and his graves,
Comes like a Pilgrim from a Holy Land.
Receive him thus, if in his blood there be
One drop of Belgium’s immortality.
II
THE CHILDREN
One day last August the members of the “Children of Flanders Rescue Committee” were waiting at the door of the Villa Béthanie, a large seminary near Paris which had been put at the disposal of the committee for the use of the refugee children.
The house stands in a park with fine old trees and a wide view over the lovely rolling country to the northwest of Paris. The day was beautiful, the borders of the drive were glowing with roses, the lawns were fragrant with miniature hay-cocks, and the flower-beds about the court had been edged with garlands of little Belgian flags.
Suddenly we heard a noise of motor-horns, and the gates of the park were thrown open. Down toward us, between the rose-borders, a procession was beginning to pour: first a band of crippled and infirm old men, then a dozen Sisters of Charity in their white caps, and lastly about ninety small boys, each with his little bundle on his back.
They were a lamentable collection of human beings, in pitiful contrast to the summer day and the bright flowers. The old men, for the most part, were too tired and dazed to know where they were, or what was happening to them, and the Sisters were crying from fatigue and homesickness. The boys looked grave too, but suddenly they caught sight of the flowers, the hay-cocks, and the wide house-front with all its windows smiling in the sun. They took a long look and then, of their own accord, without a hint from their elders, they all broke out together into the Belgian national hymn. The sound of that chorus repaid the friends who were waiting to welcome them for a good deal of worry and hard work.
The flight from western Flanders began last April, when Ypres, Poperinghe, and all the open towns of uninvaded Belgium were swept by a senseless and savage bombardment. Even then it took a long time to induce the inhabitants to give up the ruins of their homes; and before going away themselves they sent their children.
Train-load after train-load of Flemish children poured into Paris last spring. They were gathered in from the ruins, from the trenches, from the hospices where the Sisters of Charity had been caring for them, and where, in many cases, they had been huddled in with the soldiers quartered in the same buildings. Before each convoy started, a young lady with fair hair and very blue eyes walked through the train, distributing chocolate and sandwiches to the children and speaking to each of them in turn, very kindly; and all but the very littlest children understood that this lady was their Queen....
The Belgian government, knowing that I had been working for the refugees, asked me to take charge of sixty little girls, and of the Sisters accompanying them. We found a house, fitted it up, begged for money and clothes, and started The Children of Flanders Rescue Committee. Now, after six months, we have five houses, and are caring for nearly 900 people, among whom are about 200 infirm old men and women whom the Sisters had to bring because there was no one left to look after them in the bombarded towns.
Every war-work, if it has any vitality in it, is bound to increase in this way, and is almost certain to find the help it needs to keep it growing. We have always been so confident of this that we have tried to do for our Children of Flanders what the Hostels have done for the grown-up refugees: not only to feed and clothe and shelter, but also to train and develop them. Some of the Sisters are skilled lace-makers; and we have founded lace-schools in three of our houses. There is a dearth of lace at present, owing to the ruin of the industry in Belgium and Northern France, and our little lace-makers have already received large orders for Valenciennes and other laces. The smallest children are kept busy in classes of the “Montessori” type, provided by the generosity of an American friend, and the boys, out of school-hours, are taught gardening and a little carpentry. We hope later to have the means to enlarge this attempt at industrial training.
This is what we are doing for the Children of Flanders; but, above and beyond all, we are caring for their health and their physical development. The present hope of France and Belgium is in its children, and in the hygienic education of those who have them in charge; and we have taught the good Sisters many things they did not know before concerning the physical care of the children. The results have been better than we could have hoped; and those who saw the arrival of the piteous waifs a few months ago would scarcely recognize them in the round and rosy children playing in the gardens of our Houses.
III
THE BOOK
I said just now that when we founded our two refugee charities we were confident of getting money enough to carry them on. So we were; and so we had a right to be; for at the end of the first twelvemonth we are still alive and solvent.
But we never dreamed, at the start, that the work would last longer than a year, or that its demands would be so complex and increasing. And when we saw before us the certainty of having to carry this poor burden of humanity for another twelve months, we began to wonder how we should get the help to do it.
Then the thought of this Book occurred to me. I appealed to my friends who write and paint and compose, and they to other friends of theirs, writers, painters, composers, statesmen and dramatic artists; and so the Book gradually built itself up, page by page and picture by picture.
