Hush! It is to calm
His timid, childish thought.
The poor Bambino believes
These angels will keep him safe.
It is to keep serene
The thoughts ’neath his innocent curls,
That I go on carving angels.
American, bitterly:
Yes—only I have been
Down in Servia,
On Armenian plains.
In blasted fields of France,
In England’s wooded ways.
Seeing many little forms,
The angels forgot to save.
The Woodcarver stops carving; he drops his head into his hand; the American bites his lips, and curses himself. With sombre eyes he stares at the floor. Suddenly he notices a bit of wood lying in the shavings at his feet. It is a half-carved cross. The war correspondent, picking it up holds it loosely in his hand, ruminating. At last he puts it very gently on the table near the Woodcarver’s listless arm, and turns to the door, staring out to the grey vistas of the empty calles. As he smokes in silence the far-off guns boom steadily, and the whirl of grey pigeons comes once more past the little shop into the piazza.
The child, looking up at them, chants dreamily:
Laws of humanity hold them
Safe for the sunlit feeding,
Protected always, and heeding
Laws of the place that enrolled them;
Spiral their flights, midst the steeples
Pinnacles and Campanile;
Silver fanfare of wings,
Soothing the thoughts of the peoples.
They spell Humanity, Love,
Tenderness, Peace—But the air
Is rent with wild thunder—Despair....
Where is the end of it? Where?
The Woodcarver, lifting his face from his hands, looks anxiously at the child; he passes his rough hand swiftly over his eyes and smiles. Rising he pats the little shoulder of the child sitting in the doorway, saying laughingly:
Why their’s is a small Parliament.
Peace to their soaring counsels!
Weaving strange laws,
Making a Cause
For the new born nations.
Note how they fly,
Tieing the sky,
Looping the heavens,
Wreathing the square,
Binding blue air
Into golden-garlanded sheaves!
There are the glad manoeuvres,
The shiftings and the shaping,
The mist and the cloud-escaping.
Higher they fly and higher,
Looping their winged desire,
While we stand down here gaping.
The Woodcarver stands by the child, tapping his shoulder gently, and with the other hand pointing out the difference in pigeon flight.
Woodcarver explaining whimsically: