Ballads of a Bohemian
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Robert W. Service >> Ballads of a Bohemian
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To how few is granted the privilege of doing the work which lies
closest to the heart, the work for which one is best fitted.
The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.
MacBean is not happy. He is overridden by his appetites,
and to satisfy them he writes stuff that in his heart he despises.
Saxon Dane is not happy. His dream exceeds his grasp.
His twisted, tortured phrases mock the vague grandiosity of his visions.
I am happy. My talent is proportioned to my ambition.
The things I like to write are the things I like to read.
I prefer the lesser poets to the greater, the cackle of the barnyard fowl
to the scream of the eagle. I lack the divinity of discontent.
True Contentment comes from within. It dominates circumstance.
It is resignation wedded to philosophy, a Christian quality seldom attained
except by the old.
There is such an one I sometimes see being wheeled about in the Luxembourg.
His face is beautiful in its thankfulness.
The Contented Man
"How good God is to me," he said;
"For have I not a mansion tall,
With trees and lawns of velvet tread,
And happy helpers at my call?
With beauty is my life abrim,
With tranquil hours and dreams apart;
You wonder that I yield to Him
That best of prayers, a grateful heart?"
"How good God is to me," he said;
"For look! though gone is all my wealth,
How sweet it is to earn one's bread
With brawny arms and brimming health.
Oh, now I know the joy of strife!
To sleep so sound, to wake so fit.
Ah yes, how glorious is life!
I thank Him for each day of it."
"How good God is to me," he said;
"Though health and wealth are gone, it's true;
Things might be worse, I might be dead,
And here I'm living, laughing too.
Serene beneath the evening sky
I wait, and every man's my friend;
God's most contented man am I . . .
He keeps me smiling to the End."
To-day the basin of the Luxembourg is bright with little boats.
Hundreds of happy children romp around it. Little ones everywhere;
yet there is no other city with so many childless homes.
The Spirit of the Unborn Babe
The Spirit of the Unborn Babe peered through the window-pane,
Peered through the window-pane that glowed like beacon in the night;
For, oh, the sky was desolate and wild with wind and rain;
And how the little room was crammed with coziness and light!
Except the flirting of the fire there was no sound at all;
The Woman sat beside the hearth, her knitting on her knee;
The shadow of her husband's head was dancing on the wall;
She looked with staring eyes at it, she looked yet did not see.
She only saw a childish face that topped the table rim,
A little wistful ghost that smiled and vanished quick away;
And then because her tender eyes were flooding to the brim,
She lowered her head. . . . "Don't sorrow, dear," she heard him softly say;
"It's over now. We'll try to be as happy as before
(Ah! they who little children have, grant hostages to pain).
We gave Life chance to wound us once, but never, never more. . . ."
The Spirit of the Unborn Babe fled through the night again.
The Spirit of the Unborn Babe went wildered in the dark;
Like termagants the winds tore down and whirled it with the snow.
And then amid the writhing storm it saw a tiny spark,
A window broad, a spacious room all goldenly aglow,
A woman slim and Paris-gowned and exquisitely fair,
Who smiled with rapture as she watched her jewels catch the blaze;
A man in faultless evening dress, young, handsome, debonnaire,
Who smoked his cigarette and looked with frank admiring gaze.
"Oh, we are happy, sweet," said he; "youth, health, and wealth are ours.
What if a thousand toil and sweat that we may live at ease!
What if the hands are worn and torn that strew our path with flowers!
Ah, well! we did not make the world; let us not think of these.
Let's seek the beauty-spots of earth, Dear Heart, just you and I;
Let other women bring forth life with sorrow and with pain.
Above our door we'll hang the sign: `~No children need apply~. . . .'"
The Spirit of the Unborn Babe sped through the night again.
The Spirit of the Unborn Babe went whirling on and on;
It soared above a city vast, it swept down to a slum;
It saw within a grimy house a light that dimly shone;
It peered in through a window-pane and lo! a voice said: "Come!"
And so a little girl was born amid the dirt and din,
And lived in spite of everything, for life is ordered so;
A child whose eyes first opened wide to swinishness and sin,
A child whose love and innocence met only curse and blow.
And so in due and proper course she took the path of shame,
And gladly died in hospital, quite old at twenty years;
And when God comes to weigh it all, ah! whose shall be the blame
For all her maimed and poisoned life, her torture and her tears?
For oh, it is not what we do, but what we have not done!
And on that day of reckoning, when all is plain and clear,
What if we stand before the Throne, blood-guilty every one? . . .
Maybe the blackest sins of all are Selfishness and Fear.