You will see from the names of the builders what a gallant piece of architecture it is, what delightful pictures hang on its walls, and what noble music echoes through them. But what I should have liked to show is the readiness, the kindliness, the eagerness, with which all the collaborators, from first to last, have lent a hand to the building. Perhaps you will guess it for yourselves when you read their names and see the beauty and variety of what they have given. So I efface myself from the threshold and ask you to walk in.
Edith Wharton
Paris, November, 1915
Gifts of money for the American Hostels for Refugees, and the Children of Flanders Rescue Committee should be addressed to Mrs. Wharton, 53 rue de Varenne, Paris, or to Henry W. Munroe, Treasurer, care of Mrs. Cadwalader Jones, 21 East Eleventh Street, New York.
Gifts in kind should be forwarded to the American War Relief Clearing House, 5 rue François Iᵉʳ, Paris (with Mrs. Wharton’s name in the left-hand corner), via the American offices of the Clearing House, 15 Broad Street, New York.
[CONTRIBUTORS OF POETRY AND MUSIC]
- LAURENCE BINYON
- RUPERT BROOKE
- PAUL CLAUDEL
- JEAN COCTEAU
- ROBERT GRANT
- THOMAS HARDY
- W. D. HOWELLS
- FRANCIS JAMMES
- ALICE MEYNELL
- COMTESSE DE NOAILLES
- JOSEPHINE PRESTON PEABODY
- LILLA CABOT PERRY
- HENRI DE RÉGNIER
- EDMOND ROSTAND
- GEORGE SANTAYANA
- EDITH M. THOMAS
- HERBERT TRENCH
- ÉMILE VERHAEREN
- BARRETT WENDELL
- EDITH WHARTON
- MARGARET L. WOODS
- W. B. YEATS
- . .
. - IGOR STRAVINSKY
- VINCENT D’INDY
THE ORPHANS OF FLANDERS
Where is the land that fathered, nourished, poured
The sap of a strong race into your veins,—
Land of wide tilth, of farms and granaries stored,
And old towers chiming over peaceful plains?
It is become a vision, barred away
Like light in cloud, a memory, a belief.
On those lost plains the Glory of yesterday
Builds her dark towers for the bells of Grief.
It is become a splendour-circled name
For all the world. A torch against the skies
Burns from that blood-spot, the unpardoned shame
Of them that conquered: but your homeless eyes
See rather some brown pond by a white wall,
Red cattle crowding in the rutty lane,
Some garden where the hollyhocks were tall
In the Augusts that shall never be again.
There your thoughts cling as the long-thrusting root
Clings in the ground; your orphaned hearts are there.
O mates of sunburnt earth, your love is mute
But strong like thirst and deeper than despair.
You have endured what pity can but grope
To feel; into that darkness enters none.
We have but hands to help: yours is the hope
Whose silent courage rises with the sun.
Laurence Binyon
THE DANCE
A SONG
As the Wind and as the Wind
In a corner of the way,
Goes stepping, stands twirling,
Invisibly, comes whirling,
Bows before and skips behind
In a grave, an endless play—
So my Heart and so my Heart
Following where your feet have gone,
Stirs dust of old dreams there;
He turns a toe; he gleams there,
Treading you a dance apart.
But you see not. You pass on.
Rupert Brooke
THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE
PORTRAIT OF ANDRÉ GIDE
FROM A PENCIL DRAWING
PAUL CLAUDEL
LE PRÉCIEUX SANG
—Seigneur, qui pour un verre d’eau nous avez promis la mer illimitée,
Qui sait si vous n’avez pas soif aussi?
Et que ce sang qui est tout ce que nous avons soit propre à vous désaltérer,
C’est vrai, puisque vous l’avez dit!
Si vraiment il y a une source en nous, eh bien, c’est ce que nous allons voir!
Si ce vin a quelque vertu
Et si notre sang est rouge, comme vous le dites, comment le savoir
Autrement que quand il est répandu?
Si notre sang est vraiment précieux, comme vous le dites, si vraiment il est comme de l’or,
S’il sert, pourquoi le garder?
Et sans savoir ce qu’on peut acheter avec, pourquoi le réserver comme un trésor,
Mon Dieu, quand vous nous le demandez?
Nos péchés sont grands, nous le savons, et qu’il faut absolument faire pénitence,
Mais il est difficile pour un homme de pleurer.
