Songs and Satires

by Edgar Lee Masters

I have known the silence of the stars and of the sea,
And the silence of the city when it pauses,
And the silence of a man and a maid,
And the silence for which music alone finds the word,
And the silence of the woods before the winds of spring begin,
And the silence of the sick
When their eyes roam about the room.
And I ask: For the depths
Of what use is language?
A beast of the field moans a few times
When death takes its young:
And we are voiceless in the presence of realities—
We cannot speak.
A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
"How did you lose your leg?"
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away,
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.
It comes back jocosely
And he says, "A bear bit it off."
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.
There is the silence of a great hatred,
And the silence of a great love,
And the silence of a deep peace of mind,
And the silence of an embittered friendship.
There is the silence of a spiritual crisis,
Through which your soul, exquisitely tortured,
Comes with visions not to be uttered
Into a realm of higher life.
And the silence of the gods who understand each other without speech.
There is the silence of defeat.
There is the silence of those unjustly punished;
And the silence of the dying whose hand
Suddenly grips yours.
There is the silence between father and son,
When the father cannot explain his life,
Even though he be misunderstood for it.
There is the silence that comes between husband and wife.
There is the silence of those who have failed;
And the vast silence that covers
Broken nations and vanquished leaders.
There is the silence of Lincoln,
Thinking of the poverty of his youth.
And the silence of Napoleon
After Waterloo.
And the silence of Jeanne d'Arc
Saying amid the flames, "Blessed Jesus"—
Revealing in two words all sorrow, all hope.
And there is the silence of age,
Too full of wisdom for the tongue to utter it
In words intelligible to those who have not lived
The great range of life.
And there is the silence of the dead.
If we who are in life cannot speak
Of profound experiences,
Why do you marvel that the dead
Do not tell you of death?
Their silence shall be interpreted
As we approach them.

---

ST. FRANCIS AND LADY CLARE

Antonio loved the Lady Clare.
He caught her to him on the stair
And pressed her breasts and kissed her hair,
And drew her lips in his, and drew
Her soul out like a torch's flare.
Her breath came quick, her blood swirled round;
Her senses in a vortex swound.
She tore him loose and turned around,
And reached her chamber in a bound
Her cheeks turned to a poppy's hue.
She closed the door and turned the lock,
Her breasts and flesh were turned to rock.
She reeled as drunken from the shock.
Before her eyes the devils skipped,
She thought she heard the devils mock.
For had her soul not been as pure
As sifted snow, could she endure
Antonio's passion and be sure
Against his passion's strength and lure?
Lean fears along her wonder slipped.
Outside she heard a drunkard call,
She heard a beggar against the wall
Shaking his cup, a harlot's squall
Struck through the riot like a sword,
And gashed the midnight's festival.
She watched the city through the pane,
The old Silenus half insane,
The idiot crowd that drags its chain—
And then she heard the bells again,
And heard the voices with the word:
Ecco il santo! Up the street
There was the sound of running feet
From closing door and window seat,
And all the crowd turned on its way
The Saint of Poverty to greet.
He passed. And then a circling thrill,
As water troubled which was still,
Went through her body like a chill,
Who of Antonio thought until
She heard the Saint begin to pray.
And then she turned into the room
Her soul was cloven through with doom,
Treading the softness and the gloom
Of Asia's silk and Persia's wool,
And China's magical perfume.
She sickened from the vases hued
In corals, yellows, greens, the lewd
Twined dragon shapes and figures nude,
And tapestries that showed a brood
Of leopards by a pool!
Candles of wax she lit before
A pier glass standing from the floor;
Up to the ceiling, off she tore
With eager hands her jewels, then
The silken vesture which she wore.
Her little breasts so round to see
Were budded like the peony.
Her arms were white as ivory,
And all her sunny hair lay free
As marigold or celandine.
Her blue eyes sparkled like a vase
Of crackled turquoise, in her face
Was memory of the mad embrace
Antonio gave her on the stair,
And on her cheeks a salt tear's trace.
Like pigeon blood her lips were red.
She clasped her bands above her head.
Under her arms the waxlight shed
Delicate halos where was spread
The downy growth of hair.
Such sudden sin the virgin knew
She quenched the tapers as she blew
Puff! puff! upon them, then she threw
Herself in tears upon her knees,
And round her couch the curtain drew.
She called upon St. Francis' name,
Feeling Antonio's passion maim
Her body with his passion's flame
To save her, save her from the shame
Of fancies such as these!
"Go by mad life and old pursuits,
The wine cup and the golden fruits,
The gilded mirrors, rosewood flutes,
I would praise God forevermore
With harps of gold and silver lutes."
She stripped the velvet from her couch
Her broken spirit to avouch.
She saw the devils slink and slouch,
And passion like a leopard crouch
Half mirrored on the polished floor.
Next day she found the saint and said:
I would be God's bride, I would wed
Poverty and I would eat the bread
That you for anchorites prepare,
For my soul's sake I am in dread.
Go then, said Francis, nothing loth,
Put off this gown of green snake cloth,
Put on one somber as a moth,
Then come to me and make your troth
And I will clip your golden hair.

She went and came. But still there lay,
A gem she did not put away,
A locket twixt her breasts, all gay
In shimmering pearls and tints of blue,
And inlay work of fruit and spray.
St. Francis felt it as he slipped
His hand across her breast and whipped
Her golden tresses ere he clipped—
He closed his eyes then as he gripped
The shears, plunged the shears through.
The waterfall of living gold.
The locks fell to the floor and rolled,
And curled like serpents which unfold.
And there sat Lady Clare despoiled.
Of worldly glory manifold.
She thrilled to feel him take and hide
The locket from her breast, a tide
Of passion caught them side by side.
He was the bridegroom, she the bride—
Their flesh but not their spirits foiled.
Thus was the Lady Clare debased
To sack cloth and around her waist
A rope the jeweled belt replaced.
Her feet made free of silken hose
Naked in wooden sandals cased
Went bruised to Bastia's chapel, then
They housed her in St. Damian
And here she prayed for poor women
And here St. Francis sought her when
His faith sank under earthly woes.
Antonio cursed St. Clare in rhyme
And took to wine and got the lime
Of hatred on his soul, in time
Grew healed though left a little lame,
And laughed about it in his prime;
When he could see with crystal eyes
That love is a winged thing which flies;
Some break the wings, some let them rise
From earth like God's dove to the skies
Diffused in heavenly flame.

---

THE COCKED HAT

Would that someone would knock Mr. Bryan into a cocked hat.—Woodrow Wilson.

It ain't really a hat at all, Ed:
You know that, don't you?
When you bowl over six out of the nine pins,
And the three that are standing
Are the triangular three in front,
You've knocked the nine into a cocked hat.
If it was really a hat, he would be knocked in, too.
Which he hardly is. For a man with money,
And a man who can draw a crowd to listen
To what he says, ain't all-in yet....
Oh yes, defeated
And killed off a dozen times, but still
He's one of the three nine pins that's standing ...
Eh? Why, the other is Teddy, the other
Wilson, we'll say. We'll see, perhaps.
But six are down to make the cocked hat—
That's me and thousands of others like me,
And the first-rate men who were cuffed about
After the Civil War,
And most of the more than six million men
Who followed this fellow into the ditch,
While he walked down the ditch and stepped to the level—
Following an ideal!