Helen Gray Cone

“ Their colors in the wind flowing, in the sun brightening:
Deep blue of the night sky, or the splendor of flame,
Or green of spring, or the daring imperious scarlet,
The color of men’s blood:
Their curious blazonry I love, heraldic, historic,
Leopard or eagle, stripe or star or raying sun,
Or the Cross of St. George and the Cross of St. Andrew,
Or whatsoever sign men have loved and followed.
For surely a flag has a soul.
It is a thing sacred as sunrise,
It is sacred as the stars. [Pg 98]
The spirit of Man lifts it up into the sky
That holds all stars, all flags. ”

“ But sometimes, when the moon is bright,
So bright it almost drowns the stars,
She thinks how some have lost delight
Behind the prison bars.
It makes her sad a little space,
And casts a shadow on her look,
As branches in a woody place
Do flicker on a brook.
Last night she had a dream of men,
Dark faces strange with keen desire;
She heard the blaring trumpet then,
She saw the shields strike fire.
The pomp of plumes, the crack of spears,
Beyond her happy circle lie:
Thank Heaven! she has but eighteen years,
And loves the daisies and the sky. ”

“ Thundering out of the smoke with the final august proclamation:
“Nay! but the larger Hope, and the limitless future of Manhood!”
(Nathless a nation elect, a people led forth out of bondage,
Led of the cloud and led of the fire, and upheld in the battle,
Borne upon wings of eagles, and saved in the midst of the waters,
Made to them gods of gold, even there, in the desert of Sinai.)
Guns of the Gettysburg heights, we hear you as out of the distance:
Cease not to roll, vast Echoes! Reverberate solemn, immortal! ”

“ Settled o'er me a calm like a cloud, spake a voice still and small:
"Take thou Leah to bride, take thou Failure to bed and to board!
Thou shalt rear up new strengths at her knees; she is given
of the Lord!
"If with weight of his right hand, with power, he denieth to deal,
And the smoke clouds, and thunders of guns, and the lightnings
of steel,
Shall the cool silent dews of his grace, in a season of peace,
Not descend on the land, as of old, for a sign, on the fleece? ”

“ Life, that is strangely one of all these three,
Being bitter as is the sharp salt spray of sea,
And thereto colder than the blown white rose
And soft brief blossom of unmothered snows, [120]
And fiercer than the forceful feathered fire,
Fed as a flame with hope of heart and high desire:
All these I sing, and sound the same sweet string.
And as fresh-gathered leaves of bay I bring
Green praises to all dear dead lute-players,
Whom Pluto’s passionate queen holds fast as hers,
Yea all sad souls that have smiled and sinned and sung,
With whose gold-colored hairs and hoar this harp is strung. ”

“ A road runs bright through the night of Time, since ever the world began,
The wide Way of the White Souls, the Main Street of Man, [Pg 46]
The sky-road of the star-souls, beyond all wars and scars;
And there the singing soul of him goes on with the marching stars.
So, as I stand in the summer night, when the hosts of heaven seem nigh,
And look at the powdery swirl of stars, where it sweeps across the sky,
The wide way of the white stars, where it runs up and down,
My heart shall be glad for the friend who said It was Main Street, Heaventown.
[Pg 47]
RESPITE
O Beauty, heal my heart! ”

“ Over the hollowing plain, and the trampled green of the cornfields.
Stood the two armies at gaze; until, from the stronghold of Howard,
Hill of the Graves, and the ridge, and the shoulder of Round-Top the Lesser,
Burst the leashed lightnings anew, and the roars of the thunder ironic!
Forth from their hot black dens in the gorge of the cavernous cannon,—
Guns new-thrust into place,—freed for the service appointed,
Tigerish, Death and Fire leaped on the open arena.
One low sound was heard through the tumult, and deeply remembered,
Human, the moan of life mowed as the grass of the meadow. ”