Voici notre sang au lieu de larmes que nous avons répandu pour la France:
Faites-en ce que vous voudrez.
Prenez-le, nous vous le donnons, tirez-en vous-même usage et bénéfice,
Nous ne vous faisons point de demande
Mais si vous avez besoin de notre amour autant que nous avons besoin de votre justice,
Alors c’est que votre soif est grande!
P. Claudel
Juillet 1915
THE PRECIOUS BLOOD
[TRANSLATION]
Oh, what if Thou, that for a cup of water promisest
The illimitable sea,
Thou, Lord, dost also thirst?
Hast Thou not said, our blood shall quench Thee best
And first
Of any drink there be?
If then there be such virtue in it, Lord,
Ah, let us prove it now!
And, save by seeing it at Thy footstool poured,
How, Lord—oh, how?
If it indeed be precious and like gold,
As Thou hast taught,
Why hoard it? There’s no wealth in gems unsold,
Nor joy in gems unbought.
Our sins are great, we know it; and we know
We must redeem our guilt;
Even so.
But tears are difficult for a man to shed,
And here is our blood poured out for France instead,
To do with as Thou wilt!
Take it, O Lord! And make it Thine indeed,
Void of all lien and fee.
Nought else we ask of Thee;
But if Thou needst our Love as we Thy Justice need,
Great must Thine hunger be!
Paul Claudel
LÉON BAKST
PORTRAIT OF JEAN COCTEAU
FROM AN UNPUBLISHED CRAYON SKETCH
LA MORT DES JEUNES GENS DE LA DIVINE HELLADE
FRAGMENT
Antigone criant et marchant au supplice
N’avait pas de la mort leur sublime respect;
Ce n’était pas pour eux une funeste paix,
C’était un ordre auquel il faut qu’on obéisse.
Ils ne subissaient pas l’offense qu’il fît beau
Que le soleil mûrît les grappes de glycine;
Ils étaient souriant en face du tombeau,
Les rossignols élus que la rose assassine.
Ils ne regrettaient pas les tendres soirs futurs,
Les conversations sur les places d’Athènes,
Où, le col altéré de poussière et d’azur,
Pallas, comme un pigeon, pleure au bord des fontaines.
Ils ne regrettaient pas les gradins découverts
Où le public trépigne, insiste,
Pour regarder, avant qu’ils montent sur la piste,
Les cochers bleus riant avec les cochers verts.
Ils ne regrettaient pas ce loisir disparate
D’une ville qui semble un sordide palais,
Où l’on se réunit pour entendre Socrate
Et pour jouer aux osselets.
Ils étaient éblouis de tumulte et de risque,
Mais, si la fourbe mort les désignait soudain,
Ils laissaient sans gémir sur l’herbe du jardin
Les livres et le disque.
Ce n’était pas pour eux l’insupportable affront,
Ils se couchaient sans choc, sans lutte, sans tapage,
Comme on voit, ayant bien remué sous le front,
Un vers définitif s’étendre sur la page.
Ils étaient résignés, vêtus, rigides, prêts
Pour cette expérience étrange,
Comme Hyacinthe en fleur indolemment se change
Et comme Cyparis se transforme en cyprès.
Ils ne regrettaient rien de vivre en Ionie,
D’être libres, d’avoir des mères et des sœurs,
Et de sentir ce lourd sommeil envahisseur
Après une courte insomnie.
Ils rentraient au séjour qui n’a plus de saison,
Où notre faible orgueil se refuse à descendre,
Sachant que l’urne étroite où gît un peu de cendre
Sera tout le jardin et toute la maison.
Jadis j’ai vu mourir des frères de mon âge,
J’ai vu monter en eux l’indicible torpeur.
Ils avaient tous si mal! Ils avaient tous si peur!
Ils se prenaient la tête avec des mains en nage.
Ils ne pouvaient pas croire, ayant si soif, si faim,
Un tel désir de tout avec un cœur si jeune,
A ce désert sans source, à cet immense jeûne,
A ce terme confus qui n’a jamais de fin.
Ils n’attendaient plus rien de la tendresse humaine
Et cherchaient à chasser d’un effort douloureux
L’Ange noir qui se couche à plat ventre sur eux
Et qui les considère avant qu’il les emmène.