IV
The Cafe de la Paix,
August 1, 1914.
Paris and I are out of tune. As I sit at this famous corner the faint breeze
is stale and weary; stale and weary too the faces that swirl around me;
while overhead the electric sign of Somebody's Chocolate appears and vanishes
with irritating insistency. The very trees seem artificial,
gleaming under the arc-lights with a raw virility that rasps my nerves.
"Poor little trees," I mutter, "growing in all this grime and glare,
your only dryads the loitering ladies with the complexions
of such brilliant certainty, your only Pipes of Pan
orchestral echoes from the clamorous cafes. Exiles of the forest!
what know you of full-blossomed winds, of red-embered sunsets,
of the gentle admonition of spring rain! Life, that would fain be a melody,
seems here almost a malady. I crave for the balm of Nature,
the anodyne of solitude, the breath of Mother Earth. Tell me,
O wistful trees, what shall I do?"
Then that stale and weary wind rustles the leaves of the nearest sycamore,
and I am sure it whispers: "Brittany."
So to-morrow I am off, off to the Land of Little Fields.
Finistere
Hurrah! I'm off to Finistere, to Finistere, to Finistere;
My satchel's swinging on my back, my staff is in my hand;
I've twenty ~louis~ in my purse, I know the sun and sea are there,
And so I'm starting out to-day to tramp the golden land.
I'll go alone and glorying, with on my lips a song of joy;
I'll leave behind the city with its canker and its care;
I'll swing along so sturdily -- oh, won't I be the happy boy!
A-singing on the rocky roads, the roads of Finistere.
Oh, have you been to Finistere, and do you know a whin-gray town
That echoes to the clatter of a thousand wooden shoes?
And have you seen the fisher-girls go gallivantin' up and down,
And watched the tawny boats go out, and heard the roaring crews?
Oh, would you sit with pipe and bowl, and dream upon some sunny quay,
Or would you walk the windy heath and drink the cooler air;
Oh, would you seek a cradled cove and tussle with the topaz sea! --
Pack up your kit to-morrow, lad, and haste to Finistere.
Oh, I will go to Finistere, there's nothing that can hold me back.
I'll laugh with Yves and Le/on, and I'll chaff with Rose and Jeanne;
I'll seek the little, quaint ~buvette~ that's kept by Mother Merdrinac,
Who wears a cap of many frills, and swears just like a man.
I'll yarn with hearty, hairy chaps who dance and leap and crack their heels;
Who swallow cupfuls of cognac and never turn a hair;
I'll watch the nut-brown boats come in with mullet, plaice and conger eels,
The jeweled harvest of the sea they reap in Finistere.
Yes, I'll come back from Finistere with memories of shining days,
Of scaly nets and salty men in overalls of brown;
Of ancient women knitting as they watch the tethered cattle graze
By little nestling beaches where the gorse goes blazing down;
Of headlands silvering the sea, of Calvarys against the sky,
Of scorn of angry sunsets, and of Carnac grim and bare;
Oh, won't I have the leaping veins, and tawny cheek and sparkling eye,
When I come back to Montparnasse and dream of Finistere.
~Two days later~.
Behold me with staff and scrip, footing it merrily in the Land of Pardons.
I have no goal. When I am weary I stop at some ~auberge~;
when I am rested I go on again. Neither do I put any constraint
on my spirit. No subduing of the mind to the task of the moment.
I dream to heart's content.
My dreams stretch into the future. I see myself a singer of simple songs,
a laureate of the under-dog. I will write books, a score of them.
I will voyage far and wide. I will . . .
But there! Dreams are dangerous. They waste the time one should spend
in making them come true. Yet when we do make them come true,
we find the vision sweeter than the reality. How much of our happiness
do we owe to dreams? I have in mind one old chap who used to herd the sheep
on my uncle's farm.
Old David Smail
He dreamed away his hours in school;
He sat with such an absent air,
The master reckoned him a fool,
And gave him up in dull despair.
When other lads were making hay
You'd find him loafing by the stream;
He'd take a book and slip away,
And just pretend to fish . . . and dream.
His brothers passed him in the race;
They climbed the hill and clutched the prize.
He did not seem to heed, his face
Was tranquil as the evening skies.
He lived apart, he spoke with few;
Abstractedly through life he went;
Oh, what he dreamed of no one knew,
And yet he seemed to be content.
I see him now, so old and gray,
His eyes with inward vision dim;
And though he faltered on the way,
Somehow I almost envied him.
At last beside his bed I stood:
"And is Life done so soon?" he sighed;
"It's been so rich, so full, so good,
I've loved it all . . ." -- and so he died.