“ In the morning, blue and mild, of the Mother and the Child,
While the blessed bells were calling, thrilled the summons through the wire;
In the morning, blue and mild, for a woman and a child
Died a man of gentle will, plunging on to fight the fire.
Ring, swing, bells in the steeple!
Ring the Child and ring the Star, as sweetly as ye may! [Pg 89]
Ring, swing, bells, to tell the people
God’s goodwill to earthly men, the men of every day! ”

“ THE GIFTS OF THE OAK (FOR THE SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OF JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL) 'There needs no crown to mark the forest's king.'
Thus, long ago thou sang'st the sound-heart tree
Sacred to sovereign Jove, and dear to thee
Since first, a venturous youth with eyes of spring,—
Whose pilgrim-staff each side put forth a wing,—
Beneath the oak thou lingeredst lovingly
To crave, as largess of his majesty,
Firm-rooted strength, and grace of leaves that sing.
He gave; we thank him! Graciousness as grave,
And power as easeful as his own he gave;
Long broodings rich with sun, and laughters kind ”

“ Or broken bough of bay
Or olive called the happy, since it yields
Fruit in unnumbered fields:
For thus they deemed the influence done away
Of barren Death, that else a spell might lay
On the warm living, subtly to annul
Their powers, and strike their fortunes cold and dull. [23]
And we, who seek the soul in each old sign,
Pleased if we may divine
Likeness in difference, Proteus in disguise,
And gazing backward with anointed eyes
Across deep ages and the gulfs of race
Know yet a brother’s face,—
We hail, in this the antique olive gray,
A meaning of to-day. ”

“ Its stars, the symbol of many Powers that move
Clustering together without clash or conflict,
In the deep blue of the vast, tender sky
That is the all-enfolding mantle of God—
With my whole soul in all these I believe. [Pg 57]
That I in peace must show my true allegiance
To this bright Flag, this constellated Union,
By square-done work and clean unselfish living;
That I in war must show my true allegiance—
While war shall linger in this world to threaten
Such Sanctities as these—even by my dying:
In all this I believe. Amen. Amen. ”

“ Smiting his hand on the cannon, and suddenly sinking across it!
Not for them the crawl of the sick slow days of the captive,
Torture of wounds, nor bruit of the perishing cause that they fought for—
Rather swift conquest of Peace, and to enter the City of Silence!
Not for them be sorrow; but sorrow for such men as haply,
Flung on the flag of the South as it burst through the line of the Union,
Fell, and died in their doubt, and knew not the sweep of the darkness
Over their faces upturned was the passing of Victory’s garment! ”

“ And wind-fine voices of the wind-borne birds
Were ever woven in among their words.
Soft-brooding o’er the hamlet where it lay,
The circling hills stood stoled with holy white,
For orchards brake to blossom in the night;
And all the morning was one blown blue flower,
And all the world was at its perfect hour.
So fared he gladly, and his spirit yearned
To do some deed fit for the deep new day.
And on the broad bright way his armour burned, [Pg 46]
And showed him still, a shifting, waning star,
To sight that followed far. ”

“ Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love,
Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height,
Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!
"O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendor blind,
Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!—
Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined:
Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!" ”

“ Being giant-strong to save the souls of men.
But Hate came to us, richly masked, and we
Esteemed him Love; and now among us ten
Sits very Hate. The life we prized is ours
For aye! Yet not so far, I deem, this den
From sound of suffering as our fields of flowers.”
With that weird smile, she turned as if to go.
Loud groaned the lurid City, the sullen fen
Of Styx, and all that grief that lies below.
“Farewell,” I sighed, “Fiammetta!” But she, “Not so!
What life is thine? Perchance we meet again!” ”

“ Lee came riding alone, the beloved magnanimous chieftain,
All alone with defeat in the lucent night and the silence.
Slowly he rode, as one who rides by the bier of a soldier,
Hearing the muffled drums and the sob of a martial sorrow;
Slowly he rode, with downcast head, and the deep moon-shadow
Lay underneath his brows. At the last, from his horse, overwearied,
Hardly he might dismount; on the saddle heavily flinging
One lax arm, he stood awhile without word to the other;
Moveless, horse and man, as if by the art of the sculptor
Wrought in enduring bronze for an everlasting remembrance. ”