Jean Cocteau
HOW THE YOUNG MEN DIED IN HELLAS
A FRAGMENT
[TRANSLATION]
Antigone went wailing to the dust.
She reverenced not the face of Death like these
To whom it came as no enfeebling peace
But a command relentless and august.
These grieved not at the beauty of the morn,
Nor that the sun was on the ripening flower;
Smiling they faced the sacrificial hour,
Blithe nightingales against the fatal thorn.
They grieved not that their feet no more should rove
The Athenian porticoes in twilight leisure,
Where Pallas, drunk with summer’s gold and azure,
Brooded above the fountains like a dove.
They grieved not for the theatre’s high-banked tiers,
Where restlessly the noisy crowd leans over,
With laughter and with jostling, to discover
The blue and green of chaffing charioteers.
Nor for the fluted shafts, the carven stones
Of that sole city, bright above the seas,
Where young men met to talk with Socrates
Or toss the ivory bones.
Their eyes were lit with tumult and with risk,
But when they felt Death touch their hands and pass
They followed, dropping on the garden grass
The parchment and the disk.
It seemed no wrong to them that they must go.
They laid their lives down as the poet lays
On the white page the poem that shall praise
His memory when the hand that wrote is low.
Erect they stood and, festally arrayed,
Serenely waited the transforming hour,
Softly as Hyacinth slid from youth to flower,
Or the shade of Cyparis to a cypress shade.
They wept not for the lost Ionian days,
Nor liberty, nor household love and laughter,
Nor the long leaden slumber that comes after
Life’s little wakefulness.
Fearless they sought the land no sunsets see,
Whence our weak pride shrinks back, and would return,
Knowing a pinch of ashes in an urn
Henceforth our garden and our house shall be.
Young men, my brothers, you whose morning skies
I have seen the deathly lassitude invade,
Oh, how you suffered! How you were afraid!
What death-damp hands you locked about your eyes!
You, so insatiably athirst to spend
The young desires in your hearts abloom,
How could you think the desert was your doom,
The waterless fountain and the endless end?
You yearned not for the face of love, grown dim,
But only fought your anguished bones to wrest
From the Black Angel crouched upon your breast,
Who scanned you ere he led you down with him.
Jean Cocteau
A MESSAGE
This is our gift to the Homeless.
What shall it bear from me
Safe in a land that prospers
Girded by leagues of sea?—
Tear moistened words of pity,
Bountiful sympathy.
Clearly we see the picture,
Horror has fixed our eyes.
Fighting to guard its hearthstones
A nation mangled lies.
Fire has charred its beauty,
Murder has stilled its cries;
And truths we love and cherish
Hang in the trembling scale.
If you win, we win by proxy,
If you fail, we are doomed to fail.
The world is beset by a monster,
Yet we watch to see who shall prevail.
Our souls are racked and quickened,
But prudence counsels no.
So we lavish our gold and pity
And wait to see how it will go,—
This pivotal war of the ages
With its heartrending ebb and flow.
For ever there comes the moment
When destiny bids “choose.”
By the edge of the sword men perish,
By selfishness all they lose.
So Belgium stands transfigured
As the one who did not refuse.
Robert Grant
CRY OF THE HOMELESS
Instigator of the ruin—
Whichsoever thou mayst be
Of the mastering minds of Europe
That contrived our misery—
Hear the wormwood-worded greeting
From each city, shore, and lea
Of thy victims:
“Enemy, all hail to thee!”
Yea: “All hail!” we grimly shout thee
That wast author, fount, and head
Of these wounds, whoever proven
When our times are throughly read.
“May thy dearest ones be blighted
And forsaken,” be it said
By thy victims,
“And thy children beg their bread!”
Nay: too much the malediction.—
Rather let this thing befall
In the unfurling of the future,
On the night when comes thy call:
That compassion dew thy pillow
And absorb thy senses all
For thy victims,
Till death dark thee with his pall.
Thomas Hardy
August, 1915
JACQUES-ÉMILE BLANCHE
PORTRAIT OF THOMAS HARDY
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH OF THE ORIGINAL PAINTING
THE LITTLE CHILDREN
“Suffer little children to come unto me,”
Christ said, and answering with infernal glee,
“Take them!” the arch-fiend scoffed, and from the tottering walls
Of their wrecked homes, and from the cattle’s stalls,
And the dogs’ kennels, and the cold
Of the waste fields, and from the hapless hold
Of their dead mothers’ arms, famished and bare,
And maimed by shot and shell,
The master-spirit of hell
Caught them up, and through the shuddering air
Of the hope-forsaken world
The little ones he hurled,
Mocking that Pity in his pitiless might—
The Anti-Christ of Schrecklickeit.