~Another day~.
Framed in hedgerows of emerald, the wheat glows with a caloric fervor,
as if gorged with summer heat. In the vivid green of pastures
old women are herding cows. Calm and patient are their faces
as with gentle industry they bend over their knitting.
One feels that they are necessary to the landscape.
To gaze at me the field-workers suspend the magnificent lethargy
of their labors. The men with the reaping hooks improve the occasion
by another pull at the cider bottle under the stook;
the women raise apathetic brown faces from the sheaf they are tying;
every one is a study in deliberation, though the crop is russet ripe
and crying to be cut.
Then on I go again amid high banks overgrown with fern and honeysuckle.
Sometimes I come on an old mill that seems to have been constructed
by Constable, so charmingly does Nature imitate Art. By the deserted house,
half drowned in greenery, the velvety wheel, dipping in the crystal water,
seems to protest against this prolongation of its toil.
Then again I come on its brother, the Mill of the Wind, whirling its arms
so cheerily, as it turns its great white stones for its master,
the floury miller by the door.
These things delight me. I am in a land where Time has lagged,
where simple people timorously hug the Past. How far away now
seems the welter and swelter of the city, the hectic sophistication
of the streets. The sense of wonder is strong in me again,
the joy of looking at familiar things as if one were seeing them
for the first time.
The Wonderer
I wish that I could understand
The moving marvel of my Hand;
I watch my fingers turn and twist,
The supple bending of my wrist,
The dainty touch of finger-tip,
The steel intensity of grip;
A tool of exquisite design,
With pride I think: "It's mine! It's mine!"
Then there's the wonder of my Eyes,
Where hills and houses, seas and skies,
In waves of light converge and pass,
And print themselves as on a glass.
Line, form and color live in me;
I am the Beauty that I see;
Ah! I could write a book of size
About the wonder of my Eyes.
What of the wonder of my Heart,
That plays so faithfully its part?
I hear it running sound and sweet;
It does not seem to miss a beat;
Between the cradle and the grave
It never falters, stanch and brave.
Alas! I wish I had the art
To tell the wonder of my Heart.
Then oh! but how can I explain
The wondrous wonder of my Brain?
That marvelous machine that brings
All consciousness of wonderings;
That lets me from myself leap out
And watch my body walk about;
It's hopeless -- all my words are vain
To tell the wonder of my Brain.
But do not think, O patient friend,
Who reads these stanzas to the end,
That I myself would glorify. . . .
You're just as wonderful as I,
And all Creation in our view
Is quite as marvelous as you.
Come, let us on the sea-shore stand
And wonder at a grain of sand;
And then into the meadow pass
And marvel at a blade of grass;
Or cast our vision high and far
And thrill with wonder at a star;
A host of stars -- night's holy tent
Huge-glittering with wonderment.
If wonder is in great and small,
Then what of Him who made it all?
In eyes and brain and heart and limb
Let's see the wondrous work of Him.
In house and hill and sward and sea,
In bird and beast and flower and tree,
In everything from sun to sod,
The wonder and the awe of God.
August 9, 1914.
For some time the way has been growing wilder. Thickset hedges
have yielded to dykes of stone, and there is every sign that I am approaching
the rugged region of the coast. At each point of vantage I can see a Cross,
often a relic of the early Christians, stumpy and corroded.
Then I come on a slab of gray stone upstanding about fifteen feet.
Like a sentinel on that solitary plain it overwhelms me
with a sense of mystery.
But as I go on through this desolate land these stones become
more and more familiar. Like soldiers they stand in rank,
extending over the moor. The sky is cowled with cloud,
save where a sullen sunset shoots blood-red rays across the plain.
Bathed in that sinister light stands my army of stone,
and a wind swooping down seems to wail amid its ranks. As in a glass darkly
I can see the skin-clad men, the women with their tangled hair,
the beast-like feast, the cowering terror of the night. Then the sunset
is cut off suddenly, and a clammy mist shrouds that silent army.
So it is almost with a shudder I take my last look at the Stones of Carnac.
But now my pilgrimage is drawing to an end. A painter friend
who lives by the sea has asked me to stay with him awhile.
Well, I have walked a hundred miles, singing on the way.
I have dreamed and dawdled, planned, exulted. I have drunk buckets of cider,
and eaten many an omelette that seemed like a golden glorification of its egg.
It has all been very sweet, but it will also be sweet to loaf awhile.
Oh, It Is Good
Oh, it is good to drink and sup,
And then beside the kindly fire
To smoke and heap the faggots up,
And rest and dream to heart's desire.