“ Horses’ honour pricked them on, and they leaped as at a goad;
Jimmy Calnan in his place, with his clean-cut Irish face,
Iron hands upon the reins, eyes astrain upon the road.
Clang! Clang! Quick to clear the way!
(Sweetly rang, above the clang, the bells of Christmas day.)
Tearing, plunging through the din, scarce a man can hold them in;
None on earth could pull them short: Mary Mother, guard from harm
Yonder woman straight ahead, stony-still with sudden dread,
And the little woman-child, with her waxen child in arm! ”

“ Blue that is the sky of God,
Red that is the blood of Man.
The web was woven, the web was one:
The stars sang when the work was done.
God had willed it to be worn—
Fit garment for the heavenly feast—
By Man, that was to be His son.
Only God could dream that dream!
When Time began, and Man was born, [Pg 4]
He clothed himself in the skin of the beast,
And under it beat the heart of the beast.
Not till Man be born God’s son
Shall he wear the Coat without a Seam! ”

“ TO-DAY.
Voice, with what emulous fire thou singest free hearts of old fashion,
English scorners of Spain, sweeping the blue sea-way,
Sing me the daring of life for life, the magnanimous passion
Of man for man in the mean populous streets of To-day!
Hand, with what color and power thou couldst show, in the ring hot-sanded,
Brown Bestiarius holding the lean tawn tiger at bay,
Paint me the wrestle of Toil with the wild-beast Want, bare-handed;
Shadow me forth a soul steadily facing To-day! ”

“ SUMMER HOURS Hours aimless-drifting as the milkweed's down
In seeming, still a seed of joy ye bear
That steals into the soul when unaware,
And springs up Memory in the stony town.
LOVE UNSUNG Seven jewelled rays has the Sun fast bound
In his arrow of blinding sheen;
But he quickens the breast of the fruitful ground
With a subtlest ray unseen.
And the rainbow moods of this love of ours
I may blend in the song I bring;
But the magic that makes life laugh with flowers
Is the love that I cannot sing. ”

“ With her cheeks aflame and her lips aquiver,
As she leaned and looked with a loyal shame
At the steady flow of the steely river:
Till a storm grew black in the hazel eyes
Time had not tamed, nor a lover sighed for;
And she ran and she girded her, apron-wise,
With the flag she loved and her brothers died for.
Out of the doorway they saw her start
(Pickett’s Virginians were marching through) ,
The hot little foolish hero-heart
Armored with stars and the sacred blue. ”

“ O Star-Flag, O Sky-Flag!
And well may you ripple as if you smiled,
Flag of our hearts’ delight!
We joy because you are aligned
With these the noblest of your kind:
We are yours and theirs with a single mind—
Let us on to the beckoning fight!
[Pg 26]
EARTH-BROWN ARMIES
Earth-brown armies, on the brown earth whither,
Ant-like swarming, rush ye in your wrath?
—We wrestle and we tug and we pull all together
To shift the giant Dead Thing that lies across the path.
Earth-brown armies, but should it roll and smother,
Log-like topple, and crush you in the clod? ”

“ I learned it from the Ninth-month Equinoctial, from the redwood tree, and the Civil War, and the hermit-thrush, and the telephone, and the Corliss engine,
The secret of the Universe is not Beauty, dear son, nor is it Art the perpetuator of Beauty,
The secret of the Universe is to admire one’s self. ”

“ And even as mine, unheard spake voices low,
And hearts were near, that as my own heart beat,
Warm hands, and faces fashioned like to mine.
THE LOST DRYAD (TO EDITH M. THOMAS) Into what beech or silvern birch, O friend
Suspected ever of a dryad strain,
Hast crept at last, delighting to regain
Thy sylvan house? Now whither shall I wend,
Or by what wingèd post my greeting send,
Bird, butterfly, or bee? Shall three moons wane,
And yet not found?—Ah, surely it was pain
Of old, for mortal youth his heart to lend
To any hamadryad! ”