W. D. Howells
ÉPITAPHE
Ci-gît un tel, mort pour la France et qui, vivant,
Poussait sa voiturette à travers les villages
Pour vendre un peu de fil, de sel ou de fromage,
Sous les portails d’azur aux feuillages mouvants.
Il a gagné son pain comme au Commandement
Que donne aux hommes Dieu dans le beau Livre sage.
Puis, un jour, sur sa tête a crevé le nuage
Que lance l’orageux canon de l’Allemand.
Ce héros, dans l’éclair qui délivra son âme,
Aura vu tout en noir ses enfants et sa femme
Contemplants anxieux son pauvre gagne-pain:
Ce chariot plus beau que n’est celui de l’Ourse
Et qu’il a fait rouler pendant la dure course
Qui sur terre commence un céleste destin.
Francis Jammes
Orthez, 29 Juillet 1915
AN EPITAPH
[TRANSLATION]
Here such an one lies dead for France. His trade
To push a barrow stocked with thread, cheese, salt
From town to town, under the azure vault,
Through endless corridors of rustling shade.
True to the sacred law of toil, he made
His humble living as the Book commands,
Till suddenly there burst upon his lands
The thunder of the German cannonade.
Poor hero! In the flash that smote him dead
He saw his wife and children all in black
Weeping about the cart that earned their bread—
The cart that, by his passionate impulse sped
On immortality’s celestial track,
Shone brighter than the Wain above his head.
Francis Jammes
IN SLEEP
I dreamt (no “dream” awake—a dream indeed)
A wrathful man was talking in the Park:
“Where are the Higher Powers who know our need,
Yet leave us in the dark?
“There are no Higher Powers; there is no heart
In God, no love”—his oratory here,
Taking the paupers’ and the cripples’ part,
Was broken by a tear.
And next it seemed that One who did invent
Compassion, who alone created pity,
Walked, as though called, and hastened as He went
Out from the muttering city;
Threaded the little crowd, trod the brown grass,
Bent o’er the speaker close, saw the tear rise,
And saw Himself, as one looks in a glass,
In those impassioned eyes.
Alice Meynell
NOS MORTS
Astres qui regardez les mondes où nous sommes,
Pure armée au repos dans la hauteur des cieux,
Campement éternel, léger, silencieux,
Que pensez-vous de voir s’anéantir les hommes?
A n’être pas sublime aucun ne condescend,
Comme un cri vers la nue on voit jaillir leur sang
Qui sur nos cœurs contrits lentement se rabaisse.
—Morts divins, portez-nous un plausible secours!
Notre douleur n’est pas la sœur de votre ivresse.
Vous mourez! Concevez que c’est un poids trop lourd
Pour ceux qui dans leur grave et brûlante tristesse
Ont toujours confondu la Vie avec l’Amour.
Comtesse de Noailles
OUR DEAD
[TRANSLATION]
Stars that behold our world upon its way,
Pure legions camped upon the plains of night,
Mute watchful hosts of heaven, what must you say
When men destroy each other in their might?
Upon their deadly race each runner starts,
Nor one but will his brothers all outrun!
Ah, see their blood jet upward to the sun
Like living fountains refluent on our hearts!
O dead divinely for so great a faith,
Help us, whose agony is but begun,
For bitterly we yield you up to death,
We who had dreamed that Life and Love were one.
Comtesse de Noailles
CLAUDE MONET
LANDSCAPE
FROM AN EARLY COLOURED PASTEL
TWO SONGS OF A YEAR
1914-1915
I
CHILDREN’S KISSES
So; it is nightfall then.
The valley flush
That beckoned home the way for herds and men
Is hardly spent:
Down the bright pathway winds, through veils of hush
And wonderment.
Unuttered yet the chime
That tells of folding-time;
Hardly the sun has set;—
The trees are sweetly troubled with bright words
From new-alighted birds.
And yet, ...