Oh, it is good to ride and run,
To roam the greenwood wild and free;
To hunt, to idle in the sun,
To leap into the laughing sea.
Oh, it is good with hand and brain
To gladly till the chosen soil,
And after honest sweat and strain
To see the harvest of one's toil.
Oh, it is good afar to roam,
And seek adventure in strange lands;
Yet oh, so good the coming home,
The velvet love of little hands.
So much is good. . . . We thank Thee, God,
For all the tokens Thou hast given,
That here on earth our feet have trod
Thy little shining trails of Heaven.
V
August 10, 1914.
I am living in a little house so near the sea that at high tide
I can see on my bedroom wall the reflected ripple of the water.
At night I waken to the melodious welter of waves; or maybe
there is a great stillness, and then I know that the sand and sea-grass
are lying naked to the moon. But soon the tide returns,
and once more I hear the roistering of the waves.
Calvert, my friend, is a lover as well as a painter of nature. He rises
with the dawn to see the morning mist kindle to coral and the sun's edge
clear the hill-crest. As he munches his coarse bread and sips his white wine,
what dreams are his beneath the magic changes of the sky!
He will paint the same scene under a dozen conditions of light.
He has looked so long for Beauty that he has come to see it everywhere.
I love this friendly home of his. A peace steals over my spirit,
and I feel as if I could stay here always. Some day I hope that I too
may have such an one, and that I may write like this:
I Have Some Friends
I have some friends, some worthy friends,
And worthy friends are rare:
These carpet slippers on my feet,
That padded leather chair;
This old and shabby dressing-gown,
So well the worse of wear.
I have some friends, some honest friends,
And honest friends are few;
My pipe of briar, my open fire,
A book that's not too new;
My bed so warm, the nights of storm
I love to listen to.
I have some friends, some good, good friends,
Who faithful are to me:
My wrestling partner when I rise,
The big and burly sea;
My little boat that's riding there
So saucy and so free.
I have some friends, some golden friends,
Whose worth will not decline:
A tawny Irish terrier, a purple shading pine,
A little red-roofed cottage that
So proudly I call mine.
All other friends may come and go,
All other friendships fail;
But these, the friends I've worked to win,
Oh, they will never stale;
And comfort me till Time shall write
The finish to my tale.
Calvert tries to paint more than the thing he sees; he tries
to paint behind it, to express its spirit. He believes that Beauty
is God made manifest, and that when we discover Him in Nature
we discover Him in ourselves.
But Calvert did not always see thus. At one time he was a Pagan, content to
paint the outward aspect of things. It was after his little child died
he gained in vision. Maybe the thought that the dead are lost to us
was too unbearable. He had to believe in a coming together again.
The Quest
I sought Him on the purple seas,
I sought Him on the peaks aflame;
Amid the gloom of giant trees
And canyons lone I called His name;
The wasted ways of earth I trod:
In vain! In vain! I found not God.
I sought Him in the hives of men,
The cities grand, the hamlets gray,
The temples old beyond my ken,
The tabernacles of to-day;
All life that is, from cloud to clod
I sought. . . . Alas! I found not God.
Then after roamings far and wide,
In streets and seas and deserts wild,
I came to stand at last beside
The death-bed of my little child.
Lo! as I bent beneath the rod
I raised my eyes . . . and there was God.
A golden mile of sand swings hammock-like between two tusks of rock.
The sea is sleeping sapphire that wakes to cream and crash upon the beach.
There is a majesty in the detachment of its lazy waves,
and it is good in the night to hear its friendly roar. Good, too,
to leap forth with the first sunshine and fall into its arms,
to let it pummel the body to living ecstasy and send one to breakfast
glad-eyed and glowing.
Behind the house the greensward slopes to a wheat-field
that is like a wall of gold. Here I lie and laze away the time,
or dip into a favorite book, Stevenson's ~Letters~ or Belloc's ~Path to Rome~.
Bees drone in the wild thyme; a cuckoo keeps calling,
a lark spills jeweled melody. Then there is a seeming silence,
but it is the silence of a deeper sound.
After all, Silence is only man's confession of his deafness.
Like Death, like Eternity, it is a word that means nothing. So lying there
I hear the breathing of the trees, the crepitation of the growing grass,
the seething of the sap and the movements of innumerable insects.
Strange how I think with distaste of the spurious glitter of Paris,
of my garret, even of my poor little book.
I watch the wife of my friend gathering poppies in the wheat.