“ The hard distrusts that sever race from race,
Comes his true jubilee!
Never, till all the wars,
Yea, even the noble wars that strive to peace,
With all the thunder of all the drums shall cease,
And all the booming guns on all the brother-shores;
Never, till that worst strife of every day,
More bitter-sordid than the clash of steel,
By some new solving word our lips may learn to say,
Be wholly done away,
Deep-drowned in brotherhood, quenched in the common weal,
Ah, never, till every spirit shall stand up free,
Comes the great Liberator’s jubilee! ”

“ At the dawn-edge of the sky;
And he said, “O Mother, the Right is the Right:
I must fight for it now though I die!”
[Pg 33]
MOTHERS OF SOLDIERS
What should we say to you, O glorious Mothers
Sacred and full of sorrows, we childless ones?
We kneel to you as haloed women, we others,
The slighter lives that could not give their sons.
Not ours the exquisite anguish of surrender,
The deep, still courage that day by day endures,
The rosary of memories piercing-tender,
The travail and the triumph that are yours. ”

“ Such days are gone, and strange things come instead;
For she has looked on other faces white,
Pale bloom of fear, before war’s whirlwind blown;
Has stooped, ah Heaven! in some low sheltering shed
To tend dark wounds, the leaping arrow’s bite,
While the cold death that hovered seemed her own.
And in her hurt heart, o’er some grizzled head,
The mother that shall never be has yearned ”

“ Out of the wood's heart still, and shadows grow
Long on remembered roads as warm days wear;
And still the dark wild water, in its lair,
The narrow chasm, stirs blindly to and fro.
Delight is in the sea-gull's dancing wings,
And sunshine wakes to rose the ruddy hue
Of rocks; and from her tall wind-slanted stem
A soft bright plume the goldenrod outflings
Along the breeze, above a sea whose blue
Is like the light that kindles through a gem. ”

“ Guns of the Gettysburg heights, we hear you as out of the distance:
Shall we not understand? Ye spake, in your awful contending,
Words ye spake through the cloud, with austere oracular voices,
Mighty reverberant watchwords of Titan-forces in conflict:
Crying, “The sundered stars!” and replying “The heavens in their clusters,
Led in the lines of law, and linked in their differing glory
Star unto star to the end, until God folds them up as a vesture!” ”

“ The great Experiment, the high Adventure,
The captain Hope: in all this I believe.
In this bright Flag of Liberty and Union:
Its red, the symbol of the blood of brothers
That flows through men of every race and nation ”

“ Who from the seat of mine own soul dost lower,—
Darkness itself, that doth the light devour,—
I feel thine urgency upon me laid
To voice despair! Thou shalt not be obeyed;
Thou art my master only for thine hour! ”

“ Suddenly fringed the front, from the regiments crouching expectant:
Almost with awe they awaited the furious onset of foemen
Tried in the five-fold fire, and from hell undaunted emerging.
Waited not long: with the crash of answering volley for volley,
Raising the yell of the charge, wild as the howl of the wolf-pack,
Surged up out of the smoke the first of the lean tanned faces,
Teeth half-bared as in joy, and the sunken eyes savagely gleaming
Under the old gray brims and the slant of the battered visors.
Man to man at last! ”

“ Is in her memory? What struggle of sailors
In wild cold waves, at night?
With head thrown back
She looks upon the sea.
In every large curve of her broken body
Is trust, is triumph.
Against the sky she rises,
The light-filled, pure, ineffable azure sky;
Serene, unshaken,
Rises the Victory.
[Pg 96]
FLAGS AND THE SKY
I looked from my window:
I heard a whisper without from the rippling poplar,
I heard the wash of the river, its waves are never still;
I looked, and over the water the flag,
Alive as the river, alive as the rippling poplar,
Rippled too in the wind. ”