Here, round my neck, are come to cling and twine,
The arms, the folding arms, close, close and fain,
All mine!—
I pleaded to, in vain,
I reached for, only to their dimpled scorning,
Down the blue halls of morning;—
Where all things else could lure them on and on,
Now here, now gone,
From bush to bush, from beckoning bough to bough,
With bird-calls of Come Hither!—
Ah, but now ...
Now it is dusk.—And from his heaven of mirth,
A wilding skylark sudden dropt to earth
Along the last low sunbeam yellow-moted,—
Athrob with joy,—
There pushes here, a little golden Boy,
Still gazing with great eyes:
And wonder-wise,
All fragrancy, all valor silver-throated,
My daughterling, my swan,
My Alison.
Closer than homing lambs against the bars
At folding-time, that crowd, all mother-warm,
They crowd, they cling, they wreathe;—
And thick as sparkles of the thronging stars,
Their kisses swarm.
O Rose of Being at whose heart I breathe,
Fold over, hold me fast
In the dim Eden of a blinding kiss.
And lightning heart’s desire, be still at last.
Heart can no more,—
Life can no more
Than this.
II
THE SANS-FOYER
Love, that Love cannot share,—
Now turn to air!
And fade to ashes, O my daily bread,
Save only if you may
Bless you, to be the stay
Of the uncomforted.
Behold, you far-off lights,—
From smoke-veiled heights,
If there be dwelling in our wilderness!
For Love the refugee,
No stronghold can there be,—
No shelter more, while these go shelterless.
Love hath no home, beside
His own two arms spread wide;—
The only home, among all walls that are:
So there may come to cling,
Some yet forlorner thing
Feeling its way, along this blackened star.
Josephine Preston Peabody
RAIN IN BELGIUM
The heavy rain falls down, falls down,
On city streets whence all have fled,
Where tottering ruins skyward frown
Above the staring silent dead.
Here shall ye raise your Kaiser’s throne,
Stained with the blood for freedom shed.
Here where men choked for breath in vain
Who in fair fight had all withstood,
Here on this poison-haunted plain,
Made rich with babes’ and women’s blood,
Here shall ye plant your German grain,
Here shall ye reap your children’s food.
The harvest ripens—Reaper come!
Bring children singing Songs of Hate
Taught by the mother in the home—
Fit comrade she for such a mate.
Soon shall ye reap what ye have sown;
God’s mills grind thoroughly though late.
The heavy rain beats down, beats down;
I hear in it the tramp of Fate!
Lilla Cabot Perry
CHARLES DANA GIBSON
“THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM”
FROM A PEN-AND-INK SKETCH
L’EXILÉ
“O deuil de ne pouvoir emporter sur la mer
Dans l’écume salée et dans le vent amer,
L’épi de son labeur et le fruit de sa treille,
Ni la rose que l’aurore fait plus vermeille
Ni rien de tout de ce qui, selon chaque saison,
Pare divinement le seuil de la maison!
Mais, puisque mon foyer n’est plus qu’un peu de cendre,
Et que, dans mon jardin, je ne dois plus entendre
Sur les arbres chanter les oiseaux du printemps;
Que nul ne reviendra de tous ceux que j’attends,
S’abriter sous le toit où nichaient les colombes,
Adieu donc, doux pays où nous avions nos tombes,
Où nous devions, à l’heure où se ferment les yeux,
Nous endormir auprès du sommeil des aïeux!
Nous partons. Ne nous pleurez pas, tendres fontaines,
Terre que nous quittons pour des terres lointaines,
O toi que le brutal talon du conquérant
A foulée et qu’au loin, de sa lueur de sang,
Empourpre la bataille et rougit l’incendie!
Qu’un barbare vainqueur nous chasse et qu’il châtie
En nous le saint amour que nous avons pour toi,
C’est bien. La force pour un jour, prime le droit,
Mais l’exil qu’on subit pour ta cause, Justice,
Laisse au destin vengeur le temps qu’il s’accomplisse.
Nous reviendrons. Et soit que nous passions la mer
Parmi l’embrun cinglant et dans le vent amer,
Soit que le sort cruel rudement nous disperse,
Troupeau errant, sous la rafale ou sous l’averse,
Ne nous plains pas, cher hôte, en nous tendant la main,
Car n’est-il pas pour toi un étranger divin
Celui qui, le front haut et les yeux pleins de flamme,
A quitté sa maison pour fuir un joug infâme
Et dont le fier genou n’a pas voulu ployer
Et qui, pauvre, exilé, sans pain et sans foyer,
Sent monter, de son cœur à sa face pâlie,
Ce même sang sacré que saigne la Patrie.