There is a sadness in her face, for it is only a year ago
they lost their little one. Often I see her steal away
to the village graveyard, sitting silent for long and long.
The Comforter
As I sat by my baby's bed
That's open to the sky,
There fluttered round and round my head
A radiant butterfly.
And as I wept -- of hearts that ache
The saddest in the land --
It left a lily for my sake,
And lighted on my hand.
I watched it, oh, so quietly,
And though it rose and flew,
As if it fain would comfort me
It came and came anew.
Now, where my darling lies at rest,
I do not dare to sigh,
For look! there gleams upon my breast
A snow-white butterfly.
My friends will have other children, and if some day they should read
this piece of verse, perhaps they will think of the city lad
who used to sit under the old fig-tree in the garden and watch the lizards
sun themselves on the time-worn wall.
The Other One
"Gather around me, children dear;
The wind is high and the night is cold;
Closer, little ones, snuggle near;
Let's seek a story of ages old;
A magic tale of a bygone day,
Of lovely ladies and dragons dread;
Come, for you're all so tired of play,
We'll read till it's time to go to bed."
So they all are glad, and they nestle in,
And squat on the rough old nursery rug,
And they nudge and hush as I begin,
And the fire leaps up and all's so snug;
And there I sit in the big arm-chair,
And how they are eager and sweet and wise,
And they cup their chins in their hands and stare
At the heart of the flame with thoughtful eyes.
And then, as I read by the ruddy glow
And the little ones sit entranced and still . . .
~He~'s drawing near, ah! I know, I know
He's listening too, as he always will.
He's there -- he's standing beside my knee;
I see him so well, my wee, wee son. . . .
Oh, children dear, don't look at me --
I'm reading now for -- the Other One.
For the firelight glints in his golden hair,
And his wondering eyes are fixed on my face,
And he rests on the arm of my easy-chair,
And the book's a blur and I lose my place:
And I touch my lips to his shining head,
And my voice breaks down and -- the story's done. . . .
Oh, children, kiss me and go to bed:
Leave me to think of the Other One.
Of the One who will never grow up at all,
Who will always be just a child at play,
Tender and trusting and sweet and small,
Who will never leave me and go away;
Who will never hurt me and give me pain;
Who will comfort me when I'm all alone;
A heart of love that's without a stain,
Always and always my own, my own.
Yet a thought shines out from the dark of pain,
And it gives me hope to be reconciled:
~That each of us must be born again,
And live and die as a little child;
So that with souls all shining white,
White as snow and without one sin,
We may come to the Gates of Eternal Light,
Where only children may enter in.~
So, gentle mothers, don't ever grieve
Because you have lost, but kiss the rod;
From the depths of your woe be glad, believe
You've given an angel unto God.
Rejoice! You've a child whose youth endures,
Who comes to you when the day is done,
Wistful for love, oh, yours, just yours,
Dearest of all, the Other One.
Catastrophe
Brittany,
August 14, 1914.
And now I fear I must write in another strain. Up to this time
I have been too happy. I have existed in a magic Bohemia,
largely of my own making. Hope, faith, enthusiasm have been mine.
Each day has had its struggle, its failure, its triumph.
However, that is all ended. During the past week we have lived breathlessly.
For in spite of the exultant sunshine our spirits have been under a cloud,
a deepening shadow of horror and calamity. . . . WAR.
Even as I write, in our little village steeple the bells are ringing madly,
and in every little village steeple all over the land. As he hears it
the harvester checks his scythe on the swing; the clerk throws down his pen;
the shopkeeper puts up his shutters. Only in the cafes
there is a clamor of voices and a drowning of care.
For here every man must fight, every home give tribute.
There is no question, no appeal. By heredity and discipline
all minds are shaped to this great hour. So to-morrow each man
will seek his barracks and become a soldier as completely
as if he had never been anything else. With the same docility
as he dons his baggy red trousers will he let some muddle-headed General
hurl him to destruction for some dubious gain. To-day a father, a home-maker;
to-morrow fodder for cannon. So they all go without hesitation,
without bitterness; and the great military machine that knows not humanity
swings them to their fate. I marvel at the sense of duty, the resignation,
the sacrifice. It is magnificent, it is FRANCE.
And the Women. Those who wait and weep. Ah! to-day I have not seen one
who did not weep. Yes, one. She was very old, and she stood
by her garden gate with her hand on the uplifted latch. As I passed
she looked at me with eyes that did not see. She had no doubt
sons and grandsons who must fight, and she had good reason, perhaps,
to remember the war of ~soixante-dix~. When I passed an hour later
she was still there, her hand on the uplifted latch.
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