Henri de Régnier
de l’Académie Française
THE EXILE
[TRANSLATION]
Bitter our fate, that may not bear away
On the harsh winds and through the alien spray
Sheaves of our fields and fruit from the warm wall,
The rose that reddens at the morning’s call,
Nor aught of all wherewith the turning year
Our doorway garlanded, from green to sere....
But since the ash is cold upon the hearth,
And dumb the birds in garden and in garth,
Since none shall come again, of all our loves,
Back to this roof that crooned with nesting doves,
Now let us bid farewell to all our dead,
And that dear corner of earth where they are laid,
And where in turn it had been good to lay
Our kindred heads on the appointed day.
Weep not, O springs and fountains, that we go,
And thou, dear earth, the earth our footsteps know,
Weep not, thou desecrated, shamed and rent,
Consumed with fire and with blood-shed spent.
Small strength have they that hunt us from thy fold
To loosen love’s indissoluble hold,
And brighter than the flames about thy pyre
Our exiled faith shall spring for thee, and higher.
We shall return. Let Time reverse the glass.
Homeless and scattered from thy face we pass,
Through rain and tempest flying from our doors,
On seas unfriendly swept to stranger shores.
But, O you friends unknown that wait us there,
We ask no pity, though your bread we share.
For he who, flying from the fate of slaves
With brow indignant and with empty hand,
Has left his house, his country and his graves,
Comes like a Pilgrim from a Holy Land.
Receive him thus, if in his blood there be
One drop of Belgium’s immortality.
Henri de Régnier
de l’Académie Française
HORREUR ET BEAUTÉ
Sabreur de mains d’enfants qui demandaient du pain,
Brûleur de basilique et de bibliothèque,
Geste obscène, œil sanglant, front d’anthropopithèque,
L’homme ne s’est jamais plus hideusement peint.
Mais Roncevaux n’a rien de plus beau, sous son Pin,
Rien de plus pur, sous son Laurier, la fable Grecque,
Que ce jeune Monarque et son vieil Archevêque:
C’est Achille et Nestor, c’est Roland et Turpin.
Roi, d’un juste reflux puissions-nous voir la vague!
Et toi, puisque ta main éleva dans sa bague
Le seul reflet de ciel qui bénit cet Enfer,
Que la pourpre sur toi soit plus cardinalice,
Prêtre! et que de la Croix qui n’était pas de Fer
Un Christ plus abondant coule dans ton calice!
Edmond Rostand
HORROR AND BEAUTY
[TRANSLATION]
Gashed hands of children who cry out for bread—
While as the flames from sacred places rise
The Blonde Beast, hideous, with blood-shot eyes
And obscene gesture mutilates the dead—
But neither Roncesvalles where Roland bled
With Turpin, nor Greek deeds of high emprise
Can to a pitch of purer beauty rise
Than the Young King, the Priest, unconqueréd.
Oh King, soon all thy foes may’st thou repel!
And thou, High-Priest, from whose ring, raised to men,
Shone the one gleam of Heaven in that Hell,
May thy empurpled vestments so avail
That from the Cross—not made of Iron then—
A richer Christ glow in thy holy grail.
Edmond Rostand
Translated by Walter V. R. Berry
THE UNDERGRADUATE KILLED IN BATTLE
Sweet as the lawn beneath his sandalled tread
Or the scarce rippled stream beneath his oar,
For its still, channelled current constant more,
His life was, and the few blithe words he said.
One or two poets read he, and reread;
One or two friends in boyish ardour wore
Next to his heart, incurious of the lore
Dodonian woods might murmur o’er his head.
Ah, demons of the whirlwind, have a care
What, trumpeting your triumphs, ye undo!
The earth once won, begins your long despair
That never, never is his bliss for you.
He breathed betimes this clement island air
And in unwitting lordship saw the blue.
George Santayana
Oxford, August, 1915
WALTER GAY
INTERIOR
FROM AN ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR SKETCH
EDITH M. THOMAS
THE CHILDREN AND THE FLAG
The little children in my country kiss the American flag.
MADAME VANDERVELDE
What of those children over the sea
That are beating about the world’s rough ways,
Like the tender blossoms from off a tree
That a sudden gale in Spring betrays?
The children? Oh, let them look for the sign
Of a wave-borne flag, thou land of mine!
On the old gray sea its course it holds,
Life for the famished is in its gift....
And the children are crowding to kiss its folds,
While the tears of their mothers fall free and swift.—
And what of the flag their lips have pressed?
Oh, guard it for ever—That flag is blest.
Edith M. Thomas
THE TROUBLER OF TELARO
1
Warm vines bloom now along thy rampart steeps
Thy shelves of olives, undercliffs of azure,
And like a lizard of the red rock sleeps
The wrinkled Tuscan sea, panting for pleasure.
Nets, too, festooned about thine elfin port,
Telaro, in the Etrurian mountain’s side,
Heavings of golden luggers scarce distort
The image of thy belfry where they ride.
But thee, Telaro, on a night long gone
That grey and holy tower upon the mole
Suddenly summoned, while yet lightnings shone
And hard gale lingered, with a ceaseless toll
That choked, with its disastrous monotone,
All the narrow channels of the hamlet’s soul.
2
For what despair, fire, shipwreck, treachery?
Was it for threat that from the macchia sprang
For Genoa’s feud, the oppressor’s piracy,
Or the Falcon of Sarzana that it rang?
Was the boat-guild’s silver plundered? Blood should pay.
Hardwon the footing of the fishers’ clan
The sea-cloud-watchers.—Loud above the spray
The maddening iron cry, the appeal of man,
Washed through the torchless midnight on and on.
Are not enough the jeopardies of day?
Riot arose—fear’s Self began the fray:
But the tower proved empty. By the lightning’s ray
They found no human ringer in the room....
The bell-rope quivered out in the sea-spume....
3
A creature fierce, soft, witless of itself,
A morbid mouth, circled by writhing arms,
By its own grasp entangled on that shelf,
Had dragged the rope and spread the death-alarms;
Insensitive, light-forgotten, up from slime,
From shelter betwixt rocks, issuing for prey
Disguised, had used man’s language of dismay.
The spawn of perished times had late in time
Emerged, and griefs upon man’s grief imposed
Incalculable.
But the fishers closed
The blind mouth, and cut off the suckers cold.
Two thousand fathoms the disturber rolled
From trough to trough into the gulf Tyrrhene;
And fear sank with it back into its night obscene.
Herbert Trench
THÉO VAN RYSSELBERGHE
PORTRAIT OF ÉMILE VERHAEREN
FROM A PENCIL DRAWING
ÉMILE VERHAEREN
LE PRINTEMPS DE 1915
Tu me disais de ta voix douce,
Tu me disais en insistant:
—Y a-t-il encore un Printemps
Et les feuilles repoussent-elles?
La guerre accapare le ciel
Les eaux, les monts, les bois, la terre:
Où sont les fleurs couleur de miel
Pour les abeilles volontaires?
Où sont les pousses des roncerois
Et les boutons des anémones?
Où sont les flûtes dans les bois
Des oiseaux sombres aux becs jaunes?
—Hélas! plus n’est de floraison
Que celle des feux dans l’espace:
Bouquet de rage et de menace
S’éparpillant sur l’horizon.
Plus n’est, hélas! de splendeur rouge
Que celle, hélas! des boulets fous
Éclaboussant de larges coups
Clochers, hameaux, fermes et bouges.
C’est le printemps de ce temps-ci:
Le vent répand de plaine en plaine,
Là-bas, ces feuillaisons de haine;
C’est la terreur de ce temps-ci.
Émile Verhaeren
Saint-Cloud, le 31 Juillet 1915
THE NEW SPRING
[TRANSLATION]
Sadly your dear voice said:
“Is the old spring-time dead,
And shall we never see
New leaves upon the tree?
“Shall the black wings of war
Blot out sun, moon and star,
And never a bud unfold
To the bee its secret gold?
“Where are the wind-flowers streaked,
And the wayward bramble shoots,
And the black-birds yellow-beaked
With a note like woodland flutes?”
No flower shall bloom this year
But the wild flame of fear
Wreathing the evil night
With burst of deadly light.
No splendour of petals red
But that which the cannon shed,
Raining their death-bloom down
On farm and tower and town.
This is the scarlet doom
By the wild sea-winds hurled
Over a land of gloom,
Over a grave-strewn world.
Émile Verhaeren